Popular Music (2021) Volume 40/1. © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, pp. 75–90 10.1017/S0261143021000040 ‘Scottish people can’trap’: the local and global in Scottish hip-hop DAVE HOOK Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Hip-hop is a global culture, where local representation is a core tenet of its ideology. It therefore pro- vides opportunities to observe how a global cultural structure is interpreted, realigned and expressed in local cultural forms. This article combines autoethnography and rap lyric analysis to consider the complex relationship between the local and global in relation to cultural articulation and authenticity. Through a study of the poetics of Scottish hip-hop, a series of patterns and connections appear relat- ing to interpretation, negotiation and hybridisation of local and global culture, presenting a demon- stration of how the local, global and individual intersect to ‘devise unique ways of communicating thoughts, emotions and everyday realities’ (Alim 2003, Journal of English Linguistics, March, 31/1, pp. 60–84, p. 62). Furthermore, this article presents a framework for autoethnographic study of hip-hop, signposting bridging points between scholarship and practice. Introduction Scottish hip-hop is, for some, a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron (with emphasis on the ‘moron’), a laughing stock, an impossibility, at best a novelty.