Keepin’ it Real in Central Europe: The DIY Rap Music Careers of Male Hip Hop Artists in Austria

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosa Reitsamer ◽  
Rainer Prokop
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Production Performance ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
Rap Artists

This article sets out to broaden our understanding of the significance of authenticity, locality and language for the development of a do-it-yourself (DIY) rap music career by taking male rap artists in Austria as an example. Drawing on interviews carried out in 2014–2015 with two groups of rap artists from different social and cultural backgrounds who embarked on their rap music careers in the early 1990s and the early 2000s, we analyse their rap lyrics and the social and economic contexts in which these individuals became rappers. We examine how the artists articulate claims to authenticity by appropriating African-American rap styles, meanings and idioms and blending them with local languages and references to local cultures and national politics. We also examine the rappers’ relationship to the music industry and the use of informal channels for the production, performance and consumption of rap and hip hop in general. The article suggests that the DIY careers of these rap artists depend on both the rappers’ use of music to articulate claims to authenticity and their ability to form (trans-)local networks for sharing skills, knowledge and other resources, as well as on Austria’s cultural policy and the changes in the music industry that have taken place in recent years.

Subculture/Style

Brithop ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 67-90
Author(s):  
Justin A. Williams
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Musical Genre ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of

This chapter focuses on the punk-rap duo the Sleaford Mods (“Tied up in Nottz,” “Tiswas,” “Liveable Shit”) and grime-pop rapper Lethal Bizzle (“Babylon’s Burning the Ghetto”), artists who appropriate and translate punk aesthetics via different means to varying consequences. It examines the result of combining aesthetics from an older genre with newer developments, highlighting the racialized identities that often exist within these genres. While punk is not the only musical genre utilized in hybrid hip-hop styles in the United Kingdom, it nevertheless lends particular sonic and ideological meanings to English rap music, meanings which complicate an already multifaceted history of racially essentialized categorizations of the music industry and their listeners.

The Diy Habitus of Australian Hip Hop

2007 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Community Radio ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Space ◽  
Do It Yourself

Since its origins in the late 1980s, Australian hip hop continues to be fundamentally a do-it-yourself (DIY) subcultural field which has little or no music industry input or support. This paper profiles some of the small labels and producers in Australian hip hop (Obese, Elefant Traks, Nuff Said, Crookneck, Invada, etc.) and examines how they have formed from the ground up, using community radio stations such as 2SER, PBS and 3ZZZ, and websites such as Ozhiphop.com , to promote their music, as well as organising their own gigs and tours. It also examines Aboriginal practitioners of hip hop, who have even less infrastructure than the DIY network of independent producers and labels. Drawing on Holly Kruse's writing about ‘situated practices’ in independent rock music, which refers to Bourdieu's ‘fields of practice’ and ‘habitus’, I examine the subcultural networks and associations that have emerged in Australian hip hop, mediated through a nexus of genre, gender, space, location, race and ethnicity. The concept of habitus is arguably a useful way of referring to hip hop practices like MCing, DJing, breakdancing and graffiti, as well as the social behaviour associated with the hip hop subculture.

Flow

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell Ohriner
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Music Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
South Bronx ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Voice Flow ◽  
Computational Music Analysis

Originating in dance parties in the South Bronx in the late 1970s, hip hop and rap music have become a dominant style of popular music in the United States and a force for activism all over the world. So, too, has scholarship on this music grown, yet much of this scholarship, employing methods drawn from sociology and literature, leaves unaddressed the expressive musical choices made by hip-hop artists. This book addresses flow, the rhythm of the rapping voice. Flow presents theoretical and analytical challenges not encountered elsewhere. It is rhythmic as other music is rhythmic. But it is also rhythmic as speech and poetry are rhythmic. Key concepts related to rhythm, such as meter, periodicity, patterning, and accent, are treated independently in scholarship of music, poetry, and speech. This book reconciles those approaches, theorizing flow by integrating the methods of computational music analysis and humanistic close reading. Through the analysis of large collections of verses, it addresses questions in the theories of rhythm, meter, and groove in the unique ecology of rap music. Specifically, the work of Eminem clarifies how flow relates to text, the work of Black Thought clarifies how flow relates to other instrumental streams, and the work of Talib Kweli clarifies how flow relates to rap’s persistent meter. Although the focus throughout is rap music, the methods introduced are appropriate for other genres mix voices and more rigid metric frameworks and further extends the valuable work on hip hop from other perspectives in recent years.

Barrio Music, Spirituality, and Social Justice in Latino Hip-Hop

2018 ◽  
pp. 235-261
Author(s):  
Alejandro Nava
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Latino Youth ◽  
Social Concerns

This essay explores the spiritual and social concerns of US Latino and Latin American hip-hop. Beginning with a description of hip-hop’s influence on the author’s educational journey, the essay considers some of the key influences of Latino music on US rap music, as well as the growing dominance of hip-hop among Latino youth throughout the Americas. Besides documenting the influences of US rap on Latino music, it charts the distinct idioms, styles, and philosophies of Latino hip-hop, emphasizing the unique contributions of this subgenre to the broader culture of hip-hop.

scholarly journals White Pop, Shiny Armour and a Sling and Stone: Indigenous Expressions of Contemporary Congregational Song Exploring Christian-Māori Identity

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Shannon Said
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Congregational Song ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Pentecostal Churches ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Sydney Australia

It has taken many years for different styles of music to be utilised within Pentecostal churches as acceptable forms of worship. These shifts in musical sensibilities, which draw upon elements of pop, rock and hip hop, have allowed for a contemporisation of music that functions as worship within these settings, and although still debated within and across some denominations, there is a growing acceptance amongst Western churches of these styles. Whilst these developments have taken place over the past few decades, there is an ongoing resistance by Pentecostal churches to embrace Indigenous musical expressions of worship, which are usually treated as token recognitions of minority groups, and at worst, demonised as irredeemable musical forms. This article draws upon interview data with Christian-Māori leaders from New Zealand and focus group participants of a diaspora Māori church in southwest Sydney, Australia, who considered their views as Christian musicians and ministers. These perspectives seek to challenge the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations within a church setting and create a more inclusive philosophy and practice towards being ‘one in Christ’ with the role of music as worship acting as a case study throughout. It also considers how Indigenous forms of worship impact cultural identity, where Christian worship drawing upon Māori language and music forms has led to deeper connections to congregants’ cultural backgrounds.

scholarly journals From roadman to royalties: Inter-representational value and the hypercapitalist impulses of grime

2021 ◽  
pp. 174165902110243
Author(s):  
Orlando Woods
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Music Videos ◽  
Digital Recording ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Ubiquitous Access ◽  
Rap Artists

This paper explores how digital media can cause the representational value of rap artists to be transformed. Ubiquitous access to digital recording, production and distribution technologies grants rappers an unprecedented degree of representational autonomy, meaning they are able to integrate the street aesthetic into their lyrics and music videos, and thus create content that offers a more authentic representation of their (past) lives. Sidestepping the mainstream music industry, the digital enables these integrations and bolsters the hypercapitalist impulses of content creators. I illustrate these ideas through a case study of grime artist, Bugzy Malone, who uses his music to narrate his evolution from a life of criminality (selling drugs on the street; a ‘roadman’), to one in which his representational value is recognised by commercial brands who want to partner with him because of his street credibility (collecting ‘royalties’). Bugzy Malone’s commercial success is not predicated on a departure from his criminal past, but the deliberate foregrounding of it as a marker of authenticity. The representational autonomy provided by digital media can therefore enable artists to maximise the affective cachet of the once-criminal self.

Code-Switching and Code Mixing in the Selected Tracks of the Hip Hop Music of Flavour and 9ice

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Balogun Sarah ◽  
Murana Muniru Oladayo
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
First Language ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
National Language ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Unique Identity

This article attempts a comparative analysis of code-switching and code-mixing in the Nigerian music industry, using the lyrics of Flavour and 9ice as a case study. Although the English language is the national language in Nigeria and the language used by most of the musicians for the composition of their songs, and due to the linguistic plurality of Nigeria, most of these musicians tend to lace their songs chunks of words and phrases from their mother tongue or at least one of the three major languages in Nigeria, which are Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. The Markedness Model by Myers-Scotton (1993) is used as the framework to interrogate the switching and mixing in the codes used by these selected musicians and we find that while most code-switching is done in three languages – English, Nigerian Pidgin and the artist’ first language (mother tongue)  – their mother tongue plays the prominent role. Code-switching or code-mixing in these songs, therefore, becomes a depiction of the Nigerian state with its diverse languages and it provides the links between the literates and the illiterates thereby giving the artiste the popularity desired. The study concludes that the unique identity created by code-switching and code-mixing in the Nigerian music industry has a positive influence on music lovers, helping artists to achieve wide patronage and reflecting the ethnolinguistic diversity of the Nigerian nation.

scholarly journals Breaking the Gender Gap in Rap/Hip-Hop Consumption

2021 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
María Luisa Palma-Martos ◽  
Manuel Cuadrado-García ◽  
Juan D. Montoro-Pons
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Alternative Music ◽  
Music Consumption ◽  
Exploratory Survey ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractSome music genres have traditionally and mainly been consumed by men. This is the case of rap/hip-hop. However, data on the consumption of this genre in recent years shows a relevant increase in the number of women interested in this type of music. It would therefore seem to be pertinent to analyse this new trend, not only as a question linked to gender studies but also to marketing decision-making for the music industry, which is struggling to attract new audiences, a factor compounded in the pandemic. To frame this analysis, literature on music consumption, specifically in relation to gender and rap as an alternative music genre, has been reviewed from different approaches. An exploratory survey was conducted to obtain an insight into rap/hip-hop consumption and appreciation by gender. Results show that rap concert attendees’ satisfaction and interest in this kind of music are high, irrespective of gender. Only knowledge, which has not been as extensively studied, seems to be different between men and women, with this factor being slightly higher for the former. In addition, the identification of three clusters (involved, apathetic and hedonists), including both women and men, leads us to suggest that the gender gap in rap/hip-hop consumption is closing.

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