| Jonathan | Date: Sunday, 2012-06-10, 4:44 PM | Message # 1 |
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| hip hop america is a recollection of the history of hip hop music up to the year 1998, making the book a bit outdated to read now. For me, a huge fan of hip-hop music, I already knew a lot of the information in the book, but Nelson George also related many things to hip-hop and explained many things about the genre relating to the African-American culture and America as a hole. It had many interesting chapters , such as about how drugs and hip-hop complemented each other. It also went over many of the stereotypes that relate to hip-hop, such as the "gangster" image and misogyny in the genre. The book is very easy to read because of the many subsections within each chapter, and none of the chapters are overly long or dragged out. . To non hip-hop fans, I don't really know if they'd understand the book, because it has a lot of slang and mentions a countless number of rappers that may be difficult to remember while reading the book. I think George also may be a bit of a racist at times in the book, sometimes being too harsh on his own culture and sometimes subliminally blaming the white people for the blacks' problems during certain eras. That was the only main complaint with the book, along with the seemingly abrupt ending. The good thing about this copy is that it includes another extra chapter after chapter 16, which was added to the book in 2005 and is a bit more updated. The picture he paints in the final chapters for music in the future is also very true in our society today, which you would see if you read the book. Overall I thought it was a very easy read, for me anyway, and had many interesting chapters that related hip-hop to things you wouldn't things you wouldn't imagine. I'd give it a 4/5 stars, it'd probably be a much better book published circa 2005, though.
Message edited by Jonathan - Sunday, 2012-06-10, 4:44 PM |
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