The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop ed. by Justin A. Williams

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop ed. by Justin A. Williams Brandi A. Neal The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop. Edited by Justin A. Williams. (Cambridge Companions to Music.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. [xv, 349 p. ISBN 9781107037465 (hardcover), $89.99; ISBN 9781107643864 (paperback), $29.99; ISBN 9781316236147 (e-book), $24.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliography, index. The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop, which is dedicated to memory of scholar Adam Krims, does not seek to present itself as a groundbreaking work in hip-hop scholarship and thought. Rather, the collection aims to complement existing hip-hop literature, extend the conversation the literature has already evoked, and take it in new directions. To support this objective, the volume takes a multidisciplinary approach to hip-hop studies, which not only draws from diverse fields in the humanities, but also those authors who approach the topic from a transdisciplinary perspective. This methodology allows the Companion to offer entries from a broad range of subtopics and to appeal to the scholar and layperson alike. Editor Justin A. Williams divides the volume into three parts: “Elements,” which refers to the original four elements of hiphop culture; “Methods and Concepts,” which investigates innovative means of analysis; and “Case Studies,” which further investigates and explicates ideas explored in the preceding section. It is within the final segment of the volume that the reader is given both a cross-disciplinary and global perspective. Part I, “Elements,” discusses the four preexisting elements of hip-hop, but also presents multiple elements for additional consideration. The four cemented elements that contributors address—MCing, breakin’, graffiti, and DJing—are topically more self-contained than the proposed candidates. The candidate elements—knowledge, religion, and theater—are indicative of the type of dialogue that the collection aims to foster. Though it is not explicitly discussed, there is thematic overlap between the three candidates, in particular with regard to their representation in art in the black diaspora. These connections become clear early in Travis L. Gosa’s contribution to the volume, “The Fifth Element: Knowledge.” Gosa describes approximately two decades of rapper Snoop Dogg’s career in consistently negative terms. Indeed, Gosa opens the piece with, “Calvin Broadus Jr.’s career as Snoop (Doggy) Dogg gestures to the death of socially conscious hip-hop and the birth of the 1990s gangsta rap era in which gun-play, violence against women, and political nihilism were branded as ghetto authenticity” (p. 56). Though it is dramatic and evokes the “evil gangsta rap” trope, Gosa’s opening line has a clear rhetorical purpose. Snoop Dogg is positioned as a promoter of alcohol, pornography, and prostitution, but with the narrative goal of revealing Snoop’s spiritual awakening in 2012. Snoop Dogg changed his name to Snoop Lion, which reflects his newly-found understanding of Rastafarianism, its history, and his own effect on society through his past actions. Gosa then relates how Snoop created an album that same year, Reincarnated, that “oozes positivity, with tracks of love, unity, non-violence, and even the healthiness of drinking natural fruit juice without the Tanqueray Gin” (p. 57). Gosa uses Snoop’s “conversion” as a means of presenting knowledge as the candidate for the fifth element of hip-hop, and describing the conversion as a “journey for the truth” (p. 57). Snoop’s journey echoes Afrika Bambaataa’s attempt to move hiphop from street consciousness to Afrocentric empowerment. Gosa goes on to explain that Bambaataa, too, underwent a conversion from gang member in the South Bronx Black Spades to Afrika Bambaataa Aasim, a name with ties to Islam that is flavored with geopolitics (p. 58). Again, religion and knowledge are connected. This connection is not explicitly stated, merely taken as understood. On the tails of Gosa’s contribution is Christina Zanfagna’s, “Hip-hop and Religion: From the Mosque to the Church,” which is a more overt investigation of how some hip-hop artists interact with religion. Zanfagna posits that hip-hop samples spirituality, a punning but apropos description of how hip-hop (the writer has chosen to use the term hip-hop and rap synonymously) has not aligned itself with a [End Page 123] particular denomination or orthodoxy, and...