The 'Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop

by Murray Forman

Examines the significance of the 'hood in rap and hip hop

The 'Hood Comes First looks at the increasingly specific emphasis on real neighborhoods and streets in rap music and hip hop culture as an urgent response to the cultural and geographical ghettoization of black urban communities. Examining rap music, along with ancillary hip hop media including radio, music videos, rap press and the cinematic 'hood genre, Murray Forman analyzes hip hop culture's varying articulations of the terms "ghetto," "inner-city," and "the 'hood," and how these spaces, both real and imaginary, are used to define individual and collective identity.

Negotiating academic, corporate, and "street" discourses, Forman assesses the dynamics between race, social space and youth. Race, class and national identification are recast and revised within rap's spatial discourse, concluding with the construction of "the 'hood," a social and geographic symbol that has become central to concepts of hip hop authenticity. Additionally, the book analyzes the processes within the music and culture industries through which hip hop has been amplified and disseminated from the 'hood to international audiences.

Genres: Music, Hip Hop, Nonfiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2002

Reviews

[Susanna Lofvander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a comprehensive summary of the first twenty years of hip hop history, and it would be interesting to see the authors thoughts on the twenty years that followed. Space and place has become even more diluted as important factors in rap and hip hop has become saturated by increased access to music production, the internet, and encroachers and poachers from the pop world. It’s a little academic in tone, which can be hard to get through, but the authors sense of humor does come through in places. This whole book is really an even more effective damnation of Drake’s career in the wake of the Kendrick beef.