PROPHETS OF THE HOOD Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop by Imani Perry

Imani Perry considers the art, politics and culture of Black American hip hop through an analysis of song lyrics, the words of the prophets of the hood. Her innovative analysis revels in the artistry of hip hop, revealing it as an art of innovation, not deprivation. The author offers detailed readings of the lyrics of many hip hop artists, including Ice Cube, Public Enemy, De La Soul, KRS-One, Outkasts, Sean “”Puffy”” Combs, Tupac Shakur, Lil’ Kim, Biggie Smalls, Nas, Method Man, Lauryn Hill and Foxy Brown. She focuses on the cultural foundations of the music and on the form and narrative features of the songs-the call and response, the reliance on the break, the use of metaphor, and the recurring figures of the trickster and the outlaw. Hip hop, she suggests, airs a much wider, more troubling range of Black experience than was projected during the civil rights era. It provides a unique public space where the sacred and the profane impulses within African American culture unite.
First edition 2004, card cover, 238 pages, ISBN 0-8223-3446-1