한국 언더그라운드 힙합에 대한 문화적 고찰: 하위 문화에서 주류 문화로

Abstract

The Korean hip-hop genre has undergone a process of hybridization with hip-hop culture originally from the Bronx due to cultural imperialism. After hybridization, Korean hip-hop was divided into two-ways, which was main-steam hip-hop (commercial) and underground hip-hop(sub-cultural). Korean underground hip-hop with sub-cultural characteristics was formed by the PC communication club in late 1990s. This study investigated characteristics of Korean underground hip-hop music based on the sub-culture theory, by analyzing lyrics of hip-hop music released in late 1990s and early 2000, scenes in a hip-hop TV show called Show Me the Money, broadcasted since 2010, and popular video clips of Dingo Freestyle on YouTube. Through Dick Hebdige’s sub-culture theory, this study was able to analyze sub-cultural characteristics of Korean underground hip-hop in the past and the process of Korean underground hip-hop merging with mainstream culture through media. In particular, this study also tried to look into new-media platform to see how Korean underground hip-hop merged with mainstream culture is being handled in the area of new-media platforms such as YouTube. Results showed that the Korean’s underground hip-hop which had sub-cultural characteristics, was integrated with the mainstream culture starting with Show Me the Money. In this integration, the Korean underground hip-hop music adopted the Capitalistic ideology that values only wealth, and placed sub-culture members within society by showing rapper’s family and friend relationships on TV. In addition, the resistance characteristics of culture and fashion bricolage were mass-produced and distributed to the public by the mass media and cultural industries. The mass media and cultural industries also commercialized rappers(sub-culture members) as rapper-celebrities, distributing them to the public so that people could naturally accept the merge with capitalism ideology. Rapper’s commercialization made anti-capitalistic sub-culture as hedonic and showing-off culture, resulting in wide spread of Swag and Flex cultural codes among hip hop musicians and music listeners despite their racial roots. In the platform expansion area, mass contents were produced by using rapper-celebrities who contains the same ideology merged by the mass media before. Capital-friendly messages were created by rapper- celebrities, and mass commercialization of hip-hop fashion bricolage was still shown in the video clips in new-media area. Through this result, it was found that new-media video clips were making Korean underground hip-hop culture more solid as a mainstream, capital-friendly culture to the public.