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Kanye West - Through the Wire
Lots of hip hop books on the way including Kanye West's Through the Wire, featuring Kanye's "word and lyrics" with illustrations by Bill Plympton. It's due November 10th on Atria.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Kanye West: Glow In The Dark Tour Book from Rizzoli
Kanye West Self Publishing Thank You And You're Welcome
The RZA - The Tao of Wu
RZA's The Tao of Wu, a follow-up to The Wu-Tang Manual, was released October 15th on Riverhead.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
The Business of The Wu-Tang Manual
Kanye West & Nabil Elderkin - Glow In The Dark
Glow In The Dark, a book of photographs by Nabil Elderkin taken during Kanye West's Glow In The Dark Tour, is due October 20th from Rizzoli, a publisher that represents the peak of high quality art books for major markets.
Hypebeast has photos but the cover appears to be the dust jacket free version shown above. Still, it should be a nice book.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Kanye West Self Publishing Thank You And You're Welcome
The 9/11 Conspiracy - Edited by James H. Fetzer
The 9/11 Conspiracy is a collection of studies that consider such questions as:
Why did the Twin Towers, specifically designed to withstand the impact of airliners, completely disintegrate, something that has never happened to any skyscraper building before or since?
Why were there explosions in their sub-basements before the airplanes hit these buildings?
Why did Building 7 come down late that afternoon, even though not hit by any aircraft and enduring no jet-fuel-based fires?
EXPLOITING CHAOS - Ashton vs Kanye High Five Battle
A bit of public fun to support the launch of Exploiting Chaos: 150 Ways to Spark Innovation During Times of Change by Jeremy Gutsche. There's also a Twitter component asking folks who they'd highfive.
Note: I briefly posted at Trend Hunter until I realized they were taking and republishing people's photographs in a manner that felt to me like a ripoff. But, unlike Kanye West's early blog, I think they were linking out and that's cool but the content issues are why I haven't mentioned the book before and why I won't be involved with or supportive of the site in the future.
Ghostface Killah - Cell Block Z
Ghostface Killah's Cell Block Z is due July 29th from Grand Central Publishing and will be available in a Kindle edition:
"To his fans, Cole Dennis is a heavyweight contender with a devastating right hook. To a city being held hostage to chaos and terror, Dennis has a grit and charisma that make him the shining hope for justice--until he is arrested for a brutal murder. Framed for a crime he did not commit, he finds himself captive in a foreboding high-tech superprison whose masters secretly conspire to turn inmates into tomorrow's most terrifying bioweapons--with Cole Dennis as the intended prize specimen."
"But Dennis is nobody's lab rat. Reborn as a towering engine of destruction, Dennis will prepare for the fight of his life. He will rename himself Ghostface Killah. And his cry of righteous rage will echo beyond the cold steel walls of Cell Block Z."
I received an advance copy and it's a nice looking product from a professional team of writers and illustrators.
This trailer has more of the art and a link to the Cell Block Z Facebook page.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Foot Print in Hip-Hop Tour Schedule: Method Man, Redman & Ghostface
Q-Tip has signed a deal with Ballantine Books to release Industry Rules, a book that will expand on the classic:
"Industry rule #4080,
Record company people are shady."
Over at Hip Hop Press:
Battery Records to release long-awaited Q-Tip album Kamaal the Abstract
According to Gawker, Lizzie Grubman's former assistant Robert Rave has written a book, Spin: A Novel, that does quite a number on the controversial publicist:
"Spin is big and thick and getting a roll out from St. Martin's next month, but really the first few pages of the prologue tell it all. A blowed-out, little-black-dress-clad, ogre-handed orange menace named Jennie blowing lines at 6am while complaining about black people."
Spin: A Novel by Robert Rave is due August 18th from St. Martin's Press.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Publicists: Lizzie Grubman Meet Phyllis Pollack
Who's Lizzie Grubman?
Ink in the Hood: Tattoos for Darker Skin
Since I've been posting a variety of Urban Ink magazine covers I thought it would be worthwhile to mention Randy Dragon Holder's Ink in the Hood: Tattoos for Darker Skin due August 28th from Schiffer Publishing.
Definitely a more interesting form of body modification than steroids!
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Soulja Boy Covers Urban Ink Wolverine-Style
Tattooed T-Pain Covers Urban Ink Issue #94
Urban Ink: Lil Wayne & The Game on Alternate Covers
Over at Hip Hop Press:
Urban Tattoo Art Book Release "Ink In The Hood"
Chris Brogan & Julien Smith - Trust Agents
Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, is due in the States August 24th via Wiley.
You can get an early take on what they're exploring with a ChangeThis manifesto released last year, Trust Economies: Investigation into the New ROI of the Web: "in the Trust Economy, communities are king, and ROI stands for Return on Influence."
Chris Brogan and Julien Smith both shared early thoughts on their blogs.
Julien Smith recommends 5 Books To Read Before Trust Agents.
Reggaeton
Reggaeton, a selection of academic essays edited by Raquel Rivera, Wayne Marshall and Deborah Pacini Hernandez, was released in April by Duke University Press.
Via Hip Hop Research.
Rob Walker - Buying In
I just finished reading Rob Walker's Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are and I have to say it's an excellent book. It's focused on what Walker terms "murketing", his code word for marketing approaches that may seem a bit murky to folks used to being yelled at by advertising such as Red Bull's early sponsorship of events that didn't shout "RED BULL" at every turn or word of mouth marketing campaigns from companies such as BzzAgent.
Walker does an excellent job of tying together research on human responses to marketing and related topics with his own interviews and insights in a very readable manner. He also skillfully reconciles seemingly contradictory and counterintuitive findings and observations regarding marketing and human behavior.
If you've ever wanted some ammo for those self-delusional types who claim to not be affected by marketing, you'll find it here, though that's not the most important accomplishment of this book.
I was impressed by the fact that, though I was familiar with a majority of the companies and many of the specific campaigns Walker mentions in Buying In, I never once felt a desire to skip over his description or discussion of any of that history, as I do with so many other writers who relate recent events through an overreliance on secondary sources.
My only disappointment came at the end as Walker seeks closure for a book-length discussion of a complex topic. Citing a claim by Chuck D that, in the early days, "it wasn't like a brand defined you, you defined the brand," Walker attempts to flip the linear supposition that "you are only what you surround yourself with" by suggesting that "you surround yourself only with who you are."
While it's often useful and interesting to consider what happens when one reverses a linear cause and effect supposition, Walker's book suggests that the "secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are" is a complex, nonlinear process that appears murky to most folks, in part, because we are socialized to be linear thinkers. His work helps reveal the interchange of feedback loops and related processes inherent in such a dialogue, one that is deeply nonlinear as are most such processes involving human thought and behavior.
Nevertheless, despite the difficulty that comes with finding temporary closure for a complex topic, Walker's book is a valuable contribution to understanding who we are and who we are becoming.
Rob Walker blogs at MURKETING - (The Journal Of).
The 50th Law - 50 Cent & Robert Greene
The 50th Law by 50 Cent & Robert Greene is due September 8th from HarperStudio.
Robert Greene discusses the process of writing the book at his blog. Power, Seduction and War, in the first of a four part series. He said he was sceptical when 50's people first contacted him because he tends to avoid the world of celebrity and then pretty much describes why I have no interest in interviewing Russell Simmons or his ilk:
"By necessity, anyone who has reached the top has had to resort to all kinds of manipulative maneuvers, but most people in the limelight try to disguise all of that as best they can. They want to project to the public their angelic, spiritual side, highlighting the progressive causes they support, their inner goodness."
Greene feels that 50 Cent is a different phenomenon for a variety of reaons including the fact that he doesn't hide his power struggles though, from a distance, that just seems like another game to me, not necessarily superior to playing the spirituality card. Greene feels that 50 Cent is what Machiavelli termed a "New Prince":
"New Princes...start at the bottom--with no privileges, connections, or money. What they have in abundance is ambition and hunger for power. If they make mistakes, they quickly analyze what they did wrong and learn the lesson. Considering the odds against them, they must stay focused, alert and patient. If they begin to rise up the ladder, it is almost purely by their own actions."
"They do not depend on others. They can handle downturns in fortune because they are used to adversity and turning negatives into positives. Since their education comes from experience and observation, they can think in the moment and adapt to their environment. They re-write the rules that others then slavishly follow."
He goes on to describe their working method and the emergent focus on the power of fearlessness leading to the organization of the book:
"Together we mapped out ten common types of fears and the reverse power that you can obtain by overcoming them. We found stories from his own life that would illustrate these ideas, many of them culled from his days as a hustler and even highlighting mistakes along the way that taught him valuable lessons...
"I would bring in examples from other historical figures who exemplified this trait. Many of them would be African Americans--Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, Malcolm X, Hurricane Carter, et al--whose fearless quality was forged by their harsh struggles against racism. Others would come from all periods and cultures--the Stoics, Joan of Arc, JFK, Leonardo da Vinci, Mao tse-tung."
Malcolm X and JFK? I'm looking forward to this book but I already find it rather amusing to watch this variant mythmaking process in which 50 Cent and Greene are engaged. Just different forms of the game at a time when 50's claimed lack of fear seems overshadowed by his reliance on connections to Eminem and Dr. Dre, his limited and quite specific skills as an artist and his tendency to drive away anyone under him who isn't a total yes man.
I'm not so interested in fearlessness myself. Every act of success I've experienced has involved facing my fears and doing what I felt needed to be done despite them. I certainly haven't experienced 50 Cent's success but, man, I would not want to be in his f*cked up shoes, that's for certain.
More importantly, anyone that tells you they have no fear is not to be trusted and and I don't believe that famous people who behaved in a fearless manner were necessarily fearless themselves.
So, yes, moving forward despite one's fears is huge and that does put one in a state of being in which one appears fearless. Actually having no fear is a different story. So I'm looking forward to finding out what they reveal about overcoming fear just as much as I'm looking forward to seeing how they build the myths of 50 Cent and Robert Greene.
Related ProHipHop Coverage:
Interview w/Adisa Banjoko: Robert Greene on 50 Cent
& The 50th Law [of Power]
Robert Greene, That 48 Laws Of Power Guy, Talks With 50 Cent
50 Cent and the Violence of Money
Marc Lamont Hill - Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life
I recently added new titles at Hip Hop Research and one that caught my eye was Marc Lamont Hill's Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity.
There's been a a lot of grassroots action connecting hip hop and education so it's nice to see some legitimizing work coming from a hot shot in the academic research establishment like Dr. Hill.
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