Author: Lech Ceran
University of Łódź
Published in: Slavyanski dialozi, XX, 2023, 31, 105-119.
Abstract: The article presents the most common themes in the hip-hop music on the basis of material from Bulgaria and other South Slavonic countries (more specifically, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia). Even though individual hip-hop scenes may differ significantly in comparison with each other, they share many common features. Hip-hop artists describe the surrounding world in their songs – that includes the physical world like nature or the city, as well as intangible phenomena like feelings. Even in this field there are some common and divergent features. Some of the themes are universal for the whole genre, so regardless of different language systems their execution can be similar to a certain degree. The reason for that is mainly the slang vocabulary which in most of the countries shares a large number of identical units.
Key words: hip-hop slang, South Slavonic hip-hop lyrics, thematic dominants in hip-hop music