Goff at last locates one independently minded black voter who has something nice to say about one of our least popular presidents: an entrepreneur and small businessman from Connecticut named Curtis Jackson. "Incredible . . . a gangsta," Jackson raves about President George W. Bush. Jackson goes on to note that he undoubtedly would have voted for Bush in 2004 if he had not been a convicted felon. You may know him better as 50 Cent.
What neither author wrestles with, in part because of the many months of delays inevitable to book publishing, is Obama. What does it say about the political impact of the hip-hop generation that the Democratic nominee is not only African-American but evidently fluent in hip-hop culture, and able to craft a message that speaks to the politically disaffected young people for whom hip-hop is the air they breathe? No more than rock 'n' roll, hip-hop will never revolutionize politics, but its ethos - of skepticism, of brash outspokenness, of unconscious diversity - will begin to seep into the mainstream of political discourse. Obama is at the forefront of the first wave of hip-hop's cultural infiltration of the political arena. It won't necessarily change the world, but the soundtrack will be a lot better.
