“The Illest”

Disability as Metaphor in Hip Hop Music

In this context, there’s no disrespect, so when I bust my rhyme, you break your
necks.
We got five minutes for us to disconnect, from all intellect and let the rhythm
effect
’Bout to lose our inhibition. Follow your intuition. Free your inner-soul and
break away from tradition.
(wilLi.am, “Let’s Get Retarded” / “Let’s Get It Started”)

In 2003, the hip hop group the Black Eyed Peas released their third album
Elephunk which featured the controversial track “Let’s Get Retarded” (I. Am). The
radio edit became “Let’s Get It Started” with only a few minor changes made to
the verses (“cuckoo” becomes “wohoo”). The repackaged song went on to be
featured in several movie soundtracks along with being played at the 2004
Democratic National Convention and was one of the top 100 Pop songs of the year
on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart (Newman). The ARC Organization, formerly the
Association of Retarded Citizens, successfully lobbied the Pea’s record company
arguing that the ubiquitous use of the word “retarded” is offensive and damaging to
those who are medically labeled with the term (Beckham). Others felt this was an
example of the politically correct language police gone too far. I’d like to offer an
alternative reading through a disidentification with the lyrics as either bad or of
little consequence. Words have extreme power and it seems that the persuasive but
yet uninvestigated proliferation of ableist language in hip hop begs further
exploration. What work are lyrics like “let’s get retarded” doing and for whose
interests? Drawing largely on the intersectional analysis of Jose Muñoz, I will
demonstrate the synergistic properties of looking at this language through multiple
lenses at once as a way to forestall the limitations of a binary of good and bad,
political correctness and the protected right to free speech.
As I have begun to conceptualize my own research project, I am very aware of
the tension between the socially constructed nature of identity and the political
impetus to use identity to make claims for adequate and equal treatment in society.
I am also interested in how the policing of identity through stigma management
impacts the ability of various groups to build coalitions and alliances for advocacy.
Do these alternate connotations of ableist language open up or foreclose these
possibilities? What follows is a short investigation of these queries.
Jose Muñoz’s concept of disidentification is really useful in thinking about
people who inhabit the liminal spaces of marginalized categories by virtue of

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identifying with more than one minority classification of embodiment (Muñoz). As
the classic Gloria Hull et al. title advances, All the Women Are White, All the
Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, existing within the margins of the
margins can produce a unique and valuable theoretical perspective (Hull, Scott,
and Smith). One is both inside and outside the already marginalized categories
black and woman but the combination can create a standpoint that demonstrates the
limitations of monolithic constructions of a particular form of marginalization.
Minoritarian discourses generated by these multiply marginal subjects offer so
much in our attempts to theorize the body as it interacts with the world around it.
By examining ableism in hip hop through the multiple lenses of disability, queer,
critical race, and feminist theories we can go beyond the ineffective dichotomy of
positive and negative representation and possibly discover useful theorizing
derived outside the insulated world of academe. Ableism is the system of
oppression that privileges able-bodied people and culture over and above those
with disabilities. In the liminal spaces of hip hop the reappropriation of ableist
language can mark a new way of using words that departs from generally accepted
disparaging connotations. Though this project makes a case for a transgressée
reading of ableism in hip hop, ableism in and of itself is still oppressive.
Additionally, not all of it can be reimagined. Some of it is simply the vile invective
that maintains hierarchies of oppression through able bodied privilege. Though
other genres of music and popular culture generally reinforce ableism (Pop
Music’s love of “crazy” love), its presence in hip hop speaks, I argue, to centuries-
old stigma management strategies of politics of respectability that remain futile.
Hip hop was born in 1970’s New York City. The East Coast was the original
home and as such became the dominant voice of hip hop (Kitwana). The
emergence of the laid back yet violent rap sound of California made for the
creation of a legendary and ultimately deadly east/west rivalry. This unfortunate
history made way for the contemporary moment in which the “Diirty” South rules
the landscape with its feel good club bangers. This constant reorientation allows
for the emergence of different sounds. The Midwestern, i.e., Chicago sound and
the newer, less violent sounds of the Bay Area and LA offer music that has been
allowed to develop out of the mainstream’s controlling gaze. The California
derived sound of The Hyphy Movement’s reappropriation of the derisive terms
“retarded,” “dumb,” and LA Krump’s dance styling both achieved their
transgressive potential through their initial marginalization by mainstream hip hop.
The Bay, or Yay Area as it is sometimes known, along with Los Angeles, has
been off the radar of the mainstream hip hop scene for a little over a decade. With
the yet unsolved murder of the rapper 2Pac and the escalating violence associated
with the genre, so called California “gangsta rap” retreated from the popular scene.
New art forms have developed most notably the hyphy sound and krumping dance
style, with both making explicit claims to the importance of their regional location
and histories of violence as major propellants of the styles.
Getting hyphy, characterized by exaggeration, overness, and overall extraness,
offers opportunities for folks to let loose and get loose on the dance floor. Hyphy is

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also associated with “crazy” behavior like driving with no one behind the wheel
with the car doors open or sitting on top of the car while it’s moving (“ghost riding
the whip”). The addition of whistle tips, a modified metal plate welded to the car’s
exhaust that makes a high pitched screeching sound, further demonstrates the need
to be seen and heard within the hyphy movement. The social embrace of these
ostensibly stigmatizing activities and performances are celebrated for their
intentional transgressive power. By actively flouting societal conventions of quiet
and sane behavior, black people connected to Hyphy music are challenging their
marginalization in a culture that otherwise renders them invisible. They demand
attention; even incurring the derision associated with ableism rather than be
ignored.

Sitting in my scraper, watching Oakland go wild … Ta-dow

In “Tell Me When to Go,” hyphy originator and most recognizable hyphy artist
E-40 explains the unique and non-normative nature of the genre by connecting it to
the location, as well as pointing out the appropriation of the language by rappers
outside the Area. “Going dumb” is marked regionally as being something uniquely
produced in California. The violence of California gang activity has been
implicated in the production of this alternative culture.
The documentary Rize follows the practitioners of krumping from its origins in
LA children’s clowning parties to a dance form that has reached mainstream
audiences through current hip hop choreography (LaChapelle et al.). Though
beginning with Tommy the Hip Hop Clown’s solo birthday performances, it
quickly evolved to dance-battling clown troupes that served as alternatives to
gangs for kids in the neighborhoods. As dancers got older the style continued to
morph and the even more outrageous krumping was born.
To those unfamiliar, krumping looks violent with battles between dancers a
central component. Krumpers hit each other to get amped up to dance in radically
expressive and explosive ways. They connect the dance to African tribal warrior
and spiritual rituals yet also invoke an internalized colonial gaze using words like
primal, crazy, savage, and raw to characterize the link (LaChapelle et al.). So while
celebrated and even exalted as a spiritual practice, it is simultaneously imbued with
a primitive and barbarous ferocity that is connected to the loss of control.
We see this reappropriation in dance. One of the hallmarks of hip hop dance is
the ability to look free form and accidental. Dancers are seemingly and often
instructed in the music to lose control. This loss of control has been lyrically
manifested in the seemingly ableist language of getting retarded and going dumb,
though in the context of these songs, this is a good thing. Missy Elliot’s 2005 hit

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featuring Ciara “Lose Control” invokes this sentiment (Elliot). The loss of control
the freedom afforded to those who let go, who “wile out” is a momentary escape
from the strictures of the everyday. The music itself, alcohol, and weed are used to
allow people to slip out of their constraints and boxes and just be. There is an
association of freedom with one’s ability to go dumb and get hyphy. Ironically this
ableist language further circumscribes the lives of those who are assigned these
labels outside of the hip hop context. For those ascribed the labels “dumb,”
“retarded,” and “crazy,” the liberatory nature of embracing these terms does not
match their reality.
Dumb connotes a lack of intelligence that stigmatizes people and keeps people
from being fully engaged in society. Similarly, those labeled retarded are tracked
into special education classrooms and segregated from their peers. These acts of
separation reinforce stereotypes about the value of people so labeled in a world that
excludes them from formative participation. Crazy also serves to malign those
ascribed with images of violent and uncontrollable behavior, in direct contrast to
the state sanctioned controlled violence many people with mental health conditions
describe experiencing.
The freedom that is expressed through the use of going retarded and dumb has
the simultaneous effect of further foreclosing the freedom for those who are
ascribed these terms by the medicojuridical system. While this language is a
temporary escape for hyphy and hip hop practitioners, it presents many problems
for those ascribed and held to these labels in the world. Beyond just being
offensive, this ableism perpetuates stigmatization, marginalization, and oppressive
structural hierarchies of human difference.
Like many other pejorative terms – lame, gyped, gay, bitch – “retard” and
“dumb” have lost their referents, or rather the referent is purportedly discarded.
When kids say “that’s so gay” or “that’s retarded” to mean something is bad or
uncool, it is not supposed to reflect on the people who are ascribed those labels.
Disability theorists argue that this is not true. These statements do in fact reinforce
negative connotations on already marginalized groups effectively rein-scribing
their liminality and Otherness. Disability Studies, like Women’s Studies,
illuminates the controlling normate in whose fictitious image we discipline our
bodies. Part of the need for ableist language in hip hop is the erstwhile stigma that
black bodies incur. In a futile attempt to manage their own societal stigma, black
men in hip hop often target other marginalized groups including women, queer
people, and people with disabilities. But the critical question is how do we congeal
these often falsely differentiated populations into tandem resistance? What
coalitions might be formed out of a reformulation of stigma management with an
understanding of intersectionality?
Erving Goffman wrote extensively about stigma. Goffman researched the
original Greek definition of “stigma” which meant a physical mark on the body
that signaled some kind of moral failing in an individual (Goffman). This set the
person apart and discredited him/her within the society. While this marking was a
literal branding of the undesirables in ancient Greece (criminals, traitors, slaves,

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etc.), it has evolved to encompass minority groups whose physical characteristics
set them apart from the norm (3). People with disabilities or “abominations of the
body” were one of the three types of stigma Goffman identified who departed from
the anticipated socially constructed norms of the group (5).
Goffman also described “stigma management” strategies employed by
marginalized populations to mitigate their subjugated positioning in society. These
techniques were employed by a wide variety of stigmatized groups including
criminals, sex workers, racial/ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, etc. (20–
23).
The autonomy myth is the undergirding societal assumption that all people are
(or should be) independent autonomous beings that must provide for themselves
(Fineman). This is indirectly coded as able-bodied white, wealthy, and male. This
is what produces societal anxiety about people with disabilities, of color, and
women, who are imagined as dependants who weigh on others (i.e., men’s)
autonomy (34). So many of the stigma management strategies of these
marginalized groups center on making sure that they are perceived as important
contributing members of society and not a drain on its resources.
People with cognitive disabilities are tangentially located within the broader
disability movement that often centers physical impairments. People with physical
disabilities may even try to distance themselves from this presumably even more
stigma producing categorization. The documentary Murderball (2005) highlights
wheelchair rugby players whose rough and tumble personas as well as sexual
prowess are used to separate themselves from cognitive disabilities (Rubin et al.).
Film and television often reinforce this problematic construction through the
implementation of stereotypical roles and narratives that make the person with a
cognitive disability the butt of a joke. The 2008 controversy over the Ben Stiller
comedy Tropic Thunder (2008) illustrates this point well. In the film, Stiller plays
a “retard” who is an actor who thinks that his real life capture by the local people is
part of the filming (Stiller et al.). The film’s tag line “once there was a retard” was
pulled as a result of protests by various disability rights organizations within the
US and abroad.
The blatant use of this offensive language speaks to the invisibility of ableism
within popular culture. Disability activists have even taken to using the
construction “the R-word” like the use of “the N-word.” The n-word though has its
own reappropriation story that is also connected to hip hop. But what this parallel
structure presupposes is an analogous construction. Is Retard to Nigger what bitch
is to queer? Vice versa? Are all of these words only as virulent as the person
hurling them as an insult? Is it fundamentally different when someone who may
identify with these words reappropriates them?
These questions remain as I continue to investigate the simultaneity of
reclamation and reinscription that affect communities in such disparate ways. The
seemingly celebratory power of language for one marginalized group impedes on
the material reality for another and yet there are those who are multiply
marginalized who traverse more than one group at the same time. The work of

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unpacking language that does not easily fit along the binary of positive and
negative must propel our thinking into nonlinear dimensions. We must embrace the
challenge of multi-dimensional complexity and uncover new models that can
accommodate the contradictions of our language.

Works Cited
Beckham, Beverly. “Let’s Not Use Words that Have Power to Wound.” The
Boston Globe 21 Mar. 2007.
E-40. Tell Me When to Go. BME, 2006.
Elliot, Missy. Loose Control. Atlantic, 2005.
Fineman, Martha Albertson. The Autonomy Myth: A Theory of Dependency. New
York: New P, 2004.
Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. 1963.
New York: Touchstone, 1986.
Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith. All the Women Are White,
All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Old
Westbury: Feminist P, 1982.
I. Am, Will. Let’s Get It Started. A&M, 2003.
Kitwana, Bakari. The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African
American Culture. New York: Basic Civitas, 2002.
Rize. Dir. David LaChapelle. Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 2005.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of
Politics, Cultural Studies of the Americas. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999.
Newman, Melinda. “NBA Dribbles with the Peas.” Billboard 10 Apr. 2004. 11, 14.
Murderball. Dir. Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro. Thinkfilm, 2005.
Tropic Thunder. Dir. Ben Stiller. Paramount, 2008.

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