'Avessimo avuto i soldi, magari, mi comprerei una tuta più bella'.Beyond the stereotyped image and media narration of places and people

Abstract

Rap music has always been connected with places, counterposing mainstream culture. Rap historically supported a continuous, non-linear process of territorialisation. It looks at urban peripheries and turns its back to city centres, as it is located on the edges. It uses, in songs and in videos, several different archetypes that constitute the semantic and architectural image of the urban periphery. For these reasons rap is a political catalogue of urban peripheries. It addresses spatial inequalities and talks to the inhabitants of marginalised contexts but not only to them. In doing so, rap uses a common language (slang) to rhyme about social exclusion and to reveal the contradiction between centre and periphery. Beyond boundaries, socioeconomic gradients or national differences, rap connects all urban peripheries. The authors analyse the lyrics of a few songs, wondering whether and how they could contribute to the construction of a shared identity. Can rap songs anticipate social changes and urban transformations, or identify possible exit strategies for the people to whom they speak?