Hip-Hop's White Audience

Tracking the Perspectives and Ramifications of Hip Hop's Listeners

Abstract

This paper seeks to unpack the relationship between Hip-Hop and its white audience. As Hip-Hop's audience continues to grow, it is important to note shifts and changes in the genre that results from this increased popularity, specifically, this paper will take a look at Hip-Hop's white audience and provide an overview of some of the research social scientists have been conducting on the subject. The paper is divided into two sections according to the different kinds of research conducted by scholars: audience analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, help illustrate the perspective of Hip-Hop's white audience; content analysis, both of lyrics and videos, highlight the ramifications of Hip-Hop's white audience on the genre itself. As a literature review, this paper does not seek to make an argument on the relationship between Hip-Hop and its white audience as much as provide an overview of the arguments being made by certain social science scholars.