In his critique of the evolving subculture of hip-hop, Kitwana sounds a cautionary note on what he acknowledges has been an influential contributor to the character of American black youth culture. As part of a larger and more complex multiethnic society that has increasingly become the norm in the United States, hip-hop music has cut across cultural and class lines in its appeal. Equally, blacks appear to have recognized that an ethnocentric approach to addressing various political and social problems that touch on their group carries as many risks as it does rewards. In that connection, Kitwana deplores "the damage we do to ourselves" (xii) by way of cultural referents that can be found in some hip-hop art and in various patterns of social organization among African Americans. For example, he criticizes what he sees as the phony "rivalry" between East Coast and West Coast hip-hop adherents and artists as destructive. Further, he makes the point that the project of redressing problems and grievances can resonate from hip-hop and can support the more complex project of building social and political coalitions between African Americans and other demographic groups. Hip-hop, in Kitwana's formulation, has the potential to be a vehicle for meaningful social and political transformation benefiting African Americans as a community rather than merely an aesthetic artifact benefiting artists and their immediate circle or remaining anchored in pop-culture trivialities.
How Kitwana's analysis of hip-hop's place in the larger scheme of American popular culture coincides with Chuck D's Fight the Power can be seen partly in the fact that Chuck D is as much rapper (hence poet) as hip-hop performer, and as much social commentator as poet. To identify the content of the linkage, however, an account of Kitwana's line of argument and political analysis is necessary. The spine of his thesis is that young African American males are uniquely disadvantag...