Hip Hop Around The World

This set covers all aspects of international hip hop as expressed through music, art, fashion, dance, and political activity. Hip hop music has gone from being a marginalized genre in the late 1980s to the predominant style of music in America, the UK, Nigeria, South Africa, and other countries around the world. Hip Hop around the World includes more than 450 entries on global hip hop culture as it includes music, art, fashion, dance, social and cultural movements, organizations, and styles of hip hop. Virtually every country is represented in the text. Most of the entries focus on music styles and notable musicians and are unique in that they discuss the sound of various hip hop styles and musical artists' lyrical content, vocal delivery, vocal ranges, and more. Many additional entries deal with dance styles, such as breakdancing or b-boying/b-girling, popping/locking, clowning, and krumping, and cultural movements, such as black nationalism, Nation of Islam, Five Percent Nation, and Universal Zulu Nation. Country entries take into account politics, history, language, authenticity, and personal and community identification. Special care is taken to draw relationships between people and entities such as mentor-apprentice, producer-musician, and more.

A fascinating look at hip hop, the world’s most popular music, and what it means to young people all over the globe, written by an acclaimed pop-culture critic. An excellent introduction to hip hop for young adults. Hip hop is arguably the predominant global youth subculture of this generation. In this book Dalton Higgins takes vivid snapshots of the hip hop scenes in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and more. American hip hop has gone through growing pains, and is questioned for being too commercialized to articulate the hopes, concerns and dreams of marginal youth and community members. Outside the US, hip hop culture is often a political tool to mobilize disenfranchised communities around hard issues, with little support from mainstream corporations or sponsors. Higgins taps into his own powers of pop culture prognostication to predict the future of the genre and the youth culture that spawned it, as hip hop spreads its tentacles to the furthest reaches of humanity. "[The Groundwork Guides] are excellent books, mandatory for school libraries and the increasing body of young people prepared to take ownership of the situations and problems previous generations have left them." — Globe and Mail Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.2 Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.3 Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.6 Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed in the text.

Filled with more than 250 images of artists including Ice Cube, The Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J, Naughty by Nature, Public Enemy, 50 Cent, N.W.A, Snoop Dogg, Lil' Kim, Flavor Flav, Lauren Hill, Queen Latifah, TLC, many that have never before been published, this book is set to become the new hip-hop photography bible With exclusive, behind-the-scenes access, preeminent photographer Brother Ernie captures the last four decades of the evolution of hip-hop--the styles that grew from it, and the artists who shaped it. Complete with Brother Ernie's personal anecdotes of time spent with subjects, and stories behind the photographs, Hip-Hop at the End of the World shares intimate moments from the most important era of hip-hop. After picking up a camera in the 1973 to document the graffiti art that dominated New York City, Ernest Paniccioli started his journey of whole-heartedly capturing the scene during the most fertile years of hip-hop. Always armed with a 35mm camera, he successfully photographed nearly every rapper of note since the genre's inception, making him the go-to photographer for magazines like Word Up and Rap Masters. Hip Hop at the End of the World is a carefully curated selection of photographs from Brother Ernie's extensive archives, celebrating over 40 years of swag in one of the most complete records of the most crucial movements in American music.

In this lively ethnography Ian Condry interprets Japan’s vibrant hip-hop scene, explaining how a music and culture that originated halfway around the world is appropriated and remade in Tokyo clubs and recording studios. Illuminating different aspects of Japanese hip-hop, Condry chronicles how self-described “yellow B-Boys” express their devotion to “black culture,” how they combine the figure of the samurai with American rapping techniques and gangsta imagery, and how underground artists compete with pop icons to define “real” Japanese hip-hop. He discusses how rappers manipulate the Japanese language to achieve rhyme and rhythmic flow and how Japan’s female rappers struggle to find a place in a male-dominated genre. Condry pays particular attention to the messages of emcees, considering how their raps take on subjects including Japan’s education system, its sex industry, teenage bullying victims turned schoolyard murderers, and even America’s handling of the war on terror. Condry attended more than 120 hip-hop performances in clubs in and around Tokyo, sat in on dozens of studio recording sessions, and interviewed rappers, music company executives, music store owners, and journalists. Situating the voices of Japanese artists in the specific nightclubs where hip-hop is performed—what musicians and fans call the genba (actual site) of the scene—he draws attention to the collaborative, improvisatory character of cultural globalization. He contends that it was the pull of grassroots connections and individual performers rather than the push of big media corporations that initially energized and popularized hip-hop in Japan. Zeebra, DJ Krush, Crazy-A, Rhymester, and a host of other artists created Japanese rap, one performance at a time.

"Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Eric Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa, the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, ragga, and gospel music, and the continued vitality of drumming. Covering Senegal, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa, this volume offers unique perspectives on the presence and development of hip hop and other music in Africa and their place in global music culture."--Publisher description.

Since 2001, the U.S. Department of State has been sending hip hop artists abroad to perform and teach as goodwill ambassadors. There are good reasons for this: hip hop is known and loved across the globe, acknowledged and appreciated as a product of American culture. Hip hop has from its beginning been a means of creating community through artistic collaboration, fostering what hip hop artists call building. A timely study of U.S. diplomacy, Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World reveals the power of art to bridge cultural divides, facilitate understanding, and express and heal trauma. Yet power is never single-edged, and the story of hip hop diplomacy is deeply fraught. Drawing from nearly 150 interviews with hip hop artists, diplomats, and others in more than 30 countries, Build explores the inescapable tensions and ambiguities in the relationship between art and the state, revealing the ethical complexities that lurk behind what might seem mere goodwill tours. Author Mark Katz makes the case that hip hop, at its best, can promote positive, productive international relations between people and nations. A U.S.-born art form that has become a voice of struggle and celebration worldwide, hip hop has the power to build global community when it is so desperately needed. Cover image: Sylvester Shonhiwa, aka Bboy Sly, Harare, Zimbabwe, February 2015. Photograph by Paul Rockower.

In It's Bigger Than Hip Hop, M. K. Asante, Jr. looks at the rise of a generation that sees beyond the smoke and mirrors of corporate-manufactured hip hop and is building a movement that will change not only the face of pop culture, but the world. Asante, a young firebrand poet, professor, filmmaker, and activist who represents this movement, uses hip hop as a springboard for a larger discussion about the urgent social and political issues affecting the post-hip-hop generation, a new wave of youth searching for an understanding of itself outside the self-destructive, corporate hip-hop monopoly. Through insightful anecdotes, scholarship, personal encounters, and conversations with youth across the globe as well as icons such as Chuck D and Maya Angelou, Asante illuminates a shift that can be felt in the crowded spoken-word joints in post-Katrina New Orleans, seen in the rise of youth-led organizations committed to social justice, and heard around the world chanting "It's bigger than hip hop."