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DVS Mindz
The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas
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DVS Mindz
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This engaging biography suits readers interested in hip hop culture, especially those fascinated by local and underground music scenes. Fans of music history, cultural studies, and true stories of ambition and adversity will find this book particularly compelling.
DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you’ve never heard of. Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed.
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Description
99.9% of aspiring rappers never make it in the music industry. So why do we only hear the stories of the ones who do?
DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you've never heard of. Formed in Topeka, Kansas, in the mid-1990s, they developed a reputation for ferocious rhyming and frenetic live performances. In their heyday, DVS Mindz released a critically acclaimed CD, received nominations for prestigious awards, and opened for legends such as Wu-Tang Clan, Run-DMC, and De La Soul as well as KC icon Tech N9ne. But the group struggled with creative differences, substance abuse, ego battles, and money issues, and they split up in 2003.
Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed. Based on more than one hundred hours of video and audio recordings from 1999 to 2022, this fly-on-the-wall account offers a backstage pass into the recording studios and radio stations, video shoots and house parties, nightclubs and concert halls of the Kansas City-Lawrence-Topeka music scene circa 2000.
DVS Mindz is at once a compulsively readable group biography of four talented MCs, a vibrant voyage through the forgotten history of local hip hop, and a breathtakingly real story of struggling to achieve big dreams.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Critics praise DVS Mindz for its uncommon narrative perspective on hip hop culture, chronicling not just success but also the struggles and failures often left untold. Justin D. Burton calls it a "remarkable project," while Joseph Ewoodzie Jr. highlights its insightful look into aspirational culture and the myth that hard work guarantees success. The Library Journal notes it will appeal to fans of Midwest hip hop, and the Kansas City Star applauds the compelling personal stories alongside the music industry accounts.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780231208734
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 18 April 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Illustration: 50 b&w photographs
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 140.0mm
Height: 216.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 424
Collections
About the Author
Geoff Harkness is associate professor of sociology at Rhode Island College. His previous books are Chicago Hustle and Flow: Gangs, Gangsta Rap, and Social Class (2014) and Changing Qatar: Culture, Citizenship, and Rapid Modernization (2020). He first met the members of DVS Mindz in 1999 as a music journalist in Lawrence, Kansas, and went on to direct their early music videos and a documentary film about the group.
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