Trapping ecosystems: Apeshit’s fugitive politics of post/coloniality

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dc.contributor.authorGarrido Castellano, Carlosen
dc.contributor.authorRollefson, J. Griffithen
dc.date.accessioned2023-10-24T15:45:06Z
dc.date.available2023-10-24T15:45:06Z
dc.date.issued2023-03-01en
dc.description.abstractOn June 16, 2018, Beyoncé and Jay-Z released “Apeshit”—a trap-styled hip hop track featuring a chorus of “I can’t believe we made it / Have you ever seen the crowd going apeshit?” The much-commented-on music video for the track was framed as a hip hop takeover of the world’s most visited museum—Paris’s Louvre—featuring pop’s reigning power couple, marketed as “The Carters,” making themselves at home with a collection of dancers in flesh-colored black, brown, and beige bodysuits. While the video was generally received through the split-screen frame of either a cutting decolonial takedown of this monument to Western civilization or the ultimate in money-flaunting bling spectacle, a more subtle and complex set of issues is at play. This article examines the deep historical ambivalences at play in this pop cultural artifact. Employing multi-modal methodologies that combine visual and musical arts perspectives articulated via the frames of postcolonial studies, this analysis theorizes the cultural “traps” in effect. Ranging from the track’s “trap” sonic production and lyrical rhetoric of escape (“we made it”), to the historical trap of musealized colonial plunder and the Louvre’s labyrinthine, oft-subterranean floor plan, to the “trappings” of consumption, bourgeois self-making, and aesthetic contemplation, we seek to illustrate how this socio-cultural text destabilizes Enlightenment universalism and its public/private split.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationGarrido Castellano, C. and Rollefson, J. G. (2023) 'Trapping ecosystems: Apeshit’s fugitive politics of post/coloniality', Journal of Popular Music Studies, 35(1), pp. 20-45. doi: 10.1525/jpms.2023.35.1.20en
dc.identifier.doi10.1525/jpms.2023.35.1.20en
dc.identifier.eissn1533-1598en
dc.identifier.endpage45en
dc.identifier.issn1524-2226en
dc.identifier.issued1en
dc.identifier.journaltitleJournal of Popular Music Studiesen
dc.identifier.startpage20en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/15156
dc.identifier.volume35en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity of California Pressen
dc.rights© 2023, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. Branch (IASPM-US).en
dc.subjectApeshiten
dc.subjectTrap musicen
dc.subjectHip hopen
dc.subjectDecolonizationen
dc.subjectMuseumsen
dc.subjectPost/colonial studiesen
dc.subjectFugitivityen
dc.subjectThe Cartersen
dc.subjectBeyoncéen
dc.subjectJay-Zen
dc.titleTrapping ecosystems: Apeshit’s fugitive politics of post/colonialityen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
oaire.citation.issue1en
oaire.citation.volume35en
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