In studying the use of language and its impact on the world’s perception of the Hip-Hop movement, I have come to many interesting conclusions. I have studied Hip-Hop love narratives and the forms with which they are presented, finding that Hip-Hop artists use different methods of presentation in order to speak about love while maintaining socially acceptable urban identities.

I have studied the gangster rap genre and found that members of this genre reject the inferior social class status placed upon them by redefining the negative characteristics imposed by the majority class, showing that majority class to possess the same “gangster-like” qualities. I have studied underground Hip-Hop and found that many rappers focus their use of language to denounce parts of the Hip-Hop movement that have assimilated with mainstream society.

When viewing these studies in comparison to each other, it becomes clear that Hip-Hop is a movement based on ideology, in which speakers construct their own identities based on certain ideologies or systems of beliefs. The construction of Hip-Hop identities based on ideology focuses not just on how rappers conform to an accepted or imposed ideology, but how they rebel against or subvert powerful social views and beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to define and understand the manner in which language is used in the construction of Hip-Hop identities. In analyzing Hip-Hop lyrics and poetry as text, it becomes clear that Hip-Hop identities are constructed with regards to multiple rebellious ideologies, which can be seen by taking into consideration the three biggest genres of present day Hip-Hop: gangster rap, political rap, and underground rap.

Read full article “Hip-Hop’s Ideologies of Rebellion: Gangster, Political and Underground Rap” …