This week’s blog post is going to be solely discussing Prophets of the Hood for one specific reason. It’s the only one I can get my hands on. I’m having trouble getting the online article to work without buying it (I hope I’m not supposed to), and I cannot seem to find my copy of Parodies of Ownership. So here I am, with roughly a third of what I was supposed to read for the week. Let’s see if I can make it work.
Also, sorry about the title not really making sense. It's the best I could come up with.
For one, Prophets seemed very boring to me. This might just be because I’ve really enjoyed the last two books (Toure and Dyson) and Perry’s style is very different from theirs. But the intellectual debate just tends to bore me in general, and beyond that, hip-hop just seems to flow better when it’s in a more informal format. This may just be my opinion, but I feel like hip-hop being discussed in this manor is kind of missing the point. Hip-hop is fun and energetic, shouldn’t reading about it be the same. I’m probably just being greedy here, but that’s just my $0.02.
In the first chapter I felt like Perry was trying way too hard to get the reader to see his point. He spent the entire chapter just trying to make the point that rap is black music. While every once in a while he points out that people of other nationalities do participate in hip-hop, he is always quick to make sure that the reader knows that they still have to fit into the black mold of the genre. I remember one part where he was discussing language and he made the remark that there has been a fairly strong Hispanic influence on hip-hop, but is quick to caveat that to succeed these musicians have to use African American vernacular and put their own language into that. While I am far from an expert on hip-hop of any kind, and especially Hispanic hip-hop, I don’t seem to recall this being true. If I am wrong someone please correct me, but haven’t we read entire articles on the (hidden) prevalence of Hispanic hip-hop? I guess what I’m getting at is that Perry really wants the reader to see his side of things, and that he could have used a lot fewer pages to do it.
One other thing I wanted to bring up was that Perry brings up a fourth hip-hop area. While we have already been over the East coast (message), West coast (gangsta), and South (party) rappers he mentions the Mid West as an area of hip-hop in several areas of his book. I guess I just hadn’t realized that we had a large number of rappers around here. If this really is so, is there a specific area of hip-hop that Mid Westerners are attributed to?
I think that was my biggest problem with the book. To me it just feels like Perry rambles on and on and could use a lot less to make the same argument. I usually try to use these blog posts about things I like about a book, but there wasn’t really much I enjoyed here. I can pretty honestly say that this was my least favorite reading so far. While I’ll wager that I just made up my mind to dislike the reading too early and everyone else has seen the truth about hip-hop from it, I still feel this way. So feel free, nay encouraged, to chew me up if I just missed the point entirely.
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I agree with you that you think Perry is very one sided and trying to persuade the reader. However, I think that Dyson also did the same thing. Perhaps we both enjoyed the past two readings more because of the informality. I actually did enjoy reading Perry's take on rap culture though, I thought he had many interesting points but perhaps that is because I do not mind textbook reading. I jumped around a lot in this week post because I also felt that Perry did a lot of jumping. He had some really great points, but I got so distracted by those that jumped out at me that I feel I have somewhat missed the big picture.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, good post!
Hey Brett,
ReplyDeleteI will agree with you that this was the most dense reading and probably more challenging reading that we have done. I initially took issue with the comment about hip hop being a black American art form, but I think I bought Perry's argument. She was sort of getting at the idea that hip hop is certainly a hybrid culture, no questioned asked. But hip hop was not born from a lot of different cultures coming together and making something. Hip hop was created first in the local context of the African American experience. Then, different external cultures contributed and bought into the aesthetics of hip hop or fit in well with the pre-existing values, so they got added in. But the essence of how hip hop is made or the aesthetics/process of hip hop is defined by the unique African American context... I think that's the argument... I could be off, but that's what I got. And you still may not buy that, but either way I'm looking forward to Monday!
Oh yeah, as far as Midwest rappers, there's the obvious Nelly, but also Lupe Fiasco/Bone Thugs 'n Harmony (Chi), Atmosphere (Minneapolis), Tech Nine/Mac Lethal (KC), and Eminem (if you count Detroit). I don't know about any kind of influence that the Midwest has, but they are there!
I agree that this book was not nearly as enjoyable as the rest we have been working on. I found the author's writing style incredibly difficult to read; I almost felt like I was being personally affronted since I didn't necessarily agree with everything that was said. I'm afraid I couldn't even find a strong point to blog about. He was haphazard and, to me, just seemed like he was trying too hard.
ReplyDeleteI found that, while he was trying to hard to persuade me that rap is purely a black genre, I disagreed with him strongly. While hip hop is dominated by African Americans, it does not purely belong to them. Hip hop is a swirl of cultures that blend together. While the colors mix and turn, it is true that much of hip hop does come from a certain lifestyle. But it is not purely any one thing.
All,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure where I come down on Perry's argument. I can see both sides of the argument, but, I guess I hesitate to subscribe to a race based definition of anything. What I can subscribe to is the fact that this reading selection, in particular, was not my favorite. Academically dense is one thing, but Perry's overall style and approach was not really my thing. But, I really enjoyed the comments above, see you all tomorrow.
-Tom