The commercialization of music has become a primary vehicle for collective movements, encouraging political action and civic engagement.

According to Durkheim, it is crucial for the individual to understand the society they are a part of to understand themselves. He argues that humanity itself is linked to this feeling of belonging to a larger society, and thus the personal in entrenched in this large assemblage of societal influences acting upon the individual. In an individualistic capitalist society where there are fewer and fewer means of participating in the collective, coupled with the increased privatization of the individual, these feelings have fewer outlets. In the modern United States, I argue that in the present historical moment one of the primary forms that these feelings find their outlet is through the consumption of popular music. In order to study this theorization of the social structures that have developed as a result of capitalism and the impacts they have on the individual and society as a whole, I will turn to the rising popularity and commercialization of Black expression in contemporary popular music as a case study in collective effervescence. I believe that we can take the frameworks provided by social theorists who focus on post-colonial racial theories to further delve into the political mechanisms at place in rap music in the age of Black Lives Matter and identify its larger social implications and impacts. I have chosen to focus on popular music because pop culture can serve as an indication of where a society is, what it values, and what it aspires to. The other significant aspect of pop culture is that it is a site that invites the involvement of all people, from a wide array of classes, genders identities, and races, meaning that it is widely accessible. It serves as an equalizer, especially now in an age where information is spread and consumed at unprecedented speeds and connects individuals in ways that have never before been possible. The way pop culture is dissected and discussed is increasingly online on social media platforms where all a user needs is an Internet connection to participate in this new, digital public sphere. In modern America, it is through this technologically mediated collective experience that people engage with popular culture. In this study, I argue that in lieu of concrete social structures to provide the means for a populace to experience collective effervescence, popular music has become the primary vehicle through which societal issues are collectively felt and dealt with. Popular music in America has functioned as a primarily communal cultural form that brings people together and plays a crucial role in community building and ultimately how we make sense of the world around us. 9 It has the capacity for consciousness building, for boosting empathy and understanding, and, as is becoming clear as a result of a wave of politically active artists, for encouraging political action and civic engagement. Although there is a long lineage of activism on the part of the Black community in American popular music, I believe that there are several key factors that have led to the increasing politicization of celebrities within the last decade, specifically the rise of digitally mediated public spaces and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement online. My thesis will consist of examining the music and impacts of three key contemporary popular artists and the ways in which they make sense of the political and historical movement starting in 2014 and continuing to the present, and the ways in which this has sparked wider discourse in the public sphere. I will be turning to the careers of Beyoncé Knowles, Kendrick Lamar, and Janelle Monáe, focusing in on their becoming more vocal on electoral politics and the social issues confronting America today. In addition to specific albums, I will examine key music videos, live performances, as well as their broader public presence and cultural impact. These case studies will be situated within their respective musical lineages and the time period and context in which they were made, performed, and consumed. In examining the political nature of these contemporary Afrocentric musical events and albums, I hope to get into a deeper analysis and understanding of the ways in which we conceive of equality, activism, anomie, the role of the state, and post-industrial age democracy in contemporary America, and how this dialectic process has evolved.