DVS Mindz

The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas

Geoff Harkness (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

424 Seiten

2023
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-20872-7 (ISBN)

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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.

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.

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.

Cast of Characters
Preface
Introduction: “U-God Outshined by Topeka Group”
Part I. 1970–1999
1. The Genesis
2. A Pirate Poet
3. Daymond Pulling Chains
4. 1137 Washburn Avenue
5. Unsigned Hype
6. Dark Thoughts, Lovely Lyrics
Part II. 2000–2003
7. Real MCs
8. The Crew
9. Heat
10. Killa Bees
11. Hatersville
Part III. 2004–2020
12. The DVS Story
13. United States of America versus De’Juan Knight
14. Dallas
15. A Pirate Looks at 40
16. Respect
17. Modern Warfare
Conclusion: 5105 Virginia Avenue
Acknowledgments
Where Are They Now?
Research Methods
A Beginner’s Guide to DVS Mindz
Discography
Notes
References
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	14.02.2023
Zusatzinfo	50 b&w photographs
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Pop / Rock
ISBN-10	0-231-20872-3 / 0231208723
ISBN-13	978-0-231-20872-7 / 9780231208727
Zustand	Neuware