Of the Lack of Interest for Politics in Quebec’s Hip-Hop
In the context of a wide-scale sociological study on the question of the impact of hip-hop on school persistence among Quebec’s youth, we have investigated the interest of québécois hip-hopers for institutionalized politics. The analysis of the values, which are internalized and conveyed by these youth led us to think that there is a significant lack of interest for formal political issues, whether framed in terms of actual involvement with political issues or an emphasis on political demands. On a global scale, hip-hop culture has a long history of activism, advocacy and awareness rising through its artistic disciplines and expressions. However, in the case of the Hip-hop artists discussed in this article, the art form is lived as an artistic creation in which the main pursuit is about the blossoming of self-expressions, and a desire to penetrate the local culture industry. In this case, hip-hop is not synonymous to a concern for the transformation of institutionalized political relations.