Books

A brief descriptions

The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip Hop

David Toop

It’s Not About a Salary… Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles

Brian Cross

The Periodic Table of Hip Hop

Neil Kurkarni

Bomb the Suburbs: Graffiti, Race, Freight-Hopping and the Search for Hip-Hop’s Moral Center

William Upski Wimsatt

A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions

Arthur Jafa

Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing

Roni Sarig

Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop

Ben Westhoff

Decoded

Jay-Z

The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop

Dan Charnas

Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists

Sacha Jenkins, Elliott Wilson, Jeff Mao, Gabe Alvarez, Brent Rollins, Gabriel Alvarez

The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed

Shea Serrano

The Wu-Tang Manual

The RZA, Chris Norris

The Gospel of Hip Hop: The First Instrument

KRS-One

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Jeff Chang

The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop — and Why It Matters

Tricia Rose

How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC

Paul Edwards

The Anthology of Rap

Adam Bradley

E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX

DMX, Smokey D. Fontaine

The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy

Steve Stoute, Mim Eichler Rivas

Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It

Charlamagne Tha God

The Next Next Level: A Story of Rap, Friendship, and Almost Giving Up

Leon Neyfakh

Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America

Tricia Rose

That’s the Joint!

Murray Forman

What is Hip-Hop?

Eric Morse

The Plot Against Hip Hop: A Novel

Nelson George

Fresh: Hip Hop Don’t Stop

Nelson George, Sally Banes, Susan Flinker, Patty Romanowski

Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop

Vikki Tobak

Atlanta: Hip-Hop and the South

Michael Schmelling, Kelefa Sanneh, Will Welch

Diary of a Madman: The Geto Boys, Life, Death, and the Roots of Southern Rap

Brad “Scarface” Jordan, Benjamin Meadows Ingram

The Geto Boys

Rolf Potts

Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit

Kellie D. Hay, Rebekah Farrugia

Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop

Imani Perry

Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture ,and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement

S. Craig Watkins

The History of Hip Hop

Eric Reese

Original Gangstas: Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and the Birth of West Coast Rap

Ben Westhoff

The History of Hip-Hop: A simple, yet thorough, walk-through of the history behind one of the most important music genres

Alexander Zwerner

Hip Hop Raised Me

DJ Semtex

The History of Gangster Rap: From Schoolly D to Kendrick Lamar

Soren Baker

The Tao of Wu

The RZA

Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop

Adam Bradley

Hip Hop Culture

Emmett G. Price III

The Way I Am

Eminem

And it Don’t Stop

Raquel Cepeda

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: My Life as a Hip Hop Feminist

Joan Morgan

It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation

M.K. Asante Jr.

The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop

Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Nate Marshall

Other People’s Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America

Jason Tanz

Parental Discretion is Advised: The Rise of N.W.A and the Dawn of Gangsta Rap

Gerrick Kennedy