It's been over ten years since Big was killed. I grieved for him for a very long time. And then, as time passed, the icy wall of grief surrounding my heart began to thaw and I began to heal. I remarried, had more children, and continued to record and release more music. I continued to live my life. And while I can never discount the time I spent with Big, I've never felt the need to live in the past.

But sometimes, I still find myself thinking about Big being rushed the hospital, and I break down in tears.

It's not just because we hung up on each other during what would be our last telephone conversation. And it's not because I am raising our son, a young man who has never known his father.

It's partly all of those things. But mainly it's because he wasn't ready to go. His debut album was called Ready to Die. But in the end, he wasn't. Big never got a chance to tell his story. It's been left to others to tell it for him. In making the decision to tell my own story, it means that I've become one of those who can give insight to who Big really was. But I can only speak on what he meant to me.

Yet I also want people to understand that although he was a large part of my life, my story doesn't actually begin or end with Big's death. My journey has been complicated on many levels. And since I am always linked to Big, there are a lot of misconceptions about who I really am.

I hope that in reading my words, there is inspiration to be found. Perhaps you can duplicate my success or achieve where I have failed. Maybe you can skip over the mistakes I've made. Use my life as an example-of what to do and in some cases, what not to do.

It's not easy putting your life out therefor the masses. But I've decided I'll tell my own story. For Big. For my children. And for myself.

A hybrid of reggae and rap, reggaeton is a music with Spanish-language lyrics and Caribbean aesthetics that has taken Latin America, the United States, and the world by storm. Superstars--including Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Ivy Queen--garner international attention, while aspiring performers use digital technologies to create and circulate their own tracks. "Reggaeton" brings together critical assessments of this wildly popular genre. Journalists, scholars, and artists delve into reggaeton's local roots and its transnational dissemination; they parse the genre's aesthetics, particularly in relation to those of hip-hop; and they explore the debates about race, nation, gender, and sexuality generated by the music and its associated cultural practices, from dance to fashion.

The collection opens with an in-depth exploration of the social and sonic currents that coalesced into reggaeton in Puerto Rico during the 1990s. Contributors consider reggaeton in relation to that island, Panama, Jamaica, and New York; Cuban society, Miami's hip-hop scene, and Dominican identity; and other genres including "reggae en espanol," underground, and dancehall reggae. The reggaeton artist Tego Calderon provides a powerful indictment of racism in Latin America, while the hip-hop artist Welmo Romero Joseph discusses the development of reggaeton in Puerto Rico and his refusal to embrace the upstart genre. The collection features interviews with the DJ/rapper El General and the reggae performer Renato, as well as a translation of "Chamaco's Corner," the poem that served as the introduction to Daddy Yankee's debut album. Among the volume's striking images are photographs from Miguel Luciano's series Pure Plantainum, a meditation on identity politics in the bling-bling era, and photos taken by the reggaeton videographer Kacho Lopez during the making of the documentary "Bling'd: Blood, Diamonds, and Hip-Hop."

Contributors. Geoff Baker, Tego Calderon, Carolina Caycedo, Jose Davila, Jan Fairley, Juan Flores, Gallego (Jose Raul Gonzalez), Felix Jimenez, Kacho Lopez, Miguel Luciano, Wayne Marshall, Frances Negron-Muntaner, Alfredo Nieves Moreno, Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Raquel Z. Rivera, Welmo Romero Joseph, Christoph Twickel, Alexandra T. Vazquez

On the heels of Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer Prize, as the world begins to recognize the creative side of Hip-Hop, comes a writing guide from a musician and "The greatest MC of all time," Rakim. The musician and Hip Hop legend-hailed as "the greatest MC of all time" and compared to Thelonious Monk-reimagines the writing handbook in this memoir and guide that incorporates the soulful genius, confidence, and creativity of a master artist. When he exploded on the music scene, musical genius Rakim was hailed for his brilliant artistic style, adding layers, complexity, depth, musicality, and soul to rap. More than anyone, Rakim has changed the way MCs rhyme. Calm on the mic, his words combine in a frenzy of sound, using complicated patterns based on multisyllabic rhymes and internal rhythms. Rakim can tell a story about a down-on-his-luck man looking for a job and turn it into an epic tale and an unforgettable rhyme. He is not just a great songwriter-he's a great modern writer. Part memoir, part writing guide, Sweat the Technique offers insight into how Rakim thinks about words, music, writing, and rhyming as it teaches writers of all levels how to hone their craft. It is also a rare glimpse into Rakim's private life, full of entertaining personal stories from his youth on Long Island growing up in a home and community filled with musiciansto the clubs of New York and the studios of Los Angeles during his rise to the top of popular music. Rakim celebrates the influences that shaped his development, including the jazz music of John Coltrane and the spirituality of the streets, and shares anecdotes spotlighting personalities such as L. L. Cool J. and Dr. Dre, among others. Filled with valuable lessons for every writer, Sweat the Technique reveals the heart and mind of an artist and his love for great storytelling, and always, the words.

Before there was Drake, there was The 6. The genesis and rise of Toronto's Hip Hop culture.Amongst the algorithmic pulsations that remap informational networks at the whim of any giant tech company, hip hop culture produces ways of knowing (and being in) the world that continually disrupt the status quo.Guided by a sense of rawness -- an unsanitized speaking of truth to power -- hip hop culture thrives outside of the formal and institutional settings which are often used to confer importance. Hip hop has no use for such pedestals. Its inherent and purposefully self-critical nature ensures that hip hop is both a widely appealing form for youth protest and a self-calibrating system of quality control.A photographic excavation of Toronto's hip hop archive, ...Everything Remains Raw draws on photographs of Kardinal Offishall, Michie Mee, Dream Warriors, Maestro, Drake, Director X, and others by Michael Chambers, Sheinina Raj, Demuth Flake, Craig Boyko, Nabil Shash, Patrick Nichols, and Stella Fakiyesi to offer a deep dive in hip hop's visual culture. An intentional intersection of the taste-making skills of the DJ and the nuanced particularism of the curator, the book and the accompanying exhibition juxtapose never-before-seen images with photojournalism, street posters, and zines to reframe and enhance popular understandings of this thing called hip hop....Everything Remains Raw accompanies an exhibition organized at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

A first of its kind collection, How to Rap is an insightful and intelligent breakdown of the elements of rap for anyone wanting to learn the art form or understand the principles behind it. Author Paul Edwards examines the dynamics of hip hop from every region and in every form - mainstream, underground, current and classic - looking in particular at content, flow, writing and delivery. Edwards provides unparalleled access to the most acclaimed names in rap and their methods of working, with a foreword by Kool G Rap and interviews with over 100 artists, including Public Enemy, Mobb Deep, Schoolly D, Nelly, will.i.am, Arrested Development, A Tribe Called Quest, and Rah Digga. This one and only comprehensive examination of the MC art form is pure gold for the hip hop lover.

This updated reissue of Mark LeVine's acclaimed, revolutionary book on sub- and countercultural music in the Middle East brings this groundbreaking portrait of the region's youth cultures to a new generation. Featuring a new preface by the author in conversation with the band The Kominas about the problematic connections between extreme music and Islam. An eighteen-year-old Moroccan who loves Black Sabbath. A twenty-two-year-old rapper from the Gaza Strip. A young Lebanese singer who quotes Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." Heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, and reggae are each the music of protest, and are considered immoral by many in the Muslim world. As the young people and subcultures featured in Mark LeVine's Heavy Metal Islam so presciently predicted, this music turned out to be the soundtrack of countercultures, uprisings, and even revolutions from Morocco to Pakistan. In Heavy Metal Islam, originally published in 2008, Mark LeVine explores the influence of Western music on the Middle East and North Africa through interviews with musicians and fans, introducing us to young people struggling to reconcile their religion with a passion for music and a thirst for change. The result is a revealing tour de force of contemporary cultures across the Muslim majority world through the region's evolving music scenes that only a musician, scholar, and activist with LeVine's unique breadth of experience could narrate. A New York Times Editor's Pick when it was first published, Heavy Metal Islam is a surprising, wildly entertaining foray into a historically authoritarian region where music reveals itself to be a true democratizing force-and a groundbreaking work of scholarship that pioneered new forms of research in the region.

Rap Music and the Youth in Malawi is one of the first book-length studies of Malawian hip hop. It studies the language and content of contemporary Malawian hip hop as a window onto the country's youth culture as Malawian young people negotiate what scholar Alcinda Honwana calls 'waithood,' or the condition, common among Malawian youth, of lacking opportunities to advance from a situation of dependence and being stuck in a state of relative childhood. The book argues that rap music made by Malawian youth music speaks of - and represents, through its very agency - their need to break out of this stagnant state. After situating Malawian hip hop with respect to both other musical genres in the country and to the nation's language in culture, Rap Music and the Youth in Malawi shows how Malawian youth use rap music to create a sense of community, which then becomes a foothold from which they can do activities that get them out of waithood and into the adult world, such as getting involved in the music industry, realizing electoral power, or participating in activism about issues such as violence against people with albinism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Hip hop has been a crucial tool for Malawian youth to build the skills, identity, and agency necessary to exercise their economic, cultural, and civic independence.

From its beginnings in hip hop culture, the dense rhythms and aggressive lyrics of rap music have made it a provocative fixture on the American cultural landscape. In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Tricia Rose, described by the New York Times as a "hip hop theorist," takes a comprehensive look at the lyrics, music, cultures, themes, and styles of this highly rhythmic, rhymed storytelling and grapples with the most salient issues and debates that surround it.
Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and History at New York University, Tricia Rose sorts through rap's multiple voices by exploring its underlying urban cultural politics, particularly the influential New York City rap scene, and discusses rap as a unique musical form in which traditional African-based oral traditions fuse with cutting-edge music technologies. Next she takes up rap's racial politics, its sharp criticisms of the police and the government, and the responses of those institutions. Finally, she explores the complex sexual politics of rap, including questions of misogyny, sexual domination, and female rappers' critiques of men.
But these debates do not overshadow rappers' own words and thoughts. Rose also closely examines the lyrics and videos for songs by artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One, Salt N' Pepa, MC Lyte, and L. L. Cool J. and draws on candid interviews with Queen Latifah, music producer Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, dancer Crazy Legs, and others to paint the full range of rap's political and aesthetic spectrum. In the end, Rose observes, rap music remains a vibrant force with its own aesthetic, "a noisy and powerful element of contemporary American popular culture which continues to draw a great deal of attention to itself."

A concise musical biography traces the Beastie Boys' story from the New York punk scene through a blockbuster career that spans more than 20 years. Ever since they hit the big time with their 1986 rock/rap debut Licensed to Ill, the first rap album to reach #1 on the Billboard 200, the Beastie Boys have been a cultural bellwether, the likes of which was unseen before or since. Their association with MTV made the Beasties instant poster children for an unprecedented phase of integration, both musical and racial. Their music, a pastiche of sounds that spans decades and genres, influenced the course of popular music and continues to do so today. Beastie Boys: A Musical Biography tells the story of the band, from its beginnings through its ongoing critical and commercial success. Fans can read about the group's origins, the training of its members, its awards and accomplishments, and its influence on pop culture. Authoritative yet concise, this lively overview covers everything from the band's unique sound to their collaborations with leading filmmakers on their award-winning videos. A timeline captures key events in the life of the band and its members Photos show the band members and their performances A selected discography reviews the band's work over the years

According to relational sociology, power imbalances are at the root of human conflicts and consequently shape the physical and symbolic struggles between interdependent groups or individuals. This volume highlights the role of power relations in the African American experience by applying key concepts of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias to black literature and culture. The authors offer new readings of power asymmetries as represented in works of canonical and contemporary black writers (Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Percival Everett, Colson Whitehead), rap music (e.g., Jay Z), images of black homelessness, and figurations of political activism (civil rights activist Bayard Rustin,

The Word Rhythm Dictionary: A Resource for Writers, Rappers, Poets, and Lyricists is a new kind of dictionary-one that reflects the use of "rhythm rhymes" by rappers, poets, and songwriters of today. This is an eminently practical reference work for all wordsmiths looking to add musicality to their writing. Users of this dictionary can alphabetically look up words in the General Index to find collections of words that have the same rhythm as the original word and are readily useable in ways that are familiar to us in everything from vers libre poetry to the lyrics and music of Bob Dylan and hip hop groups. Professional writers and students have long used traditional rhyming dictionaries for inspiration by perusing lists of rhyming words; they may ask themselves, "I need a word that rhymes with blue," and are led to shoe, flu, or you. These rhyming words evoke through juxtaposition new images, thoughts, and actions that inspire creative directions and pleasing twists as verses and stanzas unfold. For the first time ever, this dictionary now allows writers and poets to ask the same question, but of word rhythm- "I need a word with the same rhythm as butterfly. . . . " Today's lyricists and poets know that there is so much more to the flow of their creations than just matching vowels. The Word Rhythm Dictionary organizes words by additional properties: phonetic similarity (alliteration and literary consonance), the number of syllables in words, and syllable stress patterns. Never has it been easier to locate words that feature similar sounds, matching meters, and rhythmic grooves, from traditional rhymes like "clashing" and "splashing," to near rhymes like "rollover" and "bulldozer," "unrefuted undisputed" to pure metrical matches, like "biology" and "photography." Additional appendixes allow readers to search according to poetic metrical feet and musical rhythm through a visual index of notated rhythms, allowing musicians and lyricists to track down words that match preexisting motives and melodies. This book could become the new fun addiction (or... addiction affliction...constriction conviction...conniption prescription...subscription conscription) for writers, musicians, lyricists, rappers, poets, and wordsmiths alike. Oh, and it's a lot of fun just to browse!

Despite its global popularity, rap has received little scholarly attention in terms of its poetic features, perhaps because rap is so demonstrative and powerful, or because poetry scholars have been slow to recognize rap's poetic worth, or uncertainty about its legitimacy as a form of poetry. Rhymes in the Flow systematically analyzes the poetics (rap beats, rhythms, rhymes, verse and song structures) of some 6,000 lines of rap lyrics to provide new insights on rap artistry and performance. While most scholarship on rap has focused on its historical and cultural dimensions, Rhymes in the Flow traces rap's deepest roots and stylistic evolution-from Anglo-Saxon poetry to Lil Wayne-and contextualizes its complex poetics. The book is a collaboration between two rap poetry aficionados separated in age by fifty years. Poetry professor Macklin Smith and his undergraduate student Aurko Joshi discovered in a University of Michigan poetry course their shared passion for the sounds and beats of hip hop and have been collaborating ever since. Through their efforts, Rhymes in the Flow shows how rap, at times disparaged as an art form, is in fact a more complex and complicated, versatile and nuanced genre than has been previously appreciated.

Throughout Africa, artists use hip-hop both to describe their lives and to create shared spaces for uncensored social commentary, feminist challenges to patriarchy, and resistance against state institutions, while at the same time engaging with the global hip-hop community. In Hip-Hop in Africa, Msia Kibona Clark examines some of Africa's biggest hip-hop scenes and shows how hip-hop helps us understand specifically African narratives of social, political, and economic realities. Clark looks at the use of hip-hop in protest, both as a means of articulating social problems and as a tool for mobilizing listeners around those problems. She also details the spread of hip-hop culture in Africa following its emergence in the United States, assessing the impact of urbanization and demographics on the spread of hip-hop culture. Hip-Hop in Africa is a tribute to a genre and its artists as well as a timely examination that pushes the study of music and diaspora in critical new directions. Accessibly written by one of the foremost experts on African hip-hop, this book will easily find its place in the classroom.

As one of the most influential and popular genres of the last three decades, rap has cultivated a mainstream audience and become a multimillion-dollar industry by promoting highly visible and often controversial representations of blackness. Sounding Race in Rap Songs argues that rap music allows us not only to see but also to hear how mass-mediated culture engenders new understandings of race. The book traces the changing sounds of race across some of the best-known rap songs of the past thirty-five years, combining song-level analysis with historical contextualization to show how these representations of identity depend on specific artistic decisions, such as those related to how producers make beats. Each chapter explores the process behind the production of hit songs by musicians including Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Sugarhill Gang, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, N.W.A., Dr. Dre, and Eminem. This series of case studies highlights stylistic differences in sound, lyrics, and imagery, with musical examples and illustrations that help answer the core question: can we hear race in rap songs? Integrating theory from interdisciplinary areas, this book will resonate with students and scholars of popular music, race relations, urban culture, ethnomusicology, sound studies, and beyond.

The success of the Hip-Hop album The Calling (2003) by the Hilltop Hoods was a major event on the timeline of Hip-Hop in Australia. It launched a formerly ‘underground’ scene into the spotlight, radically transforming the group members’ lives and creating new opportunities for other Hip-Hop artists. This book analyses the impact of the album by drawing on original interviews with fifteen Hip-Hop practitioners from across Australia, including artists who contributed to the album. These primary interviews are interwoven with material from media sources and close readings of song lyrics and album imagery. An exploration of the early histories of Hip-Hop in Australia with a focus on the formation of Obese Records and the Hilltop Hoods’ biography gives way to analysis of specific tracks from the album and the Hoods’ prowess as live performers. The book uses The Calling as a lens to examine the beliefs and practices of Hip-Hop enthusiasts in Australia, including changes since the album was released. Published in 2023 to coincide with the album’s twenty-year anniversary, the book is an engaging evaluation of a musical release that was so significant that people now use it explain two distinct periods in Australian Hip-Hop (pre or post The Calling).

In the late 1980s, gangsta rap music emerged in urban America, giving voice to -- and making money for -- a social group widely considered to be in crisis: young, poor, black men. From its local origins, gangsta rap went on to flood the mainstream, generating enormous popularity and profits. Yet the highly charged lyrics, public battles, and hard, fast lifestyles that characterize the genre have incited the anger of many public figures and proponents of "family values." Constantly engaging questions of black identity and race relations, poverty and wealth, gangsta rap represents one of the most profound influences on pop culture in the last thirty years.

Focusing on the artists Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, the Geto Boys, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur, Quinn explores the origins, development, and immense appeal of gangsta rap. Including detailed readings in urban geography, neoconservative politics, subcultural formations, black cultural debates, and music industry conditions, this book explains how and why this music genre emerged. In "Nuthin'but a "G" Thang," Quinn argues that gangsta rap both reflected and reinforced the decline in black protest culture and the great rise in individualist and entrepreneurial thinking that took place in the U.S. after the 1970s. Uncovering gangsta rap's deep roots in black working-class expressive culture, she stresses the music's aesthetic pleasures and complexities that have often been ignored in critical accounts.

Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Eric Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa, the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, ragga, and gospel music, and the continued vitality of drumming. Covering Senegal, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa, this volume offers unique perspectives on the presence and development of hip hop and other music in Africa and their place in global music culture."

An inside look at women graffiti artists around the world Since the dawn of Hip Hop graffiti writing on the streets of Philadelphia and New York City in the late 1960s, writers have anonymously inscribed their tag names on trains, buildings, and bridges. Passersby are left to imagine who the author might be, and, despite the artists' anonymity, graffiti subculture is seen as a "boys club," where the presence of the graffiti girl is almost unimaginable. In Graffiti Grrlz, Jessica Nydia Pabon-Colon interrupts this stereotype and introduces us to the world of women graffiti artists. Drawing on the lives of over 100 women in 23 countries, Pabon-Colon argues that graffiti art is an unrecognized but crucial space for the performance of feminism. She demonstrates how it builds communities of artists, reconceptualizes the Hip Hop masculinity of these spaces, and rejects notions of "girl power." Graffiti Grrlz also unpacks the digital side of Hip Hop graffiti subculture and considers how it widens the presence of the woman graffiti artist and broadens her networks, which leads to the formation of all-girl graffiti crews or the organization of all-girl painting sessions. A rich and engaging look at women artists in a male-dominated subculture, Graffiti Grrlz reconsiders the intersections of feminism, hip hop, and youth performance and establishes graffiti art as a game that anyone can play.

Read, Write, Rhyme Institute describes how individuals participating in the Read, Write, Rhyme Institute examine today's youth, hip-hop, and social responsibility. The institute provides a forum to engage in hip-hop Discourse (with a capital D) that includes a worldview and ways of doing, being, and knowing that are used in rap music, graffiti, spoken word poetry, and daily conversation. This book seeks to capitalize on the diversity within the hip-hop community by including successful individuals that grew up not only listening to hip-hop but also living it. Participants include educators, entertainers, and entrepreneurs.

Throughout Africa, artists use hip-hop both to describe their lives and to create shared spaces for uncensored social commentary, feminist challenges to patriarchy, and resistance against state institutions, while at the same time engaging with the global hip-hop community. In Hip-Hop in Africa, Msia Kibona Clark examines some of Africa's biggest hip-hop scenes and shows how hip-hop helps us understand specifically African narratives of social, political, and economic realities. Clark looks at the use of hip-hop in protest, both as a means of articulating social problems and as a tool for mobilizing listeners around those problems. She also details the spread of hip-hop culture in Africa following its emergence in the United States, assessing the impact of urbanization and demographics on the spread of hip-hop culture. Hip-Hop in Africa is a tribute to a genre and its artists as well as a timely examination that pushes the study of music and diaspora in critical new directions. Accessibly written by one of the foremost experts on African hip-hop, this book will easily find its place in the classroom.

The origin story of hip-hop-one that involves Kool Herc DJing a house party on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx-has become received wisdom. But Joseph C. Ewoodzie Jr. argues that the full story remains to be told. In vibrant prose, he combines never-before-used archival material with searching questions about the symbolic boundaries that have divided our understanding of the music. In Break Beats in the Bronx, Ewoodzie portrays the creative process that brought about what we now know as hip-hop and shows that the art form was a result of serendipitous events, accidents, calculated successes, and failures that, almost magically, came together. In doing so, he questions the unexamined assumptions about hip-hop's beginnings, including why there are just four traditional elements-DJing, MCing, breaking, and graffiti writing-and not others, why the South Bronx and not any other borough or city is considered the cradle of the form, and which artists besides Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash founded the genre. Ewoodzie answers these and many other questions about hip-hop's beginnings. Unearthing new evidence, he shows what occurred during the crucial but surprisingly underexamined years between 1975 and 1979 and argues that it was during this period that the internal logic and conventions of the scene were formed.

To some, Christianity and hip hop seem antithetical. Not so in Kenya. There, the music of Julius Owino, aka Juliani, blends faith and beats into a potent hip hop gospel aimed at a youth culture hungry for answers spiritual, material, and otherwise. Mwenda Ntarangwi explores the Kenyan hip hop scene through the lens of Juliani's life and career. A born-again Christian, Juliani produces work highlighting the tensions between hip hop's forceful self-expression and a pious approach to public life, even while contesting the basic presumptions of both. In The Street Is My Pulpit, Ntarangwi forges an uncommon collaboration with his subject that offers insights into Juliani's art and goals even as Ntarangwi explores his own religious experience and subjective identity as an ethnographer. What emerges is an original contribution to the scholarship on hip hop's global impact and a passionate study of the music's role in shaping new ways of being Christian in Africa.

Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made is a vivid journey into the heart of a misunderstood subculture. Through firsthand reporting, including interviews with Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse, their friends and family, and numerous devoted fans, Juggalo explores the lives of the proud outsiders who are frequently labeled as a threat or dismissed as a joke. Author and journalist Steve Miller follows ICP across America, hanging out with Juggalos before and after shows, at the legendary annual Gathering of the Juggalos, and at work and home to share their stories. In addition, Juggalo dives deep into the FBI's misguided assault on Juggalo culture and the misidentification of this devoted group of horrorcore fans as a gang. Juggalo is also the chronicle of two hard-luck kids from Detroit who created an empire and became the unwitting stars of a uniquely American grassroots success story. Without the help of radio airplay and with little love from the music industry establishment, ICP went platinum and fostered one of America's most durable subcultures. Juggalo is required reading for the hardcore fan and pop culture buff alike, a scrupulously researched account of a subculture unlike any other -- one that so shook the establishment it launched a federal investigation -- as well as a window into the world of the Juggalos and the singular mythology of their underworld apocalypse.

Musicians rapping in kriolu--a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verde--have recently emerged from Lisbon's periphery. They popularize the struggles with identity and belonging among young people in a Cape Verdean immigrant community that shares not only the kriolu language but its culture and history. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and Cape Verde, Derek Pardue introduces Lisbon's kriolu rap scene and its role in challenging metropolitan Portuguese identities. Pardue demonstrates that Cape Verde, while relatively small within the Portuguese diaspora, offers valuable lessons about the politics of experience and social agency within a postcolonial context that remains poorly understood. As he argues, knowing more about both Cape Verdeans and the Portuguese invites clearer assessments of the relationship between the experience and policies of migration. That in turn allows us to better gauge citizenship as a balance of individual achievement and cultural ascription. Deftly shifting from domestic to public spaces and from social media to ethnographic theory, Pardue describes an overlooked phenomenon transforming Portugal, one sure to have parallels in former colonial powers across twenty-first-century Europe.