The Cool: Hip-Hop, Comics, and Remix Culture

Hip-Hop and comics have always been a match made in heaven. Both have ‘narrative rearrangement’ written into their developmental core. Hip-hop as a culture was always a reflection of two things simultaneously: its constituents and the society that forced them to make something from nothing. Comic books represent the combination of all prior print art forms: mixing & matching previous narratives and narrative devices from literature; mixing and matching various static visual art mediums, styles within those mediums. Woven into the DNA of both cultural phenomena is social inclusion. The reasoning and histories are different, however. Comics predate Hip-Hop by more than fifty years, and at the core of its most popular characters (Superman, Batman, Spider Man, Wolverine [in no order]) we are presented with characters who are remixes of existing archetypes. Superman was a specific representation of Jewish immigrants in the States, Batman a philanthropist with a sense of morality (like Daddy Warbucks in Annie), Spider-Man the flawed, reluctant, and relatable hero (Shakespeare’s ‘Everyman’), and The Spy Who Loved Me From Canada With Love, Wolverine. Each of these characters are ‘sampled’ from some other time or nation, which gives permission to those sampled cultures to buy into the symbolism of the character. Hence, social inclusion in comic books.

Hip-hop is predicated on the people who participate in the culture. These have typically been the oppressed and the ‘have-nots’. D…