William Jelani Cobb‘s To the Break of Dawn (2007) joins the ranks of hip hop memoirs–narratives that are both a personal declaration of the impact of the art form on someone’s life and an academic and/or political examination of the impacts, meaning, and role of hip hop.
If you are new to the genre, it’s hard to argue with To the Break of Dawn as an entry point, although I would urge reading it alongside the work of Tricia Rose, for example.
If you are well familiar with the genre, there are still some nuggets here to make it worth your while. Specifically, I thought Cobb’s reflections on the relationship between the narratives of “gangster rap” and the narratives of the American West was interesting, especially in his explorations of the role of film and filmic storytelling. Equally skilled was his total dismissal of Eminem. (The usual narrative about the most successful white rapper of all time is to balance discussions of his whiteness and cultural appropriation with admiration for his flow and his ability to capture a particular cultural moment. Instead, Cobb interrogates both sides, finding virtually nothing to recommend.)
The 2007 date of To the Break of Dawn matters: I would imaging Cobb has some compelling thoughts on Kendrick Lamar and the slight resurgence of “conscious hip hop” seen over the last decade or so.
Recommended.
#MoreCobb
Cobb represents his day job as a scholar of African-American history as one of the “talking heads” in the amazing 13th by Ava DuVernay. You will know him by his deep and resonant speaking voice. If you have any curiosity about the history of American prisons–hell, if you aren’t curious but need to learn important truths about America–go watch it.