Library Rock's Backpages

Rural Revolution: Arrested Development

Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1993

THE NAME suggests a grungy Midwest punk band, but Arrested Development is actually a black rap family based in Atlanta. Like the "Native Tongue" groups before them – De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers – they’ve taken the rap world by storm by steering the genre down a new path. This time it’s away from the nihilistic "brag-rap" machismo of the East and West Coast "gangstas" and towards a more rural vision of black community.

Total word count of piece: 558

Subscribe

Becoming a member is easy. Membership gives you access to all the thousands of articles in the library.

Click here to go to Subscribe page.

Click here for academic and other group subscriptions.