'Hip': The White Negro Problem

Review of a book that sounds like (and apparently admits to being) a full-scale redaction of Norman Mailer's "The White Negro". Which sounds like a fine thing to have.

The book purports 'to explain the history of hip from its 18th-century origins in America's West African-born slave population, where hip evolved as a sort of whitey-confounding slanguage (evidently, the word ''hip'' derives from the Wolof term ''hepi'' or ''hipi,'' meaning ''to see'' or ''to open one's eyes'').'