Abstract
Hip-hop and rap music culture have shaped various local cultural forms in Asian countries and regions. This study explores hip-hop cultural politics at a local level, drawing on Chinese regional traditions and knowledge and responding to Western-axis hip-hop culture making. Through an analysis of the corpus of lyrics, videos, and performances of the ‘Huxiang Flow’ hip-hop genre in Hunan, China and 20 semi-structured interviews with Hunanese hip-hop audiences, this study identified how the parochial hip-hop genre has conceived local discursive fields and cultural identity through the rejuvenation of dialects and cultural ingredients and how it has preserved local linguistic and cultural heritages. Our analysis revealed the thoughtful, philosophical, and moral transmission of locality based on school instruction and incorporated in hip-hop music that has been well received by local audiences and communities. Based on our findings, we propose that hip-hop music is a vehicle of identity in the local community, presenting a grassroots, interactive, and critical perspective on the interpretation of identity in locality.
Published Version
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