Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor (potentially Volume 1)

By no definition am I a fan of rap or hip hop music. There are some songs I like and they’re mostly old school stuff like Sugar Hill Gang, RUN DMC (w/ Aerosmith, of course), Fat Boys, and Yes, I’ll admit- Vanilla Ice! I love Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure!!!

Anyways, I probably would’ve overlooked this book had I not received the 2014 Free Comic Book Day edition sampler of this book prior. I’ve not read that entire book but it did pique my interest enough that when I found this at the library, I snatched it up.

The book covers the early 70s will block parties and jams in local New York parks starting the earliest experiments with what will eventually be known as rap. It introduces Grand Master Flash, Fab Five Freddy, shows how the Sugar Hill Gang originated, the early days of a young Darryl McDaniel and his friends, a drugged out Russell Simmons, and the chaos and brat that is Rick Rubin. The book ends with Blondie’s Rapture becoming the first mainstream rap hit and the arrival of hip hop on popular TV shows such as Saturday Night Live and 20/20. (This is showing my age somewhat, but I remember that 20/20 special and knowing my dad, I probably was up watching that SNL episode waiting for my mom to get home from work.)

The artist and writer of this book, Ed Piskor, is clearly a fan of hip hop. He crafts the poetry, angst, and rhythms quite nicely. It’s almost as if you can feel the beat when reading this book. However, that doesn’t mean that this is an easy book to read.

Piskor’s dialogue is almost verbatim to how it was spoken 40 years ago. If somebody used slang in their music, that’s how Piskor fills in the word balloons. If somebody left out a syllable or vowel, that’s how Piskor writes this story. That’s not really the problem with this book. Except for maybe reading what Russell Simmons has to say? He was so strung out on dope or weed; it’s like trying to decipher pig Latin.

No, what I had trouble with this book is keeping the cast of characters straight. The inside covers of this book has a “Who’s Who” line-up of almost 100 characters who is some way shaped the evolution of hip hop. Some of the participants aren’t even singers, like Jean-Michael Basquiat, but their art played a major role with the culture and thus he’s in the book. Piskor tries to keep the line-up in order of appearance in the story, but it doesn’t quite work out that way. Plus when you’ve got 35 people who go by the moniker “DJ____”, it’s hard to keep it straight. I found myself going back to those pictorial references and previous episodes in the book often.

Ed Piskor might have had big ambitions. In his afterword, the author rights that he hopes to produce further volumes about the history of hip hop music. Maybe Piskor was afraid to not get a second volume published and thus stacked the deck with a super-sized first volume. If Hip Hop Family Tree gets the green light for a volume 2, hopefully Piskor will reel it in just a little and narrow his scope. Instead of 11 years of history, maybe he’ll focus on just 5.

This is a very good book with an interesting story that’s has piqued my interest in learning and listening more about early hip hop. The art is very good and the brown paper bag-type of paper is an interesting choice. The extras at the end of this book, like the comparison of hip-hop culture with comic book culture, were very smartly crafted. I wouldn’t recommend this book to those under 14 for the use of strong language and drug culture. But, I eagerly await future volumes.

Worth Consuming.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.