Hip-hop graffiti and civic/political commitment in Senegal. Analysis of two major works by the urban artists' collective RBS Crew

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point the socio-political and contextual frameworks that give meaning to the content of two hip-hop graffiti murals produced by the RBS Crew artists' collective between 2018 and 2021. These two collectively produced works have a certain continuity and intertextuality with each other, critically questioning the neo-colonial relationships that the political elites, essentially, in power in Senegal have with their Western counterparts, while at the same time showing themselves to be violent towards their fellow citizens, whom they are supposed to be protecting. By taking on the role of voice-bearer for the people of Senegal, and indeed Africa and the oppressed in general, the artists are defining a conception of artistic practice based above all on socio-political commitment. The modus operandi used, which draws on a variety of registers (the worlds of cinema, literature, rap music, caricatures, etc.), is indicative of the artists' desire to draw on common but diverse references, some of which are simplified, in order to make their messages easier to decode and understand. In so doing, this ‘useful art’, which attempts to make messages more accessible and is opposed to a conception of ‘art for art's sake’ or, in other words, to a conception of an art-mystery, deeply and distinctively irrigates these graffiti worlds in Senegal. Such a conception about the arts leads us to rethink the modularity of hip-hop graffiti in the light of the type of objectives pursued by the artists according to the constraints of their production environments, as well as a hierarchization of the stakes underlying the creative process.