People's Instinctive Travels, reviewed

There's a good review of Shawn Taylor's Tribe book over the Oh Word blog.

Here's the first paragraph of the review:

Hip Hop sociology makes me more nervous than a label head in front of a young Kris Parker. I’ve read enough longwinded academic diatribes on the place of 2Pac’s poetry within the black cultural discourse to know that most of the stuff is A) boring and B) written from Viacom’s perspective of “Hip Hop history”. The problem is that most writers with book deals would prefer to have their teeth pulled out rather than discuss the actual music on a rap record and as in all things Hip Hop, it’s the story that sells, not the music. This said, when I learned that the 33 and 1/3rd book on Tribe’s debut was going to be equal parts memoir and album analysis, I got ready for a bumpy ride. It’s to author Shawn Taylor’s credit that People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm works as both a look back at how A Tribe Called Quest changed Hip Hop as an art form and a culture as well as one individual’s coming of age story within that same cultural framework.

And you can read the whole thing right here.