The Hip-Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip-hop and Why It Matters [Paperback]

There are very few people I know who look at hip hop not just with a critical eye, but with such a far reaching all encompassing perspective. Tricia Rose will flip how you have ever viewed (and listened to) hip hop, leaving you wondering how you could have missed it all along, while at the same time wondering what you can do about it: as a reader and/or an artist. As a brilliant author and professor, allow her to teach you about hip hop...4 real. Its nice to have such an astounding critically thinking woman in the game!

Black Noise was a very interesting, poignant analysis of the development of hip hop. Tricia Rose provided insight on the social, political, technological, and economic factors that contributed to the creation of hip hop. It appears, however, that Rose is no longer a hip hop expert. If anything, she is only an expert on the early days of hip hop (up to the 90s) but her ignorance to recent hip hop developments is painfully obvious in this book.

I don't believe that she has listened to hip hop seriously in 10 years nor do I believe she understands the sentiment of young (16-28 year old) hip hop fans and followers. The people who buy 50 cent, TI, Lil Wayne or Jay-Z cds and understand their music as "autobiographical" are the same people following Us weekly's coverage of Britney Spear's mental breakdown with schadenfreude-istic pleasure, or buying Mylie Cyrus cds and fighting to the death to attend her concerts, naive consumers whose reductive understanding of culture feeds their need for sensational media. The parents of these idiotic consumers are the only ones who are causing all this political concern (them, and the bougie blacks like Bill Cosby who are overly concerned with what whites think of us).

Most rappers are aware and vocal of the fact that they are producing a persona, a character. Jay-Z, TI, Lil Wayne and even Cam'Ron have all explicitly said in one interview or on their albums / mixtapes that they draw a distinction between who they are as people, and the character that they are crafting in their music for entertainment purposes (interviews Rose does not cite). Why does Jay-Z get shot at the end of his 99 problems video? It was supposed to represent the death of Jay-Z the character and rebirth of Sean Carter the person (didn't last long...but that was the point). Watch 50 cent's video for In Da Club. We see Eminem and Dr. Dre doing physical tests and experiments on 50, in essence, creating 50 cent, juxtaposed with his resulting club/market persona. Most serious hip hop fans understand this divide, and the most successful, perennial rappers are the ones who consciously and creatively craft their persona in contrast to their real selves.

The reality is, hip hop was party music to begin with. It is no surprise, then, that hip hop functions mainly as party music in popular culture. People like Kanye West, Common, and Lupe Fiasco provide a much needed alternative, but I would hate for them to be the only hip hop archetypes.

What we see in a lot of discussions around hip hop is an anxiety around what others (mainly whites) think about black people. A fear of reinforcing stereotypes and "airing our dirty laundry." This is the psychosis of the Baby Boomer/X generations that most young people reject but that Rose proves herself incapable of overcoming. That is not to say that racial stereotypes do not manifest themselves anymore, or that these stereotypes do not negatively affect black people's status in America. Rather, I argue that young black and white people are tired of the monomaniacal fixation with the politics of positive/negative racial representations. We are willing to be aware of our biases and attempt to judge individuals accordingly.

The bottom line is, black people are people like anybody else with diverse sentiments and opinions. If white people want to pay black people to market themselves as thugs, this should have no bearing on black people's overall consciousness. Instead of promoting exclusively "positive" representations that appeal to white/bourgeois standards, we should promote a consciousness around persona and blackness in America (one which acknowledges the difference between the perception of black life and the reality of black life) that seeks to exploit the market, rather than change it. Until race and culture no longer serve as capital to be commodified and sold, I believe the market will not change. Consumers want what they expect and will pay handsomely for it. Let's take advantage of that, while being conscious of who we are and our potential as a people. Instead of simple saying "I'm gettin' mine" we should say "I'm gettin' mine for us"...which many rappers do (see the philanthropic ventures of TI, Cam'ron...etc)

Ultimately, Tricia Rose provides more of the same arguments we've been seeing for the last decade, and, even in her progressive section, offers nothing new to the discussion.

An acclaimed scholar with degrees from Yale and Brown, Rose's latest work failed to disappoint on every level. Whatever your views are on hip hop, give this book a read, especially if you appreciate it. A couple themes explored in this text juxtaposed with hip hop are culture, politics and more. Rose's investigative talents surely flip around the way one views this art form immensely. Contrary to one view, her citations of more modern day tunes. combined with a listing of newer artists, indicates her ears focus on both the old style rap just as well as she does on newer, more corporate envisioned songs coloring a minority's lifestyle by negative, stigmatized terms far from the lives many in those communities live today.