BRIAN COLEMAN: Well, Jeff, first of all, thanks a lot, and you know I think [for] both of us the key, really, to any subject, is to come at it as a fan, and that’s gotta be first and foremost no matter what you’re actually writing about . . . and I think that passion comes across in Jeff’s work for sure, and hopefully in mine too. So I guess in a way the idea came about before I even started writing, where you would have these records and you listened to them — personally, I always just wanted to know more. You’d get magazine articles here and there but you’d always kinda wonder. As I was [writing] different articles over the years I’d wonder whether, if you find out more about these artists and more about these albums, if that’s gonna demystify a little bit about what the artists are about, or about what the albums and the music is about, and that didn’t happen. I don’t think it happened even once in my experience, which makes it even better. My goal is to look at hip-hop producers and MCs and everyone who makes hip-hop music at artists. And especially in this day in age, the way that I think a lot of the coverage is, its not really done, and that’s really sad.
A lot of the parts of Jeff’s book that I really enjoy are talking about the beginnings of hip-hop journalism and talking about pioneers . . . you know the part about the Source is really fascinating I think — the way they started out, and obviously even in recent months how things keep getting weirder and weirder over there. It’s sad, but it’s also important to remind people about what true hip-hop journalism and what all music journalism should be about. It’s not about flash or people’s images, and I certainly tried to avoid that if I could, and just get right to the music, ’cause I think that’s what fans really want to know about.
PHOENIX: I think of you guys as being a sort of second-wave of hip hop criticism. But where do you guys see yourselves in the continuum of writing about hip hop?
JEFF CHANG: One of the interesting things that’s happening now [is] we’re kinda beginning to canonize hip-hop journalism in the same way that rock journalists began — I think probably in the late ’70s and definitely through the ’80s — to canonize rock journalism. The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll and those kinds of things were actually my bible when I was a kid growing up. When Trouser Press came out — I was all about Trouser Press. When we could get New Music Express and Melody Maker in Hawaii, I’d pick it up if I had some extra cash that day. It was all about, back then, during the 80’s, rock journalists trying to say, “OK, this is what we’ve done from the ’60s up til now, and this is what we’re gonna give to the next generation of folks.” And sure enough that’s the stuff that kinda really influenced us. So now you start seeing it happening with hip hop journalism. I mean Raquel Cepeda had this incredible anthology that came about a year and a half, two years ago now, And It Don’t Stop, which is basically an anthology of hip-hop journalism. I’m going to be on tour actually with Touré later this year. Touré’s got a new book out where he anthologizes a lot of his best writings, the book’s called Never Drank the Kool-Aid. So you see a lot of that happening now. A lot of writers that have been involved in hip-hop journalism are finally getting their books out.
