I just finished Dan Charnas’s The Big Payback. The book offers a wonderfully rich account of how hiphop went from local party music to becoming a culture linked to music, fashion, movies, comedy, and even water. I would recommend it to any hiphop fan or anyone interested in American popular culture. It is great. Charnas has done a great job, especially all of his contacts to Rick Rubin, Russell Simons, and the editors at The Source. He weaves together dozens of stories of major figures behind the scenes who helped shape hiphop’s rise to popular culture prominence.
The book, however, also made me realize the very different stakes in academic and popular writing. Popular writing seems to offer a bevy of interesting facts and stories. What it does not provide is a review of the contemporary literature, a complete discussion of historical context, much analysis of meaning or philosophy, or a discussion of the political import of the subject. This kind of journalistic writing is mostly descriptive, not analytical, critical or even ethical. Put another way, I learned a lot of facts from The Big Payback but I am not sure if it changed how I viewed hiphop. It left existing narratives about hiphop pretty much intact.
None of this means that Charnas’s book is not good. It is excellent. It will be referenced and taught for a long time. And that is a good thing. However, scholars want to dig deeper and ask more probing questions about the political economy of the contemporary music industry and what that means for the actual content of hiphop we hear.
Posts
Ahh! At last a debate I can sink my teeth into!
ReplyDeleteProf. Schur, thanks for the props, really. But I strongly disagree with your characterization of hip-hop journalism — not so much for my book's sake, but for the good name of hip-hop journalists in general, who, in writing the first draft of the history you teach, make your entire discipline possible, and do many of the things that you claim they don't.
There are good hip-hop journalists and bad ones, and the same can be said for hip-hop scholars. The best hip-hop journalists provide rich context and history, just as the best scholars do. Both come from intense study, intense research, and intense reporting.
In "The Big Payback," because I am a journalist, I considered job #1 to be providing the facts both historical and contemporary that make analysis possible. But I took care not to draw too many conclusions for my reader — although my framing often puts forward an implicit interpretation. I challenge any hip-hop scholar to provide as much context as I did over the course of 660 pages. Then we will all really be cooking!
There are, sadly, too many scholarly works that do nothing but review others' research and draw half-baked conclusions while getting many of the facts wrong. So I wouldn't get too smug about comparing the "ethics" of journalism versus academic scholarship. I am dismayed that you offer no mea culpa about your discipline's own shortcomings! That's not very honest.
To paraphrase Oliver Wang, I don't think asking and answering the question "why" (as academics do) to the exclusion of "how" (as journalists do) makes it any more worthy a pursuit. It just makes it a different pursuit.
Personally, I'd rather get the facts straight before I bloviate and opinionate.
Dan Charnas
Dan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for responding to my comments. I really do love your book. It does go much deeper than anything else that I have read into the business history of hiphop. Moreover, I did not intend to besmirch the name of journalists, hiphop or otherwise. Nor was I trying to suggest that one is superior to the other. Who could credibly claim that Nelson George or Jeff Chang's work has not positively affected the work of scholars? Or what about the great stuff by Bakari Kiwana, Greg Tate, Joan Morgan, and Yvonne Bynoe?
Rather, my goal (in this post) was to consider the different jobs that journalists and scholars have. I realize that, especially with the rise of hiphop studies as a discipline, there is considerable conflict at times among the artists, journalists, and scholars about who has the right to tell the story of hiphop and who gets it right.
That being said, I have been frustrated with the bevy of scholarly books that have relied on fairly thin accounts of hiphop. So, your point is very well-taken! One of my frustrations of trying to keep up with everything that gets published about hiphop is precisely the marginal nature of some of the scholarship that gets released! Moreover, because of the nature of "blind review," I have had publishes and editors ask me to cite some of this work.
I do think there have been some really strong scholarly work done on hiphop, such as Tricia Rose's "Black Noise," Joseph Schloss's "Foundation" and "Making Beats" or Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal's "That's the Joint!"
Moreover, some of the revisionist work, like Gwendolynn Pough's or Kyra Gaunt's stuff on gender and hiphop or Marcyliena Morgan on Project Blowed are important interventions into the debate that scholars can make.
Every couple of years, I do get to teach a seminar on hiphop and perhaps you can join the class for a session on skype?
Thanks for your comments!
Rich
Rich:
ReplyDeleteHappy to make your acquaintance, and happy to join a conversation on Skype or elsewhere.
The distinction between "scholar" and "journalist" is one I understand... different approaches, different responsibilities, different degrees, and about $100,000 in tuition.
It's when we talk about the difference between "scholarship" and "journalism" that the difference turns, well, academic. When performed at a high level, the difference means almost nothing. At a high level, journalism takes on many of the responsibilities of scholarship: properly sourced, giving context, appealing to more than just the prurient interests, and moving the understanding of the culture forward. At a high level, scholarship will take on some of the responsibilities of journalism: be clear and readable, be interesting, be true, be novel. I just think that when it comes to the best work, it's often a false dichotomy. And I think a war of perhaps not-so-carefully-chosen words ("mostly descriptive, not analytical, critical or even ethical") gives life to that lie. (Like, really, dude? Like hip-hop scholarship really does it any better? Like, can we try not to make those kinds of polarizing generalizations?) The great written works of hip-hop have, by and large, been produced by people who call themselves journalists. They don't just "influence" scholarship. They have created it.
Again, not defending my book in particular. But, just to use it as the example, I took pains to describe the socio-political context and import of many things that even scholarly works took for granted. I just didn't use the word "socio-political." Few, if any, scholastic hand-wringings about gangster rap have traced its roots in the African-American oral tradition, much less cited Roger Abrahams. I'd be discouraged to think that someone could read the passages about how gangster rap overtook political/Afrocentric rap on radio (i.e., that it wasn't some government or business conspiracy) and not change their view of hip-hop. Especially when so much bad journalism and bad scholarship presents it as a given that rappers remain colonized subjects of greedy, racist executives and that white fans are simply colonials on safari. My book is an attack on that widely-held notion. But as a journalist, I don't say it. I show, not tell. I believe the story should do the telling. That's my discipline, my ethics, my responsibility. I would have scholars respect my need to tell a story just as scholars would have me respect their need to review the existing body of literature.
Ultimately, anybody has the right to tell the story of hip-hop as long as they commit to getting it right.
DC
Rich and Dan,
ReplyDeleteAh I could geek out on a convo like this. Thanks too for the props, I really appreciate it.
I just wanted to say one thing: I don't think there's always a useful dichotomy in narrative v. argument. In my writing, I think of form as a way of constructing an argument, so to me choices about narrative, sentence structure, and even phrases or words all serve to build an argument.
It's no different than the way a song might persuade a lover to return or a movie might make one angry or sad about a character or a situation.
Thanks again for setting this off...
Jeff Chang
Nahmean?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely timely and important conversation, if for no other reason than to be self-serving. I'm teaching a Hip Hop Studies class semester ("Understanding Social Inequality in/through Hip-Hop) in which a great number of the texts are drawn from Hip-Hop journalism, more so than Hip-Hop Studies. I made this choice for a few reasons: 1) in my estimation there is a far greater volume of quality in Hip-Hop journalism in comparison to Hip-Hop scholarship. 2) students will engage journalism because care is take in the narrative style where we academics often can care less about a widely readable narrative, 3) so much of Hip-Hop studies has had potential but few intellectual watersheds in my read of it.
ReplyDeleteWhile there is a good deal of thinness on both sides of the aisle, by picking the journalistic pieces I give my students some analytic takes on the cultural aspects of the art. I then add in some classical sociology/cultural studies texts to place in their toolkit for analyzing Hip-Hop as a cultural space. How it will work? The hell if I know. It's my first semester trying this type of arrangement. And yes there will be Chang and Charnas on the syllabus.
I think Dan nails it when he reminds that, at some level, of course there's an "implicit interpretation" running through the book.
ReplyDeleteTo my mind, few books (especially re: hip-hop) examine, as R. puts it, "the political economy of the contemporary music industry" as thoroughly as The Big Payback. And while Dan clearly takes pains to "stick to the facts," there are countless passages that briefly and beautifully connect all the industrial / entrepreneurial activity he reconstructs to "the actual content of hiphop we hear." The book raises and answers a whole lot of probing questions.
But I'd love to hear some of these "more probing questions"! Perhaps if you share a few Dan, and others, can offer some informed (and even explicit) ideas. And then we can all continue to dig deeper.
Just wanted to add that this (perceived) schism has been around for decades; Simon Frith was writing about the difficulties in bridging music journalism and scholarship since at least the early 1980s.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with Dr. Schur's read of Charnas' book as being superficial (which is implied if not intended) but I have no issue with him - like all of us -stating a particular, subjective opinion about the book.
I would, however, challenge the notion that what scholarship is meant/supposed to do revolves around providing: "a review of the contemporary literature, a complete discussion of historical context, much analysis of meaning or philosophy, or a discussion of the political import of the subject."
For one, there are infinite examples in contemporary scholarship that do none of these things either yet are accepted and celebrated as scholarship. Second, I would question whether those are inherently desirable features to cultural scholarship above and beyond their worth in validating the particular logic of academia. In other words, in certain academic circles, scholars may be expected to accomplish what's laid out above and those accomplishments are then rewarded in the form of retention contracts or tenure or fellowships, etc. but it's not always the case that we actually spend much time discussing their inherent worth beyond honoring the conventions of modern American academia.
After all, to fault something like Dan's book for lacking a lit review? You might scold a graduate student on this or include it as feedback to a journal submission, but the very concept of a lit review is - in my mind - highly particular to academic conventions rather than something that could or should be universalized. *Could* Dan's book have talked more about how Toop or Chang covered this same history? Sure. Might it have added something to his own analysis? Possibly. But does the book *suffer* for its absence? In my opinion, no.
Perhaps this is part of what Dr. Schur alludes to in his comment regarding, "the different jobs that journalists and scholars have" and I think - if this is what was implied - the "different jobs" part is quite crucial. Academia, as a career, demands certain expectations be fulfilled if a scholar wants validation from her/his peers. Journalism too. That the two sometimes follow different expectations should not be construed as an inherent weakness in either.
For better or for worse, academia and journalism serve distinct masters (each of which can be as meaningful and profound OR as pernicious and illogical as the other).
Thanks again to everyone who has joined in the conversation. This is great!
ReplyDeleteMy initial blogpost was aimed (at least theoretically) more at college students learning how to become literary scholars, historians, sociologists or musicologists than a lay audience. Consequently, I did not really focus on the many virtues of journalism as they have been forcefully articulated here. That is clearly my error. I also erred somehow in my initial post as multiple folks read it in a denigration of hiphop journalism even though I thought I was being quite complimentary of Dan's book. So, my errror.
Because I am an academic, I think it is important that folks don't disregard academic and scholarly writing too much despite its many limitations.
But it also does so much more! As I gestured in my initial response to Dan, there has been great work done by scholars about gender and sexuality in hip-hop. There has been great work done on how deejays find and construct breakbeats. Neff's work on hip-hop in the Mississippi delta or Morgan' stuff about the underground scene in LA is absolutely crucial to the ongoing importance of hip-hop. Adam Krim and Cheryl Keyes work in musicology is great and deepens our understanding of how hip-hop works and where it comes form.
Such scholarship also helps hip-hop become a part of "official" US culture. The more kinds of scholars that write about hip-hop the more places it will get integrated into schools, museums, businessess, etc. I think that Dan's book provides ample testimony to how the major record companies could not figure out hip-hop. Part of the reason is that official culture had not recognized it and the executives didn't possess the tools to get it.
I know that I have been criticized for suggesting that literature reviews are important. But, I think for more serious or academic readers, they are a necessity. For example, "The Big Payback" does not really discuss the Dirty South in as much detail as he does LA and NYC. I don't think it really changes Dan's argument but readers interested in Outkast, Geto Boys, or Goodie Mob would definitely be benefitted form Roni Sarig's "Third Coast." Without footnotes or a lit review, readers just miss that. Or what about the massive growth of the underground? Why has it developed and how is it a response to the very developments Dan so ably illustrates. Similarly, I might have missed it but folks interested in how the record business has historically screwed over African American artists would want to know about Norman Kelley's "Rhythm and Business" or perhaps Frank Kofsky's "Black Music, White Business." Or folks wanting to think more about Hip Hop activism, should look to Bynoe or Kitwana. None of this is a direct critique of the book or a suggestion that it should have been written differently. Rather, I think it points to the importance of hip-hop studies as one venue for information about hip-hop.
This is a great conversation!
Richard Schur
See Rich? It the age of the Google Alert, its hard to aim anything without the rest of the world hearing about it! :-)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, it didn't even cross my mind to provide a reading list for folks with even deeper background on, say, African-Americans' relationship to the record biz. I certainly didn't want to footnote too much either (stalling the reader). But it would have been worthy to do so from an pedagogical standpoint. It's the kind of thing I did when writing my own thesis back in the day. But it's precisely this kind of thing that would, as they say in film, "break the fourth wall" of the narrative. The narrative was paramount.
But I should put a reading list together. Would be good to post online.
DC