Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
In late September of 2017, I attended a party at the University of Chicago’s Psi Upsilon
fraternity. The crowd of students was fairly large and as diverse as most UChicago frat parties
are: predominantly white with a smattering of students of color. However, this party in particular
was strange because the only other black people I could see were members of the frat itself. The
steady mix of EDM (electronic dance music) and Taylor Swift songs on the DJ’s playlist pretty
accurately reflected this demographic composition. I was on my way out when the DJ played a
familiar song: “T-Shirt” by Migos, an Atlanta-based rap trio. The crowd exploded with
excitement. Lead member Quavo’s sedate chorus blared from the speakers, and I looked around
After the song finished, I found my way to the frat house exit. I began to wonder whether
the (white) people singing the chorus knew what it meant. I grew up listening to what is called
“trap music,” a subgenre of rap named after “the trap,” typically a socioeconomically
disadvantaged area inhabited by black and brown people where drugs are exchanged. The music
itself was founded upon, and pays homage to, drug culture. I did not grow up in the trap, but I
had a fair amount of friends who did. They told me about their experiences and taught me their
slang. From them I learned that “work” means drugs, “17 5” is shorthand for the average cost of
a kilogram of cocaine ($17,500), and that “same color T-shirt” is a reference to the whiteness of
that cocaine. But as I scanned the crowd, I was unsure if anybody actually knew what those
lyrics meant, or if they were familiar with trap culture, or if those things even mattered. I decided
to ask a white girl who was also on her way out. I asked her what she thought of “T-Shirt.” She
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said it was one of her favorite rap songs. I asked her if she knew what the chorus was about. She
said she was pretty sure it was about T-shirts. I asked her if she knew what “17 5” meant. She
said she had recently bought a T-shirt for $17 so she thought those numbers had to do with
T-shirt price. For her to be so enthusiastic about a song whose meaning was completely lost on
her was interesting, to say the least; despite not recognizing the underlying meaning of Quavo’s
euphemism and presumably having no knowledge of trap culture whatsoever, she loved the song.
For my thesis I am asking the following question: why do white Americans enjoy trap
music? Here, enjoyment refers to white Americans consuming the music with a positive affinity
despite (ostensibly) being unfamiliar with the messages presented in the song. I have chosen to
evaluate white Americans and not all white people because trap music was created by black
Americans in the United States and has been consumed more voraciously in the United States
than anywhere else. (I will refer to white Americans interchangeably as “white people” and
“whites” throughout the paper, as well as refer to black Americans interchangeably as “black
In this paper I will detail the history of trap music and its emergence into the forefront of
rap and black culture. But before I do that I need to examine white American enjoyment of
previous forms of black music and/or entertainment during their peaks; blackface minstrelsy and
jazz, despite not being borne of white spaces, both amassed sizable white American followings
during the eras in which they were popular. (Although by grouping blackface minstrelsy in with
the outset that it is not. It was created by white people to parody black people and is therefore a
white art form inspired by blackness but not a black art form. However, for the intents and
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purposes of this paper, namely to emphasize the connection between it, jazz, and trap music, I
will be referring to blackface minstrelsy as a black art form. I am making this distinction now so
White American interest in these black art forms provides the historical precedent for
how trap music is currently being received in the United States. The question of authenticity has
always been a pressing one; white American fans of black music will always be scrutinized due
to their tendency to distill the music (blues, jazz, and rock, to name a few) from the culture and
develop an appreciation for the former while disregarding the latter. This invariably leads to
engage with the music in question if they cannot identify with the underlying culture.
Through my B.A. I plan on investigating why white Americans have such interest in trap
music despite not having roots in blackness and (typically) not having roots in trap culture;
although trap culture is synonymous with the drug-based exploits of black and brown people, it
is important to note that this culture is not exclusive to black and brown people. First I must
examine the literary histories of blackface minstrelsy and jazz and determine how they attracted
white fans, which should not only provide adequate background for my subsequent examination
of trap music but may also supply reasons as to what makes trap music so compelling for white
American listeners despite it being devoid of personal cultural significance. There are legitimate
reasons why “T-Shirt” is such an immensely popular song among white Americans, though none
Before I begin to dissect the possible reasons why trap music is so compelling for white
listeners I must first illustrate the centuries old historical precedent for white enjoyment of black
art. White enjoyment of black art was precipitated by white admiration of blackness itself. In The
White Negro, Norman Mailer details why a generation of white Americans began to engage with
black culture in the mid-twentieth century. He discusses how the stringency and conformity
promoted by totalitarian society made it so that “if one is to be a man, almost any kind of
unconventional action often takes disproportionate courage.”1 That courage to break loose from
social convention, white Americans discovered, was not foreign to black Americans. Inherent
outsiders to their country’s culture and society, black Americans have been, by virtue of their
existence, participating in “unconventional action” for as long as they’ve lived in the United
States. These white Americans, whom Mailer refers to as “hipsters,” admired their black
counterparts for their bravery and “Hip,” which Mailer describes as the spirit of nonconformity
and unapologetic individualism. Therefore, “it is no accident that the source of Hip is the Negro
for he has been living on the margin between totalitarianism and democracy for two centuries.”2
Mailer soon after attributes the presence of Hip in American society to jazz music “and
its knife-like entrance into culture, its subtle but so penetrating influence on an avant-garde
generation,”3 a generation which had been negatively impacted by the Twenties, the Great
Depression, and World War II. Jazz was a product of the emotional outpouring of black
Americans given two options in America: they could either humiliate themselves by tempering
1 Mailer, Norman. "The White Negro." Dissent Magazine, digital ed., Fall 1957, pp. 1-22.
2 "The White Negro."
3 "The White Negro."
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their blackness to appear more palatable or they could refuse to do so and await persecution for
not assimilating into whiteness. Life for the black American was perpetually turbulent. Because
they could not typically afford the ways by which white Americans curbed the stress and anxiety
of everyday life, “he subsisted for his Saturday night kicks, relinquishing the pleasures of the
mind for the more obligatory pleasures of the body, and in his music he gave voice to the
character and quality of his existence.”4 As jazz swept across the nation, its evocative power
transcended attempts to dilute its blackness, and it enticed younger white people who struggled
Mailer claims that the hipster “had absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro,”5
and that this is how the white Negro was born. But with regards to the prominence of blackface
minstrelsy in nineteenth century American society, perhaps it would be more apt for Mailer to
refer to jazz as the “adolescence” of the white Negro. I argue that the “white Negro” was born a
century earlier, during a time in which another “black” art form set the precedent for this white
interest in black culture. Granted, this nineteenth century art form was (generally) an indirect
product of blackness, in that it was created by white people pretending to be black. Conversely,
jazz came directly from black musicians. However, it is still important to note that white
Americans engaging with what they perceived to be blackness from the safety of their skin color
was not a new phenomenon in the twentieth century; black culture had become a target of white
Blackface minstrelsy was one of the most prominent forms of entertainment in nineteenth
century United States. Reaching its apex in 1846 and remaining there until 1854, it swept the
5 "The White Negro."
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nation, in particular the North, providing white spectators a glimpse of what they believed to be
black culture.6 In his book “Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy & the American Working
Class,” Eric Lott discusses the varied ways in which American citizens both black and white
interpreted such a derisive theatrical practice. Today, the idea that blackface minstrelsy was, is,
and will always be a maliciously racist exercise goes virtually unchallenged. Writers and orators
such as Frederick Douglass who have lent their pens and voices to analyzing the history of
blackface minstrelsy have supported that very claim. Lott, however, separates himself from
“most other writers on minstrelsy, who have based their analyses on racial aversion, in seeing the
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vagaries of racial desire as fundamental to minstrel-show mimicry.” He believes white people’s
attraction to minstrel shows was derived not out of anti-black malice but out of envy.
Throughout his book, Lott pushes aside the obvious racism and ignorance which
undergirded nineteenth century minstrel shows in order to engage with the less-discussed
motivations of their white creators; curiosity about blackness and envy directed toward their
dark-skinned counterparts spurred white people to tiptoe over racial lines. He further argues that
the genuineness of white people’s desire to participate in blackness “made blackface minstrelsy
less a sign of absolute white power and control than of panic, anxiety, terror, and pleasure.”8 If it
accomplished nothing else, blackface minstrelsy acted as the problematic ferry between two
cultural docks until the early twentieth century, by which time black people gained enough
6 Lott, Eric. Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford University Press, 2013.
7 Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
8 Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
7
Lott’s point about white cross-racial desire, that blackface minstrelsy served as a sort of
liberation for its caricatured subjects, is unusual. Citing the positive reviews given to minstrel
shows by W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson, Lott discusses a perception of blackface
minstrelsy that labels it as black culture; therefore, the white people participating in minstrel
black arts with potentially liberating results.”9 This view seems to be an optimistic attempt to
re-contextualize what we now know as blatantly racist, but it does hold some merit. Regardless
of the inaccuracy with which minstrel shows represented blackness, white spectators were drawn
to them because they cast white actors; it unclear whether minstrel shows would have reached
the level of acclaim they did had the actors been black. White people were responsible for the
growth in popularity of minstrel shows and the “black culture” they depicted. As I will later
discuss with regards to trap music, white people thrusting blackness into the mainstream, a
phenomenon I will refer to throughout my paper as the “white co-sign,” has proven in many
cases, from minstrelsy to Migos (the rap trio mentioned in the introduction), necessary to grant
Blackface minstrelsy in the antebellum decades of the United States set the precedent for
white people to adopt, parody, and exploit black art forms as they saw fit. As the popularity of
minstrel shows began to dwindle in the 1920s, white people in turn found a new form of black
expression they could mimic. In “Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture,” Les Back
illustrates the crossover appeal of jazz music for white Europeans. The Savoy Ballroom in
Harlem, one of the first places in the United States where dancers could gather and dance openly,
9 Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.
8
served as the training ground for new black dance techniques. New forms of jazz pioneered in
the Savoy Ballroom reached Europe via the jazz subcultures of London that had previously been
established there. From there young Europeans adopted jazz music and its accompanying dance
style, swing, in an attempt to express themselves and their dissent against the totalitarian culture
established by Nazi Germany and iterated elsewhere throughout Europe. It is important to note
that the Savoy was a racially integrated space, often allowing for whites and blacks to be dance
partners. Just as the popularity of jazz surged in Europe, so it surged just as, if not more,
powerfully in the United States, where jitterbugs (the name given to white swing dancers)
became engrossed by jazz music. As par for the pre-Civil Rights course, dance establishments in
the American Midwest banned swing dancing, which only compelled rebellious jitterbugs to
Back notes the complexity of jitterbugs’ affinity for black dance and cites the thoughts of
Malcolm X, who describes their relationship with jazz and swing dancing “as a combination of
white voyeurism and sexual adventure.”11 In a time and space that were overwhelmingly
anti-black and conservative in terms of individual expression, young whites were drawn to what
was black and ostentatious. Their relationship with jazz music and swing dancing not only
allowed them to participate in the exhilarating practices of a culture to which they didn’t belong
but also provided them with a release from the rigid structure of everyday life.12 This music and
dance borne of a black space was slowly becoming as white as it was black.
10 Back, Les. "Syncopated Synergy: Dance, Embodiment, and the Call of the Jitterbug." In Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and
Culture, by Vron Ware and Les Back, 169-95. N.p.: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
11 "Syncopated Synergy: Dance, Embodiment, and the Call of the Jitterbug." In Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture.
12 "Syncopated Synergy: Dance, Embodiment, and the Call of the Jitterbug." In Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture.
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Black and white people experienced jazz music differently. For the former it was a
cathartic experience ingrained in their bodies and souls. For the latter it was a new, inviting
sound and memorizable set of steps that happened to catch on at the time. Enjoyment of jazz
In 2017 America blackface minstrelsy has effectively been exterminated, save for the
occasional ignorant Halloween costume or edgy art demonstration. Jazz is no longer in the
forefront of the music scene but it is a pillar of American music, continuing to have a strong
foundation of listeners and influence artists belonging to other music genres. The newest and
most popular current form of black art is called trap music. Before there was trap music there
was crunk rap, a southern hip-hop subgenre characterized by looped drum machine rhythms and
repetitive refrains. It was exclusively party-oriented music and compensated for its lack of
substance with its catchiness and up-tempo style.13 During the height of crunk rap’s popularity in
the early 2000s “DJs started fusing crunk music with synths to produce the quintessential trap
sound.”14 It was around this time two Atlanta-based rappers named T.I. and Young Jeezy
released their debut albums, thereby ushering trap music into the mainstream. Recognized as the
pioneers of trap music, both artists claimed their stakes in the burgeoning subgenre. T.I. even
titled his second studio album, which he released in 2003, Trap Muzik.15 This album provided an
official blueprint for trap’s crunk-influenced sound, which is characterized by its “stuttering kick
13 Adaso, Henry. "Crunk Music." ThoughtCo. Last modified March 6, 2017. https://www.thoughtco.com/
definition-of-crunk-music-2857305.
14 Adaso, Henry. "The History of Trap Music." ThoughtCo. Last modified March 18, 2017.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-trap-music-2857302.
15 Lee, Sammy. "A Brief Track-by-Track History of Trap Music." Red Bull. Last modified July 11, 2017.
https://www.redbull.com/us-en/a-track-by-track-history-of-trap-music.
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drums, hi-hats, 808s and eerie synths.”16 But trap rap departs from crunk rap with regards to its
lyrical content. While crunk music was known for its upbeatness and vapidity, trap songs often
“deal in the gritty reality of street life, while the sounds are bleak and dystopian.”17 Yet, lyrics
are arguably less integral to the success of a trap song than is production. The importance of trap
production cannot be understated; without producers such as Shawty Red, Mannie Fresh, and
Zaytoven, the three of whom curated trap music’s sound during the early 2000s, trap music
would not have been able to distinguish itself from crunk rap and become popular in its own
right.18
T.I. and Young Jeezy continued to release trap projects as the subgenre grew throughout
the 2000s, and eventually other trap rappers emerged. One in particular, another Atlanta-based
rapper named Gucci Mane, became trap music’s biggest mainstream superstar after releasing a
slew of hits starting with “My Kitchen” in 2007 (which put him on the mainstream map),
“Lemonade” in 2009, and “Wasted” in the same year.19 “Wasted” peaked at number 36 on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart, the music industry’s popularity metric which measures a song’s fame
based on Nielsen Music data and sales data,20 and was Gucci Mane’s most popular song for 7
years.21 In 2015 a New Jersey-based rapper and singer named Fetty Wap released his debut
single “Trap Queen” which peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.22 These are just a
small part to the fact that this year, according to Nielsen Music data, hip-hop music surpassed
Though it is surely not the contemporary marriage of blackface minstrelsy and jazz, it
appears as if trap music’s burgeoning white fanbase readily consumes it for the same reasons its
predecessors readily consumed blackface minstrelsy and jazz. With regards to blackface
minstrelsy, trap is a genre whose saturation in blackness drives white listeners to rap along so
that they may experience black culture and drug culture from the safety of their own skin. With
regards to jazz, trap is sonically captivating and its hard-hitting, gritty style has invited the
condemnation of older generations and the adoration of younger ones. I am writing this paper to
examine why white people like trap music but I cannot ignore the importance of their patronage;
many groups of people pushed trap music into the national spotlight, but white listeners pushed
the hardest.
In January of 2017 Donald Glover won two Golden Globes for Atlanta, his television
show about two cousins navigating the Atlanta rap scene.24 As he stood on stage delivering his
acceptance speech, he thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press, television network FX, his fellow
cast and production crew members, and the city of Atlanta and its inspiring black citizens. Then
he did something unexpected. To conclude his speech, he thanked the aforementioned rap trio
23 Chesman, Donna-Claire. "Hip-Hop Passes Rock as the Most Popular Genre in the US, According to
Nielsen Data." Business Insider. Last modified July 18, 2017. http://www.businessinsider.com/
hip-hop-passes-rock-as-the-most-popular-genre-in-the-us-2017-7.
24 Dionne, Zach. "Watch Donald Glover Win Two Golden Globe Awards for 'Atlanta,' Thank Migos & His Baby
Son." Fuse, 9 Jan. 2017, www.fuse.tv/2017/01/
atlanta-donald-glover-golden-globe-award-speech-video-2017.
12
Migos, “not for being in the show, but for making ‘Bad and Boujee. Like, that’s the best song
ever.”25 The Golden Globes were held on a Sunday night. According to Spotify analytics,
between 7 AM and 9 AM the following morning, streams of “Bad and Boujee” were up 243%
It is important to consider the context of this streaming surge. Each year, the Golden
Globes, much like many other entertainment awards shows, is an overwhelmingly white space,
and it can be reasonably assumed that its viewership corresponds to that.27 And even if black
people had decided to watch the 2017 award show at higher-than-pedestrian rates, they would
not have needed the praise of Donald Glover to compel them to listen to the Atlanta-based trio’s
hit single because they had already been listening; due to the streaming numbers “Bad and
Boujee” accrued from the month prior to the Golden Globes, it leapfrogged Rae Sremmurd’s
“Black Beatles” to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 (which was officially announced
on the day after the Golden Globes).28 “Bad and Boujee” streams didn’t skyrocket because black
people, Migos’s biggest consumers, were just discovering the music of the Migos in the year
2017. But many white people were. The following section of my paper is dedicated to defining
25 Lang, Cady. "Donald Glover's Shoutout to Migos at the Golden Globes Lit Up the Internet." Time, 9
Jan. 2017, time.com/4628583/donald-glovers-migos-golden-globes-2017/.
26 Darville, Jordan. "Spotify Streams of Migos’s “Bad & Boujee” up 243% after Donald Glover’s
Golden Globes Shout Out." Fader, 9 Jan. 2017, www.thefader.com/2017/01/09/
spotify-streams-bad-and-boujee-donald-glover-golden-globes.
27 Logan, Elizabeth. "Golden Globes 2017: The Biggest Wins for Diversity." Glamour, 9 Jan. 2017,
www.glamour.com/story/golden-globes-2017-diversity.
28 Dandridge-Lemco, Ben. "Migos’s “Bad and Boujee” Is Now the No. 1 Song in the Country."
Fader, 9 Jan. 2017, www.thefader.com/2017/01/09/
migos-bad-and-boujee-no-1-song-hot-100-memes-donald-glover.
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White co-sign is a term which refers to the role of white consumers in jettisoning black
artistic content into the mainstream. White people, by virtue of their dominant population size
and overwhelming control of mass media markets, have a greater hand in making things popular
within American society than has any other ethnic group. The white co-sign manifests itself in
multiple ways. Sometimes, such as in the case of Donald Glover’s acceptance speech, it involves
the promotion of black art in a white-dominated space in which it would not normally be
promoted. By exposing a typically middle-aged and older, typically white audience to “Bad and
Boujee,” Glover introduced Migos to a demographic entirely different than the one that had
made them nationally famous. The streaming numbers do not lie; the sharp uptick in “Bad and
Boujee” listens can be attributed to the white people who began to tune in to Migos in January of
Other times, the white co-sign involves exposing white rap fans to rappers they haven’t
yet found. In order to assess the relationship between the white so-sign and commercial success
in the following examples, I will be using the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the music popularity
barometer I mentioned previously which ranks each week’s “most popular songs across all
genres, ranked by radio airplay audience impressions as measured by Nielsen Music, sales data
as compiled by Nielsen Music and streaming activity data provided by online music sources.”29
On June 13, 2013, Migos released an album titled Y.R.N. (Young Rich Niggas).30 On that
album was a song titled “Versace.” Nine days after the album was released, rap icon Drake
released a remix of the “Versace” (which contained the original chorus and verses rapped by
Drake-augmented popularity made it peak at number 99 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on
September 21, 2013.32 For the past decade, Drake has arguably been the most consistently great,
popular artist in rap music.33 His ability to rap and sing gives him an unprecedented amount of
crossover appeal between the genres of hip-hop and R&B that no artist has ever before secured.
His expansive fanbase is a healthy mix of all races, and by virtue of his immense popularity he
has more white fans than many rappers have total fans; that he is biracial himself (born to a white
Before Drake remixed “Versace,” Migos was not a household name. They were
semi-popular in Atlanta, the South, and black communities nationwide off the strength of a few
mixtapes, but they had not made any music that found its way onto the national stage. Enter
Drake, whose remix saturated mainstream airwaves and introduced the entire nation to the
Atlanta rap trio. Since then, Migos have made it onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart 30 times,34 and
their acclaim has skyrocketed both nationally and internationally. They are now widely regarded
as the world’s number 1 rap group.35 One can argue that they would have broken through to the
mainstream eventually even had they not teamed up with Drake. But what’s certain is that
Migos’s pre-“Versace,” overwhelmingly black fanbase was not the primary reason they became
31 Smith, Trevor. "Migos - Versace (Remix) Feat. Drake." HotNewHipHop, 22 June 2013,
www.hotnewhiphop.com/migos-versace-song.1438066.html.
remix, did not know who Migos was and who eagerly consumed “Versace” as soon as they
Specifically with regards to trap music, trap rappers do not necessarily need to receive a
white co-sign to garner notoriety. Many trap rappers have achieved commercial success and
amassed loyal followings in pockets throughout the country without crossing over into the
mainstream and being heavily consumed by white Americans. Jeezy is a great example of a trap
artist who has encountered this type of success. As I mentioned in the trap music section of the
literature review, Jeezy is a rapper from Atlanta who (alongside fellow Atlanta rapper T.I.)
pushed trap into the mainstream spotlight. A trap fixture throughout the 2000s, Jeezy became
famous for his trademark gravelly voice, his lyrical content centered on life in the trap, and his
affinity for rapping over high-octane, 808-heavy, horn-laden beats concocted by esteemed trap
producers such as Shawty Red. He experienced a respectable amount of commercial success, and
still does today; he has appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 chart 25 times in his career.36 It is
important to note, though, that the majority of these Hot 100 appearances occurred during the
early stages of his career, during which trap was new, unexplored, and dominated by only a
handful of rappers. He, along with T.I. and Gucci Mane, were the genre’s stalwarts. Over time,
the landscape of trap music began to change, and the shifting of the old guard rendered Jeezy’s
brand of trap music outdated. Autotune-laced vocals, undercutting melodies, and synthetic
production came to replace the traditional trap sound as the new face of the genre. Instead of
Jeezy’s commitment to uniformity and willingness to pass the torch to the new crop of
trap artists instead of hurriedly reinventing his style allowed him to gracefully depart from the
forefront of trap music, but this occurred before he had a chance to capture a white audience’s
attention. For that reason he never got a white co-sign. To this day he exists on the periphery of
trap music, every so often releasing records which embody the original trap sound; his most
recent album, titled Pressure, which he released in December of 2017, is a testament to his
sustained commercial success for the entirety of his career, and his name will always hold weight
in black communities across the nation, especially those in the South, if not for his extensive
body of work and contributions to rap culture, then for his 2009 tribute to Barack Obama titled
“My President,” which peaked at number 53 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.38 And yet, it’s fairly
certain that the notoriety he and other trap rappers achieve predominantly on the strength of
communities of color can never reach the apex they might reach with the help of a white co-sign.
The white co-sign is powerful enough to be the difference between an artist launching a
respectable career and an artist becoming a national and/or international household name. This is
all to say that, regardless of why white people enjoy trap music, which I plan on further
authenticity, a hot-button issue in the rap world, both on the side of the consumer and the creator.
Travis Scott is a perfect example of why the legitimacy of a rapper’s lyrical content is not always
Trap music’s resident autotune aficionado, Travis Scott has risen to rap prominence over
the past few years, propelled by his 2013 breakout mixtape titled Owl Pharaoh. A few years ago,
he released Rodeo, his major-label debut, which peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200, a
music popularity barometer akin to the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but for albums instead of songs.
39
Travis’s sometimes brooding, sometimes energetic melodies have proven to pair well with his
subject matter of choice, drug use; his most commercially successful solo song to date,
“Antidote” (which peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 201540),
contains a hook which both subtly and directly highlights his affinity for self-medication:
“Don’t you open up that window // don’t you let out that antidote // poppin’ pills
is all we know”41
However, Travis’s lifestyle is considerably more sober than his music suggests. In a 2015
interview with Billboard, his interviewer mentioned that Rodeo, which had recently dropped,
talks a lot about drinking and drug use. The interviewer went on to ask if Travis was a heavy user
of either. Travis responded “it stresses me out because people think I’m on a lot of drugs, which
fucking pisses me off. I’m not at all. I barely drink alcohol and I smoke weed kind of. But I don’t
39 Hyman, Dan. "Travis Scott Dishes on 'Stepdad' Kanye West and Being Misunderstood: 'People Think I'm a Douchebag.'" Billboard, 7
Sept. 2015, www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/
6700345/travis-scott-rodeo-rihanna-kanye-west-justin-bieber.
Travis has only become more popular; he has reached the Billboard Hot 100 chart 18 times since
that interview (compared to reaching it only twice before the interview).43 He has become one of
the rap game’s most popular crooners while delivering lines such as:
“Crushed xans in my soda, riding ‘round the city with my eyes closed”46
It’s abundantly clear that Travis’s fans don’t care that he’s not always honest when he
raps. His autotune-infused singing voice mixed with his adeptness at conjuring catchy hooks and
flows give him one of rap’s most captivating sounds. His success indicates a rapper’s
authenticity (or lack thereof) does not necessarily steer listeners’ enjoyment in either direction.
This especially holds true for trap music. We can reasonably assume that most trap rappers,
whose lyrical content is typically littered with references to drug use, drug distribution, drug
manufacturing, sexual prowess, wealth, material possessions, and committing acts of violence,
are not always telling us the complete truth in their songs. However, if the final product is
sonically appealing, lyrical veracity tends to be viewed as insignificant. I believe this will be
42 Hyman, Dan. "Travis Scott Dishes on 'Stepdad' Kanye West and Being Misunderstood: 'People Think I'm a Douchebag.'"
43 "Travis Scott Chart History."
44 "Migos - Kelly Price Lyrics." Genius, genius.com/Migos-kelly-price-lyrics.
45 Lyons, Patrick. "All the Drug References on Travis Scott's 'Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight.'"
HotNewHipHop, 9 Sept. 2016, www.hotnewhiphop.com/
all-the-drug-references-on-travis-scotts-birds-in-the-trap-sing-mcknight-news.23982.html.
46 Lyons, Patrick. "All the Drug References on Travis Scott's 'Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight.'"
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METHODOLOGY
For my thesis I plan on conducting interviews to uncover why people enjoy listening to
trap music. Based on the literature I examined, I hypothesize white fans of trap music enjoy it for
the same (or similar) reasons their predecessors enjoyed blackface minstrel shows (not including
the blatant anti-black sentiment) and jazz music; it allows them to experience blackness from the
safety of their own skin and/or its lyrical content and musical arrangement make it pleasing to
hear. I also hypothesize black people enjoy trap music for the same reasons their predecessors
enjoyed jazz music; it is an art form deeply rooted in black culture, candid about the black
struggle, and infused with declarations of black pride and success. I will compare the answers I
receive across racial lines so that I may observe the differences between white and black
responses.
In order to probe those hypotheses I plan to interview twenty undergraduate students who
attend the University of Chicago and enjoy trap music, ten of whom are white Americans and ten
of whom are black Americans. When I say “white American” I am referring to students who
identify as white, were born to at least one white parent, and whose families have lived in
America for at least the past three generations. When I say “black American” I am referring to
students who identify as black, were born to at least one black parent, and whose families have
lived in America for at least the past three generations; from here I will often refer to them as
“white” students and “black” students, respectively. I made the interview sample size ten of each
race so that I can hopefully interview students whose hometowns account for all regions of the
United States into which rap culture can be divided: the West Coast, the East Coast, the South,
the Midwest, and the rest of the United States; the number ten also allows me to account for
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regional outliers such as Florida, whose rap culture developed independently of, and is markedly
I chose to interview students attending the University of Chicago because its students
come from so many different places within the United States that their embrace of trap music
probably occurred within different circumstances; students from Atlanta, the birthplace of trap
music and a city where trap music saturates the airwaves and the culture, may have had a
fundamentally different experience discovering, and appreciation for, trap music than do people
from Seattle, whose music scene has never been dominated by rap and has never produced any
(notable) trap rappers. I believe the discrepancy in trap music’s popularity and prominence
across regions will be no small factor in determining the reasons why people enjoy listening to it.
In order to determine which students enjoy trap music I will create flyers on which I will
have typed the following: “If you are an undergraduate University of Chicago student who
identifies as white American or black American, enjoys listening to trap music, and would like to
be interviewed about your experience with trap music, please text (my phone number). Make
sure to include your race (white American or black American), your hometown, and your home
state in the text.” There are many places on campus I plan on posting the flyers, including the
Logan Center for the Arts, the Regenstein Library, the Ratner Athletic Center, Reynolds Club,
and various classrooms and cafes throughout campus in and around which bulletin boards for
posting flyers are present. First I will ask each respondent whether they have at least one parent
whose race matches theirs and if their family has lived in the United States for at least the past
three generations. I will organize the students who respond “yes” to both questions into
categories based on their race and the region in which their hometown is located and assign each
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respondent a different number. When I have received enough responses to satisfy my sample size
I will use a random number generator to choose ten white students and ten black students. In
order to do this I will go category by category so that I can create as equally distributed and
During the interview I will ask the respondents questions about the extent of their
knowledge of trap culture, how and when they began listening to trap music, what the music
scene in their hometown is like, whom their favorite trap artists are, and what their favorite trap
songs are, among other questions. I also plan on playing for my interviewees a famous trap song,
“Versace” by Migos, so that they can identify exactly which parts of the song they enjoy. I
choose this song because it is the marriage of the structural components that constitute a
quintessential trap song: a repetitive hook, an infectious beat, high-energy vocals, and frenetic
rhyme schemes throughout. Ideally, their answers will reflect what they generally feel to be the
most compelling aspect(s) of the music. By playing “Versace” I hope to push the respondents to
indicate why it sounds good to them. The data I collect from the interviews should not only show
commonalities between my white respondents’ relationships with trap music and their
predecessors’ relationships with blackface minstrelsy and jazz, but also illuminate general beliefs
about trap music’s sound, which will be discussed in later sections of my thesis.
One possible limitation is that the white students I interview may interpret my research
question as one designed to ridicule or discredit their enjoyment of trap music, which is not my
intention, as I do not wish to deride their musical preferences in any regard. As a result, they may
answer my questions in a way as to not align themselves and their views with those of the white
people who frequented blackface minstrel shows in the late-nineteenth century and co-opted jazz
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music in the early-twentieth century. The remedy to this would be to give them only as much
revealing my plan to compare their responses to those of blackface minstrel show spectators and
jitterbugs, then I believe I will receive less veiled answers. Also it will be important to keep the
hometowns satisfy the regional diversity I seek; ten white respondents all from the Northeast
corridor would not adequately represent rap’s regional divisions. I aim to conduct twenty
interviews, but if too few people respond to the flyer, then I will interview fewer than twenty
DATA
Sixteen survey responses have been collected. Twenty-one students inquired, thirteen
who identified as black American and eight who identified as white American, so I used a
random number generator to determine which eight of the thirteen black respondents I would
interview. Of the eight black respondents, two indicated they lived in the Midwest, three on the
East Coast, two in the South, and one on the West Coast. Of the eight white respondents, five
indicated they lived on the East Coast, one in the South, and two on the West Coast.
There was noticeable variance in the genres the respondents claimed constituted the
music scenes of their respective hometowns, but one thing was consistent: rap music was not an
integral part of almost all of them. Only two respondents were regularly exposed to rap music at
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an early age, and one of those respondents attributed this exposure not to their hometown’s
music scene but to the preference of their parents. The remaining fifteen lived in places in which
rap had not broken through the mold of the music scene. My efforts to establish regional
diversity in the respondent pool were fruitless, as trap music’s establishment in different regions
appeared to influence only one of the respondents, and none from the region which gave birth to
Students described living in places whose musical communities were “very focused on
“The music scene is okay if you’re into indie or alt rock. Just picture yourself in a craft
brewery. The music that’s playing in your imagination is the music that’s popular in the
state.”
If a genre as multifaceted as rap was not pervasive enough to infiltrate the music scene in
hometowns across the nation, then surely its more debaucherous offspring has not had nearly as
much time to accomplish the same. Trap was only in its formative stages during the mid-2000s
and did not reach mainstream popularity until Gucci Mane’s “My Kitchen” in 2007, which very
well may account for its absence in commercial music rotations at a time at which current
college students such as myself were just starting to navigate the music world with considerable
agency.
Describing where they grew up, none of the respondents indicated they lived in or even
near what we now know as the trap. As a result of growing up not listening to trap music and
also not being exposed to the trap itself, it is understandable that only one of the respondents was
“I’ve been listening to trap music since high school and I still don’t really know what the
trap is. I get bits and pieces from the songs but I’m not too sure what any of it means.
When I started listening to trap I just assumed they called it that because it was catchy.”
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At any length, trap music exploded in the 2010s, methodically working its way into
mainstream pop culture and joining rap proper as a form of veritable commercial black
expression, though its departure from the tenets of other genres took some students a while to
“The thing with trap is that it’s completely antithetical to the music I grew up on, not just
thematically but musically. I grew up on, essentially, music as a (white) devotional form.
Trap, with its braggadocio, (usual) masculinity, and hi-hat syncopation, is more like
music as a sport: you come to watch these people be good at what they do, and it inspires
an aspirational drive in you. For me, growing up, that was the barrier to entry.”
For other students, trap music was initially difficult to enjoy because its
intellectually-sparse lyrical style was not as impressive as the other styles of rap to which they
“It took a minute. I was listening to a lot of stuff like Danny Brown/Pro Era/Flatbush
Zombies, so the transition to a more aesthetically oriented subgenre wasn’t super natural.
I had to start appreciating the music for what it was and stop trying to push my
expectations of Joey Bada$$-esque quadruple entendres on to it.”
Not coincidentally, the only respondent who liked trap music right away was the one who
was familiar with the the trap and its cultural significance before trap music became popular.
Some respondents began to develop an interest in trap culture after being exposed to the music,
“I think it was more of a fascination with a world/culture completely foreign to me. I was
listening to and enjoying this music that comes from a place that I couldn’t relate to at all,
and it drew me in.”
Conversely, other respondents expressed that their enjoyment of trap music did not, in
“I mean there have definitely been times when I’ve [researched] what certain lyrics mean
in a trap context but other than that I haven’t really been interested.”
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In the introduction I conjectured why one might enjoy listening to trap music despite
presumably being unfamiliar with the euphemisms and references used throughout the song, let
alone the overarching culture which typically presents itself to far more black and brown people
than white people. I had a sneaking suspicion that one’s familiarity with the music, slang, and
culture does not necessarily have any bearing on whether they enjoy the music. The following
Listening Analysis
For each respondent I played Migos’s hit song, “Versace.” I asked each respondent to tell
me what exactly it was about the song that made it compelling to hear. My first hypothesis,
which I stated in my methodology section, was that white people enjoy trap music for reasons
similar as to why their predecessors enjoyed blackface minstrel shows - it allows them to
experience blackness from the safety of their own skin - and jazz - because its lyrical content
and/or structural arrangement make it sonically pleasing. My second hypothesis was that black
people enjoy trap music for the same reasons their predecessors enjoyed jazz music; it is an art
form deeply rooted in black culture, candid about the black struggle, and infused with
declarations of black pride and success. The results of the listening analysis support that my
white listener hypothesis was somewhat accurate, while my black listener hypothesis was
All sixteen respondents noted that the hook (which, by the way, consists exclusively of
Migos’s lead member Quavo repeating the word “Versace” with varying inflections) makes the
song appealing; words such as “catchy,” “fun,” “engaging,” and “psychedelic” were used to
describe the song’s now-iconic refrain. Many included additional reasons as to why they liked
26
the song. Some respondents claimed the Migos’s adlibs throughout the song were integral to
their enjoyment.
“The adlibs are like the glue of this song. A lot of trap songs, really. There’s so much
empty space at the end of every line that you gotta put some vocals there. Migos fill in
those dead spots perfectly. ‘WOO!’ ‘SHINE!’ ‘SKRT!’ ‘VERSACE!’ It keeps the energy
way up.”
“Who cares that they aren’t really saying anything? The song is catchy, has a great
bounce, and keeps moving. It doesn’t stagnate. S/o Zaytoven for that. When you get a
producer like that who can make a track with energy and rappers who can match that
energy and pull it forward, you get good, clean, trap fun and ‘Versace’ is that.”
And still others opted for a more analytical approach, delving into why the song’s
“It’s so fun to say the names of fashion labels, and Versace in particular has a “-ch”
sound in it that gives its repetition a unique percussive quality.”
Every reason given by every respondent dealt with the song’s sound, whether it was the
sticky hook, the animated adlibs, the lively production, or the striking nature of the vocals. I did
not receive a single response from a black student whose enjoyment of the song was related to
how the Migos portrayed black culture, black success, or black wealth. Nor did I receive a single
response from a white student whose enjoyment of the song was related to how they felt the song
allowed them to engage with blackness from a safe distance. None of the respondents’
enjoyment was derived from an appreciation for trap culture or the quality of the lyrics. Yet, each
respondent expressed that they very much enjoyed the song. It seems as if a song’s aural appeal
alone is much more powerful than for which I previously gave it credit. And to my point about
authenticity, no respondents inquired about whether the Migos’s many boasts could be
substantiated by evidence; the existence of Quavo’s silk Versace underwear, Offset’s Ferragamo
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handcuffs, and Takeoff’s Maserati went unchecked.47 The truthfulness of the lyrical content is
simply unimportant in such an enthralling song, as would be the case for the overwhelming
“If I’m [partying], I’m not trying to hear J. Cole talk about “No such thing as a life that’s
better than yours.” I’m not trying to ponder life in the club. But hearing “Versace” come
on and everybody is able to simultaneously [party] and yell out adlibs? It’s catchy, it’s
fun, and the lyrics still make sense.”
CONCLUSION
Until I conducted these interviews I had never discussed at length with anybody their
views about trap music. In my experience as a listener, I have always felt a connection with trap
rappers, despite the fact that the neighborhoods in which they grew up, the subjects about which
they rap, and the lifestyles they live are mostly foreign to me. The connection I felt, then, was
one of cultural pride. The ideas of making something out of nothing, rising from the bottom to be
unapologetically black body in white spaces are all things I admire, even though I can’t
My appreciation for trap music has always been, on the surface, an appreciation for the
catchy hooks, engaging rhyme schemes, and beguiling beats. Yet, at a deeper level, my
appreciation has been fueled by a working knowledge of, and interest in, trap culture, and a
respect for black artists who have emerged from unfavorable socioeconomic circumstances to
secure financial stability for themselves and their people. In operating under the assumption that
all, or at least most, black people knew about trap culture and felt similarly to me about trap
rickety precedent on which one of my hypotheses stood. There are many black people in
America whose understandings of trap culture are just as cursory, or nonexistent, as those of
white people. There are many black people in America whose enjoyment of trap music is based
solely on what the music sounds like, and not based on them catching every reference and
euphemism thrown at them. All of the black students I interviewed enjoy trap music, but not
because of their ties to the trap, their fondness for trap culture, or a subsurface desire to see black
people succeed (which they very well may feel, just not for this specific instance). They enjoy it
With regards to white trap listeners, it appears that they enjoy trap for the same reason: it
sounds good. I was eager to compare white attitudes toward trap to white attitudes toward jazz
and blackface minstrelsy, but I realize less of a parallel exists between the former and the two
latter than I previously believed. Trap music exists in a vastly different social context than did
jazz and blackface minstrel shows. Blackface minstrelsy was once the nation’s most popular
form of entertainment; now, instances of blackface in the United States are virtually unanimously
regarded as repugnant. Race relations in the United States are nowhere near ideal for its
nonwhite citizens, but they have progressed a considerable amount from a time during which
In the current-day United States, white people no longer have to couch their interest in
black culture in offensive caricature. Black culture is on full display in just about all facets of
American life. Because the United States is a less oppressive place for black Americans now
than it was in the 1800s, white Americans do not have to hide their fascination with black culture
29
nearly as much as they did then. For these reasons, I believe white people don’t need to use trap
music to engage with black culture like they needed blackface minstrelsy to do so centuries ago.
It’s far more acceptable to partake in (what they perceive to be) blackness now. That’s not to say
that absolutely no white people use trap music as a way to experience blackness from the
security of whiteness, but I would think considerably fewer do now than did with blackface
minstrelsy.
In the early-twentieth century, jitterbugs had to sneak out of their houses to reconvene at
jazz clubs to dance, and could only engage with the music and the culture enveloping it if they
did so subversively. Today, white kids can listen to trap music with as little effort as it takes to
open Spotify or Apple Music on their phones. Jazz was more important to black people than trap
is to black people now, and renowned jazz musician Duke Ellington illuminates that importance:
“The music of my race is something more than the “American idiom.” It is the result of
our transplantation to American soil, and was our reaction in the plantation days to the
tyranny we endured. What we could not say openly we expressed in music, and what we
know as “jazz” is something more than just dance music.”48
opportunities to hear and dance to it were monumentally important to the morale of the black
community. Trap does not occupy that same space in the black community today. Perhaps the
influence on the black community of rap at its politico-centric height could be compared to that
of jazz, but trap in its current state certainly cannot. Because trap is more accessible, more
socially acceptable, and less integral to the black experience now than was jazz in the early
twentieth century, white listeners cannot embrace trap from the same angles of rebellion and
black curiosity from which they embraced jazz, or at least not from angles of the same steepness.
48 "Syncopated Synergy: Dance, Embodiment, and the Call of the Jitterbug." In Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture.
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It would be foolish to think that absolutely no white people listen to trap for those reasons, but it
can be reasonably assumed that the majority of white trap fans do not.
If the results of the listening portion of my interviews have taught me anything, it is that
black people and white people often enjoy trap music for the same reason: it simply sounds
good. Surely there are black listeners who enjoy it for reasons related to black cultural pride,
surely there are white people who enjoy it because rapping along to the word “nigga” in songs is
exhilarating, and surely there exist myriad other reasons as to why trap music appeals to both
parties. But a base level, people listen to the music they like because it pleases them. I believe
the mass majority of people in the United States who are fans of trap music, white and black,
listen to it because it is entertaining and sonically pleasing. Perhaps there’s not much more to it
than that.
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