Hip-hop by the book: from scholarly titles to children's books, hip-hop takes on a new life in print - Critical Essay

Black Issues Book Review, May-June, 2003 by Malcolm Venable

Love it or hate it, hip-hop music is, in its most inspiring moments, literature accompanied by beats and tunes, an idea legitimized when colleges including the University of Wyoming and University of California began teaching courses on Tupac's life. Even though the form itself is narrative come to life, it appears that for many hip-hoppers, lyrics aren't enough to whet their insatiable appetites for more of the culture. The people want books, and publishers, it seems, are quite eager to provide them.

If you're really ah avid hip-hopper, forget the CDs; this Black Music Month, troop over to your local bookshop, which is sure to be brimming with books about the culture. Online book giant Amazon.com holds more than 200 books related to hip-hop; competitor Barnes & Noble carries over 500. (Books with rock `n' roll in the title, by contrast, number past 700 for both retailers.) At this rate, it's now quite possible to own a respectable library comprising works about hip-hop. The spate of books about hip-hop in the marketplace is further proof that the culture itself has a dizzying ability to turn everything associated with it into gold--or perhaps more befitting, platinum.

But given the occasional tendency for rappers' lyrics to expertly dodge intelligent dialogue and wander in the superficial and shallow--hit song titles like "Big Ole Butt" and "Bling Bling" come to mind--one can hardly be blamed for assuming that books about rap and hip-hop could be equally wisdom-free. Not so.

Actually, quite a few hip-hop books examine the culture with sharp, exploratory analysis. Tomes, many by self-identified participants of the culture (read: young blacks), range in scope from relevant social introspection to music criticism to smart artist profiles.

Writer and scholar Tricia Rose won an American Book Award in 1995 for her work Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Wesleyan University Press, May 1994, ISBN 0-819-56275-0), an honor that might suggest that some folks who are not necessarily devoted hip-hop listeners may be willing to read about it. Someone's buying this stuff. And there's hefty load of books that put the culture into a well-deserved intellectual context. Nelson George has Hip Hop America (Penguin USA, October 1999, ISBN 0-140-28022-7), an analysis of how the pastime of American black kids became an international phenomenon; similarly Vibe published its oeuvre to the genre, Vibe History of Hip Hop (Three Rivers Press, October 1999, ISBN 0-609-80503-7), a collection of thoughtful essays by prominent writers and cultural critics that trace hip-hop's expansion into a global industry.

Music journalist Margeaux Watson, who authored some chapters of Vibe magazine's book about women in hip-hop, says she was pleased to write for a book illustrating how far women had come in a male-dominated industry. "The cool thing about it was showing that black women in music can be more than the butch girl or the sex vixen. It helped show a middle-class sensibility that the black experience is broader than just a few types of things."

Weighty academic interpretations notwithstanding, hip-hoppers have produced some great coffee-table photobooks, too. Hip Hop Immortals (Immortal Brands, September 2002, ISBN 0-972-07461-9), perhaps the best example, is a superb and almost aristocratic collection of exceptional photographs (only 5,000 copies were printed) bound in a heavy, gorgeous hardcover. Immortals is clearly meant to be pop culture as high art, and it works. Two other new releases, Who Shot Ya? (Amistad, October 2002, ISBN 0-066-21168-9) and Yes Yes Y'all (De Capo Press, October 2002, ISBN 0-306-81224-X) represent the largely nostalgic hip-hop books: the first a collection of photos and the latter a mixture of photos and testimonials from the urbanites who essentially invented the form.

It may soon be that a baller just isn't a baller anymore unless there's a book about his or her life; Eminem has one, as does former Bad Boy-turned-preacher Mase, and DMX, whose E.A.R.L. autobiography received some critical praise. Tupac Shakur is practically a genre in himself,, he has at least 10 titles dedicated to him, including Tupac: Resurrection, 1971-1996 (Pocket Books, June 2003, ISBN 0-743-47434-1), a classy new book of Tupac memorabilia including photos. Like Tupac, The Notorious B.I.G.'s life was good fodder for books, chiefly because both of their murders remain mysteries.

Of course, not all books about hip-hop resonate with any real poignancy, and they are not always, unlike a Jay-Z album, certain to net publishers the levels of platinum cheddar they hope for.

The Scholastic publishing company, known for its Clifford character and Harry Potter and its successful book fairs through elementary school, unveiled a series of children books last year. Rapper LL Cool J authored one, And the Winner Is ... (Scholastic Trade, September 2002, ISBN 0-439-38911-9), as did Shaggy (HipKidHop: Hope, Cartwheel Books, February 2003, ISBN 0-439-38048-0) and Doug E. Fresh (Think Again, Cartwheel Books, September 2002, ISBN 0-439-31387-2); and each book came with a CD so young readers could rap along. Though insiders had high hopes for the books, which seemed like an excellent way to lure just one niche of American kids away from TV to books, the works didn't reap the kind of success they'd hoped. Says one staffer, "I think they might have been underpromoted. They came out, and you sort of didn't hear anything else about them. I think the people who need to read them are not aware" Whether the flop was due to poor marketing or simply because the audience wasn't interested remains a mystery, but the source says the books are "cool and worth reading. They have good messages like protecting yourself from strangers, being a good winner. It's not frivolous stuff" Either way, the company is trying again; more "HipKidHop" books are on the way.