The Hip Hop Wars
What we talk about when we talk about hip hop—and why it matters.
Within a dozen years of its ascendancy, commercially successful hip hop became increasingly saturated with caricatures of black ganstas, thugs, pimps, and ‘hos. The controversy surrounding hop hop is worth attending to 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, Tricia 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?
With fervor, subtlety, and fairness to both sides, Tricia explores the divisive, vitriolic debate about race and culture in America, concluding with a call for the revitalization of the progressive and creative heart of hip hop. Civitas Books, 2008.
Description modified from publisher press kit.
Praise for The Hip Hop Wars
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"In this impassioned and brilliant book, Tricia Rose shows how hip hop has been harmed by both its friends and its foes, how the myths spread by both its attackers and defenders hurt the people who created hip hop in the first place. In an age where both government policy and private profiteering have promoted the organized abandonment of Black communities, debates about hip hop hide larger agendas about race, sex, and money. The Hip Hop Wars exposes the music industry and its myths, but even more important, explains what we can and must do about them."
George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
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"The Hip Hop Wars is Crisis of the Negro Intellectual for the new millennium. Tricia Rose's take on hip hop is smart, provocative, analytical, gutsy and shines with a righteous indignation balanced by love, compassion and economic, political, and social context. Rose lets no one off the hook. Wherever you stand when you pick up this book, you will be in a very different, better place when you put it down."
Jill Nelson, author of Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience
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"A loving, smart, and searing critique from the pioneer of Hip Hop studies, The Hip Hop Wars breaks the impasse between those who always regarded the music as the source of our contemporary moral panic, and those hardcore defenders willing to justify anything in the name of 'keeping it real.' Tricia Rose not only brings sanity and intelligence to the debate, but at the back of every criticism, complaint, and concern is a social justice agenda. Unlike Hip Hop's corporate defenders and its cynical detractors, Rose remembers where the music and the culture came from and offers a compass to get present and future Hip Hop generations back on track. If you care about our future, don't believe the hype and read this book."
Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
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"Tricia Rose is the distinguished dean of hip hop studies in America. Her recent book not only affirms this grand status but also transforms our understanding of the present and future of hip hop-and race-in America. Rose's courageous voice and progressive vision are so badly needed at this time!"
Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair, Union Theological Seminary
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"While the depth of Tricia Rose's analytical skills is breathtaking, even more impressive is that at its heart, The Hip Hop Wars is a hopeful, inspiring book that speaks to the necessity of a community-centered vision of justice for all."
Henry Louis Gates Jr., New York Times-bestselling author of Stony the Road
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"A powerful blueprint for artists and community organizers who dare reclaim the magnificence of hip-hop culture from the matrix of mainstream distortions, The Hip-Hop Wars persuasively argues the ways that hip-hop in the last decade has become synonymous with Blackness. Hip-hop's most fierce cultural critic has given us an essential tool for deciphering both hip-hop and race in a post-racial global world."
Bakari Kitwana, author of Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop