Book Review: Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap by Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar
November 8th, 2009
Robert Charette, the author of this review, is a senior at Penn St. University. For an assignment in his Literature Public Sphere class, he was told to review a book and have it published somewhere “where someone decides whether or not something or not is published.” For some foolhardy reason, Robert requested that The Passion of the Weiss be that great decider. I imagine that vast quantities of Natural Lite had something to do with the choice, but hey.
Hip-Hop made its mark as the music of the oppressed and misrepresented. Think “The Message,” “White Lines,” and “Rapper’s Delight” (the latter of which tackled tough questions of what to do when your friend’s mother serves chicken that tastes like wood.) This characteristic has made it both ridiculously lucrative and helped it achieve relative ubiquity over the past 15 years of pop culture. But today’s current climate reflects a fandom divided. The decline of “socially conscious rap” and the stanky leg, the Soulja Boy, etc. have forced people to reevaluate the veracity of Chuck D’s claim that hip-hop was the “CNN of the Ghetto.” Then again, if you go to the CNN homepage, you can find the headline: “Dazzling on the Red Carpet.” So…
The internet’s latest salvo over hip-hop’s status quo found “New Yorker” critic Sasha Frere-Jones insinuating that hip-hop lost its place as vanguards of the avant-garde by gradual drifting and eventually submerging itself in the mainstream of pop culture. Positioning themselves as genre defenders,Brooklyn hip-hop duo Das Racist penned a scathing rebuttal that argued that while hip-hop’s sound has evolved, it remains effective as social commentary. While Jeffrey “O.G.” Ogbar, author of “The Culture and Politics of Rap,” may share Frere-Jones’ academic credentials, he leans toward the opinions of Das Racist.
