Rewinding through five decades, this book listens closely to the bars, samples, and stories that have made hip-hop the true sound of America. Bringing together nineteen essays from leading figures in hip-hop studies, it traces lines of influence from Atlanta and Detroit all the way back to the Bronx and the Caribbean. The book's first half digs into the instrumental layers that continue to underpin hip-hop, while taking a close look at the poetic effects that lurk within key verses. For its second half, the focus turns to the larger culture, assessing the cluster of social tensions that are coming to define the US and which can be heard in the nation's most powerful and controversial music. Accompanying the book is a 42-song playlist, including both iconic tracks and underground tapes, making it easy to follow the relevant beats and rhymes while reading each chapter.
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This collection explores the sonic roots and complex verbal effects of hip-hop, demonstrating the genre's vital role in US culture.
Introduction: hip-hop and American culture Rob Turner; Part I. Sonic
Roots:
1. The funk impulse Sequoia Maner;
2. Nation time(s): jazz and
Hip-hop's changing same David Grundy;
3. Return of the griot? Eric Charry;
4.
Afrofuturism, the Caribbean, and the loop of history Paul Youngquist;
5. From
circuits to aesthetics: the samplers and beat-making styles of Hip-hop's
golden era Patrick Rivers and Will Fulton; Part II. On the Mic: Wax Poetics:
6. 'Like an interstellar wind': flow and meter Rob Turner;
7. The history of
Hip-hop rhyme in three samples David Caplan;
8. Spinning staves in bars:
Hip-hop comes to spoken-word Patrick Turner;
9. 'Read the fine print': DOOM
and persona poetry Adrian Matejka; Part III. Dollars and Bodies: Hip-Hop
America:
10. 'Made a mil' off that mumblin' shit': the freestyling cyborgs of
post-internet Hip-hop Michael Waugh;
11. 'How much a dollar cost': hip-hop,
race, capitalism Mark Steven;
12. Community and capital: Detroit Hip-hop
collectives and the business of culture creation Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie
Hay;
13. The 'krip-hop' remix: disability and Hip-hop Charles L. Hughes;
14.
'Make him give me Einstein': pop trap and black women's pleasure Justin D.
Burton and Brea M. Heidelberg; Part IV. Off the Mic: Hip-hop Media:
15. What
is the Hip-hop novel? Daniel Levin Becker;
16. Hip-hop comics: Ronald
Wimberly's intertextual adaptations of rap's minor characters Vincent Haddad;
17. 'The wrath of the math': identity, aesthetics, and representation in
early Hip-hop films Amy Abugo Ongiri;
18. 'Black America's TV station': the
rise and fall of reality rap Eric Harvey;
19. Notes on Hip-hop, graffiti
subculture, and performing anti-imperial feminism in the United States
Jessica N. Pabón-Colón.
Rob Turner teaches literature at the University of Exeter. His work focuses on sound, poetics, and the politics of epic, including recent essays on the writings of Will Alexander and Samuel R. Delany. His first book, Counterfeit Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2019), weighed up the possibility of composing an American epic in an age of 'alternative facts'. He has also contributed to Tales of Dionysus (University of Michigan Press, 2022), a collaborative poem that reimagines a forgotten moment in Greek/Egyptian culture. He writes regularly about experimental music for the Wire magazine.
