The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop–and Why It Matters by Tricia Rose

Tricia Rose is at the top of my list of favorite hip hop scholars. In her latest book, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop–and Why It Matters, Professor Rose drops knowledge about the current state of the conversation about hip hop and gender politics. I have not finished reading the book, however, in my humble opinion, one of the best reasons for buying this book is to read the much-appreciated props given to my girls’ empowerment and media education work with HOTGIRLS on page 254! On a more serious note, Tricia Rose is a brilliant cultural critic and “Hip Hop Wars” further illustrates the continued importance of her work within the public and academic discourse regarding representations of black women in hip hop. This book contains useful insight and resources for educators and girl advocates — especially those who integrate media literacy into their work.

Product Description (from Amazon)

Hip-hop is in crisis. For the past dozen years, the most commercially successful hip-hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangstas, thugs, pimps, and ’hos. The controversy surrounding hip-hop is worth attending to and examining with a critical eye because, as scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip-hop has become a primary means by which we talk about race in the United States.

In The Hip-Hop Wars, Rose explores the most crucial issues underlying the polarized claims on each side of the debate: Does hip-hop cause violence, or merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip-hop sexist, or are its detractors simply anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black advancement?

A potent exploration of a divisive and important subject, The Hip-Hop Wars concludes with a call for the regalvanization of the progressive and creative heart of hip-hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized vision of the form, but one that more accurately reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and yes, sex, than the current ubiquitous images in sound and video currently provide.

About the Author
Tricia Rose is a professor of Africana Studies at Brown University. She specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century African-American culture and politics, social thought, popular culture, and gender issues. The author of the seminal Black Noise, she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.