Music Research Seminar: Steven Gamble (University of Bristol)

In The New Yorker journalist Kelefa Sanneh’s words, ‘in the 2010s … hip hop was popular music, with everything else either a subgenre or variant of it, or a quirky alternative to it’. With hip hop now the most popular genre of music, contemporary pop music has taken significant influence from hip hop aesthetics and Black culture more broadly. Yet the politics of such borrowings are contentious, sparking online discourse about white appropriations of Black culture. Discussions unfold primarily on social networking services, where individuals passionately and publicly engage in heated debates.

In this talk, I provide a critical technocultural analysis into how social media platforms shape discourse about the appropriation of Black culture in popular music. My inquiry centres around accusations of Blackfishing—a deceptive performance of racialised identity—levelled at pop superstar Ariana Grande. Ariana Grande is an illuminating example because of her immense popularity, the conspicuous incorporation of hip hop (especially trap) elements in her music, and the internet-mediated and extensively debated public image she presents. I provide methodological reflections that help to provide a model for students and scholars interested in rigorously analysing online discourse about popular music culture. By listening to the musical and cultural values disputed by users on Reddit, Twitter/X, and Tumblr alongside Ariana Grande’s work, I shed light on how pop’s adoption of hip hop aesthetics is both thoroughly normalised and contested online.

About Steven Gamble

Dr Steven Gamble is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Bristol, specialising in the study of popular music, digital methods, and online music cultures. Stim is the author of books How Music Empowers: Listening to Modern Rap and Metal (Routledge, 2021) and Digital Flows: Online Hip Hop Music and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2024). He has also published in Popular Music & Society, Ethnomusicology, First Monday, Global Hip Hop Studies, Metal Music Studies, and Journal on the Art of Record Production. Stim is a board member and webmaster for the International Society for Metal Music Studies and the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Music Studies network, and runs the Music and Online Cultures Research Network.