BOOK: “Hip Hop Family Tree Book 1: 1970s-1981” by Ed Piskor
Cartoonist Ed Piskor’s graphic novel series Hip Hop Family Tree is so effective, so informative, and so obsessively enthusiastic, it’s surprising after reading it that no one has thought of the concept before. Combining two decidedly-American art forms: the comic book and hip-hop into one cohesive work seems like a no-brainer. Maybe it just took a cartoonist as passionate and talented as Piskor to pull it off.
Aficionados of early hip-hop will find much to savor in these first two volumes: the formation of early rap crews, examples of proto-graffiti, explanations of early DJ cut-and-scratch techniques, and excellently-illustrated panels of B-boys demonstrating their sweet street moves. Anyone with a casual interest in early hip-hop, and music history in general, will learn a lot from reading Piskor’s detailed and researched work.
As someone who has read a lot of music histories, the format of a graphic novel is highly refreshing. Certain stories are told within one page, almost like a Sunday strip. Piskor originally published these volumes as a still-ongoing feature for boingboing.net that can be digested one day at a time. A lot of the narratives of the piece, however, are built slowly, page-by-page, until the resolutions of certain stories hit you with a surprising comic book-style bang.
The amount of information — on even a single page — puts many non-comic music tomes to shame. The discernable aesthetic differences between early rap players such as Grandmaster Flash, Busy Bee, the Sugarhill Gang and Spoony G make these figures seem as iconic as the Seventies-era Marvel Comics superheroes upon which Piskor based his style. Big players like Africa Bambaata take on grandiose, theatrical Jack Kirby-esque statures as their fame rises.
Using hip-hop as his base, Piskor paints a tangible portrait of mid-’70s New York City and the crossovers among its hip-hop, art, and punk scenes. Even certain page layouts and panel proximities help visually drive home the point that different New York-centric circles were influencing each other during that fertile time in the city’s artistic history.
There’s something thrilling about seeing bands like Blondie, the Ramones, Tom Tom Club, and broader cultural figures such as Keith Haring and James Brown rendered in Piskor’s pop-art wham-bam yellowed-pages style. Especially interesting is Piskor’s portrayal of a young Russell Simmons as a fairly awkward and goofy young entrepreneur — a far cry from the magnate he was to become.
Other important periods in pop-music history would benefit from Piskor’s treatment. A Brill Building Family Tree, Factory Records Family Tree
or Motown Family Tree would be awesome. Piskor’s main interest, however, is his love of hip-hop, and it shows. Also included in both volumes is an extensive discography (great for building your own Spotify playlists!) and lots of references to news clips and TV show appearances that you’ll want to YouTube right after you’re done.
(Of particular interest to REBEAT readers, I counted not one, but two Monkees references in the first third of Volume One. One must remember that “Mary, Mary” was highly sampled in early hip-hop!)
Volume Two gets deeper into the early ’80s. When we finally see Joseph Simmons, aka Rev. Run, (who we follow in both volumes from the time he is a geeky kid until he’s graduated college), Daryl McDaniels and Jason Mizell get into their familiar tracksuits for the first time as Run DMC, elevating them to striking visual icons — just like the first time Peter Parker suited-up to become Spider-Man.
Yes, yes, ya’ll true believers — don’t stop!
