KRS One on hip hop scholars / history

I dunno about the interview, KRS's complaints (and there are many) always seem to come back to "more people should listen to me!" and "Why wasn't I consulted?" And that Stop the Violence song was pretty cheesy...


There's a bit of a hip hop scholarship canon already formed.

Tricia Rose's Black Noise is still really great, even though it's over 10 years old. She's supposedly working on a new book, but I don't think it's about hip hop.

Nelson George wrote about hip hop from the beginning, journalistic style... I dunno, I always detect disdain in a lot of his writing on it though. Hip Hop Nation is pretty indispensible though.

Murray Forman has a LONG book that references just about all the hip hop scholarship that came out up to 2002... Called The Hood Comes First. Decent analysis, academic writing, but not all that challenging.

He also put out a reader with Mark Anothony Neal (who has some books on soul and hip hop, and a blog over at http://newblackman.blogspot.com/) called That's The Joint. I have mixed feelings about it; it's an overview, so a lot of stuff shows its age.

Kodwo's More Brilliant Than The Sun of course, not all hip hop, but I really dig his Kool Keith breakdown.

Paul Gilroy discusses hip hop (and dancehall) a lot in Black Atlantic. Really sophisiticated, I had to read the parts several times and I still don't know ALL that's he's going on about.

I've read some Greg Tate (not Flyboy in the Buttermilk, which is the most hip hop centric of his books I think), but he is so unapologetic buppie that I get pissed off too quickly. Like, he won't shut up about Living Colour STILL.

I haven't read the philosophy one in there; Last Night a DJ Saved My Life is a nice overview (of many genres).

As far as the state of hip hop scholarship, I've presented papers on hip hop panels at a few conferences... The audiences always seem really invested in the topic, which is refreshing, although I am quickly bored by everybody jumping on the "too much sex and violence these days" bandwagon. Most of them don't listen to rap any more, or don't follow the new stuff (popular or underground), they stopped a while ago -- if they turn on the radio, they might notice all the songs are about dancing (albeit to moody, scary, icy beats, sort of a submerged violent undertone maybe, but I think pop rap is way less violent and anti-woman than it was 10 or 15 years ago... "A Bitch is a Bitch"? ). People are WAY too much on the textual analysis tip, where the music is basically just the lyrics and can't the lyrics be more like Public Enemy. I want to get away from that stuff... it's too reductive, and also wrong -- did Public Enemy REALLY change the political landscape? Did "The Message" or "Stop the Violence"? If no, or not really, why keep looking for "good" hip hop in proper liberal manifestoes? Of course, rap is always "what's wrong." Also, not enough bridging between pop scholarship (which is inevitably rock-oriented) and hip hop scholarship, where pop=death.

Sorry to rant...

"And I'm going to stop right here. It has to do with plant life. Hip is the name of rose petals, the see part of rose petals, roses, their seed pod, the pod that holds the seeds of roses that makes the flower explode is called 'hip'. And 'hop' is barley and other plants, vines that make beer and stuff like that. One is a flower, hip, and the other, hop, is a vine. And then you look at hip-hop on the periodic table, it's hydrogen iodine phosphorous, hydrogen oxygen phosphorous. Well, hydrogen, oxygen--I'm sorry, hydrogen iodine phosphorous makes phosphoric acid. It makes fertilizer. Hip makes things grow in--on the periodic table, hydrogen, iodine and phosphorous. "

My favourite KRS quote came when he told Nas he should speak to the head brass at NASA, because, er, his name sounds almost the same...