Social Context and Musical Content of Rap Music, 19791995.” Social Forces 85

There is a link between the context of production and the content of rap music singles. This research fi nds that when independent labels owned most of the charted singles, lyrics emphasized features of the local environment and hostility to corporate music production and values. In contrast, the major-label dominated market featured lyrics blending “street” credibility and commercial success in the “hustler ” protagonist. I contribute a new fi nding to research on market concentration and musical diversity: artists ’ reactions to the market effects musical content. Over the past three decades, scholars produced important evidence on the role of industry, organizational structure and markets in the creation of cultural goods. However, the consequences of these structures for creative people and the content of the cultural objects they produce are not yet well understood, as noted by Cerulo (1984) and Peterson and Anand (2004). This gap in the literature is striking given the emphasis of lead production of culture scholars on the impact of the context of production on artistic work (Becker 1982, White an