Tiny Desk Concert as an emerging site of hip hop intimacy, authenticity and accessibility

From the late Mac Miller’s introspective 2018 session to Megan Thee Stallion’s sexually empowering show in 2019, National Public Radio’s (NPR) Tiny Desk Concert (TDC) series has showcased several unique and memorable hip hop performances over the last few years. Many of these concerts have garnered millions of views and critical acclaim, making the series an important artistic medium and promotional tool for contemporary hip hop artists. TDCs challenge artists to put forth creative and intimate performances which offer unique audio-visual experiences to YouTube users. In addition to being a well-produced, accessible and engaging online concert series, individual TDC performances constitute important areas of contemporary hip hop music inquiry that raise interesting questions about musical authenticity, aesthetic negotiation, technological mediation, online engagement and genre. I suggest that these performances are becoming increasingly relevant sites of online hip hop mediation that should be further investigated and adopted as scholarly and pedagogical resources. More specifically, I demonstrate how TDC compellingly produces and distributes unique, intimate and engaging internet content that offers nuanced performances of contemporary hip hop artistry, self-representation and reception. Through analysis of concert videos and comment sections, I illuminate how the high-quality audio-visual production, unique performance practices and YouTube’s platform features enable crucial elements of live performance – liveness, immersion and interaction – to be fully present in the online context. Overall, TDC provides ways for users to engage with more nuanced representations of hip hop culture as artists challenge the boundaries of what twenty-first-century hip hop performance can be. Accordingly, TDC has the potential to provide great theoretical and pedagogical value to hip hop researchers, educators, students and enthusiasts.