Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (Paperback)

~ (Author) "In black America mother love is second only to the love of God-but just slightly..." (more)
Key Phrases: posthumous persona, thug persona, poor black youth, New York, Mos Def, Black Panthers (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A poor, urban, high school dropout and book-devouring autodidact who'd quote Shakespeare in conversation, Shakur would also sing along to Sarah McLachlan. Dyson (I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.), a Baptist minister, reveals the complexity of Shakur and shows why even five years after his death his records, poetry and films continue to sell. "He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all," writes Dyson. "He was more than the sum of his artistic parts." Complementing Dyson's articulate perspectives on the short life and extraordinary impact of the icon are his emotive interviews with writer Toni Morrison, actress Jada Pinkett Smith (Shakur proposed to her, but was turned down), rapper Mos Def and more than a dozen others. Most striking are the conversations about and with Shakur's beloved mother, a former Black Panther and ex-crack addict. Dyson uses themes in Shakur's raps to examine the larger ills of hip-hop culture such as misogyny and the new hostility between youths and elders without neglecting the rapper's positive acts and intentions. Shakur wanted to "combat the anti-intellectualism of hip-hop," Dyson persuasively writes. (Sept.)Forecast: This book will sell, for Shakur has a huge fan base that has only grown since his death. But more than a music bio, the book will draw the attention of socially conscious readers who are interested in how hip-hop affects society.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Ordained Baptist minister and DePaul University professor Dyson (Between God and Gangsta Rap, LJ 1/96) here analyzes the life of rapper/actor Tupac Amaru Shakur (1971-96) as a microcosm of black American life and culture. Placing gangsta rap in social and historical context, he thoroughly and thoughtfully considers its key elements as evidenced by Shakur's music and videos, exploring issues like machismo, the simultaneous contempt for and adoration of black women, and black-on-black violence. (Shakur himself was shot to death in a still-unsolved murder.) Dyson discusses these sensitive, controversial subjects with such noted cultural analysts as Khephra Burns and Stanley Crouch, creditably balancing the opinions of rap's supporters, rap's critics, and rappers themselves. Though marred by a few minor errors, this well-written, intelligent, and energetically investigative work will make a valuable addition to academic libraries. The extremely high level of writing renders it unsuitable for fan-oriented biography collections, for which Tupac Amaru Shakur, 1971-1996 (Three Rivers, 1998) is more appropriate. Bill Piekarski, formerly with Villa Maria Coll. of Buffalo, Cheektowaga, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Civitas Books (November 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465017568
• ISBN-13: 978-0465017560
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #817,423 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Holler If You Hear Me Speaks Loud and Clear, August 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (Hardcover)

Michael Eric Dyson reveals in his latest book, "Holler If You Hear Me," that his own son, Michael II, once proclaimed, "Pop, if Tupac had had the chance to talk with you, he'd still be alive today." Having read Dyson's brilliant analysis of the most extraordinary poet to grace the modern music scene, I believe that Pac, indeed, would have found a healing salve for his wounds in the words and wisdom of America's unrivaled hip-hop intellectual. Dyson's tender probe of hip-hop's most shining knight takes us on a whirlwind search for Tupac Shakur. Eight chapters and an epilogue later, we learn that Pac was the one searching, searching for a Black man he could call father, searching for justice in America, searching for manhood and selfhood, and above all else, searching for love. An undeniable genius whose charismatic presence lit up the screen and stage, and whose searing social proclamations helped make rap a vehicle for change, Tupac's mercurial ascent has not yet plateaued, which makes Dyson's tome all the more important. Like other cultural icons he is compared with, Tupac's popularity transcends race and generation. Dyson's unparalleled defense of black youth, shines forth like a beacon in "Holler If You Hear Me," and caused me to understand that Pac is that brilliant young black man that each one of us has struggled to save from his own self-destruction. Dyson-the-journalist interviewed scores of people whose lives' Tupac touched and adroitly gets them to speak candidly about the paragon of virtue and violence that was Tupac Shakur. Those who knew the young man behind the handsome, dreamy visage, tell how this self-made intellectual chose death's door as his destiny. In his pulsatingly painful chapters exploring Tupac's relationship with his mother Afeni Shakur, Dyson allows us to understand for the first time how the patriarchal shortcomings of the Black Power movement failed the children of our revolutionaries. The carefully crafted chapter entitled "But Do the Lord Care?" had me in tears after learning how the brutality Tupac experienced in prison all but extinguished his flame. Hip hop has become one of the most important cultural genres ever created, and Michael Eric Dyson's compassionate look at it's most enduring icon is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the power of black youth.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Groundbreaking Work on Besieged Icon, August 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (Hardcover)

This is by far the most brilliant, insightful, cutting-edge treatment of Tupac and hip-hop culture available. Dyson doesn't offer a biography per se, and no one who is familiar with his equally impressive work on Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr., would expect such a work. Dyson is helping to pioneer a distinctive new genre of scholarship: a seamless fusion of critical evaluation of an icon's life and a searching examination of that person's life and times. As such, this work takes its place as a sophisticated, meditative and scintillating tour through the dark passages of Tupac's complex music and his surprisingly nimble mind.

The way Dyson sets the book up is compelling: He looks at Tupac's childhood, his mature artistry, and the beliefs that motivated his most thrilling achievements. I appreciate his joining Tupac's difficult childhood -- including his mother's drug abuse -- to both the political aspirations of a troubled revolutionary career (his mother was a Black Panther) and to the plague of poverty that cursed them. Dyson then convincingly links these stark realities to Tupac's plentiful and brooding music, and to the themes that would obsess him: death, betrayal, hopelessness, the search for forgiveness, spirituality, transcendence, racial authenticity and thug life.

Dyson manages, in the process, to not only write about Tupac, but about the heartless vicissitudes that haunt millions of black youth. His discussion of the "n" word controversy is brilliant, as are his examinations of the contradictions that pile up around "keeping it real," the mantra of so much hip-hop culture. He tackles gender problems (in a gem of a word coinage, what he terms "femiphobia," which is simply illuminating for the way it manages to pry a space between old-style misogyny and outright sexism), while also dealing with Tupac's bold religious views. Dyson's chapter on Tupac's sense of embodiment is one of the most lyrical in the book, although it virtually sings throughout. Dyson is one of the few world-class scholars -- and in this regard, he is nearly in a class by himself -- who is capable of both rigorous analysis and poetic declaration.

What is particularly winning about Dyson's book is the list of "firsts" he manages to accumulate: the first time we hear a prison interview he gave; the first time we hear about a video of the rapper when he was only 17; and the first time we hear from a variety of cultural and social commentators (there are over 60 original interviews in the book, if I counted correctly, including the likes of Quincy Jones, Stanley Crouch, Mos Def, Toni Morrison, Afeni Shakur, Common, Talib Kweli, Samuel Jackson, and Jada Pinkett) on the life of this most extraordinary young man.

One of the most amazing things I learned -- and there are many features that fall in this category -- is the utter intelligence that characterized Shakur's life. Dyson devotes an entire chapter to outlining the rapper's reading, and that alone is worth the price of the book.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is an intellectual tour de force by perhaps the most brilliant intellectual of his generation. For Dyson to have written the kind of utterly original book he did on Martin Luther King, Jr., only to come back in a year's time to deliver an equally powerful reflection on such a controversial, gifted and important artist as Tupac, is in itself a remarkable feat. We are all in his debt.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Listen and Learn, December 28, 2001

By	Bakari Chavanu (Elk Grove, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (Hardcover)

In "Holler If You Hear Me," Micheal Dyson developes a critical analysis of legend rapper, Tupac Shakur. Dyson is well known as an intellectual scholar of hip-hop culture. "Holler" is not a formal biography of Tupac, but moreso an extended essay that attempts to place the life, music, and contradictions of Tupac in a cultural, political context. He explores Tupac's work and life in context of his relationship with his mother, a former Black Panther Party member, and as a youth growing up in a post-Black Panther Party era. Tupac's experiences living in poverty with a drug addicted mother certaintly sheds serious light on his work and lifestyle. Dyson helps us understand more clearly Tupac as an artist whose life and work was full of love for Black cultural life, but also as a tortured brotha who, like many men, got drawn into a machismo, sexist world. In essence, Tupac, writes Dyson, adopted "a creed that at once reflected his fractured home life and affirmed his essential aloneness and his combativeness with the universe he inherited, a stance that captured the domestic alienation of millions of other black youth in his song "Me Against the World."

Personally, I've always had a problem with Tupac's ganster lifestyle and performance. I always felt that because he was looked up to by so many young people that he should have been a better role model for the hip-hop generation. But in reading Dyson's book, I discovered more about Tupac. First off, I didn't realize that he was so well read--that he read widely and continously: authors inlcuding Richard Wright, Gabriel Marquez, Carl Jung, Alice Walker, feminist Susan McClary and Robin Morgan, and George Orwell. He listened to all types of music, and he reflected deeply about God and spirituality. These literary and spiritual experiences and quests had a great influence on his own work.

Dyson also points out that Tupac's "stirring raps made many people see suffering they had never before acknowledged. It helped many desperately unhappy young people reclaim a sense of hope and humanity." Pac was rapping from the bottom (from the oppressed and exploited masses), but he did so from a artists point of view. Thus, if we're disturbed by his contridictions, we have to remember that much of his torment as an artist comes out of a racist, class divide in this country that has essentially marginalized and attacked young people--especially African males.

Dyson's book is not the definitive work on Tupac, but he certaintly raises critical questions and analysis that will be useful in present and future studies of this hip-hop icon.