DePauw Stories

Matthew Oware’s 2018 book, “I’ve Got Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Music,” was favorably reviewed in the February issue of Sociological Inquiry, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal.

Oware is the Lester Martin Jones professor of sociology and director of the Africana Studies Program.

Reviewer Erik T. Withers notes that Oware’s study covers a wide gamut of rap artists – male, female, underground and queer rappers – and “exposes under-examined nuances of how gender, race and sexuality structure the genre in unique ways.”

The review said in part: “The true gem of this text is its teachability in both undergraduate and graduate social science courses. This book would be a great addition to the reading lists of race and ethnicity courses, gender courses and even theory and methods courses. The appendix offers a clear and concise outline of how the study was conducted, and how the data were analyzed, which gives students a good example of how a rigorous pop culture content analysis is conducted. …

“Oware makes a very timely and broad sweeping contribution to the understanding of contemporary rap, and to the fields of racial and ethnic studies, intersectionality, and pop culture. A must read for anyone interested in the subject matters.”