The Diversity of Rap in Québec and of its Local Recognition

Wednesday, February 11^th, 4-5pm – Claire Fouchereaux, Indiana University Bloomington 

Little-known outside of the province, the hip-hop subculture of Québec, Canada, has been a place of expression for rap artists of a variety of backgrounds and aesthetic inspirations since the genre’s emergence in the early 1980s. This talk will present a survey of different stages of hip-hop within Québec, ranging from this early period, to the local scene’s first success within French-speaking popular culture in the 1990s, and to its second apogee towards the end of the 2010s and the early 2020s. It will outline the diversity of identity orientations, languages of expression, and media formats influential upon hip-hop in Québec over this decades-long existence, with a particular emphasis on the complexity of the mid-2000s to the late 2010s. Considering in more detail this later moment when local hip-hop began to regain mainstream recognition, this talk will highlight key barriers and factors that impacted rap’s position as popular culture in Québec during this period: amid the variety of rappers in Québec, why and how did certain ones become household names while other rappers did not? Ultimately, this event will showcase the history and intricacies of the hip-hop subculture in Québec in conversation with the province’s own unique mainstream popular culture.