Song(s) ‘e Napule. Geografie sonore di un'identità urbana

How do urban and popular music studies intersect? Can they dialogue to enrich both the fields? This contribution is a research experiment aimed at exploring geographies and identities that emerge in Neapolitan rap music between the nineties and the new century, through a transdisciplinary approach. Using the city of Naples as a case study and analyzing some iconic rap songs, the paper identifies specific spaces and conflicts at diverse scales; within this context, rap music, despite strongly related to clearly identifiable parts of the city, emerges as an invitation to cross pre-determined, traditional borders, offering an example of deterritorialization to draw new, unexpected cartographies. At the same time, the images of the city produced by the analyzed bands – Almamegretta and 99 Posse – suggest rap music both as an instrument to identify marginal spaces within contemporary territories and as a tool that allows spatial self-representation and, by doing so, enhances new forms of citizenship and (self)governance.