Katherine Kim:
May, 2005

Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet
by Patrick Neate
(Riverhead Books)

www.riverheadbooks.com
www.whereyoureat.com

Hell was alive and kicking in the Bronx in the 60's and 70's. Thriving in the mix were unemployment, burning buildings, gang violence, racism and police brutality. Then there was a gang peace treaty followed by a rise in community activism. Activists were forming "organizations" as opposed to "gangs." There was a message activists wanted to get out to the youth in their communities. It was a message about Black solidarity, about identity, about justice. Some of the key messengers were DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa. Their vehicle was music and initially both their message and music were not widely accepted outside of the Bronx. This is the background from which hip-hop music originated. Cut to 2004. The message is still political: "Vote or Die." The messenger is P. Diddy, his vehicle is a Bentley and the public cannot get enough of him, his clothing line, his $35 million home, his wealth, his fame. It is this phenomena that is researched and observed in two recent books about hip-hop culture: Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by west coast hip-hop music writer Jeff Chang and Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet by British writer Patrick Neate.

This pair of books makes for a great read on hip-hop culture. Chang and Neate take different approaches to exlporing the question: what is hip-hop culture. Chang attempts to condense an exhaustive history of the hip-hop generation down to 500 pages. He researched the history of hip-hop culture in New York and L.A. for over four years. Can't Stop Won't Stop is detailed, informative, engaging. Neate, on the other hand, provides a global "snapshot" of hip-hop culture. Neate captures the history in a few paragraphs and then jet sets around the world partying with the "it" people on the hip-hop scene in Japan, South Africa and Brazil searching for the essence of hip-hop culture.

Can't Stop Won't Stop begins with a vivid portrayal of the downfall of the Bronx in 1968 that spawned violence and self-destruction which led to the gang peace movement during the early 1970's. This serves as the backdrop from which hip-hop music evolves. Chang identifies the struggles and racial tensions of urban minorities in the Bronx from the perspective of various gang-member-turned-activists, hip-hop writers, and other eye witnesses. It credits Jamaican born DJ Kool Herc, who penned the introduction to Can't Stop Won't Stop, with the birth of hip-hop music and follows the rise of other key figures such as Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. As a group trying to fight to survive and express itself, Change takes us through the journey of the dance crazes and graffiti movements. He also delivers an account of the commercial rise and fall of radio stations and print media and the tensions between those trying to keep it real and those marketing hip-hop without a message. Through it all, the hip-hop culture remains fluid and the generation constantly reinvents itself.

While acknowledging in a few sentences that the hip-hop movement did leave out a certain half of the urban minorities, namely, the female half, Chang delves into the other racial and political tensions surrounding the hip-hop culture. Although many artists in the Bronx had a mass following, that following was localized. Many attempts to bring hip-hop music to the mainstream were thwarted by those who did not identify with the hip-hop movement. Chang portrays the hip-hop generation as a group with a multicultural face and struggles different from the primarily white rebellious punk movement of a parallel universe. Though united to fight against police brutality and for juvenile justice, the group was divided (by race, culture, gender, old school vs. new school) on what image to project or who should be considered leaders in the fight.

Chang jumps from an in-depth look at the hip-hop culture in the Bronx, completely skipping over Chicago, to Los Angeles, describing the tensions leading up to the L.A. riots and the continuing political dialogue. He also devotes a chapter to the racial tensions between African-American and immigrant Korean and how those tensions were exacerbated by a new angry breed of gangsta rap and mended by community efforts to communicate and unite in the same struggle for rights and respect.

Although at times it may feel bogged down with endless chronicles of events, Can't Stop Won't Stop is not a simple narrative of the ripple effects of the events in the Bronx. What makes Chang's account of the hip-hop generation different from the run-of-the-mill assessment of the history of hip-hop music is that he exposes the allure of the hip-hop idea. It is not simply a genre of music or a momentary rebellious movement. There is a certain je ne sais quoi quality to it; a power too attractive to ignore. Chang portrays the hip-hop idea as a solidarity of "time and peace, place and polyculturalism, hot beats and hybridity…the turn from politics to culture, the process of entropy and reconstruction." Those who did not identify with this group found it to be a dangerous nuisance while other outsiders saw a potentially lucrative mass market.

Patrick Neate, lifelong lover of hip-hop music, sets out on a quest with his girlfriend, Kanyasu, to observe this allure of hip-hop culture in his book, Where You're At. Neate had an idea of hip-hop culture before he started research for his book. In his introduction, he writes: "…the essence of hip-hop had always been something intuitive and visceral, an inexplicable concept that sat on the very tip of the tip of my tongue. Hip-hop matters to me and now, I think, it matters to everyone else too. You see, some people may not have noticed and some people may not like it, but the truth is we're living on a hip-hop planet." He travels to a few cities and tries to find the pulse of hip-hop in the city and then describes how hip-hop evolved there. What is lacking in Neate's "travelogue" is some sort of timeframe of his travels. It reads as if he spent a long weekend in each city or, at the most, a week. With this impression, it is easy to dismiss his ideas that one might not agree with. If he spent a number of months or even a year in a particular place, it lends credibility to his "confusion" that he is trying to sort out regarding the essence of hip-hop around the world.

They start their journey in New York where it all started. Then they quickly move on to Tokyo. He is quite dismissive and defensive and after talking to a group of young Japanese boys decked out in hip-hop fashion and African-American DJs in Tokyo, he quickly concludes that the hip-hop scene in Tokyo is empty and superficial. It seems to Neate, hip-hop cannot be real in a place where there is no history of bloodshed and struggle for justice. Then Neate steps back and realizes that this is his essence of hip-hop. He wants to discover the essence of hip-hop.

In a tangent in the Tokyo chapter, he mentions similar issues in Italy. Rap thrived in the 90's when militants had something to rap about. Now hip-hop is a product of American pop culture in Italy, an "imagined thug life." He goes on about how hip-hop is no longer political but is just fashionably American. In the middle of the book, he delivers his quest to his readers. The point of his book. Hip-hop has been appropriated by branding and global mass media. He wants "hip-hop to be reclaimed by its key brokers for the benefit of these core constituencies."

In South Africa, there is plenty to shout about but a tension exists in the message of hip-hop. Universal Black identity versus African identity as opposed to Black American. In Rio de Janeiro there is a history of struggle and poverty and blurred definitions of race. As he attends clubs and concerts he finds a genre of music with different influences of funk, Afro-reggae and rock, samba. Is this hip-hop? Neate concludes that it is but calling it hip-hop is a limitation because it is so much more.

In the end, Neate concludes that hip-hop is "now a key imaginative source for young people worldwode. In Tokyo, for example, it enables them to negotiate individuality, in Cape Town to negotiate with history and in Rio to negotiate a new understanding of race…[it] is now a globalized culture that is locally used to articulate protest."

Hip-hop is certainly a diverse and global culture that is here to stay. Both of these books are great for those interested in more than the fancy bling-bling American face of hip-hop culture. Can't Stop Won't Stop is definitely for those whose primary exposure to hip-hop culture is the mass media which tends to glorify the wealthier, mostly male, hip-hop artist and to generally ignore the grassroots hip-hop movement dealing with the same struggles as it has been dealing with for the past thirty years. Where You're At is perfect for those interested in the global allure of hip-hop.

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