The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop

This book was so good! Abrams is 2/2 for oral histories with me, after loving his oral history of The Wire. I love good oral histories because you get such a variety of perspectives. There's an art to making an oral history flow well and have the people speaking complement each other and Abrams is fantastic at it.

There are so many cool things I didn't know in here. From the very origins of DJing and scratching and how it started the movement, how the commercialization of rap affected the genre and subculture, to the origins of the west coast vs east coast feud (main sparks: Suge Knight and.....Outkast!?). I thought the book was pretty comprehensive and gave due to artists who don't get a lot of recognition outside of hip-hop circles for their contributions to culture. I have so much homework now. I also have a much deeper appreciation for the different styles of rap and how the genre has overlayed on top of each other in response to other regions/rappers trying something new and levelling up what people thought could be done and the influences that could be brought in. As an aside, it always makes me sad when people dismiss rap as people just talking fast. Rap is art, rap is poetry, it's storytelling and it's culture. And I think this book does an outstanding job of celebrating it in all of its forms, even if I'm not a fan of certain subgenres.

Also, while I knew it intellectually, seeing just how many incredible rappers are mentioned in this book just made me realize how deep the bench is for phenomenal talents that don't get enough appreciation. Highly recommend this book for hip hop-heads but also just for anybody who wants to dig deeper into a subculture, especially one that has influenced our modern era of music so totally.