Reddit reviews It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation
We found 2 Reddit comments about It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
"It's Bigger Than Hip Hop": M.K. Asante
heh i plan on bringing in a few of my favourite rappers - saul williams does a couple of really good tracks directly about masculinity in hip-hop - but i'm not going to get bogged down circle-jerking the artists i like the most, because that doesn't do anything for anyone.
i think the minstrel show analogy really holds true in this situation. M K Asante Jr writes in 'It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop' about the distinction between what he calls the 'real and the reel', which is basically his way of talking about the presentation of black urban / ghetto culture in the media and the actual grim reality of it. he also applies a colonial narrative to the way hip-hop got bought and sold by major labels in the late 80s / early 90s through to the present; the hip-hop movement was essentially colonised and the artists reduced to share-croppers without any stake in the culture they created. he writes about it in a far more eloquent way than me, but that's an awesome book if you're interested in the history of hip-hop from a post-colonialist / feminist viewpoint. it also includes a lot of the history of the genre, so NWA come up a few times.
another great thing to check out would be Byron Hunt's 'Hip Hop: Beyond Breaks and Rhymes' documentary if you can get a copy from somewhere. i almost feel bummed that i saw it, because it does what i'm interested in far more effectively than i could ever hope to heh. still, it's really great - he goes into the queer hip-hop movement and directly analyses various rap videos and songs.
i've got a bunch of other stuff which i'm still sorting through, but yeah - those are some of my bigger influences so far.