Commercialization of Rap Music Youth Subculture.

This article explores the commercialization of the rap music youth subculture. Rap music has moved from the inner cities into the mainstream of popular culture. Mass media advertisers have recognized the value of using rap to sell their products, even though they do not always have a thorough understanding of the subculture from which it came. Youth subculture have been often organized around music. For example, there was the punk rock subculture, which originated in England in the 1970s. Since about 1945, technological advances have played an important part in determining what type of popular music is recorded and promoted by the mass media. The criticism that rap has become too commercialized stems from a similar criticism that has often expressed about all types of popular music. To some, industrialization of music means a shift from active musical production to passive pop consumption, the decline of cultural traditions and community. Rap is possibly the commercial equivalent of what the Marxist writer Adorno called part-interchangeability or pseudo-individualization, two methods of capitalist production. Part-interchangeability is when mass-produced parts from one product line are used in another different product. Pseudo-individualization is when the same products are made to seem different by the use of individual gimmicks. Television advertising provides an excellent medium for examining the influence of rap on the mainstream audience.