Hip Hop Music as a Youth Medium for Cultural Struggle in Zanzibar Shani Omari Department of Literature, Communication and Publishing Institute of Kiswahili Studies, University of Dar es Salaam shaniom@yahoo.co.uk Abstract This paper examines how Zanzibari youth engage in hip hop music as a global youth culture. In spite of the fact that, globally, hip hop music has become a youth form of entertainment and a source of income for unemployed youth, on the Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar (Pemba and Unguja) its development is still slow. The objective of this paper is to examine how hip hop music on the Tanzanian islands creates the cultural challenges and controversies in society and how the youth struggle for its survival. The paper discusses the situation of hip hop on the Tanzanian islands, where the majority of the population is Muslim, and examines youth initiatives or struggles in engaging in it in the construction of a cosmopolitan culture in contemporary Zanzibar in spite of the problems and the generational conflict. The article concludes that this struggle is also contextualized within a larger historical framework of the struggle of the Tanzanian youth since soon after independence (1960s) in shaping new forms of culture.