“Prisoners Rise, Rise, Rise!”

This chapter provides a rhetorical analysis of “consciousness-raising hip-hop.” Merging personal stories with an encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary pop culture, it argues that a politically savvy subgenre of hip-hop artists are raising awareness about incarceration in the black community and producing effective strategies for community activism. The hip-hop movement plays an important role in illuminating the problems of the prison-industrial complex by creating spaces of prison protest and modeling sources of community care. The analysis of hip-hop focuses on the artists, music, and (life)styles that promote a type of citizen-orator that is Ciceronian in character. Particular attention is given to those hip-hop artists who fit the definition of “consciousness-raising” by providing hope to prisoners and communities working to transform the U.S. criminal-justice system.