Research on the Hip-Hop audience

In this blog post, I am going to look at the musical genre commonly known as hip hop and its audience, in detail. I am going to explore the types of people who listen and enjoy the Hip-Hop musical culture. I will use the "uses and gratification" theory in order to promote a better understanding of why people enjoy the hip hop culture. In other words, I will be using an audience centred approach as a basis upon which to analyse exactly why so many millions of people are captivated by this genre. Some of the information below is taken from the internet for example wikipedia. I felt taht this information was important for my research.

Hip hop music, sometimes also called rap music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylised rhythmic beat that commonly accompanies rap, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is sung or chanted. It`s influence as part of hip hop culture dates back to the 1970s and it originated from an African American community in New York City during this era. Since its origins are Afro-American, people are often surprised by the fact that its audience is not only restricted to young Afro-Americans, but consists of a global and diverse ethnic range. 

This contrasts with the sterotypical portrayal that has often been perpetuated by the media, more and more artists of different origins  continue to create new styles and innovations of the music, For example Eminem and Devlin, (the former being American and the latter being English). And, it was this influx of multicultural/multiracial artists, that has encouraged audiences from different origins. The typical age range of s hip hop audience is from 13 to late 20s, although this is not to say that the audience are restricted to this age group.


One of the major reasons why Hip-Hop is so popular with young people, is because of its  association with dance and parties. The popular innovation of dance, break dancing, is commonly related to this musical genre. Break dancing  is a style of street dance that originated among African American and Latino American youths in New York City during the early 1970s. It is no mere coincidence that break dancing and hip hop both became popular during the same time period, the same country and amongst the same audience age range-

Hip Hop magazines appeal to their audience through their contents because  hip hop artists  tend to be young, charismatic, fashionable and cool, characteristics which a juvenile audience can relate to. Some of the reasons that people like hip hop include:

• Diversion/escapism-sometimes, people just want to take their minds off stressful things such as school and the often overwhelming responsibility of school work. People see music as a therapeutic way to relieve their stress, while others find that they can relate to hip hop artists who talk about their past life struggles
• Personal relationships- this is another reason why people enjoy hip hop music since a lot the songs generally refers to the artist`s relationships, thus giving the audience a sense that the artist is confiding in them and really reaching out to them. 
• personal identity- Fashion plays a big part in the hip-hop scene just as fashion plays a big part in a lot of peoples daily lives, typically teenagers. Some fashion trends even originated from Hip Hop. 

All of these factors are used in music magazines as a way to express personal identity.  There are fashion sections in most music magazines and this is another example of how magazines appeal to their audience through their contents