Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Blowin’ Up
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.jooyoungkimlee.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.sociology.utoronto.ca/people/Research_and_Teaching_Faculty/jooyounglee.htm * http://www.healthandsocietyscholars.org/1822/16821/60044 * https://www.jooyoungkimlee.com/about
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2015099636
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2015099636
HEADING: Lee, Jooyoung, 1980-
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670 __ |a Email from publisher, 7-29-2015: |b (author’s birth date is Oct. 23, 1980)
PERSONAL
Born October 23, 1980.
EDUCATION:University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 2003; University of California, Los Angeles, Ph.D., 2009.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Urban ethnographer, educator. University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Munk School of Global Affairs, associate professor of sociology, 2011—, Bissell-Heyd Fellow, 2016—. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, University of Pennsylvania, 2009-11; senior fellow, Yale University Urban Ethnography Project, 2011—. Member of Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center, 2009-11, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, 2009-11, and Homicide Research Consortium.
WRITINGS
Maintains a blog, Positive Sociology.
SIDELIGHTS
Jooyoung Lee is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. “Broadly speaking,” Lee wrote in an autobiographical statement appearing on his website, “I research and write about gun violence, Hip Hop culture, and serial homicide.” He is the author of the study Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central, which examines the art of hip-hop and rap in Los Angeles. “He shows how the creative process transforms [rappers’] social networks and worlds,” explained a writer for the website of the Health and Society Scholars.
“Hip hop is still widely stigmatized, as evidenced by recent efforts by the criminal justice system to use hip hop lyrics as evidence in violent crime cases,” Lee said in a HuffPost.ca interview. “People still assume that it’s an art form that socializes young people toward violence. But the stories in Blowin’ Up challenge that. The men that I write about were doing exactly what society celebrates in stories of young, industrious and entrepreneurial people. They were using their talents and resources to pursue their passions in the hopes that they would realize their rap dreams.”
Critics found Lee’s study to be an important contribution to sociology. Blowin’ Up, declared Wilson McBee in Pop Matters, “represents a jump through the keyhole into the world of hip-hop as it is lived by some of the art form’s most dedicated practitioners. Lee is a sociologist, and the book is the result of a five-year ethnographic study of the noted Los Angeles hip-hop workshop, Project Blowed. With the dedication to detail you would expect from a social scientist, Lee catalogues the rituals of rapping at Project Blowed. He investigates the rules, unspoken and spoken, surrounding one-on-one rap battles as well as ciphers, collaborative jam sessions in which rappers trade one freestyle verse after another. … Lee does an admirable job of conveying the hard work these young men put into their craft, with the hope of ‘blowing up,'” or becoming professional rappers. “The book’s mixture of biography and academic study is done to admirable effect, and Lee uses that approach to counter rap’s more common criticisms,” stated E.A. Aymar in the Washington Independent Review of Books. “For example, he takes pains to examine rap’s rough posturing, particularly when it comes to ‘battling’—when rappers trade improvised rhymes in the hopes of humiliating each other. Lee posits these battles as a healthy alternative to violence, given that it is understood by the participants that any violence is, at most, only implied.” In a review for Choice, A.-P. Durand pointed out that Lee “spent five years conducting ethnographic field research” for Blowin’ Up, which the reviewer deemed “recommended.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, October, 2016, A.-P. Durand, review of Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central, p. 215.
Contemporary Sociology, July, 2017, review of Blowin’ Up.
ONLINE
Health and Society Scholars Website, http://www.healthandsocietyscholars.org/ (September 6, 2017), author profile.
HuffPost.ca, http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/ (March 29, 2016), “Blowin’ Up Challenges Stereotypes about Hip Hop Culture,” interview with Lee.
Jooyoung Lee Website, https://www.jooyoungkimlee.com (September 6, 2017).
Pop Matters, http://www.popmatters.com/ (July 18, 2016), Wilson McBee, review of Blowin’ Up.
Washington Independent Review of Books, http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/ (March 7, 2016), E.A. Aymar, review of Blowin’ Up.*
Welcome to my personal website! I'm an Associate Professor of Sociology and Bissell-Heyd Fellow in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. I'm also Senior Fellow in the Yale University Urban Ethnography Project and a member of the Homicide Research Consortium, a multidisciplinary group of scholars studying the causes and consequences of homicide.
Broadly speaking, I research and write about gun violence, Hip Hop culture, and serial homicide. I'm also working on a long-term methodological project on video analysis.
I'm the author of Blowin' Up: Rap Dreams in South Central (March 2016, University of Chicago Press) and am writing my 2nd book, Gunshot (under contract with University of Chicago Press), which follows the lives of young Black men who get shot and critically wounded in Philadelphia.
When I'm not doing research, I enjoy playing fetch with my dog, training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and writing blog entries for Positive Sociology, a new blog about Hip Hop, Violence, and Resiliency. You can find out more about my work on this website. If you have any questions, or you just want to say hello, feel free to drop me a line!
Jooyoung Lee is an urban ethnographer who studies race, crime, culture, and health. Dr. Lee's first book, “Blowing Up: Rap Dreams in Los Angeles,” is under contract at the University of Chicago Press. In it, he examines the careers of aspiring rappers from South Central Los Angeles. In addition to showing how young black men organize their lives around “blowing up” in the music industry, he shows how the creative process transforms their social networks and worlds.
In 2003, Dr. Lee graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with B.A.s in Political Science and Interdisciplinary Studies. From there, he pursued graduate studies in the Department of Sociology at UCLA. During his time at UCLA, Dr. Lee was a Minority Fellow in the American Sociological Association. This fellowship was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and became his first introduction to health research. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2009, Dr. Lee was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars at the University of Pennsylvania. During his time as an RWJF Health & Society Scholar, he was also affiliated with the Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC) and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, both of which are housed at the University of Pennsylvania. In the fall of 2011, Dr. Lee became an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and a Senior Fellow in Yale University's Urban Ethnography Project.
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//HOME//BOOKS//REVIEWS//JOOYOUNG LEE
Living by the Word in Jooyoung Lee's 'Blowin’ Up
Rap Dreams in South Central'
BY WILSON MCBEE
18 July 2016
BLOWIN’ UP PEERS INTO THE WORLD OF HIP-HOP AS IT IS LIVED BY SOME OF THE ART FORM’S MOST DEDICATED PRACTITIONERS.
cover art
BLOWIN' UP
JOOYOUNG LEE
(UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS)
US: 2016
AMAZON
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
I used to write fairly regularly about rap for this magazine and a couple of websites, but a few years ago I stopped. It wasn’t that I don’t love the art form anymore, or that I feel I don’t have anything to say about it. Rather, as a white guy from a privileged background, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that I lacked any real familiarity with the experiences described by the music. I had no idea what it really felt like to be black in America, and because of this I doubted whether I could be an effective judge of music that sought to convey that reality.
One of the many powers of hip-hop, of course, is the intimacy it offers. Spend enough time listening to a certain rapper, and you begin to feel like you know that person as well as you do your own friends. Chuck D’s famous pronouncement that hip-hop is “CNN for black people”, pointed though it is, seems to miss part of the story. Hip-hop is CNN for white people, too, if you acknowledge the media’s systematic neglect of America’s black population. Through hip-hop, rappers are telling the stories that many journalists, and their publications, couldn’t be bothered to cover.
As a white hip-hop fan, there’s a seductive tendency to congratulate one’s self for gaining cultural competencies in African American culture, as if memorizing Tupac lyrics and attending Wu-Tang concerts confers a master’s degree in black studies. But the truth is that even in its rawest, most detailed form, hip-hop gives only what is at best a keyhole-sized view of the African American experience.
Jooyoung Lee’s Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central represents a jump through the keyhole into the world of hip-hop as it is lived by some of the art form’s most dedicated practitioners. Lee is a sociologist, and the book is the result of a five-year ethnographic study of the noted Los Angeles hip-hop workshop, Project Blowed. With the dedication to detail you would expect from a social scientist, Lee catalogues the rituals of rapping at Project Blowed. He investigates the rules, unspoken and spoken, surrounding one-on-one rap battles as well as ciphers, collaborative jam sessions in which rappers trade one freestyle verse after another. He outlines the proper way to hold a microphone, breathing techniques, crowd-hyping strategies, and the subtle tricks used to maintain the appearance of freestyling even when relying upon prewritten lyrics. While his discussion of lyrical content is scant—there are only a handful of transcriptions of actual verses, when you might have expected them to appear on every other page—Lee does an admirable job of conveying the hard work these young men put into their craft, with the hope of “blowing up”, or making it as a rapper.
While Lee’s initial intent for the project was to focus on the Thursday night open mics at Project Blowed, he eventually is led to document the lives of his subjects, many of whom he befriends, outside of the workshop, as they struggle to turn their passion into a sustainable career. The reader starts to identify with and root for the rappers Lee follows—Big Flossy, E.Crimsin, Flawliss, Nocando, Open Mike—as if they are characters in a novel. Dodging gang activity in their neighborhoods, flitting in and out of shitty jobs, providing for their young families, the Project Blowed rappers pursue their dreams with a heroic sense of purpose.
None come close to blowing up, however, and even the few brushes with success (e.g., one rapper garners interest from a few major-label A&Rs, another is invited to open for E-40) seem to offer as much frustration as encouragement. The book’s setting, South Central Los Angeles, only heightens this disparity. Even as these young men believe themselves to be one chance meeting with a celebrity or other power player away from making it, they are nevertheless trapped in an environment bereft of support systems and real economic opportunities.
In his introduction, Lee admits that one goal of his project is to argue that hip-hop can be a positive influence in the lives of young black men. This seems a fact hardly worth proving to me, but Lee brings up comments from the noted hip-hop scold John McWhorter, who has accused the art form of stifling academic achievement, and a regrettable statement from Michelle Obama, who has complained about black youths “fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper” when they could be dreaming about being a teacher or a doctor, and I’m reminded that there are still a lot of people out there who think hip-hop is part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Lee’s book reveals the tangled connections between hip-hop and violence, as the rappers use their experiences in South Central as lyrical fodder, but it’s also clear that their commitment to the art form has emerged irrespective of their circumstances. In other words, they are drawn to rap for the same reasons that a suburban white kid is drawn to start a punk band in his garage. The desire to express oneself in musical terms is universal.
When that suburban kid’s punk band breaks up, he applies to college or he goes out to get a job, but the rappers at Project Blowed don’t have anywhere near the same set of options, and that’s the tragedy of their situation. Lee uses the phrase “existential urgency” to sum up the motivation felt by his subjects: “Existential urgency is a heightened sensitivity to time. It is motivated by experiences that foreground a person’s diminishing time to achieve life and career goals.”
On one hand, this feeling should be familiar to anyone with ambitious goals who feels him- or herself getting older. But it’s different for the rappers in Blowin’ Up because the costs of failure can be so great: if they don’t make it here, they might not ever make it anywhere. Near the end of Lee’s fieldwork, one of his central subjects, Flawliss, gets shot in an apparently mistaken gang hit, in a sadly unsurprising turn of events. Flawliss survives, and initially the response from the rapper’s compatriots at Project Blowed is that this is a good thing. Like 50 Cent, Tupac, and other rappers before him, Flawliss could use the increased street cred that comes with surviving a shooting to further his career. (This unfortunate reality of the market is also reflected in the stories from Lee’s book about rappers who admit feeling the pressure to conform to the “gangster” stereotypes expected by a white audience.) But even as Flawliss claims to be energized by coming so close to death, the adverse health effects and the lingering trauma caused by the attack lead the reader to worry that his story will not end in success.
With the growth of social justice movements online and increased media attention to inner-city issues, we’re closer to that reality than we were just a few years ago. Yet we shouldn’t necessarily bemoan the fact that Kendrick Lamar is still more famous than the most well-known Black Lives Matter activist. Like a rose growing in a crack in the concrete, hip-hop has emerged from adverse circumstances and brings pleasure to millions worldwide while sustaining and inspiring some of America’s most underserved people. Necessary and important, Blowin’ Up provides an intimate look at this essential art form.
Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central
By Jooyoung Lee University of Chicago Press 272 pp.
Reviewed by E.A. Aymar
March 7, 2016
This fascinating look at an oft-misunderstood musical genre suffers from the absence of women
A good friend once told me, "I'm not saying Eminem isn't talented, I just don't like him." I was surprised, but not by her dislike of the rapper — few entertainers have been as polarizing as Marshall Mathers. Rather, it was because she called him talented. I'd been listening to rap since the late eighties, and that was the first time I'd heard someone outside of the genre praise it.
Since then, rap has become both critically and commercially successful. That success has led to wider acknowledgment of the genre as an art form, political statement, and subject worthy of serious academic study. Jooyoung Lee's slim but detailed book, Blowin' Up: Rap Dreams in South Central, is an extension of that acceptance. In it, he studies the lives of several young men aspiring to become rappers as they train at Project Blowed, a legendary workshop and proving ground for rappers in Los Angeles.
Lee's affection for rap, and for the men he's profiling, is heartfelt and often moving (particularly when he chronicles the tragic life of the rapper Flawliss). Both longtime fans and newcomers to the music will find fascinating insights into the genre, and it's quickly apparent that the struggles of the aspiring musicians Lee writes about — the sacrifices, the high rate of failure, the use of daily employment only to support their dream — are germane to hopeful artists in any field.
The book’s mixture of biography and academic study is done to admirable effect, and Lee uses that approach to counter rap’s more common criticisms. For example, he takes pains to examine rap's rough posturing, particularly when it comes to “battling” — when rappers trade improvised rhymes in the hopes of humiliating each other.
Lee posits these battles as a healthy alternative to violence, given that it is understood by the participants that any violence is, at most, only implied. As he writes, “Rappers at Project Blowed can actually lose respect if they try to come across as thugs or gangstas on and off the microphone.”
This posturing is one of the most fascinating elements of Lee's study and something he returns to frequently, largely because violence constantly shadows the young men he studies. Becoming a rapper is a creative alternative to the criminality often presented to impoverished youths in urban environments. “Compared to the unattractive options in front of them — as gang bangers or in the low-wage labor market — rapping and pursuing their creative talents seemed like a better way to spend their time,” Lee writes.
The author’s analysis provides a wonderful response to those who claim that rap is a glorification of crime and violence, or even refuse to acknowledge it as music. What those critics fail to take into account, and what Lee explains so well, is that rap, like many emerging arts, is intentionally different than what came before it. Critics are often unwilling to accept the commercial displacement of more familiar (and safer) music, as well as the fact that rap is primarily a younger movement borne from, and frequently representative of, the experience of black youth in America.
That said, for all of Lee’s analysis, there is one glaring omission in the book: He provides no insight into female rappers. The author addresses this briefly in the opening chapter, when he writes: “Although there were a few regular ‘femcees’ when I did my fieldwork, the vast majority were young men. Also, I was immediately drawn to the freestyle and battle scenes, which were dominated by men…I have tried my best to offer a balanced perspective of this social world, but my perspective is necessarily partial. For the sake of a coherent and balanced narrative, I've decided to focus here on the people I know best — the young men at Project Blowed.”
Sure, but that absolutely, unforgivably leaves Lee’s work incomplete, especially since his study is so dependent on sociology and cultural theory. It's true that rap tends to be a male-dominated field, but the reasons for that domination need to be explored. Why weren’t female rappers present at Project Blowed? Is it because rap’s unfortunate but frequent misogyny turns away women, both as fans and artists? Is rap inherently geared toward the male experience?
These questions aren’t unnecessary or incidental; the answers would tie well to the struggles Lee so painstakingly details. It’s more than an omission; it’s a disservice to nonchalantly disregard the struggles and successes of “femcees” (a term that has come under attack as sexist). Particularly those underground female rappers who, like their male counterparts, place a value on intellectual lyrics and understand the traditions of the music (Jean Grae, Rapsody, Ruby Ibarra, Angel Haze, Theesatisfaction, and many, many others).
It’s distressing that women in rap are so casually disregarded in this work, and damning that they are frequently dismissed in hip hop. The inclusion might have turned Blowin’ Up from a good book into a great one. But despite that shortcoming, Lee’s study is an homage to, and necessary examination of, an often-misunderstood art form.
E.A. Aymar’s most recent novel is You're As Good As Dead. He’s a regular columnist with the Washington Independent Review of Books and managing editor of the Thrill Begins (for the International Thriller Writers). His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a number of top crime-fiction publications.
'Blowin' Up' Challenges Stereotypes About Hip Hop Culture
03/29/2016 04:30 EDT | Updated 03/30/2017 05:12 EDT
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project blowed rap
Jooyoung Lee is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, a senior fellow with the Yale University Urban Ethnography Project -- and the author of: Blowin' Up: Rap Dreams in South Central.
The just-published book details his research into a South Central Hip Hop workshop called Project Blowed. Lee examines how aspiring rappers and B-boys in the heart of Los Angeles's South Central neighbourhood learn the basics of the craft and hone their skills in search of hip hop glory.
U of T News writer Dominic Ali spoke with Lee about his research and about how his insights into South Central's Project Blowed could be applied to other cities with a vibrant music scene.
What was the genesis of Blowin' Up?
I was walking around UCLA's campus during my first year of graduate school and bumped into an old friend from Berkeley. He was an MC/graduate student and told me about Project Blowed, a legendary Hip Hop open mic workshop in South Central L.A.. He made it sound like a mystical training ground for underground MCs, so I went to check it out the following week and was immediately hooked! I had never seen or heard about this side of South Central L.A., which was so different from everything that I had ever seen or heard about the area. Tucked into gangland L.A., there was this incredible open mic workshop where rappers came each week to sharpen their craft.
This project is also an outgrowth of my personal journey into hip hop culture. I grew up in Southern California listening to N.W.A. and other gangsta rappers from South Central and Compton. Even though I didn't have any personal experiences growing up around gang violence or police brutality, the music still resonated. It helped me make sense of my own experiences with racism and got me thinking about many of the core issues -- poverty, structural violence, racism -- that animate my research.
What makes the music scene you document in your book so unique?
Project Blowed sets an incredibly high bar for MCs who are trying to elevate the art of rhyming. The rappers would freestyle together for hours, refining their ability to string together words on the fly and create new styles of rhyming. It wasn't enough to just freestyle or write clever rhymes. MCs evaluated each other based on their abilities to create new and interesting ways to deliver their rhymes. It was a scene that placed a lot of emphasis on creativity.
Also, my book challenges a longstanding notion that hip hop encourages young people toward oppositional values and violence. I saw the opposite process unfolding in the lives of young black men from South Central. Many of the men who I write about grew up in the shadows of the Crips and Bloods and gang injunctions. Hip hop provided them with a creative alternative to gang life.
What have you learned about hip hop and South Central that might be applicable to other cities with unique music scenes?
I think music scenes provide a window into the worldviews of young people in different cities. The young men that I write about were making music shaped by their experiences around gangs and police violence. Music is very ethnographic in this way. And we can see the same types of representations appearing in Seattle grunge, punk rock from London, reggae music coming out of Kingston, and so forth. Most popular music is youth-driven, so it provides the world with a historical lens into young people's lived experiences.
What conditions are needed for a city to successfully tap into its musical legacy?
I think cities gain widespread musical recognition when a local artist blows up. Sometimes it can look like this happens overnight. But, as I learned, there is always a long backstory. Artists are typically working tirelessly behind the scenes and receiving support from lots of different people. Cities can help support this process by investing in music programs in public schools. They can also support the creative aspirations of musicians by providing funds for local artists and aspiring musicians.
What do you think readers will take away from reading your book?
I hope readers will realize that there's a lot more to places like South Central than just gangs and violence. Although gangs and violence are definitely part of South Central, they only represent part of the youth experience. Inner city communities are often unfairly stigmatized as dangerous, even lawless, places. These images are really caricatures that gloss over the range of experiences that people have in these communities. So, I hope that people will read my book and think critically about the taken-for-granted ideas they might have about "ghettos" across the U.S. and Canada.
What did your research reveal about North American culture?
Hip hop is still widely stigmatized, as evidenced by recent efforts by the criminal justice system to use hip hop lyrics as evidence in violent crime cases. People still assume that it's an art form that socializes young people toward violence. But the stories in Blowin' Up challenge that. The men that I write about were doing exactly what society celebrates in stories of young, industrious and entrepreneurial people. They were using their talents and resources to pursue their passions in the hopes that they would realize their rap dreams. We often celebrate young people (think Bill Gates for instance) for doing this in other businesses and personal pursuits, but it takes on a very different tone when young black men from stigmatized areas take an unconventional path and invest their energies into it.
What do you hope this book will lead to?
I hope that the book will shine a light on why it's important to support the arts, especially in underserved communities. Hopefully, policymakers will realize that music and creative activities provide another way of responding to the "youth problem." Instead of only thinking about ramping up police efforts and punishing youth, it makes sense to invest in an infrastructure that will deter young people from going down those paths in the first place.