The Hip Hop Wars What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters

by Rose, Tricia

• ISBN13: 9780465008971
• ISBN10: 0465008976
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-02
• Publisher: Civitas Books

Summary

Hip-hop is in crisis. For the past dozen years, the most commercially successful hip-hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and 'hos. The controversy surrounding hip-hop is worth attending to and examining with a critical eye because, as scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip-hop has become a primary means by which we talk about race in the United States. In The Hip-Hop Wars, Rose explores the most crucial issues underlying the polarized claims on each side of the debate: Does hip-hop cause violence, or merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip-hop sexist, or are its detractors simply anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black advancement? A potent exploration of a divisive and important subject, The Hip-Hop Wars concludes with a call for the regalvanization of the progressive and creative heart of hip-hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized vision of the form, but one that more accurately reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and yes, sex, than the current ubiquitous images in sound and video currently provide.

Author Biography

Tricia Rose is a professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. She specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century African-American culture and politics, social thought, popular culture, and gender issues. The author of the seminal Black Noise, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Top Ten Debates in Hip Hop
Hip Hop's Critics
Hip Hop Causes Violence	p. 33
Hip Hop Reflects Black Dysfunctional Ghetto Culture	p. 61
Hip Hop Hurts Black People	p. 75
Hip Hop Is Destroying America's Values	p. 95
Hip Hop Demeans Women	p. 113
Hip Hop's Defenders
Just Keeping It Real	p. 133
Hip Hop Is Not Responsible for Sexism	p. 149
"There are Bitches and Hoes"	p. 167
We're Not Role Models	p. 187
Nobody Talks About the Positive in Hip Hop	p. 201
Progressive Futures
Mutual Denials in the Hip Hop Wars	p. 217
Progressive Voices, Energies, and Visions	p. 241
Six Guiding Principles for Progressive Creativity, Consumption, and Community in Hip Hop and Beyond	p. 261
Radio Station Consolidation	p. 274
Acknowledgments	p. 277
Notes	p. 279
Bibliography	p. 289
Index	p. 293
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