Authorship, subjectivity and resistance in the mainstream: A lesson from Israeli rap

Abstract

Notions of authenticity and resistance are often addressed concomitantly in the context of popular culture and in the discourse that surrounds blackness in particular. Avoiding such a perspective, this article draws on Israeli mainstream rappers for whom rap is a way to converge popular style with the ability to speak their mind in the most sincere way. Based on ethnographic description, I therefore call to acknowledge rappers’ position as ‘authors’: aware and critical subjects whose sense of personhood depends not on strict avoidance from mainstream routes but rather on a sober participation in it. Contemporary hip-hop in this case offers a possible escape from a rigid power-oriented analysis and from the irresolvable cycle of resistance and cooptation so often found in Cultural and Popular Music Studies.