Backpacker (term)

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Backpacker is a term usually used for people who listen to Underground hip-hop/rap.

Contents

[edit] History

"Backpacker" was originally a slang term from the 1980s for a graffiti artist who always wore a backpack containing his music collection and, more importantly, his spraypaint cans, markers, and spray tips. Typically, the music collection would consist only of local underground rap/hip-hop music artists. The sub-genre or sub-categorization of the music means nothing, as long as they are a local unsigned (no recording contract) artist. A backpacker's music selections are based upon three principles: 1) no mainstream, 2) the music is commercially unavailable, and 3) the music was given/sold to them "hand-to-hand" from the originating recording artist[citation needed]. However, these principles eventually became very loose, and soon many people who listened to commercially available underground rap or "indie rap" became known as "backpackers."

The term gradually came to refer to someone with this musical taste, and now has almost nothing to do with graffiti (although certain "backpackers" may participate in graffiti "tagging.") The term also may have originated (or became popularized) through the association of "indie" hip hop listeners with underground rock movements such as "straight edge."[citation needed] The "straight edge" fashion style often involves backpacks, sometimes even if the backpack is not being used.[citation needed] As underground rap listeners co-mingled with "straight edge" rockers (or any punk rocker with the backpack style), the term may have become even more popular.[citation needed]

In the 1990s and 2000s, "backpacker" became a derogatory term to describe someone who listens only to independent hip-hop music, such as the nerdcore or "emo rap" sub-genre of hip-hop music[citation needed]. It is most often used in reference to (but not limited by) white suburbanite rap music listeners who tend to dislike mainstream rap music, specifically (but not limited to) gangsta rap and more recently southern rap[citation needed].

Many Hip-Hop listeners from the 1980s to early 1990s agree that since the rise of the Internet has made it easier to acquire music that was once localized, Underground has died along with Backpackers and their three main principles, hence this modernized definition incorporating Independent rap/hip-hop music and locality of artists became less useful. Hip-Hop listeners with twenty or more years of experience will often disagree on the definition of Backpacker with the new era of listeners who never have experienced hip-hop without the Internet.

[edit] Artists

[edit] Underground/Indie

[edit] Old

[edit] Mainstream

backpacker's distillery Podcast dedicated to hip hop music, mainly from (but not restricted to) the underground-indie US scene. Canadian, Australian & European hip hop (from UK, France, Sweden, etc) also gets its fair share in its playlists

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