any good hip hop books

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Other than david toop's rap attack, are there any other great hip hop books?

― illcentric sounds (illcentric sounds), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:18 (twenty-two years ago)

There's a book called Gunshots in My Cookup by Selwyn Sefyu Hinds that I would recommend. I liked it more than I thought I would.

― scott m (mcd), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:24 (twenty-two years ago)

The Ego Trip Big Book of Hip Hop is pretty much the definitive one.

― Rollie Pemberton (Rollie Pemberton), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes Yes Y'all, that oral history of the early days, is magnificent.

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:31 (twenty-two years ago)

i second the ego trip book of rap lists & their racism too for that matter

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Ego Trip thirded

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Ego Trip is hands-down the winner by all standards.

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:37 (twenty-two years ago)

just saw some professor from Penn give a lecture here on hip hop in higher education. he has written several books on hip hop, though i found him to be very annoying and contradictory.

― D Aziz (esquire1983), Wednesday, 18 February 2004 22:57 (twenty-two years ago)

yes yes y'all is great. hip hop america by nelson george is nice. black noise by...tricia rose (i think) is interesting. i really enjoyed the vibe history of hip hop as well. jeff chang has a really good reading list on this blog. search it out.

― s>c>, Wednesday, 18 February 2004 23:01 (twenty-two years ago)

what was that book by someone called patrick neate that came out recently like?
i think it was called where you're at

― robin (robin), Thursday, 19 February 2004 06:48 (twenty-two years ago)

The Rough Guide to Hip Hop is quite well written, can't remember who the author was though.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 19 February 2004 07:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Peter Shapiro, I believe.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 19 February 2004 07:12 (twenty-two years ago)

This is great...essays on a buncha classic hip hop albums.

― djdee2005, Thursday, 19 February 2004 07:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I think my book on hip-hop is pretty good, but you can treat that appraisal with all the scorn recommendations from authours deserve. Anyhoo, it's out in May, it's called 'Hip Hop: The Message' my advice is take a medium sized plastic bag, line it with tin foil and then the alarms won't go off in Waterstones as you take it home (I'm being hopeful if I think anyone's actually gonna wanna buy the fucking thing).

― Neil Kulkarni, Thursday, 19 February 2004 12:43 (twenty-two years ago)

On yeah, Peter Shapiro. He's a good, stylistic writer, and he manages to escape the undie/mainstream division and give props to both.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 19 February 2004 15:17 (twenty-two years ago)

thanx everyone for the info. It's very helpful, but doesn't it seem like there's a huge dearth of hip hop writing, fiction and nonfiction.
Was there this little written about jazz and rock at this point in their lifecycles?

― illcentric sounds (illcentric sounds), Thursday, 19 February 2004 16:59 (twenty-two years ago)

destroy (at all costs): bomb the suburbs, no more prisons

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 19 February 2004 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Neil -- I will defnitely want that book! Nice one! What's the 'angle'?

― ENRQ (Enrique), Thursday, 19 February 2004 17:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes Yes Y'all is my #1 favorite.

The scholarly jargon in Tricia Rose's Black Noise can get annoying -- the book was adapted from her Ph.D. diss., and you can tell -- but it's a very lucid and (for its time) groundbreaking book. Excellent analysis of the socio-political-economic-blah-blah conditions that produced early hip-hop culture.

Ego Trip is great, too.

― Jody Rosen, Thursday, 19 February 2004 17:51 (twenty-two years ago)

For bios, I thought Ronin Ro's "Have Gun, Will Travel" (about Suge Knight and Death Row Records) was a great read.

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 19 February 2004 17:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh come on, _Bomb the Suburbs_ was good reading!

― scott m (mcd), Thursday, 19 February 2004 20:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes Yes Y'all is the best hip hip book there is, in fact I think it's such a benchmark book that all other hip hop books to come will have to reference it.

― Tab25, Thursday, 19 February 2004 20:27 (twenty-two years ago)

I've got a good one called 'The New Beats' by S.H. Fernando Jr. which seemd pretty good the last time I read it. It's about 10 years old now though.

Have a look at the authors bio, and in particular the "hard" photo: http://www.wordsound.com/skza.html

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Thursday, 19 February 2004 20:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Ego Trip, Ego Trip, Ego Trip.

― kit brash (kit brash), Thursday, 19 February 2004 21:31 (twenty-two years ago)

destroy (at all costs): bomb the suburbs, no more prisons

...explain yourself.

― djdee2005, Friday, 20 February 2004 04:08 (twenty-two years ago)

well my biggest gripe is that much of it doesn't have a whole lot to do with hip-hop. instead, we basically get a thinly veiled advertisement for the "b-boy lifestyle". personally, i think the b-boy thing is sort of toxic. breakdancing? graffiti?? WHO CARES. breakers, as a group, have the absolute worst taste in music i've ever witnessed. graffiti is one thing one it's own but frankly they're just as likely to listen to classic rock or heavy metal or autechre as anything else. um ... what's the other two of the "four elements"? oh yeah, being an mc, which he hardly talks about, and djing/turntablism. so, if he was such an astute observer of the hiphop scene, why did he have almost nothing to say about the south / bounce production / etc. well, too busy listening to roc raida tapes i guess.

ok that was all unnecessarily polemical but i guess i felt really let down by one too many inane "back in the day" observations and "i gotta get this off my chest" type rants and boring recitations of who said what at the all city and what zephyr thinks of x and whatever.

the writing is amateurish but heartfelt. that's the best i can say about it.

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 20 February 2004 06:02 (twenty-two years ago)

oh and his philosophy: "social change occurs through white kids hitchhiking" is totally 1955.

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 20 February 2004 06:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Well if yr looking for something about MUSIC yes you are going to be disappointed.

But he talks about what he knows - so he talks on what he has experience - which would be graf writing and breakdancing and hitchhiking.

And dude, hip hop is more than just music it IS a culture as well, and yes the music has extended beyond the culture to envelop a wealth of other influences, but the culture hasn't dried up and disappeared (CERTAINLY not when he wrote Bomb the Suburbs in 1993!).

― djdee2005, Friday, 20 February 2004 10:56 (twenty-two years ago)

why did he have almost nothing to say about the south / bounce production / etc.

1. He was writing about what he knows, which would be hip hop in chicago.
2. The "south/bounce production" was limited to fucking 2 Live Crew when he wrote this book! 1993 dude.

― djdee2005, Friday, 20 February 2004 10:59 (twenty-two years ago)

heh, i think i'd rather read a book about 2 live crew than b-boying, to be honest.

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 20 February 2004 13:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Well dude, like I said...why the fuck did you read this book?

― djdee2005, Friday, 20 February 2004 13:22 (twenty-two years ago)

anyone know of any way to get ahold of back issues of Ego Trip? or if there are any plans to publish an anthology or anything like that?

― Al (sitcom), Friday, 20 February 2004 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

five months pass...

Yes Yes Y'All was clearly wrote by someone with no knowledge of hip-hop whatsover. It's so bad it borders on being ridiculous.

― addy, Friday, 6 August 2004 18:48 (twenty-one years ago)

the Vibe History of HipHop is mandatory just for the Sasha Frere Jones piece on Run DMC

― H (Heruy), Friday, 6 August 2004 22:56 (twenty-one years ago)

i know this isn't exactly the thread for it, but are there any good books on james brown?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 6 August 2004 22:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Completely, that Yes Yes Y'all thing is an embarassment.

― Lazza, Saturday, 7 August 2004 12:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Nelson George's Hip-Hop America was pretty enjoyable when I read it two years ago

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 7 August 2004 12:39 (twenty-one years ago)

though Ego Trip is the one I keep thumbing through every now and again

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 7 August 2004 12:40 (twenty-one years ago)

The only book on rap that's actually close to what i want to read is rap music and the poetics of identity (adam krim), though i don't think there is a really intelligent close reading anywhere yet.

dylan's vision of sin is kind of gay, but it lays the framework for a good study of rap, and you can read it with rap in mind. lethem reviewed it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/books/review/13LETHAMW.html?ex=1092024000&en=d54073f3126ac1d8&ei=5070

― Peter $22, Saturday, 7 August 2004 16:41 (twenty-one years ago)

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