Somebody Scream!

Somebody Scream! Rap Music’s Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power (2008), a non-fiction book by American journalist and academic Marcus Reeves, traces the history of hip-hop, placing key artists into their social and political contexts to make the argument that hip-hop is the inheritor of the black power movement that collapsed in the 1960s. Reviewers hailed the book as “energetic music analysis that’s both celebratory and unusually honest” (Kirkus Reviews).

Reeves begins his story in 1971, argues that the debut of the television program “Soul Train” was an epochal event. In the cities of America, black power was “crumbling,” ceasing to be a meaningful social or political force. But on television, black urban youth culture found a national stage for the first time. From now on, the “vessel” of black hope, disappointment, and anger would be not a political movement but a pop cultural one. Reeves recalls his own realization, as a young black writer, that he belonged to a post-political generation that found its voice not in movements or activism but in rap and hip-hop.

From here, Reeves proceeds to trace the origins of hip-hop, placing the earliest pioneers in their social context. He describes the terrible poverty and urban decay that shaped areas like the Bronx in the mid-1970s. He argues that these environments were “comparable to the one in Lord of the Flies.” Abandoned communities were left to create their own social, political, and cultural order. In this context, hip-hop served the earliest artists and audiences as a form of personal therapy, an after-school program, and a casual job. Reeves examines the lyrics of artists such as Africa Bambaataa, Kool Here, and Grandmaster Flash to show how their work speaks directly back to the decay and despair of their urban communities.



Next, Reeves leaps into the 1980s, setting out the context of the Reagan era and its impact on hip-hop. The Reagan government drastically cut welfare programs, deepening the poverty of urban black communities. The result was the rise of the illegal drug economy and the gangs which sought to profit from it. From this content emerges the work of N.W.A. and other gangsta rappers. Reeves points out that gangsta rap managed to become extremely commercial while drawing on language, imagery, and storytelling drawn from the hearts of black communities, places otherwise invisible and incomprehensible to middle-class white audiences. Indeed, the genre’s ability to draw on this “raw” material enhanced its commercial appeal.

The rise of Run-D.M.C. is similarly positioned in the context of contemporary racial politics, through the lens of the murder of Michael Griffith, a black New Yorker killed by a gang of white racists. Reeves situates the rise of hip-hop girl group Salt-N-Pepa in the context of the American feminist movement.

At the center of his narrative, Reeves places Tupac Shakur. He argues that Tupac’s “Thug Life” philosophy was an attempt to reconcile the legacy of black power with the gangsta genre, placing the philosophy in the context of Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March, whose primary purpose was to challenge negative stereotypes about black men. Reeves argues that Tupac, both through his music and his fame (or infamy), created the blueprint for the rapper-as-spokesperson. Tupac’s look, attitude, and use of publicity all fed into subsequent generations of rap artists.



Discussing the murders of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., Reeves examines the New York City Police Department’s “Hip-Hop Task Force,” a surveillance unit set up to monitor the activities of rappers in the wake of the high-profile murders.

Reeves anchors his discussion of the late 1990s in the career of Jay-Z, arguing that Jay-Z created the blueprint for the rapper-as-CEO, combining Tupac’s spokesperson model with an unambiguous embrace of (legal) wealth and entrepreneurship. Reeves places this in the context of the Affirmative Action debate, arguing that Affirmative Action and Jay-Z’s career represent two sides of a debate about how black Americans should (be allowed to) participate in the higher reaches of the economy.

Reeves turns to the 9/11 attacks to set out the changed political context of the 2000s. He argues that it is against the backdrop of patriotic fervor and terror-fueled paranoia that DMX’s brand of thug spirituality should be understood. He isolates DMX’s single “Who We Be” as a post-9/11 rallying cry, reminding mainstream Americans that black Americans were already living in terror. Reeves closes his narrative with an account of Eminem’s career, using it to illustrate the explosively expanding appeal of hip-hop.



Reeves ends his book by asking whether hip-hop’s best days are behind it, arguing that commercial concerns may fully have overcome the genre’s original social purpose.