Gangsta warrior bro : hip-hop and urban Aboriginal youth

This chapter considers the involvement of young urban Aboriginal men in the hip-hop subculture, and looks at how this cultural form and practice resonates with their experience of social marginalisation, official surveillance and regulation. The author looks at the reflections of young Aboriginals men on their hip-hop enthusiasms past and present. This work is based on biographical narrative interviews with young Aboriginal adult men in inner Sydney. The author has argued in this chapter that the belligerent and declamatory messages of American hip-hop appeal to young Aboriginal men in inner Sydney, and that hip-hop provides a symbolic repertoire that allows them to fashion a subcultural account and response to their experiences. This provides adolescents in particular with a hyper-masculine and anarchic rationale for their exposure to lives of urban deprivation, family breakdown and very intense local policing strategies.