Jeff Chang,Total Chaos and Hip Hop

If you don't read Total Chaos in its entirity you must read Adam Mansbachs essay "On Lit Hop", the conversation, "Its All One" by Juba Kalamka and Tim'm West's, "Black Talk and Hot Sex" by Danyel Smith.

In reading this book. Then reviewing it for this post, then skimming it because I was waiting in a LONG A_S line this summer, I realize how appropriate it is.
Its like Stakes is High, in that, each time I picked it up I noticed something that I didn't peep before.

My favorite part of Mansbachs essay "On Lit Hop" was actually in his foot note. This doesn't mean that the essay wasn't good because it was delicious. But the foot note was right UP IN the gristle. He writes:

On paper, I am totally one of those guys, a white Jewish ovelis with an MFA at Columbia. Iv'e never activated my membership thin tht club though. Nor have I made a conscious decision not to; I've just always been a hip-hopper, and the sensibilities, artistically and politically, that followed form that have dicatd my path since I was eleven. , memorizing criminal minded, and beginning to understand the subjectivity of whiteness, as hip hop was wont to make a white boy do back then. Im relegating this to a footnote because I think us white folks tend to centralize ourselves and our issues way too much when we deign to talk about race or privilage or access. Is it the role of yet another overeducated white guy to point out elitism of the state of the Novel convo...To me this is proper use of privilage: to sat things for which people with less privilage might face knee jerk recrimination.

When talking about homosexuality in Hip Hop, Tim'm sets forth talks about the being a backpacker equals automatically gay. He writes:

You said inappropriate faggotry." Lets not get it twisted. Hip Hop relies heavily on the inappropriate faggot in order to even exist. IN a really twisted sort of way, hey rely n the verbal bashing of fags in order to substantiate their manhood. Which backpacking, love peace and justice MC's have ever been regarded as "hard"? None. In fact, may of them are so often suspect of being "fags" that they go to sometimes great awkward lengths to say: "Hey, I'm for peace and love but fuck a faggot." Its really funny actually.

When discussing the connection that hip hop lit writers have with their audience, Danyel states:

I crave the connection that street lit authors have with their readership. I crave their sales. I crave the thing in their souls that makes them in many cases, not give a f_ck about grammar. Most of these authors, I'm sure, are as bidialectical as me, but chose not to check and cross every sentence they write for the kind of grammatical perfection that rings like a glass bell at one of John Cheevers gin soaked soirées.

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The book is $20, and its paperback. And lord knows, all kinda $5 an $10 on amazon.

So.

Go spend some cash with ya' cuzzo Jeff.
(Typically I would place a Jeff [I am saving an Egg for him] Chang [comment here], but because your boy SJ, is positioning himself to put Ms. M.dot on lock D, imma try to be
respectful. *Wink*.

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What do you think of the above quotes? I have been saving them for yall since about, mmmmmmm, February.

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