Hip-Hop and Identity

Given the large white demographic who buy hip-hop, I find it curious that it still holds are large identity in urban African American communities. The previous musical genres all seem to have black roots in some way than were "hijacked" by mostly white consumers. Minority musical niches in general seem only to get popular when the genre becomes more "white".

Rap on the other hand is strongly linked to the urban lifestyle and in particular black popular culture yet the main consumer appears to be white teenagers. Although here is a WSJ article on how hard is to track who actually buys a specific genre. It seems the music industry has propped up an image of rap and sells that (I believe that was on of Edreys' point) because, white rappers have shown to be successful in the rap genre yet they haven't particularly took over the genre which one would expect if the demographic buying was truly overbearingly white (70%).

There may be a little touch of irony in the fact that the image most closely associated with rap and subsequently the black urban lifestyle is derogatory yet in a country with such a history of civil intolerance (relatively speaking); finds itself quite attached to a genre, and a minority that 30 years ago would have no place in the white dominated music industry.