Less a murder mystery than an insider's tour of the hip-hop world, The Plot Against Hip Hop is journalist and documentarian Nelson George's perspective on the scene, filtered through a fictional story "based on long held paranoia about the true history of hip hop."
D Hunter came of age along with East Coast hip hop, and he puts the skills he honed in that scene to use as the owner of a celebrity protection service serving the glitterati of mainstream hip hop. As an eyewitness and then investigator of the murder of his friend and mentor, music critic Dwayne Robinson (a thinly veiled fictional and ironic self-reference by the author?), D comes into contact with the real movers and shakers behind hip hop and rap, finding more truth than he had a right to expect, as a potential conspiracy to monetarily coopt the revolutionary spirit of the nascent music scene unfolds.
D connects with his late mentor's wife, struggles with his own HIV-positive status, and butts heads with police, federal investigators and rebel journalists still trying to get the truth out to a culture more interested in profit and the bottom line than changing a corrupt music system. George's prose sparkles with an effortless humanity, bringing his characters to life in a way that seems true and beautiful. The story--and the conspiracy behind it--is one we all need to hear as consumers and creators in the post-hardcore hip-hop world. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor