Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the genealogies of listening of ten Australian hip hop MC, demonstrating how key aesthetic practices are engaged with. The paper examines how artists' engagement with art objects demonstrates the manner in which popular culture forms an important basis for one's own identity.

Paper long abstract:

For hip hop artists in Australia, recorded hip hop music provides an important blueprint for the music they make. This aesthetic blueprint is referred to by these artists, something which can be observed by examining the patterns of references that these artists make their own works. As Dimitriadis (2009, p.xvi) suggests, members of the hip hop community (both fans and artists) use their knowledge of hip hop culture as a way to work out their own hip hop identities; this is achieved through a "complex positioning and re-positioning around texts". My research argues that through a sustained engagement and re-positioning of particular hip hop works, MCs are able to construct a unique artistic identity that draws on key hip hop aesthetic practices that they have learned about through their listening practices. This type of engagement with other hip hop texts forms what can be considered a 'genealogy of listening', a term used by Feld (2012) to describe a process of mutual engagement that is only possible through a shared listening experience.

Drawing on ethnographic research with Australian hip hop MCs and song analysis of these particular artists, this paper demonstrates how Australian hip hop artists construct an artistic identity through an engagement with what they perceive to be a key hip hop aesthetic practice. The paper encourages a more fluid understanding of an artists' engagement with art objects, in this context, music, to demonstrate the manner in which popular culture forms an important basis for one's own identity.