Nice For What? A Critical Analysis of Drake, Millennial Feminism and the Negotiation of ‘Wokeness’ in Female Hip-Hop Fandom

As feminism enters its fourth-wave, digital natives are negotiating their political identities, beliefs and social personas in an online realm. For those who identify both as feminists and as fans of hip-hop - a genre rapidly becoming the world’s most popular style of music - these chosen identities hold the potential for internal conflict, and in some cases, for the request of a higher level of accountability from their preferred artists.

By utilizing Drake as a case study, this phenomenological research paper will seek to explore how feminist-identifying hip-hop fans within a millennial age group respond to presentations of feminism - and females in general - from one of the genre’s most popular artists. It will consider the extent to which socio-political beliefs can reconcile and co-exist with musical interests in the Internet age, and present the possibility of social consciousness as a modern marketing tool.