OutKast, the Atlanta-based hip-hop duo formed in 1992, is one of the most influential musical groups within American popular culture of the past twenty-five years. Through Grammy-winning albums, music videos, feature films, theatrical performances, and fashion, Andre "Andre 3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton have articulated a vision of postmodern, post-civil rights southern identity that combines the roots of funk, psychedelia, haute couture, R&B, faith and spirituality, and Afrofuturism into a style all its own. This postmodern southern aesthetic, largely promulgated and disseminated by OutKast and its collaborators, is now so prevalent in mainstream American culture (neither Beyonce Knowles's "Formation" nor Joss Whedon's sci-fi /western mashup Firefly could exist without OutKast's collage aesthetic) that we rarely consider how challenging and experimental it actually is to create a new southern aesthetic. An OutKast Reader, then, takes the group's aesthetic as a lens through which readers can understand and explore contemporary issues of Blackness, gender, urbanism, southern aesthetics, and southern studies more generally. Divided into sections on regional influences, gender, and visuality, the essays collectively offer a vision of OutKast as a key shaper of conceptions of the twenty-first-century South, expanding that vision beyond long-held archetypes and cultural signifiers. The volume includes a who's who of hip-hop studies and African American studies scholarship, including Charlie Braxton, Susana M. Morris, Howard Ramsby II, Reynaldo Anderson, and Ruth Nicole Brown.

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.

Ja Rule, actor, singer, songwriter, and one of the most multi-dimensional rap artists of his time, tells his compelling story-from his youth to his rise to international fame to his transformative two years in Federal prison-and reveals the man beneath the legend. Unruly is two stories that offer one complete picture of a man and his world: the angry, fatherless rapper, Ja Rule who was "raised by the streets"; and Jeffrey Atkins, the insightful, reflective father and loyal husband who learned the hard way how to be a good man. Filled with never-before-revealed anecdotes and sixteen pages of black-and-white photos, Unruly shows the determination that it takes to become a man in today's society. Ja Rule considers the lack of role models for many young black men today-a void that leads to bad choices and the wrong paths. Recalling his youth, he illuminates the seductive pull of the streets and the drug dealers who were his earliest role models. Jeffrey Atkins offers practical wisdom-reflection, growth and hope learned first-hand as an inmate, father, husband, and community role model. He speaks fondly of men who inspired Unruly-the inmates he met in prison whose misguided ideas of masculinity landed them behind bars-and Louis Farrakhan who mediated the televised encounter with Ja Rule's adversary, 50 Cent. Unruly is a compelling, personal look at the duality and conflicts that arise in the African-American male psyche from a man who has enjoyed breathtaking fame and suffered heartbreaking misfortune.

This biography, the most in-depth look at Kanye's life and career to date, lifts the mask to expose the man behind the endless myths. Featuring quotes from all of the major players in Kanye's life, Kanye West: God And Monster traces his life from the suburbs of Chicago through art school and rap apprenticeships to recording in the coolest studios of New York and Hawaii with the biggest names in music, revolutionising hip-hop at every step of the way. It documents every rumour and revelation, details the wildest extravagances and biggest ego blow-ups of this true rap original. Exploring his life, music and controversies like never before, Kanye West: God And Monster is the ultimate profile of this legendary pop culture titan.

Early hip hop film musicals have either been expunged from cinema history or excoriated in brief passages by critics and other writers. Hip Hop on Film reclaims and reexamines productions such as Breakin' (1984), Beat Street (1984), and Krush Groove (1985) in order to illuminate Hollywood's fascinating efforts to incorporate this nascent urban culture into conventional narrative forms. Such films presented musical conventions against the backdrop of graffiti-splattered trains and abandoned tenements in urban communities of color, setting the stage for radical social and political transformations. Hip hop musicals are also part of the broader history of teen cinema, and films such as Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style (1983) are here examined alongside other contemporary youth-oriented productions. As suburban teen films banished parents and children to the margins of narrative action, hip hop musicals, by contrast, presented inclusive and unconventional filial groupings that included all members of the neighborhood. These alternative social configurations directly referenced specific urban social problems, which affected the stability of inner city families following diminished governmental assistance in communities of color during the 1980s. Breakdancing, a central element of hip hop musicals, is also reconsidered. It gained widespread acclaim at the same time that these films entered the theaters, but the nation's newly discovered dance form was embattled--caught between a multitude of institutional entities such as the ballet academy, advertising culture, and dance publications that vied to control its meaning, particularly in relation to delineations of gender. As street-trained breakers were enticed to join the world of professional ballet, this newly forged relationship was recast by dance promoters as a way to invigorate and ""remasculinize"" European dance, while young women simultaneously critiqued conventional masculinities through an appropriation of breakdance. These multiple and volatile histories influenced the first wave of hip hop films, and even structured the sleeper hit Flashdance (1983). This forgotten, ignored, and maligned cinema is not only an important aspect of hip hop history, but is also central to the histories of teen film, the postclassical musical, and even institutional dance. Kimberley Monteyne places these films within the wider context of their cultural antecedents and reconsiders the genre's influence.

It has been more than thirty-five years since the first commercial recordings of hip-hop music were made. This Companion, written by renowned scholars and industry professionals reflects the passion and scholarly activity occurring in the new generation of hip-hop studies. It covers a diverse range of case studies from Nerdcore hip-hop to instrumental hip-hop to the role of rappers in the Obama campaign and from countries including Senegal, Japan, Germany, Cuba, and the UK. Chapters provide an overview of the 'four elements' of hip-hop - MCing, DJing, break dancing (or breakin'), and graffiti - in addition to key topics such as religion, theatre, film, gender, and politics. Intended for students, scholars, and the most serious of 'hip-hop heads', this collection incorporates methods in studying hip-hop flow, as well as the music analysis of hip-hop and methods from linguistics, political science, gender and film studies to provide exciting new perspectives on this rapidly developing field.

In the case of hip-hop, the forces of top-down corporatization and bottom-up globalization are inextricably woven. This volume takes the view that hip-hop should not be viewed with this dichotomous dynamic in mind and that this dynamic does not arise solely outside of the continental US. Close analysis of the facts reveals a much more complex situation in which market pressures, local (musical) traditions, linguistic and semiotic intelligibility, as well as each country's particular historico-political past conspire to yield new hybrid expressive genres.
This exciting collection looks at linguistic, cultural and economic aspects of hip-hop in parallel and showcases a global scope. It engages with questions of code-switching, code-mixing, the minority language/regional dialect vs. standard dynamic, the discourse of political resistance, immigrant ideologies, youth and new language varieties and will be essential reading for graduates and researchers in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis.

Taboo, Grammy Award-winning performing artist and founding member of the Black Eyed Peas, shares the inspiring story of his rise from the mean streets of East L.A. to the heights of international fame.
Few bands can ever hope to achieve the sort of global success that the record-breaking Black Eyed Peas have attained, selling more than 30 million albums since their formation in 1995. From their album "The E.N.D., "which debuted at #1 on the "Billboard "charts, to "The Beginning, "the Black Eyed Peas continue to dominate the music scene. The group recently broke the all-time record for longest successive stay at the #1 position on "Billboard"'s Hot 100 list, and their song "I Gotta Feeling" became the first single to surpass six million digital downloads in the United States. But in this revealing autobiography--the first book to emerge from the group--founding member Taboo reminds us that great accomplishments are often rooted in humble beginnings.
Born in East L.A. in an area notorious for street gangs and poverty, Taboo was haunted by that environment, which seemed certain to shape his destiny. Yet, steered by his dreams to be a performer and assisted by fate, the young Taboo was thrown a rope when he discovered the world of hip-hop, where talent and love of the music itself transcended all. Supported by his one true champion, his grandmother Aurora, Taboo chased his dreams with a relentless tenacity. He refused to surrender, regardless of what life threw at him-- including becoming a father at age eighteen.
But even after the Black Eyed Peas beat seemingly insurmountable odds and achieved stardom, it wasn't all Grammys and platinum albums. Taboo delivers a searingly honest account of his collision with fame's demons, including his almost career-ending struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism. He takes us deep into a world few of us can even imagine: a show-business heaven that became a self-made hell. But inspired by the love of his family and tapping anew into the wellspring of self-belief that had sustained him in the past, Taboo learns to keep his demons at bay, his addictions in check.
Full of intimate glances into the highest reaches of the music industry--including a visit to Sting's castle, hanging out with Bono and U2, and, at forty-one thousand feet, the high-flyingest karaoke ever--"Fallin' Up "takes readers on a revealing, personal journey through stardom--and one man's triumph over adversity times two.

Rap's critique of police brutality in the 1980s. The Hip Hop Political Convention. The rise (and fall) of Kwame Kilpatrick, the "hip-hop mayor" of Detroit. Barack Obama echoing the body language of Jay-Z on the campaign trail.
A growing number of black activists and artists claim that rap and hip-hop are the basis of an influential new urban social movement. Simultaneously, black citizens evince concern with the effect that rap and hip-hop culture exerts on African American communities. According to a recent Pew survey conducted on the opinions of Black Americans, 71 percent of blacks think that rap is a bad influence. To what extent are African American hopes and fears about hip-hop's potential political power justified? In "Stare in the Darkness," Lester K. Spence answers this question using a blend of neoliberal analysis, survey data, experiments, and case studies.
Spence finds that rap does in fact influence black political attitudes. However, rap also reproduces rather than critiques neoliberal ideology. Furthermore, black activists seeking to create an innovative model of hip-hop politics are hamstrung by their reliance on outmoded forms of organizing. By considering the possibilities inherent in the most prolific and prominent activities of hip-hop politics, Stare in the Darkness reveals, in a clear and practical manner, the political consequences of rap culture for black publics.

In the Mississippi Delta, creativity, community, and a rich expressive culture persist despite widespread poverty. Over five years of extensive work in the region, author Ali Colleen Neff collected a wealth of materials that demonstrate a vibrant musical scene.

"Let the World Listen Right" draws from classic studies of the blues as well as extensive ethnographic work to document the "changing same" of Delta music making. From the neighborhood juke joints of the contemporary Delta to the international hip-hop stage, this study traces the musical networks that join the region's African American communities to both traditional forms and new global styles.

The book features the words and describes performances of contemporary artists, including blues musicians, gospel singers, radio and club DJs, barroom toast-tellers, preachers, poets, and a spectrum of Delta hip-hop artists. Contemporary Delta hip-hop artists Jerome "TopNotch the Villain" Williams, Kimyata "Yata" Dear, and DA F.A.M. have contributed freestyle poetry, extensive interview materials, and their own commentaries. The book focuses particularly on the biography of TopNotch, whose hip-hop poetics emerge from a lifetime of schoolyard dozens and training in the gospel church.

Hip-hop has come a long way from its origins in the Bronx in the 1970s, when rapping and DJing were just part of a lively, decidedly local scene that also venerated break-dancing and graffiti. Now hip-hop is a global phenomenon and, in the United States, a massively successful corporate enterprise predominantly controlled and consumed by whites while the most prominent performers are black. How does this shift in racial dynamics affect our understanding of contemporary hip-hop, especially when the music perpetuates stereotypes of black men? Do black listeners interpret hip-hop differently from white fans? These questions have dogged hip-hop for decades, but unlike most pundits, Michael Jeffries finds answers by interviewing everyday people. Instead of turning to performers or media critics, "Thug Life" focuses on the music's fans - young men, both black and white - and the resulting account avoids romanticism, offering an unbiased examination of how hip-hop works in people's daily lives. As Jeffries weaves the fans' voices together with his own sophisticated analysis, we are able to understand hip-hop as a tool listeners use to make sense of themselves and society as well as a rich, self-contained world containing politics and pleasure, virtue and vice.

It's not just rap music. Hip-hop has transformed theatre, 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 )

Our national conversation about race is ludicrously out of date. Hip hop is the key to understanding how things are changing. In a provocative book that will appeal to hip-hoppers both black and white and their parents, Bakari Kitwana deftly teases apart the culture of hip-hop to illuminate how race is being lived by young Americans. Why White Kids Love Hip Hop addresses uncomfortable truths about America's level of comfort with black people, challenging preconceived notions of race. With this brave tour de force, Bakari Kitwana takes his place alongside the greatest African-American intellectuals of the past decades.

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.

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.

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.

This titillating expose chronicles the personal and professional adventures of this tabloid-laden socialite, dispelling some rumors, while confirming others. Diaries unveils the heavily shrouded Hollywood backrooms and its coveted secrets. Offering her ardent fans answers to burning questions and presenting lessons learned, this book will surely not disappoint. Karrine Steffans continues to dish out juicy gossip and the much sought after details of her star studded lifestyle and the celebrity men that helped her get where she needed to be. Karrine draws you in to get an up-close and personal look at the Hollywood life of fast money, drugs, and sex; all the things that make for a great movie. She discusses her interactions with people after the release of Confessions of a Video Vixen and how she copes with it all.

'Bookended by tragedy, shot through with violence, ultimately uplifting' Guardian 'An insight into a singular artist' New Statesman 'Fierce, funny and indomitable' Observer 'My tears were relentlessly pricked by Tricky's memoir' Daily Telegraph Tricky is one of the most original music artists to emerge from the UK in the past 30 years. His signature sound, coupled with deep, questioning lyrics, took the UK by storm in the early 1990s and was part of the soundtrack that defined the post-rave generation. This unique, no-holds barred autobiography is not only a portrait of an incredible artist - it is also a gripping slice of social history packed with extraordinary anecdotes and voices from the margins of society. Tricky examines how his creativity has helped him find a different path to that of his relatives, some of whom were bare-knuckle fighters and gangsters, and how his mother's suicide has had a lifelong effect on him, both creatively and psychologically. With his unique heritage and experience, his story will be one of the most talked-about music autobiographies of the decade.

In recent decades, poetry slams and the spoken word artists who compete in them have sparked a resurgent fascination with the world of poetry. However, there is little critical dialogue that fully engages with the cultural complexities present in slam and spoken word poetry communities, as well as their ramifications. In Killing Poetry, renowned slam poet, Javon Johnson unpacks some of the complicated issues that comprise performance poetry spaces. He argues that the truly radical potential in slam and spoken word communities lies not just in proving literary worth, speaking back to power, or even in altering power structures, but instead in imagining and working towards altogether different social relationships. His illuminating ethnography provides a critical history of the slam, contextualizes contemporary black poets in larger black literary traditions, and does away with the notion that poetry slams are inherently radically democratic and utopic. Killing Poetry-at times autobiographical, poetic, and journalistic-analyzes the masculine posturing in the Southern California community in particular, the sexual assault in the national community, and the ways in which related social media inadvertently replicate many of the same white supremacist, patriarchal, and mainstream logics so many spoken word poets seem to be working against. Throughout, Johnson examines the promises and problems within slam and spoken word, while illustrating how community is made and remade in hopes of eventually creating the radical spaces so many of these poets strive to achieve.

It has been more than thirty-five years since the first commercial recordings of hip-hop music were made. This Companion, written by renowned scholars and industry professionals reflects the passion and scholarly activity occurring in the new generation of hip-hop studies. It covers a diverse range of case studies from Nerdcore hip-hop to instrumental hip-hop to the role of rappers in the Obama campaign and from countries including Senegal, Japan, Germany, Cuba, and the UK. Chapters provide an overview of the 'four elements' of hip-hop - MCing, DJing, break dancing (or breakin'), and graffiti - in addition to key topics such as religion, theatre, film, gender, and politics. Intended for students, scholars, and the most serious of 'hip-hop heads', this collection incorporates methods in studying hip-hop flow, as well as the music analysis of hip-hop and methods from linguistics, political science, gender and film studies to provide exciting new perspectives on this rapidly developing field.

This multilayered study of the representation of black masculinity in musical and cultural performance takes aim at the reduction of African American male culture to stereotypes of deviance, misogyny, and excess. Broadening the significance of hip-hop culture by linking it to other expressive forms within popular culture, Miles White examines how these representations have both encouraged the demonization of young black males in the United States and abroad and contributed to the construction of their identities. "From Jim Crow to Jay-Z" traces black male representations to chattel slavery and American minstrelsy as early examples of fetishization and commodification of black male subjectivity.Continuing with diverse discussions including black action films, heavyweight prizefighting, Elvis Presley's performance of blackness, and white rappers such as Vanilla Ice and Enimem, White establishes a sophisticated framework for interpreting and critiquing black masculinity in hip-hop music and culture. Arguing that black music has undeniably shaped American popular culture and that hip-hop tropes have exerted a defining influence on young male aspirations and behavior, White draws a critical link between the body, musical sound, and the construction of identity.