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4 Emceeing Toughness, Toughing up

the Emcee
Language and Masculine Ideology in
Freestyle Rap Performances
Quentin E. Williams

INTRODUCTION1

It has been more than a decade since the publication of Sally Johnson and
Ulrike Meinhof’s (1997) landmark collection of essays on Language and
Masculinity, a work which shaped some of the arguments in feminist lin-
guistics (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 2003), language and gender studies
(Bucholtz et al. 1999), and studies in language and sexuality (Cameron and
Kulick 2003). The collection of papers in that volume was an attempt to
think through the various linguistic and discursive practices and implica-
tions of men’s talk, and how men articulate their masculinities, and what
views they have as men, based on class, social status, and other factors such
as race and ethnicity (see in particular Coates 1997). In the introductory
chapter, Johnson laid bare the agenda for casting language and masculini-
ties, among other aspects, through a more critical ambit, from deconstruct-
ing hegemonic or ‘dominance’ framings of heterosexual masculinity to
addressing the idea of ‘difference.’ Particularly, she argued that “[w]hat we
really need is to know more about the complex role played by ‘difference’
in the construction of ‘dominance,’” going on to say that “[t]he study of
language and masculinities is not simply one way of exploring such a role”
but that “it [is] difficult to envisage how this can be done without looking at
men” (Johnson 1997: 25; italics in original).
Today we live in globalised societies where heterosexual men, their ideas
of being men, and their practices are placed under the spotlight and studied
with intense scrutiny (see studies by Shire 1994; Bourdieu 2001; McConnell-
Ginet 2011; Atanga et al. 2013; Milani and Shaikjee 2013). As Milani
(2011) argues in his introduction to a special issue of Gender & Language
on Re-casting Language and Masculinities, it is imperative to have a critical
focus on heterosexual men not only in order to grasp the plurality of mascu-
linities, but also to constantly question how, why, and with what linguistic
and semiotic means men produce their heterosexual masculinities in various
contexts (183–184).
This chapter contributes to Milani’s call to question the conditions that
enable the production of heterosexual masculinities, by focusing on how

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78 Quentin E. Williams
young men articulate language ideologies of various non-standard languages
(Woolard 1998) and how a particular form of masculine ideology, tough-
ness, emerges in freestyle rap performances. Freestyle rap performing is a
decades-old genre of rap deeply entrenched in global hip-hop culture since
its inception in the late 1970s (Alim et al. 2010). In the performance of
freestyle rap, emcees (artists with wide ranges of linguistic, identity, and
genre repertoires) produce clever lyrics and rhymes, and whatever meta-
phors, puns, and tropes they can create in order to outwit, outthink, and
outperform each other. Typically, emcees would duel with each other lyri-
cally in a freestyle battle circle made up of a small audience and a mediator
(Lee 2009). This circle is an interactional site where language and local rap
identities and masculinity are challenged and tested (Alim et al. 2011); it is
also a space semiotically anchored in which the activity of freestyling rap
lyrics is staged as a form of play, and where power struggles for toughness
are negotiated, contested, and aligned.
In the analyses of freestyle rap put forth in this chapter, I demonstrate
how three ‘coloured’2 male emcees draw on the language ideological asso-
ciations of Kaaps3 (a working-class variety of Afrikaans), African American
Vernacular English (AAVE), and the register Sabela (the speech register of
the Number Gangs4) to perform masculinity. I draw on a yearlong multi-
sited ethnographic research completed for my PhD study, focusing in par-
ticular on the analysis of video data of freestyle rap performances. The data
reveal how hip-hop spaces in Cape Town are male dominated, and how
emcees limit or restrict the staged performances of masculinity and jostle for
power (Foucault 1982) to control the genre of freestyle rap. Specifically, I
demonstrate how emcees draw on language and semiotic resources to entex-
tualise (Bauman and Briggs 1990) figures, characters, and personae (Agha
2007) in the performance of toughness.
Before we move into the analysis of relevant excerpts, I first argue that
language ideologies cannot be viewed in isolation of the exploration of
tough masculinity, and as such, I briefly review the way toughness and tough
masculinity have been addressed in language and gender studies and in the
hip-hop literature more generally. By drawing on the notion of entextualisa-
tion suggested by Richard Bauman as part of the theoretical toolkit of the
sociolinguistics of performance (Bauman 2011), the analytical sections dem-
onstrate how tough masculine performances emerge as a result of localised
rap identities and taking a tough stance on stage; that tough masculinity is
constructed through fantasy captured in figures, personae, and characters;
and that such discursive features feed into performances of tough masculin-
ity. I illustrate my argument by analysing two interlinked instances of free-
style rap performing to show how emcees contest and coproduce language
and tough masculine ideologies on stage and in front of an audience. By way
of conclusion, I suggest that hip-hop linguistics expand its remit and focus
more intently on local forms of toughness as indexical of local orders of
hegemonic masculinity (cf. Connell 1995).

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Emceeing Toughness 79
LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY, GENDER, AND MASCULINITY

To study language ideologies or language ideological associations and how


they are tied to the performance of gender and masculinity, especially in
the context of local hip-hop practices, is to acknowledge the way in which
speakers valorise ideas about and of language use and structure. Language
ideologies tell us what links are forged between the use of forms of talk,
speaker perceptions about the value of language, and the power of their
language(s). Silverstein (1979) writes that language ideologies are “sets of
beliefs about language circulated by users as a rationalization or justification
of perceived language structure and use” (193), whereas Woolard (1998)
reminds us that language ideologies

underpin not only linguistic form and use but also the very notion of
the person and the social group, as well as such fundamental social
institutions as religious ritual, child socialization, gender relations, the
nation-state, schooling, and law.
(3)

According to Cameron (2003), language ideologies became “a salient


issue for feminists because the salience of gender itself in many (pre-and
non-feminist) representations of language” (448), and for decades now,
feminist and gender researchers have argued against ‘established ideologies
of language’ that suggest the differences between men and women should
be taken as ‘natural’ (Cameron 2003). Feminist linguists, in particular, have
challenged the representation of differentiated language use among men
and women, leading to further questions about how gender identities are
represented, and where and what ideologies are involved. Cameron (2003)
notes that antiquated ideological representations of gender relations had the
purpose of instructing men and women on “gender appropriate behaviour”
(449) and sold the message “that there are clear-cut, stable differences in
the way language is used by women and by men” (450). These ideologies
ignored the fact that the contexts of situation and speech situations where
men and women interact today are much more complex, linguistically, than
what was previously found. In actual fact, as Cameron argues further, there
has always been “intra-as well as intercultural variation in the representa-
tion of language and gender” (451).
In spite of this, our globalised world as we know it today is still defined by
gender inequality and in some contexts the language ideology “women are
linguistically inferior to men” remains, especially where heterosexual men
overwhelmingly dominate gender talk, discourses, and interactions (Cam-
eron 2003: 453; italics in original) (cf. Cameron 1995). Those discourses are
often defined by categories such as class, ethnicity, place, and nationality and,
when looked at closely, reveal the complex nature of heterosexual interac-
tions across various local contexts. For example, Milani and Jonsson (2011)

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80 Quentin E. Williams
demonstrate convincingly how language ideological pronouncements in the
Swedia media filter into its society and are appropriated and used in hetero-
sexual interactions. In the authors’ study, they illustrate how “immigrant
young men” negotiate “positions of power, authority and solidarity” in the
school and classroom context (Milani and Jonsson 2011: 241), and slip in
and out of “ethnic, sexist and homophobic insults and jokes” (Milani and
Jonsson 2011: 241) as they interact with each other. The authors also illus-
trate how those ethnically Other young men bring into doubt a dominant
ideology in Sweden—an ideology of equality—prescribed by the teacher.
They argue, however, that this ideology of equality is “an essentialist view
of ethnic and national belonging” (Milani and Jonsson 2011: 250), and as
a result they conclude that the young men in the classroom resort to “ethnic
insults, gay innuendos and misogynistic talk” because such talk not only
constitutes the interactional resources from which they draw to make mean-
ingful classroom interaction but also helps them to negotiate “the local mas-
culine order” (Milani and Jonsson 2011: 265; citing Evaldsson 2005: 764).
Recent studies on language and gender in Sub-Saharan Africa also attest
not only to the relevance of studying language ideologies and heterosexual
masculinities but its importance for understanding gender relations of power
and dominance in post-colonial settings (cf. Morrel 2001; Atanga et al.
2013). Atanga et al.’s (2013) volume for instance demonstrates how gen-
der traditions, struggles, and the fight for change are complicated by hege-
monic gender relations, discourses of power, and language use among men
and women. In particular, the study of language and masculinity ideology in
South Africa cannot be understood outside the context of its history of colo-
nialism and apartheid (Hearn and Morrell 2012). Although it is beyond the
scope of this chapter to rehearse how the gender hierarchy and relations were
structured during colonialism and apartheid, it is perhaps sufficient to point
out that since the beginning of post-apartheid South Africa, gender relations
and inequality have been addressed in the context of civil rights, govern-
ment, and institutions such as the media. Reid and Walker (2005) point out,
for instance, that with the dawn of a new democracy, the gender order in
South Africa shifted from a patriarchal system to one that “has given way to
new ideals of equality between men and women, which are enshrined in the
Constitution” (1). But given the constitutionally enshrined rights of gender
equality, we may want to ask why hegemonic masculinity is still so relevant
in multilingual interactions? Does it have to do with ‘perceptions’ of being
a man in a context of South Africa? Or is it the way men dominate gender
interactions because of cultural, religious, and indigenous prejudices against
other men? These are some of the questions which relate to the study of mas-
culinities that have occupied feminists and gender activists for a long time.
Not too long ago David Morrell (2001) concluded that when we study men
in a post-colonial country like South Africa, “there is no one, typical South
African man” (33), which many further studies in language and masculinity
support (see for instance Milani and Shaikjee’s 2013 study on the New Man).

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Emceeing Toughness 81
To study language ideologies and their framing of gender and masculinity
therefore can be useful when we want to sharpen our focus on men’s lan-
guage use and performances, especially on how constructions of masculinity
emerge in space and time; because as Cameron (2003) puts it, “ideologies of
language and gender . . . are specific to their time and place: they vary across
cultures and historical periods, and they are inflected by representations of
other social characteristics such as class and ethnicity” (452). Language ide-
ologies are thus important resources to understand gender power struggles
in interactions (cf. Milani and Jonsson 2011) and performances, particularly
in the staged performance of tough masculine identities (the focus of this
chapter).
Generally, tough masculine identities are associated with physical prow-
ess and the attainment of respect, or participation in contact sports, and
are among the checklist of prime indicators for measuring toughness. They
are sometimes a driving factor for how men anchor their dominant roles in
gendered interactions and performances. For example, to be a tough man
means to act in accordance with subjective power-driven expectations and
experiences and to exert power over others when and where it is required
by your peers (see Walker 2005).
More specifically related to language use, Lawson (Chapter 3, this vol-
ume) states that articulations of tough masculinity can be studied by looking
at the language of toughness, and how it is often associated with “interper-
sonal violence, aggression and delinquency” as men try to obtain respect
from their peers (Lawson 2013: 369). As he points out, men perform-
ing toughness typically articulate characteristics of the ‘hard man,’ those
men who perform “a particular form of masculine identity which draws
on . . . stereotypical working-class characteristics such as toughness, physi-
cal strength, courage, and so on” (Lawson, this volume; see also Lawson
2013: 370). For Lawson, articulations of toughness emerge in conversa-
tional turns and performances that are viewed by men as competitive and
where they engage in “one-upmanship” (Coates 2003: 56). What character-
ises articulations of toughness are verbal insults and abuse and the goal is
always to assert “linguistic power” (Eliasson 2007: 48); because, according
to Seidler, “language comes to be used as a weapon for the defense of mascu-
line identity, rather than as a mode of expressing connectedness with others”
(Seidler 1989: 7; compare Evaldsson 2002).

HIP-HOP BURDENED BY TOUGH MASCULINITY

In no other local cultural context in South Africa is tough masculinity more


clearly represented than in the popular practice of hip-hop. Toughness, from
the perspective of global hip-hop, is prevalent, unquestioned, and almost an
everyday index of hegemonic masculinity throughout the hip-hop culture
(Rose 1994).

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82 Quentin E. Williams
As a historically urban culture born out of poverty and urban spaces,
hip-hop can be understood as a way of life for many young men and women
that define their lives by the performance of its elements: rap (or emcee-
ing), graffiti-writing, turntabling (deejaying), and b-boying (or breakdanc-
ing) (Chang 2007). Since its birth in New York, hip-hop has always been a
male-dominated culture, so it is not surprising then that scholarly concerns
have lamented over the dominance of toughness, the lack of emphasis on the
plural differences of masculine identities, and the subjugation of women and
their bodies (Rose 1994). It was Rose’s (1994) comprehensive study on rap
music that shed light not only on how rap artists’ use of misogynistic and
homophobic lyrics denigrate women, but also how the under-representation
of female emcees in localised hip-hop cultures and gender marginalisation
in global hip-hop persist (Morgan 1999; Perry 2004).
In most hip-hop studies, toughness is consistently and predominantly
associated with the apprenticing of boys, young men, and older men into
the culture and its practices (Sharpley-Whiting 2007). Since Rose’s seminal
study on rap, a stronger focus on men in hip-hop and their masculinities
has been one of the main concerns among hip-hop feminists and cultural
theorists (Forman and Neal 2004; Pough et al. 2007). In her fascinating
comparative study on graffiti writers in London and New York, for instance,
Macdonald (2001) corroborates many early studies of gender marginalisa-
tion in hip-hop, although focusing on how young male graffiti artists posi-
tion themselves as tough men in search of respect, and how they draw on a
wealth of social, semiotic, political, and linguistic resources to make tough
masculine ideology relevant. Macdonald’s excellent ethnographic study on
graffiti offers up evidence to understand how young men contest and copro-
duce toughness (Macdonald 2001: 96). In other words, Macdonald not only
demonstrates how toughness is associated with practices of respect among
graffiti artists, but also shows how the young men in her study discursively
performed toughness as their preferred masculine ideology, which was also
often associated with the dangers of physical confrontations. Furthermore,
tough masculinity is not only a dominant feature in the practices of b-boying
and b-girling (Schloss 2009), or turntabling; it is also a prominent feature in
rap music and freestyle rap performances (Morgan 2009). Morgan (2009),
for instance, demonstrates how in the performance of freestyle rap music
young black men perform tough masculine personae in response to the large
macro-social issues impacting their daily lives, and often comment through
clever lyrics and rhymes how those issues pervade the immediate spaces
where they performed rap and hip-hop (see also studies that draw similar
conclusions: Pardue 2008; Roth-Gordon 2009).
Global hip-hop studies have underscored how the flow of language and
masculine ideologies ties into the local lifestyles and lived realities of black
men who actively participate in the hip-hop culture, and how those men idol-
ise and very often act out the ‘real-life’ figures, characters, and personae they
see of artists in rap music videos. Most prevalent among these have been,

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Emceeing Toughness 83
on the one hand, the popularisation of the late rapper Tupac Shakur and his
motto, “Thug Life” (“The Hate U Gave Little Infants Fucked Everybody”),
and on the other hand, the gun-toting, saggy-pants-wearing, Alizé-drinking
Gangsta Rap popularised by groups NWA (Niggas with Attitudes), G-Unit,
and emcees 50 Cent and The Game. These images reach various localities
across the globe and become recontextualised by young men apprenticed
into local hip-hop cultures. This has also been the case for hip-hop in South
Africa even though traditionally rap music in the country has focused much
more on socioeconomic inequality and counter-hegemonic agency in apart-
heid South Africa (Haupt 1995), and less on language, gender, and mascu-
line ideologies in the present democratic situation.
There are a variety of reasons why this is the case. First, rap music in
South Africa has focused on the lyrical narration of state resistance, race,
and place in the context of apartheid and the early days of post-apartheid
South Africa, and few scholarly texts have highlighted the nature of mas-
culinity in the local culture. Second, research on the plurality of masculine
ideologies has always been mentioned in passing and even though it remains
an imperative (see Ariefdien 2005 for a move forward), there is still a need to
emphasise more clearly the local instantiations of masculinity and masculine
ideologies (Haupt 2008, 2012).

TOUGH PERFORMANCES AS ENTEXTUALISATIONS

Given the previous discussion, in this section of the chapter, I will demon-
strate how the language ideological associations of (1) working-classness and
the non-standard stereotyping and marginalisation that have come to define
the language variety Kaaps; (2) the violence, gangsterism, and aggressiveness
ideologies typically associated with the use of Sabela; and (3) the use of AAVE
as a racialised variety are taken up and performed by emcees in the perfor-
mance of freestyle rap (cf. Williams and Stroud, forthcoming). I will explore
two instances of toughness in freestyle rap performances during a hip-hop
show held in a popular night-club. Performances are “critical sites for the
play of linguistic ideologies about types of people, the varieties they are sup-
posed to speak and the indexical varieties associated with these varieties,”
and they also serve as important “frameworks of interpretation which people
orient to in their everyday lives” (Lo and Kim 2012: 258). In the context of
this paper, I explore freestyle rap performances as instantiations and pro-
cesses of entextualisation (Bauman and Briggs 1990) central to the enactment
and articulation of toughness by emcees. Entextualisation here refers to how
context-specific interactions become decontextualised and recontextualised
in the extraction of a piece of linguistic interaction, a text, or discourse, from
one particular space, and its incorporation into another in such a way “that
the resultant text carries elements of its history of use within it” (Bauman
and Briggs 1990: 73; Bakhtin 1981). As such, I aim to demonstrate in the

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84 Quentin E. Williams
analyses how emcees prioritise toughness as a masculine ideology mediated
and remediated in the performance of freestyle rap (Reeser 2010).
In the analysis below, I demonstrate how male-centred hip-hop cultural
practices of tough masculinity entextualised in freestyle performances may
repress the staging of other forms of masculine identities. I also demon-
strate how forms of transnational toughness circulating in global hip-hop
are relocalised in the local freestyle battle space. I point out how toughness
indexes the historical framing of black and coloured bodies as emcees lyri-
cally insult and threaten each other on stage. I also illustrate how emcees
articulate toughness through Kaaps and AAVE to showcase ideologically
their form of toughness, but also to assert registers of toughness of com-
munities associated with extreme violence (as in the case of Sabela). Below,
then, I first analyse how the emceeing of toughness involves the entextualisa-
tion of tough popular culture figures and personae in the local freestyle rap
space under consideration. Second, I demonstrate how everyday discourses
of chauvinism, homophobia, and sexuality are associated with the toughing
up activity of emcees in freestyle rap performances.

Emceeing Toughness with Personae: Chuck versus Bio.has.it


The freestyle rap performances analysed below owe their existence to trou-
ble started between emcees representing opposing style communities in Cape
Town’s hip-hop culture in the Northern Suburbs. In the first setting, I anal-
yse two instances of freestyle rap performing based on video data I collected
on multilingualism and hip-hop in a popular nightclub in the Northern
Suburbs, Club Stones, whose management agreed with a young rap group,
Suburban Menace, to host a weekly hip-hop show called “Stepping Stones
to Hip-Hop.” Club Stones, like most of the clubs in Cape Town, has histori-
cally been a convivial space for the local hip-hop culture. Suburban Men-
ace’s main purpose was to gain experience by performing their rap music in
front of an audience in a club. One of the main features of their rapping was
the performance of freestyle rap.
Suburban Menace formed part of a much bigger male rap produc-
tion company named MobCoW (see Table 4.1). All the members of the

Table 4.1  Members of MobCoW

Suburban Menace Members: MoB


Lil Holmes
M.D.K
Mseeq (also music producer)
Narc
Other Members of MobCoW: Chuck
Baza Lo
Jack deNovan

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Emceeing Toughness 85
company grew up in township areas across the Cape Flats, the apartheid-
segregated land outside the city of Cape Town where most coloured and
black speakers live. They are multilingual and speak either English or
Kaaps in most speech situations. Each of them has at one point or another
been exposed to the activities of the Number gangs4 who pride themselves
on a form of tough masculinity defined by extreme violence and physical
abuse (Salo 2004). The Number gangs use the register Sabela to articu-
late and exalt their form of toughness in the Cape Flats, and most young
men who live in the Flats are exposed to the register. As emcees in the
making, MobCoW lyricists perform their on-stage tough personae that
often combine the mannerisms, physical posturing, and, to some extent,
the registers of the Number gangs with the transnational toughness of
black masculinities and AAVE prevalent in global hip-hop. They often
engage in street corner freestyle battles, where aggressive, face-threatening
lyrics and language use are tested. And although they recognise other
types of masculinity—as fathers to their children and breadwinners in
households—they are more often than not tough men for the sake of
rap authenticity, identity construction, and apprenticing in local hip-hop
spaces across Cape Town.
As part of their effort to bring the best hip-hop performances in the
Northern Suburbs of Cape Town, MobCoW not only gave a platform to
emcees across Cape Town but also recruited some of the best rap lyricists in
Kuilsriver. Two emcees, Chuck and Jack Denovan, earned very rapidly the
reputation as the best emcees in the hip-hop community and for perform-
ing the most aggressive style of freestyle rap in Club Stones. As a rap duo,
named by MoBCoW music producer Mseeq as You Two, Chuck and Jack
Denovan captured the hearts and minds of the hip-hop show audiences and
took a chance, one night, to unseat the Stepping Stones to Hip-Hop’s then-
freestyle rap champion Bio.has.it (an emcee representing the Bellville South
hip-hop style community).
What follows is a transcript of a recording of the freestyle rap bout
between Chuck and Bio.has.it. The freestyle opened with the freestyle medi-
ator (the facilitator of the battle), Mseeq, calling both emcees to the stage.
After each had shaken the other’s hand, the mediator asked the emcee who
initiated the battle (Chuck) to choose heads or tails at the toss of the coin
and to decide which one should start the performance. Chuck won the toss
and elected himself to start, opening his freestyle with four lines of verbal
cues (lines 52 to 54), before he went on to emcee his toughness against Bio.
has.it, performing5:

Chuck:
52 Uh
53 Uh
54 Uh    (Chucks moves closer to Bio.has.it)

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86 Quentin E. Williams
55 (inaudible)
56 Djy sal jou weg moet stiek
You need to hide
57 Van vir my lyk djy
’Cause to me you look
58 soes Liewe Heksie    (Bio.has.it lifts his hands in the air, dancing)
Like Little Witch
59 Met jou fokking kak takkies    (Bio.has.it touches sneakers/shows
     thumbs up)
With your fucking shit sneakers

Chuck opens his lyrical attack on his opponent’s masculinity by entex-


tualising the persona of a fictional character depicted in a local children’s
television show, aired in the early 1980s to early 1990s of apartheid South
Africa: the Little Witch, Levinia. This show was an adaptation of a popular
books series by Verna Vels published in 1961 and depicts the world and
travails of Levinia, a little witch who has a garden, a kitten named Matewis
(Afrikaans for Matthew), elf friends in “Flower Land,” and a grown cat
who drives a car and owns a helicopter. As the story goes, the Little Witch
would sometimes summon a magic horse named Griet, and in her world,
she is beholden to King Rose Wreath, whose frustration is often caused by
Levinia’s lack of magical skill. She occasionally fights with a yellow witch
and her underlings, the “Little Poison Apples.” And when she finds herself
outnumbered, and sometimes literally between a rock and hard place, the
Fairy Queen comes to her rescue. From its debut on television, the show’s
target audience was toddlers, and the language in which the puppets spoke
was standard Afrikaans.
Levinia is the first television figure on whom Chuck draws in order to
mediate the opening lyrics of his performances. Rather interestingly, his
point of departure is to tell his opponent to hide away like Levinia (lines 56
to 58) because he acts like her. Stereotypically, Levinia, being a witch, used
to hide away, was shy, and always wore worn-out black clothes and shoes
which reflected her as unkempt and ugly. It is these features of Levinia that
Chuck brings to light and associate with the clothes on Bio.has.it’s back, and
his ‘shit sneakers’ (line 59). Almost immediately, we see that Chuck link the
flaws of Levinia with Bio.has.it’s masculinity so as to bring into doubt his
toughness. He goes a step further and decides to make use of expletives to
perform an aggressive rap style.

61 Chuck verstaan as djy wil verloor


Chuck understands if you want to lose
62 Want dai’s die skill
Cause that’s the skill
63 wat ek jou met kan betoor
With which I can put you under a spell

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Emceeing Toughness 87
64 Afrikaans, kan djy praat van dai
Afrikaans, you can speak of that
65 Djy’s ’n Boesman van Afrikaans    (Bio.has.it waves Chuck away)
You’re Bushman speaker of Afrikaans
66 Probeer jou naai    (Audience response: “Whoa!”)
Try you cunt

First, what is interesting about the continuing lines of emceeing toughness


above is that the emcee opposes Bio.has.it by reflecting on his skill (line 62).
He suggests cleverly, in Kaaps, that he would understand if Bio.has.it wants
to lose (“Chuck verstaan as djy wil verloor,” line 61) because his lyrical skill
will put him “under a spell” (line 63). In other words, whereas Chuck’s lyri-
cal skill does not assume the full magical competence of Levinia, it’s magi-
cal enough to subdue his opponent (line 63). Second, from lines 64, we see
the emcee entextualise a second persona—a Bushman—that is defined by
local sociolinguistic characteristics. Chuck offers this second persona to the
audience as a way to read his opponent’s use of standard Afrikaans as ques-
tionable (line 64 to 66). To draw on Agha (2007), the “activity of reading
persons” is almost always “mediated by stereotypes of indexicality, namely
stereotypic social images associated with discrete signs that specify default
ways of reading persons who display them” (239). Thus, what unfolds in
Chuck’s performance of toughness is the entextualisation not only of ethnic
Bushman linguistic stereotyping but also the racing of his opponent as a
coloured speaker who fails to speak ‘proper’ and/or ‘Standard Afrikaans.’
Chuck highlights apartheid’s monoglot ideology (Silverstein 1996) of
Afrikaans and its varieties. In other words, Chuck offers meta-commentary
and “moral indignation” (Woolard 1998) on the way Bio.has.it is and has
been performing Afrikaans lyrics, as not ‘Suiwer Afrikaans’ (‘Pure Afri-
kaans’ as spoken by white Afrikaners) but as a working-class variety of
Afrikaans, Kaaps, which is typically associated with coloured speakers. This
is followed by more aggressive lyrics and tone as another social persona is
entextualised by Chuck when he brandishes Bio.has.it as trash:

70 Hy se ek loep rond    (Bio.has.it shows Chuck the middle finger)


He says I go around
71 Ek naai vir twak    (Chuck faces the audience)
I’m fucking for cigarettes
72 Hah-hah   (Laughs)
73 Hy fokken naai met Chuck
He’s fucking with Chuck
74 Die ouens (inaudible) met dai brak
The street-smart (guys) with the dogs

Apart from lines 70 to 71, the hysterical laugh in line 72, Chuck argues
that Bio.has.it is “fucking with” him and as a consequence is looking for

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88 Quentin E. Williams
trouble with his ouens. As he completes his round of performing, we see it is
the street-smart figure that is mediated in Chuck’s performance, specifically
the aggressiveness of the ouens (line 74) (compare Ratele 2001). On the one
hand, Chuck implicitly links the transnational figure of Dark Man X (DMX)
whose rap music has an aggressive style and who embodies a (hyper)mas-
culine ideology in his music videos where young black men, wearing tough
Timberland boots, hold back salivating bull terriers tied to tight collars. In the
global linguistic flow of hip-hop, this figure of tough masculinity has become
part of the local masculine orders in various local hip-hop contexts, not least
in Cape Town. On the other hand, by using the male Kaaps honorific ouens,
Chuck highlights that outside the freestyle rap performance space his oppo-
nent is likely to encounter members of his crew, some of whom form part of a
Number gang (see Steinberg 2004; Salo 2004: 204). The use of that honorific
cuts right to the heart of the aggressive ideology Chuck wishes to associate
with the artistic use of Kaaps. He exploits the perceptions of his audience and
opponent about how “honorifics are embedded in an ideology in which a
low-affect style can be other-elevating” (Irvine 1998: 62) but also how the use
of honorific ouens seems to manage or prioritise tough masculinity in terms
of “affectivity and conventionality” and “rank and power” (Irvine 1998: 62).
Bio.has.it’s response remediated the persona of ouens, its link to Kaaps,
and the toughness of Number gangsters, as he performs:

75 Kykie    (Bio.has.it moves closer to Chuck)


Look
76 Djy’s van Bruinstormers
You’re from Brainstormers
77 (inaudible)
78 Huil as die komkommers    (Chuck looks to the stage floor, listening)
Cry when the cucumber’s
79 in jou hol in is
in your ass
80 Want hoekom lyk jou gesig soe vol bommels?
Why does your face have pimples?
81 Djy lyk amper vir my soes
You look almost like
82 dai bra sonder ’n face
that brother without a face
83 Djy’s ’n volstruis wat gebasterd is met ’n muis (Chuck laughs ridiculously)
You’re a crossbreed between an ostrich and a mouse
84 Hoekom praat (inaudible)
Why do you speak?
85 Kyk hoe lyk djy
Look at you
86 Djy lyk soes ET
You look like ET

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Emceeing Toughness 89
87 Djy moet jou naam change van Chuck
You need to change your name from Chuck
88 na Auntie Beatie    (Audience Response: “Oh!”)
To Auntie Beatie

From the start of his performance, line 75, Bio.has.it points out that the
affiliation to Brainstormers, a rap group not affiliated to MobCoW or the
Kuilsriver hip-hop community, compromised Chuck’s toughness: the reason
for this is that Chuck was always seen as a marginal member of the group
and it became general knowledge throughout the larger hip-hop community.
But because this is freestyle rap where creativity is taken seriously, the lyrical
combinations are done in several ways. Bio.has.it accuses Chuck of being
the female of his group, crying when a cucumber is in his ass. This explicit
reference brings Chuck’s masculine body into question, with Bio.has.it ask-
ing why his face is full of pimples; suggesting something has gone wrong;
and further pointing out that Chuck looks like an interbred species that
looks like an ostrich and a mouse.
These comments on Chuck’s body lead Bio.has.it to further associate
his opponent with two popular television personae (lines 86 to 88): ET,
the extra-terrestrial alien who stars in Steven Spielberg’s popular movie by
the same name, and a local and very stereotypical persona captured in the
name Auntie Beattie, modelled after a television character named Auntie
Stienie who stars in the popular 1980s Afrikaans series, Agter Elke Man
(‘Behind Every Man’). Auntie Stienie is a mature gossipy neighbour with
rollers in her hair, who looks for rumours in order to spread them widely.
Thus, in the same way that Chuck entextualised figures and personae
before, so does Bio.has.it.
The point I want to highlight here is that the dialogical construction of
toughness staged by the emcees demonstrates how femininity is not only
entextualised as figures of fantasy (the Little Witch), but that it also tells us
how femininity is tied into the staging of an aggressive articulation of tough
masculinity in the use of linguistic features of Kaaps. This is specifically clear
in the use of Kaaps expletives (such as “fokking,” line 59; “naai” in lines
66 and 71; “fokken,” line 73); as well as the use of sexual image-invoking
words (such as “komkommers,” line 78; “hol,” line 79). We can add to that
Cameron and Kulick’s (2003) argument that the “linguistic features that
index femininity linguistically also index heterosexual identity, because of
the crucial role played by compulsory heterosexuality in the construction of
gender identity and gender relations” (50–51).
Thus it is clear that both emcees make widely relevant the use of Kaaps for
emceeing toughness, and this is particularly the case for emcee Chuck who
suggests explicitly that his toughness is tied to his ouens’ tough masculinity.
They draw on historical discourses to construct each other’s masculinity and
throughout the whole performance Kaaps is made the linguistic resource
on which they draw to maintain their rhythm and cadence of freestyle rap

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90 Quentin E. Williams
performing. Further, they put on display the value of Kaaps as a local hip-
hop language variety that should and could be used in freestyle rap battling
and the performance of other genres (I have written elsewhere on how well
Kaaps works in the performance of other localised rap genres; cf. Williams
and Stroud 2013).
We can summarise the above analysis of tough masculine entextualisa-
tion as significant in the way toughness is dialogically constituted through
fantasy, a strategy for enforcing and maintaining the linguistic power and
ideology of toughness as compulsory for local hip-hop performances. The
use of Kaaps by both emcees reveals the various ways in which they attempt
to exert the power of toughness through the entextualisation of sexual-
ity. No attempt by the emcees is made to distance themselves from such
articulations, but rather they embrace artistic expressions through Kaaps
to index the relevance of performing toughness in the freestyle battle space.
They enact but are also caught up and embroiled in relations of masculine
power that subjugate their rap identities and make them subject to injuri-
ous discourses of sexuality, artistic humiliation, and face-threatening speech
(Foucault 1982: 781). In other words, this first struggle of toughness, or
“agonism” of toughness, between Chuck and Bio.has.it stages linguistic and
symbolic power as acts and actions of domination, “of men upon other
men” (Foucault 1982: 787), typical of the local freestyle battle space.
In the end, the above lyrical bout was won by Bio.has.it. Chuck lost the
performance against his opponent because of the fierceness of the latter’s
lyrical attacks, the entextualisation of the discourse of homophobia well
known to be a feature of heterosexual masculinity (expressed in the lyrics
78 and 79), the referencing of feminine imagery captured in the suggestion
of a name change (as in Chuck has to change from Chuck to Auntie Beatie),
and the cheers touted by the audience members. This did not sit well with
Chuck’s emceeing partner, Jack Denovan. They lost ‘face’ (cf. Lee 2009)
and momentum when Chuck lost, and for an entire week, clandestine plans
were hatched by You Two to regain their credibility as the best emceeing
duo. Together with other MobCoW emcees, Jack Denovan rose to the occa-
sion to suggest that the best way to deal with Bio.has.it, and to reclaim their
pride, was to face the latter on stage in a freestyle rap battle. The week fol-
lowing Chuck’s humiliating loss to Bio.has.it, Jack Denovan challenged the
latter emcee in the freestyle rap space and Bio.has.it obliged favourably. The
analysis of that lyrical battle follows below.

Toughing Up the Emcee with Sexuality: Jack Denovan


versus Bio.has.it
Out of loyalty to You Two, the organisers of the Suburban Menace Hip-
Hop Show were coaxed to prepare a lyrical battle between Jack Denovan,
Chuck’s stage partner, and Bio.has.it. In a dramatic and strange turn of
events that night, Bio.has.it declared that he would enter the bout only if

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Emceeing Toughness 91
it would be his last. Taking this as news, the freestyle mediator, Mseeq,
announced his retirement on the same night before the start of the battle.
In the days leading up to the battle, Chuck and Jack made intimidating
threats against Bio.has.it, mainly on-stage, but many believed that Bio.has.
it’s announcement of retirement was influenced by the frequent threats of
violence by You Two, both on-stage and behind the scenes. Thus, as a way
to avoid unnecessary physical violence, he submitted his retirement much to
the irritation of many in the audience.
The performance started much like the one in the previous section. After
a coin toss, Jack Denovan began the lyrical bout by attacking Bio.has.it’s
masculine identity. His performance opened with four lines of local verbal
cueing in Kaaps (lines 1 to 4) followed immediately by references to Bio.
has.it’s sexuality.

Jack Denovan:
1 Is ja
Yeah
2 Kykie
Look
3 Is ja
Yeah
4 Kykie
Look
5 Bio, ek is an actual
Bio, I am an actual
6 Die ding is ’n bunny
This thing is a bunny
7 Hy’s ’n fokken Biosexual
He’s a fucking Biosexual
8 Kyk hoe staan hy
Look how he stands
9 Hande in die sak
With his hands in pocket
10 Ek het hom nog nie gebattle nie
I haven’t even started this battle
11 Toe sak hy al my plak
But I’m already unsettled

From the start of his performance, from lines 5 to 11, Jack articulates his
own toughness as real, “actual,” compared to Bio.has.it being a “biosex-
ual,” for several reasons. First, if we take lines 6 and 7 together, we see that
Jack attempts to denigrate the toughness of Bio.has.it by explicitly referring
to him as a “bunny.”6 The word bunny is widely used among gay men and
women who speak Gayle (Cage 2003), although the word is used here to

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92 Quentin E. Williams
insult the masculinity of his opponent. Second, Jack questions his oppo-
nent’s aggressiveness: he does this by pointing towards the fact that he has
his hands tucked away in his pockets and means to say that Bio.has.it has
already displayed his submissiveness before the battle has even begun (see
from lines 8 to 11). Further, Jack resemiotises in the local freestyle battle
space the transnational hip-hop gangster image by lyrically arguing against
Bio.has.it as a tough Black Thug with no toughness, that is to say, an emcee
with no gangster credibility, a fake gangsta rapper. As he performs:

12 Hy’s ’n nigga
He’s a nigga
13 gangsta rapper
14 but this fucka never pulled a trigger
15 Madonna se figure    (gesturing over Bio.has.it’s body)
Madonna’s figure
16 Ek is in Stones
I’m in Stones
17 Ek is bigger
I’m bigger
18 Wat gat jou aan?
What’s going on?
19 Djy one, one two    (Jack moving closer to Bio.has.it as he moves
             away)
You’re one and two-ing
20 Ek maak vir jou ’n poes
I make you out to be a pussy
21 Vir jou my broe’
It’s you my brother
22 Maak jou hand soe    (Bio.has.it gesturing Jack is just talking)
Make hand signs
23 Ek rap freestyle
I rap freestyle
24 Betieken die kom van boe    (Jack touching his head)
That means it comes from my head
25 Bring jou rhymes
Bring your rhymes
26 Is djy gecurse
You’re cursed
27 Ek guarantee vir julle    (Facing the audience)
I guarantee you guys
28 Rap vir my ’n verse
Rap me a verse

The lyrics above are entextualised with a number of references to sexu-


ality that follow from the opening of the emcee’s performance. First, Jack

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Emceeing Toughness 93
compares Bio.has.it’s bodily stature to Madonna’s figure (the global icon of
pop sexuality) by rhyming his opponent has a meek bodily figure in relation
to his own (lines 16 to 17). This comparison of Bio.has.it’s body to that of
Madonna is interesting because “the materiality of the body” is often con-
sidered “a site of desire” (Milani, 2014: 27). Second, the use of the expletive
poes (‘pussy’) is not only seen here as an indicator of “power and masculin-
ity,” but also a display of “connotations of strength . . . [and] confidence in
defying linguistic or social convention” (de Klerk 1997: 146–147). Thus, by
comparing Bio.has.it to Madonna and saying he is a pussy, Jack produces
a temporary symbolic reworking of his opponent’s masculinity: he is not
tough; he can be sexualised; and is rather an effeminate male emcee.
Jack Denovan’s performance was followed by a short interlude by the
freestyle rap mediator Mseeq who told the audience that Jack’s first-round
performance was just a warm-up (line 32: “Dai’s opwarming”) for what is
to follow. Whether that comment concerned the lyrical response of Bio.has.
it is unlikely, because Mseeq was the producer of Suburban Menace’s music
and a member of the MobCoW. But this mattered little in the freestyle rap
space and Bio.has.it had to respond to Jack’s denigration of his masculin-
ity. And instead of responding in an aggressive way as he did in the battle
against Chuck, he avoided the use of expletives or any reference to tough-
ness. Whereas Jack toughened himself up with chauvinistic lyrical content
(as we saw above), Bio.has.it’s response was subdued, rhyming:

Bio.has.it:
34 Kykie
Look
35 Djy hoor jou naam is Jack Denovan
You hear your name is Jack Denovan
36 Vir jou sit ek liewendig
I take you alive
37 Binne in ’n Stove in
And put you inside a Stove
38 Agterna is djy soes ’n houbou
Afterwards you’ll be like a vagrant
39 Wat kryp binne in jou eie skel
Who crawls within your shell
40 Want hoeko’ djy’s dai bra
Because you that brother
41 vir wie ek gou enigetyd sal bel
Whom I’ll call anytime
42 om te se djy vervel
To tell you, you are shedding skin
43 Die mense wat jou kan sit binne hel
I’ve got people to put you in hell

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94 Quentin E. Williams
44 Kykie
Look
45 My broe’
My brother
46 Nog altyd wie ek is
I’m still me
47 Bio.has.it sal jou
Bio.has.it will
48 Tot binne in die existence diss
Diss you into existence
49 As djy vir my kom tsais het
If you came to step to me
50 is djy dai bra wat gepick is deur ’n lices
Then you’ll be that brother that was picked by lice
51 Sien djy my broe’ jou hele styl is uit
You see my brother, your whole style is whack
52 dai’s hoekom ek gebruik jou nog vir visse buit
That’s why I use you for fish bait
53 Djy’s dai bra wat nog gaan stink soos viskuit
You are that brother that will stink like fish eggs

It is clear that in the lyrical content of Bio.has.it’s 20 lines of performance


not one reference is made to sexuality, no homophobic slur is used or any
other form of emasculation. Although it may appear to the general hip-hop
fan or the uninitiated to emceeing that Bio.has.it deliberately throws the
freestyle rap battle, this is not necessarily the case. He brings into doubt
whether the sustained toughening up entextualised by Jack in the previous
spit is worth the effort. Although he chose to avoid entextualising tough-
ness, Bio.has.it offers, for example, to focus on alternative aspects of Jack’s
character: that he is a coward who hides like a vagrant in his shell (lines 35
to 39); that wherever he his Bio.has.it will still be able to disrespect him,
even in hell (lines 40 to 48); and that his style is whack (line 51) which makes
him easy prey like fish food placed on a hook (lines 52 to 53). What is per-
haps also interesting to point out is the following: in the use of Kaaps, both
Jack Denovan and Bio.has.it code-switch between forms used in that variety
typical of local rap performances and AAVE (“diss” in line 48 and “tsais” in
line 49; cf. Williams and Stroud 2010 for a similar example).
Overall, we see how Bio.has.it performs a distancing strategy from tough-
ness by avoiding aggressive lyrics in Kaaps and the use of expletives this
time around. As such, he relinquishes the power to challenge Jack out of
fear of violence and physical harm, subjecting himself on-stage and “divid-
ing” (Foucault 1982: 778) his rap identity in light of the power of toughness
that holds sway in the freestyle battle space. It is clear that Bio.has.it’s dia-
logical construction of nontoughness is a tradeoff, a “continuous oscillation
between multiple identities” which ensures “that no clear and unambiguous

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Emceeing Toughness 95
gender ideology can be permanently affixed to it, thus enabling it to achieve
a kind of ideological inscrutability” (Benwell 2011: 197). But be that as
it may, the performance of much more subdued and non-aggressive lyrics
worked against Bio.has.it because in the end, it was Jack who won the free-
style rap bout between the two. It was not only a victory for You Two, but
also a victory for the remediation of tough masculinity.

CONCLUSION

So, how do the data analysed before inform us about discussions about mas-
culinity in sociolinguistics and hip-hop linguistic studies? What do they tell
us about hip-hop in Cape Town? And what have we learned about the local
use of language and language ideological associations among the emcees
active in the hip-hop culture of Cape Town?
In this chapter, I have tried to contribute to the study of masculinities
by demonstrating how language ideologies are associated with the use of
Kaaps, Sabela, and AAVE, and I have tried to demonstrate how tough mas-
culine identities are performed in freestyle rap battles. At the beginning of
the chapter, I asked in what ways emcees draw on language and semiotic
resources to entextualise figures, characters, and personae. I also asked what
sorts of sexuality discourses are usually entextualised by emcees to stage
their toughness (drawing inspiration from Kiesling 1997, 2007).
The analyses in this chapter illustrate how discourses and practices of
femininity that circulate in the practice of hip-hop in Cape Town feed into
performances of tough masculinity and that a language variety such as Kaaps
is used as a linguistic resource to enforce toughness as a dominant form of
masculinity in local hip-hop spaces. Interestingly, the data also reveal that
the emceeing of toughness and the toughing up of an emcee through Kaaps,
AAVE, and Sabela and the activity of entextualisation of figures, charac-
ters, and personae is a matter of position-taking by emcees, with the larger
goal to win. For instance, in the first freestyle rap performance between
emcees Chuck and Bio.has.it, we learn that the mutual display of toughness
is mainly entextualised via figures and personae. The lyrical battle between
Jack Denovan and Bio.has.it gives us an entirely different picture. The data
illustrate how Jack entextualises homophobic sexuality discourses through
chauvinistic lyrics that are meant to ritually insult and emasculate his oppo-
nent. Taken together, these performances of toughness and toughing up of
each other in the freestyle rap space are interesting because they allow us to
show how the display of toughness is not only mediated through local lan-
guages but also demonstrates how emcees use those languages to reinforce
the local masculine order (Milani and Jonsson 2011), be it through popular
figures, characters, or racialised social personae.
The analyses also demonstrate that Kaaps, the language variety for
rap authenticity, is strongly linked to the everyday dynamics of masculine

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96 Quentin E. Williams
ideologies in multilingual spaces such as the one in this chapter. It is my sug-
gestion that hip-hop linguists should strongly consider not only the dialogic
construction of tough masculine selves, but that we also need to unpack
how tough masculinity is constructed through the staging of fantasy in the
identification (Cameron and Kulick 2003: 114) with entextualised figures
and personae. This will help us understand and unpack the intended and
unintended associations of language ideologies and tough masculinity by
men as they navigate local masculinities (Pujolar i Cos 1997: 90).

NOTES

1. I would like to thank Christopher Stroud, Tommaso Milani, and the two
anonymous reviewers for helpful comments that strengthened the final draft
of this chapter. This work was fully supported by the Flemish Interuniversity
Council (VLIR-DBBS, UWC), and partly supported by the Research Council
of Norway’s (RCN) Yggdrasil funding scheme, project number 227492/F11,
and its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, project number 223265.
2. Coloured is a racial category created by the apartheid government in South
Africa for citizens not easily defined as white or black.
3. Kaaps is a variety of Afrikaans.
4. There are three Number Gangs in South Africa: the 26s, 27s, and 28s.
5. A note on the transcription: the performances I have transcribed are mainly
in Kaaps, with a few words in AAVE and Sabela. I have used different fonts
to indicate the difference between Kaaps, AAVE, and Sabela. The Kaaps lyr-
ics are translated into English, and the English translation given in italics. I
have transcribed the on-stage movements of the two emcees to accentuate the
performance as well as given the audience reactions where it occurs. This is
indicated in round brackets.
6. According to Cage (2003, 59), there are two ways to use the referent ‘bunny.’
First, gay men and women talk about ‘bunny bashers’, that is, “homophobic
heterosexual males who go about beating up gay men.” But gay men and
women also talk about bunny boys, teenage male prostitutes, used in Johan-
nesburg round about the 1930s.

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