Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters

A cultural critic goes inside the world of modern music to argue that hip hop has become a primary way to talk about race in America, examining the key issues on both sides of the debate, from the link among hip hop, violence, and sexism, to whether or not hip hop's portrayal of black culture undermines black advancement. Original.
Argues that hip hop has become a primary way to talk about race in America, examining the links between hip hop, violence, and sexism and whether or not hip hop's portrayal of black culture undermines black advancement.
A pioneering expert in the study of hip-hop explains why the music matters—and why the battles surrounding it are so very fierce.
Hip-hop is in crisis. For the past dozen years, the most commercially successful hip-hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and ’hos. The controversy surrounding hip-hop is worth attending to and examining with a critical eye 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, Rose 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? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black advancement? A potent exploration of a divisive and important subject, The Hip-Hop Wars concludes with a call for the regalvanization of the progressive and creative heart of hip-hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized vision of the form, but one that more accurately reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and yes, sex, than the current ubiquitous images in sound and video currently provide.