Hip-hop's commercial success has prompted concerns that the culture is now driven by a white consumer base that demands objectionable representations of blackness for consumption. Further, Whites hold the vast majority of decision-making power within corporations that control commodification and distribution of hip-hop, giving non-Blacks a major stake in both the production and consumption of what had previously been a black cultural phenomenon driven by non-white production and consumption. The questions driving my project are: given these market dynamics, how should we understand the objectionable themes performed by black male hip-hop artists; do black listeners interpret and rearticulate hip-hop performances differently than white listeners; and how do discourses of race, class, and gender interact with hip-hop?

Though there is a strong theoretical foundation within cultural sociology for both textual/semiotic and interview-driven data analysis, this study is the first book-length project that employs both methods. In the textual analysis section, I posit that gangster/criminal narratives in hip-hop simultaneously reaffirm and challenge stereotypes of black deviance and the 'cool pose' theory of black masculinity. The second part of the dissertation moves beyond textual analysis, speaking to 40 everyday hip-hop listeners, 20 of whom are white men and 20 of whom are black men. In depth interviews are employed to reveal respondents' conceptions of what hip-hop means, and how discourses of race and gender influence these interpretations.

This mixed methodology differentiates my work from other studies as the interview section counterbalances my own readings of hip-hop performance. It is a mistake to set forth an essential definition of hip-hop, or insist that the culture is either politically progressive or reactionary, simply because one reading of carefully selected texts and representations suggests it. My projects pits my analysis against the interpretations of 40 other hip-hop consumers in an attempt to more fully sketch the range of hip-hop meanings, and the nature of the connection between hip-hop and the politics of race and gender.