Slow singing and flower bringing: Death & the Black female presence in the Black male narrative of commercial rap releases

African American Studies is an interdisciplinary field devoted to the study of the history, culture, and politics of Black Americans. Broadly, the field studies the cultures of people of African descent in the United States and compares the Black American narrative to other anthropological adaptations within the global African Diaspora. Despite the seemingly all-encompassing definition of African American Studies, the discipline often overlooks the diffusive relationship between the lived Black experience, its major cultural export, Rap music, and the catalyst for the creation of Hip Hop, Death either personified or interpreted as a metaphysical plain.;This essay argues that Achille Mbembe's principal work, Necropolitics should be applied to the United States through stories of young Black men as told through the most popular genre of American music production, Rap. Additionally it makes the case that the African American narratives of Black men and women in romantic relationships can be productively studied through Rap and Hip-Hop culture.;The foundational examples used to bridge Afro Diasporic intersectionalities (Crenshaw, 2004) will be social commonalities of the Black male experience and the exploration of Death in the Black imagination being used as unique political technique for othered groups (Guess, 2006). Locating and illuminating these intersectionalities requires a study of Black discographies, contextualized by Black Diasporic sociologies and histories. In addition to a historical framework, critical analysis and contextual explanation of the works of Black male musicians The Notorious BIG, Lupe Fiasco and others have also been incorporated in this composition to further assess Necropolitics within the Black community.