Hip Hop as Cultural Capital: Remixing Bourdieu's Theory to Affirm Cultural Wealth

Abstract

Despite their popularity in the United States of America, rap music and hip hop culture are misunderstood by many and often characterized as violent, misogynistic, vulgar, and/or venomous. Furthermore, scholarly examinations of rap music rarely emerge from within the actual culture, even though an insider’s perspective could yield valuable emic knowledge. The objective of this study is to assess the cultural value of hip hop and rap through a content analysis of popular music. Billboard music charts provide data on music trends by compiling the most popular rap songs for six years (2006–2011) ranked by sales, radio airplay, and audience impressions. Stratified random sampling of just over five percent of the population (N = 215) generated the subset for this pilot study (n = 12). Lyrics of all songs in the sample have been analyzed through the lens of Critical Race Theory along six forms of cultural capital identified in literature: aspirational, linguistic, social, familial, resistant, and navigational. This has made it possible to reframe the discourse on hip hop and rap by establishing how the music operates as cultural capital, as well as commands respect for and establishes the legitimacy of the knowledge and products generated within hip hop culture.

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