Thick description interpretation of cultures in music lyrics from the Italian outskirts

Abstract This article provides an in-depth examination of the creation of meaning within a youth cultural formation known as malessere (malaise), which emerged in the suburbs of Naples. It explores how rap and trap music function as infrastructures of meaning in platformized media environments. Rather than focusing on the phenomenon as a trend, the study reconstructs the dense network of symbols, affections, and material aspirations that coalesce around it. Rooted in local urban contexts and amplified through TikTok, this formation articulates street aesthetics, luxury symbolism, territorial belonging, and performative masculinity into a structured semantic universe. Drawing on a sequential mixed-methods design that integrates digital ethnography with computational mapping of the lyrical corpus, we trace how these musical texts operate as a ‘funnel.’ We show how the subculture captures raw affective vulnerability and ‘transports’ it toward an economy of redemption mediated by luxury brands. By integrating interpretive depth with computational modeling, the article contributes to media and cultural sociology by highlighting how musical texts mediate identity formation and how platform logics reshape symbolic hierarchies in digitally structured environments.