This tension is indicative of a growing divide in hip-hop studies. On one side are scholars interested in hip-hop as a liberatory tool; on the other are those invested in hip-hop for its own sake. Tanz seems caught between the two. He understands hip-hop's greater meaning, but his conception of how to address the question of whiteness leads him far afield, into the easily analyzed, marginally relevant provinces of nerdcore and New Canaan.
Tanz sometimes appears to dwell deliberately on the outskirts of the culture, not because it's where exciting developments are unfolding, but because he's more interested in pointing out the absurdities and contradictions of white hip-hoppers than he is in digging deeper. When he does train his attention on the mainstream, his analysis suffers. No book on white hip-hop can avoid Eminem, but Tanz's discussion of the rapper's biopic 8 Mile is so focused on the matrix of race that he fails to address the issue of class — central not just to the film but to Eminem's career. The rapper's argument for his own legitimacy, writ large in 8 Mile, is that class trumps race, and thus his poverty gives him purchase. Tanz never backs up far enough to make this basic point.
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