Sanctified and Commercially Successful Curses: On Gangsta Rap and the Canonization of the Imprecatory Psalms

Abstract

The imprecatory psalms cause problems for modern theological sensibilities, raising the question (among others) of why they were canonized in the first place. The present article compares a similar “canonization” of violent speech in the phenomenon of gangsta rap generally, and in the rapper/actor/producer Ice Cube specifically. The reception of Ice Cube into mainstream and “family friendly” media attests to a dynamic in which an audience recognizes something of itself in extreme forms of speech and art. This recognition facilitates acceptance of what is, on the face of it, otherwise off-putting and socially uncouth. This dynamic can cast light on the canonization of the imprecatory psalms. The Psalter (and the Bible writ large), however, receives the imprecatory psalms within a larger field of reference—one with its own distinctive dynamic that serves to contain their violence in a way not replicated in gangsta rap. This “scripturalized” reception of the violent speech in the imprecatory psalms is thus a crucial difference between the two. At the same time, the commercial success of gangsta rap reveals much critique of the cursing psalms to be shallow and disingenuous, if not, in fact, a case of (Freudian) projection.