Reviewed by Danielle A. Jackson

Over the course of thirty years, hip-hop music has become an indomitable cultural force with a global audience. What began as a localized expression of the sensibilities of West Indian, Latino, and African-American city kids from the boroughs of New York now influences the social interactions and lifestyle choices of individuals from the suburbs of Kansas to urban centers south of the Sahara. Much ado has been made of the social implications of hiphop artists’ global reach. Hip hop’s lyrical content, which sometimes glorifies a “ghetto culture” that denigrates women and extols a disregard for authority, hard work, sobriety, and human life, has been the topic of numerous books, articles, and two recent episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Little mention has been made of the appeal of hip hop. What is it about this rhythmically charged style of music that creates staunch devotees who dissect every lyric and pick up every trend? Why is it that young upper middle class suburbanites are so drawn to the hip hop ethos that in some communities, it is social anathema to listen to anything else?

In his second full-length book, To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic, William Jelani Cobb, assistant professor of history at Spelman College and frequent contributor to Essence, the Washington Post, and the Progressive, defends and defines the artistry of hip hop, tracing its historical relationship with older forms of black expression, and presents the music as a by-product of the African experience in the Americas. A self proclaimed hip hop head and former MC himself, Cobb attempts to legitimize rap music as an art form by ignoring its oft mentioned social conscience (or lack thereof) and concentrating on the elements of its style.

To the Break of Dawn is most engaging when it instructs. Cobb effectively lays the foundation of the hip-hop aesthetic for novices, breaking it down into the three necessary fundamentals of music (beats), lyrics, and flow (the way a particular MC finesses the beat with his lyrics). Flow, according to Cobb, is the defining characteristic of hip-hop artistry, and directly connects the genre to the artistic heritage of the black preacher. The preacher’s historical relevance in the black community, as poet/messenger/leader, along with his delivery, accentuated with pauses, adlibs, and organ riffs mirrors the techniques utilized by an MC to get his audience “open.”

At the same time, Cobb considers the blues an important forebear of hip hop. A focus on the life and struggle of the individual, as well as the presence of evil in everyday life, are pervasive themes in hip hop narrative. Additionally, hip hop draws heavily upon the blues motifs of the “baaad nigger,” as well as the trickster character. Cobb convincingly draws these ancestral parallels by including frequent examples of lyrics from artists as diverse as Nas, Big L, and bluesman Joe Pullum, which serve to both instruct and enhance the musicality of his text. Cobb graciously claims his beloved genre to be the descendant of several forms of African-American expression.

However, he is careful not to overemphasize these similarities, and insists that its content and musicality be evaluated on its own terms. While the blues is an important ancestor of the music, the distance of time between the two genres creates an entire set of differences. The creators of the blues tradition obsessed over the newfound mobility of the post-Reconstruction era while MCs obsess over the neighborhoods of postIndustrial urbanization.

Cobb is a history professor and draws outstanding parallels between art forms and the historical context in which they were shaped. However, it is often difficult to digest the plausibility of his thesis: that hip hop can both be born of the black tradition in all of its incarnations, but still be its own entity. To Cobb, the true origins of hip hop are both everything and nothing at the same time.

To the Break of Dawn is far more convincing as a tool to measure the musicality and poeticism of the genre than it is at drawing its family tree. The chapter “The Score” brilliantly divides hip-hop music into four stylistic eras: Old School (1974- 1983), the Golden Age (1983-1992), the Modern Era (1992-1997), and the Industrial Era (1998-2005.) Cobb highlights the development and growing popularity of regionalism, the increasing complexity of rhyme schematics and in the usage of hyperbole, personification, and other literary devices as methods by which to measure hip hop’s stylistic transformations. With sincerity and wit, Cobb includes snippets of songs from each epoch that personify the music’s evolution.

William Jelani Cobb’s last chapter highlights the life’s work of seven different MCs, including Lauryn Hill, Eminem, and the Notorious B.I.G. Here, Cobb uses these artists as a lens to describe the genre, combining all of the analysis and instruction from the previous chapters. It is in this chapter that Cobb’s rhythmic style of writing, peppered with punch lines and lyrics, is most instructional and demonstrative.