I need to preface this review by saying that Nelson George is one of my favorite music writers. He began covering hip hop in the early ‘80s for Billboard Magazine, and he has written some wonderfully comprehensive books on the history of popular music, including The Death of Rhythm and Blues and Hip Hop America. They are must reads for anyone invested in the history of African American music. That said, up until this point, I had not read any of his works of fiction. Seeing that he had written a noir novel titled The Plot Against Hip Hop made me think this was a good time to start.

Just a few pages into the book, and we’re already confronted the biggest problem in the book, which is that there are so many artist names and brand names mentioned that I wonder if George is getting a kick back for putting them in the book. What makes it especially awkward is that it never seems natural within the prose when it happens, as it doesn’t work to describe scenes or characters well, and often holds up the plot while he’s working these names in. Another problem with the book is that George never decides who his intended audience is, including all sorts of awkward explanations about mainstream hip hop history, which again aren’t woven into to the story, but feel like foot notes that weren’t set aside from the text, thereby making the prose clumsy. My saddest conclusion from this book, though, is that I’m afraid that George might be becoming irrelevant as a hip hop writer. His references and understanding of the culture are heavy on the ‘80s and ‘90s, while only giving a cursory glance to the ‘00s. Even then, he only mentions the biggest mainstream artists, and with very little demonstration of knowledge of how much the music industry has changed and how diverse and far reaching hip hop culture has become.

This last point is also what’s holding back The Plot Against Hip Hop back, which deals with a string of murders surrounding a mysterious report conducted in the late ‘80s about the potential power of hip hop culture, and theories about how to co-opt it. It’s a paranoid detective tale about what use the powers-that-be would have with hip hop and whose best interests are being kept in mind. If this book was written in the late ‘90s, it would probably have much more resonance than it does now. Today we have smarter artists who have learned from their peers and the past mistakes of older artists. As a result, they are relying less on the major label system to make their way. We also have artists who have seen the fall out of violence between each other. Whether it’s from the East Coast/West Coast feud of the ’90s, the Beef series of DVDs, or the work of groups like the Hip Hop Summits or the National Hip Hop Political Convention, there is much less cutting of each other’s throats and much more positive action in general. This isn’t to say there are no problems and no violence in hip hop today, but more that the plot of the book doesn’t capture the current climate and its nuances as much as it feels like it should have been written fifteen years ago.

On top all of this plot and characters that are just straight up poorly developed, and in the end I just wasn’t invested in the character of D or the mystery he was unraveling. Nelson George has written some great books, but this ain’t one of them. The Plot Against Hip Hop makes me wish that George would take the time to reconnect with the culture that he used to cover so well. This book is a bad combination of poorly developed fiction and out-of-touch cultural references.