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 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 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, and Lauryn Hill. 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: #68158 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

Guerilla Black, Peace Magazine
"Essential reading for the more erudite of heads."

Review
"Ever wondered how Jadakiss’ 'It’s Time I See You' expresses a dynamic of double consciousness or what Method Man lyric
reveals a hybrid discourse? Citing rhymes from Biggie to Pac and Foxy to Kim, this Assistant Professor of Law at Rutgers
University, def(t)ly examines the complex performances of race, violence, sexuality, and politics that make hip hop a uniquely black American art form. Essential reading for the more erudite of heads."
--Guerilla Black, Peace Magazine

"Perry's belief that 'rap music is black music' is bold in its simplicity. . . . She makes, I think, a gallant effort to bridge the gap between . . . those of us who loathe rap music and those who see in its lyrics a raw, beautiful and unbridled expression of authentic black identity."
--Quinn Eli, The News and Observer

"Perry proves . . . that rap and hip-hop actually qualify as art. . . . Instead of relying on big words to wow us to her side, Perry uses human experience to defend both the worst and best sides of hip-hop."


--Jessica Rossi, Altar Magazine

"Perry’s a law professor at Rutgers, but she’s also a hip-hop head, so she gets the music right. Drawing as frequently on Jay-Z and Eve as she does on more 'progressive' rappers like KRS-One and Mos Def, she demonstrates that consciousness isn’t just the domain of the polite, and that we dismiss gangsta rap at our own--and by that, I mean our nation’s--peril.

--Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Paste

"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."

--Mark Anthony Neal, “Critical Noir” on AOL Black Voices

"[A]n 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."
--Kevin Y. Kim, L.A. Weekly

"[O]ne of the best in-depth analyses of US hip-hop culture since Nelson George's Hip Hop America (1998) and Tricia Rose's Black Noise. . . . Particularly valuable are Perry's discussion of the text of contemporary songs, which are excerpted and analyzed throughout. The book is very well written and easy to read, and both the bibliography and the index are rich and useful. Essential."
--A.-P. Durand, CHOICE

"In this magnificent book, Prophets of the Hood, Imani Perry gives voice to hip hop's aesthetic with seven remarkable essays written with the inventiveness, style, and eclecticism personified by the genre's most prominent artists. Each piece brilliantly explores different dimensions of hip hop music, ranging from its cultural origins, to its ethics of love and authenticity, to its problematic constructions of masculinities and femininities, to its mass production and widespread consumption by the 'popular' mainstream."
--James Bryant, Journal of Popular Culture

“Prophets of the Hood is an articulate and in many ways excellent book. . . .”
--Mark Duffett, International Association of Popular Music Studies News

Kevin Y. Kim, L.A. Weekly
"[A]n intertextual discussion [that] transcend[s] the usual knee-jerk reactions. . . "

Customer Reviews

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

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.