Looks like a Man’s World: Young Women Rap and Violence in East London 

 Baljit Kaur  

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This zine is a visual representation of my ethnographic research based on young people’s engagement in music production at an East London youth club. It specifically foregrounds rap -  one of the most popular poetic forms in the world today (Bramwell and Butterworth 2020) – as a vehicle through which young people’s lived experiences of violence are made intelligible.  

Historically, rap music has been largely presented as an urban male phenomenon and the music studio gendered as a masculinised artistic space. My research findings indicate that sexist conditions often determine the silencing of young women’s voices and their absence in the male dominated music sessions. Notably, some young women do narrate their lived experiences through rap in the music studio, often reflecting themes of economic acquisition, knife violence and the streets. However, experiences of economic instability, domestic and sexual violence and mental health issues are comparatively silenced, if not narrated to a much lesser extent. This zine, then, is an amalgam of photographs taken and sketches drawn during fieldwork, as well as lyrics from young women’s rap tracks that articulate their stories. It is an illustration of the patriarchal society we live in, ‘a man’s world’ that not only downplays their contributions to rap but renders invisible their lived experiences of violence in East London.