Diaspora portoricaine et musique rap à New York : entre latinité et culture africaine américaine

Rap music has achieved unprecedented success among urban youth in the United States and in big cities around the world. As a key element of hip-hop this musical style has been asserting its strength since the 1970s as a reflection of the diasporic experience and the complex cultural interactions between African Americans, Jamaicans and Puerto Ricans of the diaspora living in New York. However, scant research has been conducted on the role of Puerto Rican artists of the diaspora living in New York. Therefore, based on field trips and participant observation undertaken between 2005 and 2008 and the concerts of the Puerto Rican rap group The Terror Squad that the author was able to attend frequently, the purpose of this article is to analyze the central role of Puerto Rican artists located in New York through rap music, the most publicized element of hip-hop. This analysis sheds light on the tensions, commonalities and cultural interactions that govern the complex relationships between the distinctive Latin identity of Puerto Ricans and the African American urban culture, as witnessed on New York’s rap scene for more than thirty years