As head of the first special force unit devoted exclusively to the investigation of hip-hop crime, first-grade detective Derrick Parker worked on some of the biggest criminal cases in rap history. From the shooting at Club New York to the murder of Tupac Shakur, Derrick was on the inside of hip-hop's most notorious crimes.
Always straddling the fence between "po-po" and NYPD outsider, Derrick threatened police tradition to try and get the cases solved. He was the first New York detective on the Biggie Smalls' murder and discovered shocking and never-before-revealed information from an unlikely informant. He protected one of the only surviving eyewitnesses to the Jam Master Jay murder and knows the identity of the killers as well as the motivation behind the shooting.
"Notorious C.O.P. "reveals hip-hop crimes that never made the paper--like the robbing of Foxy Brown and the first Hot 97 shooting--and answers some lingering questions about murders that have remained unsolved.
The book that both the NYPD and the hip-hop community don't want you to read, "Notorious C.O.P. "is the first insider look at the real links between crime and hip-hop and the inefficiencies that have left some of the most widely publicized murders in entertainment history unsolved.

The Def Jam legend shares his secrets. Under the leadership of Kevin Liles - the highest ranking and youngest African-American executive in the record industry - Def Jam Music grew from a fledgling million-dollar boutique label into a multi-million-dollar brand that transcends demographics and is recognized around the glove. Liles has worked with the biggest names in hip-hop, including Jay-Z, Diddy, Method Man, and Ja Rule. And now he's sharing the wealth, the wealth of knowledge and expertise he's gleaned from fifteen years in business. Full of eye-opening real-world anecdotes from Lile's life, the "Ten Rules" plan advises readers on: how to find something that you want badly enough to make you work harder than you ever imagined possible; how to strategize and look ahead; how to embrace the hard-knock life and learn from failure, and more.

Dr. Dre: 'In The Studio' details Dr. Dre s life, times and history, in a way no other book has. Dr. Dre: 'In the Studio' describes how he was molded into one of the world s greatest Hip Hop Producers beginning when he was three years old absorbing the music during his mother s house parties. As a deejay, Dre mixed and spun his way to the top, using Grandmaster Flash as his catalyst; and then embarked on his destiny as the most in demand and greatest record producer of rap music in the world. Author Jake Brown brilliantly captures the history of this music legend. The excitement and notoriety of Dr. Dre never lingers as the reader learns all about Dr. Dre s relationships; from Death Row Records to Aftermmath Entertainment, with the World Class Wrecking Crew, N.W.A., D.O.C., Suge Knight, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, The Game and much more. Dr. Dre: 'In the Studio' focuses on the hip hop production godfather's studio craft. Exploring in great detail the writing and production of Dr. Dre's catalog of smash hit, multi-platinum, albums and singles.

"The Psychology of Hip Hop" is a provocative examination of the world of Hip Hop, and how this music genre has shaped the American landscape. Going where no one else dares, "The Psychology of Hip Hop" effectively explains behaviors of some of the best known Hip Hop stars, like 50Cent, Eminem, Jay-Z, T.I., Lil' Kim and Snoop Dogg. Think you know? Guess again

McPhaul, a Mental Health Therapist and Personal Advisor to some of the world's biggest entertainers, explains what the media only speculates about. "The Psychology of Hip Hop" outlines the complex maze of R. Kelly's sexual indiscretions and the heinous exploitation of Hip Hop phenomenon B2K. In addition, "The Psychology of Hip Hop" answers questions such as, is Sean "P.Diddy" Combs really a Psychopath? And, studies if Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace and Tupac Shakur died as a result of an East Coast versus West Coast rivalry, or if greed of record company executives was the cause of their untimely deaths.

"The Psychology of Hip Hop" surveys the impact of racism and the influence of legal professionals on the music genre, and in the chapter "Pop Diva Takes A Dive" finally answers the question, did Bobby Brown really ruin Whitney Houston?

This book will entertain, inform and challenge the realest hip hop fan from the old to the new. Peep This Hip Hop Trivia Vol. 1 features over 400 questions on the artists you know and love. You can test yourself or your friends on anything from your favorite artists to your favorite songs.

From the creators of Godspeed: The Kurt Cobain Graphic and Eminem: In My Skin comes an explosive new graphic novel, tracing the events leading up to the death of one of modern music's most charismatic performers. Tupac: One Nation Under a Gun chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the notorious hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur, the figurehead of a musical movement that came to define black culture in America and beyond. Exploring the recesses of a racist, damaged country, the book takes the reader on a self-destructive ride through the violence and corruption and greed of Los Angeles. The marriage of Barnaby Legg and Jim McCarthy's incendiary writing with Flameboy's potent, gritty visuals produces a new perspective on the controversial events surrounding the rise of Death Row Records, the brutality of street gang warfare and murder. From the hazy skies of Los Angeles to the back streets of New York, this tells the story of a unique talent cut down at just 25 years of age.

In Jay Z and the Roc-A-Fella Dynasty, author Jake Brown has chronicled the Hip Hop icon's legacy. As Hip Hop's prodigal son, Jay Z is truly the pinnacle of where Hip Hop has come in its short but extraordinary life time. Among the detailed and explicit chapters, the story includes: "The Hustlin Years," "Shawn Carter Becomes Jay Z," "The Birth of Roc-A-Fella Records and Brooklyn's Finest-Jay Z and Biggie Smalls."

Selwyn Seyfu Hinds -- award-winning former editor-in-chief of "The Source" -- presents an extraordinary memoir/history of hip-hop as seen through the eyes of one fan-turned-luminary. The moment nine-year-old Hinds heard "Rapper's Delight" in Guyana, he embarked upon an amazing, if sometimes contentious, relationship with hip-hop -- one that would continue through his migration to Brooklyn as a teenager and on through adult life. Here, he takes readers to a murky nightclub in the violent streets of late-eighties Brooklyn; to an Ivy League campus caught up in political rap during the early nineties; to a curbside in Los Angeles where Notorious B.I.G. has just been shot; to the achingly poor streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as a sea of black humanity surges to touch a hip-hop native son....

Interspersing recollections of life in the hip-hop trenches with profiles of figures like Lauryn Hill, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Dr. Dre, Wyclef Jean, and more, Hinds traces the heights and depths of his hip-hop love affair. Like the Guyanese rice dish "cook-up," "Gunshots in My Cook-Up" ingeniously pulls wide-ranging elements into an irresistibly cohesive dish.

Ian Maxwell's sophisticated story of Australia's hip-hop scene follows the lives of a small, influential group of rappers from Sydney's Westside in the early 1990s. Maxwell conveys the excitement of the scene and the struggles of the white musicians to define Australian hip-hop, showing how discourses of nationalism and community are played out in everyday life. Whether describing composition in a bedroom, confrontation in a radio studio, tagging in a subway line, or breaking in front of a stage, Maxwell evokes the intensity of feeling and the complexity of these key experiences.
Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes looks at the many practices of hip-hop--graffiti, rapping, break dancing performances, compositional process, lyrics, music, and fanzines--and captures the fluid contradictions along with the bodily pleasures that make up the scene. With acute sensitivity, Maxwell shows how these young men negotiate issues of identity by imagining themselves within an international hip-hop nation. The book is rich in detail and theoretically innovative, A glossary of terms is included.

A legend after a bullet killed him at the age of twenty-five, Tupac Shakur was the most riveting rap musician of his day. Far from being the insolent "gangsta" the press put forth, Shakur was fiercely intelligent, fearless, and determined to make a mark. Darrin Bastfield grew up with him in a rough Baltimore neighbourhood. In this vivid memoir, Bastfield reveals Tupac Shakur as the teenager he really was: bound for greatness.In tight, edgy prose, Bastfield recalls seven years of friendship. Shakur, new in town, a skinny thirteen-year-old in shabby clothes, may have looked uncool, but he blew the school away at a talent show, an electrifying performance. It was at the Baltimore School for the Arts, however, where things really started to happen-an encounter with Salt-N-Pepa, the wild night of the 1988 senior prom. Shakur and Bastfield lived through it together, and in this memoir, it all comes alive again.

This comprehensive A-Z listing has over 100 rap-rock, rap-metal and funk-metal bands, plus a host of other hard-hitting acts from the hip-hop and hardcore punk branches of metal. All of nu-metal life is here, from leaders of the scene such as Limp Bizkit, Korn, Slipnot, Deftones, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, Soulfly, Tool, Amen, At the Drive-In, and System of a Down, through the pioneers of the movement such as Primus, Faith No More, Rage Against the Machine, and Biohazard, all the way up to the newest cutting-edge bands such as One Minute Silence, A Perfect Circle, Coal Chamber, Orgy, Alien Ant Farm, Godsmack, and Videodrome. There's also a full history of events that led to the formation of nu-meta, putting the pieces of the puzzle together with the story of grunge and early rap rockers such as the Beastie Boys.

Like the hard-hitting sounds of a Public Enemy jam, the words of the band's lead singer, Chuck D, excite the mind and senses. In his first book, Chuck D pours out commentary that takes on Hollywood, race, the music industry, the murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G., drugs, and the three E's--education, economics and enforcement. Likening the challenge to "scaling a slick mountain on roller skates," Chuck D lets no one off the hook, putting celebrities and street kids alike on notice that the future is up for grabs...and the only way to be part of it, to be players not victims, is to work together.
As an insider's view on Hip-Hop culture slides into intimate revelations about his own life, as lyrics from his songs bump shoulders with top ten lists like "The Greatest Rappers of All Time," Chuck D has his say with verve and electrifying energy, with anger, love and truth. A book that brings light into darkness, Fight the Power speaks for a generation. It is a powerful and prophetic message that America, both Black and White, urgently needs to hear.
Nightline with Chuck as the featured guest.
His rejection of celebrity and his constant community activism have made him a hero. For the past five years he's been touring colleges and universities, delivering three hour lectures on everything from the music industry's corruption of young talent, the history of black music from Blues to Rap, his own controversial lyrics, problems in the black community, self-empowerment, contemporary culture and current political leaders to Public Enemy's rise to international stardom. All while maintaining his solo and Public Enemy's recording careers.
"Fight the Power examines a multitudeof complex social, racial and artistic issues. In his unmistakable voice, Chuck discusses the role of heroes and role models in the black community, Hollywood's negative images of blacks, the effect of gangsta rap, its images on the country's youth and the war between east and west coast rappers that may have spawned the murder of Tupac Shakur, the role of athletes and entertainers in eroding and strengthening values, and other vital contemporary concerns. Candid, thoughtful, and in your face, "Fight the Power, the first substantial book by a rapper, offers readers a look into the culture of hip hop and the future of Black culture. -->

Formed as a New York City hardcore band in 1981, Beastie Boys struck an unlikely path to global hip hop superstardom. Here is their story, told for the first time in the words of the band. Adam "AD-ROCK" Horovitz and Michael "Mike D" Diamond offer revealing and very funny accounts of their transition from teenage punks to budding rappers; their early collaboration with Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin; the almost impossible-to-fathom overnight success of their debut studio album Licensed to Ill; that album's messy fallout; their break with Def Jam, move to Los Angeles, and rebirth as musicians and social activists, with the genre-defying masterpiece Paul's Boutique. For more than twenty years, this band has had a wide-ranging and lasting influence on popular culture.

With a style as distinctive and eclectic as a Beastie Boys album, Beastie Boys Book upends the typical music memoir. Alongside the band narrative you will find rare photos, original illustrations, a cookbook by chef Roy Choi, a graphic novel, a map of Beastie Boys' New York, mixtape playlists, pieces by guest contributors, and many more surprises.

Hip-hop as survivor testimony? Rhymes as critical text? Drawing on her own experiences as a lifelong hip-hop head and a philosophy professor, Dr. Lissa Skitolsky reveals the existential power of hip-hop to affect our sensibility and understanding of race and anti-black racism. In each chapter-keenly titled with a notable hip-hop phrase-she examines how the academic exclusion of hip-hop from discourses around knowledge, racism, white supremacy, genocide, white nationalism and trauma reflect the very neoliberal sensibility that hip-hop exposes and opposes. At this critical moment in history, in the midst of a long- overdue global reckoning with systemic anti-black racism, Skitolsky shows how it is more important than ever for white people to realize that our failure to see this system-and take hip-hop seriously-has been essential to its reproduction. In this effort she illustrates the unique power of underground hip-hop to interrupt our neoliberal and post-racial sensibility of current events.

Can't Stop Won't Stop is a powerful cultural and social history of the end of the American century, and a provocative look into the new world that the hip-hop generation created. Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview, and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style. Based on original interviews with DJs, b-boys, rappers, graffiti writers, activists, and gang members, with unforgettable portraits of many of hip-hop's forebears, founders, and mavericks, including DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, and Ice Cube, Can't Stop Won't Stop chronicles the events, the ideas, the music, and the art that marked the hip-hop generation's rise from the ashes of the 60's into the new millennium.

THE #MERKY STORY SO FAR

Edited and Co-written by Jude Yawson

Contributions by Team #Merky

Images by Kaylum Dennis

‘It’s been a long time coming, I swear...’

In four years Stormzy has risen from one of the most promising musicians of his generation to a spokesperson for a generation. Rise Up is the story of how he got there. It’s a story about faith and the ideas worth fighting for. It’s about knowing where you’re from, and where you’re going. It’s about following your dreams without compromising who you are.

Featuring never-before-seen photographs, annotated lyrics and contributions from those closest to him, Rise Up is the #Merky story, and the record of a journey unlike any other.

'A very important book. The voices we hear from - young, gifted and largely black - are all too rarely heard. These are people who typically have to listen to a daily diet of media negativity about their communities without the opportunities to respond. ... It is truly inspiring to read about the accomplishments of Team Stormzy, realised largely without money or expertise, but with bucketloads of intelligence and hard work.' BBC (WILL GOMPERTZ)

Put your headphones on, close your eyes. Embrace the possibility of the life-changing power of music. And perhaps one of these songs will change your life too. Music can inspire our greatest creations, salve our deepest wounds, make us fall in - or out of - love. It can also be a window into another's soul. Based on the popular live storytelling series, OneTrackMinds is a collection of twenty-five compelling answers to the question, 'What was the song that changed your life?' Featuring pieces from a stellar cast of contributors including Peter Tatchell, Inua Ellams, Cash Carraway, Rhik Samadder, Ingrid Oliver and Joe Dunthorne, alongside some of the UK's most exciting new voices, the book compiles many of the standout stories from the live show so far. Just as rich and varied are the songs themselves, by artists ranging from Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell to Aphex Twin and the Replacements via Tupac, Prince and the Spice Girls. The result is an entertaining, enlightening musical guide to the best of what makes us human.

The Organic Globalizer is a collection of critical essays which takes the position that hip-hop holds political significance through an understanding of its ability to at once raise cultural awareness, expand civil society's focus on social and economic justice through institution building, and engage in political activism and participation. Collectively, the essays assert hip hop's importance as an "organic globalizer:" no matter its pervasiveness or reach around the world, hip-hop ultimately remains a grassroots phenomenon that is born of the community from which it permeates. Hip hop, then, holds promise through three separate but related avenues: (1) through cultural awareness and identification/recognition of voices of marginalized communities through music and art; (2) through social creation and the institutionalization of independent alternative institutions and non-profit organizations in civil society geared toward social and economic justice; and (3) through political activism and participation in which demands are articulated and made on the state. With editorial bridges between chapters and an emphasis on interdisciplinary and diverse perspectives, The Organic Globalizer is the natural scholarly evolution in the conversation about hip-hop and politics.

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.

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.