Det beste bøkene om Hip-hop

Rap is “rhythmic talking over a Funk beat,”
Noen forslag til lesing for deg som nettopp har oppdaget hip-hop, men vi har også en rekke bøker for deg som ønsker å dykke dypere i sjangeren.
Her er noen av våre personlige favoritter som du også kan låne på Biblå:

Hip hop Amerika av Nelson George

"Klassikeren Hip hop Amerika gir et innblikk hvordan hiphopens estetikk ble skapt og forvandlet, og hvordan den påvirket Amerika (og verden) gjennom de tre siste tiårene av det 20. århundre. Boken handler om den samfunnsomveltende kollisjonen som har funnet sted i løpet av de to siste tiårene mellom svart ungdomskultur og massemedia, om oppdagelsen (og kanskje kapringen) av svarte ungdommer som skapere og forbrukere. Inne i sitt fjerde tiår er hiphopens innflytelse allestedsnærværende. Hiphop har overlevd alle sine kritikere og har til og med overrasket sine mest trofaste tilhengere ved alltid å forandre seg, og ved å utvide publikumsbasen sin ved hver forandring. Sannheten er at hiphop - i alle sine mange uttrykk - har gjenspeilet (og internalisert) problemene i samfunnet vårt så til de grader at kulturen har vokst fra å være et rent minoritetsuttrykk til å bli en verdsatt del av storsamfunnet. Denne kulturen vi har gitt merkelappen hiphop har rett og slett vært i sentrum av svært mye, og troskapen til hiphopens sanne troende er ikke bare dyp - den ser ut til å være livsvarig." - Forlaget

Hiphop-hoder - fra Beat Street til bygde-rap av Øyvind Holen

Boken tar for seg 20 år med rap og hiphop-kultur i Norge. Forfatteren gir et innblikk i utviklingen fra undergrunnskultur til hiphop som allemannseie, og tar for seg sentrale tema som graffiti, sampling og kvinnesyn i egne kapitler. Han baserer seg på egne opplevelser, arkivmateriale og intervjuer av de viktigste aktørene. Inneholder norsk rap- og r&b-diskografi og liste over 100 anbefalte hiphop-utgivelser. Les også del 2 som heter Nye hiphop-hoder - hvordan Karpe Diem og generasjon 1984 tok en undergrunnskultur til pophimmelen - og endret Norge på veien

Hjertet i to - seks måneder med Karpe av Yohan Shanmugaratnam

Forfatter Yohan Shanmugaratnam har fulgt Chirag, Magdi og resten av Karpe-teamet tett i det intense halvåret mellom Omar Sheriff og Spektrum x 10: Fra den første, lukkede intimgigen, via planleggingsmøter og festivalturné, fram til kvelden Chirag og Magdi steg opp på plattformen og møtte det første fulle huset på åpningskonserten. Resultatet har blitt boka Hjertet i to, som gir et fascinerende innblikk i et univers få har sett fra innsiden, der Chirag og Magdi deler egne tanker om hvem de er - og hvor de er på vei.

The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip Hop
av David Toop

"An early, important account on the evolution of hip-hop music and culture, exploring its roots and various manifestations. Contents include background information on a number of seminal groups, with coverage of DJ-ing, MC-ing, graffiti and breakdancing. Complemented with superb black and white photographs throughout by Patricia Bates." -Captain Ahab's Rare Books

Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America av Tricia Rose

"Exactly the kind of down-and-dirty research linking life and art that most pop culture study lacks . . . Too few journalists (never mind professors) have examined such issues as the impact of insurance costs at arena on the progress of hip hop performance. Rose's greatest strength is something that's still shockingly rare among academics: a firm grounding in reality."―Vibe

Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists av Sacha Jenkins

“Essential brain-food for hungry hip hoppers.” ―Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, Editor-in-Chief, The Source
“You hold in your hands a powerful tool, a document rich in humor and obsessive devotion. Packed with history and compulsively readable, Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists is bound to spark as many arguments as it settles.” ―Joe Levy, Music Editor, Rolling Stone

Ladies First: Revelations of a Strong Woman av Queen Latifah

"Queen Latifah is a sensation.
At nineteen, she was the first female solo rapper to have a major record deal. Four years later she had become a top television actress and movie star. She earned a Grammy, started a record label, and became the president of her own company. Today she is rap music's most enduring female force.
But how did Dana Owens, a young girl from Newark, New Jersey, become Queen Latifah and make it to the top of the charts? The most powerful voice in rap has always been quiet about her life.
Until now."- Fra bokens bakside

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

"Jeff Chang is a master alchemist, spinning narrative gold from a weave of sociology, history, political theory, and old fashioned boom-bap. . .Can't Stop Won't Stop is one of the best books yet written on the shifting, tumultuous history of hip-hop culture and the generation of adherents it spat onto the American and global landscape. It is a tour-de-force."
- Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, author of Gunshots In My Cook-Up: Bits of Hip-Hop Caribbean Life

My Infamous Life: The Autobiography of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy av Albert “Prodigy” Johnson

“The legendary rapper unsentimentally details a life of beefs, brawls and murders during the heyday of East Coast hip-hop.” –The Washington Post

The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop av Dan Charnas

“Dan Charnas captures an epic story full of joy and pain, triumph and failure, grace and greed with the skills of a journalist, the wisdom of an insider, and the passion of a microphone fiend. Call The Big Payback a hip-hop version of David Halberstam's The Reckoning.”—Jeff Chang, author, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Sweet Jones: Pimp C’s Trill Life Story av Julia Beverly

"Fascinating, well-researched biography of a brilliant, troubled, flawed, talented, compassionate individual who changed the world despite all that stood in his path ... [SWEET JONES] shattered every single assumption I would make about rappers - the book humanizes him and his family and friends, and exposes his genius and his flaws ... an incredible story - hilarious, difficult, tragic, and frustrating throughout." - Professor Andrew Cencini

Sweat the Technique: Revelations on Creativity From the Lyrical Genius av Rakim

“Reading Sweat the Technique is like listening to a classic Rakim track with the same codification, spirituality, and simple-complexity that will make the reader press rewind and start at page one several times over.” — East Bay Express

Dilla time : the life and afterlife of J Dilla, the hip-hop producer who reinvented rythm av Dan Charnas

“Whenever I’ve been asked why Dilla was special, I didn’t feel like I had the right vocabulary to explain his importance―specifically the way he made work that was so perfectly imperfect that it redefined the way I thought about art. Dan Charnas to the rescue. He scaled the mountain of Dilla’s complex career and sent back instructions so that others could make the climb. This book is a must for everyone interested in illuminating the idea of unexplainable genius.” ―QUESTLOVE

Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest av Hanif Abdurraqib

"If you're a hip-hop fan, you need to get it…a brilliant piece of music writing."- Nikesh Shukla ― Saturday Review, BBC Radio 4

The Tao of Wu av The RZA

"I congratulate the world for this beautiful gift, wisdom from the life and travels of RZA, wisdom I truly believe draws from the deepest pools of human thought and spirit...When a wise monk passes away, the monastery builds a pagoda in his memory. Some pagodas get one floor, some get two or three. But if the man was known as the wisest and most enlightened of all monks, his pagoda gets seven. I believe the seven pillars of wisdom in this book are like the seven floors of an exalted monk's pagoda. They represent the wisdom, knowledge, and enlightenment of a soul that has never stopped training, never stopped learning."
-Sifu Shi Yan Ming, thirty-fourth generation Shaolin Temple warrior monk

Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies av Brian Coleman

"It’s a sad fact: hip-hop album liners have always been reduced to a list of producer and sample credits, a publicity photo or two, and some hastily composed shout-outs. That’s a damn shame, because few outside the game know about the true creative forces behind influential masterpieces like PE’s It Takes a Nation of Millions. . ., De La’s 3 Feet High and Rising, and Wu-Tang’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). A longtime scribe for the hip-hop nation, Brian Coleman fills this void, and delivers a thrilling, knockout oral history of the albums that define this dynamic and iconoclastic art form."-Amazon

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

"Here’s what The Rap Year Book does: It takes readers from 1979, widely regarded as the moment rap became recognized as part of the cultural and musical landscape, and comes right up to the present, with Shea Serrano hilariously discussing, debating, and deconstructing the most important rap song year by year. Serrano also examines the most important moments that surround the history and culture of rap music—from artists’ backgrounds to issues of race, the rise of hip-hop, and the struggles among its major players—both personal and professional. Covering East Coast and West Coast, famous rapper feuds, chart toppers, and show stoppers, The Rap Year Book is an in-depth look at the most influential genre of music to come out of the last generation."-Amazon

Decoded av Jay-Z

"When you're famous and say you're writing a book, people assume that it's an autobiography--I was born here, raised there, suffered this, loved that, lost it all, got it back, the end. But that's not what this is. I've never been a linear thinker, which is something you can see in my rhymes. They follow the jumpy logic of poetry and emotion, not the straight line of careful prose. My book is like that, too.
Decoded is a book about some of my favorite songs--songs that I unpack and explain and surround with narratives about what inspired them--but behind the rhymes is the truest story of my life."-Jay-Z on Decoded

Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story av Joe Coscarelli

“A great American underdog story, full of memorable characters and extraordinary plot twists. Coscarelli is a tireless reporter and a thoughtful guide—this book is required reading for anyone who has ever wondered how, exactly, Atlanta hip-hop took over the world.” —KELEFA SANNEH

My Kaleidoscope av Myka 9

Endlessly captivating...Myka's raps read beautifully as written poetry-emotionally rich and personal, and always with a spectacular grasp of the flexibility of word as sound. My Kaleidoscope makes it clear that few writers of any kind can do what Myka 9 has been doning for over three decades."-Francis Gooding, The Wire