Michał Żmuda

The goal of this article was to analyze the issue of how discourse of polish hip-hop describes cities. Mostly polish artist’s lyrics were discussed, they were investigated in the context of the whole hip-hop culture. Article was divided into three main analytic parts. The first one presents, how rappers “read” the city. Analyzed works treat the city space as structure, which expresses deeply hidden substance. The next chapter discusses the ways of representing city, they are considered to be “textual passages” – poetics of such texts is based on discontinuity, it tries to represent dynamics of ever changing space. The last part of article examines the topic of “district”, which in hip-hop is understood as the central space, building foundations of hip-hop’s ontology. This research shows unique coherence of many different texts, that were created in one subculture. Also, this research can be a point of departure for further examination of the presented topics.

The article deals with the topic of contestation in hip-hop songs. The author goes through historical sources that have created hip-hop and notices that this subculture has been built upon cultural tradition of contestation. This fact allows to include hip-hop in a wider aspect. The analysis of selected examples shows how the subculture in question creates the image and the concept of power. The author observes that the hip-hop subject defines social reality as a cause of imprisonment. The study of rappers’ textual self-creations allows to deduce that they claim to know the only path to freedom. As a result, hip-hop culture is constructed around the dichotomy, exemplified in a division into “us” and “them”. The author detects that hip-hop songs use propaganda language and war stylizations, thus they foreshadow and fight for a total reformation of power scheme.