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MAKING BEATS joseph g. schloss BOOK

youngEINSTEINyoungEINSTEIN 2,443 Posts
edited January 2008 in Strut Central
anybody read this book?peace, stein. . .

  Comments

  • erikbeatserikbeats 129 Posts
    i read it.
    i thought it was good .
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    i read it.
    i thought it was good .

    When a funny looking white dude with no own connection to Hip Hop writes a book on hip hop it's kinda silly. This is book is Gentrification at it's best.

    Strezz strikes again!

    b/w

    It's a wonder why he's even on this site.

    b/w

    Joe knows more about production and b-boying than you do. Seriously. I'll put money on that.
  • rain103rain103 476 Posts
    i've picked it up at the library twice but never was able to finish it front to back. mostly just skimmed here and there at points of interest. good book though.
  • faux_rillzfaux_rillz 14,343 Posts
    i read it.
    i thought it was good .

    When a funny looking white dude with no own connection to Hip Hop writes a book on hip hop it's kinda silly. This is book is Gentrification at it's best.

    Just to be clear: what about this white dude's look is so funny?

    He looks pretty normal to me.
  • leisurebanditleisurebandit 1,006 Posts
    i read it, it's definitely decent. respect due to the author.
    been discussed on this board before, repeatedly.
  • hemolhemol 2,578 Posts
    I haven't read the whole book so my opinion is not fully with it, but I read one or two chapters, and skimmed over the rest of it. I think the book is primarily geared towards academics that have no knowledge of hip hop whatsoever. In this respect it is a tedious, and sometwhat saccharine read for someone who gets down with the hip or the hop. It's a great reference for people who do not have any connections of their own, but I don't feel like it really dives in much--more of a surface skim.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts

    Excuse me but you don't know me, so how do you know WHAT I know. I've skimmed it's pages and found it typical. I'll wait until more creditable writes a book.

    Based on your comments on this site, you sound pretty ignorant. That's what any of us "know".

    Also: post a picture of yourself so we can evaluate whether you have the right "look" to be speaking on anything.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    I haven't read the whole book so my opinion is not fully with it, but I read one or two chapters, and skimmed over the rest of it. I think the book is primarily geared towards academics that have no knowledge of hip hop whatsoever. In this respect it is a tedious, and sometwhat saccharine read for someone who gets down with the hip or the hop. It's a great reference for people who do not have any connections of their own, but I don't feel like it really dives in much--more of a surface skim.

    It's meant, first and foremost, as an ethnography of a particular community and if anyone actually bothered to READ the book, you'd realize that it doesn't make formal claims to represent all of hip-hop or all of hip-hop production.
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    I really wanted to like this book, especially since it has so many of my favorite Seattle artists all up in it (even Otto)...but I also found it to be an exercise in patronizing detachment.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    patronizing detatchment.

    Plaese to clarify?
  • Insulin1200Insulin1200 396 Posts
    the book has its values, albeit relatively 'dry'.
    did schloss used to to post here?
    i know some of our seattlean posters were pretty involved in it.
  • hemolhemol 2,578 Posts
    I haven't read the whole book so my opinion is not fully with it, but I read one or two chapters, and skimmed over the rest of it. I think the book is primarily geared towards academics that have no knowledge of hip hop whatsoever. In this respect it is a tedious, and sometwhat saccharine read for someone who gets down with the hip or the hop. It's a great reference for people who do not have any connections of their own, but I don't feel like it really dives in much--more of a surface skim.

    It's meant, first and foremost, as an ethnography of a particular community and if anyone actually bothered to READ the book, you'd realize that it doesn't make formal claims to represent all of hip-hop or all of hip-hop production.

    Are you looking for the most negative way to interpret what I said? I wasn't speaking on dude's knowledge at all, just the audience that the book seems geared towards. As someone who raps, and someone who makes beats, I didn't find much to enjoy in what I READ of the book.
  • jaymackjaymack 5,199 Posts
    it is a tedious, and sometwhat saccharine read

    from what i remember.
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    patronizing detachment.

    Plaese to clarify?

    I have a feeling you're going to say it's necessary for an academic treatment, but to step into an artform that has already been around for by that time like 10 years, as if you've never heard a single thing about it ever...comes across as fully contrived to me. And for who's benefit? I mean, if you have to defend the author now, for actually knowing more about hip-hop than the book indicates...isn't that at least somewhat of an indication that the book might have left something to be desired?

    Plus, it's one thing to assume by way of your investigations into hip-hop production that you don't want to make any assumptions or project your pre-determined beliefs onto your findings...but those should only be research-based guidelines. It shouldn't be followed up by writing your book as if all of your readers are adopting your research-based guidelines while reading the book. Because I doubt many people read that particular book and thank it for walking them through hip-hop like it's their first time to ever encounter it. Instead readers are more likely to be insulted that it sticks to such rudimentary analysis...as if the topic is just thaaaat far off in the distance at all times.

    So yeah, the book is apparently detached by design...and patronizing as a result of it.
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    patronizing detachment.

    Plaese to clarify?

    I have a feeling you're going to say it's necessary for an academic treatment, but to step into an artform that has already been around for by that time like 10 years, as if you've never heard a single thing about it ever...comes across as fully contrived to me. And for who's benefit? I mean, if you have to defend the author now, for actually knowing more about hip-hop than the book indicates...isn't that at least somewhat of an indication that the book might have left something to be desired?

    Plus, it's one thing to assume by way of your investigations into hip-hop production that you don't want to make any assumptions or project your pre-determined beliefs onto your findings...but those should only be research-based guidelines. It shouldn't be followed up by writing your book as if all of your readers are adopting your research-based guidelines while reading the book. Because I doubt many people read that particular book and thank it for walking them through hip-hop like it's their first time to ever encounter it. Instead readers are more likely to be insulted that it sticks to such rudimentary analysis...as if the topic is just thaaaat far off in the distance at all times.

    So yeah, the book is apparently detached by design...and patronizing as a result of it.

    I was asking b/c I wasn't sure what "patronizing detachment" means in this case...I don't usually associate the idea of detachment as being patronizing or not but now that you've explained it, I sort of get where you're coming from though the idea of "detachment" is still unclear to me since I think of detachment as meaning, "I don't really care about this topic" and I don't get that sense at all from the book.

    I'm also not suggesting the book isn't open to critique - Joe would be the first to agree if not welcome challenges and criticisms; that's how scientific-based knowledge is supposed to work. I'm not sure what he'd say to your particular criticism but since I know he lurks here, maybe he'll chime in (btw: I feel like we have a "Making Beats" thread about once a year, no?) to address it himself.

    Personally, what I've always gotten out of the book is less about the specific knowledge content around "sample-based hip-hop" and more in how it, to me, demonstrates the worth in applying ethnography to researching hip-hop communities. That might be a very specific - and certainly academic - angle to take on it but after you've read as many lousy books on hip-hop as I have, based around textual analysis rather than time spent talking and observing people, you appreciate an approach where care is taken to collect and represent data in a way that both allows practitioners to speak for themselves as well as frames those ideas for the reader to decide.

    That's why I keep noting that it's really not intended to be some kind of definitive guide - though I think it's understandable why people would seek to read it that way and I think that too is reflective of what happens when the field of general scholarship on hip-hop is so limited already.
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Yeah, not detachment as if he didn't care about his subject. Detachment as purposefully maintaining a distance between author and subject as if the 2 can never be completely intermingled.

    I dunno, I'm still more happy that the book got published than I am mad at its shortcomings.
  • verb606verb606 2,518 Posts
    I checked the first couple of pages on Amazon. I definitely need to buy this.

    Thanks for puttin me up on game, einstein.
  • JoeMojoJoeMojo 720 Posts
    I really wanted to like this book, especially since it has so many of my favorite Seattle artists all up in it (even Otto)...but I also found it to be an exercise in patronizing detachment.

    I haven't read it but I thought it was funny that he interviewed my barber (Spin of Spin's in Wallingford, who I would recommend to anyone).
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