"Snubben trodde han var cool för han hade en pistol"

Maskulinitet, våld och föräldraskap i svensk rap

Abstract

Hip hop has grown into a worldwide genre of popular music in recent decades. While the genre is often associated with sexism and homophobia, this article examines how masculinity is constructed in rap lyrics. It focuses on two central themes in contemporary configurations of masculinity: violence and parenting. The material consists of rap lyrics from 39 rap artists in Sweden during the last two decades. It is analysed from poststructuralist and intersectional perspectives, with a discourse analysis combining broad thematic coding with close readings of selected extracts. The article shows how violence is both connected to class and racial dimensions of inequality, but simultenously shared as a gender norm across such differences. Violence is both reinforced as a norm of masculinity, but also called into question through various means, such as use of irony. The analysed lyrics contain descriptions of parent-child relations from the perspective of both positions. These narratives display a similar ambivalence; they simultenously hold fathers to task for perceived parenting failures and reinforce problematic patterns of masculine parenting. In sum, the article shows how violence and parenting are important loci for contemporary configurations of masculinity. The intersectional and poststructuralist theoretical perspectives, which have been relatively downplayed in studies on men and masculinity, enable attention to the ambivalences of gender discourses, which often contain elements of both reinforcement and subversion.