THE RAPPER AS AUTHOR: ARTISTIC PRODUCTION AND CLASS STRUGGLE IN EDUARDO TADDEO'S MUSICAL CHRONICLES – A CULTURAL MATERIALIST ANALYSIS
Eduardo Taddeo; political cultural production; rap; urban chronicles; periphery; class struggle.
This doctoral research analyzes the political and cultural production of São Paulo rapper Carlos Eduardo Taddeo, former vocalist and sole lyricist of the controversial rap group Facção Central. More specifically, the artist's most recent solo albums, entitled A fantasia faca de cadavers (2014) and O mortério dos vivos (2020). The investigative process favors the perspective of Marxist Cultural Studies, in particular, the theoretical-methodological tool of cultural materialism by Welsh critic Raymond Williams (1979; 2011). In this sense, we present how the dimension of the vivid, present in Williams' work, underpins Taddeo's urban musical chronicles and how these intertwine with elements of the country's social scenario and reality. This is because these musical chronicles bring sociopolitical and cultural elements that are pertinent to thinking about the conflicts, contradictions and resistances that are characteristic of our historical time. They also highlight, in several aspects, the current relevance of the element of class struggle based on a political/cultural production that presents an assertive critical reading of structural social issues in Brazilian society such as: inequality, racial and class prejudices, exclusion processes and state/police violence. Finally, the production analyzed highlights the centrality of peripheral art, of socially produced culture, pointing out that this process establishes a dialectical relationship of human expression that reveals expectations, disappointments, denunciations and hopes. From the perspective of the totality of social relations, what Eduardo Taddeo sings and narrates characterizes processes in which social class appears with a strategic role in relations. And, for this reason, it must be continually evaluated in its conflictual dimension in the objective and subjective sphere of human creation, envisioning in its social implications fundamental transformations that result in a new sociability, as well as in more just and emancipatory collective practices.