Jacob P. Cupps researches music production and subgenre formation in rap, examining the means by which hip-hop musicians create and communicate identities in sound. Jacob’s master’s thesis, “‘The Sound of the Underground’: Distinguishing Alternative Identity in Rap’s Contemporary Moment,” examines underground hip-hop from the last twenty years to develop a vocabulary for the musical techniques that rappers and producers use to sound an underground identity in the music. Future iterations of this project will focus more closely on the music of the Ruby Yacht collective, Backwoodz Studioz, and Mello Music Group, taking a more hybrid ethnographic and theoretical approach. In Washington University’s music department, Jacob has been an AI for the Classical and Jazz Theory sequence, as well as for courses on the Roots of Lofi Hip-Hop a Music of the African Diaspora.