The concept of pure invention--of creating something from nothing--was in full effect at the end of the 1970s as graffiti ("borrowed" spray paint), breaking (cardboard as dance floor), and outdoor jams (electricity source: the base of street lights) captured the attention of urban youth, coalescing into new forms of artistic expression. Fortunately, photographer Martha Cooper was at the right place at the right time to document the people that created the music, dance, and art that became known worldwide. Cooper followed people who would one day become icons: the Rock Steady Crew, Fab 5 Freddy, Duro and Dondi, Lady Pink, and Afrika Bambaataa, to name a few. Now, Martha Cooper has the reputation of being the first and foremost photographer of hip hop culture in New York City. While the publication of Cooper's photographs in the early 80s disseminated the culture both at home and abroad, her new book, Hip Hop Files: Photographs 1979-1984, makes a significant part of her extensive and unique archive accessible for the first time. From 1999 to 2003, the German hip hop head and music publisher Akim Walta tracked down the subjects in Cooper's legendary shots and conducted numerous interviews obtaining insightful quotes and statements to accompany and add voices to the photographs. Other members of the early hip hop scene, including Zephyr, Charlie Ahearn, Fabel, and Patti Astor, contribute text and essays adding fresh data to the growing body of hip hop history.

    But although hip-hop has been assimilated and exploited in the mainstream, young black women who came of age during the hip-hop era are still fighting for equality.In this provocative study, Gwendolyn D. Pough explores the complex relationship between black women, hip-hop, and feminism. Examining a wide range of genres, including rap music, novels, spoken word poetry, hip-hop cinema, and hip-hop soul music, she traces the rhetoric of black women "bringing wreck." Pough demonstrates how influential women rappers such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliot, and Lil' Kim are building on the legacy of earlier generations of women -- from Sojourner Truth to sisters of the black power and civil rights movements -- to disrupt and break into the dominant patriarchal public sphere. She discusses the ways in which today's young black women struggle against the stereotypical language of the past ("castrating black mother," "mammy," "sapphire") and the present ("bitch," "ho," "chickenhead"), and shows how rap provides an avenue to tell their own life stories, to construct their identities, and to dismantle historical and contemporary negative representations of black womanhood. Pough also looks at the ongoing public dialogue between male and female rappers about love and relationships, explaining how the denigrating rhetoric used by men has been appropriated by black women rappers as a means to empowerment in their own lyrics. The author concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of rap music as well as of third wave and black feminism.This fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the complexities of hip-hop urges young black women to harness the energy, vitality, and activist roots of hip-hop culture and rap music to claim a public voice for themselves and to "bring wreck" on sexism and misogyny in mainstream society.