A B To Jay Z

ABC alphabet book for kids

Yo Gabba Gabba! meets Yo! MTV Raps in this lively and educational book for young children learning the alphabet—and their hip-hop–loving parents. Take a wondrous alphabetical journey through the glorious history of hip-hop in this kid-friendly introduction to the music that defined a generation. Featuring clever rhymes and graffiti-style drawings by legendary artist Mr. Kaves, Hip-Hop Alphabet uses the twenty-six letters of the alphabet to educate kids about classic icons (LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, and Jay-Z), as well as essential elements of the music and culture (DJs, microphones, and turntables). Learn the ABCs with a beat!

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.

O is for Old School takes you on an alphabetical journey through the most iconic words and phrases in hip-hop. You'll soon learn that for new parents these words have new meanings: now Peace comes at naptime, a Hood is worn on a head and when they Flow it’s going to get wet. This book is your chance to become the freshest parent in your playgroup; while your lil' one learns their ABCs like a G.

HIP-HOP (AND OTHER THINGS) is about, as it were, rap, but also some other things. It's a smart, fun, funny, insightful book that spends the entirety of its time celebrating what has become the most dominant form of music these past two and a half decades. Tupac is in there. Jay Z is in there. Missy Elliott is in there. Drake is in there. Pretty much all of the big names are in there, as are a bunch of the smaller names, too. There's art from acclaimed illustrator Arturo Torres, there are infographics and footnotes; there's all kinds of stuff in there. Some of the chapters are serious, and some of the chapters are silly, and some of the chapters are a combination of both things. All of them, though, are treated with the care and respect that they deserve. HIP-HOP (AND OTHER THINGS) is the third book in the (And Other Things) series. The first two—Basketball (And Other Things) and Movies (And Other Things)—were both #1 New York Times bestsellers.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR AND THE NEW YORK TIMES A PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB PICK "Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary." —Marlon James "Staccato prose and peripatetic storytelling combine the cadences of the Bible with an urgency reminiscent of James Baldwin in this powerfully emotional memoir." —BookPage The testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live. Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey--following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team--is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme. There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Hereinspires us to question--even shatter--and reimagine our most cherished myths.