This vivacious and edifying publication on hip hop language and linguistics has the energetic and dynamic elements of its subject matter. H. Samy Alim offers a serious examination of the next generation of Black language and confronts issues that have been imposed upon the lyrical performances of hip hop music. While studies on the centrality of language in hip hop music have been discussed in previous scholarship, Alim’s work differs in approach, demonstrating how linguistics, specifically hip hop linguistics, has the potential for social transformation and offers the best diacritical analysis of hip hop’s poetics to date. The book is also an example of activist scholarship that follows the tenets of Hip Hop Nation language. Alim advocates, “The ‘blackest thing’ we can do as a nation of Hip Hop Headz is to appreciate our own culture, history and traditions” (3), and that can mean staying true to one’s ways of expression even in an academic context. Following Geneva Smitherman’s model, Alim breaks from academic writing convention and applies Black vernacular/Hip Hop Nation language to the written word on every page.
The work is separated into seven chapters, though the last chapter is a transcribed interview with one of Alim’s star research participants. Lacking contextualization on the part of the writer, it perhaps would have been more suitable as an appendix to the overall flow of the work. Chapter 1 is a clear introduction to what the author has set forth for his readers, but also divulges his investment in the community as a hip hop generation scholar and what it means to be living in a hip hop culture world. In chapter 2, the author begins to historicize the relationship between doing hip hop and practicing Islam. He draws interesting comparisons, such as the way that one socially-conscious Muslim artist, Mos Def, explains the creative connection of memorizing Koranic texts in Arabic to reciting complex hip hop rhymes, and how the parallel rise of anti-Muslim sentiments (think early 1990s Moammar Khadafi era) emerged alongside anti-hop hop sentiments (think Chuck D telling us to follow Farrakhan in the song “Bring the Noise” 1989: “Farrakhan is a prophet and I think you ought to listen to what he can say to you. What you ought to do is follow for now”). While chapter 2 is important, chapters 3-6 truly demonstrate Alim’s brilliance.
In the third chapter, Alim asks his readers to acknowledge and adopt “linguistic equanimity,” which is the structural and socially egalitarian approach to language and demonstrates how American pedagogical praxis provides preferential treatment to European linguistic sensibilities. Such prejudices perpetuate an ideology of European linguistic (and cultural) supremacy by establishing it as the only English that is “standard,” “official,” “normal,” “appropriate,” and “respectful” (57). His discussion is incredibly intelligent in that he describes the opposing attitudinal differences between “Black English” and “White/Standard English,” examining how the European approach is to make language monostylistic and unchanging whereas Black English cannot remain stagnant nor situated in perfectible permanence. Rather, it thrives on the creative and contextual interferences of its next generation’s users as they adapt linguistic rules and rules of language use that were determined by previous generations. I found this chapter revealing my own prejudices for teaching and “gentrifying” my student’s writing in the name of academic integration and preparation for uncertain, but presumably better, economic mobility. It made me wonder what it would be like if the academy were to accept pluralistic approaches to standardized English, and not just for my African American students.
Chapters 4 and 6 flowed better for this reader as both explained the lyrical and poetic beauty as well as some of the logic of hip hop music-making. In chapter 4, Alim insists that readers not treat Black language as if it were just a dialect of Standard English. Furthermore, since hip hop as a recitative musical performance has to “flow,” Alim argues that Standard English can interfere in its construction. On the other hand, Black language, which Alim shows us cannot be stifled into an absolute, rule-bound system that is prescriptive and static, helps this musical art form to flourish. Black language is not limited, but limitless as demonstrated through its more recent incarnation hip hop language. The chapter describes the speech community’s cultural modes of discourse and how the old and new elements of orality are incorporated into hip hop lyrics.
To reiterate, I believe chapter 6 follows chapter 4 best in that Alim’s discussion of hip hop poetics with consideration of Black oral tradition and Black musical aesthetics are more of a continuation of the Hip Hop Nation discursive practices revealed in chapter 4. As in the language, hip hop lyrics are poetry, but poetry with something more added to it.
The most innovative chapter is the fifth in which the author presents a very clear analysis of conscious stylistic variation in terms of language use actively makes linguistic choices and demands a higher degree of linguistic creativity, remaining with the broader African American street culture. He addresses intelligently and without condescension the criticism made most often towards “hood” artists gaining economic success through rap music and discussing street realities as fraud once they leave the ghetto. Street culture is largely a continuation of shared identity, not exclusively economic circumstances. As intimidating as linguistic scholarship can be to the non-linguist-centered readers, Alim writes with such clarity that the technical aspects of linguistic study are relayed sensibly and not overshadowed by academic jargon or guild-centered writing.
I cannot find much fault with this book because I think Alim gets it right. He gets the culture. Alim’s work is innovative in that in the growing list of hip hop studies’ scholarship, not one has dedicated as much attention to the most obvious artistic component of hip hop music: the language of hip hop from the point of view of linguistic study. It made me excited about hip hop studies in that the diversity among the scholars of hip hop studies can benefit greatly from the variety of perspectives.
If a problem with the work must be raised it is minor in terms of what this work does. Chapter 2 draws a connection to copula-use similarities in Arabic and Black language. Also, in chapter 4, Alim concludes with the observation that more and more African Americans are accepting Islam but does not demonstrate how he came to that conclusion. Perhaps statistical data might be appropriate here. While I do agree that Islam has played a large part in many aspects of hip hop culture (from Baambaataa’s connection with NOI in the organizing period of pre-80s social clubs and especially the political and socially conscious rappers of the new school era, beginning with PE, KRS-One, the 5%ers up to contemporary rappers like Mos Def and Brother Ali) he does not deal with the large number of hip hop stars that do not address Islam, refer to Islam, or practice Islam whatsoever, especially the hip hop flooding out of pop radio.
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[Review length: 1169 words • Review posted on October 16, 2007]