The rapper (and the) sociologist
When rap music is studied, it is a mistake to see it only through a sociological point of view and forget that it is first and foremost an artistic creation. However, many texts are a source of knowledge and in particular those which are tinged with an autobiographical aspect. Indeed, rap singers’s rimed stories are a means to construe and know more about places, lifestyles, situations and feelings, which are often related to worlds and experiences that belong to a minority. In general, only groups and individuals that are legitimate to express their opinion in the public space tackle the treatment and the definition of these topics — politicians, journalists or scientists have a monopolistic position as regards these topics and reject competences and sources of knowledge that come from laypersons. There seems to be then no risks of alienation at all for rap singers — risks that are inherent in the delegation of one’s experience or one’s word (to a researcher for example). Rap singers talk by themselves (and often about themselves), they dispute or corroborate sociologists’s ideas, talk to them, and sometimes even work with them. Bringing thus elements that help understand and analyse the social world in and by songs enables the multiplication of the places of knowledge production and a wider access to its production and dissemination.