Entangled Distinctions and Cultural Ambiguities in Young Peoples’ Perceptions of Swedish Gangster Rap

Abstract

In Sweden, gangster rap emerged in 2018 as a new cultural expression within the national hip-hop scene. Despite its recent origin, it has become a significant part of youth culture, particularly popular among young people from diverse social backgrounds. This makes it possible to understand young people’s preferences not only as personal expressions of taste but also as symbolic acts linked to social position and identity. This study therefore analyses interviews with 15- to 18-year-olds from various social environments, using conceptualizations from Pierre Bourdieu. The aim is to (a) analyse paradoxes and tensions in youths’ discourse on Swedish gangster rap, and (b) explore how these relate to socio-economic status. Results reveal how gangster rap generates intergenerational and entangled distinctions, alongside cultural ambiguities in youths’ perceptions. These tensions highlight gangster rap as simultaneously mainstream and exclusive, authentic yet exaggerated, fictional but relatable. The study contributes to understanding the complex ways young people engage with gangster rap, showing that it fosters ambivalent cultural modes and entangled distinctions that cut across conventional boundaries and challenge established class positions.

Introduction

Gangster rap is a relatively new cultural expression in Sweden, emerging within the hip-hop scene from 2018 onwards. Despite its short history, it has rapidly become a significant part of youth culture across social backgrounds and has sparked heated media debates over its potential negative influence. The development resembles the US context of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when gangster rap was at the centre of a moral panic. Scholar Eric K. Watts (1997) shows how the genre in the United States was simultaneously framed as criminal and as art, producing conflicting narratives particularly in cultural journalism. This is a tension that remains central also in contemporary Swedish debates (Arvidson, 2023). Like their American counterparts, Swedish critics currently struggle to situate gangster rap within a broader cultural landscape, oscillating between defending it as legitimate culture and dismissing it as social decay. A recurring theme concerns the blurred line between fiction and authenticity, reinforced by contemporary artists’ documented gang affiliations (Ramic, 2019; Sjöshult, 2020).

Media discourse also links gangster rap strongly to marginalized suburban areas (commonly referred to as ‘orten’ or ‘förorten’), which are portrayed as sites of delinquency and alienation. Yet the appeal of gangster rap extends far beyond the periphery. Journalist Emil Arvidson (2022), for instance, observes how TikTok is ‘flooded’ with dance videos centred around gangster rap hits posted by privileged teenagers from affluent Stockholm areas such as Östermalm and Täby. Also, streaming charts and music awards confirm the genre’s popularity across demographics. The tension between the connotations of gangster rap and its public appeal therefore suggests that listening to gangster rap may be understood as a symbolic act tied to aspects of social position and identity. Despite public fascination, however, the scholarly analyses of this youth cultural phenomenon remains limited—with a few exceptions (Jensen & Thomsen, 2024; Joosten, 2024; Åberg & Tyvelä, 2024). Aside from these contemporary studies, prior research of Swedish hip-hop has largely focused on artists, producers, pedagogy and institutions—that is, the field of cultural production. This study instead addresses the underexplored field of cultural consumption, examining how young people themselves make sense of Swedish gangster rap.

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural sociology, this study treats musical taste as a marker of class (Bourdieu, 1984). This point of departure therefore enables an analysis directed at understanding the widespread popularity of gangster rap across diverse youth groups in relation to how its cultural value is negotiated. By tracing paradoxes and tensions in young people’s discourse on gangster rap, the study explores how these perceptions relate to their positions in social space. From this perspective, the articles aim is twofold: (a) to analyse the paradoxes and tensions that emerge in young people’s understandings of Swedish gangster rap and (b) to examine how these paradoxes and tensions relate to their position in social space.

• How is the social and cultural understanding of gangster rap shaped in relation to different youth groups and practices, and how does it reflect their position within social space?

• In turn, how can this contribute to a broader understanding of gangster rap as a cultural phenomenon?

Previous Studies on Young People, Hip-hop and Cultural Consumption

Much existing research on hip-hop has focused on what, in Bourdieu’s terms, could be called the field of cultural production—examining artists, producers and creative practices that shape the genre. In the Swedish context, scholars have explored hip-hop as both an artistic and an educational practice, analysing musicians’ educational strategies and the genre’s male-dominated character (Berggren, 2014; Dankić, 2019). Other studies have examined hip-hop’s connection to suburban environments (Joosten, 2024), its role in broader narratives of Swedish identity (Bredström & Dahlstedt, 2002) and its challenge to values associated with the welfare state (Åberg & Tyvelä, 2024).

However, there is still limited research on how young Swedish listeners engage with hip-hop—what Bourdieu would term the field of cultural consumption—particularly so when it comes to studies located outside the suburbs. While some studies suggest that hip-hop artists primarily produce music for fellow practitioners, little is known about how socially different youth groups interpret and relate to the genre in the Swedish context. International research has provided some insights into these issues in relation to other settings, highlighting, for instance, hip-hop’s significance for motivating young people in education, for example, language learning (Chesley, 2011) and science education (Emdin, 2010). Hip-hop has also been recognized as a key identity marker for marginalized young people, serving as a vehicle for social commentary and cultural resistance (Brooks et al., 2015; Lock, 2005; Travis, 2013). Some studies in turn suggest that listening to hip-hop can foster an understanding of racial and social inequalities (Tatum, 1999), while others call for more research on young audiences outside marginalized communities—such as white middle-class listeners—to better understand the genre’s broader appeal (Riley, 2005; see also Harkness, 2014).

Varieties in the Cultural Value of Music

On an overarching level, the issues raised regarding the need for further research connect to ongoing debates on youth culture and cultural omnivorousness, which appear contested in the hip-hop field. In the Canadian context, for instance, rap music has been found to be associated with lowbrow omnivorousness, as young listeners tend to engage with both mainstream and niche hip-hop (Veestra, 2015). Similarly, among Chinese youth, genre preferences within hip-hop appear to shape identity formation and symbolic boundaries, revealing tensions between a desire for transgression and the rejection of vulgarity (Wang, 2024). This insight may help explain why young people interpret expressions of anger in the genre in different ways (Jensen & Thomsen, 2024). Together, these findings from studies of local hip-hop illustrate that the meaning in and of hip-hop is not universal, but rather highly shaped by local and contemporary culture, norms and values. In local Swedish hip-hop, this means perceived ties to the suburbs (Sernhede, 2002), which may explain why it has a higher symbolic value among young people (de Paor-Evans, 2018). On the other hand, so does other genres in relation to other social contexts. Rural areas are, for example, often associated with dance band and country rock music (Areschoug, 2022). This in turn reflects broader trends in music research that show cultural hierarchies operating both between and within genres (Vestby, 2017, 2019). In Sweden, this means that the ‘others’ in a rural setting tend to be urban youth, and perhaps also vice versa. However, differentiation is also evident in how young people engage with music. In a Swedish study focused on young people’s musical interaction in two middle-class schools, it was indicated that students at a music-profiled school approach music with seriousness, while students at a non-music school treated it with humour (Persson, 2019). Similar distinctions emerge around study motivation, linked to class and social affiliation (Ambjörnsson, 2004; Borg, 2024; Willis, 2017) and are likewise embedded in different ways in different schools and neighbourhoods. In a working-class town, young people therefore construct ‘working-class culture’, in our time symbolized not only by certain music but also by symbolic goods such as the EPA tractor (Årman, 2024). Even though youth groups and generations tend to generally be associated with stereotypical musical forms as we have demonstrated here, this is not always true. Rather so, musical consumption functions as a social marker for individuals to make statements about who they are (Frith, 1998).

Music as Capital or Distinction for Institutions

There are also studies indicating that previous students’ achievements in mainstream popular music may serve as an institutional symbolic capital for prestigious elite schools in Sweden (Lundberg, 2020). Given that hip-hop and gangster rap are genres associated with urban culture, there are, however, no studies showing the opposite being true for urban schools that prominent rappers have attended. Juvenile detention centres (‘SiS homes’) appear to be a central institution to gangster rap, as many contemporary artists claim to have written their music there. This, however, is not used as symbolic capital by the institutions; rather, it creates tensions with staff, who perceive hip-hop as a genre reflecting problematic lifestyles (Silow Kallenberg, 2016).

These examples therefore highlight the need for nuanced analyses of cultural preferences to understand the tension-filled spaces youth navigate. Against this backdrop, questions arise about how young people from different social backgrounds engage with gangster rap—not only as musical consumption but also as a means of negotiating identity, belonging and distinction. While hip-hop has been widely studied, little research examines how young people themselves make sense of gangster rap or how their engagement reflects broader social structures. This study addresses that gap by analysing how different youth groups navigate the paradoxes and tensions embedded in Swedish gangster rap.

Understanding Young People’s Perceptions of Gangster Rap: A Cultural—Sociological Approach

This study draws on perspectives and concepts derived from Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural sociology, particularly his conceptualizations of cultural consumption, social positioning and distinction. At its core, Bourdieu’s framework provides analytical tools for examining how Swedish gangster rap is interpreted and integrated into different lifestyles among young people with varying social backgrounds and life conditions. Simultaneously, the study adopts an inverse analytical perspective by exploring how young people’s perceptions of gangster rap can reveal implicit understandings of the genre’s cultural value and offer insights into their positioning within social space.

Bourdieu’s notion of capital is central to this analysis. Capital can be economic, cultural, symbolic or social, and it is through the distribution, exchange and conversion of these forms of capital that hierarchies and distinctions are produced in social space, which is Bourdieu’s concept for the structured network of positions that individuals and groups occupy relative to each other based on their relative amounts of capital (Bourdieu, 1984; Swartz, 1997). Social space is thus dynamic, where positions are relational and continuously negotiated, and different forms of capital can be transformed or mobilized depending on context. In the context of gangster rap, for instance, subcultural or street-based cultural capital can be converted into symbolic capital, affecting young people’s social positioning and perceived legitimacy within both mainstream and subcultural audiences. This study primarily focuses on cultural capital, defined as the knowledge, skills, education and cultural experiences that are valued in specific social fields (Bourdieu, 1977). The ways in which young people engage with gangster rap are therefore assumed to reflect their access to and interpretation of various forms of capital, including cultural capital associated with specific music genres or cultural practices. In this context, hip-hop functions both as a means of distinction and as a shared cultural resource that fosters social belonging, allowing young people to navigate the social and symbolic boundaries of their environments. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus—a system of dispositions shaped by one’s social position—helps explain how cultural preferences and practices are not merely individual choices, but rather deeply embedded in social and economic contexts (Bourdieu, 2000). Habitus manifests in practical expressions, such as the ways young people evaluate authenticity, interpret aesthetic elements or engage with peers in musical practices. Different social and economic backgrounds thus shape how gangster rap is consumed and interpreted, allowing cultural engagement to function either as a marker of social differentiation or as a means of contesting existing social hierarchies.

The concepts of taste and distinction (Bourdieu, 1984, 2000) in relation to the ‘space of lifestyles’ (Bourdieu, 1984; Broady, 1998) serve as key analytical tools. Taste operates as a mechanism of social differentiation, where preferences in music both reproduce and challenge social hierarchies, depending on the cultural and social resources available to the people at hand. By analytically examining how taste in gangster rap signifies certain aesthetic and social choices, this study analytically deals with issues related to understanding how hip-hop is incorporated into or challenges different social positions. The space of lifestyles serves as an analytical lens for investigating whether gangster rap fosters social cohesion—by functioning as a shared cultural reference among a generation—or whether it reinforces social and class-based segregation.

Finally, Bourdieu’s (2000) concept of consecration is relevant for understanding how hip-hop, and particularly gangster rap, is legitimized as an artistic expression. Consecration involves both institutional recognition and peer validation within subcultural fields, highlighting how authenticity and artistic credibility are socially constructed and contested. In this study, the concept enables the analysis of how aspects of authenticity and realism relate to the artistic process of transforming lived experiences into aesthetic expression. It also allows consideration of how cultural producers within hip-hop target specific audiences or attract diverse groups, shaping the broader cultural and social significance of the genre.

Methodology

This study is based on semi-structured interviews (Bryman, 2016), conducted individually in state-run youth homes (so-called ‘SiS homes’)—for ethical and security reasons—and in groups in lower and upper secondary schools. This methodological approach allows for in-depth understandings of how gangster rap is interpreted across contexts and perspectives. The participants were all young people aged 15–18, including ninth graders and first-year upper secondary students aged 15–16, and SiS home residents aged 17–18. Schools in different socio-geographical environments were contacted through principals or directly through teachers, depending on local conditions. Students were recruited by their teachers, who invited whole classes to participate; those who consented took part, which also applies for schools and the selection ranging from ninth graders to upper secondary schools. The selection of schools was guided by categorizations from the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions: ‘small town’ (15,000–40,000 inhabitants), ‘rural’ (<15,000) and, additionally, inner-city, suburban and affluent middle-class schools in Sweden’s three largest cities. All interviews followed the same guide, covering listening habits, familiarity with artists and perspectives on gangster rap, crime and representations in songs and videos. In total, 11 interviews were conducted, ranging from 25 to 45 minutes: group interviews (3–8 students) at one school of each category and individual interviews with six young people at three SiS homes.

Analytical Process

The data were analysed guided by thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2013, 2019) and informed by Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts, which served as a lens for interpreting social positioning, capital and cultural legitimacy in young people’s engagement with gangster rap. First, all interviews were transcribed and read multiple times to achieve familiarity and a holistic understanding of the material. During this initial phase, we conducted an inductive coding process, generating descriptive codes that captured concrete elements of the data, including: authentic rappers, perceived exaggerations, representations of reality, crime as an outcome of listening to music (or not), suburban context, humorous positioning, juvenile delinquency as an aesthetic, Einàr’s murder as a shared experience and differentiation between rappers. Next, we examined relationships between these codes, grouping them into broader categories and identifying patterns that reflected key distinctions in how gangster rap is perceived. At this stage, Bourdieu’s concepts helped us move from descriptive coding to analytical interpretation. For example, we considered how references to authenticity or exaggeration might reflect cultural capital, how suburban or institutional contexts shaped perceptions and how relatability and exclusivity could signal social positioning. Through this iterative process, fundamental paradoxes and tensions emerged: gangster rap was simultaneously grounded in reality and exaggerated, fictional yet relatable, mainstream yet exclusive in certain contexts. These paradoxes guided the final formulation of overarching themes, which synthesize descriptive codes into analytically meaningful categories that connect social positioning, cultural capital and youth engagement with the genre. Finally, throughout the analysis, we continuously reflected on our theoretical assumptions, ensuring that our interpretation remained grounded in the data while drawing on Bourdieu to illuminate social and cultural mechanisms shaping young people’s perceptions of gangster rap.

Ethical Considerations

This study follows the Swedish Research Council’s ethical guidelines regarding the principles of informed consent, confidentiality and the responsible use of research data (Vetenskapsrådet, 2002). Since all participants are over the age of 15, they have been able to provide informed consent themselves. Ethical approval for the study has been obtained from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority, and for the interviews conducted in SiS youth homes, an additional local ethical review was required before access was granted. This means that the interview guide has been approved by two separate bodies. Regarding data management, all recorded and transcribed interviews are securely stored on the University of Gothenburg’s server to ensure data protection. All data have been anonymized to safeguard participants’ privacy.

At the same time, ethical considerations in research go beyond administrative procedures. This study examines a highly debated topic in the media, which is often linked to a specific socio-geographical context—the suburban areas. To account for this, we have used open-ended questions to create opportunities for the interviewees to articulate their own perspectives on and interpretations of gangster rap as a cultural phenomenon. However, it is important to acknowledge the potential influence of the interviewer effect, meaning that participants may have adjusted their responses based on what they perceived as our interests as researchers. The indications made to the teachers was to ask a class of students who might be interested in taking part in interviews related to a research project concerning Swedish contemporary gangster rap. Additionally, we do not have full insights into how different teachers introduced the study to their students or the exact process by which participants were selected.

Limitations

This study focuses on young people’s accounts of gangster rap in relation to the social class positions represented by their respective school environments. Within a Bourdieusian framework, such a focus is a well-established approach (see Bourdieu, 1984, 2000). At the same time, this choice entails a natural delimitation from, for instance, deepened intersectional analysis. Also, the study is situated in Sweden and therefore contributes particular knowledge to the local value of contemporary hip-hop among Swedish youth from different social environments and backgrounds.

Gangster Rap as Mainstream yet Exclusive

In the analysis of the interviews, we identify a tension between gangster rap as ‘mainstream’—a shared cultural reference point across different social environments—while simultaneously functioning as a marker of cultural exclusivity for certain listener groups. This paradox aligns with Bourdieu’s concept of distinction that suggests that even when a cultural form is widely consumed, it may still operate as a resource for positioning oneself in social space. The shared repertoire of artists such as 1Cuz, Einàr, DreeLow, Asme, Aden, Saretti, C Gambino and Gaboro thus appears as a form of youth cultural capital that fosters generational belonging while also enabling fine-grained symbolic differentiation based on how this repertoire is interpreted and valued. Across all social environments, the interviewees also depict gangster rap aesthetics as including elements such as money, drugs, cars, ‘flashy watches’ and ‘girls’, often accompanied by the image of a group of men ‘standing around looking cool’. The ease and uniformity with which such characteristics are described suggests that these elements have become doxic forms of cultural knowledge—commonly understood markers of the genre’s aesthetic field. A further shared cultural reference is the murder of the well-known rapper Einàr. Many recall not only the date—21 October 2021—but also the specific circumstances under which they learned of his death, whether through news, peers, parents or nighttime Snapchat notifications. One interviewee even described it as ‘the biggest thing that has ever happened in Sweden’. Knowledge of the preceding conflict between Einàr and Haval is broadly shared as well, as illustrated by the following example from a student at the rural school:

I kinda know that Haval and Einàr weren’t really nice to each other. When Haval’s brother died, Einàr mentioned it in his song, and then you realized that he was talking about his brother, so then … Then you understood that they had a ‘beef’. And then when Einàr died, Haval sang about his death, so then you kinda knew, like, who …!

In the last part, the boy implies that Haval was in fact involved in Einàr’s murder. A young person at an SiS home further elaborates on the same dynamic: ‘So many criticized Einàr and Haval, and many praised Einàr, while others criticized him. There was so much going on around him’. Such shared narrative references contribute to understanding gangster rap as part of generational cultural capital. However, how this capital is embodied and integrated in daily practice varies significantly across social environments, reflecting differences in habitus. For instance, the rural group listens while driving ‘EPA tractors’, the small-town youth integrate the music into gym routines or learning to drive, the affluent suburban youth describe it as background music during make-up routines and the inner-city students joke about Einàr referencing Fortnite. At the SiS home, the music is intertwined with everyday life in an even more direct way, as connections to rappers and their networks are part of lived experience. As one interviewee states: ‘At SiS, there are relatives and friends of the gangster rappers. There are so many connections to gangster rap at SiS’. These varied forms of engagement indicate that while the cultural form is shared, its meaning and function differ depending on one’s position in social space.

Yet gangster rap is also perceived as exclusive, though in different ways. At the rural school, it serves to create distance from peers who listen to ‘FrökenSnusk’ and participate in ‘epa-dunk’ culture. For one interviewee at SiS, exclusivity instead takes the form of rejecting songs that become too widely embraced:

I remember when Antwan released the song ‘Sativa’, and it became famous. I hated it! I despised it from the bottom of my heart just because everyone liked it. It was like, ‘you only like it because everyone else does’. You don’t like it because you genuinely like it. You like it because the norm has told you that you should like it.

This rejection can be understood as a practice of distinction, where authenticity is defended against perceived mainstream dilution—an attempt to accumulate symbolic capital by demonstrating a deeper or more ‘true’ relation to the genre. A clear differentiating factor between youth groups concerns how they relate to lyrics. At the urban school and at SiS, interviewees express the importance of listening to lyrics but stress a particular mode of listening: ‘It’s not like you sit and listen to the song and think, “shit, he has it tough,” overanalyzing’. By contrast, at the affluent and rural schools, valuing ‘the sound’ is seen as more appropriate.

These contrasting listening orientations suggest different forms of cultural investment by young people from different social environments and positions in social space. Close engagement with lyrics may signal experiential proximity to the social worlds portrayed, whereas focusing on sound reflects a more distanced, aestheticized mode of consumption. Thus, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds may access forms of genre-specific cultural capital that carry symbolic value in certain peer contexts, in ways that more privileged youth may not.

Gangster Rap as Both Authentic and Exaggerated

There appears to be a complex tension in how gangster rap is perceived among the young people we have interviewed, particularly regarding claims of authenticity, on the one hand, and perceptions of exaggeration, on the other. The young people’s evaluations of what is ‘real’ or ‘fake’ can be understood through Bourdieu’s concept of taste as a socially conditioned form of judgement: how authenticity is recognized depends on one’s habitus and position in the broader social space. For many of the young people, authenticity is closely tied to place—especially the suburb. The suburb functions not only as a geographical reference but also as a symbolic marker of cultural legitimacy, where proximity to the suburbs or ‘orten’ becomes a way of positioning oneself within the cultural field of hip-hop. At the affluent middle-class school, gangster rap is also described as ‘the soundtrack of the suburb’, and one student expresses that ‘it is probably the only thing being played there’, which peers agree upon. At the small-town school, a student explains that the genre’s association with the suburb likely comes from that rapper in their lyrics: ‘ often sing about the suburbs in their lyrics. So that makes people associate it with that’.

At the affluent middle-class school and inner-city high school, both located in large metropolitan areas, students name specific neighbourhoods in the two largest cities Stockholm and Gothenburg associated with the genre while simultaneously marking their own relation and distance from them. This suggests that invoking the suburb becomes a strategy of distinction. One can claim familiarity with the cultural codes while maintaining symbolic safety from the social realities associated with them. The suburb is known yet held at an arm’s length. This dynamic also shapes interpretations of the relationship between gangster rap and criminality. At the inner-city school, students ridicule the idea that music could directly lead to crime, or as one student puts it: One should undergo ‘mental training’ if one is ‘so stupid’ as to ‘do something stupid after listening to these songs’. Here, disbelief in the music’s influence reflects a habitus shaped by relative social security—where criminality appears distant and unlikely. Meanwhile, a young person who was also interviewed and who has grown up in a suburban area but is now placed at an SiS home explains: ‘If I had grown up on a farm, I wouldn’t necessarily have listened to “orten” rap’. This statement acknowledges how socio-geographical location appears to shape taste and that musical preference emerges from lived conditions. At the suburban school, one student, however, suggests that rap can draw someone ‘into the criminal world’, though adds that ‘it doesn’t always have to be like that’. Similarly, at the affluent middle-class school, one interviewee notes that media headlines about real violence among rappers suggests that ‘there is at least some truth’ to the lyrics. However, others—particularly those further from the social contexts of the genre—tend to reverse the narrative, assuming that criminals listen to gangster rap rather than that rap produces criminality. At the rural school, students discuss how the music may ‘trigger something’ in young boys, making ‘crime, guns, money’ seem ‘cool’. Such comments reveal how lower familiarity with the genre’s symbolic goods may lead to interpretations framed by moral distance or cultural anxiety rather than embodied familiarity. These varied interpretations also highlight how access to subcultural capital shapes meaning making. Those with closer lived proximity to the social worlds referenced in the music interpret authenticity differently than those who observe from afar.

Exaggerated authenticity is, for instance, articulated most clearly by an interviewee at the SiS home:

That is the reality for many, but I don’t believe half of what they say. If they really lived the life they rap about, they would never be able to rap about it. … Some of them live in it and like to play with fire. … I think they are more like secondhand witnesses who have seen it. … I used to be like that myself, watching what others did and then thinking that I had done it too.

In the quote, authenticity is evaluated through embodied social experience—those with real proximity understand that genuine involvement in crime limits one’s ability to publicly narrate it. This demonstrates how symbolic capital in the gangster rap field may be accrued not only through having lived certain experiences but also through being able to convincingly claim positional proximity to them.

At the inner-city school, students use the term ‘cap-rappers’ to describe exaggeration—‘If you lie about everything’. They also exemplify this by saying that: ‘If you grew up in a really rich home … and want to rap about something illegal, go ahead! But you have to say something like “no, none of this actually happened.”’ This indicates that authenticity can be performed, but this performance must be reflexively acknowledged to maintain legitimacy. The fact that rules of the field require transparency about the gap between experience and narrative appears as known also among young people who are distant from it themselves. Similarly, rural and suburban students describe exaggeration as: ‘A lot of talk’, ‘Something small may have happened, but they amp it up’ or ‘It doesn’t feel like many of them are actually capable of doing all the things they say’. At SiS, some also claim they can verify truthfulness: ‘Some of them talk nonsense, others talk about what they have experienced, and others talk about what they see. … Sweden is a small country; you know who everyone is’. At the suburban school, the students do not display the same embodiment; instead, they frame authenticity evaluation as research to ‘Check the facts!’ or ‘Look at how these people lived before’. These practices of verifying authenticity can be understood to reflect processes of consecration: that is, the ongoing negotiation of who actually counts as a ‘real’ artist and who holds legitimate symbolic capital in the field.

Gangster Rap as Fictional and Relatable

While there appears to be a tension between perceived authenticity and exaggerations within gangster rap, there is also a tension between understandings of gangster rap as relatable and at the same time fictional. The interviewees demonstrate an awareness that not all elements of the aesthetics of gangster rap are necessarily authentic or even rooted in reality. In certain contexts, elements of fiction and understandings of storytelling are interpreted as a strategy for rappers to gain attention. For example, at the rural school, one of the interviewees expressed that many rappers probably ‘lie’ to gain more ‘followers’. At the inner-city school, students similarly reason that rappers most likely exaggerate aspects ‘so the song sounds good’, even though they have not actually done ‘anything related to gang crime, except maybe smoking weed’. At the same high school, others likewise express severe doubt as to whether real weapons are actually used in Swedish rap videos. Half-jokingly, they speculate that the weapons seen in Swedish videos are probably toy guns, ‘airsoft’ weapons. They legitimize this by referring to and comparing with British ‘UK rappers’, whom they view as more authentic because they (humorously stated) ‘walk around with swords that are like three meters long in their pants’. The comparison with the over-dimensioned sword also appears as an exaggeration, which further emphasizes the fictional conception. This demonstrates how young people negotiate symbolic capital within the cultural field of gangster rap: those with greater exposure and cultural literacy are able to discern stylistic performance from ‘real-life’ experience, reflecting the relational nature of taste and knowledge in Bourdieu’s framework. Fictional elements are not merely dismissed but are also evaluated as markers of artistic strategy, aesthetic skill and credibility within the subcultural space. They also contrast statements made by students at the suburban school who more seriously highlight fictional elements of gangster rap by describing the genre as ‘storytelling’, particularly so when talking about music videos, which they claim to be a way for artists to showcase ‘how they live’ but at the same time to ‘look cool’. The suburban students further elaborate that this type of storytelling requires certain aesthetic artefacts: ‘For example, if you rap about “yeah, I shot him” or something, then you can’t stand there waving a Swedish flag. Instead, you must stand there waving a gun’. The other interviewee at the suburban school further detailed:

Some people, when they see these things in music videos—like when they show weapons—they think it’s glorifying that life. But maybe they do it … I mean, it’s an image. You can’t stand there waving a stick if you’re rapping about the lifestyle.

From a Bourdieusian perspective, these reflections reveal how habitus and social positioning shape aesthetic evaluation: suburban students demonstrate a capacity to recognize the performative logic of gangster rap, distinguishing between the embodied lived experience of the ‘hood’ and mediated representation, which constitutes a form of analytical cultural capital. An interviewee at SiS described a belief that young people outside the suburbs probably do not relate to gangster rap in the way that SiS youths tend to do:

I don’t think they relate as much at all. I think they just vibe with the music itself. Because I can imagine that they have better opportunities than someone who lives in the ‘hood’. It has a lot to do with opportunities. If you don’t have a single penny and you see your mom is struggling with money, and you hear about others making big money selling stuff, I can imagine that you take that as a shortcut. It’s just an easier way.

This passage illustrates how social and economic capital condition interpretive frameworks. Those growing up in environments marked by scarcity may interpret gangster rap narratives as viable social scripts, connecting aesthetic consumption to lived structural realities. Here, cultural engagement functions as a site of both identification and potential social mobility. This view suggests that the lifestyle depicted in gangster rap may appear as a relatable life course for some, depending on circumstances. Similarly, another interviewee at the SiS home found that it was only when the type of shootings portrayed in gangster rap became part of one’s own life that it was possible to be able relate to the content of the lyrics:

Shootings and stuff—I didn’t relate to that until 2019, when I also started losing friends, loved ones, and so on. Whether you’re a criminal or not, you can still end up in the line of fire. Things can go wrong because of someone else’s mess.

The interviewee also described so-called ‘hood music’, which serves as a reminder of dramatic experiences that only those who have lived in the suburbs have witnessed. Another interviewee at the SiS home described the relatability of gangster rap:

I think it was that I could understand the lyrics much more. Even if I couldn’t relate to them directly, I turned them over in my mind and eventually found something I could relate to in a song. And the deeper the lyrics were, the more I could relate to the sense of exclusion. At the same time, I wanted to fit in. Everyone liked it, so I wanted to like it too.

The quotes underscore how gangster rap operates as a vehicle for affective capital: relatability is derived not from literal experience alone, but from the recognition of structural and emotional truths. Listeners cultivate a form of embodied knowledge that allows them to map their own experiences onto the cultural narratives, demonstrating the interplay of habitus, social positioning and aesthetic evaluation.

According to the interviewees at the suburban school, artists must adapt to the subject matter of gangster rap to be able to invoke the intended feeling in their listeners. Despite recognizing elements of fiction in gangster rap, students at the suburban school still emphasized its relatability and the importance of that, particularly in relation to the lyrics. This shows how symbolic boundaries and social positioning shape the reception of gangster rap, allowing young people from different backgrounds to connect emotionally despite recognizing its fictional elements. One of them expressed that ‘the music gets better the more you can relate to the lyrics’. One of the interviewees at SiS, who grew up in a suburb, shared a similar view, stating that it ‘has to do with the environment’. This perspective was also echoed by one of the students at the suburban school:

You can recognize yourself everywhere—you don’t have to be hardcore criminal to relate to someone rapping about hardcore crime. Maybe you just grew up in an environment where you saw things, and that can affect you. And it can result in you relating to these lyrics. So, it’s not that you have to commit these acts yourself, it’s your surroundings, and just growing up in a certain place.

These reflections highlight how relatability functions as a mechanism of symbolic inclusion within the field: the ability to empathize with lyrics constitutes a form of cultural and emotional literacy, which can confer social legitimacy within peer groups or subcultural contexts. The negotiation between fiction and lived experience thus becomes a terrain for the accumulation and demonstration of social and cultural capital. Another interviewee at the SiS home explained how the feelings and experiences portrayed through the music make it possible to be able to relate:

I felt understood. When my mom didn’t understand what was happening in my life, and my older brother said, ‘You’re an idiot, what are you doing? You’re going to become an addict. You’re going to fail in life. What did I tell you? …’ Everyone was on my case. … I didn’t understand myself, but I understood the music, and the music understood me. It was like everything in the music related to me. I didn’t even have to have done what they were rapping about, but the feeling of exclusion, of not wanting to hurt your parents but ending up doing it anyway—that was what made me feel understood without having to say a word.

An interviewee at the suburban school confirms the same idea, that the genre portrays feelings: ‘Most rappers rap about their lives because it’s their way of expressing their feelings and what they have inside’. Given that relatability appears as trivial or cliché, something almost embarrassing, among the young people from other environments, the depictions in gangster rap still give rise to empathic recognition. One of the students at the small-town school, for instance, reflects on the following question: ‘What if you live in Rinkeby, and they rap about Rinkeby—does that make you worried about living there?’ This tension between relatability and recognition illustrates how gangster rap operates as both a site of identification and a source of emotional distance. While some interviewees emphasize the genre’s expressive function, others approach it with scepticism, questioning its impact on perceptions of specific places and communities. The reflection points to how the genre’s narratives not only invite emotional engagement but also shape imaginaries of urban life, reinforcing or unsettling preconceptions depending on the listener’s social positioning. In this way, the ambivalence surrounding relatability in gangster rap reflects broader cultural distinctions, where expressions of emotion and authenticity are valued differently across social contexts.

Cultural Capital and Social Positioning in Young People’s Interpretations of Gangster Rap

Our analysis demonstrates that Swedish gangster rap holds multiple and sometimes contradictory meanings among young people, which vary both within and across social environments. This finding aligns with previous research suggesting that the meanings of hip-hop are shaped by local and cultural contexts rather than being universal (Veestra, 2015; Wang, 2024). However, while earlier studies predominantly focus on artists and production practices within hip-hop (e.g., Berggren, 2014; Dankić, 2019; Joosten, 2024), our study shifts attention towards the field of cultural consumption (Bourdieu, 1984). In doing so, we address calls for research that examines how socially diverse youth groups engage with and interpret hip-hop, particularly outside marginalized suburban environments (Harkness, 2014; Riley, 2005).

A key finding is that young people with direct or proximal experience of the social environments referenced in gangster rap tend to emphasize its artistic dimensions rather than treating it as a documentary of suburban life. This resonates with research showing that hip-hop can serve as a vehicle for identity formation and cultural resistance among marginalized youth (Brooks et al., 2015; Lock, 2005; Travis, 2013). Among youths in SiS homes and suburban settings, authenticity is rooted in lived experience. Here, artistic legitimacy emerges through proximity to the realities described in the music, reinforcing Bourdieu’s (2000) notion of field-specific logics of legitimacy. The symbolic value of gangster rap in these contexts echoes studies suggesting that cultural forms tied to the suburbs can carry heightened symbolic capital (de Paor-Evans, 2018; Sernhede, 2002). By contrast, young people located further from suburban contexts often treat gangster rap as a stylized or partially fictionalized cultural form. For these listeners, authenticity becomes an aesthetic rather than biographical criterion, aligning with broader trends of cultural omnivorousness among middle-class youth (Persson, 2019; Veestra, 2015). The humour and irony through which some outsiders engage with ‘orten’ culture reflect symbolic boundary-making, similar to processes found in studies of classed distinctions in youth culture (Ambjörnsson, 2004; Borg, 2024; Willis, 2017). Thus, while gangster rap circulates widely, its interpretation continues to reproduce social and cultural hierarchies—illustrating how music consumption operates as a marker of social position (Frith, 1998; Vestby, 2017, 2019).

Relatability emerges as a particularly significant mechanism. For some, personal or social proximity to the experiences narrated in the music functions as a form of subcultural or street capital (Sandberg & Pedersen, 2007; Thornton, 1995). For others, distance enables a more detached, culturally omnivorous form of appreciation. This tension illustrates how authenticity is neither fixed nor universally recognized but negotiated in relation to social space.

Finally, our findings highlight the active cultural discernment young people demonstrate when evaluating rapper credibility. While authenticity and truthfulness are idealized, exaggeration is recognized as part of the genre’s artistic language—echoing long-standing debates in hip-hop scholarship (Chang, 2005). The capacity to navigate these nuances suggests that engagement with gangster rap involves the development of what might be understood as a cultural compass: a form of cultural literacy that allows young people to negotiate distinctions between reality and performance. This underscores young people not as passive consumers but as culturally competent agents who contribute to the ongoing production of meaning in hip-hop.

In conclusion, this study shows how gangster rap functions as a dynamic cultural arena where young people’s social positions shape their understandings of authenticity, relatability and artistry. Engagement with the genre varies across social environments: while some draw on lived experiences to assess credibility, others interpret fictional elements as markers of artistic value. These distinctions reflect different forms of cultural capital and illustrate how authenticity is socially negotiated rather than fixed. The study extends previous youth cultural research by demonstrating how young people actively make sense of gangster rap across diverse social settings, navigating and reconfiguring symbolic boundaries in the process. By highlighting how cultural legitimacy and aesthetic judgement are shaped through social positioning, the study contributes to a broader understanding of gangster rap as a culturally embedded and socially contested phenomenon.