The Krip Hop Movement

Krip hop is just one form of musical expression for disabled artists found on YouTube

The “krip” in krip hop is short for “crippled”— normally a disparaging term, but krip hop artists embrace it as a way of taking charge of the narrative about who they are. (Leroy Moore, a rap artist with cerebral palsy who founded krip hop, changed the C to a K to avoid association with the Crips gang).

The same can be said for their music itself, which features rappers who share their personal encounters with discrimination and harassment and their aspirations for acceptance for who they are.

Another YouTube phenomenon: poetry slams in American Sign Language.

These digital forms of creative expression are of special interest to Betsy Wheeler, an associate professor of English, who studies how the depiction of disabled children and youth in literature has evolved over time, and now includes forms of self-expression via new media like YouTube videos, such as the ones shown below: