Arabism in Arab(ic) Rap. Local Languages, Translocal References and Virtual Networks

One of the hip-hop networks that has gained influence in Arab countries since 2011 has emerged around the Arabic language and culture. This (new) "Arabism" manifests itself in various forms: The Arab(ic) rap scenes that are the subject of this study include rappers who rap in Arabic, rappers of Arab ethnicity who express themselves in other languages, and rappers who belong to local hip hop scenes in Arab countries. This study focuses on the role of Arabic language and Arab culture as a unifying element. The question of the role of Arabism in these communities serves as a starting point for the study to ask more specific questions about mechanisms of community formation and the construction of group identity. This thesis addresses the related questions at three different levels. The first level is networks between artists, collaboration, mutual musical influence, and connections to other regions and countries. The second level is language use, the role of Standard Arabic, the languages and scripts of music production and reception. The third level is intertextual references that link rap to other forms of Arabic literature and culture. Methodologically, the work relies on ethnographic and netnographic field research, active participation in the field and in social networks, interviews with artists, song and battle rap text analysis, and social network analysis. It is organized as follows: First, key theoretical concepts are explained. Ensuing is a brief overview of hip hop culture and Arab(ic) rap. Then, three case studies focusing on different aspects of Arab rap are presented before a final conclusion is drawn.


Preface
kontakt. Das Kulturprojekt, and supported financially by the department of Arabic Studies at the University of Bamberg. The third event was organized by kontakt. Das Kulturprojekt, the association Betna e.V. and the working group AK Orient and took place on 2017-04-21. 3 Shout-outs go to the many active and committed people who helped host these concerts in Bamberg, as well as those who helped in Munich, Berlin and elsewhere.
As a thesis, just like a concert, is a collaborative project of many people, I would like to thank those who were involved in the creation of this thesis. First and foremost I want to thank my would also like to say thank you to Prof. Dr. Kaplony, through whose network of researchers on media and (trans)regional network cultures I was able to have many inspiring conversations and who made it easy for me to feel welcome in Munich's community of Middle Eastern scholars.
In developing the ideas presented here, I have received helpful input from colleagues and friends in Bamberg, Marburg, Bochum, Beirut, and Munich. Many have contributed feedback and inspiration, read passages or articles, asked critical questions, provided a couch to crash on, or discussed research and everything else over a cup of coffee or in the canteen. Financially, my research was supported by grants from the Hans Böckler Foundation, the Orient-Institut Beirut and the DAAD. However, these institutions have offered me much more than just the research grants through their seminars, events, and networks of bright and dedicated scholars. My thanks also go to the University of Bamberg, which provided me with an ideal environment and home for my studies and research. I especially thank the community of Rap Genius Arabia and the artists in Beirut and Oran who took their time to talk with me and from whom I learned a lot. My thoughts are with you in these times. Last but not least, a big thank you goes to my family, my friends and Lena who have been with me throughout this project.

Introduction and Research Questions
‫صفة‬ ‫يجعل‬ ‫لنفسه‬ ‫العربي‬ ‫الراب‬ ‫يتخذه‬ ‫الذي‬ ‫المنحى‬ " ‫العربي‬ " ‫صفة‬ ‫على‬ ‫مة‬ ّ ‫مقد‬ " ‫الراب‬ " ‫!مولي‬ ‫ش!‬ ‫!ف‬ ‫تعري!‬ ‫بأي‬ ‫ا‬ ‫ل‬ ، ‫ل!‬ ‫مؤدلج‬ ‫والسماع‬ ‫النطق‬ ‫ة‬ ‫العربيّ‬ ‫بالمساحة‬ ‫الراب‬ ‫مظلة‬ ‫التقاء‬ ‫فرادة‬ ‫إلى‬ ‫إشارة‬ ‫بال‬ ‫بل‬ ‫العروبة،‬ . the high number of Arabic speakers in diaspora communities. Most of the research on rap in Arabic and/or by Arab rappers does not adequately take into account the artists' embedding in transnational networks, be they based on a shared feeling of belonging to hip hop culture, or on shared languages, or on a shared history, etc. 11 It is, therefore, important to "overcome methodological nationalism as a frame of reference considering that shared cultural spaces […] are not necessarily associated with geographical proximity." 12 Hip hop that we can observe in many Arab countries nowadays should be understood as networks or as clusters in bigger networks. Arab rappers and rappers who rap in Arabic can be part of different networks. There already is research that addresses some of these networks. For instance, research has focused on rappers who feel and express themselves as part of the "Global South" 13 or a "Hip Hop Umma" based on shared Islamic faith. 14 However, there is another network that has gained influence since 2011, but has not received the same attention in research: a network formed around the Arabic language and Arab culture. When talking about the rebellions in the Arab world, [Munaqresh] quickly turns to the subject of cross-border identity conflicts or the decline of pan-Arabism. Then the 34-year-old straightens his baseball cap and says in broad American English: "We just had to give the dirty laundry a good airing." 16 This (new) "Arabism," which is the focus of my work, manifests itself in various forms. Its varying manifestations are the reason why I frequently write "Arab(ic)" instead of "Arab" or "Arabic" because -as will become clear later on -some of the connections uniting the community are based on concepts of shared "ethnicity" and shared cultural heritage, whereas others are based on an understanding of a shared language. Individual rappers in the network are not necessarily Arabs by ethnicity. Some rappers who are born and live in Lebanon, for example, are Armenians; some who are born and live in Algeria are Amazighs. Nevertheless, these rappers express themselves artistically in Arabic. We might also find rappers who were born in Arab countries, migrated to Europe, and still rap in Arabic. Through Arabic as a shared language, all these rappers interconnect with each other in what Johannsen calls "the Arabic-speaking hip hopcommunity as one tribe of the Global Hip Hop Nation." 17 On the other hand, not every rapper in the network I am focusing on necessarily raps in Arabic. Syrian-Filipino rapper Chyno states on his latest album: Arab is not the one who sings and speaks in Arabic but the one who protects the Arab culture, the land, the people. [Chyno in "Abed" on his album Mamluk, 2021]. 18 For instance, some rappers in Lebanon prefer English or French as their language of artistic expression. It still makes sense to include these rappers in the researched network, as they contribute to local hip hop scenes and use similar topics and/or imagery in their lyrics. Therefore, the Arab(ic) rap scenes which are the object of my study encompass rappers who rap in Arabic, rappers of Arab ethnicity who express themselves in other languages, and rappers who belong to local hip hop scenes in Arab countries.
In these communities, I focus on the role of Arabic language and Arab culture as a unifying element. The question of the role of Arabism in these communities serves as a starting point for exploration, for asking more specific questions on community building mechanisms and group identity construction. I will deal with these questions on three different levels. 16 Hagmann, "The Arab Hip-Hop Sampler 'Khat Thaleth. '" 17 Johannsen,"Keepin' It Real," 86. 18 Chyno,Mamluk. Introduction and Research Questions First, I will look at networks between artists. Who is collaborating with whom? Which artists in which countries are releasing tracks with each other? Another question in this direction would be: Who is listening to whose music? Are networks of Arab rap artists becoming more independent of their initial influences from the USA and France, and are they replacing these ties with ties to Arab artists in other countries or regions? "Are rap of the Maghreb and rap of the Mashriq part of the same phenomenon ?" 19 Second, I want to focus on language use. Which languages are used? What is the role of Standard Arabic? I want to look not only at the languages of music production, but also at those of music reception. In which languages are fans and music critics discussing Arabic rap music? Are they writing on Arabic rap music in Arabic, in arithmographemics-based scripts like 3arabizi, 20 in English, or in French?
The third aspect I want to deal with is: How do Arab rap artists use intertextual references linking their art to other forms of Arabic literature and culture? Are these links to a shared cultural heritage also used to create links between the artists of today?
To be able to thoroughly investigate questions on networks and languages, I make use of a methodological triangulation because it provides more than one perspective on the research object and better suits a subject matter as complex as culture. In other words, 'cultural studies' should be a field of at times intractable complexity and perhaps the first great academic experiment in the attempted formation of a 'non-disciplinary' discipline. No one approach can hope to comprehend the above in one sweep; no one sweep producing some partial understanding can fail to notice what other sweeps might produce. We are condemned to a kind of eclecticism because of the very eclecticism and indissoluble combinations of the dissimilar in the increasingly complex 'real' world around us. 21 interviewed artists, actively participated in online social networks, analyzed song and battle rap 23 texts, and used social network analysis to add a quantitative angle. In addition, whenever possible, I let the rappers themselves have their say through direct quotes so as not to speak for them.
This thesis is structured in the following way: First, core theoretical concepts are explained.
Ensuing is a brief overview of hip hop culture and Arab(ic) rap. Then, three case studies focusing on different aspects in Arab(ic) rap are presented, before a final summing up. 23 A rap battle is a playful rapped exchange of artists who take turns lyrically mocking and insulting each other in front of an audience. For more on the subject of battle rap, see section 5.2 and Wiedemann, "Remixing Battle Rap and Arabic Poetic Battling."

Theoretical Framework -Fields, Worlds, Networks and Scenes
Researchers on the sociology of music use different concepts. For instance, they talk of scenes, worlds, networks, or fields. In the next pages, I briefly present the core ideas behind these concepts and explain which aspects I found useful for my own research and for addressing the previously formulated research questions. I hereby follow an eclectic approach to theory including ideas from different theoretical currents, an approach supported even by researchers favoring certain concepts: There are considerable overlaps between these conceptions [of 'scenes,' 'fields' and 'music worlds'] and whichever one we opt for, the literature on the others will remain a useful resource. 24

-Crossley, McAndrew and Widdop in Social Networks and Music Worlds
Our formulation of the scene concept draws heavily on Pierre Bourdieu's (1984) idea of 'field ' and Howard Becker's (1982) idea of 'art worlds,' which both make many of the same assumptions we do. 25

-Bennett and Peterson in Music scenes: local, translocal & virtual
My impression when studying theories on the sociology of music was similar, as I found aspects in different theories compelling.

Fields
Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, with its focus on power structures, is one approach to culture and human interaction in general which I found helpful throughout this project. 26 It provides useful tools for analyzing communities, as well as analyzing the relations and standings of people within them. 27 At its basis is the idea that the social room can be divided into fields. People can be part of multiple fields. If a person is part of a field, the person's position in relation to other people depends on the person's capital in the field. In different fields, different sorts of capital can exist. 24 Crossley, McAndrew, and Widdop, "Introduction," 1. 25 Bennett and Peterson, "Introducing Music Scenes," 3. 26 Cf.: Wiedemann, "Negotiating Languages in an Arab(Ic) Rap Music Fan Community," 159-61. Since the concept of the field proved particularly helpful for this article, you can find a similar summary there. 27 See for example: Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital." Fields Bourdieu himself differentiated between economic, social and cultural capital. 28 These three forms of capital can be understood as parallel currencies: in different fields, different forms of capital can exist, and the exchange rates between them can vary according to the field. 29 For example, social capital in the academic field can manifest itself in a high number of well-known co-authors, economic capital in research funding, and cultural capital in the ability to write and speak in a way that is considered appropriate. Those who know how to write and speak and have enough connections can then in turn convert, for example, cultural and social capital into funding, i.e., economic capital. Each specific field, or rather the people in it, create field-internal rules or conventions (which Bourdieu called doxa). These rules then have to be followed by the agents in a field in order to maintain or better their position in that field. By internalizing the rules of a field, actors adopt a habitus characteristic of the field.
Later researchers have identified other sorts of capital that are relevant for understanding individual fields. These include, for example, erotic capital 30 and intercultural capital. 31 Some would subsume them under cultural capital, but for understanding power dynamics in specific fields, it can make sense to regard them as distinct forms of of their own. Throughout my own research, I found this theory helpful for example for investigating the Arab(ic) online community of rap fans on the Genius platform (see section 5.3). Questioning how capital could be accumulated within the community through interactions led to insights into power structures on Genius. While Bourdieu's field points at power struggles between agents, Howard S. Becker's world focuses on collaboration, on agents helping each other to construct something together. The

Music worlds
American sociologist defines art worlds as communities of people collaborating to produce art: 28 Bourdieu,"Ökonomisches Kapital,kulturelles Kapital,soziales Kapital." 29 In the field of dating and mating, "erotic capital" helps understanding human behavior. Hakim Art worlds consist of all the people whose activities are necessary to the production of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, define as art. Members of art worlds coordinate the activities by which work is produced by referring to a body of conventional understandings embodied in common practice and in frequently used artifacts. 32 In other words, art is created not only by those people called "artists," but also by support personnel working in production or distribution, and by the art world's audience. This conglomerate of people comes together in an art world over time, and continual repetition of the same interactions regulates these interactions into conventions. These conventions standardize the cooperation process, making processes faster, and making participants exchangeable as expectations and skills become standardized as well. Conventions also set aesthetic standards

Networks
The concept of music worlds and its focus on collaboration was built on by researchers like Nick Crossley who center their attention on networks. In such relational sociology view, culture exists between people and "belongs to the domain of interaction." 38 Thus, a music world develops through continuous interaction between people, through for example, organizing concerts together, writing a track collaboratively, mixing and mastering a rapper's song, and so on. The longer this interaction lasts and/or the more often it takes place, the more likely it is that people acquire the necessary know-how for each of the possible roles in the music world -e.g. artist, listener, support personnel. 39 They also form conventions which ease and accelerate their interactions. 40 Such a music world can then be seen as clusters of people held together through particular forms of musical interaction. 41 It is therefore important to identify and analyze these forms of musical interaction which are characteristic for a certain music world.
Once these characteristic interactions are identified, both actors in such a music world and the interactions between them can then be mapped in a network model and analyzed, at least partly,

Music scenes
One proponent for the concept of the music scene is Andy Bennett, a professor of cultural sociology. He and Richard A. Peterson describe music scenes as contexts in which clusters of producers, musicians, and fans collectively share their common musical tastes and collectively distinguish themselves from others. 42 They add that people in a scene unite in order to "collectively create music for their own enjoyment." 43 Thus, scenes are often seen as "informal assemblages," characterized by Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture and "grassroots musical activities." 44 With DIY culture comes autonomy, self-empowerment and independence from neoliberal, market-driven societies. 45 Yet, scenes can also become part of the global music industry. More often however, they function independently from it -helped by technological progress which cheapens both production (through relatively cheap or bootlegged software) and (online) distribution. 46 Since people's involvement in a scene varies, and because scenes grow and shrink, Bennett and Peterson argue that it would not make sense to differentiate scenes from non-scenes, nor members from nonmembers. One should instead focus on analyzing "the degree to which a situation exhibits [a scene's] characteristics." 47 Bennett and Peterson distinguish between three different types of music scenes: Local scenes "clustered around a specific geographic focus," translocal scenes that comprise "widely scattered local scenes drawn into regular communication around a distinctive form of music and lifestyle," and virtual scenes "in which people scattered across great physical spaces create the sense of scene via fanzines and, increasingly, through the Internet." 48 I find this division into the local, the translocal, and the virtual helpful, even though it does not always makes sense to classify a certain scene as either local or translocal or virtual. It is the links and breaking points between the local, the translocal and the virtual which can lead to interesting questions revolving around notions such as identity, home, or authenticity. 42 Bennett and Peterson,"Introducing Music Scenes," 1. 43 Bennett and Peterson,3. 44 Bennett and Peterson,[4][5][6] Bennett and Guerra, "Rethinking DIY Culture in a Post-Industrial and Global Context," 12. 46 Bennett and Peterson,"Introducing Music Scenes,[4][5][6]12. 48 Bennett and Peterson,[6][7]

Local scenes
To summarize, we view a local scene to be a focused social activity that takes place in a delimited space and over a specific span of time in which clusters of producers, musicians, and fans realize their common musical taste, collectively distinguishing themselves from others by using music and cultural signs often appropriated from other places, but recombined and developed in ways that come to represent the local scene. 49 It is thus not any one cultural artifact that makes a specific scene, but rather the mixture of different elements. According to Bennett and Peterson, a "narrative of the local" is often constructed through appropriation of globalized music and incorporation of local dialects, clothing styles, knowledge, or local struggles against racism, classism, sexism etc. 50 They also explicitly mention hip hop culture as a good example of a local scene which -while seeming to be rather translocal at first glance -is "locally reworked" and, content-wise, deals with topics like race, inequality, oppression, identity and place with varying degrees of locality. 51 It thus undergoes a process of "glocalization" 52 and is adapted to "localized patterns and practices, reinventing hiphop according to entirely contingent and locally relevant logics." 53 This leads to a variety of expressions of locally authentic hip hop which each feed off differing social environments and aesthetics. 54 Lebanese rapper El Rass sees this process of glocalization with regard to Arab(ic) rap as accomplished, saying that "on est passé du rap en arabe au rap arabe." 55 Focusing on the locality of a scene might be especially rewarding when working on hip hop culture because of the role authenticity plays in the culture (see section 5.3.2 below). The question of whether a participant is perceived as authentic is always answered against the background of local knowledge, and is hence highly dependent on local circumstances. 56 A specific local hip hop culture is always the "product of locality, that is to say, the particular local circumstances under which hip hop is appropriated." 57 For example, Bennett recounts that, among participants in the Frankfurt hip hop scene, "it was argued that only when local rappers started to write and perform 49 Bennett and Peterson,8. 50 Bennett and Peterson,7. 51 Bennett and Peterson,8;Bennett,Cultures of Popular Music,102. 52 See i.e. Robertson, "Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity." 53 Forman,The 'Hood Comes First: Race,Space,24. 54 Bennett,Popular Music and Youth Culture,150. 55 Nashara, "« Une sorte de fierté est revenue ». Entretien avec le Rappeur El Rass," 7. 56 Bennett,Popular Music and Youth Culture,164. 57 Bennett,164. texts in the German language did their songs begin to work as an authentic form of communication with the audience." 58 While this emancipation process through the use of local languages has been studied extensively in different linguistic environments, 59 there is yet another intriguing approach to hip hop as a local scene: Some artists mention that they see hip hop itself as either a "'deterritorialized' locus of identification" 60 or as "'the local' capable of offering globally dispersed individuals a point of reference and cultural retreat." 61 Like the Muslim umma, the Global Hip Hop Nation functions as a worldwide network of 'believers' around the world who have created 'nationhood' through cultural, ideological, and imaginary means. 62 I will come back to the term, "Hip Hop Nation" below. 63 For the moment, let us zoom in on one of the best examples for this approach to locality: Chyno's first album, Making music to feel at home. In this debut album, Chyno, a Beirut-based rapper of Syrian-Filipino roots who has lived, among other places, also in Saudi Arabia and Spain, musically processes feelings of not fitting in, of loneliness, and of how rap music and hip hop culture helped him find a place to feel at home.
In an interview, he recounts what attracted him to the culture in the first place: Chyno: I thought that stuff was really cool. I'd never seen anything like it, so I was into that culture before I even meet [sic!] any Americans. And I didn't have a lot of friends, because I didn't speak Arabic that well. So I went down and met a few friends, but watching "Hip Hop Hooray" by Naughty by Nature, that was the coolest thing for me, all these people dressed up so uniquely and awesomely, and having such a good time at the basketball court, throwing their hands in the air. I thought, "What is this thing that is so communal and awesome? This is so different. I've never seen anything like this. They're all together. They're singing together. It's awesome. Where is this place, and what is this thing?" And from then on I really loved hip hop. Hip hop is the only culture to which I feel assimilated, more than any other place, or any other culture. I am fluent in hip hop, in any language, so I could go to anywhere and break it down with anybody, from when it started until now. I don't feel alienated by my beliefs when it comes to hip hop. But when I'm here, in the 58 Bennett,141. 59 See e.g.: Manabe, "Globalization and Japanese Creativity"; Johnston, " Middle East, the way I think is a bit alien to some people, and it's the same in the Philippines, and it was the same when I was living in Barcelona, for a while. 64

Translocal scenes
As we have seen above, Bennett and Peterson claim that hip hop is best understood as local scenes because of these scenes' local reworkings of a seemingly translocal culture. They contrast such local scenes with translocal scenes: Often the most self-conscious local music scenes that focus on a particular kind of music are in regular contact with similar local scenes in distant places. They interact with each other through the exchange of recordings, bands, fans, and fanzines. These we call translocal scenes because, while they are local, they are also connected with groups of kindred spirits many miles away. 65 There certainly are some hip hop scenes which feature many translocal characteristics. Bennett and Peterson mention the music festival as a special example of a translocal scene. Such a multiday event is special in that it draws together not necessarily local scenes but scattered individuals. These individuals come together for the duration of the festival. The longer the festival, the more likely it is that the participants can act out their scene-internal expectations and rules with regard to music taste, and also for example, through clothing style, sexual relations, or recreational drug use. 66 Slightly less intensive but still relevant for the building of translocal scenes are concerts and events. For example, the Arab migrant community in European hip hop and migration hot spots like Berlin quite often offer the opportunity to meet with rappers and activists living in other diasporic communities or Arab countries. 67

Virtual scenes and online tribes
People who are part of a virtual scene often live geographically far from each other. Unlike in translocal scenes, they cannot meet regularly at a shared physical location like a festival, so it is important that they can agree on a virtual meeting place. Hence, all virtual scenes have some 64 Thornburgh, "Chyno on Beirut Battle Rap and the Lebanese Revolution." 65 Bennett and Peterson,"Introducing Music Scenes,[8][9][9][10]  A concept closely related to virtual scenes is O'Neill's notion of "online tribes": By "online tribes," he understands projects or "social formations which favour grassroots direct democracy, the pleasurable provision of free gifts, and the feeling of proximity to others." 77 The rise of the internet brought with it the possibility of setting up decentralized networks at very low cost. 78 This technology then led to a "'hacker ethic' of sharing and cooperation," 79 to projects built on antiauthoritarian values like openness, swarm intelligence and peer review. 80 In such an environment, authority is gained through merit. 81 Because of decentralized structures, no single person has significantly more power than others, so authority ends up distributed among different people, 82 and is based on one's reputation. 83 However, there are a couple of mechanisms which contradict meritocracy, decentrality and distribution of authority. Network analysis has shown that most natural social networks follow power laws. This means that most people in a social network have only a few connections to others, while a minority are very well-connected. These so-called "hubs" have "an anomalously high number of links." 84 Why is that so? When new people enter a social network, they have a higher probability of connecting to already well-connected people than to those who are not so well-connected; a mechanism called "preferential attachment," 85 or the "Matthew effect." During my research, I came across two virtual Arab(ic) rap scenes. The first is the community of rap fans on the platform genius.com, dedicated to interpreting rap lyrics and whose language and script use I studied in one of the case studies below (see section 5.3). The second is the community in the Facebook group, "Hip Hop Baladi," in which rappers, hip hop activists and rap fans, mostly in the Levant and Gulf region, but also from diaspora communities and all over the world, come together. I was a member of this group and observed how fellow members discussed music and current events, and also shared memes and videos. In March 2021, the group has over 77 O'Neil, "Cyberchiefs. Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes," 2. 78 O'Neil,10. 79 O'Neil,15. 80 O'Neil,16. 81 O'Neil,43. 82 O'Neil,[43][44][45][46][48][49][50][51][52][53]Linked,70. 85 Barabási and Albert, "Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks," 1. 16,500 members and, much like the the alt.country music scene mentioned above, helps people to make first contact with each other online before meeting offline or engaging in projects together.

Summary on scenes
I think a differentiation into local, translocal and virtual scenes makes sense as it helps us to ask the right questions: What are a scene's local specificities? For example, how different might the local hip hop scene in Beirut be from its sibling in Amman? What are the local sociopolitical influences and problems leading to differences in artistic output?
However, I cannot see how it could be helpful to forcedly classify hip hop scenes as either local or translocal or virtual. Putting hip hop in any one of these boxes can capture only part of the picture. For example, there are certainly scenes with a thick layer of local paint. This is true, for example, of the rap battles in "The Arena" mentioned below (see chapter 5.2). These battles sport local dialectal expressions, and references to local culture and humor, which are only understandable through familiarity with the scene's codes and local knowledge. However, even these battles -rich with local elements -cannot be fully understood without allowing for their translocal overlay. Yes, we can see them primarily as an expression of local Lebanese hip hop culture. However, even the first battle between Edd Abbas (Lebanon/Ivory Coast) and Dizaster (Lebanon/USA), moderated by Chyno (Syria/Philippines) can also be interpreted as translocal.
Not only do the rappers themselves each bring their own life stories with them and onto the stage, but they are also attacked for what they allegedly do not have in common with the audience.
Other battles followed suit featuring rappers of Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian and Egyptian descent -using different languages and registers including varieties of both Arabic and English. In addition to that, The Arena is also a virtual scene, as all the battles are recorded, published on YouTube, watched sometimes by hundreds of thousands of viewers, 86 and discussed online in a variety of social networks by people from all over the globe. 86 So far (2021-01-03), over eleven videos have reached a view count of more than 100,000 views, with one video soon getting its millionth view. At live events, normally no more than 100-200 viewers show up.

Summary
While the different concepts vary in their specifics, they share some common ground: firstly, music is an "inter-activity" in which artists produce sounds, and in which audiences listen to these sounds and give meaning to them. Secondly, music is a collective action, the joint product of artists, audiences and support personnel. Thirdly, music creates distinct social spaces. 88 The different theories on conceptualizations of music each emphasize on different aspects: Bourdieu's field theory has its strength for examining power relations. It can explain very well why, in a certain field, some people are powerful and others are not, and why the same people's power hierarchy can look completely different in other fields.
Becker's concept of the music world and Crossley's focus on the network are helpful when trying to identify all the different actors who are all somehow involved in constituting a music world.
These theories' emphasis on collective action, the role of support personnel and the importance of links between people shows that musicking is not a solitary action executed by artists but a collective endeavor. This quote by Stuart Hall sums up my own feelings about the term "popular culture." While my main focus in this dissertation is not a theoretical contribution to the understanding of the term "popular culture," I feel it is appropriate to briefly examine the term and concept, as it is through the lens of "popular culture" that rap music is often perceived, and, in the discourse on rap music, some concepts of "popular culture" can be encountered more often than others.

Dichotomy between "high culture" and "popular culture"
Let us start with the fact that rap music and hip hop culture are often perceived as forms of "low culture" in comparison to other cultural artifacts which are read as "high culture. time praise and patronization. One might think that such a view on rap music is limited to nonacademic discourse. However, Igor Johannsen describes that he had a similar experience in an academic context: During a conference on hip hop at the University of Cambridge in 2016, for example, the view was expressed that adherents of hip hop-culture should feel honored that academics see it as an object of study, ennobling hip hop through their time and attention. This argument can only be made regarding cultural forms deemed "popular," or practices of "ordinary" people. It is difficult to imagine that scholars would demand this kind of gratitude, theoretically, from Goethe or Mozart, Elias Khoury or Daniel Barenboim. Consequentially, this perspective carries implicit qualifications regarding different cultural practices, their worth, relevance, or complexity, without ever clarifying that difference in an analytically sound and convincing manner. The conviction that an object of inquiry is elevated and made more relevant by being subject to scholarly scrutiny comes with implicit forms of discrimination that discredit the academic endeavor considerably as it unmasks qualitative assumptions regarding the object as well as the subject of research. 91 A consequence of such a view on rap music is that a number of researchers write introductory articles on Arabic rap as a "side project," even though rap is unrelated to their main focus.
Besides that, there are also a few researchers doing good work on Arab(ic) rap but without sufficient language skills to confidently work with Arabic source material. 92 This shows, on the one hand, that this area is not yet researched thoroughly and that there are not yet many specialists in the field. On the other hand, it could also be read as a low-status topic which only merits treatment as a "side project," and is not worth spending more resources on -or, in the case of poor language handling, that the research community is not big enough to prevent such mistakes through peer review or thinks that rap is not worth learning Arabic for.
There is also an intriguing development in that, today, people with high cultural capital do not limit their cultural consumption to only "high culture." On the contrary, they read, watch and listen to "popular culture." It is no longer the "what" that counts, but the "how." Editors of a newspaper like Die Zeit can publish an article raving about gangsta rapper Haftbefehl -as long as 91 Johannsen, "'Popular Culture' and the Academy," 103. 92 For example, Almeida -whose work I generally find interesting -interprets an Arabic cartoon: "The man is holding a briefcase fed by a petrol pump that reads at its top ' Here, Die Zeit journalist Daniel Haas interprets and "translates" the codes Haftbefehl uses and which are, to a large extent, incomprehensible to your average "high culture" enthusiast, into a linguistic register which I surmise to be incomprehensible to many of the hip hop heads blasting Haftbefehl in the streets of Offenbach. By voicing his interpretation in a "high culture" register, Haas excludes others, outside this language register, from debating his interpretation. It could also be seen as an indication that "though the distinction popular/elite remains, the inventories of each culture do change." 94 This could for example mean that Haftbefehl is (unsolicitedly) knighted in feuilletons as a member of "high culture" while other rappers are still looked down upon as representatives of less-sophisticated "low culture."

"Popular culture" as counterculture
The significance of rap, or any "low culture," differs according to whether the justification is personal or academic. The rap lyrics that most attract my personal interest are the so-called "conscious" lyrics which criticize different forms of societal problems -a topos that matches the conceptualization of "popular culture" as "counterculture" or as "rebellion." Construing rap music as an expression of a politically conscious counterculture, critical to political and economic hegemonies, makes it also an attractive research object for research funders. My research might perhaps not have been funded had I not framed my proposal with concepts like "postcolonialism," "class," "race" etc. -all of which help portray rappers as rebels worth supporting through research. 93 Haas, "Gib dir Kugel. Der Rapper Haftbefehl ist der deutsche Dichter der Stunde." 94 Shoshan, "High Culture and Popular Culture in Medieval Islam," 68.
Understanding Arab(ic) Hip Hop as a form of "counterculture" is, however, both blessing and curse. The counterculture view firstly ignores that the "very same cultural techniques are employed by those on the opposite side of the political spectrum," 95 by rebels but also by conformists and oppressors. 96 Some rappers even use a rebel pose mainly for marketing and economic reasons -a fact often overlooked in research on Arab(ic) rap. 97 Secondly, on the one hand, reading rap as a voice of the people, for example in the revolutions starting in 2010, 98 makes it easily understandable that even something as "profane" as rap warrants serious research if rap songs are perceived as "mobilizing Pan-Arab hymns of revolution." 99 However, if, for example, Jairo Guerrero Parrado describes rap in the aftermath of the "Arab Spring" 100 as "el grito ahogado de aquellos que luchan por un cambio radical y tangible," 101 he ignores that not every rap song is a "suppressed cry for radical change" and certainly not everyone demonstrating in 2010/2011 felt represented by rap lyrics.
On the other hand, perceiving rap as an expression of the struggle against political or economic developments reduces rap to merely a vehicle for understanding these political and economic forces, and neglects that rap itself, as a form of literary expression, can be an object of study in its own right. 102 Swedenburg, for instance, argues that Palestinian rap is mostly regarded through the lens of what he calls the "struggle, or resistance, paradigm." 103 He laments that most scholars adhering to this paradigm perceive the Palestinian struggle as so important that they would only work on "serious" and "uncompromised" "high culture" and folklore, leaving aside "irrelevant" and "corrupted" "popular culture". 104 They would look down on "popular culture" and perceive it 95  as being "epiphenomenal, as an effect of more fundamental and significant forces -economic, political, military, diplomatic, and so on." 105 Swedenburg then continues to argue that the aesthetics of Palestinian rap, its heterogeneous audiences and polyvalent lyrics also have to be taken into account. 106 While I fully agree with this idea, I find its execution not too convincing.
The examples he brings forth in his article all have a political focus, contradicting the point he claims to make. More unfortunate, if Swedenburg was fully convinced of rap's aesthetic value, why did he not just concentrate on it and leave aside the complaints about other scholars' focus?
As one can find both politically conscious rap as well as rap made for other purposes, rap can also be approached from other angles. It is feasible to combine a politics-centered angle along with an aesthetics-focused approach. Almeida summarizes these options well: […] rap is not a mere 'tool' of resistance, but a creative expression of hip hop culture chosen by many Moroccans to aesthetically convey personal, local and national histories, to be part of the public sphere, to feed their own egos, to express love or hate, to develop a career in the music industry, to have fun, and also, but not exclusively, to resist dominant political, cultural or economic discourses. 107 All in all, I have the impression that both a "high culture"/"low culture" and a "popular culture"as-counterculture viewpoint are grossly overused when talking or writing about rap music and hip hop culture. Both approaches fail to identify characteristics inherent in rap music and hip hop culture which would unambiguously qualify them as one of "high" or "low culture", or as counterculture or hegemonic culture. However, both approaches are used often, and can certainly tell quite a lot about the perspective of those employing these terms.

Arab(ic) Rap
Now that the theoretical background is set, let us dive deeper into Arab(ic) rap itself. But how can we best approach it? Because everything is connected to everything, it seems impossible to try to understand any local music scene without listening to and reading about every other music scene and every other form of human cultural expression -an impossible task. Therefore, in order to better understand Arab(ic) rap, I had to limit my geographical focus. I concentrated on the Lebanese and Algerian rap music scenes for the following reasons: The two countries are geographically distant from each other, which makes it less likely to find connections between their rap scenes. However, if connections can be identified, they must be based on something other than mere convenience due to physical proximity. Other reasons for comparing the two countries include Algeria's pioneering role in the history of Arab rap and Lebanon's position as a "melting pot" of various musical influences. 108 I include, however, research with different regional foci because comparison helps in understanding regional specifics. I also have to add that the material I gathered on rap in Lebanon is more diverse than what I gathered for Algeria: I had the opportunity to stay a total of seven months in Lebanon, could meet and talk with several rappers, could go to concerts and other events, and helped organize a couple of events with a Beirut-based rapper in Germany. In contrast, I was able to make only one, very brief, visit to Algeria. There, I was unbelievably

The birth of the Hip Hop Nation
Wake up your mind black people, it's ill Superior people use superior skill We can defeat any congressional bill at will The hip-hop nation will fulfill all prophecy in society with inner city philosophy 109 Hip hop is most often read as a culture based on at least four so-called "elements": rapping, DJing, break(danc)ing and writing (graffiti). Some sources also add other elements like beatboxing, street fashion, producing music or knowledge to this list. It originated in the Bronx, New York in the 1970s and has spread all over the world. Worldview-wise, political and so-called conscious rap rap took many of its core ideas from a history of the US Black nationalist movement, the Black power movement of the 1960s, and from Afrocentrist ideas focusing on a shared Black cultural heritage in Africa and especially in ancient Egypt: 110 In the late 1970s, while the Nation of Islam reorganized after the death of Elijah Muhammad, the hip hop nation was born largely through the efforts of one of rap music's pioneers, Afrika Bambaataa. Influenced partly by the release of a British feature film on the Zulu tribe of southeastern Africa, Bambaataa summoned into existence the Zulu Nation in New York City's South Bronx in an attempt to bring about peace in a region increasingly prone to gang violence. It wasn't until 1983, when Brother D. came out with 'How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise,' that an explicit nationalist message was heard in rap music. 111 Thus, what is frequently also called the "Hip Hop Nation" seamlessly continues a succession of multiple Black nationalist movements from which many elements were taken up and   appeal of Islam within hip hop culture could be a perception that Islam is "a response to whiteness" 115 : Whether rappers self-identified as Muslims or merely appropriated Sunni, Nation of Islam, or Five Percenter discourse, embracing Islam, commonly described in hip hop as 'the black man's religion,' was an opportunity to position oneself in opposition to white Christian American values. 116 It has to be noted here that "Whiteness" is not (necessarily) linked to skin color. It is rather "whatever white people said it was, and nothing more." 117 People who are White belong to the "unmarked category against which difference is constructed." 118 People belonging to this unmarked White category enjoy certain privileges that non-White people are excluded from. 119 Such an exclusion can manifest in education, housing, employment and many other domains.
Such exclusion is demonstrated by Yassin Alsalman, aka Narcy, an Iraqi-Canadian rapper, who begins his song "P.H.A.T.W.A." with a video sequence, in which he and another rapper, Yoshua Scott, who is of darker skin color, go through airport security.
Scott: "Who do you think they're going to harass more, man, me or you?" Narcy: "Obviously me, dawg. You know Iraqi is the new Black." 120 One can summarize that both Islam and hip hop have been sometimes perceived as something Other, and hence appeal to people who self-identify as non-White. Islam is therefore a good fit for rap which -in the words of David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello -is an expression of a marginalized "Other'd nation" within US urban centers, that makes "the pale […] hurry across the deck." 121 This might be one of many reasons which eased the spread of hip hop culture to countries with a Muslim majority population.
Using the image of a "nation," the hip hop community both mocks nationalist ideas and constructs a pillar of a shared identity. Hence, it should be seen not as a conventional nation-state but rather as a challenge to the oppression of the state it was born in: 115  Members of the hip hop nation form an 'imagined community' that is based less on its realization through state formation than on a collective challenge to the consensus logic of U.S. nationalism. The language of nation is appropriated by the hip hop community as a vehicle for contesting the changing discursive and institutional structure of racism in America. 122 Nowadays, the term "Hip Hop Nation" is used mostly to refer to a "'borderless' composite of hip hop communities worldwide." 123 These hip hop communities are constructed around different identity markers. One imagined community certainly felt by numerous rappers is what Igor Johannsen, in reference to Chilean-French rapper Ana Tijoux's song, "Somos Sur," calls the "Global South." 124 This community can be understood as an "imagined community […] delineated by a virtual spatiality circumscribed by discourse, narrative and identity rather than geographical or material space," 125 and which is "politically and socially activist, revolutionary, and highly critical of the powers that are." 126 Besides this shared "Global South" identity, some Arab rap scenes focus on nationality, 127 some on religion, 128 some on ethnicity, some on language. Arab nationalism, for example, can become apparent through patriotic lyrics 129 which are often characterized by a dichotomic patriot-foe understanding. 130 On the other hand, musical innovators redefine national identities by mixing new material with musical heritage, a development which can lead to fusion music styles like that of H-Kayne and Fnaïre in Morocco. 131 The identity markers that are the focus of this research project are Arabic language and Arab culture. Reverberations." 129 In Morocco, these patriotic lyrics are critized as "watanounisme", an invented word combining the Arabic "watan" ("nation") and the French suffix "-isme". Almeida interprété par Hamidou.

Rap in Lebanon and Algeria
[…] C'est vrai que le rap est diffusé en Algérie. C'est une musique qui est très très écoutée. Il y a beaucoup de rappeurs. Mais ça se passe surtout sur les réseaux sociaux. Sur le terrain, on remarque pas ça beaucoup. [...] il y a vraiment pas de festivals. Il y a pas d'émissions trop spécialisées à la télévision, à la radio. Il y a pas d'articles, il y a pas de magazines. Ça c'est absent. 132 Among Arab countries, Algeria was the earliest to adopt rap music, with mimetic "mock rap" songs like Hamidou's (Ahmed Takdjout) Ǧaula fi-'l-lail ("Journey through the night") or his Sarwāl lūbiya ("Bean pants") being released in the mid-1980s. 133 A little later, at the beginning of the 1990s, more seriously committed rap crews emerged, fueled by political unrest in 1988 and the establishment of local radio stations. 134 These first crews -like Intik and Hamma Boys in Algiers, or Deep Voice in Oran -were mostly founded in the big, coastal cities in the North. 135 Nowadays however, rap and hip hop culture are everywhere in Algeria and are even mentioned, at least briefly, in Algerian articles in Arabic about the country's musical heritage. 136 One reason for this quick spread of rap in Algeria could be the music's many similarities to traditional Algerian Raï music, with which it shares the use of "authentic" street language, dialectal expressions, and social critique. 137 However, while rap music seems to be everywhere, it mostly circulates online through social networks as Fada Vex mentioned above.
One of the questions I was often confronted with when talking about my research was how far Arab rappers have to deal with censorship, if there are any social, moral or legal red lines they are not supposed to cross, and what happens if they are crossed nonetheless. As always, it depends. It depends very much on place, on time, on other circumstances. In Morocco, Almeida writes that a taboo topic for critique is the monarchy, 142 and, for example the official stance that the Sahara is part of Morocco and not allowed to become independent. 143 On the other hand, she observes that members of the government can be criticized which in turn helps deflect this critique from the monarchy. 144 In Lebanon, Chyno explains that foreign battle rappers in "The Arena" enjoy relative liberty with regard to freedom of speech compared to in their home countries, and even sees the rap battles as a "prerequisite" for politically engaged songs: Chyno: The beauty about the Arena, the battle rap league over here, is because it's regional, so we bring in these multiple rappers from different regions and their politics is so different than ours. There are a lot of things they can't say, where they're from. So when they come over here, a lot of times they don't even expect that we'll be able to say what we say, because they've never got to say it over there. I don't want to sound like I'm making battle rap bigger than what it actually is in the Middle East, but with what's going on in the revolution right now-people making songs cursing out ministers-I think our battles are a prerequisite for that. 145 On the one side, Chyno sees relative freedom in Lebanon. While the lyrics to many of his songs are highly political, dealing with topics like identity, migration, (neo-)colonialism, terrorism or engagement, he also takes his beliefs to the streets. However, he explains that, due to his vulnerable position as a migrant in Lebanon, he, too, feels red lines in this area: Chyno: One thing, I'm Syrian-Filipino. So at the beginning [of the protests in Lebanon in 2019/20], I was going to the protests a lot. I'm definitely for it. Back in 2015, I was down there all the time. Two weeks ago, I applied for residency to stay in Lebanon, as a Syrian. So I'm staying a little bit away from that protest itself and being vocal online, because the police are actually cracking down on people they consider part of the protest, or revolutionaries, as they would call them. 146 Always having to balance free speech, critical lyrics, societal taboos and legal censorship can be exhausting. Another issue that artists in general, and Arab(ic) rappers in particular, have to deal with is the business side of their art.

Business, production and distribution
Producing music can be expensive but rappers have a big advantage over other types of musicians: they do not necessarily need to record anything besides their voice in a studio. This limits studio costs. However, the remaining production costs are still high. 147 Rappers can reduce these costs by making use of globalization and a global assembly line: it is now possible for rappers to record their voices and then send the recordings online to someone -sometimes even on another continent -for production, mixing and mastering. 148 According to Beirut-based rapper Mad Prophet, many such collaborations in the Arab(ic) hip hop community are brokered through online hangouts like the Facebook group "Hip Hop Baladi." 149 Many artists also resort to home studios, pirated software, online and/or illegal distribution and also (rarely) to creating their own independent labels. 150 While production costs can be reduced to a certain degree, for many artists there seem to be bigger problems when it comes to getting paid for one's art: And then, the more work you put in and the more you network, it's that character of yours which is real, then you're living hip hop. Then you are gonna be the embodiment. You create a niche for yourself and a market that doesn't exist and people are gonna go to you. You know, because you are known as that person. Because you are that embodiment of that. [...] And sooner or later, the chickens will come home to roost. You know, after you put in the work. And usually people feel they plateau really early when it's really... You need to work harder. 151 Once produced, music has to reach its listeners and customers. One way is through the traditional selling of CDs. While staying in Beirut, I purchased a couple of albums at stores in Hamra, at the bookshop of the Beirut Art Center, or at concerts. Their prices were comparable to CD prices in Germany, ranging from ten to 15 US dollars 152 . In comparison, the very few CDs I picked up in shops in Algeria were very cheap, both in quality and in price -however this might not be a representative sample as I was there only very briefly. However, it seems to be clear that, just like average living costs, prices for non-pirated original albums vary considerably from country to country. At least in some regions, traditional CD sales have only a very marginal economic viability. Potential costumers are either not willing or not able to pay higher CD prices.
In Morocco, international record stores like Virgin Megastore or FNAC sell locally produced CDs at prices which hardly cover production costs and are significantly lower than those of imported international CDs (15 versus 200 dirhams). 153 On the one hand, lower prices make music more affordable. On the other hand, they prevent artists from making a living from their work. As in all parts of the world, music is also pirated both through hard copies and through online platformsan effect which can be observed even more clearly in countries with generally lower incomes and relatively higher prices for music. 154 Another way to distribute one's music is via online streaming platforms. This might not boost an artist's symbolic capital, given that anyone can publish music online. 155  Apparently, Samzz and many other rappers cannot earn a lot through their own art. Samzz hence resorted to taking on a ghostwriting job, writing lyrics which did not "mean anything" for a "talentless" club music artist. Other artists I talked with have a day job. Some, for example, work in the restaurant trade. There are also rappers who make money from selling merchandise such as t-shirts - Almeida  work, and partly for their street wear brand. Depending on the country and city, live events can also play a big role in an artists' finances.

Live performances / venues / festivals
Venues are important for the building of community. Because venues are known for particular forms of culture, similar people go there, meet similar people there, and also adapt by adjusting to their peers. In chapter 5.1.1, hip hop events in Beirut are analyzed in depth, so here I will give a brief overview over events in Algeria, in Morocco and the Arab(ic) diasporas.
In Algeria, rap is an underground phenomenon that takes place mainly online rather than at events. There is one remarkable rapper in Algeria, Lotfi Double Kanon, whom one could call "l'arbre qui cache le forêt." He has published numerous albums, gets media coverage, and even gets invited to televised roundtables and discussions, and can live off his art. Apart from him, no Algerian rapper has financially "made it" to a degree that allows living comfortably and being economically independent from other sources of income. Almost all Algerian rappers are ignored, in fact, by the local media and the wealthy. There is thus a lack of production means which, in turn, influences the art itself.
By contrast, Almeida writes that, in Morocco, almost all live rap music happens during the festival season. 160 These festivals are mostly open-air and free of charge. 161 They are free of charge because, since 1999 -when Mohammed VI became king -they have been mostly sponsored by the Maḫzan, i.e. the entourage of the king, 162 in an attempt to benefit from rap's appeal to the youth and to push back Islamism and heavy metal ("satanism"), both of which are seen as too radical. 163 The Maḫzan uses festivals also as a space for "controlled opposition" 164 where people feel they can breathe -an effect called tanaffus. 165 There is only one major independent music festival, L'Boulevard, without direct ties to the state. However, even L'Boulevard accepted funding from the Maḫzan in 2009, because they were unable to obtain other funding from either public or 160 Almeida,115. 161 Almeida,114. 162 Almeida,35. 163 Almeida,22. 164 Almeida,114. 165 Cooke,Dissident Syria,72. Live performances / venues / festivals private sources. 166 By controlling the festival scene and influencing which artists get on the stagewho tend to be the same famous ones every year, together with a few no-names 167 -the Maḫzan applies a "divide and rule tactic." 168 Artists dependent on the state certainly think twice before criticizing it too directly.
However, Arab(ic) hip hop events do not take place only in Arab countries. Due to unrest, civil war, international war, the unresolved and so-called "Arab-Israeli" conflict, economic pressure, and social pressure, many Arab rappers have migrated to Europe (and other regions). There, they

State and foreign funds and influence
As mentioned before, some states fund certain events and certain rappers. But it is not only the rappers' home countries that fund their art: foreign funding bodies play an important role for the cultural scene in the MENA region. The Institut Français, the Instituto Cervantes, US embassies and the Goethe Institut, among others, sponsor the development of certain cultural currents in these countries. Such funding is, on the one hand, a rare source of income for certain artists. On the other hand, one should ask in how far these artists and the rap genre as a whole were thus coopted into "a state tool for diplomacy to satisfy other countries' agendas." 169 The USA, for example, has used hip hop to "improve its image abroad" and has been sending "hip-hop envoys" How this kind of foreign funding both nurtures artists and also changes the topics that they address was worked out in Leonie Thal's study of the role of the Goethe Institut in Egypt. She finds that artists whose work uses words and topics like "revolution," "gender," or "education" are funded significantly more often regardless of their works' artistic values. She adds that there are more-or-less closed circles of artists who have the necessary cultural and social capital to become noticed and also, oftentimes, repeatedly funded -because previous funding is a positive criterion in the selection process -whereas other artists with comparable artistic output remain I also attended two events featuring the Tunisian rapper, El Général. One of these events was a strange combination of round-table discussion and a rap concert with a seated audience, most of them educated and bourgeois -a good example of the oddities foreign funding and research can produce.

Summary
Before moving on to the case studies, let me briefly summarize some of the points made in this chapter. Hip hop originated in New York City in the 1970s. It incorporated, among other influences, thoughts of Black nationalists and Afro-American Muslims. Since then, hip hop culture has spread all over the world. Algeria was one of the early adopters, Lebanon took well over a decade longer to establish its own scene. While events play a big role in building communities, some regions simply do not support live events, whereas, in others, both indoor and outdoor concerts can be organized. Because of limited airtime on radio and television -and, in the case of Lebanon, also because of a saturated market for alternative music -rappers use international online networks to distribute their art. Still, only a few Arab(ic) rappers and hip hop activists in the MENA region can live off their art (e.g. the Algerian Lotfi Double Kanon or the Ashekman brothers in Lebanon); many have a day job. In this precarious financial situation, both domestic and foreign funding bodies sponsor events and album productions which, on the one hand, financially enables the scene, and, on the other hand, affects its artistic direction and creates dependencies. This historic and socioeconomic overview of Arab(ic) rap music's background prepares us to better understand its scenes and environment today.

The Case Studies
This project centers on three case studies, employing different methodological approaches. In this chapter, I will introduce these case studies, explain my choice for each of them, present some material which did not find a place in the published articles, and summarize what the articles add to my PhD project. The case studies each highlight different aspects within a broader scope. Seen together, these three different angles allow for a wider perspective than each one alone could have aimed for. interpretation; it is not always clear whether they exist or not. Particularly difficult are cases where some interactions are stronger than others; consider, for example, connections in a friendship network. In these cases, the edges would have to be weighted. This would make it more complicated to interpret the interactions in a visualized network.

Social network analysis -interaction quantified
The different networks of interaction between rappers in different Arab countries show 1) that rappers are interconnected with each other through, for example, their songs and through social media, 2) that rappers form different clusters: rappers in the whole Levant are interconnected with each other while Algerian rappers seem to be less connected to rappers in neighboring countries, 3) that rappers in Algeria and Lebanon follow US rappers on social media, while French rappers were surprisingly underrepresented in both of these Twitter networks.
There are some aspects worth adding: networks based on one sort of interaction only say as much as that specific kind of interaction can reveal. For example, the absence of a Twitter following does not preclude a following on another social media platform, nor close personal ties that make a social media connection unnecessary. Followings also do not indicate what following "policy" the rappers use: do they follow everyone they find remotely interesting, or are they more selective in their followings? Because of this, an analysis of who follows whom has its limitations. Some of them might, however, be alleviated by interpreting only the overall structure of the network, and not its individual actors. The networks show that (some) people, common projects -in this case the songs -as well as social media and communication channels in general can connect people and thus lay the groundwork for the forming of culture. Gigs and venues draw music fans together. They function as mechanisms of network formation: foci. But they more effectively generate a network when audiences self-select according to taste and outlook. 178

Events as catalysts for culture
In other words, a venue is known for a certain style of music. So people who like this style of music go there and find people who think alike. Now, can what Crossley observed for punk in the UK, also be true for rap music? Literature on hip hop culture has already marked the significant influence that place contributes to the art form: Rap artists draw inspiration from their regional affiliations as well as from a keen sense of what I call the extreme local [italics in original], upon which they base their constructions of spatial imagery. 179 This spatial imagery can manifest itself in lyrics, in clothes, in gestures, in language use. Instead of interpreting the expressions of such a spatial imagery, I will instead go directly to the source of the imagery, visiting some of the places that rappers and the hip hop crowd frequent in Beirut.
The most prominent example of a rap venue in the whole of Lebanon is Radio Beirut. Radio  Everyone claiming to take part in an event could then export the list of attendees. So I signed up for these 13 events and exported their guest lists including everyone with a participation status of either "accepted" or "tentative." Of course, one must keep in mind that confirming attendance at an event on social media and actually showing up to the event are two different pairs of shoes. I did also not differentiate between those people claiming they would perhaps go to the event, i.e. with a participation status of "tentative," and those claiming they definitely would go, i.e. with a participation status of "accepted." It would only have made sense to differentiate between these two groups given the probabilities of actual attendance for each group. However, these counts can still give us a useful information on the size of the hip hop crowd in Beirut, on the importance of events for bringing people together, and on the importance of hubs in the network. Besides an impression of event size, additional insight can be achieved by focusing on the individual accounts. To do so, I built a two-mode-network out of the data (figure 1). A two-modenetwork is a network in which the nodes represent two sorts of actor. In this case, we represent events and attendees as node types. Attendees are not directly connected to each other in this network, but they are indirectly connected through events.

Number of attendees
Accounts of people going to ≥ 10 events 4 Accounts of people going to < 10 and ≥ 5 events 43 Accounts of people going to 3 or 4 events 236 Accounts of people going to 2 events 511 Accounts of people going to 1 event 3,515 Total number of distinct accounts 4,309 Some of the attendees went to more events than others. In network theory terms, their nodes have a higher degree, i.e. more connections. Among a total of 4,309 distinct people, only four claimed to attend at least ten of the 13 events, and 283 claimed attending at least three events. So "Do you have his number?" I gave him his number, and I spoke to Edd, "Edd, guess who I have with me in the car?," I told him, "Dizaster." He said, "Who, Dizaster?" He knows him but he was not expecting... they spoke together and it was really like… it was really cool. 185 When Omar Kabbani mentions that he went to the "most active MC," he provides a textbook example of a network effect: People who are already well-known and well connected are more likely to get new connections than those who are less well connected, an effect called "preferential attachment" 186 which amplifies the differences between strongly and weakly connected people.

Why not to ignore networks
As we have seen, there are many different forms of interaction in the network of Arab(ic) rap. In addition to the local networks described, border-crossing international networks warrant examination. Arab rappers listen to, for example, US-American and French rap. Some works cannot be fully understood in the context of the artist's country alone; the extent of how misleading it is to ignore international linkages is exemplified in Almeida's interpretation of the song "A la Marocaine" by H-Kayne featuring Ridfabuleux, released in 2011: While the song resorts to a number of strategies to remember the nation, it surprisingly does it in French, the language of the colonizer. Although the Constitution does not mention French as an official language, it has remained as the language of the elites and is rarely used by other than the French-educated urban privileged. French thus has a limited capacity to reach Moroccan youth, particularly the lower socio-economic classes, and thus limited means to relate to this youth. The aim of recreating the nation is therefore curtailed by the use of a foreign language with, however, a socio-economic significance. The inconsistency between the language in "A la Marocaine" and the message comes across as a lack of socio-economic awareness, devaluing its power as a song of unity. 187 185 Kabbani, Interview with Omar Kabbani of Ashekman.
186 "The probability that [a new node] will choose a given node is proportional to the number of links the chosen node has. That is, given the choice between two nodes, one with twice as many links as the other, it is twice as likely that the new node will connect to the more connected node." Barabási Almeida's interpretation of French as "the language of the elites" and a "foreign language" neglects Moroccan hip hop culture's ties to, and embedding in, a global hip hop culture. By using the title, "A la Marocaine," H-Kayne and Ridfabuleux reference the French rapper Soprano's smash hit, "A la bien," released in 2007. In "A la bien," Soprano raps about many small details that describe his generation living in Marseille. By rapping in French and by using a similar title which rhymes with the original, 188 H-Kayne and Ridfabuleux draw a connection to Soprano's song. This connection invokes pride in one's roots and local anchorage, as was displayed in "A la bien." By placing their song in contrast to Soprano's, H-Kayne and Ridfabuleux also amplify its patriotism. It is as if they were saying, "You do it the French way, 'à la bien,' but this is how we do it, 'à la Marocaine.'" Choosing to rap in French also transports this message to a French audience.
The lyrics' intertextuality, however, gets lost when focusing narrowly on local surroundings.

Summary
Analyzing culture through a network perspective can yield many interesting results. In the article on "The Local and the Global in Networks of Lebanese and Algerian Rappers", I focused on whether artists' interaction clusterings vary by geographic location. In other words, I worked on the question of whether artists tend to interact more with each other if they are geographically nearer to each other. While Algeria's rappers seem only weakly connected to other Arab(ic) artists via either artistic collaborations or Twitter followings, the Levant, in contrast, seems strongly interconnected.
There are also other aspects which would merit further analysis and which would also be suitable for a quantitative network analysis focused on Arabism in Arab(ic) rap. For this purpose, other parts of the music worlds could also be analyzed: for art is produced not only by those people conventionally labeled 'artists,' but also by 'support personnel' like producers, managers, CD sellers, etc. 189 As mentioned, a closer look at interaction in other social media networks like Facebook or at online distribution platforms like Soundcloud or Bandcamp might reveal even more networks and actors in these networks that altogether shape Arab(ic) rap.
188 "Marocaine" rhymes with "bien" in the local Marseillais dialect. 189 For the role of support personnel in art worlds see: Becker, "Art As Collective Action"; Becker, Art Worlds.

Summary
Of course, a methodological approach like the one employed in this part of the project comes with certain particularities, potentials and limits: network analysis is inherently quantitative. Therefore, it is excellent for validating hypotheses based on feelings and impressions, to test if something is true in the face of hard data or not. These validated hypotheses can then be complemented by qualitative methods. Therefore, the other two case studies I conducted abandoned this wide quantitative angle and zoomed in on some select aspects which I consider important. One of these aspects, I analyzed within the framework of my PhD project are the different language registers Arab(ic) rappers use to create identity and community. To do this, I took a closer look at Arab(ic) battle rap and the languages of battle rappers. Arabic and elaborate rhyming patterns to demonstrate their good command of the Arabic language, and their stylistic and rhetorical prowess. Others use dialect, street language, swear words and humor to accentuate their authenticity and closeness to the people. Muhandas gives two perspectives on whether to use 'high' or 'low' language:

Sociolinguistic demarcations in battle rap
Muhandas: A lot of Lebanese rappers and even the respected ones, when they hear you talking in fuṣḥā, they'll be like "What the fuck are you doing? Yo, this language, we don't use it anymore. Why are you doing this? Why don't you speak in dialect that you are part of ?" 192 Muhandas: Fuṣḥā, I think, is the common point and the Lebanese dialect is a shitty language to be honest, because the dictionary is so small. There are things if you want to say in Lebanese dialect, you just can't. You have to use the fuṣḥā word. [...] What I'm doing is using the mother language instead of using the dialect. First because it's rhythmic, its musical, and this is a language that poets 2,000 years ago were using. 193 This is what made it so easy, I mean this language has been used for so many years, in the context of poetry, so we can learn from them. […] You use the tool that makes you capable of doing more, so instead of holding a hand gun, I hold a big ass machine gun, because it makes me do more. 194 Besides working on language choices, I also explored how rappers draw connections between their art and different poetic traditions ranging from ancient Arabic poetry to local zaǧal and hip hop culture. Each link that rappers emphasize frames their art, drawing from a particular literary canon and telling a story about how the art is supposed to be read. Such a literary canon is a means to create a shared identity, an "imagined community." 195 One example would be El Rass' reference to the pre-Islamic muʿallaqāt poems, in whose tradition he apparently sees his own art:

-Māzin as-Sayyid aka El Rass, quoted by Dallāl
While I concentrated mainly on Lebanese rappers in the article, one can also find other rappers drawing parallels between battle rap and other forms of Arabic poetry. Two noteworthy examples follow in the next pages. Thereafter a couple of notes follow which deal with language registers and gender related topics in battle rap, and with reactions they provoked when I presented the research in this article.

Algeria -DRP Rap Cup, Ǧarīr and al-Farazdaq
One example of a direct connection between battle rap and other forms of Arabic poetry can be observed in the Algerian rap battle tournament, DRP Rap Cup. DRP Rap Cup is produced by the 193 If Muhandas is indeed referring to Arabic poetry here, he is mistaken by several centuries. Imruʾ al-Qais' poems, which are counted among the earliest works of Arabic poetry, date from the 6 th century. 194 Safieddine, Interview with Najib Safieddine aka Muhandas. 195 Penier, "BAME Authors, the Literary Establishment and the Publishing Industry in the UK." 196 Translation [my own]: "'I chose to name my music taʿlīq (comment). This refers to the process of commenting in the Arabic language, as indicated by an Arabic word that comes from the same root, muʿallaqāt, which is the corpus of pre-Islamic poetry and which was chosen and hung in golden ink on the walls of the Kaaba in Mecca.' […] El Rass' taʿlīq comes to make the link between Arab hip-hop and Arab poetic production from pre-Islamic poetry to modern poetry." Cf.: Dallāl, "Al-Hīb Hūb al-ʿarabī: Ar-Rās Wa-'l-Huwīya al-Ǧādīda." All of what is said is musically underlined by drums. After this introduction a modern beat is  Bevan,25. 199 Wormhoudt,29,transcription unchanged. 200 "Zulu Beliefs." By transitioning from al-Farazdaq and Ǧarīr to Tupac and Biggie, the makers of DRP Rap Cup construe today's battle rappers as direct successors of ancient Arabic poets. It can be assumed that the audience of DRP Rap Cup is familiar with al-Farazdaq (d. ~730) and Ǧarīr (d. ~728). In these poets' time, most well-known poets served a patron of high societal standing, 201 and received protection in exchange for loyalty and poetic praise. 202 By competing against other poets in front of an audience, they could both endanger and reinforce their reputation. 203 In these competitions, two elements resembling rappers' boasts and disses can be identified: faḫr (self-praise) and hiǧāʾ (slander). 204 The origin of these competitions lies in pre-Islamic times, when poets encouraged their tribes' warriors through the "magical effect" of their words. 205 To display their own and their tribe's ʿirḍ (honor) and ʿizza (power) as horsemen and warriors, poets emphasized courage, generosity, hospitality and wealth and described their people's good equipment. 206 Bedouin poets also boasted by depicting their lovers, weapons, camels and horses. 207 Though some of the poets' virtues, attributes and possessions differ from those which rappers emphasized on, one can easily identify common features between battle rap and poetic battling in the time of al-Farazdaq and Ǧarīr. In both cultures, the artists boast of their deeds and riches, praise their own people and diss opposing poets and their opponents' entourage.
Chyno: That's the essence of hip hop. It's impressing your peers. You go up, you do a cipher, you're trying to do the best you can do. You go to a battle rap. You wanna win. That's essentially the competitiveness of hip hop. 208 However, not all rappers like to draw such a parallel with the ancient tradition. One of the members of the jury at DRP Rap Cup, the Oran-based rapper Fada Vex, rejects it: According to Fada Vex, rap battling promotes individuality and has to be understood as part of hip hop culture, whereas ancient Arabic poetic battling has to be understood in its tribal and political context.

Egypt -Ahmed Mekky: "Ar-Rap aṣluh ʿarabī"
Another prominent Arab rapper who relates ancient Arab poetic battles and Arabic rap battles is poets confront each other in front of the people in the marketplace. Each one improvises a qaṣīda in which he mocks his opponent and which blinds the people with the magnificence of these poets, with the speed of improvisation and with the talent in the use of language. Even our Lord -praised and exalted be he -when he sent down to them a miracle, he sent down the Qurʾān al-karīm, because in it is a linguistic miracle. And when Mekky claims rap has Arabic roots (aṣl). According to him, these roots are the lyrical competitions (mubārazāt kalāmīya) which were held between Arabic poets way back in the 8th century and even before. This tradition of lyrical competitions reached Africa where it mixed with African rhythm and drums ('l-īqāʿ u-'ṭ-ṭabl). When African slaves were brought to the USA, they told their problems to the rhythm, an art they would later called "rap." Several aspects are worth pointing out here: The narrator boasts of the Arabian Peninsula as the supposed global origin of word contests. As markers of a poet's skill, he mentions speed of improvisation and linguistic talent. He goes so far as to draw a connection between poetic dueling and the Qurʾān by alluding to the theory of Iʿǧāz al-Qurʾan. The latter was developed by the Muʿtazila school of thought around the 10th century, and claims that it is impossible for any human to create something as linguistically perfect as the Qurʾān. Thus, Mekky points out that battle rap and its valuing of rhetorical proficiency is not only rooted in Arabic literature but also in Islamic religious traditions. Mekky thus creates a founding myth that caters to the many who speak of strong ties between Islam and hip hop culture, ties that many researchers have written on. 212

Notes on feedback, language and gender
When I presented my research on battle rap, the feedback I received was quite diverse. Two aspects particularly stuck out: language and gender. I was surprised by how much critique focused not on the methodological and theoretical grounding of my research project, but rather they read it, they said that it was impossible for there to be a person who wrote it, and that it was sent down from God; and the Arabs developed poetry further and further to the point that they created a science called metrics. And this is the division of poetry into meters according to the rhythm of the words.
[…] And the one who wrote this is al-Ḫalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī, as he was walking the Sūq al-Ḥaddādīn, and when he heard the rhythms of the knocking of swords and iron, he created the subject of metrics. Via trade routes, these ideas reached Africa and the Africans, in whose culture rhythm and drumming is to be found. And the Africans recited poetry to rhythm and music. And when Columbus discovered America, many Africans were taken there as slaves. And they told their problems and the problems of the street and of life to the rhythm. And this art began to show itself and they called it 'rap' and they trace its origin back to America but in reality its roots are Arabic. on the research object itself, that is the content of the battle rap lyrics. These lyrics were described by some of my fellow researchers as "vulgar," "not comparable quality-wise to other forms of Arabic poetry," "misogynist," "void of meaningful content," "sloppy language mixtures," and so on. Some other colleagues were on the other hand fascinated by the "witty wordplay" and "skillful code-switching" or by the rappers' skills at improvisation and engaging the audience. Both the negative and positive receptions to battle rap have something in common: neither focus on the research itself; both focus on the research object. Both reactions are triggered by something which they found in this research area but not in others.
This something is the rappers' apparent "disrespect" for academia's and White society's standard codes of communication. This "standard" can manifest in allowing only certain language registers, specific grammar, a limited and select set of swearwords, code-switching to accepted second languages/registers, and content-wise limitations in topics and opinions. The specifics of what is accepted as "standard" however, can vary greatly from time to time and place to place.
Alim very poignantly explains the social construction of "standard": Standard simply means that this is the language variety that those in authority have constructed as the variety needed to gain access to resources. 213 El Rass explains by way of example what such a "standard" might mean in an Arabo-Islamic context. He identifies tendencies of "monopolized linguistic authority" that are attacked by rappers who "penetrate this monopoly" by "appropriating the entire Islamic textual heritage": Any linguistic authority that is cornered might feel challenged and lash out. Perhaps academics, especially in the humanities, depend on precise and skillful language use. During their studies 213 Alim,Roc the Mic Right,67. 214 Translation [my own]: It is the linguistic authority itself that the ruling system seeks to monopolize [...] Any penetration of this monopoly is a threat to the network of concepts on which this system is based in order to control and shape the collective consciousness.
[…] From here also comes the desire of Arabic rap to appropriate the entire Islamic textual heritage, which has transformed itself, on the basis of superior authoritarian interpretation, into a monopoly in the hands of the ruling system. Sayyid, "ar-Rāb wa-'n-naṣṣ al-Qurʾānī: Bayn almawrūṯ al-inqilābī wa-'l-ištibāk." they have to learn how to formulate arguments, they have to learn which authors they have to read or at least quote and they have to internalize a certain standard in language register and writing style to be accepted in their field. Thus, as people who are conscious of language use, they are perhaps either attracted by artists questioning linguistic norms, or feel endangered by the artists' display of language mastery which differs so much from their own. It shows that there are other ways of playing the linguistic field which do not conform to the rules these academics have internalized themselves: Hip Hop artists been knowin that they language is "advanced." response to powerlessness enacted in the context of a preexisting gender structure." 219 Powerlessness is experienced by many young Arab males: political oppression, (civil) war, unemployment, and corruption, but also the lack of socially accepted ways of having sex before marriage can all lead to feelings of being marginalized and "emasculated." In this situation, rapping can help construct a "tough, resistant, masculine image." 220 This hypermasculine act helps, on the one hand, to solidify patriarchy, but could also be seen as a parody attacking it. 221 It certainly inspires more males to rap than females, which leads to male rappers dominating the field quantitatively. On the other hand, Almeida's research in Morocco has led her to notice that sexualized women are almost completely absent in MENA rap, which she believes stems from rap in the region being more concerned with the everyday lives of urban youth, tackling social inequities and political corruption, but also with presenting a creative and aesthetic value that does not revolve merely around sexualized women 222 I would agree in that, if we take a look at rap and pop music videos in the MENA region, it is certainly the pop music videos which put a bigger focus on sexualizing women. 223 However, the hypermasculine posture which complements the picture can clearly also be found in rap lyrics and hip hop culture -although there are notable exceptions to the rule. 224 One of the areas in hip hop culture, in which it plays a crucial part, is battle rap. Battle rap seems very much maledominated, with male attendance rates at battle rap events in the USA as high as 80%. 225 In The Arena, the male quota seems comparable. Concerning the lyrics, it does not take long to find sexist and misogynist verses:  Gangsta rap […] frequently makes use of same-sex encounters -particularly when the sexual encounter is the result of the physical subduing of one or more male partners -as a reification of the physical subduing of one or more male partners -as a reification of heterosexual masculine prowess. In this context, a man who has to "suck" another's penis or "bend over" for anal penetration is emasculated, because rap rhetoric portrays this act as one of sexual submission; the man whose body is the receptacle for penetration is imagined as the "woman," while the man who enacts the penetration anally or orally has his normative masculinity consolidated and affirmed. 229 Facing the hypersexual ego is the opposing rapper who is dissed as emasculated [4]. Sometimes, rappers also do not directly attack their opponents but use female proxies [2,3]. of belonging through discrimination of everyone not adhering to these stererotypes. As individual observers, we can be disgusted by sexism and misogyny in hip hop culture and else/everywhere.
As researchers, we can study gender roles and stereotypes in battle rap. As engaged intellectuals, we can choose to focus on them and criticize both them and the system that leads to them. While I could have written yet another study dealing with sexism in rap lyrics, 233 I think it is more important to address unanswered questions about community building in Arab(ic) rap scenes.

Summary
In the battle rap scenes studied here, community is built through a range of different tools. While rappers of course connect to their audience through their clothing and call-and-response performance elements, their most important skill is their language mastery. Battle rappers create group coherence through language choice and intertextuality.
Language plays a crucial role in battle rap. Rappers choose one or more languages or registers for their lyrics. Their language choice is influenced by the intended target group, by social conventions like diglossia, and by properties inherent in languages (e.g. morphology). Rappers show that they know their audience well by speaking a language they understand, a language they expect and which fits the context, but at the same time an original language which surprises the audience through wordplays etc. This language and the fact that both rappers and audience value it highly creates a strong bond between rappers and audience.
On a deeper level, battle rappers use intertextuality in a shared canon of works in these shared languages. Rappers have to be deeply embedded in their community to be able to divine exactly what their audience already knows. A too-obvious intertextual link, and equally a link too complicated, would fail as a stylistic device. A surprising but still understandable intertextual cross-reference, however, emphasizes the connection between rappers and their audience.  It is not only the artists' language use which is interesting, but also the language used by their listeners, by the music's consumers. It is not only the artists who shape language ideologies and identities, but also the fans. While my research thus far has been focused on either artists or their songs, now I want to look at reception. El Zein, who did fieldwork on attending concerts, wrote that:

Negotiating belonging through language
"[T]he vast majority of listener engagement with Arabic hip hop and the MCs and producers who make it is not during live events but mediated through technology. Sound Cloud, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are the primary sites for hosting and disseminating this material. Bandcamp, Indiepush, and Reverbnation, are less frequently used networks. This means that the primary mode of interaction between rappers and their listeners are comments on tracks and the virtual affectivity of 'likes,' 'shares,' and so on." 234 When I talked face-to-face to rappers in Beirut, Oran and elsewhere, they confirmed that many of the interactions within Arab(ic) hip hop culture(s) take place online. Therefore, investigating these online interactions within the communities seemed promising. What makes the platform Genius (genius.com) -on which I concentrated on in the article -special is that it focuses on song lyrics and much of its data is openly available to non-registered observers. Thus, research on communities at Genius is not obstructed by too many ethical obstacles, and it is reproducible.
Genius is a platform on which fans can upload lyrics of (rap) songs and then annotate and comment on them line by line. While it is a commercial platform financed through advertisement, all of its content is created by a community of volunteers for the community of rap fans all over the world. When looking at transcriptions of rap lyrics, one has to keep in mind that rap songs are a form of oral poetry: the written texts omit some essential dimensions. Users transcribe the lyrics and annotate them line by line, but do not necessarily take into account the performative aspects, nor music video production, nor vocal skills. Thus, a flattening of the artistic product takes place. During this flattening process, spoken language has to be transferred into written language. Decisions have to be made about the degree of precision of the transcription, and about the use of different scripts.
My research on RG Arabia, the Arab(ic) community on Genius, which is mostly based in the Maghreb, established that some characteristics of everyday language use are reproduced on the platform: fans use the same languages they use in other domains also for interpreting rap lyrics, a range of registers of Arabic and French. Both a diglossic and digraphic separation of language and script use domains was observable, i.e. the use of languages and scripts differed according to the function the languages and scripts had to fulfill (transcription of lyrics / comment / explanation / ...). Within this rich corpus, I focused especially on power struggles with regard to language and script use. Apparently, the field had been dominated for a while by Algerian Genius users who favored the use of fuṣḥā and Arabic script for supra-regional comprehensibility. When conventions changed and the community adapted new policy, Moroccan users, who favored the use of dialect and arithmographemes-based 3aransiya, became more active and powerful. (What is called 3aransiya is the same arithmographemic script as 3arabizi, albeit with a French rather than English base language.) 235 In addition to this, when analyzing Genius, I could also notice that, even nowadays, Genius (among many platforms) has not implemented support for right-toleft (RTL) languages in a way that truly equals its support for left-to-right (LTR) languages -a fact which complicates writing in RTL-languages and seems highly discriminatory.
It wasn't until I had been active in the Genius community for several years that I read an article by Fischione whose basic statements ran counter to some of my observations. She examines how the use of "weapons offered by language (vernaculars, figures of speech, citations, wordplay and so on)" 236 lead to an "untranslatability" 237 of Levantine rap and to an ever-shrinking "audience of 235 The term "3aransiya" was first used by Zaidane to describe Moroccan-French code-switching, and now also stands for "e-darija," i.e. Moroccan Arabic written in Latin script. See: Zaidane, "Emprunt et mélange: Produits d'une situation de contact de langues au Maroc"; Caubet, "New Elaborate Written Forms in Darija : Blogging, Posting and Slamming in Morocco," 389; Pennisi, "Written Dārija," 133. 236 Fischione, "Untranslatability as Resistance," 299. 237 Ironically, Fischione either proves that she is sloppy in her quoting, or that this "untranslatability" of Arabic (rap) might be more her personal problem. She builds her entire argument around the following English translation (supposedly by Dallāl himself) of an alleged part of Dallāl's article "Al-hīb hūb al-ʿarabī: ar-Rās wa-'l-huwīya alǧādīda": " [i]f poetry is the language of nonexchangeability, then it is also the language of the untranslatable .… Arabic speakers recognize how words and whole verses are made up of the same letters reshuffled …. The breaking up of words into letters and the reshuffling of the latter to extend new meaning renders the verses insiders" 238 , which is "layered in concentric circles, each with a deeper comprehension of the complexity of the text" 239 . In general, I agree with this last aspect. However, I would draw different conclusions from rappers' display of linguistic weaponry. Fischione leaves aside important aspects like musicality or performance, which in themselves make rap songs accessible to an additional audience. In contrast to Fischione, Dallāl, whom she quotes, points out the significance of these very points:

Scripts on rap album covers in Algeria and Lebanon
The article focused on the languages and scripts of the rap fan community on the Genius platform. Of course, rappers themselves also make choices of language and script. They all take notes or write down lyrics. Some publish their lyrics online on some website, or as subtitles to their music videos. However, as their art is primarily oral, there are not too many instances which show rappers' script choices. The few examples include rap album covers, which can be read as the exclusive work of self-publishing rappers or as the joint work of rappers and their publishers.
On those, we normally find the name/s) of the artist(s), the album title and sometimes additional written information or metadata.
To develop a more precise understanding of which scripts are preferred in rap communities, I  Which conclusions can be drawn from comparing these two graphs?
1. In Algeria, album output started much earlier than in Lebanon and the Algerian rap scene's album output is significantly bigger than the Lebanese one. Algeria's total output is more than three times Lebanon's. 245  When El Rass recounts that writing in Arabic was perceived as "nerdy" and "outdated," such classifications are always closely linked to concepts of authenticity, which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

Notes on authenticity and (stage) names
In battle rap, the audience decides their winner. Mashrou' Leila. If Mashrou' Leila was singing the same stuff in English, it would be one band among others. So this question of identity is crucial. 256 As Baz observes, artists considered authentic are also the ones who create or find niches which make them stick out and become economically successful artists. He also points to the importance of language for one's identity and authenticity. While Pennycook emphasizes the tension between local and global as a basis for anything "authentic," Almeida interprets street credibility using field theory: Following Bourdieu, street credibility is the amount of cultural capital bestowed by the audience and peers to the rapper in order for him or her to be legitimated. 257 Three aspects she mentioned can be emphasized: First, street credibility legitimizes a rapper; without it, there is no rapper. Secondly, street credibility cannot be "taken" by the artist, but only "given" by others. And street credibility is a measure of cultural capital -rappers have to know "local politics, society, economy, arts and so forth" 258 in order to have street credibility. For Almeida, this also explains why a gangsta-attitude and violent crime might be locally authentic and therefore a way to get street-credibility in some parts of the US, whereas in Morocco, she could not find any rappers involved in any gangsta-like acts of violence. 259 My impression of most Arab rappers is similar. I've hardly come across anyone self-describing as a gangsta rapper or anyone I would label that way and would surmise that gangsta rap does not play a huge role in Arab(ic) rap.
US-American gangsta rap can, however, be attractive to anyone sharing comparable experiences of violence, crime, drugs and discrimination. The precarious living conditions in refugee camps are just such an environment, in which Ela Greenberg -who worked in the Šuʿafāṭ refugee Camp in Jerusalem -sees the "hyper masculine" act of gangsta rappers as especially inspiring. 260  changes through "working" and "networking." He sees and points out the influence of interaction. If one truly embodies and becomes this new hip hop persona, one is not only "living hip hop" but can also "create a niche […] and a market." Muhandas, on the other hand, sees his "hip hop character" as a reflection of his "actual persona" and emphasizes a common "base" beneath both characters. He also sees the importance of interaction through his social network and through his name, "Najib." He mentions the importance of using a pseudonym which "represents something else," and elaborates further: Muhandas is "the engineered," not the engineer, the subject, as in the "engineered one." And the reason behind picking this name is because I reached a certain conclusion that we as human beings are engineered for a certain end point. And I tried to find this endpoint through my music, that's it. And this end point is really a pain in the ass because I can't see it so far and it's gonna take so much time but I feel like music is a very good platform for me to find this endpoint. So I decided to go with that name. And plus I'm a big fan of Mahatma Gandhi and his actual name is Mohandas and Gandhi represented a very disgusting struggle between peace and violence which is something I believe manifests in our everyday life, especially in this country, so I felt like it was a suitable name that represents me more but I am not satisfied with it of course. I think there will come a time when I'm always gonna change my hip hop character I think that's a good thing to do […] I think when you do music, you're doing art. And art is something that cannot stay constant or static. It's a very changing platform, it's like a sea, it's really interesting when you think about the sea, it represents to us a lot of calmness and, we look at the sea and we feel inner peace. But surprisingly if you think of it rationally, the sea is the most moving object you can lay your eyes on because it's constantly moving, and colliding and there's so much violence and action and it always represents something different. And art is the same, you know, it calms us down, but it's a very crazy world, where so many unorthodox ideas just clash with each other and staying under one name means that you're stuck in one point in this vast ocean that you can be anywhere. So changing your name means that you are excelling in music and music is meaning something different to you every day, and motion is very key, in everything, especially in music. 266 Najib Safieddine chooses his stage names very carefully. As long as he saw himself as an "angry communist," he felt comfortable with the name "Menace," given to him by his friends. When he no longer identified with the name, he chose "Muhandas" as his new stage name. He explains the name as meaning "the engineered," representing his quest for the meaning of life and as similar 266 Safieddine. to the name of Gandhi, whom he identifies with. He also reflects on the problems, change and development for a stage character. He comes to the conclusion that art is always changing, so his stage name has to change, too, in order not to get "stuck in one point." Stage names are very common in rap music: in many other art forms, for example classical music, artists are not expected to have a stage persona resembling their offstage persona. They are, however, known under one name only -in all of their different social environments. In hip hop culture, by contrast, where authenticity -albeit staged -is valued highly, most artists go by a hip hop name that they or their peers choose. They might thus be known under different names in different social environments. A self-chosen name might even feel more "real" than a birth name. As Muhandas explained, changes to one's chosen name are often accompanied by an artistic change. That said, few rappers change their stage names during their career. Among the well-known examples are US-rapper Dante Terrell Smith who went by "Mos Def" and nowadays goes by the completely different "Yasiin Bey"; Iraqi-Canadian rapper Yassin Alsalman is now known as "Narcy," a modification of his previous name, "The Narcicyst." Several rappers in the Wu-Tang Clan collective also have multiple stage names; for example RZA / Bobby Digital / The RZArector, GZA / The Genius, Raekwon / Lex Diamonds, U-God / Golden Arms, to name a few.
Summing up, being perceived as authentic is very important in hip hop, sometimes even to the degree of blurring the line between the artist's person and persona. Authenticity is given and credited by other people, and it depends on local environments. Hence, locally flavored language is a key factor for creating authenticity.

Summary
Rappers, fans and basically everyone in Arab(ic) hip hop scenes can use more than one Arabic language register (varying from very formal and/or classical fuṣḥā, to different Arabic dialects and sociolects) or even more than one language (Arabic, French, English, …). Those who are literate, more often than not, can use more than one writing system, including Arabic, Latin script and different versions of 3arabizi or 3aransiya. There is hence a plethora of possibilities for building group identity through shared linguistic choices. Rappers choose their language(s) of expression with regard to their message and their audience. They also consciously choose their stage names Summary and decide which scripts to use for their album covers. All aspects of their output have to match the rapper's "hip hop persona" and be in character. It has to be considered real. Just as rappers think carefully about their linguistic expression or intuitively express themselves in a way deemed authentic, fans face similar choices. They may choose Arabic language and Arabic script or Arabic language and 3aransiya for transcribing song lyrics. They might interpret these lyrics in the same dialect the rapper is using, or opt for the more broadly understandable Modern Standard Arabic.
They might talk about the lyrics in English or another non-Arabic language. All of these choices depend on whom they consider to be their peer group, on who they hope to gain respect and recognition from, on which languages and scripts they themselves are proficient in, and on power dynamics in the field.

Summary
This dissertation and the three referenced case studies describe a kaleidoscopic picture painted by Arab(ic) rap's local, translocal and virtual scenes. It is a very colorful picture in which differently hued dots connect with each other: rappers, producers, fans and so-called support personnel, and also journalists and researchers. Some of these dots are drawn in clusters based on a shared understanding of how authentic Arab(ic) rap should express itself. Varying shades of interpretation are observable in, for example, how artists collaborate, languages deemed authentic, scripts considered appropriate for online communication, scripts for transcribing lyrics, and of texts judged canonical.
• Artistic collaboration: While some rappers like the Algerian Fada Vex closely follow developments in Arab(ic) rap all over the MENA region and abroad, the majority have a clear regional focus. The Levant is very well interconnected through artistic collaborations like featurings, through online social media communication, linguistically, and through joint live events. For example, the battle rap series The Arena hosted Lebanese, Palestinian, Jordanian and Syrian rappers. The Maghreb's rap scene is artistically very diverse ranging from the partially state-sponsored Moroccan scene with a strong festival culture and professionally made videos, over Tunisia with a quite diverse alternative music scene in general, to Algeria with a very vibrant but mostly underground scene.
• Language: Arab rappers rap in a multitude of languages. They use different varieties of Arabic, English, French, Armenian and many other languages. Their interpretation of language use is highly context-dependent. For example, battle rappers in Lebanon portray the use of fuṣḥā either as proof of linguistic proficiency, or as something artificial and inauthentic. Each approach creates different communities of in-and outsiders. Many also mix languages and switch from one to the other, whereby they either reproduce their environment's everyday language or employ code-switches to linguistically add an individual flavor to their lyrics. Similarly, on the reception side of Arab(ic) rap music, one can find both "Panarabists" who use fuṣḥā to explain dialectal Arabic rap lyrics to other Arabic-speakers, and also those who stick with dialect for authenticity.
• Scripts: In addition to language choice, script choice is also a field in which identity politics are fought out, as can be observed on the lyrics-interpretation platform, Genius.
Technology also plays a role, as some technological environments still do not offer full support for right-to-left languages -a fact that advances the spread of arithmographemebased scripts like 3rabizi or 3aransiya.
• Canonical texts: Some rappers create their own Arab(ic) hip hop founding myth tracing, for example, the roots of battle rap back to other sorts of poetic jousts, be it those of Ǧarīr and al-Farazdaq or Lebanese zaǧal. Some of these references with a Pan-Arab appeal are employed in a wide range of Arab countries. Others, like zaǧal, are only locally observable.
These references show the diverse impacts of different musical influences: some rappers and fans listen to a wide spectrum of international rappers. Muhandas, for instance, said he had listened to German old school rapper Samy Deluxe, to Britons Rhyme Asylum or US-American Jedi Mind Tricks among many others. Nonetheless, what made him rap in Arabic was discovering the Palestinians Ramallah Underground. 267 Several rappers have stated that they came to do rap in Arabic because they were inspired by people doing what they wanted to do. However, the majority of Arab(ic) rappers cite the US-American rap scene as by far the most influential one. I had initially expected French rappers to be an important influence -because of wide-spread language proficiency in French in the Maghreb and -albeit to a lesser degree -in the Mashriq. Throughout my research on Twitter followings and after having conducted interviews with rappers, however, I had to adjust this assumption, as the French influence seems, at least in the Mashriq, not very important.
267 "And what made me do Arabic hip hop was actually Asifeh from Ramallah Underground and Boykutt. I heard them and I was like look at these people, if these people were rapping in English and they used to, they used to rap in English, we wouldn't connect with them that much, but they used the simple Arabic language and they just got me, and I felt like getting to people that way as well." Safieddine.

Summary
Arab(ic) rap is not a single-layered sketch, but rather a multi-layered palimpsest. Scratches beneath the surface layer of rappers, one sees different primers: there is an economic primer that varies from country to country, from city to city, which either provides a firm base layer which helps rappers for example through state-funded festivals (urban Morocco) and private sponsors (e.g. RedBull in Beirut) or a slippery base layer where both state and private funds are lacking (e.g. Algeria). There is also a layer in which different shades of free speech and censorship either stimulate the spread of rap music, or hinder it.
Throughout the research project, it was helpful to concentrate on particular areas of this picture in order to more fully grasp, for instance, the roles rappers assign to different languages and scripts. However, it is all too easy to get lost in the scene's multitude of fascinating minutiae. It would be easy to perceive all of it as just one Arab(ic) rap scene with regional tints. This is a view staged by rappers themselves in order to build community, and also by journalists or researchers who essentialize and orientalize Arab(ic) rap. Taking a couple of steps back, however, reveals that this picture of Arab(ic) rap music does not fill its frame. It is actually just a vignette of the Global Hip Hop Nation picture -to which it is connected through intertextuality and artistic collaboration -and that, in turn, is but one vignette of the greater picture of human cultural expression. Many Arab(ic) rappers emphasized being part of the Global Hip Hop Nation. They "make music to feel at home" in this border-crossing, worldwide community. Some enjoy having international ties to hip hop heads all over the world. Others connect primarily to their local community, but use the language of hip hop to speak to them. Whatever the primary focus of identification, the rappers' ties to either a global or a local community -or both -manifest themselves in concerts, in communication, in online social networks or in artistic collaborations.
Besides the difficulty of describing a picture overwhelmingly full of details, it is also not so easy to describe a picture that many painters are working on at the same time. For instance, in the last couple of years, a new wave of migrants added a new layer to an already existent vivid Arab(ic) rap and hip hop scene in European metropolitan areas which merits its own research , which could focus on, for example, interactions (like the ones depicted in section 5.1) between established Arabo-European rappers and their new peers.

Summary
While this picture of Arab(ic) rap is painted by Arab(ic) rappers and Arabic-speaking people in the scene, it is a picture which is academically interpreted almost exclusively in languages other than Arabic. While there are some notable journalistic projects like Saudi hip hop activist Big Hass' podcast "Buckle Up," in which he interviews rappers in either English or Arabic, and social media discourse in, for example, the "Hip Hop Baladi" group on Facebook or the "RG Arabia" community on Genius, there is very little research in Arabic on Arab(ic) hip hop culture in general, and on Arab(ic) rap music in particular. Even some of the rare articles written by people from within the field of Arab(ic) rap itself -such as by Palestinian Basel Abbas in the music collective Ramallah Underground, or by Algerian rapper Fada Vex -are written in English or French. 268 The research field would certainly profit both from having more participants in the academic discourse in Arabic on Arab(ic) rap music, and from having more ears who can listen to and process Arabic songs. Nevertheless, I hope to have contributed to a relatively new field of research, to have helped answer some of the field's questions, and to have stimulated new ones. 268 Abbas, "An Analysis of Arabic Hip-Hop"; Fada Vex, "Le rap algérien est dans la place!!" 7 Appendix 7.1 Remarks on choice of publication I chose to write a publication-based dissertation instead of a monographic one for several reasons: • Interdisciplinary approach: I employed theoretical concepts and methods from different disciplines, e.g. social network analysis, cultural studies, sociolinguistics, ethnography. Dividing my text into several shorter texts permits each to have its own thematic focus, theoretical and methodological framework.
• Quality control: publishing self-contained articles allows them to be evaluated and reviewed by specialists in each field in addition to the evaluation of the entire project by my supervisors. As I worked on the Arab(ic) community on genius.com, I contributed many transcriptions and interpretations of song lyrics to the platform. I still like genius.com for its scope and its functionality (besides some technical issues with RTL-languages), but I disapprove of its commercial nature and its advertisement/data-based business model. Therefore, I would have preferred to contribute my working time and knowledge to a truly open and non-commercial project, had there been a comparable one.