MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Representation and discussion of identity are nothing new to music. From folk and country music artists singing about life in rural America, to musicians like The Ramones writing songs about what it was like to be a bored youth in 1970s New York City, American pop music has always provided an interesting ethnographic window into not only a time period and a place, but also the socio-cultural landscape that these artists experienced. This goes doubly so for the genre of hip-hop, which was born out of incredibly specific urban circumstances and gave rise to some of the most vibrant, introspective, and politically charged music of the latter half of the 20th century. So while the idea of music be utilized as a performative aspect of one’s identity and a lens through which to showcase one’s socio-cultural circumstances is not new, the approach that hip-hop artist Himanshu Suri takes—as well as the topics that he covers quite explicitly—stand out as a unique example of the utilization of hip-hop as a means of exploring social topics from a specific ethnic viewpoint that have thus far been fairly nonexistent in American pop culture. The music of Himanshu Suri, both as part of the rap group Das Racist as well as his solo work under the moniker Heems, operates as a unique iteration of the hip hop musical tradition as well as providing a unparalleled and explicitly political look at the experiences of members of the South Asian immigrant community in post-9/11 New York City. This paper is an examination of the multi-faceted approach that Suri undertakes in his music to achieve this goal of examining the exploring and representing his own South Asian immigrant identity and examining the experience of his community, both in the context of life in post-9/11 New York.