Discerning fans will want a more in-depth, wide-ranging book, but that may not happen until Public Enemy hangs up the...
Serviceable but toothless look at the poster children for brainy hip-hop.
Fronted by African-American culture pundit Chuck D and current reality-TV star Flavor Flav, Public Enemy is arguably the most important unit ever produced by the hip-hop nation. (Rolling Stone included them on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.) The group’s singular ability to combine politically conscious lyrics and funky beats, all tied together by Chuck’s clarion voice and Flav’s goofball onstage and in-studio clowning, is why they are one of the few rap groups whose 20-year-old music sounds and feels as if it could have been created today. Yet up until now, aside from Chuck’s two hit-and-miss memoirs, there have been no Public Enemy books—as opposed to at least 15 titles about Kurt Cobain and/or Nirvana, to name one of the only bands of that era equally important within its own genre. Was Village Voice arts editor Myrie’s study worth the wait? Sort of. He had full access to Chuck, Flav and the rest of the crew, to the brain trust at Def Jam Records and to virtually everybody else who played a role in the group’s artistic and cultural success; all of them were forthcoming and generous with their stories and observations. Unfortunately, the book is almost completely rooted in fact: Here’s what happened in the studio…here’s what happened on tour…here’s the next album, etc. Myrie offers very little historical context or analysis, which seems a particularly grievous oversight in the first-ever group portrait.
Discerning fans will want a more in-depth, wide-ranging book, but that may not happen until Public Enemy hangs up the microphones. In the interim, this genial survey will have to suffice.Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-84767-182-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Canongate
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
