Two Theoretical Models of Subcultural Anger—Synthesizing Subcultural Theory with the Sociology of Emotions and Exploring Anger in Hip Hop

Abstract

This article synthesizes subcultural theory with elements from the sociology of emotions. Two theoretical models are developed. In the first, young people form subcultures on the basis of feelings of injustice. Subcultures give expressive form to authentic anger and express resistance. In the second, young people use subcultures to explore non-normative feelings, but this does not mean that they are actually angry, nor is the formation of subcultures based on shared structural position. The analytical value of the models is illustrated through a dialogue with a virtual ethnographic material (debates, interviews, music videos, documentaries, pictures, album covers etc.) focusing on hip hop. It is argued that the two models are not mutually exclusive but can strengthen our analytical sensitivity when it comes to understanding youth subcultures that might be resistant, but at the same time resist being fixed into the position of ‘angry youth’.

Introduction

The music is fast, aggressive and noisy—grind core, we believe. The band is in the background of the video. In the foreground are two men, naked except for their underwear. One of them is wearing a ski mask. They dance frantically to the music and kick the balloons that lie on the floor. One of the YouTube comments asks whether the band plays at children’s birthday parties. ¹

The young Black man on the picture is carrying a sign. It says, ‘And you thought we were angry before’. Demonstrators are standing behind him. The picture is from the Facebook page of the punk-rap-metal group Prophets of Rage. It was posted in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in October 2018. ²

The two memos above stem from our virtual ethnography of angry subcultural music (which we will return to below). The two examples speak to the intersection of musical subcultures and emotions—either in the unarticulated aggressiveness of the grind core metal band or the explicit articulation of anger illustrated by the Facebook page of Prophets of Rage. The intersection of emotions and musical subcultures is, in other words, expressed very differently in these two examples. As ironic play with something that assembles aggression but is not to be taken too seriously. And as a serious articulation of social protest. How are we, as researchers of youth subcultures and music, to make sense of such different subcultural expressions?

In this article, we develop two theoretical models of subcultural anger. We focus on anger because it is well suited for grasping the theoretical differences that we want to discuss and because subcultures that can be deemed angry have traditionally been at the focus of subcultural research. Anger can thus mobilize, but it can also be fun to just play around with. We do not mean anger in a narrow sense, and we are not preoccupied with conceptual differences between anger, aggression, rage, wrath, and so on. We should also stress that we are not making a negative assessment of people, groups or subcultures when we point to anger. Anger may be justified by social injustice, and anger should not be essentialized as it is a complex question whether young people involved in angry subcultures are actually angry or just playing out a subcultural repertoire.

The first theoretical model we develop is indebted to ideas coined at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), United Kingdom, from the start of the 1970s. This model understands subcultural anger as authentic, embedded in social structures and as an articulation of resistance. The other model is indebted to Post-subcultural Theory dating from the mid-1990s. This model understands anger as play, as a way to explore non-normative emotions, but not as tied to social structures or resistance. The two theoretical models are developed through a dialogue with the sociology of emotions. It is an important point of the article that the two models are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, both interpretations may be valid as young people might act resistant but at the same time resist being fixed into the position of ‘angry youth’.

The theoretical models are developed in dialogue with a study of hip hop, not because hip hop is more angry than other subcultural genres, nor because hip hop is reducible to anger (it can be fun, happy, hopeful, sad, etc.), but because hip hop is well suited for illustrating the relevance of the theoretical models we develop.

We start the article by outlining elements from the sociology of emotions, and then move on to discuss how these may inform subcultural theory. We then turn to the virtual ethnography to illustrate the relevance of the models. Here, we outline examples where anger might be thought of as resistance tied to structural positionality, as well as examples where anger is articulated without links to resistance or structural positions.

The Sociology of Emotions

The sociology of emotions has pointed out that emotions are central to understanding social hierarchies, the formation of collectivities and groups, social identities, as well as social practice. Here, we draw on concepts and ideas from the sociology of emotions in a fashion that comes close to Layder’s (1998) recommendation of electing and adapting theoretical ideas to contexts they were not originally developed to explain.

We draw on interactionist ideas about emotions, in particular, Collins’ idea of emotional energy. Emotional energy denotes a positive collective emotional atmosphere that is built up in face-to-face interactions and may energize collective action. To Collins, this energy is created through human interaction rituals and creates group solidarity and a shared understanding of morality (Collins, 1990, 2004, 2008, 2014). We use the term to denote how such events as a concert might be loaded with emotional energy but also adapt the concept to denote phenomena that are not face-to-face. For instance, a song may have a specific emotional energy. In addition, we consider the emotional energy of emotions that are normally thought of as negative, such as anger, as exploring such emotions may be joyful or exciting.

We also draw on theories of emotions in the sphere of production. Here, Hochschild’s concepts of emotional labour, deep acting, and surface acting are central. These concepts were originally developed to grasp the emotional labour of stewardesses who are expected to display happiness regardless of their emotional state. For Hochschild, surface acting denotes pretending to have a given emotion, whereas deep acting demands that one is actually able to mobilize this emotion (Hochschild, 1983). We use these concepts to denote subcultural practices of displaying emotions. We furthermore adapt the concepts to contain emotional labour that is not meant to convey happiness but may convey other emotions. Hochschild’s work shares some similarities with that of Illouz. Here, we draw on the concepts of emotional style and emotional capital. Illouz (2007) thus points out how an emotional style originally grounded in psychology and psychoanalysis has become a capital on the labour market. We use the concept of emotional style to denote how subcultural styles may often have a distinct emotional aesthetic, and we use the term emotional capital to denote how the mastery of this aesthetic may make up subcultural capital (Jensen, 2006; Thornton, 1995).

We also draw on theories that emphasize the role of emotions in relation to social structures and collective mobilization. Barbalet thus understands emotions as embedded in social structures and class relations. The emotions felt by individuals are conditioned by social structures and influence social action. Resentment is central, but whether it gives rise to collective social action depends on the cultural context. One might thus interpret the formation of oppositional subcultures as a response to a collectively shared feeling of resentment grounded in social structure (Barbalet, 2004). Kemper proposes a structural approach to the dynamics of emotions in social movements. Kemper thus points out that social movements often arise from a shared sense of injustice and that a denial of status may breed anger. Adapting this to subcultural theory, one might say that oppositional subcultures are formed on the basis of collectively felt anger with social injustice and that this anger creates a feeling of community among participants (Kemper, 2001). In a similar fashion, Flam has theorized how emotions uphold relations of domination and how social movements may counter these relations. Social movements have to generate subversive counter-emotions in order to win new followers. Social movements thus need members to feel angry about social injustices and to replace feelings of shame with anger to move towards collective action. Hence, anger plays a transformational role in social movements’ struggle against social injustices (Flam, 2005). Adapting this to subcultural theory, one might say that subcultures provide forms of expression and frames of interpretation that allow subcultural participants to direct anger at social injustices.

The CCCS Theory and Anger as Resistance

The CCCS theory was formulated by a diverse group of authors during the 1970s at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies University of Birmingham, the United Kingdom (Cohen, 1972; Cohen, 2002 [1972]; Hall & Jefferson, 1991 [1975]; Hebdige, 1979; Mungham & Pearson, 1978; Willis, 1978, for an introduction see Haefler, 2013). Without disregarding differences, some general points can be made about the theoretical ideas that the CCCS shared. The CCCS took over a number of theoretical ideas from earlier American subcultural theory, which had argued that subcultural crime may be thought of as solutions to a shared problem of strain produced by young working-class people’s position in class structure. Being denied status in the ‘respectable society’, young people were taken to form deviant subcultures in which they could obtain social status by alternative criteria. Emotions were not given a central role in this early theoretical tradition aside from the assumption that working-class subcultures were often formed on the basis of a shared feeling of frustration grounded in structural strain (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Cohen, 1955).

The CCCS were critical to the inherent functionalism of prior subcultural theory but did take over the idea of subcultures as answers to structural problems. This was however rethought in at least three ways: (a) The CCCS was not preoccupied with deviance and therefore did not see subcultural solutions as tied to crime. (b) The CCCS accepted the premise that subcultures may be understood as (attempted) solutions to collectively shared social experiences. However, they saw such solutions as imaginary; as they provide a meaningful cultural space for young people, but do not change social structures (Hall & Jefferson, 1991 [1975]), and (c) the CCCS maintained that subcultures were not only answers to shared social problems, but also a stylistic form of resistance up against class society. As noted by Blackmann (2014), the CCCS theory thus moved ‘beyond deviance and style to address the symbolic politics of subculture’ (p. 504).

The CCCS understood society through a Marxist theoretical lens and ultimately saw working-class subcultures as a manifestation of antagonistic class conflict. Class was thus understood as a lived reality shaping the cultural responses of young people (Hall & Jefferson, 1991 [1975]; Willis, 1978). The Marxist understanding also implied that young people’s cultures were seen as taking different form, depending on their class position. Oppositional middle-class youth were thus taken to form countercultures—characterized by conscious political dissent—whereas the term subculture was reserved for working-class youth whose resistance was articulated in a more cultural and not explicitly political way (Hall & Jefferson, 1991 [1975]).

The CCCS synthesized Marxist ideas, early American subcultural theory, concepts adapted from anthropology, such as Levi–Strauss ideas of bricolage and homology, and Barthes’ social semiotics. The CCCS theory can thus best be described as a ‘complex Marxism’ (Hall 1980, p. 25). The Marxism did however imply a problematic primacy of class over gender, ethnicity, or race (Gilroy, 1993; McRobbie, 1980, 1990). This theoretical privileging of class represents a problem for contemporary critical theory, but Jensen argued that we can rethink the CCCS theory to account for this critique. It is possible to widen the scope of the theory to include gender, ethnicity, and race as structural inequalities, as well as their intersections with each other and with class. An updated version of the CCCS theory can thus include the intersectionality of subordination based on class, gender, ethnicity, and racialization (Jensen, 2018). It is then possible to theorize the formation of subcultures as an answer to a more complex positionality.

As mentioned, the CCCS interpreted spectacular youth-subcultural styles as a proto-political resistance against structural subordination. This interpretation entails a theoretical problem of intent: If no one among the subcultural participants has any intention of resisting, then how can we plausibly claim theoretically that they are resisting social structures? The CCCS theory handled this problem in different ways. Hebdige (1979) asserted that the resistance existed only on a stylistic level, taking the form of semiotic guerilla warfare. Willis’ analysis of how working-class kids get working-class jobs offered another solution (Willis, 1978). According to Willis, working-class kids may have an intuitive understanding of the school system in the reproduction of class society. This exists on a collective level and as a form of practice. Willis thus asserted that a range of limitations (racism, sexism) resulted in working-class kids arriving at this only ‘partial penetration’. However, it might be argued that this theoretical solution was too close to the classic Marxist concept of ideology as false consciousness. Still, the theoretical problem may be how resistance can be claimed if no conscious motive of resistance can be identified among subcultural participants? Here, the sociology of emotions can be of help. Perspectives from the sociology of emotions thus allow us to understand emotions as central to group identity and social action. This implies taking seriously the idea of shame and frustration, which linked structural position to the formation of subcultures in the earlier American tradition. This can be combined with Raby’s argument that young people tend to act from a partially conscious feeling that they are being treated unfairly. The experience of injustice takes on an emotional rather than analytical character. When young people act from this feeling, they may not subscribe to a conscious political analysis, but this does not exclude that we can view their cultural practices as resistant (Raby, 2005). Emotions, as in frustrations and feelings of injustice, may thus make up an emotional quality of the experience of othering and relative poverty. The anger felt by subcultural participants is thus related to their positionality in social structure (cf. Barbalet, 2004). Subcultural anger is productive, as it works as an alternative to humiliation and shame and may mobilize social practice. Emotions may thus theoretically and analytically mediate between structural position and the mobilization of collective oppositional practices (cf. Flam, 2005; Kemper, 2001).

Now, as mentioned, the CCCS did have a concept of counterculture taken to exist among middle-class youth (Hall, 1969). The distinction between countercultures and subcultures was defined by the level of political awareness (Hall & Jefferson, 1991 [1975]) and may appear reductionist in the eyes of contemporary researchers. This theoretical problem is perhaps best solved by thinking of countercultures and subcultures as a continuum rather than a mutually exclusive dichotomy.

How, then, can angry subcultural expressions be understood through a version of the CCCS theory that is rethought through a dialogue with the sociology of emotions? Interpreted through this lens, angry subcultural or counter-cultural styles are in essence expressions of dissent and resistance. McLaren’s (1999) study of gangster rap as a counter-cultural sphere may make up an example drawn from the world of hip hop. From this theoretical perspective, anger is seen as related to subcultural participants’ position in social structure. The young people who participate are seen as really angry. The anger is seen as justified and authentic both in the sense that subcultural theorists take the young people involved to actually be angry and in the sense that theorists assume that subcultural participants expect each other to actually be angry. They do not act angry or perform surface acting (Hochschild, 1983). Subcultural anger is furthermore seen as grounded in actually existing socio-structural injustices and angry subcultural musical styles are seen as vehicles for collective mobilization.

Post-subcultural Theory and Anger as Play

Like the CCCS, Post-subcultural Studies, or Post-subcultural Theory, makes up a heterogeneous theoretical tradition (Bennett, 1999, 2000, 2011; Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004; Malbon, 1999; Miles, 2000; Muggleton, 2000; Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003; Redhead, 1993). This tradition can be understood as a critical alternative to the CCCS theory of youth subcultures. The tradition suggests that subcultures can no longer be understood as class-based oppositional cultural answers to shared structural situations. Subcultures are thus claimed to be fluid, open-ended, not based on class, and it is argued that individuals can move in and out of different subcultures or participate in more subcultures at the same time (Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004; Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003). Subcultural practices are seen as something young people choose to do for fun rather than as an oppositional phenomenon. Some proponents of Post-subcultural Theory base this on a postmodern or late modern understanding of contemporary society in which there is no stabile class structure to resist (e.g., Muggleton, 2000). Subcultural participation is, however, not seen as a superfluous epiphenomenon. On the contrary, subcultural participation is seen as an important way for young people to construct and display identity and individuality in a postmodern world (Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003).

One of the common denominators that defines Post-subcultural Theory is thus a scepticism towards interpretations of subcultural practices and styles as resistance. One of the first to formulate this scepticism was Stanley Cohen (2002 [1987]). Cohen is an interesting figure because he was both part of the CCCS and part of the critique of the CCCS. Cohen (2002 [1972]) thus argued that in the CCCS analyses ‘the symbolic baggage the kids are being asked to carry is just too heavy’ (p. LIX), implying that theorists’ hope of radical social change was projected onto subcultural participants. This (self) critique should however not be taken to imply that Cohen would subscribe to Post-subcultural Theory. His ideas were closer to labelling theory (such as Becker, 1963) and hence the later Chicago School.

Post-subcultural Theory has been problematized on a number of grounds. The abandonment of class has thus been criticized by authors that point out that young people’s consumption is dependent on class position and that young people are likely to form networks and friendship based on their place of residence which is tightly linked to class (Shildrick, 2006; Shildrick & Macdonald, 2006). More broadly the analytical decoupling of socio-structural inequalities from young people’s lives has been criticized by authors pointing to the relevance of not only class but also gender and race (e.g., Blackmann, 2005, 2014; Blackmann & Kempson 2016; Jensen, 2018). Other authors have problematized the depolitization of youth subcultural practices inherent in the abandonment of resistance (Blackmann, 2014; Carrington & Wilson, 2004; Williams, 2011).

The latter point of contention raises a central question for this article: If the notion of resistance is deconstructed, how are we to understand subcultural expressions of anger in a post-subcultural theoretical frame? The sociology of emotions may once again be of help. Subcultural practices and forms of expression may carry emotional qualities that can be enjoyed and consumed by subcultural participants. Displays of anger may be fun, exciting, thrilling, and joyful to watch, consume, explore or take part in. Anger can be understood as an emotional style (cf. Illouz, 2007), a form of expression that creates emotional energy (cf. Collins, 2004), and it can be meaningful or joyful to play with such emotional expressions, perhaps as a way to explore emotions as anger or aggression that are otherwise seen as inappropriate. Indeed, part of the attraction of an angry subcultural emotional style may be that it is an antithesis to a widely accepted conventional emotional style, according to which emotional expressions must always be balanced (cf. Illouz, 2007). Thinking from the perspective of Post-subcultural Theory, participants may be attracted to given subcultures due to their emotional style, but this is a form of play. If interpreted from a post-subcultural perspective, subcultural participants are acting angry but might not be angry. Theorists do not assume that anger is authentic, nor do theorists assume that it is important to subcultural participants whether the anger displayed by other participants is authentic. It is a part of the rule of the game that anger does not have to be real. Thus, from the post-subcultural perspective, participants of angry subcultures can be interpreted as practising surface acting (Hochschild, 1983). But emotional labour is inverted compared to the work Hochschild described, as they are acting angry rather than happy. The situation is also radically different in the sense that their surface acting is not a part of wage labour to earn an income. A different currency is at stake (although some subcultural forms of expression can be commodified and sold on a capitalist market). Read through the perspective of Post-subcultural Theory, subcultural participants are displaying an emotional style of anger, and thereby producing a form of emotional subcultural capital. The embodied ability to display the right angry style is an emotional capital in the Illouzian sense because it is a resource that yields social privileges. It is also a subcultural capital (Jensen, 2006; Thornton, 1995) given that the mastery of the emotional style of a subculture may provide status and prestige in that subculture. Doing it right is thus important. But it is accepted that subcultural participants need not actually be angry to find angry subcultural forms of expression fascinating. Sometimes, this may even implode into ironic distance and self-parody, as the almost naked men dancing around kicking balloons in the music video of the heavy metal band mentioned at the start of this article. In addition, angry subcultural emotional styles are not seen as tied to specific socio-structural positionality. Put short, understanding subcultural expressions of anger through a post-subcultural theoretical perspective implies post-authenticism. A notion of real or justified anger implodes. Young people are seen as preoccupied with postmodern surface acting and/or as being fascinated or drawn to other people’s postmodern surface acting. Such collective situations may be rich in emotional energy (Collins, 2004) even if the emotion being played out is anger, but it has nothing to do with resistance or social structure. This way of thinking comes close to Michel Maffesoli’s idea of neo-tribes as contemporary collectivities that attract young people because of their aesthetic qualities. For Maffesoli (1995, 2022), these aesthetic qualities may include an effervescence that fills participants with emotions (see also Bennett, 1999). But the young people are not politically conscious, and they are perhaps even conscious that they are not conscious. This does not mean that participation in angry subcultures is without meaning, but the meaning of their participation is to be found somewhere else than in the realm of the (proto)political. Anger is seen here as productive, as something that works for participants, but it works in a different way than understood by the CCCS-inspired model. Rather than mobilizing on the basis of structural positionality, acting out anger creates emotional energy. Anger is a subcultural form of expression—a repertoire and an emotional style—that works irrespectively of whether participants are angry or not.

Back to the Virtual Ethnography

Above, we outlined two theoretical models of subcultural anger. We will now return to the virtual ethnography to illustrate the analytical potential of the models. Although this article is theoretical in purpose, our theorization thus rests on a broad virtual ethnographic material on anger in musical youth subcultures. Below, we focus on hip-hop. As emphasized above, this does not mean that hip hop is reducible to anger or that expressions of anger are more frequent in hip hop than in other subcultural genres (such as punk or heavy metal). However, we focus on hip hop because we find the multifaceted and contradictory articulation of anger in this genre to be particularly well suited for illustrating the analytical value of the theoretical models.

The material includes Facebook debates, interviews, music videos, documentaries, pictures, album covers and, not least the actual sound of the music. Following Hine (2015), virtual ethnography should resemble users’ participation on the internet. Therefore, we attempted to follow threads and links across sites. We collected data on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, Discord, Quora, 4chan, Genius, Twitter, Soundcloud, various internet forums and other relevant platforms. Our search strategy was thus intended to resemble that of an average young social media user. We did, however, attempt to ensure nuance and depth by exploring discussions and themes from different virtual entry points. This type of material is difficult to quantify, but we spent approximately 90 days on virtual ethnography, collecting data from approximately 50 subreddits, 50 forums, 100 YouTube videos, 30 Quora discussions and so on, resulting in 275 pages of notes. Importantly, we also draw on our own prior knowledge, based on participation and experience in hip hop dating back to the mid-1980s.

Our ethnographic material includes Danish and US examples. In the United States, hip hop grew out of socially underprivileged minority communities in the 1970s, whereas hip hop in the Danish context was taken over around a decade later and has been adopted and adapted by a predominantly white and often middle-class demography. Parallelly, hip hop has also become a voice of dissent among minority youth in Denmark (Jensen, 2008, 2011). Including these two societal contexts thus provides variation and nuance regarding the different ways hip hop can be practised and articulated.

We emphasize that our reliance on virtual data implies limitations in relation to subcultural participants’ lived experiences. Furthermore, our account should not be read as a representative study of hip hop, as the data presented below were selected to illustrate the relevance of the theoretical models we have developed.

Subcultural Anger as Resistance in Hip Hop

First, let us account for a number of ethnographic examples that can be understood from the CCCS perspective. From this perspective, hip hop can be viewed as oppositional. The history of hip hop as a powerful vernacular of dissent among marginalized young ethnic minority youth is well documented in the United States and in other parts of the world (Åberg & Tyvelä, 2023; Kahf, 2007; Ogbar, 2007, Perry, 2004, Rose, 1994). One needs only point to such iconic groups as Public Enemy, who drew heavily on American Black intellectuals, to demonstrate the political content of youth sub/countercultures. This is not to argue that hip hop is reducible to political commentary—many hip hop texts were always about the rapper saying that he is ‘bad’, ‘hard’ or just a better rapper. Nor do we want to argue that the politics of hip hop are unproblematic. Feminist critiques are often valid (Armstrong, 2001; Weitzer & Kubrin, 2009). Our point is more modest—to point out that parts of hip hop has historically articulated anger and criticism of social injustices. This can still be observed in current hip hop.

One illustration can be found in Soei’s ethnography of angry, young, ethnic minority men from stigmatized parts of Danish cities (Soei, 2011). This ethnography illustrates how hip hop is entangled in the oppositional practices of these young men. Soei thus explores the background for riots that took place in Copenhagen in February 2008. According to Soei, the cause of the riots was an underlying feeling of anger. The anger was tied to experiences with discrimination and to mass media framing of ethnic minorities as a problem. This had resulted in a ‘feeling of counter-citizenship’, although this remained mostly unarticulated. In Soei’s view, it is possible to speak of an accumulated and structural anger and a more situational anger. The situational anger was sparked by the introduction of so-called visitation zones, which meant that some ethnic minority men experienced being searched several times a day. The anger was furthermore triggered by the aggressive arrest of an elderly minority man. The result was explosive rage and widespread riots. As one young man explained:

Many have a feeling of being second-rate citizens. And the fact that they know, deep inside, that they are not accepted in Denmark; that is bound to hurt. (Soei, 2011, p. 31, translated from Danish)

The incidents that took place before, during and after the riots took their expressive form in hip hop music. Soei thus argues that hip hop texts contained a warning of the anger that was building up among the young ethnic minority men. The group Rap Movement made a song during the riots. One line goes:

I can relate to Denmark in flames, so I spit my pain for you […] they say that Denmark is in fire, but who sparked the flames? (translated from Danish ³ )

A more recent example of angry rap music is the Danish drill hip hop group Shooter Gang. The group is from Trillegården, an underprivileged and stigmatized residential area in Denmark’s second largest city, Århus. As a subgenre, drill is characterized by aggressive and hyper-masculinist lyrics depicting street culture and violence. The emergence of drill has thus marked a cultural shift in hip hop that encourages people to speak up in explicit ways. At the same time, drill emerged at a point in time where social media blur the lines between performance and reality. The performance of aggression is thus a convention of the genre, making it difficult to assess articulations of anger. Shooter Gang’s lyrics centre on the realities on the street and are delivered in a rather hypermasculine fashion. For instance, music videos feature armed gang members and the sound of gunfire. ⁴ Drill artists often appear masked in public, which is also the case for Shooter Gang. It is therefore difficult to give a precise account of the group’s members, but we can say that they are young, male and ‘African’ (in their own words ⁵ ). The sound of the music is hard, modern and keyboard based as opposed to the hip hop sound based on funk and jazz samples of the nineties (Chang, 2005). The group is part of a broader community of artists in Trillegården. One of the artists, Baloosh, made the following remark in a Danish Radio documentary about the Trillegården hip hop community:

My music is only about the feelings we get from all the stuff that is happening here in the area. It is the real feelings I would like to touch on, from the boys on the street. It is not about being trendy […] I am just talking about our problems on the street, you might say. ⁶ (translated from Danish)

Understood from the CCCS model, Shooter Gang and the broader community they are part of are taking part in an angry, resistant, oppositional subcultural practice that is tied to social positionality, grounded in social injustices and reflects authentic frustration.

While Shooter Gang has attracted widespread attention, popularity and public concern, other less popular but analytically interesting artists exist. One example is Adam, a rapper from Copenhagen’s underprivileged Nørrebro area. In a YouTube interview, Adam describes himself as ‘part Danish and part African’, thereby inscribing himself in a distinct form of tough, street-oriented minority masculinity (Jensen, 2010, 2011). Adam also emphasizes being ‘true’ in the sense that what he is rapping about is not made up. The music and the lyrics come across as angry, hard and aggressive. He explains that his EP will be titled ‘five killings’ because he will be ‘slaughtering’ five beats. He thus appears as an authentic angry young Black man. In terms of broader style, Adam inscribes himself in a specific repertoire of street culture authenticity. He is dressed in baggy street wear, comes across with a rowdy and angry facial expression and body language, and smokes his cigarette in a masculine and cool, street-cultural way. In the interview, he explains:

I started writing lyrics when I was 12 years old. It’s always been a way for me to blow off steam. […]. All my lyrics are inspired by stuff I’ve been through. It’s real shit, not something I’m just making up. I didn’t just sit in an apartment all my life writing about how I’ve been ‘slanging’ left and right. So, it’s inspired by things from my real life. ⁷ (translated from Danish)

A different form of subcultural expression can be found in the music of Danish hip hop veteran Mund de Carlo. He positions himself close to an intellectual critique of social injustice and thus represents a move towards the counterculture pole of the subculture-counterculture continuum within CCCS thinking. His music is close to traditional hardcore hip hop. He also speaks from an ethnic minority position, and often problematizes systemic racism. In the 2018 song Slave af bølgerne [Slave of the waves], Mund de Carlo depicts the harsh realities of his childhood neighbourhood in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro area and criticizes police harassment and structural raced and classed injustice over a classic hardcore hip hop beat. ⁸ The ghettocentrism of the song conveys an inherently masculine claim to authenticity, that is actually being from a tough area and actually having experienced rough life on the street. On his 2021 song, Priviligeret, [privileged] Mund de Carlo speaks out against inequality from a different position that includes feminist sensibilities. The song criticizes sexism, heteronormativity and racialization and thus inscribes itself in a pro-feminist, queer-friendly and anti-racist current. ⁹ The song is also interesting in terms of authenticity, as a diverse group of amateur actors appear in the music video, lip-syncing the lyrics and portraying the characters exposed to the social injustices that Mund de Carlo raps about.

In US hip hop, several examples can be found of artists who can be placed somewhere on the subculture-counterculture continuum within CCCS thinking. One example is the hip hop collective Run the Jewels. In the 2015 song Close Your Eyes (And Count To F**k), the group criticizes racism and police brutality in the US over a hard and aggressive hip hop beat. The group draws explicit parallels between slavery and racial relations in the contemporary United States. The music video depicts a lengthy and abusive fight between a Black man and a white male police officer. ¹⁰

Another example is Kendrick Lamar, a rapper with a broad popular resonance. Lamar’s entire musical back catalogue appears rife with social criticism, and in a sense, he embodies a musical version of classic Black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Clarence 13x (or perhaps KRS one or Chuck D). He thus raps about Black communities, structural racism, and American history. On the album To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), Lamar addresses materialism, oppression, structural and cultural injustices, and Black culture through a series of confrontations with various symbolic antagonists, such as ‘Lucy’ and ‘Uncle Sam’. In songs such as Wesley’s Theory, Institutionalized and Alright, Lamar criticizes systemic racism and capitalism and encourages collective mobilization. The latter song was played and sung during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2015 and 2016. In a similar vein, the song Hood Politics criticizes the logic of US politics—with only two parties to choose from in a winner-takes-it-all electorate system—by drawing a parallel to the gang conflict between Crips and Bloods:

They tell me it’s a new gang in town

Form Compton to Congress

[…]

Aint nothin new but a flu of new Demo-Crips and Re-Blood-icans

Red state versus a blue state - which one you governin?

They give us guns and drugs, call us thugs. ¹¹

Lamar expresses anger, but his anger appears controlled. His lyrics do not come across as hypermasculine or misogynist. This is paralleled by a musical style that does not sound aggressive or dissonant, perhaps reflecting that the music is conceived as a medium to convey a controlled and intellectualized anger rather than inarticulate rage. His music is thus in stark contrast to the earlier gangsta rap genre, which contained numerous articulations of anger. The perhaps best-known example, also widely recognized by people outside hip hop, would be N.W.A’s Fuck the Police.

Subcultural Anger as Play in Hip Hop

Now, we turn to illustrating the analytical potential of the post-subcultural model of anger as an emotional style that is not grounded in structural position, does not convey a critical stance towards society, but can be consumed, enjoyed, or explored through subcultural music.

The album Blomsterbørns Monsterbørn [Hippie’s Monster Children] (2020) by the Danish hip hop group Torrpedorr makes up an illustrative example. Throughout the album, the group articulates an ironic and playful version of hip hop ‘hardness’. In one verse, the group raps:

If you say swear words, I’ll start to cry, Wash your dirty mouth with soap […] And if people argue I get sad. Don’t eat chocolate, it makes you fat. Never complained about anything, always satisfied. None of my homies are angry or upset. You can hear it in my verses, I’m your mate, when I clap your back and hug you to death (Torrpedorr, 2020: Hverdagens Helte ¹² [Everyday Heroes]. (Translated from Danish)

Across the album, the group caricatures hypermasculine gangster attitude. One example is the song Sol Over Gudhjem [Sun over Gudhjem] where one line goes ‘stab someone, that is hip hop culture’. What makes the group a particularly good example is, however, their mastery of the emotional style of the genre, which is turned upside down in a loving caricature, that plays with, and ultimately deconstructs gangster masculinism.

A different example is the Danish hip hop group Suspekt. The group comes across as aggressive in terms of both the sound of the music and lyrical content. They often provoke through explicit sexual and heteronormative material bordering to misogyny. From a feminist and intersectional perspective, their lyrical universe can be considered problematic. Criticism of social injustice is absent in the lyrical material. The group is rowdy but not critical. They sound angry, but the anger has no object. The point of the aggressive style seems to be a very different one: Provocation, aggression and ‘hardness’ make up an emotional style that can be joyful and exciting to explore and play with and that can attract an audience, but there seems to be no deeper point behind the aggression. This emotional style seems to work as the group has attracted a large audience. The emotional energy generated by the emotional style of the group seems productive, as it provides a collective space for exploring otherwise illegitimate emotions. At festival gigs, it is common to see otherwise ‘decent’ college youth (including young women) rap along with the group’s sexually explicit lyrics. The group’s musical universe may thus serve as a youth subcultural space for exploring and consuming emotions that are outside the norm.

A US example is the group ‘Odd Future’, including frontperson Tyler, the Creator. Emotions seem to play a central role in the group’s universe, which at times takes the form of a musical exploration of non-normative feelings. The group often plays with aggressive or angry emotional styles, not because the anger is directed at something but more, it seems, as a refusal to hide such emotions. The message seems to be to insist on being allowed to have and express these feelings rather than being angry at something. This ranges from sharing dark thoughts on suicide and depression to expressing alienation. At the same time, the group challenges which musical styles are legitimate, thus challenging the limits of hip hop as a genre. ¹³

The exploration of non-normative emotions sometimes takes on extreme forms of expression, such as yelling ‘kill people, burn shit, fuck school’ in the song Radicals. This is inscribed in a form of postmodern identity play, distancing the group from claims to authenticity. For instance, the song Yonkers comes across as classic authentic New York-style hip hop, yet the group has publicly denounced authenticity and claimed that the song is mostly a parody of classic hip hop. Tyler, the Creator explains:

Niggas don’t know that that beat was made as a joke. I was trying to make a shitty New York beat and we was just rapping like we was from New York like we were retarded. And then, I just had some random verses and I was just like ‘I’ll just record it to this beat, this beat is kinda cool.’ And then niggas really liked it. That’s so nuts, because that shit was actually a fucking joke. I made that beat in literally eight minutes ¹⁴

There is no way to validate what the group intended when creating the song, but the point here lies in the distancing from authenticity. Instead of notions of authenticity and resistance the group cultivates an aesthetic and stylistic form of oddness and marginality linked to an angry, aggressive and quasi-depressive emotional style. This combination of postmodern identity play and exploration of non-normative emotions seemingly resonates with a large number of contemporary young people, as the group has attracted a large following. It should however be noted that Tyler the Creator’s lyrical universe includes examples of sexism and misogyny, marking the limits of postmodern sensibilities (Eate, 2013).

Conclusion

Above, we have outlined two theoretical models of subcultural anger. In the first, subcultural forms of expression articulate authentic anger rooted in social structures. Young people are understood to form subcultures on the basis of feelings of injustice related to structural positionality, and emotions are seen to mediate between structural positionality and oppositional cultural practices. Anger is viewed as productive because it replaces shame and facilitates collective mobilization. In the second model, young people are attracted to subcultures because of their emotional style and emotional energy. Subcultural expressions of anger attract young people to subcultures, without either the young people themselves or the subculture theorist assuming authenticity. In this theoretical framework, subcultural expressions of emotions are seen as playing around and acting. Acting out anger creates emotional energy that may be experienced as fun or joyful. Anger is a subcultural style, a repertoire, regardless of the emotions or socio-structural positionality of participants.

We have illustrated the analytical relevance of these theoretical models through an engagement with a virtual ethnography on hip hop. We thus identified examples that can be understood from the CCCS and the post-subcultural models, respectively.

The question remains: What is the utility of these models for future youth research? One answer would be that these are different perspectives suited for understanding different social phenomena. The term subculture has, thus, been used to refer to varying social phenomena, from stylistically distinct working-class youth groups to young people’s leisure networks. Another answer would be that these are theoretical perspectives that can be applied to the same phenomenon and reveal different layers of meaning. Both answers might be valid: subcultural forms of expression exist that are clearly about protest and resistance. There might also be subcultural forms of expression that are so ironic in their play with anger that they cannot meaningfully be understood as oppositional. However, many youth subcultures could be understood from both perspectives. It is often difficult to say whether young people are just playing around, pretending to be angry, or whether they are engaged in oppositional cultural practices. Perhaps this double articulation is exactly the point in many youth subcultures that might be resistant but at the same time resist being fixed into the position of ‘angry youth’. Thus, the theoretical models we have developed here are not mutually exclusive. Their potential for future youth research lies in the possibility of strengthening our analytical sensitivity when researching young people, emotions, anger and subcultural forms of expression.