1/2 Book Review: The Hip-Hop Generation

I have this really bad habit.  I am sure someone out there can analyze this for me.  I start reading a book and feel like I want others to join in on on the ride.  The good thing is that I really want others to experience something that is compelling.  The bad is that I have no idea where we are heading and might draw you into some catastrophic abyss of nothingness.  Be it church, books, social networks, whatever, my first inclination is, "Come on in, it probably won't kill you and it just might be good for you."

You all are grown-ups.  Jump in if you like.

My latest book adventure is Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence by Keli Goff.  I heard about this book while listing to a Talk of the Nation episode, Barack Obama and the African American Vote.  While the context was the African American community, there were some great thoughts put out.  The two that stood out to me were these:

• One, the cultural shifts in the African American community are between the Civil Rights generation (Boomers) and the Hip Hop Generation (born 1965-85);
• Two, this shift is not happening soley in the African American community, but also in the larger culture.

I am about half-way through this book and I there have been a few really good insights for me. 

• I am more of a HipHop Generation Person than a Generation X person.  I always knew there was something that didn't quite fit for me in the whole GenX world.  Maybe it was music, the city thang, my ethnic realities, whatever it was, I never saw myself as a GenX'er.   I resonate much more with the social and political realities of the HipHop reality.
• I am NOT crazy.  There are times when, in the midst of my ranting about the church needing to drastically shift with culture, I feel like I am really off.  This book reaffirms so much of what many of us have been talking about as of late.
• I just might vote for Jon Stewart/Chris Rock ticket . . . no seriously.

So, take a read of this one.  It is pretty quick and will give an entirely different perspective on the root causes and reactions to cultural shifts.