Digital Flows: Online Hip Hop Music and Culture

Digital Flows provides a radical study of the most recent chapter in the life of hip hop, one closely intertwined with the networked cultural flows of the internet. Some fifty years after its birth in the Bronx, hip hop is one of the most significant cultural forms of the internet age. Now that the internet is enmeshed in our everyday lives, hip hop is predominantly encountered and experienced online, where it comprises a third of all streamed music. People are constantly making, sharing, and commenting on hip hop—from Drake memes through viral TikTok dances to AI-generated rappers—challenging hip hop’s conventional connections to place, authenticity, and community. Digital Flows uses an innovative method encompassing music and cultural analysis, ethnography, and web data analysis. It extensively draws on scholarship in hip hop studies, internet studies, popular music studies, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, Black studies, intersectional feminism, and more. The latest practices in digital humanities and data ethics underlie Gamble’s interdisciplinary approach. The book provides in-depth insights into hip hop in the internet age, new net-native genres like SoundCloud rap and YouTube lofi beats, communities on social media and streaming platforms, online hip hop feminism in rap music videos, cultural appropriation and callout/cancel culture, and hip hop concerts on video game platforms. This book uncovers what happens when a cultural form born on the streets thrives on transformative technologies of global reach.