Hip Hop Congress

I’m currently in the middle of this book and it is hard to put down. I give it high marks, here is the press release for it.
–

“‘SOMEBODY SCREAM!: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power’
is eminently readable and occasionally riveting . . . The book, which ends with Eminem, begins in 1971, when black power was ‘crumbling’ in real life but was reborn on television. The debut of ‘Soul Train,’ Reeves argues, ‘provided a national stage for black urban youth culture,’ thus sowing the seeds for hip-hop culture: ‘a hard-rock vessel carrying the hopes, anger, disappointments, attitude and history of post-black-power America.’” - New York Times Book Review

Somebody Scream by Marcus Reeves

While Hip Hop music is the most powerful musical force in pop culture today, its current popularity and corporate controlled dominance belies its more political history. In SOMEBODY SCREAM!: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power, the journalist Marcus Reeves argues that Hip Hop is nothing less than “a hardrock vessel carrying the hopes, anger, disappointments, attitude, and history of post-Black power America.” From its evolution from New York-based musical form into commercial music revolution to unifying expression for a post-Black power generation, Reeves examines-through studies of Rap music icons, the author’s personal accounts, and the void in national leadership-how rappers, especially hardcore MCs, rose to become the all-encompassing sociopolitical voice of American youth.

Looking at ten artists who have had an impact on rap - from Run-DMC “Black Pop in a B-Boy Stance” to Eminem “Vanilla Nice” - as well as Public Enemy, N.W.A., Salt-N-Pepa, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G. & Sean “Puffy” Combs, Jay-Z and DMX, Reeves explores their music and celebrity in the context of the times that produced them. With a narrative that looks beyond the controversies currently engulfing the genre-the foul language, violence, misogynistic lyrics, the corporate manipulation - SOMEBODY SCREAM! critically and holistically analyzes Rap through its most famous icons to tell a “story that couldn’t be written without including the tale of a Black generation whose story the music told. It’s a revision of their dreams that made the music speak, and it was their ingenuity to persevere, by any means necessary, that keeps Rap music relevant and evolving.”

Go Pick up a couple copies