This book is a work of great passion and obvious obsession with the subject matter. It self-consciously takes a magpie approach to the selection and presentation of material. This is both a good and a bad thing. A precursory glance at the books I’ve rambled about on this blog will show I employ a similar strategy with my reading so, in some ways, I admire it. On the other hand, I’m not writing a book!
Beginning with the good stuff, Ashon knows what he is talking about when it comes to making music, listening to music, selling music and pretty much anything else to do with music. His explanations of sampling techniques and equipment are great. His knowledge of its history and the genealogy of influences are deep and detailed. He breaks down how a track makes its way from an artist’s bedroom to a studio album, or at least how that happened in the mid 90s when ‘36 Chambers’ was released. He knows how record deals work and where to look for the split of royalties between group members. All in all, he’s very strong on music, how music is made and how the music industry works. He has also analysed the subject matter, and seemingly almost any material connected to it, forensically.
On the other hand, the same magpie approach yields some less shiny objects to adorn the nest. Ashon covers huge swathes of non-musical history, anthropology, sociology, economics and geography in a manner that’s much less clear than the stuff on music. He achieves the considerable feat of being simultaneously superficial and rambling on subjects like race, slavery and economics. He references some great books in his chapter length summaries of these gargantuan subjects but, on the whole, there are much better authors to read on these complex topics. Sometimes, the chapters read more like a stream of consciousness and it’s hard to work out what he’s even on about. The chapter about weed would definitely fall into this category and I wasn’t even stoned when I read it! The overall effect is to diminish the quality of the book and make it too long. Occasionally, a nice connection is made or an interesting tangent described but I would have much preferred it if he got rid of about ten chapters and wrote at greater length on the stuff he is really good at writing about (see para 2), which is often too short and left me wanting more. Maybe I should blame the editor, maybe he got carried away with the idea of having 36 chapters or maybe it’s just me who’s irritated by this sort of thing. One of the chapters contains hundred-odd word summaries of a selection of Shaw Brothers films which influenced the group’s members, which struck me as utterly pointless. I would imagine that Ashon has watched them all, which is what makes him such an expert on this topic, but it brings little insight or enjoyment to the reader to read skeletal plots one after another. Similarly, each chapter has a tiny, black and white photo of what I assume are scenes from Staten Island. Again, it’s evident from the book that he has been there and visited all the central locations in the creation of the album and this results in interesting and valuable prose sections. But why try to crow bar in a bunch of average snaps of suburban NY, which are neither interesting nor valuable? Selection of material and knowing what to focus on and what to leave out are the weakest points of this book.
The style of the prose is mixed too. Sometimes it’s like reading a music magazine with puns and pop culture references. Other times it’s all high falutin Granta / Oxbridge stuff with a religious use of ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ (though he does acknowledge the absurdity of this in a note) and words like ‘impedimenta’ and ‘praxis’ bandied around just so you know he is REALLY VERY CLEVER! The prose certainly wasn’t the highlight of the book even though it was good in places.
The book finishes on a high note with a brilliant conspiracy theory about how Ghostface Killah might have been the real architect of the group’s structure and success, which is normally attributed to the RZA. Only a true aficionado would even be able to construct a theory like this and it showcases all Ashon’s undoubted knowledge and immersion in the subject in a very flattering light.
At its best the book is informative, well written and fascinating. However, too often it strays into vague tangents and attempts to cover way too much ground given its scope. It would have benefitted from tighter focus on the areas where Ashon is a real expert and omission of his ill-fated attempts to explain slavery, capitalism etc. etc. in one chapter.
