An obscured vanguard in hip hop Filipino Americans have been innovators and collaborators in hip hop since the culture’s early days. But despite the success of artists like Apl.de.Ap of the Black Eyed Peas and superstar producer Chad Hugo, the genre’s significance in Filipino American communities is often overlooked. Mark R. Villegas considers sprawling coast-to-coast hip hop networks to reveal how Filipino Americans have used music, dance, and visual art to create their worlds. Filipino Americans have been exploring their racial position in the world in embracing hip hop’s connections to memories of colonial and racial violence. Villegas scrutinizes practitioners’ language of defiance, placing the cultural grammar of hip hop within a larger legacy of decolonization.An important investigation of hip hop as a movement of racial consciousness, Manifest Technique shows how the genre has inspired Filipino Americans to envision and enact new ideas of their bodies, their history, and their dignity.  

"Empire of Funk: Hip Hop and Representation in Filipina/o America" gives long overdue attention to the most popular cultural art form practiced by recent generations of Filipina/o American youth. A pioneering work, the anthology features the voices of artists, scholars, and activists to begin a dialogue on Filipina/o American youth culture and its relationship to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. The text also offers the opportunity to question the future of Hip Hop itself. Chapters in "Empire of Funk" explore Filipina/o American Hip Hop aesthetics, community-building, the geography of Hip Hop in Filipina/o America, sexuality and power, activism and praxis, visual culture, and navigating the Hip Hop industry. This text gives readers a thoughtful introduction to an often-overlooked aspect of American society and culture. It can be used in courses dealing with race and ethnicity, American youth culture, popular culture in America, and immigrant communities.
Mark R. Villegas is a poet, filmmaker, blogger, and Ph.D. candidate in Culture and Theory at the University of California, Irvine. He is a navy brat who grew up in Yokosuka, Japan; Pascagoula, Mississippi; Long Beach, California; and Jacksonville, Florida.
DJ Kuttin Kandi was born and raised in Queens, NY, and is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished female DJs in the world. She is also a writer, spoken word poet, theater performer, educator, Hip Hop Feminist, and community organizer. She is a member of DJ team champions the 5th Platoon, co-founder and DJ for the all female Hip-Hop group Anomolies, co-founder of the famed NY monthly open mic nights "Guerrilla Words" and co-founder of the coalition R.E.A.C.Hip-Hop (Representing Education, Activism & Community through Hip Hop). She currently resides in Chula Vista, CA, where she works at UC San Diego s Women s Center.
Dr. Roderick N. Labrador is an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawai i at M noa. His research and community work focuses on race, ethnicity, class, culture, language, migration, education, hip hop, and cultural production in Hawai i, the US, and the Philippines."

An obscured vanguard in hip hop Filipino Americans have been innovators and collaborators in hip hop since the culture’s early days. But despite the success of artists like Apl.de.Ap of the Black Eyed Peas and superstar producer Chad Hugo, the genre’s significance in Filipino American communities is often overlooked. Mark R. Villegas considers sprawling coast-to-coast hip hop networks to reveal how Filipino Americans have used music, dance, and visual art to create their worlds. Filipino Americans have been exploring their racial position in the world in embracing hip hop’s connections to memories of colonial and racial violence. Villegas scrutinizes practitioners’ language of defiance, placing the cultural grammar of hip hop within a larger legacy of decolonization.An important investigation of hip hop as a movement of racial consciousness, Manifest Technique shows how the genre has inspired Filipino Americans to envision and enact new ideas of their bodies, their history, and their dignity.