Product Description

At once the most lucrative, popular, and culturally oppositional musical force in the United States, hip hop demands the kind of interpretation Imani Perry provides here—criticism engaged with this vibrant musical form on its own terms. A scholar and a fan, Perry considers the art, politics, and culture of hip hop through an analysis of song lyrics, the words of the prophets of the hood. Recognizing prevailing characterizations of hip hop, or rap, as a transnational musical form, Perry advances a powerful argument that hip hop is first and foremost black American music. At the same time, she contends that many studies have shortchanged the aesthetic value of rap by attributing much of its form and content primarily to socioeconomic factors. Her innovative analysis revels in the artistry of hip hop, revealing it as an art of innovation, not deprivation.

Perry offers detailed readings of the lyrics of many hip hop artists, including Ice Cube, Public Enemy, De La Soul, KRS-One, Outkast, Sean "Puffy" Combs, Tupac Shakur, Lil’ Kim, Biggie Smalls, Nas, Method Man, Lauryn Hill, and Foxy Brown. She focuses on the cultural foundations of the music and on the form and narrative features of the songs—the call and response, the reliance on the break, the use of metaphor, and the recurring figures of the trickster and the outlaw. Perry also provides complex considerations of hip hop’s association with crime, violence, and misogyny. She shows that while its message may be disconcerting, rap often expresses brilliant insights about existence in a society mired in difficult racial and gender politics. Hip hop, she suggests, airs a much wider, more troubling range of black experience than was projected during the civil rights era. It provides a unique public space where the sacred and the profane impulses within African American culture unite.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #301567 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780822334460
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Perry's a law professor at Rutgers, but she's also a hip-hop head, so she gets the music right." Paste Magazine "Compelling... Clearly interest in Hip-Hop Studies is only growing and Imani Perry's Prophets of the Hood is yet another example of how far the field has come as a legitimate site of scholarly production." Online at AOL Black Voices "an intertextual discussion, transcending the usual knee-jerk reactions, of how hip-hop's women have gone from MC Lyte to today's lifeless--and often light mulatta--capitalist commodities par excellence." L.A. Weekly "Imani Perry has written the most subtle and nuanced treatment of hip hop that I know. Her complex view of hip hop as black democratic space subject to prophetic utterance and mainstream cooptation is powerful. Her call for the local engagement and global vision of the underground to revitalize hip hop is compelling. Her seminal work should silence all naive or ignorant trashers of this vital cultural form!" Cornel West, Princeton University "Imani Perry's Prophets of the Hood is an extraordinary and brilliant book. Eschewing a rigid division between the 'positive' and 'negative' in hip-hop, she takes the discussion of rap to new depths and greater heights with a probing analysis of the poetic and political dimensions of the art form. With lucid explanations, crisp writing and sharp analysis, Perry has managed to actually say some very important things in a strikingly fresh manner. With the story-telling skills of Nas, the passion of 2Pac, the lyrical dexterity of Lauryn Hill, the verbal mastery of Talib Kweli and the conceptual acuity of KRS-One, Perry has produced a stunning, magnificent work of art." Michael Eric Dyson, author of Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur.

From the Back Cover
“Imani Perry has written the most subtle and nuanced treatment of hip hop that I know. Her complex view of hip hop as black democratic space subject to prophetic utterance and mainstream cooptation is powerful. Her call for the local engagement and global vision of the underground to revitalize hip hop is compelling. Her seminal work should silence all naive or ignorant trashers of this vital cultural form!”—Cornel West, Princeton University

About the Author
Imani Perry is Assistant Professor of Law at Rutgers School of Law-Camden in New Jersey. She has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a doctorate in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant Book
Imani breaks down the hermeneutics of hip hop with the same detail to nuance and complexity and rigor that a Greek Scholar devotes to Paul's Epistles or Plato's Republic. I agree with Cornel West: there isn't a better book on hip hop out there. She is both critical of Hip Hop's excesses as well as appreciative of its raw Dionysian energy. After reading it, I'm convinced that Imani will always be the smartest person in the room. I will use this for my Hip Hop and Urban America course.

Excellent. A MUST read for anyone.
Imani Perry is a wonderful writer and analyst. Her book is remarkable in its approach to the subject of Hip Hop's role in the black community.

Incomplete
To write a book about rap and hip hop, and to not once mention homophobia, is an extremely glaring oversight.