Biracial in a Black Man's Rap Game: Exploring expressions of multiracialized vulnerability in Logic’s “Everybody”

• In Event: 30420 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Multiracial, Transracial Spaces, and Navigations

Abstract

The field of Black vulnerability studies (Curry 2017) includes analyses of Black male rap artists’ sexual debut (Rudrow 2020), romantic relationships (Smith 2023), mental stress, self-medication, and suicide ideation (Forman 2023; Rudrow 2019). I extend this analysis to Black-white mixed-race males who express emotional vulnerability concerning their racialized identities (Campion 2019; Sims and Joseph-Salisbury 2019). Using Logic’s—a Black and white mixed-race male—song “Everybody” as a case study, I find that while he expresses joy and pride in his Black and mixed-race identity, he simultaneously articulates anger and frustration towards Blacks and whites who question, dismiss, or degrade his Black and mixed-race identities, paralleling research on multiracial individuals (Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002; Franco et al. 2018). By using his radio interviews and personal video log (vlog) to contextualize and supplement the content analysis of “Everybody,” I argue that Logic’s articulations of a multiracialized vulnerability in his music is a complex and multilayered affective response to challenges to his racial identity, illustrating Forman’s (2023) notion of a “revised sense of [Black male] authenticity” within recent rap music. Consequently, this research broadens the literature on Black male vulnerability to include Black-white multiracial males within rap.

Author

• Matthew Oware, University of Richmond