Cash rules everything around me: the high price of sustaining hip-hop community in Chicago
type: CreativeWork
description: This dissertation, entitled “Cash Rules Everything Around Me (CREAM): The High Price of Sustaining a Hip-Hop Community in Chicago,” contributes to the literature on hip-hop and culture by providing an ethnographic study on the various ways that those who defined themselves as being hip-hop go about constructing this identity in light of the unique socioeconomic challenges that all Americans are experiencing in these uncertain economic times. A sub-cultural cooption through consumer capitalism has forced those who want to be part of hip-hop subculture to go back underground. But to label all of these individuals merely “underground” would be as equally uninformative as labeling anyone who wears baggy blue jeans and can rhyme words together as being “hip-hop.” With so much confusion and misappropriation of the culture, it appears urgently necessary to take a more academic examination of exactly what this hip-hop thing is, who is authentically hip-hop and how membership in this community is defined. “Cash Rules Everything Around Me” contrasts the Hip-Hop Nation with the Rap Industrial Complex, which presents stereotyped caricatures of hip-hop culture. A central argument of this dissertation is that neoliberalism is one of the more significant contributing factors that explains the slow encroachment of the Rap Industrial Complex where it is often mistakenly blurred with hip-hop. This dissertation separates the two and reveals several complex layers to each medium. I present how these layered identities of the Hip-Hop Nation are being undermined by consumer capitalism much like has already occurred within the Rap Industrial Complex. My nine months of field research in Chicago revealed that five major identities emerged among my research participants who are categorized as the Hip-Hop Nation: Professional Headz, Refugee Headz, Hip-Hop Fundamentalists, Black Headz and Tech Headz. These identities were characterized by the personal values that my participants indicated were…
abstract: This dissertation, entitled “Cash Rules Everything Around Me (CREAM): The High Price of Sustaining a Hip-Hop Community in Chicago,” contributes to the literature on hip-hop and culture by providing an ethnographic study on the various ways that those who defined themselves as being hip-hop go about constructing this identity in light of the unique socioeconomic challenges that all Americans are experiencing in these uncertain economic times. A sub-cultural cooption through consumer capitalism has forced those who want to be part of hip-hop subculture to go back underground. But to label all of these individuals merely “underground” would be as equally uninformative as labeling anyone who wears baggy blue jeans and can rhyme words together as being “hip-hop.” With so much confusion and misappropriation of the culture, it appears urgently necessary to take a more academic examination of exactly what this hip-hop thing is, who is authentically hip-hop and how membership in this community is defined. “Cash Rules Everything Around Me” contrasts the Hip-Hop Nation with the Rap Industrial Complex, which presents stereotyped caricatures of hip-hop culture. A central argument of this dissertation is that neoliberalism is one of the more significant contributing factors that explains the slow encroachment of the Rap Industrial Complex where it is often mistakenly blurred with hip-hop. This dissertation separates the two and reveals several complex layers to each medium. I present how these layered identities of the Hip-Hop Nation are being undermined by consumer capitalism much like has already occurred within the Rap Industrial Complex. My nine months of field research in Chicago revealed that five major identities emerged among my research participants who are categorized as the Hip-Hop Nation: Professional Headz, Refugee Headz, Hip-Hop Fundamentalists, Black Headz and Tech Headz. These identities were characterized by the personal values that my participants indicated were…
author: Muhammad, Kareem R.
language: en
keywords: hip-hop, neoliberalism, subculture
date published: 2010-05-19T18:32:31Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:08Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16024