Makin' It, by Keeping It Real : Street Talk, Rap Music, and the Forgotten Entrepreneurship From “the ’Hood”

• This article deals with rap music and with two distinct discourses in which rap artists habitually engage. It also deals with the way that one, in these, can find a dialectic between the special and the mundane, between succeeding – makin’ it – and remaining loyal to the values of your community or culture – keeping it real. Furthermore, it deals with how the rap star Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter handles this dialectic, positing entrepreneurship as both a politics and an ethic, and how we, by reading his lyrics, are led to some forgotten localities in academic research – the disenfranchised, urban, marginalized, entrepreneurial “’hood.”

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

rap music

hip-hop culture

entrepreneurial discourses

Zizek

Business studies

Företagsekonomi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)