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The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young.
Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying-storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, and “jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art-and artfulness-to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.
Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying-storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, and “jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art-and artfulness-to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.
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Reviews
"In his new work of literary and cultural criticism, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, the accomplished poet Kevin Young unearths, orchestrates, improvises and imagines lies and more lies--in short, American history. . . . Who is the liar, who the thief, who is telling whose history, and who is keeping score? Young forces us to contemplate who controls the music."
David Shields, The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice
"Equal parts blues shout, church sermon, interpretive dance, TED talk, lit-crit manifesto and mixtape, the poet Kevin Young's first nonfiction book, The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness, is an ambitious blast of fact and feeling, a nervy piece of performance art. . . . [Young] makes a series of sly arguments for black art's centrality in American culture writ large."
New York Times
"In his first prose book, an expansive and radiantly interpretive exploration of 'black creativity,' [Kevin Young] proves to be an exceptionally fluent, evocative, deep-diving, and bracing critic. . . . Young reads, listens, and observes with acute, questing attention, following 'underground railroads of meaning' and tracing artistic lineages and bursts of fresh invention. As intricate and ingenio
Booklist (starred review)