Hip-Hop has historically existed as a male-dominated industry. Being a reflection of urban life and struggle, past Hip-Hop artists have been forced to maintain a certain level of masculinity in order to be accepted by their urban communities. Old school rappers who talked about love were often viewed as soft or corny. Because of this perception, the existence of love in Hip-Hop is a fairly new concept.

As the movement has gained support and recognition throughout the world, love has become an increasingly common theme in Hip-Hop music and poetry. However, the taboo still exists. Even today, Hip-Hop artists and poets present their love stories in a manner that allows them to maintain socially acceptable identities. Hip-Hop stories about love must still meet the masculine ideology in which the movement is rooted in order to be perceived as real and true.

The purpose of this study is to analyze Hip-Hop love narratives and how artists present these love stories in order to construct socially acceptable identities. I believe personal narratives are closely tied to the construction of identities. It is through personal narratives that people can recount life-changing events, realize socially acceptable behavior and create individual identities.

I have researched and studied several Hip-Hop love songs and analyzed the lyrics as text and poetry. In my research, I have found five common narrative forms used by Hip-Hop poets to tell their love stories: contrasting, perceptual, spiritual, conversational and metaphoric. These five narrative forms are used not only to present the story correctly, but also to maintain positive perception among a society that might view this sensitivity as weak or disrespectable. I plan to demonstrate each of these narrative forms and show how the poets use them to tell their love stories while establishing acceptable identities.

The Contrasting Narrative
One of the most common forms of Hip-Hop love stories is the contrasting narrative. Many artists use Hip-Hop music and poetry to tell stories about the negativity surrounding their urban environments. The contrasting narrative allows the poet to express his or her love story as a contrast to this negativity while constructing an acceptable identity because that negativity is real and understood in urban communities.

A great introductory example to the contrasting narrative would be the following passage from Method Man