Bomb The Suburbs

[RAISED BY WOLVES]

Discuss the seminal "special white boy syndrome" hip hop journalism classic.

Criticism and praise equally encouraged.

[arem]

Thought it was great when it came out. The world has changed too much since then, doesn't seem relevant if you read it today.

[NESK]

no more prisons was better. so is angry black whiteboy, but thats fiction.

when reading bomb the suburbs i was always more concerned with how hard upski was trying to be down than with the point he was making. especially when he was talking about philanthropy, he was pretty much drawing a huge sign of an arrow pointing to himself about how down for the cause he was. even though it seemed cheap, i hope he got alot of hugs/props/pounds/handslaps/affirming nods from black people. go upski.

[RAISED BY WOLVES]

Thought it was great when it came out. The world has changed too much since then, doesn't seem relevant if you read it today.

That's an interesting point. Might be true.

I haven't read it in years, and the copy I got when I was 10 or 11 got mailed around to friends so many times I think it never came back. I'd like to grab a copy again, and I suppose that shouldn't be too much of a problem in the internet age.

[RAISED BY WOLVES]

no more prisons was better. so is angry black whiteboy, but thats fiction.

when reading bomb the suburbs i was always more concerned with how hard upski was trying to be down than with the point he was making. especially when he was talking about philanthropy, he was pretty much drawing a huge sign of an arrow pointing to himself about how down for the cause he was. even though it seemed cheap, i hope he got alot of hugs/props/pounds/handslaps/affirming nods from black people. go upski.

I don't think No more Prisons was better, and I don't even know about Angry Black Whiteboy...but it sounds like more of the same.

The penultimate dissapointment in my teenage years was going to see Upski speak/read, and being introduced to a 5'5" balding man with a lisp who talked like a self-help speaker.

That shit crushed me for a minute.

The self conciousness of his "trying to be down" was probably what made the book interesting to me (that and the fucking Graffiti of course). I think he spoke fairly candidly about it.

Anyway, nice to see at leat 2 people have read this, though I'm honestly surprised there weren't more responses.

Maybe I should make a thread about The Babysitter's Club or some shit.

[NESK]

angry black whiteboy is fiction but it takes what bombs the suburbs could have been and opens up a whole other can of worms. id recommend it over upski anyday.

and i liked no more prisons more because it wasnt nearlyh as naive. the liberal guilt by then had kind of evolved into a better analisys of cause/effect. it doesnt conjure the same nostalgia, but its a better political statement.