Abstract: This article is dedicated to the examination of the New Black Aesthetic trend and determination of its basic peculiarities. It originated in 1960’s in the United States as a response of the Afro-American population to the autocratic discourse of the white culture. Having emerged as a part of the “Nation of Islam” movement, the New Black Aesthetic rapidly transformed into the independent art movement, becoming comprehensible through the specific set of categories. The starting point of conceptualization of the aesthetical practice in terms of the considered trend lies in persuasion that the result of art must be the transformation of social life. It reconciles the New Black Aesthetic with the philosophical positions of pragmatism and neo-pragmatism. The article also separately examines the problematic of subversive relation to the New Black Aesthetic from within the Afro-American community, concentrated in the concept of “cultural mulatto”. The author refers to the framework of multimodal materials of the indicated aesthetical trend, using the visual-semiotic, content, and historical-comparativist analysis.  The author introduced into the discourse of Russian aesthetic research the description of one of the most significant aesthetic projects of the XX century – New Black Aesthetic (NBA), as well as characterizes the political and historical context of its establishment, key peculiarities, and impact upon the contemporary cultural movements.

Abstract: The article is devoted to the prerequisites of the hip-hop culture in terms of the late capitalism culture of the XXth century. The author of the article describes the formation of the main elements of the hip-hop culture against the backgrund of popular protest movements of yong people during the 1960 - 1980's in the after-war West. Western countries faced the disappointment of the wide strata of youth in political and economic valus. As a protest against the established regime, they created their own cultural movements. The methodology of this research is based on the historical comparative approach. Analysing social, economic, and political factors that have influenced the development of the hip-hop culture, the author of the article appeals to the historical roogs of hip-hop as a musical movement. Based on different examples, the author analyses particularities of the hip-hop aesthetics in dancing (break dancing), art (graffiti) and practice of using rhythmisized recitative (emceeing). At the present time the academic community does not offer a single approach to studying the hip-hop culture. The need to fill in this gap creates the rationale of the present research in particular and hip-hop researches in general. The author describes social, economic and political processes that have influenced the hip-hop culture. Focusing on the main milestones thereof, the author defines key changes that have accompanied the hip-hop culture from the moment it was created as a cultural movement and up to the present. 

Abstract: The subject of this research is the Russian religious hip-hop, while the object is its aesthetic peculiarities. Analyzing the materials from the interviews with hip-hop artists, song lyrics, and visual imagery of video recordings, the author determines the aesthetic borrowings and specificities of such music genre. The article refers to the key terms of postmodernist aesthetics, focusing on the cultural borrowings, metaphors, and cliché in the narrative and visual content of the analyzed hip-hop material. As the theoretical framework is used the neo-pragmatist approach of Richard Shusterman. Main conclusion consists in the following: borrowing the established images of hip-hop culture and religious narratives, the Russian religious hip-hop adds its original aesthetic peculiarities, but only in the sound effects, as for example, noise of bells. Although, there is a world entrenched tradition of hip-hop studies. This article is the first to introduce examination of the Russian religious hip-hop and its aesthetic features. In addition, special interest presents the selected by the author methodology for analyzing the visual imagery.