well yes I probably shouldn't have typed that, as it means this thread is almost certainly going to immediately go off on a tangent!

I'm not entirely sure what I mean, but I can at least be very specific. The rap tracks I'm talking about achieve something folkish, in a devolved, almost a pre-industralisation way. They will have a very localised, self-referencing rap, which might be an answer to somebody else's rap, perhaps referring to some falling-out among previously matey rappers. It might refer, postcode specifically, to the local pirate radio show, where said falling-out took place.

Pop songs don't do that - they're about love or whatever. Whereas certain old folk song traditions commerated a battle, a feud, a disaster. Or an agricultural tool: things specific to mining or farming. Rap, wherever it's from, before it gets big, seems to have that micro-topicality to it. Like broadsheets did.

While "rappers from Hackney" is, obviously, not exactly a community the way "northumbrian pit workers" or "railwaymen from Derby" were, the songs (raps) they make often feel like it.