Hip hop am Main: the localization of rap music and hip hop culture

Abstract

This article examines the way in which rap music and hip hop culture have been appropriated and reworked by the youth of Turkish and Moroccan communities in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I begin by considering how, via the incorporation of German and Turkish lyrics into self-composed rap songs, Frankfurt rap groups have been able to turn the genre into a highly localized mode of expression. More specifically, such a reworking of the rap genre has enabled its use as a medium for the voicing of issues relating to the problems of racism and citizenship with which ethnic minority groups newly or recently settled in Germany are faced. In the second part of the article I consider some of the resources which Frankfurt rappers have been able to draw upon in their attempts to rework hip hop as a localized mode of expression.