Customer Reviews

Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Music Culture)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an impressive interpretation of Black musical culture, with loads of interesting information and pertinent feminist content. I've read several books with somewhat similar subject matter, from Dick Hebdige's broad and helpful survey to the rather pretentious book by Russell Potter; but none of them captured my interest as much as this one.

As an adult man in my 30's, this book reminds me why I loved hip hop and why I still do. Historically, it reconnects me of my past experience with the whole movement; and intellectually, it summarizes the power of hip hop...

Tricia Rose details the Hip-Hop Culture - and its beauty and depth - in this book I call "essential for Hip-Hoppers". For example: I'm writing 'bout Brazilian hip-hop and "Black Noise" cleared many doubts I had on hystoric, artistic, and politic aspects of the 'Culture of Streetz'. Another contribution that elevates this 'Bible of Hip-Hop' is the way Tricia Rose writes. The words flow natural, with many rich informations reduced in a very agradable text. If you don't like this book, you'll never understand the 'Black Noise' of this new millenium! Peace!

brilliant, exhausting and informative... provides a feminist point of view from the inside for all important aspects... read it and love it...

I read this book as a compulsory action for the 'Poetry of Rap' course in which I am currently enrolled at a major university. As a narrative and dialectic of black culture, or rather a single faction of black culture, this book is powerful and informative, providing analysis of many, many social thinkers of the Black Arts and later movements as well as Rose's perspective(s) on the developments of the culture. However, the execution of this text, ostensibly an academic account, is weakened by a diffuse structure, imprecise diction (beyond that necessitated by dealing with a topic heretofore untreated in academic circles with any rigor) and atrocious editing. I highly recommend the text, but by the same token recommend it with a disclaimer: hear why she says, and not what she says.

Hip Hop is founded on the valorization--rather than villification--of recontextualization, revision, and redaction. In a examplary work of musical and cultural studies scholarship, Rose traces the ways prior black musical/oral traditions, technological advances, and sexism undergird the discourse (just to mention a couple of the lens through which she takes on rap). The work highly accessible to hip hoppers non hip hoppers alike, furthermore. Finally, it is to Rose's benefit that she comes from an "insider's" vantage point, giving the text a genuine concern for where the music comes from, finds itself, and is indefatigably headed towards.