In recent years, there has been a flood of hip-hop scholarship???some great, some not so great. For me, there are two foundational texts???Steven Hager's Hip-Hop (recently reprinted in Adventures In The Counterculture) and David Toop's Rap Attack???two foundational movies???Style Wars and Wild Style??? and three crucial books???S>Tricia Rose's Black Noise/S>, Brian "B+" Cross's It's Not About A Salary: Rap, Race + Resistance in Los Angeles, and S>Bakari Kitwana's The Hip-Hop Generation/S>.
i have been looking for a copy of hip-hop in every used book store i've ever walked past for about the last eight years to no avail. the counterculture book has no pictures!
It seems like the reprint he's talking about is mixed in with a collection of other High Times articles..
According to Jeff, it is reprinted, but MINUS the accompanying photos and illustrations including the 2 page layout of Phase 2's evolution of a style, Top Cat's piece, and Taki 183's tag... Those alone are worth the energy and time required in trying to hunt down an OG...
I haven't read Bakari's book yet but I'll defend Rose's book as a flawed but still-better-than-most-anything-else-that's-come-out-of-academia tome.
A good book that requires no qualification: Raquel Rivera's' "New Yoricans in the Hip-Hop Zone."
In recent years, there has been a flood of hip-hop scholarship???some great, some not so great. For me, there are two foundational texts???Steven Hager's Hip-Hop (recently reprinted in Adventures In The Counterculture) and David Toop's Rap Attack???two foundational movies???Style Wars and Wild Style??? and three crucial books???S>Tricia Rose's Black Noise/S>, Brian "B+" Cross's It's Not About A Salary: Rap, Race + Resistance in Los Angeles, and S>Bakari Kitwana's The Hip-Hop Generation/S>.
i have been looking for a copy of hip-hop in every used book store i've ever walked past for about the last eight years to no avail. the counterculture book has no pictures!
I haven't read Bakari's book yet but I'll defend Rose's book as a flawed but still-better-than-most-anything-else-that's-come-out-of-academia tome.
That's a relative defense and it still doesn't translate into the book even being worth reading.
I'm sorry, but it's really time to abandon this fundamentally flawed book, but it is now part of the academy's rap canon and, given the glacial pace at which the academy moves, it will probably be treated as cornerstone text for another half century.
At one time--when there were only half a dozen books about rap on the library shelves--you could say "Well, nobody else has even tried," but now you can't even say that for it.
I know you're going to ask me what books I would assign to students if I were teaching an undergraduate seminar that dealt with rap, and the answer is that I would be forced to resort to stuff written at the popular level. And there is plenty of good primary source material out there--like Yes, Yes, Ya'll or Brian Cross's book.
I really don't think Rose's book is THAT bad - but sure, I'll gladly concede that it's very, very relative. The problem - as you note - is not just that academia moves very slow in adopting certain texts but larger than that...there just hasn't been anything very good that's come out since - at least not (and this is a big qualifier) on an academic press.
I think something like Jeff's book is actually a good compromise because it has academic qualities but isn't written strictly for that audience. But I've seen almost every major book on hip-hop that's come out via academia presses and in that mix, Rose's book really rises to the top for having some compelling ideas to debate even if her facts and assumptions can be taken to task.
I haven't read Bakari's book yet but I'll defend Rose's book as a flawed but still-better-than-most-anything-else-that's-come-out-of-academia tome.
That's a relative defense and it still doesn't translate into the book even being worth reading.
I'm sorry, but it's really time to abandon this fundamentally flawed book, but it is now part of the academy's rap canon and, given the glacial pace at which the academy moves, it will probably be treated as cornerstone text for another half century.
At one time--when there were only half a dozen books about rap on the library shelves--you could say "Well, nobody else has even tried," but now you can't even say that for it.
I know you're going to ask me what books I would assign to students if I were teaching an undergraduate seminar that dealt with rap, and the answer is that I would be forced to resort to stuff written at the popular level. And there is plenty of good primary source material out there--like Yes, Yes, Ya'll or Brian Cross's book.
I think something like Jeff's book is actually a good compromise because it has academic qualities but isn't written strictly for that audience.
I agree--I had that thought while I was reading it last year, and was wondering whether the structure--which would lend itself to being assigned to a class piecemeal--was something that he'd decided upon because he anticipated it being used in classes.
But I've seen almost every major book on hip-hop that's come out via academia presses and in that mix, Rose's book really rises to the top for having some compelling ideas to debate even if her facts and assumptions can be taken to task.
I have, too, but I'm sorry: saying it's better than Russell Potter's book or Imani Perry's book or Murray Forman's book is not a ringing endorsement.
I think something like Jeff's book is actually a good compromise because it has academic qualities but isn't written strictly for that audience.
I agree--I had that thought while I was reading it last year, and was wondering whether the structure--which would lend itself to being assigned to a class piecemeal--was something that he'd decided upon because he anticipated it being used in classes.
But I've seen almost every major book on hip-hop that's come out via academia presses and in that mix, Rose's book really rises to the top for having some compelling ideas to debate even if her facts and assumptions can be taken to task.
I have, too, but I'm sorry: saying it's better than Russell Potter's book or Imani Perry's book or Murray Forman's book is not a ringing endorsement.
1) I actually liked chapter 1 of Imani's book but couldn't keep reading after that.
2) I don't think Jeff designed the book to work in a classroom setting like that though it might have developed into that during the editing phase. Keep in mind, his original manuscript was AT LEAST 50% longer.
1) I actually liked chapter 1 of Imani's book but couldn't keep reading after that.
I thought she did some valuable work at the beginning of the book in taking on all of the poptarts desperate to establish that hip-hop's roots are somewhere other than this country, but I think I stopped reading when she footnoted a Nas lyric in which he referred to himself as "Esco" with: "The rapper's actual last name is Escobar."
1) I actually liked chapter 1 of Imani's book but couldn't keep reading after that.
I thought she did some valuable work at the beginning of the book in taking on all of the poptarts desperate to establish that hip-hop's roots are somewhere other than this country, but I think I stopped reading when she footnoted a Nas lyric in which he referred to himself as "Esco" with: "The rapper's actual last name is Escobar."
Comments
I cosign these strikeouts.
According to Jeff, it is reprinted, but MINUS the accompanying photos and illustrations including the 2 page layout of Phase 2's evolution of a style, Top Cat's piece, and Taki 183's tag... Those alone are worth the energy and time required in trying to hunt down an OG...
A good book that requires no qualification: Raquel Rivera's' "New Yoricans in the Hip-Hop Zone."
That's a relative defense and it still doesn't translate into the book even being worth reading.
I'm sorry, but it's really time to abandon this fundamentally flawed book, but it is now part of the academy's rap canon and, given the glacial pace at which the academy moves, it will probably be treated as cornerstone text for another half century.
At one time--when there were only half a dozen books about rap on the library shelves--you could say "Well, nobody else has even tried," but now you can't even say that for it.
I know you're going to ask me what books I would assign to students if I were teaching an undergraduate seminar that dealt with rap, and the answer is that I would be forced to resort to stuff written at the popular level. And there is plenty of good primary source material out there--like Yes, Yes, Ya'll or Brian Cross's book.
I really don't think Rose's book is THAT bad - but sure, I'll gladly concede that it's very, very relative. The problem - as you note - is not just that academia moves very slow in adopting certain texts but larger than that...there just hasn't been anything very good that's come out since - at least not (and this is a big qualifier) on an academic press.
I think something like Jeff's book is actually a good compromise because it has academic qualities but isn't written strictly for that audience. But I've seen almost every major book on hip-hop that's come out via academia presses and in that mix, Rose's book really rises to the top for having some compelling ideas to debate even if her facts and assumptions can be taken to task.
I agree--I had that thought while I was reading it last year, and was wondering whether the structure--which would lend itself to being assigned to a class piecemeal--was something that he'd decided upon because he anticipated it being used in classes.
I have, too, but I'm sorry: saying it's better than Russell Potter's book or Imani Perry's book or Murray Forman's book is not a ringing endorsement.
1) I actually liked chapter 1 of Imani's book but couldn't keep reading after that.
2) I don't think Jeff designed the book to work in a classroom setting like that though it might have developed into that during the editing phase. Keep in mind, his original manuscript was AT LEAST 50% longer.
I thought she did some valuable work at the beginning of the book in taking on all of the poptarts desperate to establish that hip-hop's roots are somewhere other than this country, but I think I stopped reading when she footnoted a Nas lyric in which he referred to himself as "Esco" with: "The rapper's actual last name is Escobar."
You mean it's not?
...
For real though, I missed that gaffe.