Green, A. (2022) Beyond the crew: hip-hop and professionalization in Mexico City. Cultural Sociology, 16(1), pp. 25-44. (doi: 10.1177/17499755211015170)
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Abstract
In recent years profesionalización – professionalization – has become an increasingly influential concept in the hip-hop scene in Mexico City. This term can refer to a variety of changing practices relating to artistic presentation, the organization of hip-hop events, and the hip-hop scene’s model of creative production. The influence of professionalization relates to the rising specialization of hip-hop production and the increasing importance of the digital circulation of music and images; increasingly, success is made on YouTube and Spotify. It also relates to new sources of income, such as freestyle rap battles with corporate sponsorship, and to nascent spaces for hip-hop within adult education. Above all, professionalization relates to a series of structural changes connected to the declining influence of crews, oriented around something akin to Spillman’s ‘non-strategic solidarity’: fraternity, informality, and shared identity. In some cases, crews are giving way to more formal ‘teams’, oriented around the solo artists that now dominate the hip-hop scene. This article builds on ongoing ethnographic research since 2012 and a series of interviews with over 40 local hip-hop artists, to explore professionalism and professionalization as emergent, negotiated values within Mexico City’s hip-hop scene. It offers a frame through which different ideas of the ‘professional’ may be considered: object-forming (relating to the creation of a ‘professional’ music object) and subject-forming (relating to the formation of a ‘professional’ subject). Profesionalización cannot be understood in a functionalist sense, nor may the hip-hop ‘professional’ be conceptualized as a straightforward antonym of ‘amateur’. This article instead shows different ways that ‘object-forming’ and ‘subject-forming’ professionalization both incorporate and texture the ‘non-strategic’ and distinguish hip-hop ‘professionalism’ from the same texture the ‘non-strategic’, and distinguish hip-hop professionalism from it.
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Green, Dr Andrew |
| Authors: | Green, A. |
| College/School: | College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Music |
| Journal Name: | Cultural Sociology |
| Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
| ISSN: | 1749-9755 |
| ISSN (Online): | 1749-9763 |
| Published Online: | 11 June 2021 |
| Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2021 The Author |
| First Published: | First published in Cultural Sociology 16(1): 25-44 |
| Publisher Policy: | Reproduced under a Creative Commons License |
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