Reviewed by Sidik Fofana
In Somebody Scream, hip-hop adopts a broader role in the context of African-American history. According to Marcus Reeves’s book on the storied genre’s major movements, hip-hop seceded the Black Power Movement of the 1960s as a cultural force for minorities in the United States to latch on. Of course, Reeves discusses the rise of acts like Public Enemy and Run DMC, but his analysis takes into account COINTELPRO, Assata Shakur’s murder trial, and other key political events that have fueled their post Civil Rights aesthetic. He depicts rap music as a natural evolution from these watershed moments.
No book about hip-hop history is complete without a thorough study of Public Enemy and the haloed ensemble’s contributions to rap music. Although Reeves starts his analysis fairly early in the book, he is careful to avoid sanctifying the group. Whereas most written accounts paint Public Enemy’s music as a perfect amalgam of angst and intellect, Reeves shows instances where the group’s political fervor was misguided. In the chapter entitled, “Stumbling through Black Power Revisited,” he writes about an anti-Semitic comment that band member Griff made during an interview for The Washington Times, “The explosive fallout began a month later following a reprint of Griff’s comments in The Village Voice. Jewish groups like the militant Jewish Defense Organization began protesting against P.E. The mainstream media began shining an anti-Semitic light on the group, helping to strain black-Jewish relations as folks began to take sides in the debacle.”
More importantly, Somebody Scream shows that Public Enemy and other hip-hop artists were not in an ageless vacuum when they conceived their masterpieces. On several occasions, the book makes the distinction that these groups were not making protest music just because it was cool, but in response to the tense social climate of the day. Reeve writes about Reaganomics, Yusef Hawkins’s murder, and Jesse Jackson’s 1988 stint for presidency under the guise that these events motivated hip-hop’s lyrical content. To him, this on-record activism is akin to the militant efforts of the Black Panthers and other Civil Rights organizations.
Just as early hip-hop transitions from the Black Power Movement of the 60s and 70s, Somebody Scream notes the point when the conscious music of Public Enemy shifts to the gangsta rap of Death Row Records. Reeves dedicates two chapters to Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur, documenting the rise of hardcore west coast hip-hop. Yet, Reeves does not spare the aggressive music from having its own share of political undertones. This connection is not all too far-fetched given that California rap’s prominence coincided with the Rodney King beatings and the L.A. Race Riots. In “Gangsta Chic,” Reeves points out that, “As the L.A. riots placed the city at the epicenter of American political discourse by turning black Los Angeles into a worldwide symbol of oppression, black rage, and victimization, they also turned the gangsta and the gangbanger into emblems of strength, fearlessness, and street-level empowerment.” Whereas gangster rappers were once vilified by the media, these social circumstances turned them into urban soothsayers, reporting on the uproar of their own communities.
Somebody Scream’s final movement documents hip-hop’s marriage to capitalism and extreme commoditization. These chapters perhaps represent Reeves at his strongest as he wields through an era that he does not necessarily hold in the highest regard. Sean “Puffy” Combs headlines Reeve’s discussion of the genre’s developed obsession with diamonds and shiny suits. Although the multimedia mogul is often blamed for adulterating rap’s political message with meretricious showcases of wealth, Reeves reminds readers that Combs is foundationally as hardworking and relentless as anyone in the music business. The chapter, “Ghetto Fab Rising” refers to a celebrity/benefit basketball game Puffy threw at City College in New York in 1991 during which nine people were killed in a stampede. Instead of letting the public relations nightmare deter him, Reeves writes, “…Puffy resurfaced the next year as a musical dynamo.” He grants each period in hip-hop its share of recognition and acknowledges its contributions to the history in whole.
Somebody Scream is not a nostalgic glimpse back in the golden age, but rather an objective document of hip-hop defining epochs and the social milestones that influenced them. The painstakingly researched book is now required reading for a class at Brooklyn College and is being compared to Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop in terms of its thoroughness and wide-ranging subject matter. With this book, rap’s archives have grown that much more stronger as Reeves, with his culturally astute eye, records the timeless hands of hip-hop history.