50 Years of Hip-Hop

The author explores the evolution of hip hop and the backlash against it, from Detroit Mayer Kwame Killpatrick, the nation's first hip hop mayor, to the reception of the music on college campuses, where debates over its misogyny thrive.

Hip-hop culture has grown from its humble beginnings in the South Bronx section of New York City into a significant and influential cultural movement. This volume examines the rich history and promising future of this musical genre. Created in the mid-1970s by poor Bronx residents with few resources, hip-hop has become a billion-dollar industry whose reach now stretches around the world. Hip-hop has influenced the way people make music, the way they dance, and the way they wear their clothes. It has also shaped people's political views and turned many people into entrepreneurs.

Since its introduction in the 1970s, hip-hop has become a way of life. This title takes an inside look at hip-hop music. Hip-Hop Music examines the origins of many styles of hip-hop music, such as crunk and gangsta rap, and explores how they burst into the mainstream and went global. Features include a timeline, a glossary, essential facts, references, websites, source notes, and an index.

It's a sad fact- hip-hop album liners have always been reduced to a list of producer and sample credits, a publicity photo or two, and some hastily composed shout-outs. That's a damn shame, because few outside the game know about the true creative forces behind influential masterpieces like PE's It Takes a Nation of Millions. . ., De La's 3 Feet High and Rising, and Wu-Tang's Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). A longtime scribe for the hip-hop nation, Brian Coleman fills this void, and delivers a thrilling, knockout oral history of the albums that define this dynamic and iconoclastic art form.

Rap music has many detractors. Today, it is often associated with a culture of crass materialism, sex, violence and irresponsibility. It wasn't always so. In her thorough and entertaining tour of the "golden age" of rap from 1987 to 1996, McQuillar takes us back to a time when the music voiced the social and political concerns of inner-city youth, reflected their hopes and dreams for the future, and strove to inspire positive social change. When Rap Music Had a Conscience gives us the A's- to - Z's of major groups and artists, from Arrested Development to YZ, of this creative and socially conscious age.

An inside look into the beats, lyrics, and flow of hip-hop's history
With roots that stretch from West Africa through the black pulpit, hip-hop emerged in the streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s and has spread to the farthest corners of the earth. To the Break of Dawn uniquely examines this freestyle verbal artistry on its own terms. A kid from Queens who spent his youth at the epicenter of this new art form, music critic William Jelani Cobb takes readers inside the beats, the lyrics, and the flow of hip-hop, separating mere corporate rappers from the creative MCs that forged the art in the crucible of the street jam.
The four pillars of hip hop--break dancing, graffiti art, deejaying, and rapping--find their origins in traditions as diverse as the Afro-Brazilian martial art Capoeira and Caribbean immigrants' turnstile artistry.

For the first time Gucci Mane tells his story in his own words. It is the captivating life of an artist who forged an unlikely path to stardom and personal rebirth. Gucci Mane began writing his memoir in a maximum-security federal prison. Released in 2016, he emerged radically transformed. He was sober, smiling, focused, and positive--a far cry from the Gucci Mane of years past.

The highly anticipated memoir from hip-hop icon Rick Ross chronicles his coming of age amid Miami's crack epidemic, his star-studded controversies and his unstoppable rise to fame. Rick Ross is an indomitable presence in the music industry, but few people know his full story. Now, for the first time, Ross offers a vivid, dramatic and unexpectedly candid account of his early childhood, his tumultuous adolescence and his dramatic ascendancy in the world of hip-hop.

Legendary wordsmith Raekwon the Chef opens up about his journey from the staircases of Park Hill in Staten Island to sold-out stadiums around the world with Wu-Tang Clan in this revealing memoir--perfect for fans of The Autobiography of Gucci Mane and Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter. There are rappers who everyone loves and there are rappers who every rapper loves, and Corey Woods, a.k.a. Raekwon the Chef, is one of the few who is both. His versatile flow, natural storytelling, and evocative imagery have inspired legions of fans and a new generation of rappers.

A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur. Amid rising gang violence, the crack epidemic, and police brutality, a group of unlikely voices cut through the chaos of late 1980s Los Angeles: N.W.A. Led by a drug dealer, a glammed-up producer, and a high school kid, N.W.A gave voice to disenfranchised African Americans across the country. And they quickly redefined pop culture across the world. Their names remain as popular as ever -- Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. Dre soon joined forces with Suge Knight to create the combustible Death Row Records, which in turn transformed Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur into superstars. Ben Westhoff explores how this group of artists shifted the balance of hip-hop from New York to Los Angeles. He shows how N.W.A.'s shocking success lead to rivalries between members, record labels, and eventually a war between East Coast and West Coast factions. In the process, hip-hop burst into mainstream America at a time of immense social change, and became the most dominant musical movement of the last thirty years.

The explosive, never-before-told story behind the historic rise of the Wu-Tang Clan, as told by one of its founding members, Lamont "U-God" Hawkins. "It's time to write down not only my legacy, but the story of nine dirt-bomb street thugs who took our everyday life--scrappin' and hustlin'and tryin' to survive in the urban jungle of New York City--and turned that into something bigger than we could possibly imagine, something that took us out of the projects for good, which was the only thing we all wanted in the first place." --Lamont "U-God" Hawkins The Wu-Tang Clan are considered hip-hop royalty. Remarkably, none of the founding members have told their story--until now.

For the first time, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson opens up about his amazing comeback--from tragic personal loss to thriving businessman and cable's highest-paid executive--in this unique self-help guide, his first since his blockbuster New York Times bestseller The 50th Law. In his early twenties Curtis Jackson, known as 50 Cent rose to the heights of fame and power in the cutthroat music business. A decade ago the multi-platinum selling rap artist decided to pivot. His ability to adapt to change was demonstrated when he became the executive producer and star of Power, a high-octane, gripping crime drama centered around a drug kingpin's family. The series quickly became "appointment" television, leading to Jackson inking a four-year, $150 million contract with the Starz network--the most lucrative deal in premium cable history. Now, in his most personal book, Jackson shakes up the self-help category with his unique, cutting-edge lessons and hard-earned advice on embracing change. Where The 50th Law tells readers "fear nothing and you shall succeed," Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter builds on this message, combining it with Jackson's street smarts and hard-learned corporate savvy to help readers successfully achieve their own comeback--and to learn to flow with the changes that disrupt their own lives.

The St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture presents entries that examine the history and contributions of hip hop to American and global culture. It provides academic and public libraries with a much-needed authoritative reference resource defining, exploring, and analyzing this significant aspect of culture and history.

Hip-hop culture has shaped many facets of popular culture, including the worlds of music, politics, and business. The hip-hop movement began with New York City residents with few resources and has now turned into a billion-dollar worldwide industry.

If asked to list the greatest innovators of modern American poetry, few of us would think to include Jay-Z or Eminem in their number. And yet hip hop is the source of some of the most exciting developments in verse today. The media uproar in response to its controversial lyrical content has obscured hip hop's revolution of poetic craft and experience: Only in rap music can the beat of a song render poetic meter audible, allowing an MC's wordplay to move a club-full of eager listeners.

This insightful analysis of the broad impact of hip-hop on popular culture examines the circulation of hip-hop through media, academia, business, law, and consumer culture to explain how hip-hop influences thought and action through our societal institutions. How has hip-hop influenced our culture beyond the most obvious ways (music and fashion)?

Hip Hop Headphones is a crash course in Hip Hop culture. Featuring definitions, lectures, academic essays, and other scholarly discussions and resources, Hip Hop Headphones documents the scholarship of Dr. James B. Peterson, founder of Hip Hop Scholars--an organization devoted to developing the educational potential of Hip Hop.Defining Hip Hop from multi-disciplinary perspectives that embrace the elemental forms of Hip Hop Culture (b-boying, dj-ing, rapping, and graffiti art).

Early hip hop film musicals have either been expunged from cinema history or excoriated in brief passages by critics and other writers. Hip Hop on Film reclaims and reexamines productions such as Breakin' (1984), Beat Street (1984), and Krush Groove (1985) in order to illuminate Hollywood's fascinating efforts to incorporate this nascent urban culture into conventional narrative forms. Such films presented musical conventions against the backdrop of graffiti-splattered trains and abandoned tenements in urban communities of color, setting the stage for radical social and political transformations.