Although I began this project in my sophomore year in college, the issues it encompasses have been affecting my life for as long as I can remember. As a white female from Oakland, California with constant exposure to black popular culture, I spent a good deal of my adolescence struggling between the values instilled in me by my parents and those that surrounded me in my popular culture and black peers in school. Part of this popular culture took the form of rap music, and though I was not consciously serious about the hip-hop culture behind it until college, I can remember rap pop hits providing the soundtrack for events throughout my jr. and high school years.
In the spring of my sophomore year at Lewis and Clark College, I began thinking about how I, as a white female, related to a predominately black male medium and began to formulate a project on how other white rap fans dealt with the contradictions involved in participating in a music that often overtly excludes them. I conducted interviews at my school, at which time one of my interviewees introduced me to the hip-hop Internet newsgroups, that I then started reading. I changed my focus to the dynamics of issues of race and class on these newsgroups, reading the two hundred or so messages that are posted every other day to alt.rap and rec.music.hip-hop. I have been a regular reader of these newsgroups for almost two years now, and through this time, I have been able to watch and see which themes and subjects grow and change, and which stay relevant to the Internet hip-hop community. For this portion of my research, my methodology has been limited to reading and saving conversations relevant to my project. Since this community is mediated in a public space, I have rarely posted questions myself, and instead watched to see what the newsgroup members found important to discuss.
In the beginning of my junior year, I went on an academic program in Kenya and Tanzania where I was struck by the predominance of American rap and R&B music in Nairobi. I conducted a small independent project while I was there on Nairobi youth's perceptions and appropriations of hip-hop culture. However, I did not feel I was given enough time to do all that I wanted so when I returned to Lewis and Clark College, I wrote a research proposal to return to Nairobi to continue my study. I received a SAAB (Student Academics Advisory Board) grant and returned to Nairobi for 6 weeks in the summer of 1996. While in Nairobi, I undertook a variety of research methodologies. One of my main sources of information was observation and casual conversation. I regularly went to clubs and music stores and talked with youth and employees about their perception of rap music. I went to hip-hop competitions that were held every Sunday afternoon at a club in the city center and set up interviews with the rappers and DJ's. In total, I had about a dozen formal interviews in which I asked questions on their perceptions of hip-hop culture, artists, conflicts and its impact and role in Nairobi. I also interviewed several people in Nairobi's music and media industry, including the VJ for Nairobi's music video program and a DJ for a new radio station. All of my formal interviews were taped and transcribed and I took thorough notes on most of my casual conversations.
Another source of research materials involved literature and media review. I have read most of the major literatures on hip-hop music and culture, but have also augmented it with less formal texts like rapzines, magazines, private publications and web pages, not to mention the music and music videos themselves. I also have several friends who were rappers in Oakland who gave me some insights into the hip-hop industry in the Bay Area. Altogether, I believe I have a comprehensive view of hip-hop music and culture in a variety of spaces and places and from the perspectives of insider and outsider, academic, fan and critic. The one thing that has always stayed constant in my perspective is in my being a white female. This project has been periodically paralyzed by my doubts over my own legitimacy, but has always been recovered by my uncompromising belief that this project matters. My race, class and gender have undoubtedly shaped many of my encounters, interviews and interpretations, but no more than any other race or gender would affect any other's study of the same. If anything, I believe my status as an outsider might have helped my understandings of others appropriations, and made me that much more conscious of how I deconstruct my data.
Note: All quoted interviews were conducted in 1996 unless otherwise noted. When quoting internet posts, I have occassionally made a few minor changes. I have corrected minor spelling errors and changed a poster's use of "..." to "--" to distinguish my editing from their typing. However, I have kept most unconventional uses of spelling and grammer because they usually are indicative of an individual's writing style. I have cited posts by using either members' nickname or an abbreviation of their e. mail address, depending on which is available.