Common has earned a reputation in the hip-hop world as a conscious artist by embracing themes of love and struggle in his songs. His journey toward understanding is rooted in his relationship with a remarkable woman, his mother.
Common holds nothing back in this gripping memoir, both provocative and funny. He tells what it was like for a boy with big dreams growing up on the South Side of Chicago. He reveals how he almost quit rapping after his first album sold only two thousand copies. He recounts his rise to stardom and talks about the challenges of balancing fame, love, and family. Through it all, Common emerges as a man in full. Rapper. Actor. Activist. But also father, son, and friend. His story offers a living example of how, no matter what you've gone through, one day it'll all make sense.

If asked to list the greatest innovators of modern American poetry, few of us would think to include Jay-Z or Eminem in their number. And yet hip hop is the source of some of the most exciting developments in verse today. The media uproar in response to its controversial lyrical content has obscured hip hop's revolution of poetic craft and experience: Only in rap music can the beat of a song render poetic meter audible, allowing an MC's wordplay to move a club-full of eager listeners. Examining rap history's most memorable lyricists and their inimitable techniques, literary scholar Adam Bradley argues that we must understand rap as poetry or miss the vanguard of poetry today. Book of Rhymes explores America's least understood poets, unpacking their surprisingly complex craft, and according rap poetry the respect it deserves.

An extraordinary collection of lyrics showcasing rap's poetic depth and diversity From the school yards of the South Bronx to the tops of the Billboard charts, rap has emerged as one of the most influential musical and cultural forces of our time. In The Anthology of Rap, editors Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois explore rap as a literary form, demonstrating that rap is also a wide-reaching and vital poetic tradition born of beats and rhymes. This pioneering anthology brings together more than three hundred rap and hip-hop lyrics written over thirty years, from the "old school" to the "golden age" to the present day. Rather than aim for encyclopedic coverage, Bradley and DuBois render through examples the richness and diversity of rap's poetic tradition. They feature both classic lyrics that helped define the genre, including Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five's "The Message" and Eric B. & Rakim's "Microphone Fiend," as well as lesser-known gems like Blackalicious's "Alphabet Aerobics" and Jean Grae's "Hater's Anthem." Both a fan's guide and a resource for the uninitiated, The Anthology of Rap showcases the inventiveness and vitality of rap's lyrical art. The volume also features an overview of rap poetics and the forces that shaped each period in rap's historical development, as well as a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and afterwords by Chuck D and Common. Enter the Anthology to experience the full range of rap's artistry and discover a rich poetic tradition hiding in plain sight.

Collected together for the first time, the best weird fiction from Morpheus Tales, the UK's most controversial weird fiction magazine! Only the very best weird fiction has been hand-picked from the Morpheus Tales archives to create the seventh collected volume of the magazine Christopher Fowler calls "edgy and dark." Featuring fiction by Philip Roberts, Brent Pilkey, C. E. Zacherl, Todd Outcalt, Jessica Lilien, Clay Waters, Tyler Bowler, Jude-Marie Green, Paul Michael Moreau, Tim Foley, Charles Austin Muir, Benjamin Blake, Morgan Duchesney, Nate Jacobs, Richard Farren Barber, Jason Sturner, Jared Bernard, Edward A. Taylor, Paul L. Howard, Steven Lee Climer, Meredith Doench. Established horror best-sellers rub shoulders with rising stars and newcomers in this diverse collection of short weird fiction.

Collected together for the first time, the best weird fiction from Morpheus Tales, the UK's most controversial weird fiction magazine! Only the very best weird fiction has been hand-picked from the Morpheus Tales archives to create the sixth collected volume of the magazine Christopher Fowler calls "edgy and dark". Featuring fiction by Richard Wolkomir, Stuart Hughes, Ty Schwamberger, Paul Johnson-Jovanovic, Matthew Acheson, K. Scott Forman, Charles D. Romans, Craig Saunders, Matt Leyshon, Michael Lejeune, Michelle Ann King, Bruce L. Priddy, Douglas J. Ogurek, Harley Carnell, Stephen McQuiggan, Joe Mynhardt, David McGuire, Richard Farren Barber, Lee Clark Zumpe, Todd Outcalt, Kevin G. Bufton, Charles Austin Muir, Michael W. Clark, Anthony Baynton, Stephen Hernandez, Holly Day, Craig W. Steele, A.A. Garrison, David Barber, John S. Barker, David Buchan. Established horror best-sellers rub shoulders with rising stars and newcomers in this diverse collection of short weird fiction.

Collected together for the first time, the best weird fiction from Morpheus Tales, the UK's most controversial weird fiction magazine! Only the very best weird fiction has been hand-picked from the Morpheus Tales archives to create the fifth collected volume of the magazine Christopher Fowler calls "edgy and dark". Featuring fiction by David Lear, Brockton McKinney, Lee Clark Zumpe, Robert Sagirs, Sean Logan, Adrian Ludens, Candra Hope, Ed Plotts, Glen Garrick, Matthew Piskun, Deborah Walker, Paul Johnson-Jovanovic & James Brooks Anthony Baynton, Sharon Baillie, Matt Leyshon, Matthew Acheson, Kyle Hemmings, James Gabriel, Gary Budgen. Established horror best-sellers rub shoulders with rising stars and newcomers in this diverse collection of short weird fiction.

For the first time collected together, the best weird fiction from Morpheus Tales, the UK's most controversial weird fiction magazine! Only the very best weird fiction has been hand-picked from the Morpheus Tales archives to create the fourth collected volume of the magazine Christopher Fowler calls "edgy and dark". Featuring fiction by Gary Budgen, Alex Davis, James Everington, R. K. Gemienhardt, Dean M. Drinkel, Michael W. Garza, John S. Barker, Brick Marlin, Kurt Fawver, John F. D. Taff, Charles A. Muir, Martin Slag, Lenora Farrington-Sarrouf, Deborah Walker, Cate Caldwell, Richard Smith, Alex Gonzalez, Erik T. Johnson, Brian Kutco, Heather Smith, John Morgan. Established horror best-sellers rub shoulders with rising stars and newcomers in this diverse collection of short weird fiction.

For stay-at-home parents, exchanging adventures in the business world for those at home can be full of surprises. Bradley tells of his own transition to a stay-at-home dad to discover the art of listening to his child and learning how to become the man his daughter needs. The Adventures of a Stay-At-Home-Dad is a collection of seven short stories recounting the shift in perspective Bradley discovered on God, himself, and the world around him. Each story concludes with an opportunity for the reader to self-reflect on his or her own journey. This book is perfect for individuals or small groups to journey through together.

Morpheus Tales, the UK's most controversial horror, sf and fantasy magazine, proudly presents its first original dark fiction anthology: 13. Original fiction by Eric S Brown, Joseph D'Lacey, Gary Fry, Andrew Hook, Shaun Jeffrey, Matt Leyshon, Gary McMahon, Andy Remic, Stanley Riiks, Tommy B. Smith, Alan Spencer, Fred Venturini, and William R.D. Wood. Featuring a wide range of dark fiction, including horror, dark fantasy and dark SF, Morpheus Tales has pulled stories from around the world. 13 authors each present their own story: disturbing malevolence, personal fear, ghostly debts, the apocalypse, musical madness, sasquatch and more...All manner of disturbingly dark tales are contained in this collection. 13 tales of dark fiction.

A major reassessment of Ralph Ellison's literary legacy that explores the mysteries surrounding his unfinished second novel Ralph Ellison may be the preeminent African-American author of the twentieth century, though he published only one novel, 1952's Invisible Man. He enjoyed a highly successful career in American letters, publishing two collections of essays, teaching at several colleges and universities, and writing dozens of pieces for newspapers and magazines, yet Ellison never published the second novel he had been composing for more than forty years. A 1967 fire that destroyed some of his work accounts for only a small part of the novel's fate; the rest is revealed in the thousands of pages he left behind after his death in 1994, many of them collected for the first time in the recently published Three Days Before the Shooting . . . . Ralph Ellison in Progress is the first book to survey the expansive geography of Ellison's unfinished novel while re-imaging the more familiar, but often misunderstood, territory of Invisible Man. It works from the premise that understanding Ellison's process of composition imparts important truths not only about the author himself but about race, writing, and American identity. Drawing on thousands of pages of Ellison's journals, typescripts, computer drafts, and handwritten notes, many never before studied, Adam Bradley argues for a shift in scholarly emphasis that moves a greater share of the weight of Ellison's literary legacy to the last forty years of his life and to the novel he left forever in progress.

From Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles to Beyoncé, "Mr. Bradley skillfully breaks down a century of standards and pop songs into their elements to reveal the interaction of craft and art in composition and performance.” (The Wall Street Journal) Encompassing a century of recorded music, this pathbreaking book reveals the poetic artistry of popular songs. Pop songs are music first. They also comprise the most widely disseminated poetic expression of our time. Adam Bradley traces the song lyric across musical genres from early twentieth-century Delta blues to mid-century rock 'n’ roll to today’s hits. George and Ira Gershwin’s “Fascinating Rhythm.” The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Rihanna’s “Diamonds.” These songs are united in their exacting attention to the craft of language and sound. Bradley shows that pop music is a poetry that must be heard more than read, uncovering the rhythms, rhymes, and metaphors expressed in the singing voice. At once a work of musical interpretation, cultural analysis, literary criticism, and personal storytelling, this book illustrates how words and music come together to produce compelling poetry, often where we least expect it.