Tricia Rose

Tricia Rose - A style Nobody can Deal With: Politics, Style, and the Postindustrial city in Hip Hop
Some things I understand:

I felt Rose was trying to help the reader understand where Hip Hop and its culture came from. This culture was brought about by economic decline in New York’s low income housing areas. Rose points out that “During this same period, thirty percent of New York’s Hispanic households (for Puerto Ricans it is forty percent) and twenty five percent of black households lived at or below the poverty line.” (404) Due to these economic disasters the younger generations were looking for ways to express themselves. This turned into the Hip Hop culture which consisted of artists, rappers, stylists, and break dancers. Rose then goes on to describe how Hip Hop constantly changes with the dominant culture.

Some things I don’t understand:

“I intend to demonstrate the importance of locating hip hop culture within the context of deindustrialization and to show how hop hops primary properties of flow, layering, and rupture simultaneously reflect and contest the social roles open to urban inner city youth at the end of the twentieth century.” (402)

Flow, layering, and rapture. I do not fully understand these. “they create and sustain rhythmic motion, continuity, and circularity via flow; accumulate, reinforce and embellish this continuity through layering; and manage threats to these narratives by building in ruptures which highlight the continuity as it momentarily challenges it.” (410-411)

Connections to other texts:

1. Ono page 407 Rose describes how in the South Bronx the devastation of their homes was used as backdrops in movies leading people to see these areas in a negative context. As Rose then says it was perceived by others as being “lost”. In Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us by Linda Christensen Beverly Tatum explains that children develop stereotypes at a very young age. If they were to turn on their TV’s and see the South Bronx destruction it could create a stereotype or develop into racism.

Questions/Comments:

What is flow, layering, and rupture in plain terms?
Would anybody agree or disagree that showing the devastation of the Bronx could create stereotypes of these people? Or should it be shown because it is news?