The New H.N.I.C.

This “convincing and entertaining” book frames hip-hop as the defining cultural force in the aftermath of the Civil Rights and Black Power eras (Mother Jones).

Once dismissed as irrelevant, hip hop music quickly blazed a trail to pop cultural dominance. Influencing everything from film and fashion to sports and politics, it became the defining ethos for a generation—and a social and cultural movement in its own right. In The New H.N.I.C., Todd Boyd maintains that a new generation, having grown up in the aftermath of both Civil Rights and Black Power, rejects these old school models and is instead asserting its own values and ideas.

Boyd challenges conventional wisdom on a range of issues, from debates over use of the “N-word,” the comedy of Chris Rock, and the “get money” ethos of hip hop moguls like Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Russell Simmons. He also examines hip hop’s impact on a diverse array of figures from Bill Clinton and Eminem to Jennifer Lopez.

Maintaining that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is less important today than DMX's It's Dark and Hell is Hot, Boyd argues that Civil Rights as a cultural force is dead, confined to a series of media images frozen in another time. Hip hop, on the other hand, represents the vanguard, and is the best way to grasp both our present and future.