“‘SOMEBODY SCREAM!: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power’
is eminently readable and occasionally riveting . . . The book, which ends with Eminem, begins in 1971, when black power was ‘crumbling’ in real life but was reborn on television. The debut of ‘Soul Train,’ Reeves argues, ‘provided a national stage for black urban youth culture,’ thus sowing the seeds for hip-hop culture: ‘a hard-rock vessel carrying the hopes, anger, disappointments, attitude and history of post-black-power America.’” - New York Times Book Review
Somebody Scream by Marcus Reeves
While Hip Hop music is the most powerful musical force in pop culture today, its current popularity and corporate controlled dominance belies its more political history. In SOMEBODY SCREAM!: Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power, the journalist Marcus Reeves argues that Hip Hop is nothing less than “a hardrock vessel carrying the hopes, anger, disappointments, attitude, and history of post-Black power America.” From its evolution from New York-based musical form into commercial music revolution to unifying expression for a post-Black power generation, Reeves examines-through studies of Rap music icons, the author’s personal accounts, and the void in national leadership-how rappers, especially hardcore MCs, rose to become the all-encompassing sociopolitical voice of American youth.
Looking at ten artists who have had an impact on rap - from Run-DMC “Black Pop in a B-Boy Stance” to Eminem “Vanilla Nice” - as well as Public Enemy, N.W.A., Salt-N-Pepa, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G. & Sean “Puffy” Combs, Jay-Z and DMX, Reeves explores their music and celebrity in the context of the times that produced them. With a narrative that looks beyond the controversies currently engulfing the genre-the foul language, violence, misogynistic lyrics, the corporate manipulation - SOMEBODY SCREAM! critically and holistically analyzes Rap through its most famous icons to tell a “story that couldn’t be written without including the tale of a Black generation whose story the music told. It’s a revision of their dreams that made the music speak, and it was their ingenuity to persevere, by any means necessary, that keeps Rap music relevant and evolving.”
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“Marcus Reeves’ SOMEBODY SCREAM!
is a strong and timely book for the new day in hip-hop. Don’t miss it!”
- Cornel West
author Marcus Reeves
Marcus Reeves has covered youth culture, music and politics for over fifteen years, in publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Vibe, Rolling Stone and The Source.
Upcoming Appearances
April 10: East Brunswick NJ 7:30pm. Barnes & Noble 753 Route 18 Brunswick Sq.
April 14: Greenwich Village
7:30pm. Barnes & Noble 396 Ave. of the Americas NYC
April 22: Harlem NY
6pm. Hue-Man 2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd.
April 24: Brooklyn NY
7pm. Brownstone Books
409 Lewis Ave. Brooklyn
April 29: Brooklyn Heights
7pm. Barnes and Noble
106 Court St. Brooklyn
“A muscular narrative… that’s both celebratory and unusually honest.” -Kirkus Reviews
“Pay attention: one of the most compelling writers of our generation has arrived. SOMEBODY SCREAM! is a deeply imagined, finely balanced, and richly detailed narrative of our nation’s complicated, contradictory, often explosive post-black power journey.”
- Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
“Marcus Reeves is one of the gifted thinkers and literary spokespersons of the hip-hop era. Every cultural movement, every generation, needs those voices who are not only willing to represent that movement and that generation, but also able to stand back and, like the rapper Bonecrusher, proclaim loudly, with his chest poked out, ‘I ain’t never scared.’ And never scared is what Marcus Reeves is with SOMEBODY SCREAM!: he manifests the truth from back-in-the-day to our day, straight up and down, with no chaser and no apologies.”
-Kevin Powell, author of Someday We’ll All Be Free
“Marcus Reeves gives voice to the world that hip-hop created and still hopes to create.”
-Mark Anthony Neal, author of New Black Man
“SOMEBODY SCREAM! is a panoramic, icon-by-icon rendering of hip-hop. In the crowded field of hip-hop lit, this book is a standout. Marcus Reeves has composed a portrait of the culture that possesses all the verve, intellect, and swagger of a classic Rakim line.”
-William Jelani Cobb, author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic
“Extending the historical analysis found in other works on the genre, such as Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Reeves underscores the importance of rap as an art form that continues to evolve while remaining a viable means through which to channel future discourse of post-black power America”
-Library Journal
“It’s inspiring when a writer can bring insight, conviction, and perspective to a subject too often lost in myth and controversy. Marcus Reeves does that and more. He knows the music and the history, and brings both vividly to life here.”
-Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor, Rolling Stone
“If in SOMEBODY SCREAM! Marcus Reeves only provided his exegesis of Public Enemy and Chuck D, it would be an indispensable book. The rest of the chapters, for me, are added value-and extremely valuable. What a remarkable new writer and scholar!”
-Herb Boyd, author of Baldwin’s Harlem
“The story of this powerfully influential and yet surprisingly little-understood American musical genre has been told several times in the past few years; there would seem little need for yet one more account. Journalist Reeves’s first book more than makes the case for its necessity…His attempt to suss out what exactly rap means in the modern black community is incisive and hopeful without succumbing to the hyperbolic claims common to music journalists…Energetic music analysis that’s both celebratory and unusually honest.”
-Kirkus Reviews
“Reeves honors hip-hop culture by illuminating it.
He tells the story with great insight and deep compassion.”
-David Ritz, author of Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye