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So has anyone here read this then? I’m posting it in music because it’s more about the politics brought up by Hip Hop than any sort of literary concerns. Neate is a award winning author ( 12 Bar Blues) whose also been nuturing a love of Hip Hop for the past 15-16 years. This is an extended meditation and travelogue, dealing with the different facets of a music that can exemplify so many differing concerns – the conflicts of race and the appropriation of black cool, by both White (and other) consumers and capital itself, the power of Hip Hop’s cultural capital vs. the poverty of it’s audiences, the way Hip Hop is used as a medium for negotiation and imagination of identities and to articulate protest in some very different cultures, and ultimately, what this might have to say Hip Hop as a potential medium for change. What a popular music and culture can mean, actually and potentially, in this weird time we live in. As part of his research for the book he travelled to New York, Japan, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Rio, following the thread of his argument – I still don’t know if it pulls together as a coherently yet, it’s so rich with ideas and contradictions, I’m still digesting it. But it’s a great book nonetheless. I’ll post some quotes when I have it with me next. This is as much a public service announcement as anything else.
I really liked it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet, this seems to be part of his challenge to the reader on concluding It’s genre busting and confusing in the way that good Hip Hop should be, sampling and pulling in disparate elements from all over the place. It’s very personal (travelogue and interview based), leavened with a heavy dose of theory, as well as his experience of travelling through in some of the worst ghettos on the planet.
Here’s an extract.
Love to hear anyone else’s impression. But if you’re interested in the mix of politics and popular culture in this gloablised age, it’s pretty much an essential read. |
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