Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap

Last year in May, I merely posted a review from Publishers Weekly on Nik Cohn's Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap, not adding any commentary of my own as I had not read it. It remains a very popular post and since I picked it up a few weeks ago and began to move through it, I've felt the need to actually say something about it.

What I can tell you already is that it is going to be a solid contribution to the larger hip-hop diaspora, to American and world hip-hop. This should be read as a companion to Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop, as one of the drawbacks of the latter is that it doesn't explore the rich tradition of Southern, specifically New Orleans hip-hop, both of Bounce and that of Master P and Mannie Fresh (What do we call this brand, y'all? Help me out). Chang can't cover it all.

How Cohn, a white Irish cat in his late 50s was able not only to penetrate into the insular world of New Orleans hip-hop, but to assume its validity from the start by wanting to write a book about it is profound. No doubt we live in a time where Southern hip-hop stands on its own and needs no justification from some Dysonesque hip-hop intellectual. Nonetheless, a fake coastal/pseudo-positive hip-hop apologia and elitism still prevails among those with the loudest voices (Dyson included) as LBoogie wrote in our last post on Cosby.

Cohn, while discovering the world of Gangsta Gumbo (Kelefah Sanneh coined that and I dig it), is also on a process of self-discovery as a white man directly confronting his own fear of the hood. I have yet to see where this goes, but I can tell that Cohn begins to assume a legitimacy in the eyes of the books' subjects as his relations with them change as the more he interacts with them. Cohn becomes "Triksta", a person who begins to reject any sense of permanency about his "real" identity to whom he owes his former fear.

His book is set amid the decline of state capitalism most clearly exemplified in the decay of public housing, amid unemployment and the barbarism of the gun whom Soulja Slim, a central character of the story, falls prey to.

Triksta writes about his indirect association with Slim, who upon death becomes a legend in New Orleans and in the (former) projects which belies the "Ghetto Gold" phenomenon. He writes about why a local form, though it may never drift beyond its point of origin, is still hip-hop and is still a part of the totality of the culture.

A book like this is highly relevant, especially for folks who already have an appreciation for New Orleans Rap (and for you haters who cling to Boom Bap like your fathers clung to Fusion Jazz), for it isn't another "hip-hop history book" (Master P sold his first albums out his trunk, Lil Wayne was a hip-hop diaper baby, etc.) soon to be relegated to the proverbial dust bins of history, but a story of a forgotten but valiant people and the aesthetics they've created at a particular stage of the working class struggle (broken up and sporadic though it is).

We shall see if this relevancy remains consistent throughout.