Hip-hop has transformed theater, dance, performance, poetry, literature, fashion, design, photography, painting, and film, to become one of the most far-reaching and transformative arts movements of the past two decades.American Book Award-winning journalist Jeff Chang, author of the acclaimed Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, assembles some of the most innovative and provocative voices in hip-hop to assess the most important cultural movement of our time. It's an incisive look at hip-hop arts in the voices of the pioneers, innovators, and mavericks.With an introductory survey essay by Chang, the anthology includes: Greg Tate, Mark Anthony Neal, Brian “B+” Cross, and Vijay Prashad examining hip-hop aesthetics in the wake of multiculturalism. Joan Morgan and Mark Anthony Neal discussing gender relations in hip-hop. Hip-hop novelists Danyel Smith and Adam Mansbach on "street lit" and "lit hop". Actor, playwright, and performance artist Danny Hoch on how hip-hop defined the aesthetics of a generation. Rock Steady Crew b-boy-turned-celebrated visual artist DOZE on the uses and limits of a "hip-hop" identity. Award-winning writer Raquel Cepeda on West African cosmology and "the flash of the spirit" in hip-hop arts. Pioneer dancer POPMASTER FABEL's history of hip-hop dance, and acclaimed choreographer Rennie Harris on hip-hop's transformation of global dance theatre. Bill Adler's history of hip-hop photography, including photos by Glen E. Friedman, Janette Beckman, and Joe Conzo. Poetry and prose from Watts Prophet Father Amde Hamilton and Def Poetry Jam veterans Staceyann Chin, Suheir Hammad, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Kevin Coval. Roundtable discussions and essays presenting hip-hop in theatre, graphic design, documentary film and video, photography, and the visual arts. “Total Chaos is Jeff Chang at his best: fierce and unwavering in his commitment to document the hip-hop explosion. In beginning to define a hip-hop aesthetic, this gathering of artists, pioneers, and thinkers illuminates the special truth that hip-hop speaks to youth around the globe.” (Bakari Kitwana, author of The Hip-Hop Generation)

    Remarkably, none of the founding members have told their story—until now. Here, for the first time, the quiet one speaks. Lamont “U-God” Hawkins was born in Brownsville, New York, in 1970. Raised by a single mother and forced to reckon with the hostile conditions of project life, U-God learned from an early age how to survive. And surviving in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s was no easy task—especially as a young black boy living in some of the city’s most ignored and destitute districts. But, along the way, he met and befriended those who would eventually form the Clan’s core: RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface Killah, and Masta Killa. Brought up by the streets, and bonding over their love of hip-hop, they sought to pursue the impossible: music as their ticket out of the ghetto.U-God’s unforgettable first-person account of his journey,from the streets of Brooklyn to some of the biggest stages around the world, is not only thoroughly affecting, unfiltered, and explosive but also captures, in vivid detail, the making of one of the greatest acts in American music history.

    Having risen from obscurity as a precocious producer through the ranks of Jay Z's Roc-A-Fella records, by the time he released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (MBDTF) in late 2010, West had evolved into a master collagist, an alchemist capable of transfiguring semi-obscure soul samples and indelible beats into a brash and vulnerable new art form.A look at the arc of his career, from the heady chipmunk soul exuberance of The College Dropout (2004) to the operatic narcissism of MBDTF, tells us about the march of pop music into the digital age and, by extension, the contradictions that define our cultural epoch. In a cloud-based and on-demand culture – a place of increasing virtualization, loneliness, and hyper-connectivity – West straddles this critical moment as what David Samuels of The Atlantic calls "the first true genius of the iPhone era, the Mozart of contemporary American music." In the land of taking a selfie, honing a personal brand, and publicly melting down online, Kanye West is the undisputed king.Swallowing the chaos wrought by his public persona and digesting it as a grandiose allegory of self-redemption, Kanye sublimates his narcissism to paint masterstroke after masterstroke on MBDTF, a 69-minute hymn to egotistical excess. Sampling and ventriloquizing the pop music past to tell the story of its future – very much a tale of our culture's wish for unfettered digital ubiquity – MBDTF is the album of its era, an aesthetic self-acquittal and spiritual autobiography of our era's most dynamic artist.

     What do all these people have in common? Fame, of course, and undeniable talent. But most of all, they were cool. Birth of the Cool is a stunningly illustrated, brilliantly written cultural history of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s -- the decades in which cool was born. From intimate interviews with cool icons like poet Allen Ginsberg, bop saxophonist Jackie McLean, and Living Theatre cofounder Judith Malina, award-winning journalist and poet Lewis MacAdams extracts the essence of cool. Taking us inside the most influential and experimental art movements of the twentieth century -- from the Harlem jazz joints where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker invented bebop to the back room at Max's Kansas City when Andy Warhol was holding court to backstage at the Newport Folk Festival the night Bob Dylan went electric, from Surrealism to the Black Mountain School to Zen -- MacAdams traces the evolution of cool from the very fringes of society to the mainstream. Born of World War II, raised on atomic-age paranoia, cast out of the culture by the realities of racism and the insanity of the Cold War, cool is now, perversely, as conventional as you can get. Allen Ginsberg suited up for Gap ads. Volvo appropriated a phrase from Jack Kerouac's On the Road for its TV commercials. How one became the other is a terrific story, and it is presented here in a gorgeous package, rich with the coolest photographs of the black-and-white era from Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, and many others. Drawing a direct line between Lester Young wearing his pork-pie hat and his crepe-sole shoes staring out his hotel window at Birdland to the author's three-year-old daughter saying "cool" while watching a Scooby-Doo cartoon at the cusp of a new millennium, Birth of the Cool is a cool book about a hot subject...maybe even the coolest book ever.

    From the seed first planted by slave dances held in Congo Square and nurtured by early ensembles led by Buddy Belden and Joe King Oliver, jazz began its long winding odyssey across America and around the world, giving flower to a thousand different forms--swing, bebop, cool jazz, jazz-rock fusion--and a thousand great musicians. Now, in The History of Jazz, Ted Gioia tells the story of this music as it has never been told before, in a book that brilliantly portrays the legendary jazz players, the breakthrough styles, and the world in which it evolved. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history--Jelly Roll Morton (the world's greatest hot tune writer), Louis Armstrong (whose O-keh recordings of the mid-1920s still stand as the most significant body of work that jazz has produced), Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, cool jazz greats such as Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, and Lester Young, Charlie Parker's surgical precision of attack, Miles Davis's 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, Ornette Coleman's experiments with atonality, Pat Metheny's visionary extension of jazz-rock fusion, the contemporary sounds of Wynton Marsalis, and the post-modernists of the Knitting Factory. Gioia provides the reader with lively portraits of these and many other great musicians, intertwined with vibrant commentary on the music they created. Gioia also evokes the many worlds of jazz, taking the reader to the swamp lands of the Mississippi Delta, the bawdy houses of New Orleans, the rent parties of Harlem, the speakeasies of Chicago during the Jazz Age, the after hours spots of corrupt Kansas city, the Cotton Club, the Savoy, and the other locales where the history of jazz was made. And as he traces the spread of this protean form, Gioia provides much insight into the social context in which the music was born. He shows for instance how the development of technology helped promote the growth of jazz--how ragtime blossomed hand-in-hand with the spread of parlor and player pianos, and how jazz rode the growing popularity of the record industry in the 1920s. We also discover how bebop grew out of the racial unrest of the 1940s and '50s, when black players, no longer content with being entertainers, wanted to be recognized as practitioners of a serious musical form. Jazz is a chameleon art, delighting us with the ease and rapidity with which it changes colors. Now, in Ted Gioia's The History of Jazz, we have at last a book that captures all these colors on one glorious palate. Knowledgeable, vibrant, and comprehensive, it is among the small group of books that can truly be called classics of jazz literature.

    A pioneering drummer who has transcended genres, he did much to popularize world music with his fierce passion for the rhythms of Africa. He is that rare thing, a critically acclaimed musician who has enjoyed global success with not one but several supergroups to his name, including Cream and Blind Faith. Here, Ginger tells his story for the first time and without any self-censorship. It's an often harrowing, but honest journey from his humble beginnings in war-torn south London to his adopted home in South Africa's beautiful Western Cape. He tells of his life-long love of jazz, how he discovered the drums and African music, and life on the road. He also confesses to the heroin use that should have killed him in his colorful 1960s prime, working and playing with the biggest names of the time. In the 1970s, he came up with a trans-Saharan trucking scheme, was a successful rally driver, built an ill-fated recording studio, and discovered a consuming passion for playing polo. He talks candidly of the loss and recovery of his fortune, his three marriages, Cream's 1993 induction into the rock 'n' roll hall of fame, their subsequent successful reunion in 2005, and his hopes for the future.

    The definitive history of an underdocumented music genre, The VIBE History of Hip Hop tells the full story of this grassroots cultural movement, from its origins on the streets of the Bronx to its explosion as an international phenomenon. Illustrated with almost 200 photos, and accompanied by comprehensive discographies, this book is a vivid review of the hip hop world through the eyes and ears of more than 50 of the finest music writers and cultural critics at work today, including Danyel Smith, Greg Tate, Anthony deCurtis, dream hampton, Neil Strauss, and Bönz Malone."A history? No. A story, really. A tale from the dark side. In this book, hip hop is all. It's always there. Like hip hop, this book is about the intense kind of aspiration that comes from having little. About holding and rhyming into a microphone. Mixing and scratching. Guns pain blood. Desire desperation truth true love. Art and mystery and metaphor. The singularity of voice. The magnificence of ingenious sampling. The glory of a beat. This book is that story."-- From the Preface by Danyel Smith, editor-in-chief of VIBE, the voice of the hip hop generation, presents the essence of hip hop.

    In conversation with legendary rock critics and authors he respected, Reed’s interviews are as pithy and brilliant as the man himself.

    The Vinyl Dialogues offers the stories behind 31 of the top albums of the 70s, including backstories behind the albums, the songs, and the artists. It was the 1970s: Big hair, bell-bottomed pants, Elvis sideburns and puka shell necklaces. The drugs, the freedom, the Me Generation, the lime green leisure suits. And then there was the music and how it defined a generation. The birth of Philly soul, the Jersey Shore Sound and disco. It's all there in "The Vinyl Dialogues," as told by the artists who lived and made Rock and Roll history throughout the decade.Throw in a little political intrigue - The Guess Who being asked not to play its biggest hit, "American Woman," at a White House appearance and Brewer and Shipley being called political subversives and making President Nixon's infamous "enemies list" - and "The Vinyl Dialogues offers a first-hand snapshot of a country in transition, hung over from the massive cultural changes of the 1960s and ready to dress outrageously and to shake its collective booty. All seen through the eyes, recollections and perspectives of the artists who lived it and made all that great music on all those great albums.

    RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN is a celebration of what happened next.Post-punk bands like PiL, Joy Division, Talking Heads, The Fall and The Human League dedicated themselves to fulfilling punk's unfinished musical revolution. The post-punk groups were fervent modernists; whether experimenting with electronics and machine rhythm or adapting ideas from dub reggae and disco, they were totally confident they could invent a whole new future for music.

    In clear, understandable language, Jourdian expertly guides the reader through a continuum of musical experience: sound, tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, composition, performance, listening, understanding—and finally to ecstasy. Along the way, a fascinating cast of characters brings Jourdian's narrative to vivid life: "idiots savants" who absorb whole pieces on a single hearing, composers who hallucinate entire compositions, a psychic who claims to take dictation from long-dead composers, and victims of brain damage who can move only when they hear music. Here is a book that will entertain, inform, and stimulate everyone who loves music—and make them think about their favorite song in startling new ways.

    It left the business of rock stardom to rock stars. But by 1992 alternative rock had spawned a revolution in music and style that transformed youth culture and revived a moribund music industry. Five years later, alternative rock was over, leaving behind a handful of dead heroes, a few dozen masterpieces, and a lot more questions than answers. What, if anything, had the alternative revolution meant? And had it been possible - as so many of its heroes had insisted - for it to be both on MtV and under the radar? Had it used the machinery of corporate rock to destroy corporate rock? In ENtERtAIN US! Craig Schuftan takes you on a journey through the nineties - from Sonic Youth's 'Kool thing' to Radiohead's 'Kid A', NEVERMIND to ODELAY, Madchester to Nu-Metal, Lollapalooza to Woodstock '99 - narrated in the voices of the decade's most important artists. this is the story of alternative rock - the people who made it, the people who loved it, the industry that bought and sold it, and the culture that grew up in its wake - in the last decade of the twentieth century.

    This is the story of lifelong musician Buzzy Martin, music teacher to the hardened criminals inside the walls of San Quentin Prison-and what he learned, note by incredible note.

    He tried to look you right in the eyes to see how you were feeling about it.” —Will Kalson, friend and first manager Following Mac Miller’s tragic passing in 2018, Donna-Claire Chesman dedicated a year to chronicling his work through the unique lens of her relationship to the music and Mac’s singular relationship to his fans. Like many who’d been following him since he’d started releasing mixtapes at eighteen years old, she felt as if she’d come of age alongside the rapidly evolving artist, with his music being crucial to her personal development. “I want people to remember his humanity as they’re listening to the music, to realize how much bravery and courage it takes to be that honest, be that self-aware, and be that real about things going on internally. He let us witness that entire journey. He never hid that.” —Kehlani, friend and musician. The project evolved to include intimate interviews with many of Mac’s closest friends and collaborators, from his Most Dope Family in Pittsburgh to the producers and musicians who assisted him in making his everlasting music, including Big Jerm, Rex Arrow, Wiz Khalifa, Benjy Grinberg, Just Blaze, Josh Berg, Syd, Thundercat, and more. These voices, along with the author’s commentary, provide a vivid and poignant portrait of this astonishing artist—one who had just released a series of increasingly complex albums, demonstrating what a musical force he was and how heartbreaking it was to lose him. “As I’m reading the lyrics, it’s crazy. It’s him telling us that he hopes we can always respect him. I feel like this is a message from him, spiritually. A lot of the time, his music was like little letters and messages to his friends, family, and people he loved, to remind them of who he really was.” —Quentin Cuff, best friend and tour manager.

    Led by a man named Allah, the Five Percenters taught the city’s black youth that they were gods. From their marginalized beginnings, the movement’s history has been charged with drama, spanning the war between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, the Attica prison revolt, Brooklyn turf gangs and 1980s crack empires. Now counting several hip hop stars amongst their ranks, including RZA, GZA, Rakin, and Lord Jamar, the Five Percenter’s profile is arguably greater than their parent organization, the Nation of Islam. With a cast of characters ranging from Malcolm X to rap stars 50 Cent and the Wu-Tang Clan, Knight’s exciting work is the first detailed account of the organization inextricably linked with black rights, Islam, New York and hip hop. The first serious treatment of the Five Percenters as a legitimate value system and culture with its own traditions, Knight investigates the community’s icons and history, examining its appeal in youth culture. Also covering the status of women and non-blacks within the movement, he explores why the organization has often been greeted with negative publicity. With unrivalled insider access to the movement’s elders, oral tradition and community literature, Knight reveals the hidden reality behind the myths, rumours and hearsay, and explores the origins and development of this misunderstood community. Fast-paced and compelling, The Five Percenters will captivate anyone with an interest in hip-hop, intrigue or Urban American sub-culture. Michael Muhammad Knight converted to Islam at 16 after reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and at 17 traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan to study at Faisal Mosque. His debut novel, The Taqwacores, is credited with influencing the American Muslim woman-led prayer movement and has also inspired a nascent Islamic punk rock scene.