From the left to the right, from the fringe to the centre: The trajectories of Iran's DIY hip-hop culture

Abstract

This article focuses on Iranian hip-hop's changes between 2009 and 2023. Focusing on ‘resistance hip-hop’, it analyses the established discourse of nationalism within resistance hip-hop songs. The article shows how the newly emerged forms of DIY hip-hop in Iran and the diaspora increasingly lean towards right-wing politics. Mainstream Iranian hip-hop increasingly reinforces a patriarchal, patriotic, and centralizing discourse at the expense of the marginalization of minoritized groups, including women, queers, ethnicities, and nationalities. In addition, the article examines the new developments among the Iranian women who started their careers on the verge of the Women-Life-Freedom movement. Some women artists refuse to reproduce the patriarchal and patriotic discourses dominating recent hip-hop productions; instead, they simultaneously defy the Islamic regime's norms of gender identity and that of the mainstream male-centric pro-nationalist hip-hop.