On the one hand, he's saying what we've all been thinking for a long time, which is nice.
On the other hand, he's saying what we've all been thinking for a long time, which makes most of it strike me as old news. Stuff we've all discussed with each other 100 times and blogged half to death.
But on the other hand, he says it all more vividly than most of us can, in a document that will reach many people who never read/talk to us. So there's gotta be value in that.
Yet on the other hand, at times I feel like Greg succumbs to the big lie here. Seeing no value in hip-hop itself as a musical form, only in what it seeks to achieve outside the realm of musicality. A self-help guru would say that hip-hop as envisioned by Greg Tate is not capable of true self-esteem, only other-esteem.
(and now that I think about it even his Street's Disciple review, though dead-on in everything it does address, shows little awareness that this is a musical work being reviewed, that it matters at all what the music sounds like.)
I dunno. What do y'all think? I turned off typekey to try a more subtle anti-spam gambit, so posting should be easier now.
