The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture

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The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture (eBook) Pub. Date: 8/5/2008 Publisher: Basic Books
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The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture (Reprint) Pub. Date: 4/10/2003 Publisher: Basic Books

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Overview

The Hip Hop Generation is an eloquent testament for black youth culture at the turn of the century. The only in-depth study of the first generation to grow up in post-segregation America, it combines culture and politics into a pivotal work in American studies. Bakari Kitwana, one of black America's sharpest young critics, offers a sobering look at this generation's disproportionate social and political troubles, and celebrates the activism and politics that may herald the beginning of a new phase of African-American empowerment.

Editorial Reviews

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This brilliantly provocative work is a focused, passionate, inspiring, and extremely thoughtful attempt not only to examine the problems facing young blacks, but also to point to a way out.

Black Issues Book Review

Today there are a slew of books about what is now being called the 'hip hop generation.' Luckily The Hip Hop Generation gets it right. Kitwana is successful in balancing critical analysis with practical, everyday observations about this generation. That balance has produced a book that is accessible to every generation...A powerful and enjoyable read.

More Reviews (8) Fewer Reviews

Chicago Tribune

The Hip Hop Generation. ..presents an ambitious but pragmatic plan of action based on the notion that hip-hop may offer a solution to the many crises threatening the black community. It's an admirable effort.

Essence

An insightful study of post-integration black culture and its influence on the world.

Los Angeles Times

While Kitwana makes clear arguments about what has affected Black youth over the last twenty years, from lock-ups to loitering laws, he doesn't simply enumerate the issues on a continuous loop, he looks toward solutions.

New York Newsday

An educated, accomplished author very much at ease on the streets of black America...Kitwana [has] become a cogent narrator of the hip-hop subculture, a subculture that is helping to shape a whole generation of African Americans.

San Francisco Chronicle

A must-read for those interested in hip-hop.

Village Voice

Without dogma or jargon, Bakari Kitwana's important new book cuts to the chase... The Hip Hop Generation is Kitwana's manifesto. No self-esteem-driven mazes of passive-voice philosophizing here...Equal parts generational critique, pro-Black youth polemic, op-ed analysis, and hip-hop Molotov, Kitwana's book has already garnered comparisons to Harold Cruse's brilliant 1967 rant against black leaders, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.

Washington Post Book World

Kitwana provide[s] this group with an identity beyond the notion that the hip-hop generation is just Generation X in blackface.

KLIATT

Bakari Kitwana, executive editor of The Source: The Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture, and Politics and author of The Rap on Gangsta Rap, offers an in-depth look at the politics and history of the issues affecting the hip hop generation, here defined as black youth born in the years 1965 to 1984. Reading like a long, riveting magazine article, The Hip Hop Generation spells out how this age group has become the locus of all things media with pervasive influences on clothes, film, music, and all forms of advertising. Kitwana's strength comes from not only demonstrating the historic and political context of problems facing the hip hop generation, but also showing how the lack of understanding from black leadership (like the Civil Rights-era leaders heading the NAACP and the Urban League) has led to the absence of activism in modern youth. The author names what he considers the true issues of this generation and then goes on to offer examples of successful political figures and movements that have managed to reach through hip hop apathy. The only weakness of this work is its lack of footnotes or a bibliography, which would have been helpful as a primer to reading the many works cited in the text. An essential addition for senior high and public libraries. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2002, Perseus, 230p. index.,
— Courtney Lewis

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780465029792
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 4/10/2003
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 256
Sales rank: 370,794
Product dimensions: 5.42 (w) x 8.12 (h) x 0.68 (d)

Meet the Author

Bakari Kitwana was the Executive Editor of The Source from 1994-98; Editorial Director at Third World Press; and a music reviewer for NPR's All Things Considered. He currently freelances for the Village Voice, Savoy, The Source, and the Progressive, and his weekly column, "Do the Knowledge," is published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is the author of The Rap on Gangsta Rap and The Hip Hop Generation. He lives in Westlake, Ohio.

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Anonymous

Posted May 3, 2006

Cultured Driven Piece.

The African American culture and Hip Hop has been one in the same for the past twenty years. What's unfortunate is that when one is negative it sheds the same light on the other. However, this book is vital becuase it breaks down the mirror-image reflection of the two. Any one into Hip-Hop should study this book. Another book that researches Hip-Hop in relation to black culture is 'Why do I have to be your Nigger? Theories in Niggativity.'
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