CHRISTINA ZANFAGNA Santa Clara University Email: czanfagna@scu.edu ALEX WERTH Geographer and DJ Email: awerth@berkeley.edu Introduction Soundscapes of American Gentrification “ This ain’t the same place it was / different space and buzz.” -Gift of Gab, “ The Gentrification Song” (2018 ) 1 America is abuzz with gentrification. The archives of media, academia, and Hollywood 2 are now replete with images, ranging from triumphant to melancholic, of urban change. Indeed, the symbology of gentrification has become iconic. From cafe ´ seating on sanitized sidewalks to roving security “ambassadors,” from alien architectural styles to a rushed coat of paint (“flipper gray” is currently in vogue 3 ), gentrification appears to be scrawled across the visual landscape of American cities. It thus seems to be inextricable from an optical epistemology, a way of knowing by seeing. According to this common sense, if it looks like gentrification, then it probably is (fig. 1 ). In this special issue, we offer a different take, starting with the lyrics from Gift of Gab, the recently deceased stalwart of Oakland’s underground hip-hop scene. 4 In “The Gen- trification Song” (2018 ), Gift of Gab laments the way the commodification of Oakland has dislocated not only longtime residents and communities, but also what geographer 1 . Gift of Gab, “The Gentrification Song,” Rejoice!Rappers Are Rapping Again! , Gifstribution, 2018 . 2 . The Bay Area, where we live and write, has been the focus of several recent films about gentrification, including Sorry to Bother You (2018 ), Blindspotting (2018 ), and The Last Black Man of San Francisco (2019 ). Hip- hop MCs from Oakland and Berkeley—including Boots Riley, Rafael Casal, and Daveed Diggs—wrote and directed the first two films, pointing to a long tradition of merging music and activism in the East Bay. See Rickey Vincent, Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers’ Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill Books, 2013 ). 3 . Annie Vainshtein, “Grayspace: How San Francisco Lost Its Color,” San Francisco Chronicle (11 October 2019 ), www.sfchronicle.com/culture/article/Welcome-to-grayspace-San-Francisco-s-new-14493024 .php. 4 . Gift of Gab was an African-American MC and member of the hip-hop duo Blackalicious, along with pro- ducer and DJ Chief Xcel. While Blackalicious was formed in Sacramento, CA, Gift of Gab eventually settled in the East Bay, where he collaborated with other underground rappers such as Lyrics Born. He died at age 50 on 18 June 2021 . 64 Journal of Popular Music Studies, Volume 33 , Number 4 , pp. 64 –77 , Electronic ISSN: 1533 -1598 © 2021 by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. Branch (IASPM-US). All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10 .1525 /jpms.2021 .33 .4 .64 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jpms/article-pdf/33/4/64/487039/jpms.2021.33.4.64.pdf by Oregon State University, jeditor@ucpress.edu on 18 December 2021