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  Publish Date: October 26, 2005
  Book Website: Hip-Hop & Philosophy
  Publisher: Open Court Press

Darby & Shelby “Hip-Hop & Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason” Book Review
I must admit that I’ve started to grow somewhat weary of people talking about the “Four Elements of Hip-Hop.” It seems like every time I read an article about hip-hop, everyone is attempting to define it with the use of these four attributes, which include rapping, DJing, breakdancing and graffiti. This has always confused me, because ever since I was a kid, I was under the impression that there were not four, but five, elements of hip-hop.

Could it be that, somewhere along the line, the culture forgot about its ties to community, politics, and intelligent and groundbreaking trains of thought? Could it be that we’ve been so excited by the mainstream’s acceptance of the first four elements that we feel no reason to push the fifth? Or is it that people who cannot understand hip-hop as a worldview and culture, instead attempting to define it as a style or fad, choose to leave out the fifth element due to their inabilities to explain it or make it fit within their preconceived notions of what hip-hop is supposed to be? Being the conspiracy theorist that I am, I tend to believe in the last explanation.

The Fifth Element … Knowledge
The fifth element of hip-hop has always been knowledge. This element is a broad one, and can be seen to include everything from self-consciousness and cultural awareness to social and political philosophies and new patterns of thinking. Yet this fifth element is continuously, almost blatantly, ignored, so much that everyone nowadays appears to believe that hip-hop is, and always has been, composed of only four elements.

However, the emergence of more and more intellectual studies based on the social, political and educational aspects of hip-hop culture, and the music that reflects its agendas, is being seen all over the United States. From Cornel West to Tricia Rose to Michael Eric Dyson, intellectuals and scholars are showing that the fifth element of hip-hop does indeed exist, and possesses the ability to vehemently turn heads and change our society’s understanding of the hip-hop culture and worldview.

The most recent of these studies, Derrick Darby and Tommie Shelby’s “Hip Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme2Reason,” stretches these boundaries even further by proving that hip-hop music can be consulted while contemplating some of life’s most pondered mysteries. By showing the strong connection between the beginnings of philosophy and the beginnings of hip-hop, these editors and their team of modern philosophers make one wonder if hip-hop could do as much as our most prevalent philosophical studies to further conscious thought and understanding into our future, as both a culture and a worldview.

Hip-Hop & Philosophy
From the cobblestone streets of ancient Athens to the downtrodden boulevards of America’s urban areas, one cannot help but see patterns of similarity in how the people came together under less than desirable conditions to answer life’s important questions. I can just see Socrates standing at a street corner around a trash can set ablaze, ambulances and police cars whizzing by, questioning the hypocrisies of the ruling class and kicking knowledge from a modern day perspective to any who will dare to listen or have the courage to spit back. After all, isn’t that what he was put to death for?

“Hip-Hop and Philosophy” was both an interesting and entertaining read. While some chapters immerse the reader in deep thought, others also create laughter and, at times, sadness. I was so immersed in it that I read it twice consecutively. Kinda like that dope album that you just let run through and through. Unfortunately, the book is a little on the nerd tip, and may be a hard read for anyone not familiar with philosophy, hip-hop, or ultimately, both. Therefore, I have summarized it below. Holler.

Disk 1 – Da Mysteries: God, Love, and Knowledge

Chapter 1 – Yo! Ain’t No Mystery: Who Is God?
Written by Derrick Darby, this chapter contemplates divine omnipotence, or the claim that God can do all things, using the arguments of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Socrates, Rakim, Young Buck, 50 Cent and Tupac. It finds answers in challenging God to roll a blunt so strong that even he can’t hit it, to create a glock so powerful that even he can’t wield it, and to break Tupac from prison.

Chapter 2 – Ain’t (Just) ’bout da Booty: Funky Reflections on Love
Written by Tommie Shelby, this chapter reflects on love using the arguments of Pausanias, Aristophanes, Socrates, Alcibiades (all character’s in Plato’s Symposium, which basically searches for the meaning of love), Andre 3000, Jay-Z, Lil’ Kim, Meth, Biggie and Lauryn Hill.

Chapter 3 – “You Perceive with Your Mind”: Knowledge and Perception
Written by Mitchell S. Green, this chapter challenges the sense-data idea of perception, the idea that your senses work together to create a picture for your mind, using the arguments of Descartes, Sigmund Freud, the Gorillaz, Common, and KRS-One. It makes the case for the existence of a conscious awareness much bigger and deeper than we realize while contemplating the “Cocktail Party Effect,” which questions the senses’ abilities to correctly perceive things, and the theory of adaptive consciousness, which is the idea that we go through much of life in an unconscious state, similar to a jet controller flying around in “auto-pilot.”

Disk 2 – What’s Beef? Ruminations on Violence

Chapter 4 – “Y’all Niggaz Better Recognize”: Hip-Hop’s Dialectical Struggle for Recognition
Written by John P. Pittman, this chapter contemplates the reasoning behind hip-hop beefs and battle rapping using the arguments of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Talib Kweli, Run D.M.C., Outkast, Ice Cube, and the Jay-Z vs. Nas beef. It basically interprets rap beef and battles as simple Hegelian “struggle for recognition,” even as relates to the materialism that exists in some portions of the hip-hop culture.

Chapter 5 – Rap Aesthetics: Violence and the Art of Keeping It Real
Written by Richard Shusterman, this chapter evaluates pragmatism in hip-hop using the arguments of the pragmatists, followers of a philosophy that emphasizes practical applications to solving problems or assessing situations. It basically shows that hip-hop, like pragmatism, creates rigid divisions between art and reality, and considers the Darwinian premise that violence, even in hip-hop, can be channeled into artistic forms, thus making it more productive than destructive.

Chapter 6 – “F**k tha Police [State]“: Rap, Warfare, and the Leviathan
Written by Joy James, this chapter examines whether or not a social contract, basically an agreement between the government and the governed defining and limiting the rights of each, has ever existed between the United States and African Americans using the arguments of Thomas Hobbes, Public Enemy, Dead Prez, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Ice-T. It points to the existence of a murderous police presence as proof of a broken social contract, using as examples the rape and torture of Abner Louima (with a broomstick, no less) and the murder of Amadou Diallo (who was fired upon with 41 bullets while unarmed), both acts committed by the NYPD.

Disk 3 – That’s How I’m Livin’: Authenticity, Blackness, and Sexuality

Chapter 7 – Does Hip-Hop Belong to Me? The Philosophy of Race and Culture
Written by Paul C. Taylor, this chapter questions the relationship between race and culture by reviewing the movie Brown Sugar, the Eminem enigma, and his own life. It attempts to disprove classical racialism, which is the old-school belief that somehow culture and intelligence is inherited in the same way eye or skin color is, and concludes that culture does not belong to any single group.

Chapter 8 – Queen Bees and Big Pimps: Sex and Sexuality in Hip Hop
Written by Kathryn T. Gines, this chapter challenges the roles of pimps and hos in hip-hop by likening them to their earlier versions, the post Civil War stereotypes of the black female jezebel and the black male rapist. It examines Nelly’s “Tip Drill” Video and its effect of denying the individuality of women in relation to Jean Paul-Satre’s “concept of the gaze,” or threat of non-recognition. It also examines the concept of the “virgin-whore paradigm,” which ultimately forces women to have no sexual voice, in relation to Lil’ Kim’s well-recognized assertion of her sexuality.

Chapter 9 – Grown Folks’ Business: The Problem of Maturity in Hip Hop
Written by Lewis R. Gordon . you know, I couldn’t really follow this one, even after two readings. I found myself daydreaming. I’ll try one more time and post something if I figure it out.

Disk 4 – Word Up! Language, Meaning, and Ethics

Chapter 10 – Knowwhatumsayin’? How Hip-Hop Lyrics Mean
Written by Stephen Lester Thompson, this chapter examines when a lyric really means what a lyricist is attempting to say, and when it only represents part of a personae, or public image.

Chapter 11 – Girl Got 99 Problems: Is Hip Hop One?
Written by Sarah McGrath and Lidet Tilahun, this chapter attempts to figure out whether or not hip-hop is bad for women using arguments of John Stuart Mill, David Hume, J.L. Austin, and Immanuel Kant. Never seems to figure it out though.

Chapter 12 – “For All My Niggaz and Bitches”: Ethics and Epithets
Written by J. Angelo Corlett, this chapter uses moral philosophy to address the ethical issue of whether or not it is morally wrong for hip-hop artists and comics to use language normally considered bad. It examines the comedy of Dave Chappelle in relation to John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle, which states that the only time that words ought to be prohibited by law is when they cause harm to others.

Disc 5 – Fight the Power: Political Philosophy ‘n the Hood

Chapter 13 – Microphone Commandos: Rap Music and Political Philosophy
Written by Bill E. Lawson, this chapter goes a little further into the idea of a broken contract between the United States and African Americans, asserting that America has not lived up to its promise of social inclusion for all citizens. It pushes the point that political rap in part represents Americans’ responses to this broken contract.

Chapter 14 – Halfway Revolution: From That Gangsta Hobbes to Radical Liberals
Written by Lionel K. McPherson, this chapter makes the case that political rap is not politically revolutionary, as its visions have been mainly amoral, Afrocentric, or liberal. It pushes the point that political rap is the soundtrack to the hip-hop generation’s anger over being left out of the American dream.

Chapter 15 – Criminal-Justice Minded: Retribution, Punishment, and Authority
Written by Erin I. Kelly, this chapter examines the similarities between prison and the ghetto, as well as the policies that have dramatically increased the prison population seven times in the past forty years. It also gives several interesting facts about the jail sentencing differences between possession of crack and possession of cocaine charges, based most likely on the racial percentages of convicts arrested for each.

Chapter 16 – Getting’ Dis’d and Getting’ Paid: Rectifying Injustice
Written by Rodney C. Roberts, this chapter contemplates the reparations struggle, or talking about injustice and what should be done about it. It gives an interesting analysis into forty acres and a mule idea, as well as the reality of how it came to an end.

After . Word! The Philosophy of the Hip Hop Battle
Written by Marcyliena Morgan, this chapter sums up the volume, defining the hip-hop battle as a philosophical fight exploding with overwhelming expectation, opportunity, and challenges that affect real lives.