Biblical intertextuality devices in African American rap texts (based on the Kendrick Lamar’s album “Damn’)

Abstract

Abstract. The research is concerned with the biblical intertextuality of the Kendrick Lamar's album "Damn" reflecting the rapper meta-modernist opposition to the conventional rap discourse-forming values of exceptionalism, chosenness and individualism interpreted within the framework of the Christian anti-values. The research aims at identifying the biblical images, symbols and concepts of Kendrick Lamar's rap texts as the intertextuality devices, which provide the semantic coherence and hypertextuality of the rapper album “Damn”. To achieve the purpose, we have applied the methodology incorporating the methods of text interpretation, intertextual and hyper-textual analysis, added by some elements of conceptual and stylistic analysis as well as narrative analysis with the use of the “feedback network” principle. The major findings refer to the identification of the basic devices of biblical intertextuality and their functions in emphasizing the implicit rap-texts meanings, while implying semantic coherence and interrelations between the album compositions. The coherence in the framework of the biblical values bases on allusions, reminiscences, direct and paraphrase quotations from the New and the Old Testament. The basic concepts of the rap texts are explicated either by their keywords and titles denoting the fundamental human sins or virtues or implied by symbolic imagery. Key concepts form a hypo-hyperonymic, metonymic or cause-and-effect relationships with the concept of “Damn” designated by the title of the album. In the framework of the album hypertext, the author-performer applies the narrative principle of “feedback network”, which consists in replacement of the first link of the negative feedback loop by a new element – an act of kindness that destructs the fatal causal relationship and envolves another scenario in another “possible world”.