Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The way Dyson sets the book up is compelling: He looks at Tupac's childhood, his mature artistry, and the beliefs that motivated his most thrilling achievements. I appreciate his joining Tupac's difficult childhood -- including his mother's drug abuse -- to both the political aspirations of a troubled revolutionary career (his mother was a Black Panther) and to the plague of poverty that cursed them. Dyson then convincingly links these stark realities to Tupac's plentiful and brooding music, and to the themes that would obsess him: death, betrayal, hopelessness, the search for forgiveness, spirituality, transcendence, racial authenticity and thug life.

Dyson manages, in the process, to not only write about Tupac, but about the heartless vicissitudes that haunt millions of black youth. His discussion of the "n" word controversy is brilliant, as are his examinations of the contradictions that pile up around "keeping it real," the mantra of so much hip-hop culture. He tackles gender problems (in a gem of a word coinage, what he terms "femiphobia," which is simply illuminating for the way it manages to pry a space between old-style misogyny and outright sexism), while also dealing with Tupac's bold religious views. Dyson's chapter on Tupac's sense of embodiment is one of the most lyrical in the book, although it virtually sings throughout. Dyson is one of the few world-class scholars -- and in this regard, he is nearly in a class by himself -- who is capable of both rigorous analysis and poetic declaration.

What is particularly winning about Dyson's book is the list of "firsts" he manages to accumulate: the first time we hear a prison interview he gave; the first time we hear about a video of the rapper when he was only 17; and the first time we hear from a variety of cultural and social commentators (there are over 60 original interviews in the book, if I counted correctly, including the likes of Quincy Jones, Stanley Crouch, Mos Def, Toni Morrison, Afeni Shakur, Common, Talib Kweli, Samuel Jackson, and Jada Pinkett) on the life of this most extraordinary young man.

One of the most amazing things I learned -- and there are many features that fall in this category -- is the utter intelligence that characterized Shakur's life. Dyson devotes an entire chapter to outlining the rapper's reading, and that alone is worth the price of the book.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is an intellectual tour de force by perhaps the most brilliant intellectual of his generation. For Dyson to have written the kind of utterly original book he did on Martin Luther King, Jr., only to come back in a year's time to deliver an equally powerful reflection on such a controversial, gifted and important artist as Tupac, is in itself a remarkable feat. We are all in his debt.

Personally, I've always had a problem with Tupac's ganster lifestyle and performance. I always felt that because he was looked up to by so many young people that he should have been a better role model for the hip-hop generation. But in reading Dyson's book, I discovered more about Tupac. First off, I didn't realize that he was so well read--that he read widely and continously: authors inlcuding Richard Wright, Gabriel Marquez, Carl Jung, Alice Walker, feminist Susan McClary and Robin Morgan, and George Orwell. He listened to all types of music, and he reflected deeply about God and spirituality. These literary and spiritual experiences and quests had a great influence on his own work.

Dyson also points out that Tupac's "stirring raps made many people see suffering they had never before acknowledged. It helped many desperately unhappy young people reclaim a sense of hope and humanity." Pac was rapping from the bottom (from the oppressed and exploited masses), but he did so from a artists point of view. Thus, if we're disturbed by his contridictions, we have to remember that much of his torment as an artist comes out of a racist, class divide in this country that has essentially marginalized and attacked young people--especially African males.

Dyson's book is not the definitive work on Tupac, but he certaintly raises critical questions and analysis that will be useful in present and future studies of this hip-hop icon.