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Spaghetti Funk: Appropriations of Hip-Hop Culture and Rap

Music in Europe

Article in Popular Music and Society · December 2003

DOI: 10.1080/0300776032000144922

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Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4, 2003

Spaghetti Funk: Appropriations of

Hip-Hop Culture and Rap Music
in Europe
Jannis Androutsopoulos and Arno Scholz

Introduction
In the past twenty years, hip-hop culture and especially its most popular form of
expression, rap music, have spread “from the margins to mainstream” (Stapleton
219). What started in deprived New York neighborhoods in the late 1970s is today
a worldwide youth culture. As with previous music cultures, such as heavy metal
and punk rock, the global reception of rap music led to its being productively used
in new social and linguistic environments. As a result, “local” rap with native
lyrics can be found in many parts of the world today, including most, if not all,
European countries. While the global spread of rap music is often mentioned in
hip-hop studies (Toop xii; Potter 10), few attempts have been made to describe the
development of hip-hop culture and rap music in non-English-speaking countries.
As far as Europe is concerned, a number of authors have pointed to the gradual
“emancipation” of rap from its U.S.-American model, for example: Boucher for
France, Willis for the UK, Sansone for the Netherlands, Schneider for Germany,
and Scholz (“Aneignung,” “Un caso”) for Italy. However, virtually no attempt has
been made to compare local variants of rap with one another or to examine how
this emancipation process is reflected in rap lyrics.
The aim of this study is to trace the appropriation of hip-hop culture and rap
music in a number of European countries. Our working definition of appropriation
is the productive use of an originally imported cultural pattern. In a concrete sense,
appropriation of rap music starts when rap fans not only listen to imported
records, but start performing the genre themselves. In more general terms, appro-
priation can be conceived as local instantiation of a globally available cultural
form. Thus the topic of this article is connected to a major concern of recent
research discussed by, among others, Kunczik, Lull, and Waters: the reterri-
torialization (or indigenization) of globally available popular culture in various
communities.
The appropriation of hip hop and rap in Europe will be discussed from both
a sociohistorical and a textual-semiotic point of view. The first part of this article
offers an overview of local rap and hip hop in five European countries: France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, and Greece.1 On the basis of published research, mass
media resources, and our own fieldwork, we will discuss the development of a
native hip-hop culture and market in these countries. The remainder of the article
will focus on strategies of appropriation that are typical for a central component
of hip hop, namely rap music. While we acknowledge the importance of
ISSN 0300-7766 print/ISSN 1740-1712 online/03/030489-17 © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0300776032000144922
490 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

ethnographic research, our approach concentrates on the textual analysis of rap

discourse. Our leading questions are: How do German, French, Italian, etc. rap
artists go about conveying the local anchorage of their discourse? How are the
global and the local elements of hip-hop culture balanced in their songs? On the
basis of a sample of 50 rap songs for each country, we will examine various
aspects of verbal and nonverbal rap discourse, such as the use of sound samples,
the selection of song topics, the use of vernacular speech, and rhyme structures.2
We will attempt to work out how the process of “cultural reterritorialization,” as
described by Lull, is manifested in the work of European rap artists.

A short history of hip-hop culture in five European countries

Our brief account of hip-hop culture in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and
Greece is organized as follows. After the emergence of hip-hop activities in each
country and the ethnic composition of the rap bands in our sample, we then
explore the infrastructure of national hip-hop scenes, described in terms of record
releases per year, specialized music labels, media coverage, etc. Finally, we give a
short overview of documentation and scholarly research in each country. Owing to
the fact that the documentation available so far is rather unequal, not all points
will be covered in the same detail for all the countries concerned.
Although the first traces of hip-hop culture in Europe go back to the early
and mid-1980s, the development of national scenes and markets is essentially a
phenomenon of the 1990s. Similar to U.S. developments, it was often the success of
individual artists that opened the way for a nationwide scene. In France, Bocquet
and Pierre-Adolphe date the beginnings of rap reception back to the early 1980s in
Paris. One of the most prominent figures of this early phase, Dee Nasty, released
the very first French rap album, Paname City Rappin, in 1984 with just 1,000 copies.
The first real star of French-speaking rap was, however, MC Solaar with his 1991
album Qui sème le vent recolte le tempo.3
In Germany, the most popular aspects of hip-hop culture in the early 1980s
were graffiti and breakdancing. Although the first rap productions in German
were released in the late 1980s, it was a band called Die Fantastischen Vier (The
Fantastic Four) that made German-speaking rap widely successful from 1992 on.
In Italy, rap and raggamuffin were adopted in the early 1980s in so-called centri
sociali, i.e. centers for alternative culture that were set up in squat buildings.
However, Italian rap was made popular by Jovanotti, who adopted it as an
innovative variant of traditional Italian pop song, targeting the mainstream market
rather than the rap scene.
The beginnings of Spanish rap in 1989/1990 were marked by the attempt
of major labels to impose the rap trend on the national market, but participating
artists eventually fell victim to a commercialization that came too soon (Toner
111–12). The development of a hip-hop scene in Madrid finally led to the
establishment of the first Spanish rap label, Zona Bruta (Brutal Zone), in 1994.
In Greece, the first references to a native hip-hop scene go back to 1987, but
native rap CDs were not released there until the mid 1990s.
Hip-hop scenes develop mainly in urban settings, with particular cities being
especially important in each country, such as Paris and Marseille in France,
Hamburg, Berlin and Stuttgart in Germany, Milan, Turin, Bologna, and Rome in
Italy, Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, and Athens in Greece. In discussing the
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 491

constitution of hip-hop culture in Europe, a number of social and cultural factors

such as gender, ethnicity, generational differences, and differences in music style
must be taken into consideration.
As far as gender is concerned, the male dominance of rap discourse that is
typical for the United States (Rose 146–82) is by and large reproduced in the
European context. Although female rappers are active in all the countries we have
investigated, there are many fewer of them, and sexist attitudes on the part of male
rappers do exist (Boucher 221, 226). As for ethnicity, the number of rap artists of
migrant descent is quite variable, but generally higher in the north of Europe than
in the south. The percentage of bands with at least one member of migrant origin
ranges in our sample from 92 percent for France to 60 percent for Germany, with
32 percent for Spain, 4 percent for Italy, and 0 percent for Greece. In particular,
French-speaking rap is almost completely a product of artists of Arab, African, and
Spanish descent, the number of native French rappers (e.g., the Bretonian band
Manau) being quite small. As a consequence, topics like ethnic identity and every-
day racism constitute a considerable part of French rap lyrics (Boucher 183; Prévos
69, 75). In Germany, rappers of migrant descent are especially of Turkish and
Italian origin, and in Spain of African origin.
Hip-hop culture generally involves a kind of “generational conflict,” the poles
of which are often referred to as “old school” versus “new school.” In Italy, for
instance, first-generation rappers of the early nineties endorsed a politicized and
militant stance, and used rap and raggamuffin as vehicles of political and social
protest. Second-generation Italian rappers of the mid- and late nineties, on the
other hand, had a less militant stance, were technically more sophisticated as well
as more commercially oriented, and included topics like love and everyday life in
their lyrics. Within a national scene, particular cities and bands develop indi-
vidual artistic profiles. An example is the Greek rap scene, which is dominated by
eight to ten groups with two or more CD releases each. Owing to the relatively
small size of the scene, there is a clear stylistic differentiation among these bands:
Terror X Crew and Nebma (Gesture) are considered “hardcore,” Razzastar more
“romantic,” Active Member rather “protest-oriented,” while Ta Imiskoumbria (the
Half Sardines) endorse a jocular style, and Zondani Nekri (the Living Dead)
present a Greek version of gangsta rap.
Following the practices of U.S. artists such as Wu-Tang Clan, European hip hop
too has witnessed the formation of artist collectives, for example Area Cronica
(Chronic Area) in Italy, Freestyle Productions in Greece, and Le Circle Vicieux (the
Vicious Circle) in France (Boucher 251). The names of these clans often connote
a kind of “tribal togetherness,” as in the case of Sarda Famiglia Krikka (Sardinian
Family Clique; Scholz “Aneignung” 241). At the same time, artist collectives of
this kind constitute an innovative marketing strategy, whereby the success of one
member can open the way for others as well.
The number of rap productions grew constantly and rapidly in the 1990s
throughout Europe. Figure 1 shows all the French, Italian, and Spanish rap CD
releases we were able to document in these ten years. The findings demonstrate the
impressive increase of record releases in all three countries. In particular, Italian
rap releases rose from one album per year in 1990 and 1991 to 29 albums in 1999.
Our Spanish data include only three releases until 1995, but eighteen releases in
1999. In France, rap albums climbed from four in 1990 to twenty-one in 1994,
reached a peak of 76 albums in 1996, and then dropped, presumably as a result of
492 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

Figure 1. Rap CD releases in France, Italy, and Spain from 1990 to 1999
(based on authors’ record archives and media documentation).

market saturation, to 39 in 1998 and 45 in 1999. As a whole, our data include 331
rap albums for France, 118 albums for Italy, and 52 albums for Spain as of the end
of 1999, while Greek rap productions in the same period amount to around 30
CDs. Note that these figures concern full CD albums only, excluding maxi CDs
and vinyl releases, the latter having a rather restricted distribution and thus being
more difficult to document.
A considerable number of these records are released by small labels that grow
from within the scenes and handle mostly or exclusively rap music. Italian rap
labels include Mandibola Records (Lower Jaw Records) from Rome, and Area
Cronica and Unda Funk Records from Turin (Pacoda Hip hop italiano 51–53);
German labels include Deck 8 (Dortmund), Yo Mama (Hamburg), Put da needle to
da groove (Ruhr area), M-Pire Records (Mannheim), and Rap Nation (Braunsch-
weig); Spanish ones include Zona Bruta, Yo Gano (I Win) and La Madre (The
Mother) from Madrid, Avoid Records from Valencia, Producciones Pollicidas
(Chicken-cide Productions) from Zaragoza, and Zeroporsiento (Zero Percent) from
Seville. At the same time, major labels have recognized the potential of native rap
and come into the market in various ways. For instance, Greek rap is released
almost exclusively by major labels, the Italian label Best Sound is a sublabel of
BMG-Ariola, and the German label Four Music is distributed by Sony.
The development of native hip hop is prompted, and documented, by special-
ized media of various kinds. The relevant print media range from commercial
magazines with a nationwide distribution4 to short-lived and locally distributed
fanzines. Some of these may eventually become professional publications, as has
been the case with the Italian AL Magazine, which began in Genoa in 1991 as a
photocopied local fanzine and developed into Italy’s leading hip-hop magazine
by the end of the 1990s. Hip hop’s media infrastructure also includes specialized
programs on radio and music television, and private and commercial websites.
The whole range of mediated representations of hip-hop culture seems to be most
fully developed in Germany.
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 493

In the mid- and late 1990s, hip hop started drawing considerable scholarly
interest. One of the first publications on rap in Europe was the French study
by Lapassade and Rousselot, which combined anthropological and linguistic
perspectives. Recent French publications by Bazin, Boucher, and Milon adopt a
more sociological point of view. In Italy, Pacoda (Potere alla parola) and Depaoli
offer annotated anthologies of rap lyrics; Plastino provides an ethnographic study
that emphasizes the relation between native music traditions and imported genres
like rap and raggamuffin. Recently, Pacoda (Hip hop italiano) presented a historical
overview that includes interviews with rappers, producers, and editors of hip-hop
magazines as well as annotated lyrics. As for Germany, Schneider discusses rap’s
rhetoric of violence from a social-psychological point of view, and Feser et al.
present an ethnographic and stylistic analysis of an amateur rap band. The
volumes by Krekow and Steiner, and Verlan and Loh document the rise of hip hop
in Germany through interviews with artists and activists. Spanish publications
are restricted to a few articles in mainstream music magazines, while Toner’s
full-length book on hip hop includes only a marginal treatment of the Spanish
scene. Finally, documentation of the Greek scene is restricted to a graffiti album
by Iosifidis, which provides further resources on Greek hip hop and to occasional
music press coverage.
As our survey shows, both the local productivity and the market size of hip-hop
culture in these five countries differ considerably. However, there is a sense of
evolution and growth on each national scene. Participants are more or less
informed about the development of hip-hop culture on an international scale
and conscious of their position relative to other European countries. By way of
anecdotal evidence, during the second author’s field research in Madrid in March
1999, a hip-hop activist and owner of a music store pointed out that “we are only
in the beginning.” This statement covers both a comparison to other European
scenes, which the local activist was familiar with, and the intention to work on the
improvement and growth of the national scene. Indeed, the number of Spanish rap
artists and CDs has continued to increase ever since.

Rap in Europe—a new cultural territory

Following a framework proposed by James Lull, we can view appropriation of
rap in Europe as the emergence of a new cultural territory. According to Lull, the
formation of a cultural territory is a complex process that involves three distinct
phases (145–64). Its starting point is deterritorialization, i.e., the extraction of a
cultural pattern from its original social context; its endpoint is reterritorialization,
i.e., the integration of this cultural pattern into a new society. The crucial middle
phase, cultural melding and mediation, consists of three distinct cultural inter-
actions: transculturation, hybridization, and indigenization. Significantly, Lull
repeatedly refers to rap as an example of these phenomena. We will now define
each of these concepts and relate them to the concerns of this article.
Transculturation “refers to a process in which cultural forms literally move
through time and space where they interact with other cultural forms, influence
each other, and produce new forms” (Lull 153). As Lull points out, “many cultural
crossings are made possible by the mass media and culture industries” (153).
Indeed, this has been the case with the international spread of rap as well: during
the 1980s a whole range of media genres (records, films, video clips, magazines,
494 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

etc.) delivered essential impulses for the spread of hip-hop culture among young
people in Europe. The following excerpt from a review of the Greek scene vividly
illustrates the role of media consumption and rap-star concerts in the initial forma-
tion phase of the Greek scene. Although we do not claim that the relevant media
input or the precise year of its reception was the same in all countries concerned,
we suggest that transculturation of hip hop and rap to Europe was essentially a
mediated process:
We have to admit that the catalyst for the spread of hip hop in Greece were the
popular American groups and artists of the early 1990s: Public Enemy, Ice-T,
N.W.A. And of course the concert of Chuck D and his crew. It was then that
boys with NBA shirts, baseball caps, and sneakers appeared for the first time.
Often their imagination was fueled by classic ghetto movies: Do the Right Thing,
Boyz [sic] in the Hood, New Jack City, Tresspass [sic], Friday. (Kolovos 8; trans. JKA)
The second process in the melding-and-mediation phase—hybridization—refers
to the contact and mixture of new and familiar cultural forms that leads to the
formation of “cultural hybrids.” The example used by Lull is “the global flow of
rap music in the 1990s” that resulted in mixtures of rap with local pop music
(155). As we suggest in the remainder of this article, the hybrid character of rap
music in Europe is manifest in different facets of sound and text, including local
sound elements, native vernaculars, and references to local topics and institutions.
Lull’s third cultural interaction—indigenization—“means that imported
cultural forms take on local features” (155–56). The example used is, once again,
rap, this time in Indonesia. As Lull writes:
consider what happens when rap music is exported to a place like Indonesia. The
unfamiliar, imported cadence and attitude of rap is appropriated by Indonesian
musicians. But the sounds become indigenized at the same time. Indonesian rap
is sung in local languages with lyrics that refer to local personalities, conditions,
and situations. The musical hybrid is an amalgam of American black culture and
Indonesian culture. (156–57)
Although the distinction between indigenization and hybridization is not com-
pletely clear in Lull’s account (e.g., the above quote refers to both “indigenized”
sounds and a “musical hybrid”), we understand indigenization as the outcome, or
endpoint, of the melding-and-mediation process. An indigenized cultural pattern
is integrated into the artistic repertoire of the host society, and, as a consequence, it
is not felt to be “alien” anymore. Although there is an awareness of its foreign
origin, and some of its structural elements may not change substantially, the
pattern is now appropriated as a native form of expression. Evidence for this is
provided by rappers who declare that they are “fighting for French-speaking rap,”
are rapping in the language named “in their passport,” or are trying to expand
“their style in their mother tongue.”5 Such claims of indigenization do not neces-
sarily mean that the model role of U.S. rap is rejected altogether. However, they
clearly indicate that participants are engaging in a symbolic struggle for cultural
autonomy, whereby simple imitation of the “mother” culture is rejected in favor of
a creative integration of rap into the host culture.
In order to demonstrate processes of cultural melding and mediation, research-
ers draw on texts in the broadest sense of the term, i.e., signs and artifacts of
different kinds and varying complexity. Lull’s examples include advertisement
posters, shop signs, stamped t-shirts, etc. In a similar manner, indigenization of
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 495

hip-hop culture can be illustrated through a variety of signs and behavior patterns,
such as clothing, graffiti, dancing practices, etc. The focus of this article on rap
lyrics is justified by the fact that lyrics form a substantial and distinctive com-
ponent of rap music. In fact, rapping in native speech is the starting point for the
genre’s reterritorialization. However, rap songs do not consist only of lyrics;
and the self-presentation of rap artists through text is not restricted to the songs,
but extends to CD booklets and other promotional material. Our subsequent
discussion of appropriation strategies will consider five different aspects of rap
discourse: the graphic design of rap CDs, the use of sound samples, song topics,
the use of vernacular speech, and the rhyme properties of “native” rap.

The multimodal construction of a hybrid identity

Every vinyl or CD record is a semiotically complex textual unit. It consists of the
sound material of the CD itself and the verbal and visual material of the CD cover
and booklet, which includes pictures, acknowledgments, and various promotional
texts. While record cover and booklet are certainly peripheral in terms of artistic
value, they are nevertheless quite important for the self-presentation of the artists.
Following Kress and van Leeuven, we suggest that record covers and booklets
convey meaning through all of the semiotic resources of which they are composed:
language, typography, images, and layout. Hence a multimodal analysis of record
covers may provide important evidence for the appropriation processes we are
interested in. Since an extensive analysis of CD covers is outside the scope of this
article, we will restrict our discussion to a particularly suitable example. It is the
cover of Messa di vespiri,6 a 1994 CD release by one of the best known Italian rap
bands, Articolo 31 (Article 31; Fig. 2).
The band’s philosophy with respect to rap is epitomized in the notion of
“spaghetti funk.” This is a witty juxtaposition of two terms that come from quite
different domains—spaghetti is a gastronomical term of Italian origin, and funk
is a term from African-American popular music. In addition, the phrase alludes to
an earlier instance of cultural appropriation, the “spaghetti western” (i.e., Italian
western films of the 1960s). Thus, “spaghetti funk” immediately presents the
band’s work as a cultural hybrid, and places the band’s activity into historical
perspective. Judging from lyrics and interviews, this phrase has a prominent
position in the band’s artistic discourse. In an interview with Fly Cat, Articolo
31 claimed “spaghetti funk” as their own genre creation, which integrates Italian
melody into rap music.
The CD cover (Fig. 2) features the band members at a dinner table that is loaded
with spaghetti, large demijohns of red wine, and chunks of parmesan cheese. A
further salient visual element is a large tattoo on the left man’s arm, representing
the shape of Italy formed out of skulls on a blood-red background. A second
picture inside the booklet shows the band drinking wine and features the Italian
flag on the right background. Both the flag and the tattoo reinforce the national
affiliation of the actors. Moreover, the tattoo can also be read as a claim to tough-
ness and subcultural identification (since a tattoo of this kind is not a mainstream
practice, but rather to be expected on the arms of seamen or convicts). At the same
time, other visual elements establish a connection to international hip-hop culture.
These are the members’ turned-around baseball caps and the lettering of the record
title, Messa di vespiri. It comes in two different typographic styles, Gothic typeface
and graffiti style, both of which are popular in hip hop on an international scale.
496 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

Figure 2. Cover of Messa di vespiri by Articolo 31. Reproduced by kind

permission of Best Sound/BMG Italia.

The band draws on stereotyped imagery of national popular culture and

attributes of global hip hop in order to make graphic the hybridization philosophy
behind its “spaghetti funk.” Although this is by no means a representative cover
for European rap records in general, it does provide an excellent illustration of
how a “local” instantiation of the “global” genre is visually encoded.

Sampling local sounds

The extensive use of sampling is a quite distinctive feature of rap music. Bits
and pieces from various sonic sources, such as songs, film scenes, TV series, com-
mercials, street sounds, etc. are arranged to create dense, multiple sound collages.
As Potter points out, “the fundamental practice of hip hop is one of citation, of the
relentless sampling of sonic and verbal archives” (53). Besides its aesthetic value,
sampling is also “a process of cultural literacy and intertextual reference” (Rose
89–90). The selection of samples can express affiliation with favorite artists or
cultural icons, and establish connections to music history (Potter 117). Certain
sorts of sampled material, such as political speech and mass media coverage, can
be used as “a straightforward way to signal political awareness” (Potter 44), thus
enhancing the social criticism already immanent in rap discourse.
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 497

Since sampling is a constitutive structural part of rap music, it is naturally

found in all local variants of the genre. Significantly, local sampled material can be
found, alongside samples of U.S. origin, in all countries dealt with in this article.
Local samples are not very frequent, but usually appear just once or twice on a CD.
A closer look reveals that they are taken from various domains, such as traditional
folk music, contemporary popular music, mass media samples, and even poetry.
To give an example for each case, Greek rappers Terror X Crew are sampling
traditional rembetiko music, Italian artists Articolo 31 are sampling Lucio Dalla,
German rappers Die Firma (the Firm) use dialogues from The Godfather, and
German rappers Anarchist Academy recite a nineteenth-century romantic poem by
Heinrich von Kleist.
The textual integration of this material is quite variable. While some “local”
samples are just a part of the song’s rhythm or melodic structure, others are dis-
cursively connected to the song topic. For instance, a song called “Die Kraft der
Gemeinschaft” (The power of community) by German rappers Cheech and Iakone 1
includes two different citations. An extract from the folk song “Wir sind aus
Kassel” (We are from Kassel) builds the song’s intro, and the voice of an operator
saying “Telefonauskunft Kassel” (telephone information Kassel) is repeated at
various points in the song. The two samples create a witty contrast to the rest of the
song by contextualizing the artists’ local origin. In other cases, a local sample can
itself become the focus of attention. For instance, Greek rappers Terror X Crew
feature a short instrumental called “O DJ Alx ston teke” (DJ Alx in the pot-house),
in which a Greek rembetiko song from the 1920s that features the bubbling sound
of a water pipe is mixed with hip-hop beats. This sound collage can be read as a
statement of continuity in popular music. Mixing yesterday’s native folk music
and today’s rap, the DJ connects musical past and present in a manner not dis-
similar to the use of funk samples of the 1970s in contemporary U.S. rap. Moreover,
this mix also positions the artists outside of mainstream society, alluding as it does
to cannabis use through the sound of the water pipe. Finally, local sonic material
can be used with critical or subversive intentions. An example is a song called
“Graffiti contra” by the German group Too Strong. In this song, voices of police
officers and other authorities talking about graffiti are mixed with “silly” back-
ground sounds and the band’s own beats. Here, “enemy” voices are instantiated
and remixed “in ways that highlight their absurdity” (Potter 76).

Expressing local concerns

Potter and Stapleton classify rap lyrics into three major categories, which are
partly associated with differences in music style. While early rap was dominated
by party or fun lyrics, the mid- to late 1980s witnessed the rise of “message rap,”
which focuses on social problems and protests against social injustice; and the late
1980s to early 1990s saw the advance of “gangsta rap,” which portrays ghetto life
and criminal action. However, these categories reflect the genre’s chronological
evolution as a whole, and do not necessarily hold true for individual artists or for
all of European rap. In a content analysis of German, French, and Italian lyrics
by Androutsopoulos and Scholz, seven song topic categories were inductively
worked out based on a sample of 50 songs for each country. The two most frequent
categories were self-presentation, broadly defined as talk about oneself and the
crew one belongs to, and social criticism, i.e., talk about sociopolitical issues
498 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

affecting the rappers and their social context. Taken together, self-presentation
and social criticism songs made up almost half of our sample for each country.
Additional topics are the local or national hip-hop scene, parties and fun, love and
romance, and scenes of everyday life.
Remarkably, one of the most prominent currents of U.S. rap in the 1990s—
gangsta rap—is virtually absent from our data. Certainly, some instances of
gangsta-rap style are to be found in Europe. For example, a German release from
1993 was called Leichenzähler, which is a calque on the then popular U.S. title Body
Count by Ice-T. Still in Germany, Feser et al. discuss the gangsta-style lyrics of
Midnite Sonz, an amateur group consisting of migrant youths. Similar is the case
of the Greek group Zondani Nekri (Living Dead), whose lyrics are dominated by
narratives of robbery, murder, imprisonment, drug abuse, and demonstrations of
toughness. However, these are exceptions to the rule and are sometimes consid-
ered exaggerated by critics and other rappers. On the whole, gangsta rap did not
really “catch on” in Europe, i.e. it is consumed but not productively appropriated.
We suggest that the reason for this is the fundamentally different social base of
hip-hop culture in Europe. In particular, the living conditions reflected in gangsta
rap hardly have a direct equivalent in the lives of European rap artists and fans.
As a Greek commentator puts it, “Greek criminals and convicts do not listen to
hip hop” (Kolovos 8; trans. by JKA). While European rap artists may listen to (and
look up to) U.S. gangsta rap, their own lyrics are expected to represent their own
social environment. If an essential aspect of rap discourse is to reflect “urban lived
experience” (Rose 102), then simply copying an imported narrative will clearly not
meet the expectations.
Rap songs that focus on social criticism make up about 20 percent of our Italian
and German data, and almost 50 percent of the French data, suggesting that the
protest song tradition of message rap is being continued in Europe. In countries
with a large number of rap artists from a migrant background, such as France and
Germany, many of the socially critical raps deal with migration related problems,
such as discrimination, xenophobia, and the problematic identities of young
people of foreign descent. French rap lyrics abound with references to beurs and
noirs, or “blacks,” i.e., migrants of Arab and African descent. They portray living
conditions in the banlieue (suburbs) and talk about “l’homme noir exploité,
déraciné,”7 the exploited and uprooted black man in search of a sense of identity.
In Germany, this discourse is epitomized in the 1993 title “Fremd im eigenen
Land” (A foreigner in one’s own land) by pioneering rap band Advanced Chemis-
try. The situation is quite different in Italy and Greece, however, where the hip-hop
communities hardly include any migrants. Socially critical rap from these coun-
tries talks about more general social problems, such as poverty, corruption, crime,
drug abuse, consumerism, etc. Thus, reterritorialized rap lyrics retain their func-
tion as social commentary (Rose 99–124), but the conditions they comment upon
are somewhat different in each country.
The ranking of song topics referred to at the beginning of this section gradually
changed during the 1990s. In particular, the mid- and late 1990s witnessed a
decline of the socially critical discourse that prevailed in the early 1990s. A
detailed content analysis of 100 Italian rap songs from 1992 to 1999 reveals that
topics that are not specific to rap music, such as love, sex, and everyday life,
increased in frequency (Scholz “Un caso”). For instance, the percentage of love or
sex raps in this sample was just 7 percent in 1996, but 26 percent in 1999, while
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 499

socially critical raps dropped from 43 percent in 1995 to 9 percent in 1999. Two
other topics that are quite specific to rap, i.e., self-referential boasting and talk
about the hip-hop scene, remained more or less stable over the years, with 30–35
percent for the first and 10–20 percent for the second topic.

Drawing on vernacular and English resources

The language of rap lyrics in Europe is almost categorically native speech or,
with regard to artists of migrant descent, the dominant language of the society
the rappers live and work in. On this base, rap discourse explores various
resources provided by the linguistic repertoire of the speech community. At the
same time, it sustains a connection to the genre’s original linguistic code, i.e.
(African-American) English.
It is widely acknowledged that the major linguistic resources of U.S. rap are
African-American vernacular speech and traditions of oral rhetoric, such as the
“sounding” or “playing the dozens” studied by William Labov in the sixties
(Potter 55–64; Toop ch. 3). The heavy use of vernacular speech in rap lyrics under- 2
scores the subversiveness of hip hop with respect to mainstream culture and its
consonance with vernacular cultural values. According to Potter, rap took a tradi-
tionally disempowering language variety, African-American vernacular English,
and turned it into a “resistance vernacular,” i.e., a positively valued linguistic code
(57).
A similar vernacular orientation is essentially confirmed for rap in Europe
as well (Androutsopoulos and Scholz; Boucher 35; Lapassade and Rousselot 92;
Prévos 69). However, the sociolinguistics of European rap differs dramatically
from its U.S. counterpart, in that there is no single language variety that dominates
European rap lyrics, as is the case with African-American vernacular English.
Instead, European rappers draw on a variety of area, social, and ethnic dialects,
the precise use of which depends on the linguistic repertoires and language
attitudes of each speech community. For instance, regional dialects appear more
frequently in rap songs in societies in which they are generally vital and presti-
gious, as is the case in Italy and Germany. In our Italian sample, 17 out of 50 songs
contain some dialectal features, and some are even completely rapped in dialect. In
countries with large migrant communities, such as France and Germany, rappers
who have a migrant background themselves or socialize in ethnically mixed peer
groups may integrate fragments of migrant languages such as Arabic or Turkish
into their lyrics.
A characteristic feature of European rap lyrics is the widespread use of
(American) English material. More than 60 percent of the German, French, and
Italian songs we studied contain some English elements. Some of these refer to
major topics and activities of rap music and hip-hop culture, for example
“freestyle,” “flow,” “diss,” “funk,” and “skills.” At the same time, rappers also
draw on U.S. hip-hop slang, including items such as “bitch,” “blunt” (joint), or
“shit” in their speech. In addition, songs from all three countries are also found to
contain English interjections such as “yeah” and “yo,” English formulaic expres-
sions, and even complete English utterances and refrains. A vivid example is
a German song called “Dortmund represents,” which contains the line, “Trete
zurück, dies ist nichts für kleine Kacker (Step back, this is not for wimps)/lyrics
for the real motherfucker.” Here, the English segment additionally helps to
 500 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

convey a sense of toughness and subcultural expertise. The subcultural prestige in

European rap of vernacular English is amply demonstrated by its use in company
names, as in the German label names Yo Mama and Put da needle to da groove. At
the same time, English items provide input for the creation of a native stylistic
repertoire. For instance, rappers do not just use the loanword “shit” (in the
vernacular meaning of “stuff, music”), but also its calques in their native speech,
for instance Scheiss in German (as in heisser Scheiss [hot shit]) and merda in Italian.
Similarly, the rhetorical formula “X is in the house” (where X is the name of the
performing artist) is also attested as X ist im Saal in German, X (est) dans la place in
French, and X (está) en la casa in Spanish.

Native rhymes—a renaissance of vernacular lyrics in Europe?

Besides their content and language style, rap lyrics are characterized by their
particular form, which is determined by the interrelated factors of rhythm and
rhyme (Rose 64–65, 87–88). Unlike other genres of popular music, rap lyrics are
not sung, but recited. This goes back to the fact that rapping emerged from every-
day vernacular rhetoric. Indeed, the style of speech known as rapping—“a lively
and fluent way of talking,” according to Mitchell-Kernan (171)—was part of every-
day speech well before the hip-hop era. At the same time, in the musical structure
of rap songs, beat (i.e., rhythm) has priority over melody. The rhythmic priority of
rap music favors a reciting style that is closer to spoken language. Its counterpart
is the rhyme priority: the fact that rhyme and other forms of sound repetition (such
as alliteration and assonance) are structuring principles for the arrangement of rap
lyrics.
The importance of formal arrangement for rap lyrics in Europe is amply
demonstrated by frequent references to the concepts of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and
flow. Examples from our data include phrases such as “je rime comme à perpète”
(I’ll be rhyming forever’), “giostro sopra la ritmica” (I’ll spin round the rhythm),
and “tener miedo de cada palabra rimada” (be afraid of each rhyming word).8 The
prevalence of rhythm and rhyme in rap texts also means that the popularity of
rapping brings with it a new interest in and attention to formal and aesthetic
aspects of text production, an interest that often comes from social groups without
any strong connections to traditional “high” poetry.
However, from the viewpoint of its new host societies, rap is profoundly differ-
ent, not only from other contemporary pop genres but also from national poetic
traditions generally. Some of these traditions are metric conventions, which are
constitutive for certain genres such as Italian and French canzone (Coenen 160–61).
Metrics generally describes the formal arrangement of lines without taking
into consideration any features of the accompanying music (Coenen xii; Beltrami
62–65). By contrast, rap lyrics are subject to rhythm restrictions and are, in fact,
often arranged to suit preselected beat patterns.
To give an example, the following extract from an Italian rap song9 “flows” on a
sequence of rhythm units, but there are no corresponding verse units. The six
verses of the excerpt are eleven to fifteen syllables long and cannot, therefore, be
classified as a specific meter within Italian poetry. Nevertheless, a connection to
3 traditional poetry is achieved by the rhyme that marks the end of each verse, i.e.
-ili [‘ili] in verses 1–2, -ini [‘ini] in verses 3–4, and -ici/-ichie, both pronounced
[‘itSi], in verses 5–6. In the transcript that follows, capital letters indicate the onset
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 501

of the rhythmic units, and the numbers in parentheses at the end of each line
indicate the number of syllables of each verse.
1. DImmi com’è che Snefs stila ’sti stili (11)
2. FIla in fila ’sti fili vai di feeling a chili [‘kili] (15)
3. tipo CHIli [’tSili] ti strina funky più che il Martini (15)
4. tortelLIni ’sti loops che c’ho fini più di Fini (14)
5. VEni vidi vici cici a giro in bici (14)
6. FACcio all night long come Lionel Richie10 (12)
In addition, this excerpt demonstrates a number of characteristic rhetorical
strategies of rap lyrics. The content is a typical example of self-presentation lyrics,
in which the rapper praises the band’s music and his own recitation style. The
lyrics abound with similes, allusions, and intertextual references that derive from
quite different domains. In lines 3 and 4, the rapper compares the effect of his
music to chili, Martini, and tortellini, and the proper name Fini in line 4 is pro-
bably a vinegar brand. “Veni vidi vici” (line 5), is of course, Caesar’s well-known
utterance, and the phrase “a giro in bici” (going around by bike) in line 5 is per-
haps an allusion to Italian politician Romano Prodi, who is frequently pictured on
his racing bike by the mass media. Finally, line 6 refers to the African-American
artist Lionel Richie and his well-known song “All night long.” On a formal level,
the excerpt features various kinds of sound repetition and play, such as homo-
phony (in fila/fila and fini/Fini), alliteration (in stila/stili and fili/feeling), and rhyme
(in kili/chili, martini/tortellini, vici/cici/bici/Richie). All these elements work together
to produce what Potter (81) calls “linguistic slippage,” i.e., a piece of discourse
in which form and association are more important than a coherent denotative
meaning. In fact, this coexistence of self-referentiality, formal arrangement, and
intertextual play is highly characteristic of much of our European rap material,
regardless of the country it comes from and the language it is recited in.

Summary and conclusions

During the 1990s, hip hop established itself in most European countries as
a new cultural territory that emerged through a process of reterritorialization.
Hip-hop culture and rap music are transmitted to new societies and gain fans
there (transculturation). They are then actively performed and adjusted to local
conditions (hybridization), and eventually become integrated into native cultural
repertoires (indigenization). Two aspects of this complex process have been exam-
ined in more detail in this article. First, our study looked at hip hop and rap as
a new niche in the music and media market, and discussed a number of factors
that distinguish “big” markets (such as France, Germany, and Italy) from
“smaller” ones (such as Spain and Greece). Second, characteristic patterns of the
hybridization and indigenization of rap were examined.
The results of this study suggest that there is a variety of appropriation
procedures on different levels of textual organization. Each of them reveals a
different facet of the interplay of “global” and “local” aspects of rap discourse.
Self-positioning as a “local” (e.g., Italian, French, or Greek) rap band can begin
with the graphic design of a CD’s cover and booklet. With regard to music, the use
of local citations next to U.S. ones is an important, and salient, component of
hybridization. On a content level, rap in Europe follows traditions established by
 502 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

U.S. rap, but is not identical to it, because one of the imperatives of rap discourse is
to express local concerns and to reflect local social realities. In terms of language
style, the use of regional or social dialects or migrant languages is consonant
with the genre’s vernacular orientation; however, these resources are quite specific
to their respective society. The importance of English for reterritorialized rap
discourse is at once referential, sociosymbolic, and aesthetic. Finally, we suggested
that the popularity of rap in Europe established a new form of lyrical tradition,
which is related neither to other pop genres nor to traditional poetry. To the extent
that rapping initiates or strengthens an interest in formal and aesthetic text
production among young people with no particular connection to “high” poetry,
rap can be said to trigger a renaissance of vernacular lyrics in Europe.
Overall, our findings confirm, and vividly illustrate, Lull’s conception of
cultural reterritorialization as a “process of active cultural selection and synthesis
drawing from the familiar and the new” (161). If all facets of appropriation
examined in this article could be summarized under one prevailing label, then this
could be the double bond of European rap discourse between a global and a local
pole. Being a local representative of a global cultural discourse is, we believe,
fundamental to European rappers’ self-understanding and discursive action.
Our study increases awareness of the fact that this double bond can be
expressed in every single verse of rap. To close with one more Italian example
by Articolo 31: “e per favore non diciamo che in testa abbiamo il sogno americano/
al limite il sogno di Cologno” (and please don’t think we have in mind the
American dream/it’s the Cologno dream at best).11 Here, the choice of the word
Cologno is multiply motivated: as a place name—a subway station in Milan—it
locates the artists as inhabitants of one of the main sites of Italian hip-hop culture.
The phrase “il sogno di Cologno” stands, through its juxtaposition with “il sogno
americano,” for a claim of indigenization and emancipation from rap’s “mother”
culture; and, of course, Cologno rhymes with sogno.

Notes
1. The choice of these particular countries is a result of the authors’ familiarity with the
respective languages and cultures. At the same time, France, Germany, and Italy are
the largest hip-hop and rap markets in continental Europe.
2. The material for this study comes from the authors’ private collections of rap CD
releases in the five countries during the 1990s. While these data are restricted by the
fact that only CDs are taken into consideration (thus excluding vinyl and audiotape
releases), they are substantial in both number and breadth, with around 350 CDs
having been used and including both stars and newcomer artists for each country.
The French data, for instance, include artists such as MC Solaar, Supreme NTM, IAM,
Manau, and Passi. For our sample, a maximum of 50 CDs per country was selected
and one track was randomly selected from each CD. A link to a complete reference
list is given in Androutsopoulos and Scholz.
3. This is a wordplay on the French equivalent of the phrase “to sow the wind and reap
the whirlwind,” whereby the word tempête (storm, whirlwind) is replaced by tempo.
4. These include Radikal and Groove in France, Juice and Backspin in Germany, AL
Magazine, Hip Hop nelle forme originali (Hip-hop in its original forms) in Italy, and Serie
B (B Series) and Game Over in Spain.
4 5. Sens Unik (One-way Street) “Le VIème sens” (The sixth sense). Le Vième Sens. Maniak
Records, 1991; Stieber Twins. “Fenster zum Hof” (Rear Window). Fenster zum Hof.
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 503

MZEE Records, 1996; Space One. “Tutti contro tutti” (Everybody against everybody
else). Tutti contro tutti. Best Sound/BMG, 1997.
6. According to the booklet text, Messa di vespiri is a jocular formation involving three
words that are central to the band’s self-understanding: messaggio (message),
divertimento (entertainment), and spiritualità (spirituality). More precisely, messa (which
also means “mess”) is a clipped form of messaggio, while di vespiri is a blend of the two
initial syllables of the other two words.
7. IAM. “IAM Concept.” De la planète Mars (From Planet Mars). Labelle Noir/Virgin,
1991.
8. De puta madre (Son of a Bitch). “Tripp’n tranquilo” (Trippy and easy). Une ball dans
la tête (A Ball in the Head). 9mm Recordz, 1995; Chief & Soci. “Soci.” Il Mondo Che
Non C’è (The World That’s Not There). Best Sound/BMG, 1997; El club de los poetas
violentos (Club of Violent Poets). “Jazz, el descerebrador” (Jazz the Debrainer).
Madrid Zona Bruta (Madrid Brutal Zone). Zona Bruta, 1994.
9. Neffa. “Gran Finesse.” Chico Pisco (Pisco Boy). BlackOut/Universal, 1997.
10. Translation: (1) tell me why Snefs styles these styles/ (2) and puts in a row these
threads feel good! by kilograms/ (3) like chili [my music] singes you funky more than
Martini/ (4) these loops like tortellini that I have finer than Fini/ (5) veni vidi vici cici
going round by bike/ (6) I do it all night long like Lionel Richie.’ In verse 5, the word
cici refers to a small, roly-poly person.
11. Articolo 31. “Un urlo” (A Scream). Così com’ è (The Way it Is). Best Sound/BMG, 1996.

Works cited
Androutsopoulos, Jannis K., and Arno Scholz. “On the Recontextualization of Hip-Hop in
European Speech Communities.” PhiN: Philologie im Netz 19 (2002). Online: <http://
www.fu-berlin.de/phin>
Bazin, Hugues. La culture hip-hop. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1995.
Beltrami, Pietro G. La metrica italiana. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991.
Bocquet, José-Louis, and Philippe Pierre-Adolphe. Rap ta France. Paris: Flammarion, 1997.
Boucher, Manuel. Rap. Expression des Lascars. Significations et enjeux du Rap dans la société
française. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998.
Coenen, Hans Georg. Französische Verslehre. Ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998.
Depaoli, Massimo, ed. Rap. Milan: Garzanti Scuola, 1999.
Feser, Oliver, et al. “Musik- und Sprachstile: HipHop, Heavy Metal und Hard Rock.” 5
Jugendliche und “ihre” Sprache. Ed. Peter Schlobinski and Niels-Christian Heins. Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998. 63–100.
Fly Cat. “Articolo 31. Verdetto finale.” AL Magazine: Hip Hop nelle forme originali 43 (2000):
30–34.
Iosifidis, Kyriakos. Graffiti 2. Athens: Akti/Oxy, 2000.
Kolovos, Giannis. “Boots ‘n’ Sneakers.” Oxy Magazine 7 (1997): 6–11.
Krekow, Sebastian, and Jens Steiner. Bei uns geht Einiges. Die deutsche HipHop-Szene.
Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2000.
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design.
London: Routledge, 1996.
Kunczik, Michael. “Globalisierung und Provinzialisierung von Kultur durch
Massenkommunikation.” Publizistik Sonderheft 2 (1998): 257–73.
Labov, William. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.
Philadelphia, PA: U of Pennsylvania P, 1972.
Lapassade, Georges, and Philippe Rousselot. Rap ou la foureur de dire. Paris: Loris Talmart,
1990.
 504 Androutsopoulos and Scholz

Lull, James. Media, Communication, Culture. A Global Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press,
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Milon, Alain. L’étranger dans la ville. Du rap au graff mural. Paris: PUF, 1999.
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Pacoda, Pierfrancesco. ed. Hip hop italiano. La CNN dei poveri. Turin: Einaudi, 2000.
——. Potere alla parola. Antologia del rap italiano. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1996.
Plastino, Goffredo. Mappa delle voci. Rap, raggamuffin e tradizione in Italia. Rome: Maltemi,
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Potter, Russel. Spectacular Vernaculars. Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. New York:
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Prévos, André J. M. “Hip-Hop, Rap, and Repression in France and in the United States.”
Popular Music and Society 22 (1998): 67–84
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise. Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover,
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Sansone, Livio. “The Making of Black Youth Culture: Lower-Class Young Men of
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Schneider, Silvia. “Gewaltrhetorik in der Selbstpräsentation jugendlicher HipHopper.”
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Scholz, Arno. “Aneignung und Umkodierung der Hip-Hop-Kultur in Italien.”
Jugendsprache—Langue des Jeunes—Youth Language. Ed. Jannis K. Androutsopoulos and
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Toner, Anki. Hip-Hop. Madrid: Celeste, 1998.
Toop, David. Rap Attack 3. African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000.
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Waters, Malcolm. Globalization. London, New York: Routledge, 1995.
Willis, Paul. Common Culture. Boulder CO: Westview P, 1990.

7 Discography
Advanced Chemistry. Welcher Pfad führt zur Geschichte. MZEE Rds, 1993.
Articolo 31. Così com’è. Best Sound/BMG, 1996.
Articolo 31. Messa di vespiri. Best Sound/BMG, 1994.
8 Cheech and Jakone. Xenophile Phonologen. Tribehouse Recordings, 1995.
Chief & Soci. Il mondo che non c’è. Best Sound/BMG, 1997.
El Club de los Poetas Violentos. Madrid Zona Bruta. Zona Bruta, 1994.
De Puta Madre. Une ball dans la tête. 9mm recordz/WMD, 1995.
Dee Nasty. Paname City Rappin. Funkzilla Records, 1984.
IAM. De la planète Mars. Labelle Noir/Virgin, 1991.
Der Lange and Funky Chris. The Real Deal. Tribehouse Recordings, 1996.
MC Solaar. Qui sème le vent récolte le tempo. Polydor, 1991.
Neffa. Chicopisco. Universal/Black Out, 1999.
Sens Unik. Le VIème sens. Maniak Records/WMD, 1991.
Space One. Tutti contro tutti. Best Sound/BMG, 1997.
Stieber Twins. Fenster zum Hof. MZEE Records, 1996.
Terror X Crew. I Polis Ealo. FM Records, 1997.
 Popular Music and Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 505

Too Strong. Intercityfunk. Tribehouse Recordings, 1996.

Zondani Nekri. O Protos Tomos. FM Records, 1998.

Jannis K. Androutsopoulos, born in 1967, studied German Linguistics and Translation

Studies at the universities of Athens (Greece) and Heidelberg (Germany), and received
his Ph.D. from Heidelberg University in 1997. From 1998 to 2000 he was a postdoctoral
fellow of the German Research Foundation, and since 2000 he has been a research fellow
at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim. He is the author of Deutsche Jugend-
sprache and editor (together with Arno Scholz) of Jugendsprache—Langue des
Jeunes—Youth Language, both published in 1998. His publications are in the areas of
sociolinguistics and linguistic media studies in German, English, and Greek.

Arno Scholz, born in 1967, studied Romance Languages and Literatures and Art History
at the universities of Heidelberg (Germany) and Granada (Spain), and received his Ph.D.
from Heidelberg University in 1996. Since 1997 he has been a lecturer for Romance
Linguistics (Italian and French) at the University of Stuttgart. He has published Neo-
standard e variazione diafasica nella canzone italiana degli anni novanta (1998)
as well as various articles about variationist linguistics, youth language, and Italian rap.
 Author Query Sheet
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Volume and issue 26 (4)

Author name Androutsopoulos

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AUTHOR: The following queries have arisen during the editing of your
manuscript. Please answer the queries by marking necessary corrections at the
appropriate positions on the PROOFS. Do not answer the queries on the
query sheet itself. Please also return a copy of the query sheet with your
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QUERY
QUERY DETAILS
NO.
Sampling local sounds:
1 para 3. Please check the spelling of “Iakone” (in Cheech and
Iakone). In the Works cited it is spelt “Jakone.”
Drawing on vernacular and English resources:
2 para 2. Please provide the page range of Toop’s chapter 3.
Native rhymes---a renaissance of vernacular lyrics in Europe?
3 para 4. Please check use of the word “verse” here. In the
following paragraph, “line” is used. Is “line” intended throughout
(see also, in relation to this, note 10)
Notes
4 note 5. Do all the references here refer to all the examples given
in the text?
Works cited
5 Feser, Oliver et al. Please provide all authors’ names.
6 Scholz “Un caso”, in press. Update?
Discography:
7 Please give recording format and catalogue number for all entries
in the Discography.
8 Cheech and Jakone. Please check the spelling of “Jakone”. It is
given as “Iakone in the text” (see query above).

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