"Wut is Wut?" : En studie av maskuliniteter och sexualiteter inom hiphop-genren

Sammanfattning: Sofia Hedberg: "Wut is Wut?" En studie av maskuliniteter och sexualiteter inom hiphop-genren. Uppsala universitet: Institutionen för musikvetenskap. C-uppsats 15 hp. 2013. This essay examines how a group of male, homosexual or bisexual African-American rappers from New York City are challenging the norms of hypermasculinity and heteronormativity within the musical genre of hip-hop. The study investigates both visual and textual expressions from Mykki Blanco, Le1f and Zebra Katz, and does so through the artists' videos and lyrics. The artistic expressions are continually compared to those of more traditional rappers, in order to illuminate both similarities and differencies. To provide a wider understanding of such terms as masculinity, gender identity and sexuality, a number of theoretical perspectives were taken into account. Queer theory provides the key theoretical perspective, but R.W. Connell's theory about masculinity and Yvonne Hirdman's on the 'gender contract' were also important to the study. The essay's result shows that the rappers use different tools to communicate their identities and sexualities, mainly the body, choice of language and by playing with stereotypical gender identities and roles. Although several similarities were found amongst the three rappers, the study showed that they all use the given tools in separate ways, and the fact that they are homosexual or bisexual does not, and should not, place them under any sort of homogeneous category.