Summary: | Specifically, this thesis is a look into rap lyrics, subculture, policy, reflexivity and the formation of the social self. In a broader vision, this thesis attempts to mold a theoretical pathway that illuminates where our cultural products come from, not historically, but socially. Through the vehicle of rap lyrics I attempt to show that there is a historical and social structure that molds, limits and contains the very possibility of what music and lyrics can come to be. I try to show that the decisions we make on a national scale effects groups which have little political power, effectively recreating their realities, cultures and their value systems. Policy becomes a mechanism, which I call rejection, that forces people to live certain ways consequently reforming their social mapping, and by extension, their social selves. I then utilize auto-ethnography to show that, perhaps, rejection is a part of all us, and that it never quite escapes our cultural products, our work and those things we create
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