Overview

Amid increasing hardship and limited employment options, poor urban youth are developing creative online strategies to make ends meet. Using such social media platforms as YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram, they're capitalizing on the public's fascination with the ghetto and gang violence. But with what consequences? Ballad of the Bullet follows the Corner Boys, a group of thirty or so young men on Chicago's South Side who have hitched their dreams of success to the creation of drill music (slang for shooting music). Drillers disseminate this competitive genre of hyperviolent, hyperlocal, DIY-style gangsta rap digitally, hoping to amass millions of clicks, views, and followers--and a ticket out of poverty. But in this perverse system of benefits, where online popularity can convert into offline rewards, the risks can be too great. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and countless interviews compiled from daily, close interactions with the Corner Boys, as well as time spent with their families, friends, music producers, and followers, Forrest Stuart looks at the lives and motivations of these young men. While these virtual displays of ghetto authenticity can lead to online notoriety and actual resources, drillers frequently end up behind bars, seriously injured, or dead.

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Forrest Stuart is associate professor of sociology and director of the Ethnography Lab at Stanford University. He is the author of Down, Out, and Under Arrest. Timothy Andrés Pabon is an English- and Spanish-speaking voice-over artist who has worked extensively in advertising and audiobook narration. He has had acting roles on House of Cards and has also been a costar on HBO's acclaimed series The Wire opposite country music legend Steve Earl. As a stage actor, he has worked off-Broadway at the June Havoc Theatre, and his regional credits include Center Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre, Arena Stage, the Hippodrome, Olney Theatre, Rep Stage, and GALA Hispanic Theatre.

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