Journal of Hip Hop Studies
Abstract
Hip Hop group Slaughterhouse's multi-membered, perversely holy quadrinity provides a fertile site for a pseudo-non-theological theological reading-a theology with and without god, that is, with god's titular presence but bereft of any ethos of a mover and shaker god. God, in my reading of Slaughterhouse's lyrics, is impotent. Rather than the Word, Slaughterhouse publishes sacred texts (albums and mixtapes) that speak to Black embodied life; their albums are the scriptural holy ghetto-Word, the Gospels that of Royce, Crooked, Joell, and Joey, rather than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Through the lyrics of Slaughterhouse's songs, they craft a god that is but is not; a god that does lyrical "work" in the sense that the name of god has cultural capital and produces effects, but is not "God," that is, a being that commands the heavens and the Earth.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.34718/BMFC-HK85
Volume
3
Issue
1
Rights
© The Journal
Recommended Citation
Bey, Marquis
(2016)
"About Gods, I Don't Believe in None of That Shit, the Facts Are Backwards: Slaughterhouse's Lyrical Atheism,"
Journal of Hip Hop Studies: Vol. 3:
Iss.
1, Article 8.
Available at:
https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/jhhs/vol3/iss1/8