The author and the lyrical heroes in the Kanye West's art

The thesis “The Author and The Lyrical Heroes in Kanye West’s art” explores the ways of expressing the author’s consciousness in a hip-hop text, as well as the position of the author and other voices in a hip-hop text. Based on the assumption that hip-hop text is a polyphonic text, in the study we rely on the theoretical principles of literary scholar M. Bakhtin and linguist O. Ducrot. Due to the minimal number of works devoted to the study of hip-hop text as a literary one, as well as the absence of works examining the works of Kanye West in both Russian-language and foreign academic discourse, the current study is divided into parts devoted to the genre content of hip-hop text, theories regarding the term "lyrical hero", the genesis of the hip-hop genre and a close study of Kanye West's lyrics and his artistic concept. Using a comprehensive methodological approach, we completed the assigned tasks and came to the conclusion that polyphony in hip-hop text was unambiguously identified at the level of utterance, in particular, that the voices included in Kanye West’s works are equal in rights and are not subordinate to the author’s voice.