Let the world listen right : the Mississippi Delta hip-hop story

233 Pages·2009·5.636 MB·English

by  Ferris, William R., Neff, Ali Colleen

C
h
a
pt
e
r
O
n
e
t
h
g
i
R

n
e
t
s
i
L

d
l
r
o
W

e
h
t

t
e
L
American Made Music Series
Advisory Board
t
h
David Evans, General Editor
g
Barry Jean Ancelet i
R
Edward A. Berlin

n
Joyce J. Bolden
e
Rob Bowman t
s
Susan C. Cook L i
Curtis Ellison d
William Ferris l
r
o
John Edward Hasse
W
Kip Lornell
e
Bill Malone h
Eddie S. Meadows t
t
Manuel H. Peña e
L
David Sanjek
Wayne D. Shirley
Robert Walser
t
h
g
i
R

n
e
t
s
i
L

d
l
r
o
W

e
h
t
t T
e h
L e

M
i
s
s
i
s
s
i
p
p
i

D
e
l
t
a

H
i
p
-
H
o
p

S
t
o
r
Ali Colleen Neff y
Foreword by William Ferris
university press of mississippi
jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of
the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2009 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2009
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Neff, Ali Colleen.
Let the world listen right : the Mississippi Delta hip-hop story / Ali Colleen Neff ;
foreword by William Ferris.
p. cm. — (American made music series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-60473-229-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Rap (Music)—Mississippi—Delta
(Region)—History and criticism. I. Title.
ml3531.n43 2009
781.6409762’4—dc22 2009008536
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
This piece is dedicated to Rebecca Hood-Adams, who loves the Mississippi Delta infinitely.
This work has been buoyed by our laughter.
The Highway 49 roadside south of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Photograph by the author.
Many underclass black people who do not know conventional aesthetic theoretical
language are thinking critically about aesthetics. The richness of their thoughts is
rarely documented in books. . . . We must not deny the way aesthetics serves as the
foundation for emerging visions. It is, for some of us, critical space that inspires
and encourages artistic behavior.
—bell hooks1
Contents
Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Emergence at the Crossroads 3
One “This Game Is for Life!” 15
Two New Blues in the Mississippi Delta 46
Three A Family Affair 76
Four True Blues Ain’t No New News 109
Five Musical Mobilities 141
Six The Undivided Road 169
Conclusion: Let the World Listen Right 190
Notes 201
References 209
Index 214
Foreword
No American region is better known and more intensely studied for its history
and culture than the Mississippi Delta. Generations of writers, scholars, pho-
tographers, and filmmakers have traveled Delta roads and captured its worlds
in memorable ways. William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and
Richard Wright wrote powerfully about the Delta. Folklorists and music crit-
ics from Alan Lomax, John Lomax, and John Work to David Evans, Adam
Gussow, Robert Palmer, and Elijah Wald have written important books on
Delta blues.
Ali Colleen Neff’s Let the World Listen Right: The Mississippi Delta Hip-
Hop Story is both part of this tradition and distinctly different from it. Not
since Hortense Powdermaker’s classic 1939 work on Indianola, After Freedom:
A Cultural Study in the Deep South, has a major study of the Mississippi Delta
been published by a woman. As a young white woman, Neff’s perspective is
distinctly different from those of the men who explored Delta worlds before
her. Her work deals with the region’s contemporary musical worlds and with
both the men and the women who compose and perform hip-hop music in
the Clarksdale community. In developing her study, Neff pays tribute and in-
tegrates into her own work research done in the Mississippi Delta throughout
the twentieth century.
After working as a freelance music journalist in San Francisco, Neff and
photographer Tim Gordon moved to Clarksdale in search of authentic roots
music. The Mississippi Delta and its symbolic association with the Crossroads
drew them, as it had earlier collectors who were attracted by the region’s music.
Her trip and the experiences that followed forever changed her life. Neff was
clearly on a mission, and this book documents her journey and how it trans-
formed her life.
Clarksdale is arguably the most important musical city in the Mississippi
Delta. It is the home of celebrated artists like Sam Cooke, John Lee Hooker,
Ike Turner, and Muddy Waters, as well as traditional blues performers like Wash
Herron, Big Jack Johnson, Pine Top Johnson, Jasper Love, and Maudie Shirley.
While Neff pays homage to these artists and to the writers who have studied
xi