Summer of Hamn

The tragedy of gun violence is depicted in annotated illustrations that illuminate a society gone hamn; from legendary hip-hop artist Chuck D (Public Enemy, Prophets of Rage, etc.)
"The iconic hip-hop artist presents an ambitious combination of prose and visual art, drawing from his personal journals. Chuck D brings the energy and passion that powered Public Enemy to these fiery social critiques of the pandemic era, the post-2020 election chaos, and the early days of the Biden administration."
--Kirkus Reviews, on STEWdio
In Summer of Hamn, legendary hip-hop artist Chuck D takes on gun violence with rhythmic, inventive writing and passionately raw art. He has long spoken out against gun violence, including how it intersects with rap and hip-hop culture. Summer of Hamn is the bound journal Chuck D carried with him in the summer of 2022--a summer marked by a particularly high rate of gun death.
In these pages, victims are memorialized, politicians are skewered, and vehement pleas to eradicate gun violence are made. Jaw-dropping statistics (40% of all personal guns in the world are owned by US citizens; there are 100 million more guns in the US than there are citizens) intersect with poetic reflections ("Another mall shooting seems normalized in Columbus / Raining outside in Ohio / Raining inside folks panic / Inside hearing shots bust"), all written in Chuck's hand over vibrant, utterly original, neoexpressionist ink and watercolor art.
This book is the follow-up to STEWdio the debut trilogy on Chuck D's Enemy Books imprint, in which he invented a new medium--the "naphic grovel"--a bound journal brimming with his observations and reflections of current events in both art and prose. Summer of Hamn is the second release on the imprint.