“La Habana que no conoces”: Cuban rap and the social construction of urban space

Studies of Cuban rap have focused on issues of race and resistance, but have paid less attention to hip hop as urban discourse and practice. Through a combination of ethnographic study of Havana's “underground” rap scene and textual analysis, this article explores rap as a response to recent changes in the physical and social fabric of the Cuban capital and to the opportunities and restrictions of life in a late socialist city.