Book Review: Justin A. Williams, Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop

Abstract

Book Review: Justin A. Williams, Rhymin' and Stealin': Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop. University of Michigan Press, 2013. ISBN: 978-0472-11892-2 (Hardcover). 280 pages. $60.00.[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2014 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]Misattributed to Elvis Costello and proliferated on the web, the quote Writing about music is like dancing about is pertinent to in both the quote's intention and its misinformation. If there is any newly developed academic field as adamant in its purpose but murky in its definition, surely studies qualify. No one taking up a pad and pen to analyze does so without having a clearly stated mission to demystify and invariably to celebrate a African American music culture that is as ubiquitous as it is hard to identify. But what is also at stake, especially when a study attempts to recognize a sensible chronology of the aesthetics of culture, are thorny issues of cannon and essentialism. Maybe the question we should ask is this: can we write about the architecture of a music that makes people dance?Justin William's Rhyming and Stealing: Musical Borrowing in HipHop takes up this cause wielding the sometimes obtuse but imaginative theories of ethnomusicology. After digesting the heavy verbiage of William's approach, we are left with an inventive take on the imagined community of that values not only production of the music by its creators but its reception by audiences. Further, it is an analysis of the industry itself from recording techniques through advertising campaigns to the places and spaces in which the listener experiences the music. As new technologies and/or the shifting socio-economic landscape alter production and reception, Williams deftly notes the change in the sound and ideas of music from the 1970s to the turn of the century.The lens of William's focus is the concept of borrowing, an inescapable feature of culture. From its inception in the Bronx in the mid 70s, whether lyrically, musically or visually, has deliberately and defiantly recycled culture for its own ends. Swarms of post modernists and copyright lawyers alike have reacted with valueladen responses and actions that sometimes imbue purpose and intention to these borrowed acts for their own ends. William's work here refreshingly discusses this topic with objectivity and an elaborate eye for cultural associations. As he proclaims, hip-hop is a vast intertexual network that helps to form and inform the generic contract between audiences and groups and artists. (14)The author is able to detail this network with painstaking and thorough research - both of theoretical nature and actual recordings. Far too often academic studies of equate cultural shift with popularity, essentializing the role of the record industry. As the author puts it, focusing on the metagenre overlooks the nuances of the culture, unintentionally duplicating patterns of reductive analysis prone often to mass media. His intention is purposely devoid of establishing an authenticity hierarchy or to praise ideal types of expression in contrast to others. Williams does not ignore popular rap recordings but rather carefully contextualizes each recording or artist he discusses with less famous examples via footnote, bibliography or selected discography. While this is commonplace for most disciplines, Rhymin ' and Stealin ' is noteworthy alone for this organization of studies sources.As a result, Williams pieces together an important chronology of the development of hip-hop's musical aesthetics. First, Williams identifies the primacy of the break beat, the original records used by south Bronx DJs in outdoor parks or public housing recreational rooms. …