Rap Pages

Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists is more popular than racism! Hip hop is huge, and it's time someone wrote it all down. And got it all right. With over 25 aggregate years of interviews, and virtually every hip hop single, remix and album ever recorded at their disposal, the highly respected Ego Trip staff are the ones to do it. The Book of Rap Lists runs the gamut of hip hop information. This is an exhaustive, indispensable and completely irreverent bible of true hip hip knowledge.

This is the first book to discuss in detail how rap music is put together musically and how it contributes to the formation of cultural identities for both artists and audiences. It also argues that current skeptical attitudes toward music analysis in popular music studies are misplaced and need to be reconsidered if cultural studies are to treat seriously the social force of rap music, popular musics, and music in general. Drawing extensively on recent scholarship in popular music studies, cultural theory, communications, critical theory, and musicology, Krims redefines 'music theory' as meaning simply 'theory about music', in which musical poetics (the study of how musical sound is deployed) may play a crucial role when its claims are contextualized and demystified. Theorizing local and global geographies of rap, Krims discusses at length the music of Ice Cube, the Goodie MoB, KRS-One, Dutch group the Spookrijders, and Canadian Cree rapper Bannock.

From the school yards of the South Bronx to the tops of the "Billboard" charts, rap has emerged as one of the most influential cultural forces of our time. This pioneering anthology brings together more than 300 lyrics written over 30 years, from the "old school" to the present day.

Did you know that rap began in the United States in the 1970s? The way a rapper talks with the beat is called flow. Discover these and other fascinating facts in Rap, an I Love Music book.

Having failed at rapping, what’s next for an endlessly passionate rap nerd? In this sequel to the acclaimed memoir Wiggaz With Attitude, it turns out what’s next is a sometimes controversial career in rap journalism. Write Lines: Adventures in Rap Journalism tells the tale of hip-hop writing from the inside. From death threats to interviewing Lauryn Hill while she’s in the shower. From calling Jay-Z a c*** to his face, to letting a notorious rapper sleep in his bath, it’s a hilarious, anecdote-studded tale that takes in hip-hop's first ever magazine and lifts the lid on rivalries, squabbles and how music journalism really works. Brutally honest and endlessly opinionated, Write Lines is also a love letter to hip-hop as it changed seismically through the decades. It charts those changes from the front line through encounters with many of the greats of rap: Chuck D, Missy Elliott, RZA, Eminem, Jazzy Jeff and Gang Starr. This is an unfiltered tale of hip-hop that is both heartfelt and scabrously funny.

With a new preface by the author. Ten years after his murder, Tupac Shakur is even more loved, contested, and celebrated than he was in life. His posthumously released albums, poetry, and motion pictures have catapulted him into the upper echelon of American cultural icons. In Holler If You Hear Me, “hip-hop intellectual” Michael Eric Dyson, acclaimed author of the bestselling Is Bill Cosby Right?, offers a wholly original way of looking at Tupac that will thrill those who already love the artist and enlighten those who want to understand him.

From Grandmaster Flash to Jay-Z rap has shaped generations and transformed the charts. Bop along with the greats in this adorable baby book that introduces little ones to the rappers that started it all.