‘77% of aussies are racist”: Intersections of politics and hip-hop in Australia

Abstract

The Australian government’s decision to turn away a Norwegian vessel with 438 asylum seekers on board became a national political issue and triggered a response from the hip-hop group The Herd in their track '77%'. Utilising Androutsopoulos’s (2009) framework of the three spheres of hip-hop discourse, this study explores how dissatisfaction and dissent are expressed through the lyrics, the media response to the track and through consumer channels in the comments section of the track’s YouTube video. The results show that hip-hop acts as a multi-level platform for such expressions.