Connect Politic...

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...

Continue reading "Jeff Chang: Why Hip-Hop Writing Doesn't All Suck In 2005" »

Posted by Jeff Chang at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (28)

Hey Jeff,

I'm sorry it took a while to reply to you, though it looks like people have used my absence to get a discussion going. In some ways that has actually helped me to come up with what I want to say here, for it's that same opinionated spirit that these people are expressing that makes writing about hip-hop interesting. More so than other musical genres, writing about hip-hop opens you up into such a vulnerable space simply because there are always people who will tell you if they think you are full of shit for what you are saying.

I've told you this before, but it was somewhat of a terrifying challenge to write the Dirty South book for so many reasons. Not only is it my first book but it's the first to tackle this subject (and I pray not the last). I had an overriding fear that my work would not appear credible to those who have chronicled the culture for many years. That shit kept me up at night at times!

Continue reading "Hip-hop Writing Empowers Us and Gives Us a Voice" »

Posted by Tamara Palmer at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (46)

Hey Tamara,

Hope all is well, the book is blowing up, and the weather is good on your side of the Bay!

Getting a chance to link up back with you within the blog fishbowl is a pretty cool thing. And I know it's going to be a really interesting conversation because we've been asked to talk about hip-hop history.

Now this is funny to me in some ways. We're both Left Coasters--and Bay Area partisans, at that. (Representing the blue and gold and the green and gold and the paying side of the Bay Bridge, which I'm always gonna be bitter about...) So it's strange that I'd go and do a history that falls in love with the Bronx, Long Island, Watts, DC, and many other places--but makes little mention of the Yay, the place where I actually chose to put down some roots--and that you're doing the history of the Dirrrty. To take it further, I grew up on an island in the Pacific.

Hip-hop is often so much about representing where you're from and who you are. I guess a great place to start this conversation is: what in the world possessed us to think we could do what we did?

Continue reading "Jeff Chang: Why Do We Love Writing About Hip-hop?" »

Posted by Jeff Chang at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (45)