Research Into Audience

The audience of British Hip-Hop is a very young one at that and would appear a working class one, as sales of records do not correlate with millions of youtube hits, with Krept and Konan gathering over 5 million youtube hits, but less than ten thousand copies of their album bought. However, they did have charted success on Itunes.

The target audience of this genre consists mainly of young working class teenage and young men, as their can be seen as a shared identity between the fan and the artist, being that the artist is most probably living a similar lifestyle, as the success of this genre gives an artist more fame, than money independently. Although one artist that could be classified as British Hip-Hop, who has left his more urban gritty material in aspirations for chart success and record sales would be Tinie Tempah, an artist who has gone number one in charts in the UK as well as in America and gone platinum in record sales.

This would show there is appeal from British Hip-Hop to a mainstream audience, if the content is altered from largely about crime, to music more identifiable with partying, similar to the dance musiv genre. If the target audience of the genre had to be classified, it would perhaps come under many such as C1, C2, D and E, as well as a small part of B, as the genre attracts many aspirers as the artist themselves is usually a strong aspirer from a poor background. As the genre is fairly accessible for new artist seeking to gain success quickly through youtube videos, it could possibly demonstrate effects of the Hypodermic model. Many of the artists with over 500,000 videos are still accessible to their fans and in their working class surroundings, prompting other to involve themselves in the genre and make British Hip-Hop music too. But on a much more negative level, the genre has been criticised by the Primeminister David Cameron, for glamourising gun violence and encouraging youth to perhaps live out the lyrics of violence, leading to the government funded radio station "BBC 1xtra", must censor much of British hip-hop when played.