All the way up: hip hop’s global emergence as the leading popular music genre in the age of digital streaming

This is the script of a paper I gave at the Climates of Popular Music: IASPM 2022 Conference, hosted online by Daegu University on 9 July 2022. It makes reference to the research published in my data-driven analysis of annual top 100 albums, Hip hop’s hold over Top 100 albums, 2000–2020. Introduction When, in 2016, … Read more

Towards an ethical model of social media data analysis for internet music studies

This is the script of a paper I gave at the conference Information Overload? Music Studies in the Age of Abundance, hosted online by the University of Birmingham on 8 September 2021. For more info, see the UKRI AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship Music and the Internet: Towards a digital sociology of music. Introduction Scholars … Read more

How do rap lyrics address the internet?

How do rappers address the internet? I’ve identified five broad trends: embracing the internet as an educational and performative space; dismissing social platforms as fake, inauthentic places of activity (usually contrasted with a ‘real’, ‘offline’ life); viewing the web as an arena for confrontation or disrespect, often mockingly so; using social networking sites to pursue or maintain sexual relationships; and criticising the internet as a source of privacy violations or producing negative psychological effects. As an introductory analysis, this look at how song lyrics implicate online practices, digital technologies, and specific platforms enables a clearer picture of artists’ and listeners’ contextual understandings of the internet and its place in everyday social life.