The issue of Jimi Hendrix and race derives most of its richness from the fact that it's usually seen as a non-issue. Hendrix's place in the history of rock couldn't be more firmly established, but strain his status through a racial filter, and he turns to pure enigma, less a black star who soared in spite of his race than a peculiar subject who slipped free of its grip altogether. Or maybe not? Or maybe so, but in a way too nebulous to suit history's tidy demands? Few writers are better equipped to tackle such questions than Greg Tate, a cultural critic whose work treats race as a subject both simpler and more complex than convention suggests. Tate states his purposes from the get-go in typically forceful fashion: "This is a Jimi Hendrix book with A Racial Agenda. A Jimi book with plantation baggage, darkskin biases, and Black Power axes to grind. Even more pompously, it purports to be a book of ideas about Hendrix." Most of Midnight Lightning's ideas focus on reclaiming Hendrix as a black icon, while considering the ways his legend works to foil such reclamation. Part of the paradox lies in the differing scale attached to white and black icons. Instead of enlightened mortals, Tate writes, "Black culture must produce demigods and mythological creatures: half-human, half-archangel winged things bent on saving the race, uplifting the culture, bearers of Black Redemption." Hendrix never made explicit moves to carry such a load, but then, Tate argues, that's part of the formula. Midnight Lightning bursts with ideas that beg for expansion, but they ultimately go underserved by scant biographical backup and a jarring loss of focus. A full third of the 157-page book consists of oral-history passages by incidental figures with less-than-crucial ties to Hendrix, and Tate's initially bracing thesis feels winded as soon as it arms its premise with promise. He exhibits more than enough smarts to rewrite Hendrix as "a supersignifier of Post-Liberated Black Consciousness," but Midnight Lightning ends up working mostly like a proposal for a book that still awaits Tate's full attention.