Abstract

By the end of the Eighties hip hop had taken root in Italian society through a twofold mechanism: broadcast by the culture industry and the mass media, incubated in the punk counterculture and occupied social centres. Intertwined with phenomena such as the «Panther» student movement, the spread of the «posse» and the end of the «First Republic», hip hop seemed to convey alternative forms of social conflict. Its ambiguous relationship with the media and, above all, with certain intellectual sectors – bent on devising a substitute for the worn-out political categories of «class» and «generation»– would prove decisive for hip hop politicization.