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It’s Where You’re @: Hip Hop and the Internet
  • ISSN: 2632-6825
  • E-ISSN: 2632-6833
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Abstract

Hip hop is central to the Palestinian ‘alternative’ () music scene. Recently, some rappers in the scene started making feminist tracks and sharing them using video-sharing and social media platforms. In this article, I analyse artists’ music videos as well as interviews with musicians to examine what happens when hip hop gets feminist and goes online in the Palestinian context. My argument is twofold. First, I suggest that rappers circulate songs and videos on social media that transgress gender and sexuality norms. Second, however, while these productions do critical identity work in Palestine, they also often iterate liberal ‘solutions’ to structural asymmetries. I therefore conclude that Palestinian hip hop mediates contradictory feminisms as it travels online. Neither dystopic nor utopian, digital culture makes room for gendered critiques that coexist and compete with depoliticized ideas about liberal personhood and individual agency.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Leverhulme early career fellowship 308
© 2021 The Author Published by Intellect Ltd.
This article is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The CC BY licence permits commercial and noncommercial reuse. To view a copy of the licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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2023-01-25
2024-04-29
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): gender; hip hop feminism; Middle East; Palestine; popular culture; sexuality; social media; YouTube

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