Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1010908 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 332 pages

From the Author
Why did I write Gangsta Rap?

I was fascinated by the amount of young people excluded from school who had loads of talent and who then went on to succeed in their chosen careers, usually creative careers. I was in a similar situation myself when I was excluded at 13 and the teacher called me a "born failure", so I wanted to go into the life of a young boy in a similar situation. Ray is, on the one hand, a bad boy, a boy you wouldn’t want your daughter to bring home, but actually underneath there is goodness and real talent. So I wanted to explore what could happen to him if he was given creative freedom and how he could be inspired by a head teacher who had the vision to recognise his talent.

I love Rap music. Many people say that teenage boys are not interested in poetry but Rap is simply street poetry. Why do kids get embarrassed when you call it poetry? I used to. I love poetry, but poetry reminds lots of kids of dead slow words written by dead white men. Rap tells it as it is. It might grate or upset you, but people who are studying youth trends should just listen to Rap music as that’s where it’s at. Rap is street poetry owned by young people. Nowadays every kid on a street corner is a rapper and that’s all good.

I also wanted to explore the gun culture. In some areas where black people live there are more guns than food. In many inner city areas kids no longer get into scraps and come home with a bloody nose or a black eye, now it’s a shooting or at the very least a stabbing.

Some studies have shown that black kids are highly intelligent when they start their education but by the time they’ve left they are at the bottom of the pile – why is that? I can partly answer that question from my own experience of school where I found the system far too rigid. When I objected to the teacher’s version of black history starting with slavery, I was told that that’s how she was told to teach the subject. When I objected to being told that infrastructure of civilisation started in Europe, I pointed out that Ancient Egypt had a social security system and a sewage system. I feel that everyone is taught a biased inflexible version of history and I know it’s not the teachers’ fault – they’re boxed in by the thing called the curriculum. My instinct says it’s based on a need to pass exams. Are kids failing school, or are schools failing kids?

Simply what do you do with talent that’s living on the wrong side of town?

Customer Reviews

Buy this
This book is brilliant, one of Benjamin Zephaniahs best books (though they are all wicked). It is really imaginative about 3 boys who have all been excluded from school and instead of moving to a different school, they go to a special school where all their work is related to rap and hip hop, they get signed to a record contract. This book is awesome, Buy it NOW!

Simple, but good
The book overall had a very good story line with a deep and thoughtful plot. The languge of the book let me down a little, aimed at the over 13s the languge was very simple for such an audiance.

The book was basically about forfilling your dreams , while this may sound simple the plot can be read at many different levels, from an easy holiday read, to a harsh view of life and culture in London today. Mostly belivable apart from the ease at which the boys got a recording contract which normaly takes months, but this may have been left out as not to destroy the fast moving pace of a book.

Well worth a look, do not expect an intelectually challenging book, but it may make you see life in a different way.

Didn't let me down...
I first clocked Benjamin Zephaniah when he turned down an honour from the UK Government. As a man of Irish immigrant ancestry living in the west of Scotland, I felt I could relate to that. The more I read about the man and his reasons the greater my respect for him became and I felt compelled to pick up some of his poetry. The guy's a genuine talent and, importantly, somebody worth listening too. He's morally strong and resolute and he's articulate enough to get people to sit up and take notice.

I don't know what I expected from the book but if one measure of a good book is how much you begin to care about the main protagonists then I reckon Gangsta Rap is a massive success. It's an easy read and accessible for teens but suitable - and in some ways required - reading for adults looking to introduce themselves to BZ. I won't bore you with a rehash of the synopsis and what this book meant to me will differ from what it meant to other readers. But for me it was about friendship, about relationships good and not so good, it's about the media and the inability of some (most?) people to question what's forcefed them by the nation's hacks...

for me the book was rich. I cared what happened to Ray and the other lads. If I had only one minor gripe it would be that the character of Prem wasn't really developed in the way that some others were. Still, this is a very minor gripe. Pick it up, have a read... and listen to a man with something to say.