It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation [Hardcover]

M.K. Asante Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 16, 2008

In It's Bigger Than Hip Hop, M. K. Asante, Jr. looks at the rise of a generation that sees beyond the smoke and mirrors of corporate-manufactured hip hop and is building a movement that will change not only the face of pop culture, but the world.

Asante, a young firebrand poet, professor, filmmaker, and activist who represents this movement, uses hip hop as a springboard for a larger discussion about the urgent social and political issues affecting the post-hip-hop generation, a new wave of youth searching for an understanding of itself outside the self-destructive, corporate hip-hop monopoly.

 

Through insightful anecdotes, scholarship, personal encounters, and conversations with youth across the globe as well as icons such as Chuck D and Maya Angelou, Asante illuminates a shift that can be felt in the crowded spoken-word joints in post-Katrina New Orleans, seen in the rise of youth-led organizations committed to social justice, and heard around the world chanting "It's bigger than hip hop."

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Asante (b. 1982) decries the negativity of much of mainstream hip-hop. Though people his age “were born into the hip-hop generation, they feel misrepresented by it and . . . see the dangers and limitations of being collectively identified by a genre of music they don’t even own.” Their “lack of ownership . . . has allowed corporate forces to overrun hip-hop with a level of misogyny and black-on-black violence” that has led “some young folks to disown the label ‘hip-hop generation.’” A similar argument could be made about nearly every underground movement that achieves pop-music supremacy, but Asante feels mainstream marketing of hip-hop has robbed his generation of a valuable voice for enunciating social and political criticism and made the music “a conservative instrument, promoting nothing new or remotely challenging to mainstream cultural ideology.” He declares that “post-hip-hop,” rather than marking the death of rap, represents a shift to a more inclusive movement incorporating culturally significant subject matter. Weighty, probably vital reading for keeping up with youth culture and pop music. --Mike Tribby

Review

"An empowering book that moves you to action and to question status quo America. Reading It's Bigger Than Hip Hop is motoring through a new generation of America with one of its best storytellers."

- Ari Bloomekatz, Los Angeles Times

"M.K. Asante, Jr. combines drive, skill and a commitment that buoys us all. The hip hop community should feel extremely blessed to have those qualities attached to its forward movement."

- Chuck D

"M.K. Asante, Jr. is a rare, remarkable talent that brings to mind the great artists of the Harlem Renaissance."

- Philadelphia Inquirer

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312373260
• ISBN-13: 978-0312373269
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #279,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

MK Asante is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and professor who CNN calls "a master storyteller and major creative force." Asante's new book, "Buck," a memoir about his youth in Philadelphia, will be published by Random House on August 20, 2013. Asante studied at the University of London, earned a BA from Lafayette College, and an MFA from the UCLA School of Film and Television. Asante has toured over 30 countries as well as throughout the United States at hundreds of venues. He was awarded the Key to the City of Dallas, Texas. His essays have been published in USA Today and the New York Times. Visit mkasante.com for more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!! November 2, 2008

By Zella Llerena

Format:Hardcover

M.K. Asante Jr. is a gem. His book It's Bigger Than Hip Hop is one of the most in depth investigative books from our own community in quite some time. Asante's writing style is reminiscent of the great James Baldwin. The ancestors are watching and speak through Asante.

Hip Hop has become one of the most financially successful music genres of an entire century. Hip Hop reaches all ages, classes, races and countries. However, the image of Hip Hop that has spread in our communities and worldwide has changed over the years from its underground message of unity to consumerism/materialism by any means necessary. We have lost control of our own music yet when considering other black music genres from the past; blues, jazz, R &B we have never `owned' our music. History repeats itself. In retrospect, Ray Charles and Prince, to name a few, understood the need for us to own our lyrics, music, distribution houses, etc... (ex. When Prince wrote slave on his head to get out of a music contract and own his music).

Almost 40 years after the Civil Rights Movement and where are we? We integrated yet we never asked once what will happen to us after integration? We never had a plan. If considering that the former African-American segregated communities were small nations how is it that once we gained our `independence' we did not have a well thought out plan? Asante's book addresses some of those issues post-Civil Rights, post hip-hop. Every chapter needs to be read and analyzed in classrooms but specifically read between parent and child. This book needs to get in the hands of every African (Latinos too)
in the U.S., the rest of the Diaspora and Africa to fully understand our current state of affairs.

Chapter Glimpses:

Chapter 2: Keepin' It Real vs. Reel, The Truth about Commercialized Hip Hop artists (Not really hood at all but rather came from the middle class and two parents' home, ex. ODB) But why would ODB or any other artist sell their soul like that?
Chapter 3: What's Really Hood? A Conversation with the African-American Ghetto? This will be a classic in literature. A one on one interview with Asante and Hip Hop.
Chapter 5: It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: Time Line (1965 -1991) A historical time line that puts politics, hip hop, our history in perspective.
Chapter 6: Old White Men (or, Who Owns Hip Hop) Who really owns Hip Hop? Viacom? Bald Head Israeli's? Discusses Mos Def's underground never aired classic "The Rape Over".
Chapter 7: Beyond Jena: Free `Em All.Assata Shakur, Political Prisoners, Slave working Prisoners.
Chapter 8: FTP, F' the Police. Cameras on our blocks, police brutality. Interview with Dead Prez.
Chapter 9: Universal Language: Black and Brown. Common Struggles. Immortal Technique.
Chapter 10: Two Sets of Notes: Asante suggests to students to take two sets of notes, theirs and ours.
Chapter 12: (State Property) The linguistics of Clothes. State Property Brand Beanie Sigel. Marketing death and eternal imprisonment to black boys/men.French philosopher Focault. The history of the prison.
Chapter 13: Conquering the division. Middle class vs. Underclass, Elders vs. Youth. Are we saying the same thing but not getting through to each other?
Chapter 14: A Lesson Before Dying: A Phone Interview with Hip Hop. Final Interview with Asante and Hip Hop

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Different Kind of Prison January 9, 2009

By The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Format:Hardcover

I was hip hop. A `70s baby, my teenage years stretched across hip
hop's awakening into proud and empowering lyrical expression. It
was a chain link of similarities, connecting the dots of every urban
experience, expressing the voice of every ghetto. Like Common, I
used to love H.E.R. But then, somewhere in my twenties, she abandoned
me. I became nothing more than a groupie, a video accessory and a
derogatory term. And my male counterparts became
unrecognizable, fake shadows of long forgotten pimps and, "keeping
it real," fools.

M.K. Asante remarkably captures the incredulous struggle that those
like me, the post hip hop generation, face when reconciling past hip
hop loyalty with current hip hop disdain.
IT'S BIGGER THAN HIP HOP is a classic work, a creative and
innovative approach to examining what hip hop was and is, and how
its growth and subsequent stagnation affect generations.

An example of his entertaining approach is demonstrated in Chapter
3, What's Really Hood?, when M.K. Asante engages in a colorful and
testy interview with "the ghetto." Yes, the ghetto finally speaks
and he has some truth to spread. As "the ghetto" explains his
history dating back from 1611, correlating past "ghettoization" with
modern Urban Renewal, he reminds the post hip hop generation of the
ignorance in blaming the poor for poverty.

In Chapter 10, Two Sets of Notes, M.K. Asante captures the struggle
of being taught incomplete truths, being fooled by "selective
memory," losing who we are as a people inside of the incessant white
lies. His poem reminded me of my public school frustration, when
black and brown history was a footnote on the school agenda and I
had to join the Youth NAACP and, to my Baptist mother's horror, the
Nation of Islam seminars in an attempt to learn about me.

M.K. Asante won me over early on, when he articulated how the reel
becomes the real. It's an argument you thought you heard before, but
never quite applied in this way. But M.K. Asante's logic makes
perfect sense, especially if you, like me, often wonder why a
suburban black boy tries so hard to be "thug life" or a middle class
black child works overtime to prove his "realness." It's a mind-
boggling epidemic that I never understood, until now.

IT'S BIGGER THAN HIP HOP speaks candidly to the post hip hop
generation, challenging us to take a deeper look and a more
introspective approach into who and what we really are, reminding us
that the struggle is ever present.

Reviewed by a. Kai
for The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I Used To Love H.E.R. November 17, 2008

By D. Frazier VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

What do popping collars and bling have to do with a revolution? How are people who know nothing about hip hop defining its culture? It's Bigger Than Hip Hop by M.K. Asante Jr. shows how these things, and more, have everything to do with hip hop's transformation. Asante Jr. goes beyond surface facts like the first rap song to top music charts or defining acronyms (i.e. D.J., M.C., etc.). The author eloquently cannon-balls into the grudge today's youth have with what hip hop stands for because of what it stood for initially. From the perspective of a generation deep in awareness and appreciation of the need hip hop used to fill, readers will learn why hip hop no longer represents them, what they feel is needed for its resurrection, and what was ultimately sacrificed when we became all about the Benjamins. Asante Jr. examines conversations with his college students, rap lyrics, speech sound bytes, etc and hits on political, historical, racial, and economical issues that play vital roles in the unrest and revolution-ready, conscious young adults of today.

The author's passion for the topic is what gripped me from the first page. As a self-professed hip hop head, it was challenging to wrap my thoughts around, and accept, how disabled the culture has become. When I began having my own uncomfortable moments with hip hop, I could not quite define why. It's Bigger Than Hip Hop describes in detail the exact reasons I was on the brink of discontent. Moving beyond what this book has clarified for me, the writing is fresh, excerpts were used effectively, and the pictures painted parallel free verse poetry. Readers who enjoy hip hop culture and those who have grown weary of hip hop would really enjoy It's Bigger Than Hip Hop.

Reviewed by Darnetta Frazier
APOOO BookClub