Hip-hop records have never had what one would call “substantial” liner notes. Obligatory credits to various producers and guests, a representative photo or two, and often indecipherable shout-outs are all that crowd the glossy pages of inserts to virtually every classic and current hip-hop album, much to the frustration of detail-hungry fans.
How are we ever supposed to find out who exactly is responsible for Public Enemy’s paradigm-altering sound (Hank Shocklee)? Or why those Beastie Boys took three years to follow-up Paul’s Boutique and came out with something so deliciously afield (basically, a skate ramp)? Or who was the first MC to mention a ménage a trios (Bushwick Bill, believe it or not)?
Thankfully, Brian Coleman wants to know just as badly as we do, and he’s actually done something about it.
Coleman, a hip-hop journalist whose writing has been featured in the likes of XXL, URB, Scratch, and Wax Poetics, found himself with such a large amount of unused material from his interview sessions, and he could no longer excuse keeping such important information to himself. “If a friend of mine had all these interviews and was hoarding them,” Coleman said in an early interview with Baghat Vinyl, “I’d kick his ass.”
With that in mind, he self-published a collection in 2005 called Rakim Told Me. For a genre with hardly any written history, it’s unsurprising that the book quickly became an authoritative must-have for any hip-hop head.
Today’s commercialization (read: bastardization) of hip hop has made the careful documentation of its roots even more crucial than before. Most hip hop played on the radio is so far removed from its predecessors that fans find themselves struggling to find a context for the genre, wondering how to understand the move from A Tribe Called Quest to, say, Lil’ John. When Random House approached Coleman and requested an expanded second edition of Rakim, he must have felt the urgency of such a task and had no option but to oblige.
The best part about Coleman taking on the job is that he does it so well. Where others might want to intellectualize the stories of an urban artist’s rise from obscurity to legendary status, in Coleman’s hands these tales are anything but academic. Like Rakim Told Me, each of the thirty-six albums gets its own chapter with an introduction to the artists and then a track-by-track commentary, always including those shiny little tidbits that inspire endless trivia wars.
More often than not, Coleman’s introduction to the albums actually outshines the artist-lead track commentary, and his enthusiasm and sense of humor are infectious.
Still, the already encyclopedia-sized anthology overlooked some important albums. For instance, plenty of artists mentioned collaborations with Queen Latifah, but All Hail The Queen was nowhere to be found in the list.
In fact, only two female artists (MC Lyte and The Fugees’ Lauryn Hill) are really given any attention in almost five hundred pages of writing. And though it’s true that only a handful of women have been able to secure a spot in the school of hip hop, doesn’t that make it all the more necessary to include them in the catalogue of the genre’s trail blazers?
– Kristena Adamo
Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies
Brian Coleman
Paperback, 528 pages
$16.95, Villard / Random House
Random House: www.randomhouse.com