Growing Up Through the Lens of Music Genres

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Kelefa Sanneh’s “Part-Time Punk” is a coming-of-age narrative just as much as a personal narrative of music. Through his descriptions of punk and hip hop, Sanneh’s analysis of music becomes more nuanced, which encapsulates his transition to maturity. Sanneh’s contradicting descriptions of punk and hip-hop introduce a grey area in his coming-of-age narrative that wasn’t possible in the black-and-white binary of punk music.

In his description of the Dead Kennedys song “Stars and Stripes of Corruption,” Sanneh says that the lyrics “[bray] about the evils of the American empire and the passivity of a citizenry” (29). This summary of the lyrics makes vast generalizations about the problems in America. There’s no context for what evils are occurring in America, or what would make the singer believe that the citizens are passive. Sanneh doesn’t give insight into these issues, either; the anger is hazily directed at America, but mostly the anger isn’t pointed at anything or anyone. This parallels Sanneh’s teenage angst during his punk phase and young, black-and-white thinking. Everything was simply right or wrong, including music taste: “punk was good, and other music was bad, meaning not just inferior but wrong.”

Hip-hop, however, introduced a complexity that Sanneh could not find in punk music. The hit single “C.R.E.A.M.” by the Wu-Tang Clan is described as a “bleak [narrative] of drugs and jail” while contrastingly having “money-hungry lyrics” (33). In contrast to the vague critique of America in the Dead Kennedys song, the Wu-Tang Clan song has a rich story and a specific stance on growing up poor in America. Sanneh’s maturity is complete, and he even changes his physical appearance to match his newfound perception of the world featuring gray areas and contradictions. 

Following the complexity of the Wu-Tang Clan song, Sanneh’s transition into adulthood continues by embracing unity and diversity in music, which opposes his previous stance of individualism in punk music. Sanneh introduces the nuances of his coming-of-age thinking through his analysis of hip-hop music that he would not achieve in the blind rage of punk music alone.