On Hip-Hop Music as Pop-Politics: A Look at the Poetics in Trajectories of Content and Form

Ventsislav Dimov
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”,
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2024-03S-11

Abstract. Hip-hop music in Bulgaria is not just a style of popular music but a cultural choice and political stance. This paper explores Bulgarian hip-hop songs and artists as bearers of the communal and political through the poetic. The analyzed songs and videos of Zhluch, Atila and Upsurt from the latest wave of Bulgarian rap are symptomatic examples of the unifying characteristics of the two lines (“joking around”, “folk” and “high”, “intellectual”) of rapping as a pop culture with a dynamic nature of tension and struggle. The musical play and intertextual references illuminate the role of technology as a means and form in the political game: remixes, digital sampling as expressions of the fun, contrasting, parodic, and carnivalesque recreation of reality are catalysts for challenging the status quo.
Keywords: Bulgarian rap waves, videos on YouTube, pop politics, resistance

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