Majority Minority

a five episode web series about Hispanic rappers in Los Angeles

What do you think of when you think of a rapper?

For decades now Hip-Hop and Rap has been thought of as a predominately Black genre of music. Over the past few years we’ve seen many White rappers emerging as main stream Hip-Hop artists, but the participation from the Latin community remains underground and receives very little attention from mainstream media. Hip-Hop From it’s birth, has been heavily impacted by the Latin community in America and still is today. In this five episode series on Latin American rappers, this impact will be brought to light.

This series will follow the lives of four Latin American rappers, two women and two men.  We will explore their thoughts and insights on their impact as rappers: their music, their family life (immigration and origins), competition in the rap game, how they do it independently, and even the gentrification of their communities.

THE RAPPERS

Episode Breakdown

Episode One

In the very first episode we introduce our four rappers and what city they’re from. We highlight the aspects of each city as they pertain to the Latin community. Each rapper will discuss how they have created their own opportunities as we show in a candid style the things they do that create these opportunities, the phone calls, the self–promotion, the hustle. We then compare this hustle to what their families expected from then upon migrating here. This will lead us to Episode 2 where we can then segue to their family life and family history and how it has impacted their music.

Episode Two

The beginning of the second episode focuses on the family’s perspective of the artist's choices to pursue music. Most families who immigrate to the U.S. in pursuit of the American Dream expect a lot from their children, wanting them to get a good job or a top of the line education. Pursuing music is one thing but to do so as a rapper is another and the perspective of the family will be an interesting one and won't be the same across the board for each family. This diversity in opinion between each family will fuel greater interest in the story of each individual rapper. Now that we’ve introduced their family life, our four rappers will discuss how their families and communities have impacted their music, their creative process and their drive to be successful in their music.  We see the rappers in the studio, meeting with friends and locals to record music, write, produce, and put together shows or events.

Episode Three

We left off episode two with the rappers beginning to touch more on the impact of their community on their music, now we will explore the impact of their music on others. The fan base. What do these artists do for their fans? How do they interact with the listeners? These are the kind of questions we answer in episode three. Social media, merchandise, meet & greets, this is where we see the connection between artist and fan not only on a person to person level but on the business end as well. How does the rapper support themselves as an independent artist? Yes hip hop is a culture but it’s a career for these four as well. Rappers will talk about what they do as artists to connect to there fans as well as what they do to expand their fan base and grow as an artist. 

Episode Four

At this point in the series we’re getting to know the Rappers pretty well. The viewer is going wherever these artists take them, so lets take the viewer a bit deeper. This episode will tackle some heavy hitting topics,  Hip-Hop culture and the role of the Latin American community, gentrification and what’s happening to the Latin American communities in Los Angeles, and even all over the US. How do these issues effect other topics we’ve discussed in previous episodes, family life and expectations, the independent hustle, growing a fan base. Because of the gentrification of Hip-Hop culture how has the perception of rap changed? How are these artist adapting to the industry as it’s changing? 

Episode Five

On the last episode of the series it’s important that we sum up the topics that have been covered in the previous episodes and reflect on the journey we’ve seen the rappers go through. Each artist should speak on their relationship to the rap genre, their culture, and their community. This episode should leave the viewer asking, why don’t we see more Latin rappers go mainstream? Why is this so under ground? But we also want to end on a positive note, let the viewer know it’s not just these four, and open the door to all the other artist that contribute to Hop-Hop culture that come from a Latin background, and many other diverse backgrounds as well.