Jeff Chang: Why Hip-Hop Writing Doesn't All Suck In 2005
Peace Tamara,
I've been really enjoying Country Fried Soul. There's lots to love about your book. One thing I really dig is how you designed it to be explicitly hip-hop. I really love your mixtape concept. It's like the funk is in the format, too!
That's what is also interesting to me about hip-hop writing. First off, there's a huge variety of styles—as many as there are MCs or graf writers or DJ or b-girl/b-boy styles--and mad quality to be had. Don't believe me? Check Raquel Cepeda's incredible anthology And It Don't Stop or Oliver Wang's Classic Material. (And anyone who doesn't believe "real" journalism, the kind that takes risks and changes lives, is happening in hip-hop should check Cheo Hodari Coker's biography of Biggie or anything by Elizabeth Mendez-Berry.)
I'm not even getting to Bakari Kitwana or Mark Anthony Neal or Tricia Rose's cultural criticism or Danyel or Adam Mansbach or Jee Kim's lit or Joe Schloss, Cheryl Keyes, or Raquel Z. Rivera's scholarship. I could go on mentioning peers like this who inspire me for days...
To be honest, I would never say that the majority of what's being published in magazines or in books now is classic material. But it's always been like that. Even the so-called Golden Age of Hip-Hop produced its share of wack shit. (To all you 80s revivalist audiobloggers who don't believe me, I have crates and crates in my garage to prove it.) I don't have any good reason to read about 98% of the writing I did in the 90s ever again.
But the point is most folks get better with time, indeed some folks get really good, and as a result, it feels like there's a lot of style, knowledge, and just straight-up kick-ass writing out there right now. I'm proud of us for that.
I think it's just going to keep on getting better. The other day, I counted more than a dozen books out from my peers and friends in the past 12 months. The publishing industry is waking up to the quality of our stuff. And even if you don't like my writing or the next person's, there's another voice you need to hear right around the corner. That's hip-hop...
One thing you got me thinking about was what makes our writing hip-hop. Because even if I was writing about the revaluation of the yuan, I'd still say my shit was hip-hop. And I'm interested in trying to figure out why, and asking others how they see it as well…it's what I'm trying to do with this current project on the aesthetics of hip-hop. What makes hip-hop journalism or hip-hop theater or hip-hop pedicures hip-hop?
For me, I've been messing around with storytelling, sentence structure, internal rhyme, flow, voices, layering. It's not just rap music that influences me—it's everything: what it would read like to successfully capture, say, the warmth and humanity of a Brett Cook-Dizney piece, the ignition and surprise of a Rokafella floor routine, the shrewdness and ambition of a Jay-Z power move?
Not that anyone can read this in my writing—usually I suck, and I'm really not that confident at this yet. But it is something I am conscious of when I write and rewrite and edit. Do you obsess about any of this stuff too?
Questions, questions, always got questions.
Peace,
Jeff
Comments
The people that WRITE IT SUCK !
You are NOT writing about HIPHOP at ALL!
Where are the articles about Culture in CUBA? Japan ?
The books about Afrika Baambataa ! Kool Herc !
Its like one day I woke up and EVERYBODY was HIPHOP all of a sudden.
THEN THE MONEY RAN OUT & They Went BACK to their original states of being
Please Keep the word HIPHOP out of your mouth! Because sounds like SHIT when you say it!
ps. JChang this is not a personal Attack on YOU so dont take it that way
Posted by: Diggiti | August 6, 2005 12:44 PM
Dang diggiti... fly me out to Cuba or japan and I'll do a story on it... who wants to invest in that?
If Bambaata and Herc didn't want to write their own books, I would write one on them, by the way have you even read Jef Chang's book? What is you definition of hip-hop? Isn't it b-boying, graf art, DJing and MCing (which is rap, right?) the elements of hip-hop?
Sure, you can write off hip-hop mags as just covering the urban music industry... but to write off every hip-hop journalist as someone who sucks without reading some of their stuff is pretty ignorant... and I'm not just talking about magazines here... read Nelson George's Hip-Hop America, read Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop, read Selwyn's Gunshots...
Posted by: Quibian Salazar-Moreno | August 6, 2005 02:33 PM
Damn! Somebodys salty. Jeff Changs book deals heavily on the subjects of Afrika Baambata AND Kool Herc. GREAT read. Magazines=advertisements (9 times out of 10, some obvious some subtle)
Posted by: JB | August 15, 2005 02:50 PM
That's a salty mofo right there. Brother chang's book is very thorough and covers the csociopolitical causes (or rather originas) of hiphop. Plus he didn't have to write about the deaths of biggie and pac which is probably a first in modern hiphop 'history' books .. He also mentions its only one story not the definitive story .. .peace
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The best book about hip-hop I read wasn't even by a so-called "hip-hop journalist." It was Cheryl Keyes' "Rap Music and Street Consciousness". Keyes is a UCLA ethnomusicologist, she nails down the real history of RAP (granted, that's just 1/4 of hip-hop culture), all the way from its West African roots. I highly recommend it - engaging reading.
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Yo scratch West African B.S. the problem is that there are no standards. any one can be a hip-hop journalist most of these cat just started to follow hip-hop in the 90's from there dorm rooms it seems most of them didn’t grow up hip-hop and pay duos by DJing bock party or spiting with there friends every day most of them don’t have any street vial at all sh** most of them don’t know about video music box or the fat boys performing at IS 166 in New York or bobby Simmons or the girl that stared that show sns mix tapes. So how would they understand hip-hop. If thaws are my memories and there’s is whereing hammer pence and IceIce baby.
P.S. most of Brooklyn didn’t have cable in the 80's now mtv tells us who hot most of these writers learned hip-hop from met sell out Bet.
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