I agree that a lot of mainstream corporate sold hip-hop is self-hating.

I'm not a poster boy for misogyny and I don't think hip-hop should be either.

And just as you can find hip-hop lyrics beating up on all these groups, including young Black men themselves, the primary producers of the music, you can also find lyrics celebrating them.

Few places in American culture have made as effective a case for entrepreneurship than hip-hop. Hip-hop tells young people that our society is offering very limited options for youth. And that while society points to a radical decline in living wage jobs for youth and meaningful and affordable education, hip-hop is offering an alternative legitimate economy that is giving youth hope.

Hip-Hop's cultural movement is much larger than the corporate representation. The images most of hip-hop's critics point to are those manufactured by major corporations whether on television, via Viacom, or on the radio, via Radio One and Clear Channel.

Locally lived hip-hop culture that is giving many of America's youth the tool they need to survive and thrive in America, in the face of public policy that have written too many young people off.

I agree that all kids of all colors love hip-hop. My point in writing the book was to raise questions about the ways the hip-hop generation and the millennium generation, both who have lived their entire lives in post-segregation America, are processing race in radically different ways than any generation of Americans. I think they have a lot to tell us as a country about ways of addressing race matters.