Pause brings together Cokes' inquiries into issues of cultural identity and the codes of pop music. Exploring the formal features of contemporary electronic music in relation to African Diaspora cultural forms, and employing a soundtrack appropriated from a popular, Internet-disseminated musical "mash-up," Cokes suggests that, in his own words, "electronica and Black cultures both critique Western ideas of material progress and temporal development through ruptures, accidents, and repetitions."