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Inside Hip-Hop’s Evergreen Tension with the American Flag

Billboard spoke with a few esteemed cultural critics to break down the dynamic between Black hip-hop artists and Americana iconography.

With a Black man finally reaching the highest office in the land, two of hip-hop’s defining icons fully leaned into bootstrap ideology with art that played up the idea that, if you work hard enough, you too can access the financial spoils of the American dream regardless of your skin color. In 2017, the first year of former President Trump’s first term, Brooklyn rapper Joey Bada$$ dropped All-Amerikkkan Badass – an LP chiefly concerned with unpacking the atrocities of the American project – which featured an album cover that replaced the red, white and blue of the flag with the paisley print of bandanas. Arriving in the wake of the insurrection and bearing a sound heavily influenced by rage rap, metal and punk, Pink Tape offers a starkly dystopian imagining of America; the official album trailer finds Uzi dancing and somersaulting their way through a fleet of warriors in what appears to be a crumbling city.

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