Editors Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, hip-hop scholars and professors at Northeastern University and the University of Texas at Austin, respectively, have done a service of biblical proportions to hip-hop heads living everywhere from the New York City boroughs to the halls of the ivory towers.
"That's the Joint!" is an eclectic collection of more than 40 previously published articles and essays that capture the emergence and growth of hip-hop culture. Colorfully titled essays such as "Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile" by Tricia Rose, and "Check Yo Self Before You Wreck Yourself" by Todd Boyd deconstruct hip-hop using a kaleidoscopic lens of research techniques drawn from sociology, musicology, linguistics, political science, feminist theory, and economics. Every article, written in the distinct style of its author, paints the multifaceted face of a multicultural reality.
Essay standouts include Craig Castleman's "The Politics of Graffiti," which delves into the New York City effort to wipe the transit system clean of graffiti, once referred to by the 1972 New York city council president Sanford Garelick as "one of the worst forms of pollution we have to combat." Castleman illustrates how the graffiti deemed as eyesores by government officials were actually colorfully created out of a burn for artistic expression and respect by the often-silenced youth of color. Kyra D. Gaunt's "Translating Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop: The Musical Vernacular of Black Girls' Play" finds an overlooked link between the ghetto art form of double-dutch and the hyper-masculine and uber-sexual hip-hop culture.
Gaunt demonstrates that the chants and rhymes that accompany the fury of the twisting double-dutch ropes are a way that little brown girls can dance themselves into an often exclusive culture, writing "the games that African-American girls play suggest that both women and girls should recognize signs of their own private play in hip-hop music in addition to hearing it as an expression of black male life."
