"The Cashtro Hop Project" Hip Hop Music and An
"THE CASHTRO HOP PROJECT" HIP HOP MUSIC AND AN EXPLORATION OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF ARTISTIC SELF-IDENTITY by Christopher Joseph Cachia A Project presented to Ryerson and York Universities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Program of Communication and Culture Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2006 © Chris Cachia 2006 DECLARATION I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this project I authorize Ryerson University to lend this project to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize Ryerson University to reproduce this project, in total or in part. at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. II ABsTRACT While Hip Hop culture has regularly been legitimized within academia as a social phenomenon worthy of scholarly attention (witness the growing number of studies and disciplines now taking Hip Hop as object for analysis), this is the first Hip Hop-themed project being completed within the academy. Indeed, academic and critical considerations of one's own Hip Hop-based musical production is a novel venture; this project, as a fusion of theory with practice, has thus been undertaken so as to occupy that gap. The paper's specific concern is with how (independent) Hip Hop recording artists work to construct their own selves and identity (as formed primarily through lyrical content); the aim here is to explore Hip Hop music and the construction of artistic self· presentation. I therefore went about the task of creating my own album - my own Hip Hop themed musical product - in order to place myself in the unique position to examine it critically as cultural artifact, as well as to write commentary and (self-)analyses concerning various aspects of (my) identity formation.
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