The "new generation of rap" and the cultural industry

• Grant number: 15/20592-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Effective date (Start): January 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Renato José Pinto Ortiz
• Grantee: Daniela Vieira dos Santos
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/11769-1 - The new generation of rap and the cultural industry, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

Rap is a musical genre that was born in USA in the 1970s, but in the context of globalization and globalization of culture, it has spread to many countries. So, it assimilates global and local elements, a common feature of globalized cultures. In Brazil, the genre was launched in São Paulo in the middle of 1980s, however, it was in the 1990s that it expressed more critical aspects in the lyrics. This change is linked to the success of Racionais MCs, who gained fame in parallel to the mass media. Although with the Racionais the brazilian rap has acquired another status, expanding into a different audience from whom his raps make mention, the genre still alluded to the community and was mainly restricted to the periphery urban. But we can realize that this condition has been changing, especially with the rappers so called as the "new generation". As an assumption we realize that the rap of this "new generation" doesn´t "talk" only to their pairs in the periphery, but has gained the taste of a university middle class, and has been occupying spaces that were previously restricted to the intellectual elite, such as the SESCs and bookstores. Therefore, we seek through a social and historical research of the Paulistano rap, in particular from the analyses of Criolo and Emicida, understand this interesting phenomenon still ongoing. The question is to understand and discuss the mechanisms that underlie this transformation. Why do some rap and rappers can go beyond the peripheral space and penetrate new market niches while others do not ? As a hypothesis we think that unlike Racionais, Facção Central, among others groups of rap in São Paulo, Criolo and Emicida (so called as the rappers of "new generation") present a "sweetish" and\or a Whitening (in the sense exposed by Roger Bastid and Florestan Fernandes) in their songs, which make it palatable to the hearing by intellectual elite university and the middle class. Thereby, we seek to understand the social inclusion of rap in the cultural industry through aesthetic analysis and with the investigation of the means of production (record company) of their raps.