"Keepin' It Real": White Hip‐Hoppers' Discourses of Language, Race, and Authenticity

This study investigates the discursive construction of authenticity among white middle-class young people in the New York City area who affiliate with hip-hop. It explores the ways in which hip-hop mediates the adoption of African American English-influenced speech by these young people and how this phenomenon complicates traditional sociolinguistic conceptions of identity. There is a discourse within hip-hop that privileges the urban black street experience. This forces white middle-class hip-hoppers whose race and class origins distance them from this socially located space to construct themselves linguistically as authentic via both form and content.