Percy Carey and Ronald Wimberly, Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm (Vertigo/DC Comics, 2007). $19.99, hardcover.

By Alex Boney

I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to say that hip-hop is currently a shadow of its former self—or maybe, more accurately, to say that today’s hip-hop is a glitzy, hollow reflection of what it once was. Like any child of the 80s, I grew up as much with the Beastie Boys and LL Cool J as I did with Genesis and Cyndi Lauper. I started seriously listening to hip-hop music as it was entering the mainstream in the early 90s, just as the fledgling genre was reaching its heyday. Gangsta rap like Dr. Dre and Snoop, mainstream acts like MC Hammer, and R&B darlings like Boyz II Men were getting the same airplay and media attention that Madonna and Aerosmith were. Granted, a white kid listening to A Tribe Called Quest and Pete Rock & CL Smooth while cruising through rural Georgia in his parents’ Nissan Sentra isn’t exactly the epitome of hip-hop authority. I wasn’t living in Brooklyn or Hell’s Kitchen, but I was paying attention to the growth of the music. As I got older, I grew more and more disillusioned with the direction in which the genre was heading. After the recent rise of Puff Daddy —> P. Diddy —> Diddy Combs and the hype machine of the 50 Cent / Kanye West drop-off this summer, I realized again why I’d drifted away from a serious, sustained interest in hip-hop. But it wasn’t until I read Percy Carey’s Sentences: The Life of M. F. Grimm a couple months ago that I fully realized and appreciated both the appeal and the absurdity of hip-hop culture (and my relationship with it).

In Sentences, Carey tells the story of his life growing up on the streets of Manhattan. He begins life with a strong single mother, falls into crime early, gets in early on the growth of hip-hop, gets shot and paralyzed, turns to dealing drugs, lands in prison, and eventually goes on to…well, to write this book and revitalize his music career. This all sounds like a ridiculous cliché on first read, and I’ll admit that I was skeptical going into this book. But Carey’s approach to telling his story quickly pulled me into his narrative and kept me there long enough to find something I wasn’t expecting.

The design of Sentences reflects the project as a whole. The exterior design mimics the look of a composition notebook, wherein not only students and authors, but also emcees—in this case, Carey himself—are inclined to scribble thoughts and verses. The first few pages use the interior look of a composition notebook (wide-lined notebook paper) as a background for the introductory material before the format shifts into standard graphic narrative. Ronald Wimberly’s black-and-white art (with well-used gray-tones) matches the overall look and feel of a sketchbook project, but the art is clean and refined.

The narrative and dialogue reflect the same raw/refined mix that the art does. Sentences retains the natural rhythms and cadences of hip-hop. The language is realistic. Modern hip-hop slang is integrated into the narrative, but the slang of the 80s is preserved in dialogue pulled from Carey’s childhood. And those scenes come across as believable and carefully preserved. One of the things hip-hop is known for (for better or worse) is its honesty. That honesty is often exaggerated and distorted, but most rap lyrics reflect an unfiltered, revelatory mind—even if we don’t find much value in or sympathy for what is revealed. For the most part, Sentences doesn’t follow the posturing and bravado of the standard, clichéd hip-hop playbook. Carey doesn’t necessarily downplay his accomplishments (he frequently reminds his reader that he’s crafting his own biography), but the confidence doesn’t come across as forced or manufactured.

Actually, Carey is often self-deprecating and reflective in a way that most emcees aren’t. Sentences contains numerous examples of impressive, non-ironic self-awareness. After a scene in which his mother warns him about the direction in which he’s heading, he reflects, “As a man, I now see how right she was. But I was young, foolish, and I didn’t care. I walked away laughing from three gunshots AND the beating of a lifetime. You can understand how a young man like myself developed a GOD COMPLEX, right?” When Carey does something stupid, he calls himself out for being stupid. He comes to terms with his past and present by drawing connections between cause and effect, and all of this is accomplished without the glorification or self-aggrandizement of an artist like 50 Cent.

Readers don’t have to have much familiarity with old-school or modern hip-hop to appreciate Carey’s story, though. Sentences serves as an introduction not only to Carey’s life, but also to hip-hop music and culture from its earliest days. One of the most interesting things about this book is its insider’s perspective on how the genre grew out of the various divergent elements that converged in parks and playgrounds in the 80s. Emcees, DJs, graphitti artists, breakdancers, and gangs all contributed almost equally to the emergence of rap and hip-hop, and Carey explains how it all fits together and why no one element can really be left out of a full understanding. This isn’t done to justify the presence of crime and gangsters in his narrative. Carey doesn’t use guns and drugs to establish credibility, but rather as a matter of fact. To this end, Carey’s perspective provides an interesting view of men like Suge Knight, Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, and Snoop Dogg (before any of them got acquired the reputations they have today). If nothing else, Sentences provides an interesting look into the birth of hip-hop from the inside out.

The book also provides insight into the psychology of someone who has pretty much become a mute statistic in most of today’s public discussions of race and urban culture. He’s one more black man who grew up not knowing his father. He’s one more black man who slung weed, dope, and coke to get by. He’s one more black man who dreamed of getting famous in music. He’s one more black man locked up in prison and ignored by the system. He’s one more black man who is, at one point, mad as hell at having screwed up his life: “In my mind, Jay’s death and my own injury justified everything I chose to do to anyone, whether they were involved or not. To me, it was get even NOW, and deal with God LATER. ‘REVENGE’ isn’t a good thing, but at the time, it was the only reason I had to keep living.” Carey seems to be aware of the statistics, though, and he finds a way to push through the numbers and make his story speak to (and for) a wider audience. Maybe it’s because he grew up reading and educating himself extensively, and he speaks for those who didn’t bother but find themselves in situations similar to his.

Although it might look like Sentences is an entirely dark, serious look at the life of an artist who currently goes by the stage name of M.F. Grimm, the book is actually pretty funny. This, too, is not entirely surprising. While a large part of urban rap deals with the realities, dangers, and horrors of street life, there’s also an element of humor lying underneath that allows both emcee and audience to deal with desperate circumstances. In every Chuck D, there’s an element of Flava Flav. The first moment of disillusionment Carey recalls from his childhood came on the set of Sesame Street. When the show was set in Upper West-Side Manhattan in 1977, Carey was hired to be in the show. After filming a scene with Big Bird, Carey sees the actor remove his Big Bird head and put it in a dressing room where various puppets were hanging upside down from a rack. The moment is crushing, but it’s hilarious turning the page and seeing a young kid trying to preach the exposed truth of Sesame Street to all the kids on the block who will listen.

My one big complaint with this book is the same complaint I’ve had with Vertigo for years, and I’m honestly getting tired of beating this drum. Any reading is a solitary activity, but most books are meant to be shared and talked about. More than most, Sentences is a book that was written to be read and discussed. Even if this book is deemed too raw for high schoolers (although it shouldn’t be for most seniors), it’s perfect for college classrooms—alongside Richard Wright and Nikki Giovanni—and discussion groups. But until Vertigo starts printing page numbers on the pages of its books, these graphic narratives will continue to elude the legitimacy and respectability of “real” books that act like real books and get assigned and used like real books.

Sentences is an important book—not just because it’s better than I expected it to be, but because it engages issues and exposes lives that have gotten completely lost in contemporary public discourse. The materialistic, often misogynistic direction hip-hop has taken in the last decade has diluted the voices (like A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy) that used to have something substantive to say. And most of the out-of-touch, tone-deaf public “voices” denouncing hip-hop have no credibility or platform to stand on because they’ve only listened to sound clips their producers have prepared for them. Listening to Russell Simmons defend hip-hop has become about as grating as listening to Bill O’Reilly denounce it. In Sentences, Percy Carey provides a voice that’s not being heard nearly enough. Carey’s story is a far more valuable and relevant to the discussion of hip-hop culture than the umpteenth staged “debate” between huckster Al Sharpton and blowhard Sean Hannity. And it’s far more interesting, too.