Edinburgh Napier University

  Hip-hop’s export, practise, appropriation and reuse can be found in cultures around the globe from Aborigines in Australia, to Palestinian hip-hop in the Middle East. While a number of academic works already exist examining the development of hip-hop music and culture in the UK, this research is predominantly England and even London-based. Scottish hip-hop has been in existence since the late 1980s but has remained historically a subculture, much less regularly crossing over into wider culture than its English counterpart. Largely a working-class subculture, the barriers that have traditionally existed between Scottish hip-hop and Scottish cultural commentators (and consumers) have added to its creators’ existing feelings of social marginalisation. As principal songwriter with critically acclaimed live hip-hop group Stanley Odd, I have spent a prolonged period intensely studying, writing and producing hip-hop. Examining my own work and that of other leading writers, I argue that by utilising established hip-hop forms filtered through a locally representative voice no other Scottish musical genre is as relevant in chronicling contemporary Scottish society at present.