Here's a great book I've enjoyed this winter: Somebody Scream!: Rap Music's Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power

It's a book I could have used while writing Blessed Are the Uncool: It’s a missing link, of sorts. Author Marcus Reeves explores the history of hip hop’s uncomfortable relationship with the black power movement.

As he tells the story, black power ran out of steam in the mid 1970s, and for a variety of reasons: persistent legal troubles; incessant internecine squabbling; and perhaps most importantly, success.

Courtesy of pop culture, black people began to see their tastes on TV, and hear their music on the radio. Meanwhile, Civil Rights victories made the need for change feel less pressing for a new generation of African Americans.

But at the same time, our inner cities were failing. In the late seventies in the South Bronx, New York, ghetto hopelessness rose in tandem with the end of the black power movement. It was at this time that rap music began to appear.

Initially nothing more than party music, rap music began to become a vehicle for communication about inner city life beyond the party. And over the ensuing decades, from Public Enemy to Tupac Shakur, several of hip hop’s leaders were also children of the black power movement, steeped in its ideas from a young age.

Others, however, like Snoop Dog and the Notorious BIG, took the muscular aesthetic from Black Power, stripped it of its message, and went for a nihilistic, violent, and hedonistic expressiveness, glorying in guns, booze, licentiousness and—above all—respect from other blacks. This was gangsta rap.

Eventually a balance would come to hip hop, as the unsustainability of gangster lifestyles became apparent.

Still, there has always been an element of generational conflict in the relationship between hip hop and black power. Reeves’ key point lies in what he calls the post-black power generation: those who take black dignity for granted and live exclusively for the moment. With little historical education or interest, all they have is today. Progress is defined in weeks or months—certainly not in decades.

Somebody Scream! is an important contribution to African American history. We’re approaching the moment (rap’s 30th birthday has already passed) when historians—far better storytellers than most pop culture writers—will begin to get their hands on rap, so we can expect more in the coming years.

I have one complaint with Reeves’ treatment: his apparent blind spot to coolness itself. I know I wrote a book on the issue, so forgive the windiness. But from my vantage, hip hop’s revolutionary impotence appears entirely related to its foremost commitment to coolness.

Coolness—which I’ve defined as the performance of permanent rebellion—exists only in the moment. Revolutions (like Black Power) draw strength and humility from historical consciousness. Hip Hop’s cool insistence on living only in the moment condemns it to have no future and, accordingly, no consequence, despite its massive pop cultural weight.

Until Hip Hop grows beyond petty coolness, it will never grow up.

[photo credit: Bronx, by sxc.hu member bkeim]