Emcee Chosan’s song “Blue Check Fame” interrogates the pursuit of clout and influence through attaining blue check verification status on social media platforms. Appearing on his 2023 album, Me Against the Algorithm, it is part of Chosan’s broader narratives about the benefits and drawbacks of algorithms, artificial intelligence, and social media usage. Inspired by the title of rapper Tupac Shakur’s 1995 release, Me Against the World, Chosan uses the songs featured on Me Against the Algorithm as commentaries about our increasingly digital lives.

“Blue Check Fame” is Chosan’s exploration of public perception and social media addiction. The track’s lyrics propose that the coveted blue checks create addictive behaviors as well as extreme fixations with achieving public popularity and visibility. Chosan emphasizes that after 2022, many social media users opted to pay monthly subscriptions to garner blue check recognition, and the emblem’s significance was irreversibly transformed.

Based upon lyrical, musical, and video analyses, this presentation investigates Chosan’s examination of blue check verification status and its impact on social media users. It incorporates details from interviews and personal communication with Chosan about “Blue Check Fame”between 2023 and 2025. Moreover, it integrates data gathered from a co-facilitated 2025 lecture with Chosan about Me Against the Algorithm. The presentation also draws upon theories of social media as a behavior modification tool (Lanier 2018) and motivator for chasing virality (Newport 2025). By these means, it uses “Blue Check Fame” as an example of a rap narrative critiquing social media addiction.

This paper examines the work of hip-hop artist and cultural worker Brayan “Mulato” Muñoz in the city of Pasto (Nariño, Colombia). I argue that while musicians in Pasto often struggle to sustain long-term careers within its dense soundscape—marked by intense competition among numerous regional artists—Mulato has remained audible by embedding practices of care (Hobart and Kneese 2020) into his work. Mulato’s impact is evident not only in his success as an artist, but in his cultivation of transformative community spaces.

Drawing from interviews conducted with Mulato, I explore how he emerges from an “overpopulation of sounds” (Schafer 1977) while staying grounded in the vision that guides his organization Surprise City Foundation. This includes creating and sustaining spaces dedicated to youth expression and education, human rights advocacy, citizen participation, and sexual and reproductive rights. I pay particular attention to the annual event, Encuentros Hip Hop por la Paz (Hip-Hop Encounters for Peace), which exemplifies an initiative designed as both entertainment and community development through skill-building workshops. The skills and knowledge acquisition fostered through these programs shape broader community development efforts by expanding access to opportunity (Harrison 2020).

Ultimately, I show how Mulato’ work exemplifies that creative practices rooted in care can serve as forms of resilience and long-term community-building. Mulato’s work responds directly to institutional shortcomings in his city through community-oriented action. By foregrounding interdependency, he demonstrates that listeners are worthy of care from the artists they support. Reciprocally, artists are sustained by attentive and engaged audiences.

GNX (2024) has largely failed to attain the same near-universal critical acclaim as Compton rap star Kendrick Lamar’s previous records. This is best evidenced by an infamous review score from Pitchfork: 6.6/10. As critic Langdon Hickman wrote, “By pre-existing metrics Kendrick has more than willingly slotted himself into, of course GNX would be a disappointment.” This paper investigates these “pre-existing metrics,” revealing how twentieth century conceptions of rockist seriousness still guide critics today. I argue that two metrics of seriousness remain pervasive: 1) the (concept) album as the most valuable format of musical expression, and 2) a perceived oppositional orientation towards the “mainstream.” To demonstrate this, I provide comparative analyses between the critical reception of GNX and good kid, m.A.A.d. city (2012), illustrating how discourses of seriousness have guided the reception of both records. I engage primarily with the historiographical work of Keightley (1995), Lindberg et al. (2005), and Brennan (2017) pertaining to rockist critical aesthetics. I also engage with a critique of hip hop politics as applied to Lamar’s older records by Burton (2017), illustrating how Lamar has updated his messaging to a new mode of political expression that is predominantly implicit and thus largely illegible to critics. I conclude by asserting that GNX teaches us about the aesthetic value of accessibility in popular music. Ultimately, this investigation reveals a new politics of seriousness that has taken hold in contemporary popular music, politics which are no longer beholden to the rockist idea that seriousness and accessibility are mutually exclusive.

Bad Bunny references traditional Puerto Rican genres—bomba, plena, and música jíbara—on Debí Tirar Más Fotos, which many have described as his “most Puerto Rican album yet.” The use of barriles (bomba drums) and panderos (associated with plena), layered with reggaetón rhythms and salsa samples, grounds the album in local musical heritage. While this project marks a new level of commercial and critical success for Bad Bunny through its embrace of traditional sound markers, such fusions are not unprecedented. Throughout his career, Tego Calderón has incorporated elements of bomba and salsa into his rap compositions, particularly on El Abayarde. Building on Bruno and Victoria’s concept of “productive nostalgia” in Un Verano Sin Ti, this paper compares Debí Tirar Más Fotos and El Abayarde, focusing on their use of samples and sonic markers drawn from bomba, plena, and música jíbara. I argue that both albums engage with representations of Puerto Rican identity shaped by state institutions and grounded in ideals of racial democracy through mestizaje. Through his deployment of traditional genres, Bad Bunny often reinforces state-sponsored narratives of racial harmony, whereas Tego Calderón foregrounds Black sonic epistemologies that challenge these discourses. Using frameworks of productive nostalgia, acoustemology, and Black Sound Studies methodologies, this study examines how each artist mobilizes local sound to negotiate, contest, or reimagine hegemonic constructions of Puerto Rican identity in the archipelago and its diaspora.