The 'Hood Comes First

Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop

Murray Forman

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9780819501660
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The 'Hood Comes First looks at the increasingly specific emphasis on real neighborhoods and streets in rap music and hip hop culture as an urgent response to the cultural and geographical ghettoization of black urban communities. Examining rap music, along with ancillary hip hop media including radio, music videos, rap press and the cinematic 'hood genre, Murray Forman analyzes hip hop culture's varying articulations of the terms "ghetto, " "inner-city, " and "the 'hood, " and how these spaces, both real and imaginary, are used to define individual and collective identity.

Negotiating academic, corporate, and "street" discourses, Forman assesses the dynamics between race, social space and youth. Race, class and national identification are recast and revised within rap's spatial discourse, concluding with the construction of "the 'hood, " a social and geographic symbol that has become central to concepts of hip hop authenticity. Additionally, the book analyzes the processes within the music and culture industries through which hip hop has been amplified and disseminated from the 'hood to international audiences.

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Space Matters: Hip-Hop and the Spatial Perspective
• Chapter 2: “Welcome to the City”: Defining and Delineating the Urban Terrain
• Chapter 3: Old-School Geography: From the Disco to the Street
• Chapter 4: Growing an Industry: The Corporate Expansion of Hip-Hop
• Chapter 5: Crossover and Fragmentation: Rap in the Platinum Era
• Chapter 6: Boyz N Girlz in the ’Hood: From Space to Place
• Chapter 7: Hip-Hop Media: Dissemination throughout the Nation
• Chapter 8: “The ’Hood Took Me Under”: Urban Geographies of Danger and the Cinematic ’Hood Genre
• Chapter 9: Industry, Nation, Globe: Hip-Hop toward 2000
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index