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Paper short abstract

This contributes explores the agentive, immanent and ontological nature of the devil in contemporary European street rap. In doing so, it highlights the religious and ethical considerations of street cultural agents, which is generally overlooked in current scholarship.

Paper long abstract

Figures of the devil haunt European street rap and its lyrics. Building on this, I approach the devil, shaytan or iblis as a methodological construct in my analysis of dozens of contemporary European street rap songs and multiple interviews with Dutch/Flemish street rappers. References to the devil by Christian, Muslim, and secular rappers show remarkable consistency in what they signify: money, consumerism, crime, and the power they hold over the subject. These materialist themes are often associated with street rap and street culture in both journalism and academic literature. Whereas my contribution confirms the importance of these themes in street rap, their association with (d)evils reveals that many in street culture inhabit a critical posture towards such values. Following Samanani, this agentic and ethical factor remains overlooked in existing literature. Taking Webster’s notion of references to the devil and their expression in materiality as immanent transcendence, I suggest that the devil is immanently, agentively, and ontologically present in European street rap. However, I also argue that this devilish transcendence does not so much express itself, somewhat contingently, materially, but that it refers to street culture’s foregrounding of material wealth more broadly (and the mainstream consumerism underpinning it). Following Howland and Davies, this contribution connects street culture to debates on evil in moral anthropology by highlighting the moral scruples of its participants, their agency, and that of the ‘evil’ powers they face.