Hip-hop Crossroads of the Popular, Political and Funny in Media Music from Bulgaria

Abstract

The study offers observations on some trajectories of the funny in Bulgarian hip-hop situated at the crossroads of popular culture and popular politics. The subject of the analysis is hip-hop videos of artists (“Upsurt”, Itzo Hazarta, Jluch) that have huge popularity on the web due to the political messages in their songs to a large extent. Through analytical readings of lyrics, performance, visual narratives in the videos, and media narratives of the artists and tracks, the study shows how in the free internet environment these hip-hop performative messages exist as the protester’s choices, alternative journalism, weapons on the communication front to vilify the adversary, subversive resources through the comic and parody.

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