Bronx Biannual

Just as hip-hop music’s “golden era” (1988-1994) is long past, it also seems that hip-hop journalism’s best years have also passed their peak. But that isn’t to say that real hip-hop writing is dead: far from it. While hip-hop magazines, once the lifeline of information within hip-hop culture, have largely declined in content to become superficial lifestyle rags competing with the likes of “Access Hollywood” for the latest scoop on 50 Cent, hip-hop journalism has grown up and moved on. These days the best hip-hop writing can be found in books by singular authors or collections—both non-fiction and fiction—such as Akashic Books’ recently published Bronx Biannual Issue No. 2.

Edited by Miles Marshall Lewis, the 230-page literary journal, boasts includes fine hip-hop generation writers—Bahiyyih Davis, Liza Jessie Peterson, Sun Singleton, Sheree Renee Thomas, Michael A. Gonzales, t’ai freedom ford, D. Scot Miller, Kenji Jasper, SekouWrites, Jerry A. Rodriguez, Staceyann Chin, kelly a. abel, Carol Taylor and Natasha Labaze—who capture more of the Bronx-born culture’s true essence than a year’s subscription to The Source. 

“Hip-hop journalism nowadays is indistinguishable from celebrity journalism. When rap reportage was new in the early ’90s, many writers tried a more sociological approach. But that eventually got dumbed-down to discussions of an MC’s bling and record sales,” says Miles, who began his career as a hip-hop journalist back in the 1990s. A few years ago he published his first book, Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don’t Have Bruises, that conveyed the message a couple of years earlier than Nas that hip-hop is dead.

“That drastic statement came from my perspective as a nostalgist, growing up in the Bronx in the ’70s and ’80s and seeing the radical difference in the current music and culture of hip-hop,” explains Miles, who also singles out Wu-Tang as artists symbolic with hip-hop’s death. “In 1997, Wu-Tang Clan still had the bravery to release a sprawling double-album of unmitigated kung-fu esoterica and boom-bap on Wu-Tang Forever. With their next release, they became a lot more conscious of radio airplay and SoundScan concerns. And I think this perspective infected hip-hop across the board forevermore around this time period.”

The disappointment that Lewis felt was positively channeled into his literary work, specifically with the 10-volume Bronx Journal Biannual series that he began last year specifically “to publish both celebrated and unsung writers on a variety of subjects germane to the black aesthetic.”

According to contributor (and Harlem native) Michael A. Gonzales, “Bronx Biannual is a great way to show people that the term ‘hip-hop writer’ doesn’t have to be limited to hoochies and jail cells...that just because it’s hip-hop doesn’t make it crude; just because it’s literary, doesn’t mean that it’s cold.” The noted hip-hop author added that “it is terribly difficult for writers of color to be taken seriously if their work doesn’t conform to so-called urban fiction style.”

On Saturday, Gonzales joins Lewis, along with contributors Carol Taylor, Reginald Lewis, Sun Singleton, SékouWrites, Liza Jessie Peterson and Greg Tate for a reading at Bluestockings Bookstore to demonstrate what it means to be a hip-hop writer with integrity.

July 14, Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-777-6028; 7, free.