The Soul of Hip Hop: Rims, Timbs and a Cultural Theology
Daniel White Hodge
IVP, 2010, 250 pp., $17
Many of us like rap music, but few have felt or studied it as deeply as Hodge, who heard 1980s “Rapper’s Delight” and realized this was “the sound that would change my life forever.”
An adjunct professor at Azusa Pacific University and affiliated with the Urban Youth Workers Institute, Hodge provides fresh insights about the music and the culture from which it sprang, complete with personal anecdotes about seeing a friend gunned down before his eyes, experiencing his first police beating at the age of 14 and other revealing anecdotes.
Many urban blacks see rap as a source of news and cultural commentary; Hodge probes deeply into the “consciousness and social awareness” of rap, as well as its spiritual themes. Insightful chapters on suffering, community, social action and the profane help unlock the theology behind the lyrics.
This is an exciting and important book that can help veteran fans and newbies read between the lines of this major musical phenomenon.
