Buppies, B-Boys, Baps & Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul Black Culture

Village Voice columnist George has already established his scholarly depth and his gift for stylish, finger-on-the-pulse reporting on black music with his The Death of Rhythm & Blues and Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise & Fall of the Motown Sound . This collection of articles, nearly all of them reprinted from the Village Voice , marks him also as a knowledgeable, entertaining critic of African American popular culture generally and its pervasive influence on American life. Beginning with an astute, comprehensive, polemical time line, ``A Chronicle of Post-Soul Black Culture,'' George traces black mass culture from the 1970s ``blaxploitation'' films through Alex Haley's Roots saga and comic Richard Pryor's sociopolitical humor up to the explosive popularity of hip-hop. His observations on the origins of rap in New York City black neighborhoods are valuable, and two probing essays--on the fatal 1985 shooting by a white Manhattan police officer of black Phillips Exeter Academy student Edmund Perry, and on the near-cosmic importance of basketball among black teens--vividly illustrate George's sensitivity to the social complexities of African American life. Photos. (Feb . )