This dissertation investigates figurative constructions in Brazilian rap lyrics produced in the last decade, aiming at comprehending their value as elements of identity (de)construction. This research stands thus in a position that brings together the following intellectual developments: (a) studies of identity as a creature of language; (b) studies of figurativity as a founding phenomenon in language, thought, and action; and (c) studies of popular music as an important element in the constitution of the social identities. Under a non representationalist view of language, the analysis shows that Brazilian rap lyrics produced in the last decade manifest a tension between an implicit rhetoric - discernible, for example, on ontological, spatial and structural crystallized figures associated with a number of deep-rooted cultural predilections – and a more explicit rhetoric - manifested, above all, in a deliberate investment on the destabilization and resignification of such crystallized figures. This study has two principal and interconnected conclusions: considering the analyzed sample, we see, first, that a major characteristic of the examined figures is their propensity to a radical volatility, their tendency to systematically frustrate stable interpretive results; second, partly because of this very volatility, rap figures play an important role with respect to identitary processes, often blending reinforcement and destabilization of culturally entrenched oppositions, and allowing for a less dichotomic understanding of the identity interplay going on in the socio-cultural field in focus.