Abstract
Rap is a music genre that is as dynamic and internationally successful as it is extensively discredited. This contribution begins here by focusing on the perception of young rap fans and asking what meaning they attach to rap specifically with regard to the criminality of gangstas. The empirical basis for the analyses is an ethnographic study with young rap fans in Germany. The results show that rappers as gangstas have a high identification potential for the young people – but not in every case. Rappers have to be authentic and show the young people possibilities to find ways out of disadvantaged and discriminating living conditions, if necessary with the help of crime. To appear credible in this respect, gangstas must rap about actual crimes and communicate experiences with which the young people, for their part, are familiar.
The Story Continues: Rap and Criminalization 1
Rap is a music genre that receives broad public, political, and academic attention. Since the 1980s and 1990s, it has dominated discussions about young people’s media consumption and its possible connection to criminality. The term rap, however, tends to be misleading because very different subgenres have long since been differentiated, which can hardly be brought down to a common, uniform denominator. Rap and its diverse subgenres are flexible and undergo a permanent process of transformation (Lena, 2006). Drill, conscious rap, cloud rap, trap, gangsta rap, emo rap, crunk, and numerous other (intern)national and local styles represent a very heterogeneous landscape that is constantly changing. Even individual subgenres, such as gangsta rap, are not to be understood statically, but rather merge with other subgenres and adapt to particular framework conditions of production and consumption. Thus, Quinn (2005: 191) speaks of gangsta rap not as a ‘fixed, self-evident category’ but as ‘part of an ongoing history’. In view of its ‘hybridity’, Keyes (2002: 227) attests to rap’s ‘chameleon appeal’; although it has a certain contour and history of origin, it is constantly transforming and appeals to different interest and consumer groups. Rap has always been determined by a ‘variety of styles and cultural forms’ (Kelley, 2012: 147), and the ongoing differentiation of subgenres in recent years has increased this variety even more.
Despite this flexibility and hybridity, there is one feature that has characterized rap since its beginnings: the criminalization associated with it. On the one hand, rap is credited with giving minorities a voice, establishing opportunities for social and economic advancement, and denouncing discrimination by society, the police, and the criminal justice system; in this sense, it is considered a valuable tool in the fight against disadvantage and discrimination. Even gangsta rap experienced a cultural revaluation, motivated not least by economic interests (Harvey, 2021: 257). On the other hand, however, rap has been extensively discredited since its emergence and international dissemination. Numerous studies document what Rose (2008) calls the ‘hip hop wars’, i.e. legal, public, and political disputes over rap, which as an alleged ‘poison from the black ghetto’ (Harvey, 2021: 98) is accused of glorifying violence and drug use, destroying the social value base, discrediting minorities, demeaning women, and leading young people to crime. Attempts at censorship, criminal prosecution, and overall efforts at ‘moral control’ (Quinn, 2005: 88) are constant companions of rap. Like earlier musical genres, ‘hip hop has been maligned, attacked, and blamed for various social and cultural dangers to American youth’ (Ogbar, 2007: 176). As Ogbar argues, this discrediting currently continues, although rap’s success story, now spanning several decades, has clearly not resulted in youth becoming criminals en masse, failing to attain high educational qualifications, or becoming morally derailed. Although empirical evidence of such negative consequences of rap consumption is scarce, moral, public, and criminal indictments against rap continue.
With the differentiation of (sub)genres, they did not become rarer, but various studies indicate that they have persisted or even intensified. In this respect, recent studies often focus on drill, which has been popular for several years, and the extensive control and censorship attempts directed at it. Ilan (2020) uses the example of the United Kingdom to describe how drill is criminalized by authorities, which he argues is counterproductive because drill is misunderstood when it is interpreted as incentivizing crime. The spiral of criminalization and censorship, he argues, promotes a ‘backlash’ (Ilan, 2020: 1008) as the marginalization and alienation of rap consumers is fostered by the overpolicing of drill. Drill does, Evans (2020: 241) argues, involve ‘empowerment, pleasure and subversive strategies’ and thus continues a positive tradition of rap, as ‘drill rappers were a new iteration of hip hop’s penchant for inventive Black social practice: simultaneously leveraging social media to feel alive, important and visible’. In the current criminalization of rap, however, this penchant is often overlooked, as Owusu-Bempah (2022) notes. According to her, the criminalization of rap and rappers is based on stereotypes: ‘the notion that rappers are dangerous criminals reflects long-standing stereotypes about Black people (particularly boys and men) as criminals’ (Owusu-Bempah, 2022: 432). The criminalization and overpolicing of music genres associated with minorities are also described by Fatsis (2019a, 2019b) using the examples of drill and grime. The way grime is treated by the police in London, Fatsis (2019a: 455) argues, involves ‘stereotypical assumptions about imagined links between Black musical subcultures and criminal behavior that are shown to be racially-driven and discriminatory’, thus constantly turning the screw of marginalizing fans of grime or drill (Fatsis, 2019b). Vulnerability is reinterpreted as dangerousness and criminalized in ignorance of the creative and expressive potentials – extending to criminal charges against rappers accused of inciting youth to crime, violence, and misogyny (Tanovich, 2016), even to the point of insinuating terrorist threats implied in rap lyrics (Khan, 2022: 250).
These examples may suffice to show that rap continues to be massively policed and criminalized. Rap is a differentiated, dynamic genre whose criminalization continues unabated, legitimized in particular by the insinuation that it glorifies criminality and encourages young consumers in particular to commit crime. 2
This contribution draws on this debate. According to Rose (2008: 34), a ‘key aspect’ of the problematization and criminalization of rap by the public and authorities lies in the insinuation ‘that it glorifies, encourages, and thus causes violence’. Different subgenres of rap have been confronted with this accusation for decades; the empirical evidence for this accusation may be thin (Ilan, 2020; Kubrin and Weitzer, 2010; Rose, 2008). But the reception of rap by youth and the effects associated with it are a central argument for its criminalization. To find out how young people experience rap and the crimes associated with it, what is needed – contrary to simplistic, unilinear impact hypotheses – is ‘close-up scholarship’ (Fatsis, 2019b: 455), that is, research that reconstructs everyday practices of rap fans. This requirement follows research traditions established in dealing with delinquency and youth cultures, in that research ethnographically engages in close contact with youth and seeks to understand how they perceive and attribute meanings in their everyday, interactive practices (e.g. Ferrell, 1997; Fleetwood and Sandberg, 2022).
Gangstas and Youth
In the following, I will present findings from a study in which young rap fans in Germany were ethnographically accompanied over several months to understand what meaning rap and the representation of criminality associated with it have for them. The analyses focus specifically on the character of the ‘gangsta’ and the stories told about him (sometimes her) in rap. 3
The focus on gangsta stories is based on the fact that rap – especially when its possible connection with criminality is in question – is often associated with individual, exposed personas. Smith (2003) speaks of the ‘hip-hop mogul’ who emerged in rap and often poses as a gangster. Moguls are financially successful and serve as role models for others. Despite their success, they remain tied to their origins; they do not deny ‘their racial and ethnic heritage’ but link it to upward mobility and illegality according to the scheme ‘of criminal “families” in the mafioso tradition of Al Capone, John Gotti, and the Gambino crime syndicate’ (Smith, 2003: 82). These gangsters are widely known not only in the United States but at least in the Western world. Since their pop-cultural establishment by mass media in the period between the two world wars, as Ruth (1996) reconstructs, they have been heroes or antiheroes with a high degree of recognition. Against the background of the media staging of gangsters, Ruth (1996: 1) speaks of a ‘media gangster’, who is less a depiction of real events than a personalized story about criminals and their success designed to sell. In his analysis, Ruth (1996: 43) details the ‘gangster’s story’ that, according to Leland (2005), was later echoed in gangsta rap. Gangsters are successful; they act like businessmen and are able to leave a disadvantaging background behind, at least to a large extent. With their illegal actions, they are socially and legally ostracized, yet they appear as an ‘antihero’ (Ruth, 1996: 71) by epitomizing a central cultural goal of the Western world: financial wealth. In their media staging, gangsters consume lavishly. They consume what the consumer world offers, with a particular focus on expensive and exclusive goods associated with a special ‘distinctiveness’ (Ruth, 1996: 65). In this regard, Leland (2005: 230) speaks of a ‘shady nobility’ of the gangster, which is also referred to as ‘ghetto sublime’ in analyses of gangsta rap (Smith, 2003: 84): gangsters, like the gangsta in rap, are not pure heroes, as they have illegality and discrimination attached to them.
This ambivalence sends out ‘mixed messages’ (Quinn, 2005: 29), that is, the gangsta character can imply contradictory stories about crime. Crime is not necessarily promoted but can also be problematized in rap lyrics. Nevertheless, it is often of central relevance for rappers to present themselves as gangstas. Evans (2020: 241) emphasizes in reference to drill rappers he interviewed that the following was important to them: ‘the promotion of a persona highlighting gangster motifs of exotic cars, promiscuous women, luxury clothing, expensive liquor and a “never say die” attitude’.
These motifs provide the gangsta with a particular pop cultural ‘appeal’ (Farrant, 2016: 39). In historical analyses, Hobsbawm (1969) described this appeal by elaborating that heroically portrayed criminals – Hobsbawm spoke of ‘bandits’ – offer a high degree of identification potential for disadvantaged youth and adults. According to Hobsbawm (1969: 113), it was spread and promoted in the modern era by gangster movies. These movies, popularized in the 1930s and 1940s, are followed by the gangsta character in contemporary rap (Quinn, 2005: 93). It repeats what already in the 1930s and 1940s motivated censorship attempts and discrediting of these gangster movies: the argument that they led young people to crime because they identified with gangsters (Springhall, 1998). As illustrated above with the example of drill, this argument is crucial for the criminalization and policing of rap to this day. Rap seems to tell stories rendering criminality appealing so that it is experienced positively and imitated by young people. This contribution will take a closer look at the respective meaning attribution to rap, gangstas, and crime.
A Narrative Approach
The following analysis starts from a narrative point of departure since rap is considered in particular as the telling of stories. Rose (1994: 2) calls rap ‘rhymed storytelling’; it contains narratives about oppression and resistance against disadvantageous living conditions. According to Dimitriadis (1996), rap incorporated an increasingly narrow narrative format in the wake of its mass media marketing and popularization in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in gangsta rap: locally embedded hip-hop events became less important in comparison to relatively structured and highly visual media productions. The ‘gun-carrying gangster’ (Dimitriadis, 1996: 188) was established as the core of the rap narrative. Dimitriadis attributes the considerable success of gangsta rap in particular to this character, its ‘roots deep in American popular lore’ and its ambivalence as a gangsta ‘is both deeply inside and outside of mainstream American culture’ (Dimitriadis, 1996: 188).
Against the background of the importance that this character continues to play for rap today, I will focus on which stories of gangsters or gangstas young people tell when they talk about rap songs. The character of the gangster in itself represents a story reproduced in rap, a story of social and financial advancement from disadvantaged, discriminatory living conditions (Smith, 2003). This story may often be more contrived than a factual description of events and actions (Kubrin, 2005: 375). Nevertheless, it is a powerful narrative epitomized by the character of the gangster who becomes a gangsta in rap, and it can be connected to in a variety of ways. A gangsta is as successful as he is tragic (Riley, 2005). This ambivalence is inscribed in him, so it has to be elucidated how young people interpret this character and its ambivalence. Since narratives are highly shaped by evaluations (Labov and Waletzky, 1967), the stories that adolescents tell about gangsta rappers can be used to understand how they make sense of the gangster image and how they assess it. Since in the following the focus is only on rap fans, a purely negative assessment is, of course, rather unlikely. However, an open research approach allows for the reconstruction of possibly complex attributions of meaning to this character.
In the sense of an open research attitude, we collected stories of young rap fans, which they told of their own accord. Stories are told in particular local and interactive settings (Bamberg, 2012). Stories are not simply given; rather, a plot is negotiated in interactive contexts in which the participants refer to each other. Characters like a gangster or gangsta are extra-situationally significant; they are culturally established and can be interactively engaged as a kind of storytelling resource. However, their concrete narrative meaning must be accessed by reconstructing the ‘interactive activity’ (Bamberg and Wipff, 2021: 72) of storytelling. 4
The stories analyzed below are from a project conducted in Germany [Stagings of crime: gangsta rap in interactive identity practices of youth]. The project’s aim is, among other things, to fathom the practices and meaning attributions of young people relating to rap. Access to the young people is provided by four institutions of youth work, where hip-hop culture and rap music play a major role. Each of the four institutions was researched for approximately eight months between 2021 and 2023. Young people attend the facilities voluntarily in their free time and they are supervised by socio-pedagogical staff. They are designed to be low-threshold, i.e. anyone who wants to visit them. Most of the attendees are young people with a rather low socio-economic status; they attend the facilities to meet friends, play computer games or billiards, and consume or produce music, as some of the facilities have sound studios. In the research process, different facilities were contacted to establish connections with the youths and to see if they listened to rap, which was often the case. Starting at these facilities, research relationships were established with young rap fans at each facility and, in some cases, beyond the facilities. The researchers visited the youth facilities regularly, gradually became acquainted with the youth, and built a relationship of trust with them so they could take part in conversations and practices and explore what rap means to the youth. The young people reported on below were all male, as we could hardly reach female rap fans in the facilities. The youths were between 12 and 22 years old; many of them have a Kurdish (migrant) background. They often described the neighborhood in which they live as disadvantaged.
The project uses an ethnographic research strategy that includes participant observations, ethnographic conversations, and the collection and analysis of cultural artifacts. This strategy is supplemented by audio-recorded focus interviews with the young people to ensure that we can record their interactions as verbatim as possible. The following analyses are based on the ethnographic observations; they were recorded in field reports and analyzed using Ethnographic Semantics (Maeder, 2002) and, additionally, open coding based on Grounded Theory (Corbin and Strauss, 2015). Ethnographic Semantics was used to identify terms, concepts, and practices in the field reports important to the youth and thus locate important passages. These were then analyzed in more detail, following Grounded Theory, to more accurately tap into the relations of central terms and concepts and to understand the relevant stories. In the course of the data analysis, we successively worked out respective topics and practices that related specifically to crime. 5 We consulted with the rap fans about our field reports. They repeatedly made use of the opportunity to read our field notes and discuss them with us. Over the course of the observations, we were increasingly able to focus on topics and practices already identified in the field and thus establish (narrative) patterns that will be discussed in the following. This contribution only depicts pertinent patterns that represent our observations. Through numerous discussions and comparisons of the data, including from different institutions, we were able to identify overarching patterns and finalize our interpretations of the stories we heard from the young people. With these methods, narratives of the youth were collected and systematized in an open form, and it was made visible what they associated with the character of a gangsta, rapper, or gangsta rapper. 6
The kind of rap the young people listened to cannot be assigned to a clear genre. Many songs were about drugs, violence, discrimination, and social advancement; these motifs, the songs, and the self-portrayal of the rappers corresponded to what is currently discussed in Germany as gangsta rap (e.g. Dietrich and Seeliger, 2022). But gangsta rap was not a term that the young people used of their own accord. They used different names for rap and knew various (sub)genres, including drill. Individual youths stated that they were familiar with rap genres from the United States, Great Britain, or France, and in some cases also Turkey, but this varied. In the following, I will speak of gangsta rap, as this label corresponds most closely to the rap songs, but it should be borne in mind that this designation only does approximate justice to the diversity mentioned.
Gangstas and Their Stories From the Perspective of Young Rap Fans
Well-known gangsta rappers play a central role for the youth in the study. 7 The facility from which the following data primarily stem, is mainly frequented by young people who spend their leisure time in the facility. The groups and (gangsta) rappers they listened to were partially very well-known, and partially rather unknown. 8 One aspect that is repeatedly made relevant by the young people – and that is hardly a surprise, given its centrality in research on rap (e.g. Forman and Neal, 2012; Harvey, 2021; Quinn, 2005) – is the question of the authenticity of rappers, particularly in the case of success. Perceptions of the authenticity of rappers are closely linked to social and economic mobility, which is documented in success, but can also become a problem. Commercial success in rap, despite the centrality of wealth and luxury in the lyrics and visual representation of rappers, is sometimes interpreted as a contrast to authenticity and local connection (McLeod, 2012).
Mobility, Success, and the ‘Hollywood’-Problem
The field report expresses the topics success and mobility and how they are intertwined. The following excerpt reflects a conversation between two young people (Cem and Yaro) on what kind of rap the two like to listen to: Cem says that he doesn’t really listen to rap anymore. Not the new stuff, only the old stuff. He describes in detail that all these new songs are all fake. The rappers would think up everything only, because that’s what’s hot right now. And also with all this Autotune, he says while shaking his head, ‘there one does not hear the genuine voice at all’. He would also hear from most rappers only the old things, he continues. Encouraging each other, Yaro and Cem explain that the things from the past are still ‘real’, that the rappers really had something to tell back then. Those were just stories from the street that the rappers had really experienced. But if they then had success and money and also ‘go away’, then they would have to make it all up. That’s just not real anymore.
Although well-known gangsta rappers are of central importance to the young people, their status is not without risk when it comes to authenticity. Success can symbolize a form of mobility as a result of which it is hardly possible to narrate real, self-experienced stories. If it is not possible to balance both – success and authenticity – in a convincing way, the verdict of ‘fake’ threatens, that is, the expectation that the rapper as the narrating person is at least largely identical to the character portrayed (Hess, 2012) is disappointed.
The evaluation by Cem and Yaro is based on contrasts: according to them, there are old and new songs; a passage of time that separates the past from the present; real and technically modified voices (Autotune); truly experienced and made-up content of songs; a life on the street and in other places; a life without money and one with financial success. These contrasts establish a distinction of authenticity versus fake (see also McLeod, 2012). Successful rappers are only genuine if they do not abandon the contrast poles first mentioned, if they make it believable that they are still attached to them. To appear authentic, they must remain committed to an earlier state despite their mobility. They must be recognizable with their real voice and tell of experiences they actually had themselves, especially experiences on the street. When they move away and have success and money, they leave the street and poverty behind; they can then no longer relate authentically because they lose their experiential connection to their origins (Leibnitz and Dietrich, 2012).
In a conversation in the facility, a reference to ‘Hollywood’ is used as a meaningful symbol to make clear the difference between authenticity versus success and mobility. The conversation takes place between the ethnographer and two young people who had often visited the facility in the past and are now dropping by again: We talk about what ‘the little kids’ of today would listen to. The two don’t know O.G., who is currently very popular with the visitors. [. . .] We then talk about rappers who come to the neighborhood to shoot their videos. ‘I feel like [nickname neighborhood] is starting to be Hollywood’, Tolga says, slightly indignant. They also want to know which rappers I have heard a lot. Celo, Abdi and Olexesh, who I name, the two also think are good. But somehow they would never have had so much success. They haven’t taken off like some others, who have lost the ground under their feet.
Here, too, success and mobility are coupled and provided with an ambivalence. The neighborhood mentioned is used by various gangsta rappers to shoot videos for their songs. As the young people make clear in other contexts, they see their neighborhood as disadvantaged and experience themselves in part as discriminated against because of their living in this neighborhood. The fact that this neighborhood is considered anonymous, characterized by high-rise buildings and social problems, is used by prominent rappers as a backdrop for their videos. It therefore functions as a mere stage, as ‘Hollywood’, that is, rappers who have moved away from the neighborhood and its problems in the course of their successful careers no longer have any substantial connection to this neighborhood and thus to their origins. On the other hand, those who have little success – at least from the perspective of the two youths – can maintain this connection and keep ‘the ground under their feet’. Success is therefore a risk; it implies the danger of inauthenticity. Those who rap about something they are not able to represent as a person make themselves untrustworthy. They do not ‘own’ the story they relate and are not entitled to tell it (Shuman, 2015); they only do so if they narrate, e.g. offenses which they themselves committed or experienced and which they are still connected to, in whatever way.
Social Antiheroes
In the context of gangsta rap, the ‘Hollywood’ problem implies that criminality plays a central role in establishing credibility: Anyone who raps about crime and is successful in doing so would appear untrustworthy if their depictions of offenses could be seen through as mere staging. In gangsta rap, the attribution of authenticity is highly personalized and focused on the person of the rapper, who becomes a gangsta with a past as a gangster. A gangsta rapper known in Germany (here, I call him ‘R’) plays an important role in this respect. The young people report of the rapper that although he has had great success and is now active as an entrepreneur, he still maintains an attachment to his milieu of origin. They attribute to the rapper that he came back to a neighborhood from which he – from the point of view of the young people – came from, to shoot videos, but not in the style of a simple ‘Hollywood’ production. Instead, he takes care of the children in the neighborhood and buys them something to eat. He thus reproduces a pattern that is sometimes exhibited by rappers: They try to be successful and legitimize this endeavor, at least partially, as a philanthropic way to give back to their former friends, their family, and their neighborhood. For instance, using Jay-Z as an example, Hess (2012: 650) describes those acts of philanthropy – in Jay-Z’s case, setting up scholarships for inner-city students – showed the (rap) public that ‘he hasn’t forgotten where he came from, and that he remains accountable to that community’.
The accounts of the young people we researched reflect these social actions. For example, two youths report that they missed ‘R’ handing out food after a video shoot. They went up to him afterward and asked if there was anything left. ‘R’ first apologized and denied it, but then he went out again and came back with food for them. And that was, in their words, ‘so cool’.
If one follows this story, a financially successful gangsta rapper not only gave out food to people from the neighborhood but personally made sure that the two young people got something to eat. According to this narrative, ‘R’ seems to be committed to the neighborhood and its residents. He has a special connection to his precarious background and his former milieu and can thus appear authentic and offer the young people the potential to identify with him.
It is important to note that ‘R’ has committed serious crimes and served several years in prison for them. This criminal record fits in seamlessly with the young people’s stories about ‘R’, in which they describe him as a credible gangsta rapper: With a robbery committed by ‘R’ and his accomplices, one teenager tells, they made ‘millions of euros’; that was ‘not like selling a few packs here’; how they did it – ‘you’d have to come up with that first’.
Although ‘R’ had been caught and imprisoned, he appears as smart and as someone capable of committing relatively serious offenses. It had not been about small things ( ‘not like selling a few packs here’; i.e. drugs), but about a large sum of money. In addition, he was inventive ( ‘you’d have to come up with that first’). Gangsters are brave and clever when it comes to making money (Ruth, 1996; Warshow, 2004), and in this sense, ‘R’ is an authentic gangsta rapper who is a gangster as a real person.
The corresponding stories of the young people describe a hero or ‘antihero’ (Leibnitz and Dietrich, 2012: 314) who acts criminally and is able to function as a role model in his courage and success. The admiration he receives does not deny that the rapper comes from a precarious background; on the contrary, he has a biography that the young people are familiar with, and such a comparison with personal experiences contributes to the credibility of stories (Loseke, 2019).
The assessment of crime that the youths make is consistent in this regard. They present crime as a kind of reality with which they are familiar. They do not dispute that crimes are rightly sanctioned. With their stories about ‘R’ and other gangsta rappers, they do not imply that the actions of the police and criminal justice system are per se illegitimate. Rather, with their narratives they seem to underpin that they live in difficult circumstances marked by social problems and crime. They experience crime and violence in their neighborhood time and again (see below). Yet by pointing to them, the youths do not narrate a victim story in which the protagonist suffers from problems and is forced into crime. Narratives of offenders relatively often tell such stories of suffering, in which individuals appear driven to crime because of external circumstances (e.g. Maruna, 2001; Presser, 2008). The young people’s stories about ‘R’ and other gangsta rappers emphasize something different: they focus on a person who is highly capable of acting despite the problems surrounding him. This person acts criminally and gets caught, but he is smart, can defend himself, defies discriminatory treatment by others, commits severe crimes, endures his punishment, and is successful overall. Gangsta rappers communicate a ‘self-aggrandisement’ (Dimitriadis, 1996: 186) that is prized by the attention they receive from others – but only if the rappers tell of real experiences and remain true to their background. The young rap fans check closely whether this is the case.
Crime as Local Experience
The young people usually know where well-known rappers come from and whether they have special characteristics in common with them, such as a certain migrant background, belonging to an ethnic group, living in a particular part of town, etc. One particularly important characteristic that marks a rapper as a gangsta is the form of criminality with which he is associated. The following excerpt from the field report shows that rap, crime, and the local environment can be closely intertwined. It is about a drug dealer and a rapper who live in the neighborhood of the youths and about whom they talk to the ethnographer. Chico explains that I should definitely know what’s about to happen here. Because ‘in the past, [nickname neighborhood] was dry’ and there had been a guy who had built up everything here. I ask him what he means and he explains that there were no drugs in the neighborhood and this guy built up a big business here. But he had been in jail for six or seven years now and during that time two brothers had taken over the business. But soon the guy would get out of jail and then there would definitely be ‘war’ here. [. . .] I ask if he means the rapper [Mio] here from the neighborhood and he answers in the affirmative. Then one of them asks if they have heard what happened to Mio. They talk a bit about it and Chico explains to me at some point that Mio had knocked another guy over the head with a bottle. Then the cousins of the guy came from [city] and went straight to his high-rise. One knows who lives where here. Then they rang the bell and said that either he would come down or they would come up and his mother would have to see what they did to him. So Mio came down and they beat him up badly. He was really thrashed.
The young people describe two dramatic stories. The first story concerns drug dealing in their neighborhood, where initially there had been no drugs (‘dry’). Then one person – who is not explicitly depicted as a rapper by the two youth – ended that drug-free era. Crime here is not a matter of pettiness; the story is about drug dealing on a grand scale (‘big business’). Drugs are often associated pop-culturally with resistance (Leland, 2005), and in gangster stories (Bengtsson, 2012) and gangsta rap (Neal, 2012; Ogbar, 2007; Rose, 2008), drug dealing and the pursuit to make a quick buck are important motifs. The drug dealer the youth talk about reproduces these motifs by being credited with building up the local drug trade and thus changing the character of the neighborhood. His influence and his power to act seem to be great, as he had established extensive drug dealing and changed the state of the neighborhood. The youth do not state that the rapper was imprisoned because of the drug trade; nevertheless, the imprisonment also broaches an established gangster motif (Sandberg, 2009). In principle, it fits seamlessly into the story of a drug dealer who is caught by the police and receives a harsh punishment.
The reference to an upcoming ‘war’ after the drug dealer’s release continues the gangster story. According to this story, the drug dealer is not converted by the imprisonment and he does not strive to lead a life without crime, but rather there seem to be tough conflicts between rival groups ahead, in which he must defend ‘his’ neighborhood as a place of drug trafficking. In the neighborhood where the youth are living, there are gangsters who deal drugs, come into conflict with the police and the criminal justice system, and are involved in violent fights. They have to assert themselves, act illegally, and suffer setbacks in ‘their’ neighborhood, which they have to defend in their own sense.
The second story in the excerpt is about violence and revenge. Mio, a rapper from the neighborhood, has committed an act of violence (‘knocked another guy over the head with a bottle’). The reaction to this act is not that the police would be called to resolve the conflict. The lives of gangsters, according to this kind of stories, operate ‘under different rules from the rest of society’ (Sandberg, 2009: 532), and this difference includes not reporting anything to the police. Instead, familial ties are used to seek revenge. Revenge is foregrounded in the story, rather than, for example, the question why Mio had become violent. His reasons do not seem to play a role, but what is worth telling is a cycle of violence and counter-violence, the latter not being explained in any detail. It is sufficient for the ‘functioning’ of the story, from the point of view of the narrating youths, that violence occurred and therefore relatives of the injured party became active. Possibly – but this is not mentioned – the person attacked with the bottle cannot take revenge himself because of his injury. The fact that his relatives take over this task does not need any further explication; the kinship seems to explain why the cousins act.
Just like the first story, the second narrative also draws on established motifs of a gangster character or gangster film: violence occurs; family members take revenge for it; the police are left out; the revenge is incurred honorably because its victim saves his mother from having to watch him being beaten up. The rapper acts violently and seems to ‘deserve’ revenge – but in the sense of the above-mentioned ‘shady nobility’ he also acts honorably by facing his tormentors and protecting his mother. A gangster can become a victim (Riley, 2005; Sandberg, 2009), but even then he acts as ‘gangster honor’ demands by protecting innocents – and especially his own mother.
The setting of the second story is framed by a reference to a ‘high rise’, that is, an anonymous environment that is likely to be socially and economically deprived, as is often thematized in gangsta rap. However, there is no question of a ‘Hollywood’ scene here – it is about real, brutal violence, in which a rapper is entangled as perpetrator and victim. Drugs and violence characterize the neighborhood just as much as the high-rises. The young people we researched live in this neighborhood, so they are directly affected by the problems and criminality that are thematized in rap and exemplified by the gangsters and gangsta rappers. This neighborhood may have been drug-free in the past; through gangsters and rappers, however, it becomes the scene of large-scale drug trafficking, wars for dominance over the neighborhood, violence, and revenge. In this sense, gangsta rap can be described as a ‘hyperbolic representation of street life’ (Hagedorn, 2008: 94). It may often be hyperbolic, but, according to the youths’ stories, it represents ‘actual’ street life.
Conclusion: The Appeal of Crime Narratives
The narratives of the youths we researched cover drugs, criminality, violence, police persecution, etc. There are other narratives, but these gangster stories play a significant role – that is, narratives that are responsible for the music genre being highly problematized in the public sphere as tempting youth to commit acts of violence, drug use, and other norm violations.
These findings indicate that youths consume (gangsta) rap with a close focus on the character of a gangster who is seriously criminal, entangled in violence, subject to police persecution, liable to imprisonment, and so on. If rappers cannot live up to this character, they are considered inauthentic and their songs are devalued. The corresponding symbol is ‘Hollywood’, meaning that rappers are just putting on a show with no real content. On the other hand, they are credible if they remain connected to their local origin and rap about experiences and criminal acts they have really experienced. In this case, they can go from being antiheroes to heroes for the young people. They are entitled to tell gangsta stories because they are gangsters in real life.
In this regard, there is a negotiation about the conditions under which authenticity can be ascribed or must be withheld: When dealing with gangstas and rap, the youths refer to their experiences and compare them to what is portrayed in songs and by rappers. For them, credibility lies with those who tell and rap about their experiences of crime – experiences with which the young people are familiar. This ‘narrative evaluation’ (Loseke, 2019: 7) points to narratives that are worth telling because they address real norm violations: acts of violence, discrimination, drug dealing, conflicts with the police, etc. Only a rapper who leads or has led a gangster life himself can be a good gangsta, because he raps about what he has experienced. A gangster may be a contrived character created by lore and the media a long time ago; the lines between fact and fiction are often (or usually) blurred in rap music (Harvey, 2021; Kelley, 2012). However, it is a character that both rappers and rap fans make real by ascribing authenticity.
The stories of the young people undergird how important the gangster myth that (gangsta) rap reproduces is to them. It proves them that one can be successful despite a disadvantaged background, if necessary with the help of illegal means. Their usage, however, is not arbitrary. What the findings discussed above illustrate is a kind of balancing act: certain kinds of crime – especially violence and drug dealing – can appear legitimate because they are interwoven with the life of a gangster who has to assert himself against all odds. This self-assertion brings into play particular norms that indicate how to behave as a gangster: for example, by protecting one’s family or mother, by confronting people with whom one has to fight battles, by giving away some of one’s own financial success to show that one is still connected to one’s origins, etc.
It should be noted, however, that the study described in this contribution primarily researched youth from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds. For them, the authenticity of a (gangsta) rapper is tied to the experiences they are familiar with from their neighborhood (in which crime is, of course, only a small part of a wide range of experiences). It is possible and likely that youth from other backgrounds interpret (gangsta) rap quite differently and do not ascribe authenticity in the same way. 9
What cannot be said on the basis of the study presented here is whether youth engage in criminal behavior because they listen to rap or gangsta rap. It can be stated, however, that the young people evaluate rap and weigh up which messages they consider authentic and which not. Their actual experiences and everyday life are a decisive point of reference for this assessment. Crime is part of their lifeworld, so it would be inappropriate to attribute it as a problem solely to the young people or to individual rappers. If one wanted to ask what conclusions can be drawn from this study, then they point to the living conditions of the young people. Improving these conditions would make much more sense than censoring rap or countering the young people with police measures.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – SFB 1472 “Transformations of the Popular – 438577023”.
