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Look up backpacker in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Backpacker may refer to:

• Someone who carries their belongings in a backpack:
  • Backpacking (wilderness), someone hiking and camping in the backcountry
    • Thru-hiking, wilderness backpacking end-to-end on a long trail
  • Backpacking (travel), budget travelling using hostels and public transport
• Backpacker Magazine, a backpacking, camping, and hiking magazine published by Rodale Press

• Backpacker is also a hip-hop/rap term.

"Backpacker" was originally a slang term from the 1980s for a graffiti artist who always wore a backpack containing his music collection and, more importantly, his rattle cans, markers, and spray tips. Typically, the music collection would consist only of local underground rap/hip-hop music artists. The sub-genre or sub-categorization of the music means nothing, as long as they are a local unsigned (no recording contract) artist. A backpacker's music selections are based upon three principles: 1) no mainstream, 2) the music is commercially unavailable, and 3) the music was given/sold to them "hand-to-hand" from the originating recording artist. The term gradually came to refer to someone with this musical taste, and had nothing to do with graffiti.

In the 1990s and 2000s, "backpacker" became a derogatory term to describe someone who listens ONLY to Independent rap/hip-hop music, specifically (but not limited to) the nerd-rap sub-genre of rap/hip-hop music. It is most often used in reference to (but not limited by) white suburbanite rap/hip-hop music listeners who tend to dislike mainstream rap/hip-hop music, specifically (but not limited to) Gangsta rap.

Notes: Many Hip-Hop listeners from the 80s to early 90s agree that since the invention of the Internet, Underground has died along with Backpackers and their three main principles, hence this modernized definition incorporating Independent rap/hip-hop music and locality of artists became less useful. Hip-Hop listeners with twenty or more years of experience will often disagree on the definition of Backpacker with the new era of listeners who never have experienced hip-hop without the Internet.

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