Black creative agency in Hip Hop culture: the professionalization of MCs in the transnational rhyme battle circuit

• Grant number: 23/17994-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2024
• End date: February 29, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Priscila Martins de Medeiros
• Grantee: Cairo Henrique dos Santos Lima
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Upon reaching its fiftieth anniversary (1973-2023), Hip Hop culture appears to be more powerful and vivacious than ever, consolidating itself through the internationalization of sociability circuits, artistic professionalization, academic institutionalization and the intense population of the imaginary. social relationship with the experiences and expectations of peripheral black youth. This project proposes to carry out a sociological analysis of Hip Hop culture, and more specifically, of the recent process of professionalization of the transnational circuit of rhyme battles, to characterize the forms of articulation of black creative agency, its geocultural flows and the global transformations caused for the expansion of Hip Hop culture. We start from the premise that rhyme battles, as Afro-diasporic cultural practices linked to Hip Hop, have advanced and established themselves contemporaneously in transnational circuits, based on the performance of Brazilian MCs in international rhyme battle championships, such as Red Bull FrancaMente and Freestyle Master Series. In terms of theoretical framework, we start from the approach of Hip Hop Studies and African Diaspora Studies. Methodologically, we combined in-depth interviews with MCs, organizers and other mediating agents on the rhyme battle circuit, with participant observation at international championships, to build a methodological configuration known in Hip Hop Studies as hiphopography. In this way, through the sociological analysis of the professionalization process of the transnational circuit of rhyme battles, we will seek to characterize the social experiences of MCs, their disputes for recognition and the articulation strategies of black creative agency established in Hip Hop culture.