Where You're at

I am a high school music teacher and was not exactly trained in hip-hop education. My students are very hip-hop oriented (at least, what they think hip-hop is), and I found it important to do some research. The question of identity is a central theme in this piece, I believe second to the question of hip-hop, which made the read intriguing as well as informative. Every day, I read to my students and we fall into heated discussion regarding the quality and evolution of hip-hop as we know it. Is hip-hop dead? This book is literal and figurative from cover to cover. Definitely worth the time.

The author intersperses personal experiences, interviews with rappers, record labels, and kids on the street to describe a movement of hip hop, or an explanation of what hip hop is today. He pieces this book together very well, and its organization is a testiment to his skill as a writer and journalist. I noticed a weak point in that the repetition of thequestion and answer of "what hip hop is" in almost every paragraph and chapter, if you have an issue with what it is, or a personal concern that is regarding it, you maybe more interested. His span of the globe also has a kind of import to his thesis that he doesn't really explain (why give as much time/space to French and African hip hop, for example, in what I found was a very slender volume.) OK, I'm from the West Coast and the focus on NYC got a bit tiresome too. Partway through the book I also realized that if I started reading this knowing it would be more about business and economics I wouldn't feel this little trace of disappointment. I don't want to make it seem like it's a bad book, because it really is good. The guy knows his stuff, and the references to lyrics, songs etc. flow along really well as you're reading. I wish there were more people writing about hip hop, their experiences with it and history of it. I've already started a list of tracks I want to from this book! There is a kind of problem with writing about hip hop without being a lyricist- especially in a musical genre that is so self-parodying and self-critizing. You just get bogged down in pretension or stiffness, maybe. But it usefully opens a dialogue about/on issues of sellout music, the underground, and the media. He is pretty self-conscious though of who is and how he appears to those he interviews, which at the same time displaces me, as a reader, even more than I usually am in approaching the culture/music. One great part was the use of ebonics to lower/raise the speaker in certain situations- a white exec saying "yo dawg" (oh the number of times I have experienced this!) and a black kid responding "yo dawg" - has reverse effects on each speaker. The white exec gets to be "hip" the black kid gets to be shot down.

I picked this book up at a literary agency I was interning at this summer and I was completely blown away. I am not a hip-hop head (is this a British term?) myself -- in fact, metal and hard rock are my genres -- but this book manages to explore the dialectics of a marginalized subculture in a way that is immediate and enlightening, bringing the grim urban realities as well as the privileged suburban fantasizings involved in hip-hop subculture to life, offering a very intimate view into what drives this passion both for the author himself and for a variety of cultures and key cities around the globe. It presents a variety of interesting socio-cultural issues without being pedantic, and best of all, the author is very unapologetic about making the book strictly his own -- his quest for his truth, his answers, all situated within possible truths and answers that may exist for other people. For someone coming from the other side of the mythical music border (I know, I know, metal has grass-roots in hip hop) this book was an amazing read, and has offered me an inside glimpse into this genre that has heightened my respect and admiration for it even more. Just think what it could do for you -- a hip hop head!