Studying Beef/Diss as a topic for dissertation?

Hello everyone,

I'm a student of MS, just started working on my thesis (not officially yet) and I'm working on the aspect of beef in hip-hop. I began looking at it through Foucault and confession until my professor told me to read Henry Louis Gates Jr's "The Signifyin(g) Monkey" and I'm fascinated to say the least. I have been reading up literature on Signifying(g) in hip-hop as well. Though most of it focuses on music rather than lyrics.

My question is, what else can I explore? I still think my framework would be Gates, but not sure at this point how exactly. It'd be great if someone can help since although I love rap, I'm outside the culture, I'm a Pakistani trying to study hip-hop. It'd be huge help if someone can just suggest how to go about it initially, as in how do I start exploring things in a way that would make sense?

submitted by /u/zepstk
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/hiphopheads/comments/1x9poqk/studying_beefdiss_as_a_topic_for_dissertation/