Buppies, B-boys, Baps & Bohos Book

I always enjoy Nelson George, and this volume--which collects pieces he wrote mostly for The Village Voice in the late 80s and early 90s--definitely evokes African American music and American race politics tangibly. The period is an intriguing but forgotten one--that is, that murky historical epoch between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama--and George does a good job of singling out in the moment what were questions of concern regarding the dilution of African American musical culture amid a broader integrationist wave, and, more pressingly, the ways that systemic racism and white supremacy continued to be malignancies in American life despite the visible gains of the Civil Rights Movement. If I have any complaint, it's with the length. There's a lot that might have been pruned here, so as not to take away from the power of the best parts.