Rose’s article touched on some critical issues in hip hop that interested me, but I’d argue that some of her claims feel a little forced. Rose asserts that hip hop is organized around the notions of “flow, layering and rupture in line” (82), and applies this logic to the flow and movement of muscles and joints in breakdancing, the three-dimensional design of graffiti lettering, and the more obvious presence of flow in the creation and execution of lyrics. These seem like cool examples of the imagery she’s pushing, but are these really the principal notions that bind the many angles of hip hop together? I am attracted to the idea of postmodern urban space, in its many tangible forms, serving as the roots from which hip hop emerged (the rumble of MTA trains through Bronx as a soundtrack for gritty lyrics, or the emergence of electronic turntable technology), but again it seems funky when Rose credits these disparate elements of the postindustrial city as the root of hip hop culture.
Rose’s assertion that “hip hop developed as part of a cross-cultural communication network” also doesn’t wholly underscore the ways in which hip hop created divisions between the communities of color (Hispanic, Afro-Caribbeans and African-Americans) in which many principles of hip hop were conceived (84). I would like to see more analysis of how the racially diverse nature of hip hop’s terrain in the 1970’s also rendered this terrain more contested? In what ways to the fact that conditions of urban plight that bound many communities of color together during the era of hip hop’s conception also serve as divisive influences among these very communities?
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