“Be real,” Busdriver admonishes at the outset of his twitchily verbose new album Jhelli Beam. “Conscious rap failed us.”
I kept thinking of that line as I read The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground (Duke Univ. Press), a new book by the Harvard hip-hop studies professor Marcyliena Morgan. This was partly because Busdriver, pictured above, is among the more widely known affiliates of the Project Blowed scene, which Morgan examines with scholarly detail. It was partly a response to the elusive ideal of Realness. But it was also because the assertion feels so pointed, so damning. If you were paying attention to underground hip-hop during the early part of this decade, you might well feel the same way.
My review of The Real Hiphop appears in the Sept./Oct. issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette, the alumni magazine of the University of Pennsylvania. So I’ll leave it there for now. The service-journalism instinct in me is strong, so I will also mention that Busdriver is on tour with Abstract Rude through the rest of this month. (Check it here.)
And if you’re wondering what has me contributing to the Gazette, don’t be surprised. Since graduating from Penn, I’ve covered a handful of music stories for the magazine, which has a great editorial sensibility and a forward-thinking staff. Here are a few that I enjoyed tackling. At the time that I wrote the Uri Caine piece, I was particularly proud of it. The John Legend and Disco Biscuits pieces are curious artifacts: profiles about musicians with whom I have experience performing.
Biscuits Rising The Disco Biscuits in their element, July/Aug. 2007
Making a Legend John Legend on the cusp, Jan./Feb. 2005
Flowing Earth Muddy Waters examined in print, Mar./Apr. 2003
Raising
Caine Uri Caine’s Goldberg Variations, Jan./Feb. 2001
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