Gwen Roberts

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Zabriskie, Queen

Area of Concentration

Sociology

Abstract

This thesis examines a selection of songs by various mainstream Korean hip-hop artists to understand how they perform Blackness in a transnational context. This research employs a qualitative content analysis of song lyrics from twenty-four songs selected through both convenience and purposeful sampling. The songs examined are from thirty-nine hip-hop artists, both Korean and Korean-American/Canadian, who self-identified as Korean hip-hop artists. Along with supplemental theories, Marc D. Perry's "self-fashioning" (2008) and Geoff Harkness' "situational authenticity" (2012) are central theoretical frameworks in this thesis. The findings from the content analysis are organized into four themes: linguistics, culture/positionality, conventions, and class status. I argue that performances of hip-hop by South Korean artists exposes their complex racial & socio-cultural positionality, sometimes in conflict with itself. I argue that this is a transnational extension of “Asian-American” political identity within the United States that produces a racial triangulation of whiteness, Blackness, and Asianness, but also specifically a representation of Koreanness as its own site of complexities when coming into contact with whiteness and Blackness (Kim, Suk-Young 2020:90). Lastly, I argue that their “self-fashioning” (Perry:2018) as Korean hip hop artists demonstrates their conscious affiliation with Blackness and the sub-cultural capital it offers, and the potential to create “a space of radical openness” (bell hooks 1989:19) that transcends and redefines “authenticity” in global hip-hop.

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