POP CULTURE

En plus de ces images parlantes, voici la note de l'éditeur à propos d'un livre écrit par un professeur à USC, suivie d'une partie de son interview. Pour continuer le débat en cours...

Conversation With Todd Boyd Author of Young Black Rich & Famous

In this controversial look at the impact of cutting-edge black urban culture on contemporary America, Dr. Todd Boyd, the man CNN deemed "the hip-hop professor," uses the intertwining worlds of basketball and hip-hop as a powerful metaphor for exploring the larger themes of race, class, and identity. In the 1970s, as a direct result of both the civil rights and the black power movements, black popular culture became a visible, influential presence in mainstream film, television, music, and sports. Basketball, in particular, reflected the changing landscape. The NBA came to be dominated by young black men whose potent combination of fame and wealth, often coupled with a defiance of white mores, profoundly disrupted the status quo. At the same time, hip-hop music was emerging from the streets of New York City. An expression of and a response to urban conditions, it served as a way of being heard when many other forces attempted to suffocate the black voice. It, too, aroused strong reactions.

In Young, Black, Rich and Famous, Todd Boyd chronicles how basketball and hip-hop have gone from being reviled by the American mainstream to being embraced and imitated globally. For young black men, he argues, they represent a new version of the American dream, one that embodies the hopes and desires of those excluded from the original version.

Shedding light on both perceptions and reality, Boyd shows that the NBA has been at the forefront of recognizing and incorporating cultural shifts-from the initial image of 1970s basketball players as overpaid black drug addicts, to Michael Jordan's spectacular rise as a universally admired icon, to the 1990s, when the hip-hop aesthetic (for example, Allen Iverson's cornrows, multiple tattoos, and defiant, in-your-face attitude) appeared on the basketball court. Hip-hop lyrics, with their emphasis on "keepin' it real" and marked by a colossal indifference to mainstream taste, became an equally powerful influence on young black men. These two influences have created a brand-new, brand-name generation that refuses to assimilate but is nonetheless an important part of mainstream American culture. A thought-provoking examination of basketball and music-"the two rarefied spaces where the most fundamental elements of blackness are articulated and played out, both internally and for the masses"-Young, Black, Rich and Famous brilliantly captures a culture and a sensibility that are at once unique, influential, and sometimes intimidating to so many.

Dr. Boyd recently told us more about why he wrote YOUNG, BLACK, RICH AND FAMOUS, the role of hip-hop in his writing, Kobe, and more.

Why did you write this book and what is the book's main message?

When you look at the culture at large, basketball and hip-hop are amazing because they're both extremely popular and are dominated by young black men. And are both mainstream in their popularity. I was interested in how basketball and hip-hop have become these cultural entities that demand so much attention and at the core is black masculinity. When you look around there's nothing else that demands the attention of the future.

What's the attraction? Why are they able to operate so freely in that environment and not in other parts of society?

Society has always been interested in urban black male style. There was jazz in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. There were racial hindrances, but increasingly jazz started to hit the mainstream. Frank Sinatra's whole sense of identity came from the gangsters that he grew up with, but also the black jazz musicians. The same could be said for the Beats, Jack Kerouac (et al.) mimicked Bird and the whole bebop thing. Fred Astaire wouldn't be Fred Astaire if not for copying Bill Bojangles Robinson.

The theme of hip-hop is important to you-all four of your books deal with the topic. Why is hip-hop so significant to you and why has it become such a critical cultural indicator?

I love hip-hop, I grew up with it. I tell people all the time that I was in tenth grade in 1979 when "Rapper's Delight" came out. I'm from Detroit and that was the first time we heard hip-hop. I've grown up with hip-hop and it's always been a part of my identity. When everyone was listening to [Michael Jackson's] "Thriller," I was listening to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Hip-hop has always been interesting. The attitude is familiar to me and to see that attitude represented now in mainstream society and to see people's reaction to it is amazing. An attitude and a style that's common to black society and black men, but until hip-hop we hadn't seen that style and attitude in public so much. There have been some examples of that attitude, but they haven't been so overt: Miles playing with his back to the audience, and the Black Panthers and their imagery, the images were out there, but they weren't popularized, or broadcast in mainstream society in the same way that they are today. Hip-hop is a movement in which a number of people exhibit an aloof, militant, distant, defiant, and creative style. There's an indifference to mainstream approval with hip-hop but ironically in the end it's received massive mainstream approval. And that approval has turned into dollars and cents.