Black Noise: Rap and Black Culture in Contemporary Culture

Author: Tricia Rose

by DJ Renegade

When Chuck D proclaimed "bring the noise," I doubt that the book by Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap and Black Culture in Contemporary America is what he intended. Chuck D, known for kicking his ballistics in a minimum of mustard, is the antithesis of plethoric word-slinger Tricia Rose who was last spotted playing de-constructive punctuation games with her essay in the anthology Black Popular Culture. Sista Rose got more words than Clinton got mistresses, than Haiti got dictators, than... (well-you get the picture.) Black Noise, her Ph.D. dissertation, purports to "describe, theorize, and critique elements of rap, including rap's lyrics, music, culture, and style, as well as the social context within which rap takes place." (Damn!) It also claims to "ground black cultural signs and codes in black culture and examine the poly-vocal languages of rap as the 'black noise' of the late twentieth century." (Damn 2 times!)

Chapter 1 is entitled "Voices from the Margins" and it examines the marketing of rap, the production of music videos, and their social context. Chapter 2 "All Aboard the Night Train: Flow, Layering and Rupture in postindustrial New York" explores facets of hip-hop (breaking, graffiti and rap), and considers some factors that led to their emergence. The third chapter examines the role of technology in rap, and its relationship to black oral and musical traditions, and debates the industrial effects on musical structures (especially the role of repetition.) Chapter 4 looks at rap lyrics and the way they critique the police, the media, and the government, and how media coverage of rap has helped hinder its growth. The fifth chapter deals with women rappers and how they work in and against the male dominated rap environment, and analyzes the most common critical claims about female rappers. The book ends with a short summarizing epilogue.

This is unquestionably an ambitious and impressive undertaking and to her credit, Rose has researched the hell out of her subject, compiling interviews, citing available written materials, and listening to and transcribing hundreds of records and videos. However, her book has some serious flaws. It's most serious flaw is that it is full of so much hyper-academic jargon that it'll make you break out in hives at the mere sight of a thesaurus. Sadly, to be intellectual in Postmodern America means you have to be adept at spewing obfuscatory verbiage in mindlessly gratuitous displays of vocabulariousness (see what I mean?). The end result is that very few citizens of the Hip-Hop nation will be able to read this book, let alone understand it. And while the jargon may provide academic credibility for a dissertation, it serves no useful purpose because it is hopelessly bloated with scholarly pretentiousness. The problems for Black Noise begins when Tricia Rose starts her bewildering theorizing.

As a former rap D.J., I found Rose's ideas about flow, layering, and rupture to be abstract speculative nonsense. Even these ideas are borrowed from Arthur Jaffa, cinematographer of "Daughter of the Dust." Rose's ignorance of the equipment involved in creating rap, haunts her as she frequently embarrasses herself. She engages in such inanities as claiming that the TR-808 drum machine is digital and a sampler, it is neither. She says that "computer sampling instruments create access to sounds formerly uncopyable and therefore unprotected. The fact is anything you can sample can be recorded on analog tape, and all of it is protected by existing copyright laws. (Ask Biz Markie.) Rose's alienation from black urban music became clear when she wrongly identified Chuck Brown, leader of the Soul Searchers and Go-Go music's Godfather, as the leader of Trouble Funk.

I've heard clearer logic from schizophrenics in front of the White House babbling about the miniature microphones the Pope planted in their Cheerios, than can be found in Black Noise. Fortunately for Rose, and us, she regains her senses when she discusses rap's militants in her chapter entitled, "Prophets of Rage." She details a lucid and accessible analysis of the valuable role progressive rap plays in countering our oppression. But Rose reaches her analytical strength with her writing on women in hip- hop, the best analysis to be found anywhere. Her ideas on women are an invaluable contribution to hip- hop culture and is must reading for anyone interested in understanding the role of black women in rap. She expertly points out how the depiction of most female rappers as proto-feminists and most male rappers as misogynists is hopelessly simplistic. Throughout her book she dispels much of the nonsense of other academicians who have written about rap. But lacking any grounding in West African music and culture, she falls into the common trap of attributing far too much of rap's development to racism. Most of the theoretical apparatus she conjures, ultimately proves superfluous.

Rose's fixation with sampling and technology is out of proportion to their actual role. Poor people created rap music because just as the poor people who created the blues affirmed, culture and humanity demand expression. What Rose seems to ignore or be ignorant of is the fact that black people have and will continue to make music with whatever is at hand, be it high, low or no tech. (Check Doug Fresh's beat box!) Black Noise is emblematic of the best and worst of black intellectual thought in the nineties. While it begins the important task of defining black culture, it attempts to clarify by forcing contrived complexity, and ultimately engages in an incestuous dialogue between pompous scholars. Black Noise is Tricia Rose's first book, let's hope that this sista goes on to bigger, better, and more readable things. Peace.

DJ Renegade is a poet and regular contributor to ONE.

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