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In Gangsta, Ronin Ro looks at the perversion of the music called hip-hop - the syncopated verse with a political edge and an emphasis on hope - into a medium of rage and hyper-violence. Gangsta is about selling evil in a marketplace already glutted with faulty, combustible goods. Who supplies and who demands? Can we trace the engineers behind this star-maker machinery? This is packaged, sanctioned violence - a message without a source.
Few rappers opt to stay in the 'hood; many more are lured to abandon it for the music video's version of the 'hood - the cartoon slash-and-burn community, the bloodbath, the vision of unassignable rage, anxiety, and revenge. Ro is asking, Whose rage is this, and are the predominately black and Hispanic artists involved in a minstrel show gone out of control? Are we giving society what it wants or are we telling it what it wants?
What is clear is that society is getting what it does not need. What is most disturbing is that the music that carries the message was conceived to galvanize communities. As in the fifties, when television was supposed to function as a great teaching tool, hip-hop promised to promote pride and hope. Now it has morphed into cruelty, selfishness, the fracturing of communities and all this to the thwack, thwack of the plastic charge card. You can't trace who wants what, who believes what, who needs what.
This book is saying: Repent for your sins.
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Showing 2 featured editions. View all 2 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
Gangsta: Merchandizing the Rhymes of Violence
July 1996, St Martins Pr
Hardcover
in English
- 1st ed edition
0312143443 9780312143442
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2
Gangsta: merchandizing the rhymes of violence
1996, St. Martin's Press
in English
- 1st ed.
0312143443 9780312143442
|
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- Created April 1, 2008
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July 30, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 15, 2010 | Edited by bgimpertBot | Added goodreads ID. |
April 14, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the edition. |
December 8, 2009 | Edited by ImportBot | link works |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |