ReadingBillboard1979–89: Exploring Rap Music's Emergence through the Music Industry's Most Influential Trade Publication

Abstract

This article presents the qualitative content of Billboard magazine as an important resource for expanding popular music scholars' understandings of the activities, motives, and structures that shape commercial music. We argue that through careful consideration of columns appearing in Billboard researchers can resurrect, re-imagine, and update forgotten and overlooked aspects of music industry history. A thick reading of the trade journal between 1979 and 1989 reveals how rap's emergence into the field of popular music commerce was marked by struggles over its definition, placement, and meaning. In our particular reading of Billboard we emphasize its value in uncovering new perspectives on the context of innovation within popular music and enhancing existing production of culture analyses.