"Lasciatemi cantare la vita che fa un immigrato vero": images and imagery of the migration experience in Italian rap and trap lyrics

Drawing from cultural studies and the concept of ‘thinking with music’, the contribution traces and reconstructs the migration narratives depicted within rap (and its derivatives, such as trap and drill) produced in Italy over the past three decades. Positioned as ‘street’ music associated with working-class neighbourhoods, rap has emerged as a potent language for expression, storytelling, and occasionally counter-narratives, reflecting both internal South-North migrations and transnational movements. The children of these migrations now find themselves contributing to the construction of a hybrid, multiethnic ‘collective identity’ that transcends national and linguistic boundaries. Raps mythopoetic capacity, amplified by its increasing mainstream popularity, serves as a conduit for translating migration experiences, intersecting with race, class, gender, generation, and urban inequalities, along with various internal and external migratory stratifications, often integrated through processes of subaltern stratification. From these foundations, the analysis of rap lyrics and imagery allows for the illumination of ‘minor’ experiences and perspectives-related to everyday life, perspectives, and values-interwoven with migration.