Hip Hop and Islam
A Guided Reading
with Atéha Bailly
Explore the intertwined histories of hip hop, the African diaspora, and Islam in the United States with this four-part series on Hip Hop and Islam.
Hip hop has long been one of the places where big questions about race, religion, identity, and power get worked out in public. This guided reading looks at how Islam became part of that story...not just as a passing reference in lyrics, but as a deeper moral, political, and cultural force in Black life and expression.
You’ve probably heard some of these references before—mentions of Allah or the umma—but without context, they can be easy to miss or misunderstand. This guided reading is about learning how to hear them.
Playlist-as-Text
Drawing on Africana Religious Studies, Black Atlantic thought, and the history of Black Muslim movements in the United States, this "guided reading" will focus on a playlist instead of a book. created by musician and scholar Atéha Bailly.
Across four sessions, we’ll explore how hip hop conveys histories of displacement, resistance, authenticity, community, and global belonging—while also asking how artists use religion as a way to interpret the world around them.
Along the way, you’ll listen closely to selected tracks and read them carefully—paying attention to lyrics, samples, references, and style—and connect them to the broader histories that shaped them, from the transatlantic slave trade to the Bronx in the 1970s to the transnational circulation of hip hop today.
- Dates: Thursdays, June 4, 11, 18, 25
- Time: 8:00-9:00pm EST
- Featuring:
- ✔ Four 60-Minute Sessions (Recorded Live and Instantly Available)
- ✔ Playlist and Further Readings
- ✔ Community Discussion
- ✔ Searchable Transcripts
The Playlists
Week 1 – Signifyin’ History: Africana Religious Studies & Diaspora as Method
This week introduces Africana Religious Studies and the idea of diaspora as a way of thinking about identity—not as something fixed, but something shaped through movement, displacement, and power. Drawing on the work of Charles Long, we’ll explore how African-descended peoples have continually remade meaning in the wake of rupture—and why that matters for understanding religion today.
Week 2 – The Black Atlantic & the Politics of Authenticity
This session explores how music became a central vehicle for diasporic connection across the Atlantic world and beyond, drawing on Long, Paul Gilroy, as well as the work of ethnomusicologists of West African music. It interrogates authenticity, gatekeeping, and the ways Black sound has been both commodified and used to imagine global belonging.
Week 3 – Birth in the Rubble: Islam & the Early Years of Hip Hop
Set in 1970s New York, this week places hip hop in the context of migration, urban crisis, and the creative responses of Black communities. We’ll explore how Black Muslim movements like the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Nation helped shape hip hop’s early worldview—giving it a language for spirituality, identity, and political critique.
Week 4 – Global Scope & Commercial Rise: Constructing a Hip Hop Umma
In this final week, we explore how artists—from Rakim to Central Cee—have built transnational audiences using sounds, styles, and references that draw on Islamic cultures. As hip hop becomes increasingly commercial and global, we’ll ask a bigger question: is Islam in hip hop functioning as theology, cultural identity, political critique—or all three at once?
Course Details
Experience Level
Open to all levels.
No prior background required
Learning Pace
Guided, comfortable reading pace with space for reflection.
Interaction
Live Q&A or submit questions in advance. Community forum.
Your Instructor
Atéha Bailly
Atéha Bailly is a scholar and musician living in Massachusetts. His studies in religion at Reed College and the Harvard Divinity School focused on the cultural and political implications of music in communities centered around musical practices and/or sub-cultural aesthetics. Specifically, his research has focused on these aspects of music in Islam, Rastafari, and Ananda Marga.
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