Located at the intersection of sociolinguistics and Hip Hop Studies, this cutting-edge book moves around the world spanning Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas and the European Union to explore Hip Hop cultures, youth identities, the politics of language, and the simultaneous processes of globalization and localization. Focusing closely on language, these scholars of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, cultural studies, and critical pedagogies offer linguistic insights to the growing scholarship on Hip Hop Culture, while reorienting their respective fields by paying closer attention to processes of globalization and localization.

The book engages complex processes such as transnationalism, (im)migration, cultural flow, and diaspora in an effort to expand current theoretical approaches to language choice and agency, speech style and stylization, codeswitching and language mixing, crossing and sociolinguistic variation, and language use and globalization. Moving throughout the Global Hip Hop Nation, through scenes as diverse as Hong Kong s urban center, Germany s Mannheim inner-city district of Weststadt, the Brazilian favelas, the streets of Lagos and Dar es Salaam, and the hoods of the San Francisco Bay Area, this global intellectual cipha breaks new ground in the ethnographic study of language and popular culture.

Since She Bop was first published in 1995, digital downloading has transformed the music landscape. But has issue of gender inequality changed too? For She Bop, Lucy O Brien conducted over 250 interviews with female artists and women working behind the scenes in A and R, marketing, music publishing, and production to write a groundbreaking exploration of sexism in the music industry. Fusing many untold stories, O Brien presents a feminist history of women in popular music, from 1920s blues to the present day. Talking to iconic artists from Eartha Kitt and Nina Simone to Debbie Harry, Poly Styrene, and Beyonce, she charts how women have negotiated old boy power networks to be seen and to get their music heard. This revised edition updates that story through many fresh interviews and new perspectives. In a new introduction and additional closing chapter, O Brien asks why, in 2020, women own just 13 percent of music publishing and are still a minority among festival headliners. She celebrates the rise of unique women such as Lizzo and Billie Eilish who are bursting through and creating new possibilities for female artists, while also looking at the struggles of artists like Kesha and Aaliyah, and wondering whether the pop industry has had its #MeToo moment. When she first wrote She Bop, O Brien questioned the way the music press lumped female artists together under the term Women in Rock , saying that the ultimate goal was to make that phrase redundant. Now, despite the gender inequalities that still exist, greater awareness means few magazine editors would dare to feature women in such a derogatory way. Published to celebrate the original book s 25th anniversary and in the year that also marks the 50th anniversary of Women s Liberation this new She Bop will appeal to a huge cross-section of readers, from music fans to the LGBT audience and women of all generations.

Runner-up, Carr P. Collins Award for Best Book of Non-Fiction, 2021 Go-Go's bassist Kathy Valentine's story is a roller coaster of sex, drugs, and of course, music; it's also a story of what it takes to find success and find yourself, even when it all comes crashing down. At twenty-one, Kathy Valentine was at the Whisky in Los Angeles when she met a guitarist from a fledgling band called the Go-Go's-and the band needed a bassist. The Go-Go's became the first multi-platinum-selling, all-female band to play instruments themselves, write their own songs, and have a number one album. Their debut, Beauty and the Beat, spent six weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 and featured the hit songs "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed." The record's success brought the pressures of a relentless workload and schedule culminating in a wild, hazy, substance-fueled tour that took the band from the club circuit to arenas, where fans, promoters, and crew were more than ready to keep the party going. For Valentine, the band's success was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream-but it's only part of her story. All I Ever Wanted traces the path that took her from her childhood in Texas-where she all but raised herself-to the height of rock n' roll stardom, devastation after the collapse of the band that had come to define her, and the quest to regain her sense of self after its end. Valentine also speaks candidly about the lasting effects of parental betrayal, abortion, rape, and her struggles with drugs and alcohol-and the music that saved her every step of the way. Populated with vivid portraits of Valentine's interactions during the 1980s with musicians and actors from the Police and Rod Stewart to John Belushi and Rob Lowe, All I Ever Wanted is a deeply personal reflection on a life spent in music.

Representations of music were employed to create a wider 'Orient' on the pages, stages and walls of nineteenth-century Britain. This book explores issues of orientalism, otherness, gender and sexuality that arise in artistic British representations of non-European musicians during this time, by utilizing recent theories of orientalism, and the subsidiary (particularly aesthetic and literary) theories both on which these theories were based and on which they have been influential. The author uses this theoretical framework of orientalism as a form of othering in order to analyse primary source materials, and in conjunction with musicological, literary and art theories, thus explores ways in which ideas of the Other were transformed over time and between different genres and artists. Part I, The Musical Stage, discusses elements of the libretti of popular musical stage works in this period, and the occasionally contradictory ways in which 'racial' Others was represented through text and music; a particular focus is the depiction of 'Oriental' women and ideas of sexuality. Through examination of this collection of libretti, the ways in which the writers of these works filter and romanticize the changing intellectual ideas of this era are explored. Part II, Works of Fiction, is a close study of the works of Sir Henry Rider Haggard, using other examples of popular fiction by his contemporary writers as contextualizing material, with the primary concern being to investigate how music is utilized in popular fiction to represent Other non-Europeans and in the creation of orientalized gender constructions. Part III, Visual Culture, is an analysis of images of music and the 'Orient' in examples of British 'high art', illustration and photography, investigating how the musical Other was visualized.

The music industry has been waging some very significant battles in recent years, reacting to numerous inter-related crises provoked by globalization, digitalization and the ever more extensive commercialization of public culture. These struggles are viewed by many as central to the survival of the central mediators in the consumption of popular music. These battles are not just against piracy and the sharing of digital song files on the internet. The music industry is also struggling to find ways to compete or integrate with many other forms of entertainment, including films, television programmes, mobile phones, DVDs and video games in an extremely crowded communications environment. The battles currently being fought by the music industry are about nothing less than its continued ability to create and maintain specific kinds of profitable relationships with consumers. This book presents two inter-related cases of crisis and opportunity: the music industry's epic struggle over piracy and the 'Idol' phenomenon. Both are explicit attempts to control and justify the particular ways in which the music industry makes money from popular music through specific kinds of relationships with consumers. The battles over piracy have been fought with a remarkable collection of campaigns consisting of advice, coercion and argument about what is or is not the best way to consume music. From these complicated and often contradictory campaigns we form an unusually clear picture of what many within the music industry imagine their industry to be. In a complementary way, 'Idol' works to demonstrate the joy and pleasure of consuming popular music the 'right' way. By creating a series of intertwined relationships with consumers around multiple sites of consumption, incorporating television, radio, live performance, traditional print media campaigns, text messaging and all manner of internet-based systems of communication and 'fan management,' the producers of 'Idol' present an ideal relationship between musicians and audiences. Instead of focusing on selling CDs, the music industry's digital Achilles' heel, 'Idol' has given the music industry an integrated platform for displaying its expanded palette of products and venues for consumption. When understood in specific relation to the battle against piracy, Fairchild's analysis of 'Idol' and the emerging promotional cultures of the music industry it exhibits shows how multiple sites of consumption, and attempts to mediate and control the circulation of popular music, are being used to combat the foundational challenges facing the music industry.

A tour diary of life on the road with one of Minnesota's greatest bands-with nearly 100 never-before-seen photographs "Don't bore us, get to the chorus" is Bill Sullivan's motto, which will come as no surprise to anyone who opens Lemon Jail. A raucous tour diary of rock 'n' roll in the 1980s, Sullivan's book puts us in the van with the Replacements in the early years. Barreling down the highway to the next show through quiet nights and hightailing it out of scandalized college towns, Sullivan-the young and reckless roadie-is in the middle of the joy and chaos, trying to get the band on stage and the crowd off it and knowing when to jump in and cover Alice Cooper. Lemon Jail shows what it's like to keep the band on the road and the wheels on the van-and when to just close your eyes and hit the gas. That first van, dubbed the Lemon Jail by Bill, takes the now legendary Replacements from a south Minneapolis basement to dive bars and iconic rock clubs to college parties and eventually an international stage. It's not a straight shot or a smooth ride, and there's never a dull moment, whether Bob Stinson is setting a record for the quickest ejection from CBGB in NYC or hiding White Castle sliders around a hotel room or whether Paul Westerberg is sneaking gear out of a hostile venue or saving Bill's life at a brothel in New Jersey. With growing fame (and new vans) come tours with REM and X (what happens when the audience isn't allowed to stand?), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and the Violent Femmes (against their will), and Saturday Night Live, where the band's televised antics earn the edict You'll never play on NBC again. Fast forward: You'll never play Washington, D.C., again. Or Moorhead. Hiding in fans' backyards while the police search the streets and pelted with canned goods at a Kent State food drive, the Replacements hit rough patches along with sweet spots, and Lemon Jail reveals the grit and glory both onstage and off, all told in the irrepressible, full-throttle style that makes Bill Sullivan an irresistible guide on this once-in-a-lifetime road trip with a band on the make.

In I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound, musician Mike Doughty presents stories about life on the road as an indie rock musician, taking readers deep inside the dislocated life of an itinerant performer, the exhilaration and terror involved in getting up in front of strangers night after night, and as far behind the curtain as they've ever dared to venture. Doughty's writing is deeply provocative, eliciting visceral responses from his readers, and this extraordinary book will blow the minds of people who have never considered what life is like for those on the other side of the stage. I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound is composed of strange, surreal tales from on the road that draw from dream-like conflations of memories of times and places, especially New York City in the '90s. It looks at why diminished circumstances are sometimes, bafflingly, more profitable than chart success, how the nostalgia of fans is both a boon and a burden for an artist struggling to stay vital, and what it means--and how it works--to grow into middle age while still playing hundreds of shows and releasing albums prolifically. Both a fascinating and dislocated narrative and a highly review-worthy examination of what it is to be an artist at this cultural juncture, I Die Each Time I Hear the Sound is funny, unsparing, vulnerable, and incisive.

Emilia Barna is Assistant Professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. She is a founding member and Chair of IASPM Hungary, editor of Zenei Halozatok Folyoirat (Music Networks Journal), and Advisory Board Member of IASPM@Journal. Tamas Tofalvy is Assistant Professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He was the founding Chair and is the current Vice-Chair of IASPM Hungary.

Hot Lips Page was a seminal figure in the history of jazz trumpet. After making his name as the top trumpeter in Kansas City in the middle 1930s, he moved to New York City and performed in Harlem and on 52nd Street, headlining at the Apollo Theater and in Greenwich Village. He was a star trumpet soloist with Artie Shaw's Orchestra in 1941. He recorded with Billie Holiday and Pearl Bailey and made many early TV appearances in the 1950s. Perhaps most significantly, Page was also one of the greatest blues players of his generation. Dizzy Gillespie may have said it best, When it comes to the blues, don't mess with Lips, nobody not Louis, not Roy, not me.Despite his many successes, Page's personal life was fraught with troubles. His father died when his son was eight, and the boy was forced to leave school and go to work to help support his family. Page's second wife, Myrtle, who by all accounts was the love of his life, died suddenly in New York in 1946 at the age of twenty-eight, leaving Hot Lips as the sole parent of their young son, Oran Jr. Throughout the 1940s, he struggled to maintain his audience as the popular style of music changed from Swing to Bebop to Rhythm and Blues.He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1954, at age forty-six. Through the use of interviews, anecdotes and oral histories, author Todd Bryant Weeks has pieced together Page's personal story. He has contacted dozens of people (many in their eighties and nineties), who knew Page personally, and has spent many hours interviewing several of Page's family members, including his son, Oran Page, Jr., who is now a Municipal Judge in Jackson, Mississippi. Weeks has also been granted access to files, photographs and personal scrapbooks belonging to Page at the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark, New Jersey. Luck's In My Corner: The Life and Music of Hot Lips Page is the definitive work on this legendary jazz figure.

Luck s in My Corner is a comprehensive biography of one of the most compelling jazz musicians of the Swing Era, Oran "Hot Lips Page. Page was the greatest of the Kansas City trumpeters, whose crackling, growling solos made him the go-to man during Count Basie s earliest days as a bandleader. Page went on to be a featured trumpeter with Artie Shaw, a star of New York s 52nd street, and a pioneer of the R & B scene of the 1950s. This book presents an in-depth chronology of Page s career, with special attention paid to the development of his trumpet style.

Luck s in My Corner examines the life and music of a forgotten figure of the Swing Era and returns him to his rightful place as a leading light in the world of jazz. Todd Bryant Weeks has combined genealogical, musicological, discographical and historical research, resulting in a revealing and entertaining examination of a life that spanned major changes in American popular music. This book includes a new and complete discography by the author and dozens of unpublished photos. "

'Hip Hop is Dead! Long Live Hip Hop!' From the front lines of hip hop culture and music in the USA, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Hawaii, Tanzania, Cuba, Samoa and South Africa, academics, poets, practitioners, journalists, and political commentators explore hip hop -- both as a culture and as a commodity. From the political economy of the South African music industry to the cultural resistance forged by Afro-Asian hip hop, this potent mix of contributors provides a unique critical insight into the implications of hip hop globally and locally. Indispensable for fans of hip hop culture and music, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in cultural production, cultural politics and the implications of the huge variety of forms hip hop encompasses.

Whiskey and porn stars, hot reds and car crashes, black leather and high heels, overdoses and death. This is the life of Mötley Crüe, the heaviest drinking, hardest fighting, most oversexed and arrogant band in the world. Their unbelievable exploits are the stuff of rock 'n' roll legend. They nailed the hottest chicks, started the bloodiest fights, partied with the biggest drug dealers, and got to know the inside of every jail cell from California to Japan. They have dedicated an entire career to living life to its extreme, from the greatest fantasies to the darkest tragedies. Tommy married two international sex symbols; Vince killed a man and lost a daughter to cancer; Nikki overdosed, rose from the dead, and then OD'd again the next day; and Wick shot a woman and tried to hang his own brother. But that's just the beginning. Fueled by every drug they could get their hands on and obscene amounts of alcohol, driven by fury and headed straight for hell, Mötley Crüe raged through two decades, leaving behind a trail of debauched women, trashed hotel rooms, crashed cars, psychotic managers, and broken bones that has left the music industry cringing to this day. All these unspeakable acts, not to mention their dire consequences, are laid bare in The Dirt.

Here -- directly from Nikki, Vince, Tommy, and Mick -- is the unexpurgated version of the whole glorious, gut-wrenching story. In these pages, published for the first time anywhere, are Tommy Lee's letters to Pamela Anderson from prison: Mick's confession to having an incurable disease that is slowly killing him; Vince's experience burying his own daughter -- and the train wreck that his life became afterward; and Nikki's anguished struggle to deal with an entire life fueled by anger over his childhood abandonment, his discovery of the family he never knew he had -- and his subsequent loss of them. And all of it accompanied by scores of rare, never-before-published photographs, mug shots, and handwritten lyrics. No one is spared. Not David Lee Roth, Ozzy Osbourne, Vanity, Aerosmith, Heather Locklear, AC/DC, Lita Ford, Iron Maiden, Pamela Anderson, Guns N' Roses, Donna D'Errico, RATT, or those two girls from Dallas, Texas.

Make no mistake about it: these guys are geniuses. They invented glam metal and then left it in the dust; sold more than forty million albums from Shout at the Devil to Dr. Feelgood; toured the world dozen times and have the scars to prove it it; and maintained a rabid following in an era of throwaway pop stars. Mötley Crüe has done nothing less than tattoo the psyche of the entire MTV generation. They are the ultimate rock 'n' roll band. And if you don't believe it, read The Dirt. You don't know what decadence is...

The 1950s represented the birth of rock 'n' roll music in the UK. This title presents a complete history and social analysis of the era tracing the music's emergence from the primitive experimentation of teenage revolutionaries in the coffee bars of London's Soho to the marketing of the first generation of TV idols.

America's Songs tells the "stories behind" the most beloved popular songs of the last century. We all have songs that have a special meaning in our lives; hearing them evokes a special time or place. Little wonder that these special songs have become enduring classics. Nothing brings the roarin '20s to life like "Tea for Two" or "I'm just Wild About Harry"; the Great Depression is evoked in all of its pain and misery in songs like "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?; "God Bless America" revives the powerful hope that American democracy promised to the world during the dark days of World War II; "Young at Heart" evokes the postwar optimism of the '50s. And then there are the countless songs of love, new romance, and heartbreak: "As Time Goes By," "Always," "Am I Blue"...the list is endless. Along with telling the stories behind these songs, America's Songs suggests, simply and succinctly, what makes a song great. The book illuminates the way each great song melds words and music -- sentiment and melody -- into a seamless whole. America's Songs also traces the fascinating but mysterious process of collaboration, the give-and-take between two craftsmen, a composer and a lyricist, as they combined their talents to create a song. For anyone interested in the history of the songs that America loves, America'sSongs will make for fascinating reading.

Jim Godbolt first emerged on the British jazz scene as unofficial manager of George Webb's Dixielanders in the late 1940s. Throughout the trad boom he was an agent and club manager, and his story also encompasses the pop revolution of the early sixties when, uncharacteristically, he enjoyed a brief taste of success as agent of the Swinging Blue Jeans. In 1971, Godbolt retired from the music business in order to become a writer. His memoirs are packed with hilarious anecdotes and accurate portraits of British jazz stars such as George Melly, Sandy Brown, Humphrey Lyttelton and Ronnie Scott. With his renowned humour and insight, he recalls his years as an electricity meter reader, exiled from the jazz world and struggling for recognition as a writer. The final chapters chart his return to eminence in British jazz, becoming by dint of stubborn application a published author and editor of "Jazz" at Ronnie Scott's.

Christians and Christianity have been central to Hip Hop since its inception. This book explores the intersection of Christians and Hip Hop and the multiple outcomes of this intersection. It lays out the ways in which Christians and Hip Hop overlap and diverge. The intersection of Christians and Hip Hop brings together African diasporic cultures, lives, memories and worldviews. Moving beyond the focus on rappers and so-called "Christian Hip Hop," each chapter explores three major themes of the book: identifying Hip Hop, irreconcilable Christianity, and boundaries.There is a self-identified Christian Hip Hop (CHH) community that has received some scholarly attention. At the same time, scholars have analyzed Christianity and Hip Hop without focusing on the self-identified community. This book brings these various conversations together and show, through these three themes, the complexities of the intersection of Christians and Hip Hop. Hip Hop is more than rap music, it is an African diasporic phenomenon. These three themes elucidate the many characteristics of the intersection between Christians and Hip Hop and our reasoning for going beyond "Christian Hip Hop." This collection is a multi-faceted view of how religious belief plays a role in Hip Hoppas' lives and community. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of Religion and Hip Hop, Hip Hop, African Diasporas, Religion and the Arts, Religion and Race and Black Theology as well as Religious Studies more generally.

Jazz: The Basics gives a brief introduction to a century of jazz, ideal for students and interested listeners who want to learn more about this important musical style. The heart of the book traces jazz's growth from its folk origins through early recordings and New Orleans stars; the big-band and swing era; bebop; cool jazz and third stream; avant-garde; jazz-rock; and the neo-conservative movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

Key figures from each era including: Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Wynton Marsalis are highlighted along with classic works. The book concludes with a list of the 100 essential recordings to own, along with a timeline and glossary. Jazz: The Basics serves as an excellent introduction to the players, the music, and the styles that make jazz 'America's classical music.'

Made in Poland: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Polish popular music. Each essay, written by a leading scholar of Polish music, covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Poland and provides adequate context so readers understand why the figure or genre under discussion is of lasting significance. The book first presents a general description of the history and background of popular music in Poland, followed by essays organized into thematic sections: Popular Music in the People's Republic of Poland; Documenting Change and Continuity in Music Scenes and Institutions; and Music, Identity, and Critique.

Inside British Jazz explores specific historical moments in British jazz history and places special emphasis upon issues of race, nation and class. Topics covered include the reception of jazz in Britain in the 1910s and 1920s, the British New Orleans jazz revival of the 1950s, the free jazz innovations of the Joe Harriott Quintet in the early 1960s, and the formation of the all-black jazz band, the Jazz Warriors, in 1985. Using both historical and ethnographical approaches, Hilary Moore examines the ways in which jazz, an African-American music form, has been absorbed and translated within Britain's social, political and musical landscapes. Moore considers particularly the ways in which music has created a space of expression for British musicians, allowing them to re-imagine their place within Britain's social fabric, to participate in transcontinental communities, and to negotiate a position of belonging within jazz narratives of race, nation and class. The book also champions the importance of studying jazz beyond the borders of the United States and contributes to a growing body of literature that will enrich mainstream jazz scholarship.

This book explores how, and why, the blues became a central component of English popular music in the 1960s. It is commonly known that many 'British invasion' rock bands were heavily influenced by Chicago and Delta blues styles. But how, exactly, did Britain get the blues? Blues records by African American artists were released in the United States in substantial numbers between 1920 and the late 1930s, but were sold primarily to black consumers in large urban centres and the rural south. How, then, in an era before globalization, when multinational record releases were rare, did English teenagers in the early 1960s encounter the music of Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller, Memphis Minnie, and Barbecue Bob? Roberta Schwartz analyses the transmission of blues records to England, from the first recordings to hit English shores to the end of the sixties. How did the blues, largely banned from the BBC until the mid 1960s, become popular enough to create a demand for re-released material by American artists? When did the British blues subculture begin, and how did it develop? Most significantly, how did the music become a part of the popular consciousness, and how did it change music and expectations? The way that the blues, and various blues styles, were received by critics is a central concern of the book, as their writings greatly affected which artists and recordings were distributed and reified, particularly in the early years of the revival. 'Hot' cultural issues such as authenticity, assimilation, appropriation, and cultural transgression were also part of the revival; these topics and more were interrogated in music periodicals by critics and fans alike, even as English musicians began incorporating elements of the blues into their common musical language. The vinyl record itself, under-represented in previous studies, plays a major part in the story of the blues in Britain. Not only did recordings shape perceptions and listening habits, but which artists were available at any given time also had an enormous impact on the British blues. Schwartz maps the influences on British blues and blues-rock performers and thereby illuminates the stylistic evolution of many genres of British popular music.

Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else is a critical biography of Ray Davies, with a focus on his music and his times. The book studies Davies' work from the Kinks' first singles through his 2006 solo album, from his rock musicals in the early 1970s to his one-man stage show in the 1990s, and from his films to his autobiography. Based on interviews with his closest associates, as well as studies of the recordings themselves, this book creates the most thorough picture of Davies' work to date. Kitts situates Davies' work in the context of the British Invasion and the growth of rock in the '60s and '70s, and in the larger context of English cultural history. For fans of rock music and the music of the Kinks, this book is a must have. It will finally place this legendary innovator in the pantheon of the great rock artists of the past half-century. Thomas M. Kitts, Professor of English and Chair of the Division of English/Speech at St. John's University, NY, is the co-editor of Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks, the author of The Theatrical Life of George Henry Boker, articles on American literature and popular culture, reviews of books, CDs, and performances, and a play Gypsies. He is the book review editor of Popular Music and Society and the editor of The Mid-Atlantic Almanack.

David Amram-composer, jazz artist, conductor, and world music pioneer-has been described by the Boston Globe as "the Renaissance man of American music." From early collaborations with Kerouac and Sinatra, chosen by Leonard Bernstein as the New York Philharmonic's first composer in residence, Amram's artistry has taken him from concerts with Willie Nelson to jamming with the Massai tribe of Kenya. In Upbeat: Nine Lives of a Musical Cat, Amram recounts his extraordinary adventures in the many worlds of music he calls home, all told in a rollicking anecdotal style that makes you feel that you are at home around the world. He writes, "Everywhere I have been in the world, music transcends politics. As musicians, we were able to go beyond all that and just be fellow human beings." Threading through Amram's tale of music, hard work, respect, and friendship are unforgettable stories of fellow great artists-Dizzie Gillespie, Hunter S. Thompson, Janet Gaynor, George Plimpton, Lyle Lovett, Zoe Caldwell, Willie Nelson, and many more.

Expression in Pop-Rock Music is a collection of critical and analytical essays written by todaya (TM)s top scholars on pop and rock music. Applying a wide variety of analytical techniques and critical approaches in the study of songs by artists such as Tori Amos, David Bowie, James Brown, the Cure, Genesis, Radiohead, and Frank Zappa, these essays tackle the musical text itself in coming to terms with political, social, cultural, and stylistic issues expressed in the most popular music of the past half-century. It has been expanded in its second edition to include three new essays and other additions accounting for the changes to the popular music landscape since its first edition, with particular attention paid to the rise of hip-hop and country music.

Expression in Pop-Rock Music is a collection of critical and analytical essays written by todaya (TM)s top scholars on pop and rock music. Applying a wide variety of analytical techniques and critical approaches in the study of songs by artists such as Tori Amos, David Bowie, James Brown, the Cure, Genesis, Radiohead, and Frank Zappa, these essays tackle the musical text itself in coming to terms with political, social, cultural, and stylistic issues expressed in the most popular music of the past half-century. It has been expanded in its second edition to include three new essays and other additions accounting for the changes to the popular music landscape since its first edition, with particular attention paid to the rise of hip-hop and country music.

Underground rap is largely a subversive, grassroots, and revolutionary movement in underground hip-hop, tending to privilege creative freedom as well as progressive and liberating thoughts and actions. This book contends that many practitioners of underground rap have absorbed religious traditions and ideas, and implement, critique, or abandon them in their writings. This in turn creates processural mutations of God that coincide with and speak to the particular context from which they originate. Utilising the work of scholars like Monica Miller and Alfred North Whitehead, Gill uses a secular religious methodology to put forward an aesthetic philosophy of religion for the rap portion of underground hip-hop. Drawing from Whiteheadian process thought, a theopoetic argument is made. Namely, that it is not simply the case that is God the "poet of the world", but rather rap can, in fact, be the poet (creator) of its own form of quasi-religion. This is a unique look at the religious workings and implications of underground rap and hip hop. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Hip-Hop Studies and Process Philosophy and Theology.