From there the culture spreads, assimilating militant black gangs and converting them to community guardians, moving from playgrounds to nightclubs, from the Bronx to Manhattan, from street cyphers onto the radio and into the recording studio. The book begins at hip-hop’s Year Zero: Jamaican-born DJ Kool Herc’s rec-room parties at the Sedgwick projects in the South Bronx in the mid-1970s. In this format, it assumes its proper weight, physically and psychically. Now Fantagraphics offers Family Tree as it was meant to be: an extra-large trade paperback graphic novel. It became a phenomenon online rap royalty like Chuck D, Biz Markie and Grandmaster Flash (all of whom Piskor depicted) cosigned via Twitter. With each installment, Piskor recounted the evolution of one of the great cultural movements of the 20th century. Written and illustrated by Pittsburgh comics artist Ed Piskor, Family Tree is a serial anthology that began as a weekly online comic in early 2012. If scenes like that are apocryphal in the annals of pop culture, then Hip Hop Family Tree is a full-color Bible. “Fab Five Freddy,” says Debbie Harry, “meet the Clash.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |