"Brown and Proud!" The Aesthetics of Chicano Rap in the Southwestern USA

Chicano Rap emerged in Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early 1990s and established itself as a musical subculture in the southwestern United States - a region that was Mexican territory until 1848 and is still referred to as "Greater Mexico" or "Aztlan," the mythical homeland of the Aztecs. Chicano Rap picks up on this culturally charged symbolism on lyrical, musical and visual levels. This paper places this aesthetic in a regional and cultural-historical context and explores how and why Chicano rap became a phenomenon of the U.S. Southwest. Focusing on the multimedia interweaving of cultural signifiers, the analysis is based on a critical source examination of selected songs, record covers, and music videos, and is underpinned with ethnographic interviews with artists and contemporary witnesses.