(Hip) Hopping between cultures: A study on international fandoms’ perception of the Hip Hop artist Jay Park and his cultural hybridity.

Music has always been a means to understand and represent each era’s culture. In the 2010s, as the world became increasingly globalised and different countries emerged as new leaders within popular culture, South Korea appeared as a new power. While the world turned their eyes to South Korean content - in a phenomenon known as Korean Wave, or Hallyu - the K-Hip Hop scene also became subject to scrutiny. Because of Hip Hop's close relation to race, often Korean rappers are accused of cultural appropriation and the K-Hip Hop scene is considered illegitimate. While there is some research on K-Hip Hop as a result of cultural hybridity, not much of this analysis has been conducted from the perspective of its fandom. This thesis aims to fill this academic gap, by answering the following research question: How does Jay Park and his online international fandom make sense of cultural hybridity within South Korean Hip Hop music? 11 music videos and five interviews of the Korean American artist Jay Park were analysed through multimodal discourse analysis, as well as approximately 30 comments in each video's comment section. As the focus of this research was the international fandom, only content and comments available in English were accepted as part of the data set. The main concepts which guided the research were cultural hybridity, Hip Hop culture, the Korean Wave and its related fandom practices. The study showcased how Jay Park found in Hip Hop music a space to represent his own hybridity as a Korean American. This representation was often presented through key elements of Hip Hop culture, such as the emphasis on one’s own community or hard work. Hustle culture was also closely linked with the expression of South Korean cultural values, thanks to which the country progressed rapidly in the past decades. Jay Park’s attention in portraying South Korean values was interpreted as a way to deal with its diasporic experience and showed to be highly appreciated by fans who wished for K-Hip Hop to homage its African American tradition, while also showcase the specificity of the Korean scene. Through the adaptation of Hip Hop to the specific context of South Korea, or through its glocalization, Jay Park was able to find the means to express his artistry freely, in contrast with his regulated and challenging career in Kpop. Jay Park’s efforts in consolidating the K-hip hop scene provided a successful example of Asian American representation within the Hip Hop industry.