Sitting on my Atkinson porch, listening to The Bigger Picture on repeat from my neighbor’s outdoor speaker system, I was reading a book written by a sociologist who is also an anthropologist about the connection between communities and the creation of genres.
Recommended the work through my wife’s friendship with the author, the book blew my mind and informed a good portion of the genesis of Rap Fiction. I would share her name but in our story, everyone remains anonymous, including me.
The book informed my understanding of the way new genres come out of cultures created within specific locations, often tied to factors like past and present economic structures, the land mass surrounding the community, the history of conflict or cooperation in the locale.
The book is hyper-nerdy and covers many more subjects but the idea of a home-base rallying around a community of artists to create a genre resonated with me.
The demand for this type of organic, often very location specific fandom for a rap artist, holds a firm line in Hip Hop. This line is why the idea of an industry plant compels backlash in the genre; the culture around the art form believes authentic connection to specific humans within defined locations growing over time carries some intangible power of authenticity - that never quite goes away no matter how big the rapper becomes.
But it’s not just rap, land and art are connected in metaphysical ways across the history of culture: a specific comedy club in Chicago, the French Riviera for Picasso, an infamous 1970s performance venue in Lower Manhattan, Harlem for a whole generation of formally educated Blacks in the earliest waves of the Great Migration, the American movie industry maturing in the fantastical terrain of LA.
Much of the American fiction that has lasted over time does so in part through the author and the writing’s connection to a place. Phillip Roth’s early work basked in the peculiarities and contradictions of the Jewish community he wrote about in Newark, New Jersey.
Despite questions about his talent over generations, Thomas Wolfe has remained relevant and regarded highly by noteworthy writers at least partly because of how much he drew from his small southern hometown based off Asheville, North Carolina for his first novel, Look Homeward Angel.
The idea of home, leaving or staying where you were born, has become a major theme in overall American culture, and his novel played an essential role in that romantic development.
A writer like Nathanael West, if not for his rendering of LA in all its seedy colors, in his novel, The Day of the Locust, may have been totally erased from the literature canon.
Not fiction, but I can’t discuss art and location without mentioning the brightest star of them all, August Wilson, and the great American achievement of his Pittsburgh Century Cycle.
I cannot think of an American cultural artifact I have consumed that uses the notion of a home, arriving, leaving, and coming back to it, with as much precision and commitment as Mr. Wilson’s work.
Most successful rappers are very much based in a location. And lots of them never grow a national audience but thrive over decades because of an intense regional following. Flo Rida in the Sunshine state, Texas rappers like Slim Thug, the Bay area poet of non sequiturs in an off-key voice, E-40.
A previously location locked group like Three Six Mafia maintained popularity in Memphis and the southeast United States for at least two decades before the national rap audience found their sound and remixed it and them into a newfound, wider prominence.
The idea that land contains the dirt of the genre compels future craftspeople of the genre to create hallowed land. A rock and roll band like The Black Stripes (and many others) feel driven to visit the Delta of Mississippi to capture a connection to the spirits that created the Blues.
Fiction writers haunt Oxford in Northeast Mississippi in search of Faulkner’s pen.
Detroit singers kept the legacy of Motown active and relevant with local performances that modernized the sound in a way that Amy Winehouse milked for an insanely popular debut album.
Regional versus national/international popularity also shows up directly in the growth of genres.
The book I read from my porch outlined this using examples of musical genres, like Rock and Roll and Hip Hop that became national and international in reach versus regional music that has a sustainable legacy but never widened in popularity in the same way – think Bluegrass in Appalachia or GoGo in Washington D.C.
A genre can stay stagnant in a location, but the meaning of what happens at a place can evolve over time. And on a side note, this happens with history as well. Tea dropped in the Charles River at one point means rage and rebellion; at another point 250 years later, it is presented as nostalgia and apology.
The connection between time and space was the subject of one of my favorite author’s works, Time and Free Will by Henri Berguson. The book outlines the false historical separation between time and space. To summarize very, very simply, there is no time without space, and time is better understood as a concept of duration. This seems obvious, but the implications of this change in perspective are profound.
Our Rap Fiction story travels to many different places in very specific moments for the characters and their environments.
The story visits New York City, several countries in East Africa, USC’s campus in Los Angeles, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, China and Hong Kong, Salt Lake City, Utah, Dakar, and many others, but there are two special homes where the story spends most of its time.
Columbus, Mississippi + Detroit, Michigan. Two essential points in a physical and emotional great migration; to leave or to stay, to return or remain away, is at the heart of the songs.
Time and Space are the pillars of our Rap Fiction story, and the climax over multiple books will build towards The Final Confrontation, which takes place at a very specific location, at a very specific time, ordained by my ancestors many moons ago.
Be prepared to meet us there.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Rap Fiction, and read BEEF - VOLUME I, the best fiction published on Substack this year. I could not recommend the audio more. Several people have said listening to the joint added a whole other level of appreciation for the work.
I promised myself I would organize a live reading of the story that I would record and create into a video component for the joint, but I am starting to get dead man’s feet.
I am going to have to gather up the courage to bring you that content.
Wish me luck!