The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop

It has been more than thirty-five years since the first commercial recordings of hip-hop music were made. This Companion, written by renowned scholars and industry professionals reflects the passion and scholarly activity occurring in the new generation of hip-hop studies. It covers a diverse range of case studies from Nerdcore hip-hop to instrumental hip-hop to the role of rappers in the Obama campaign and from countries including Senegal, Japan, Germany, Cuba, and the UK. Chapters provide an overview of the 'four elements' of hip-hop - MCing, DJing, break dancing (or breakin'), and graffiti - in addition to key topics such as religion, theatre, film, gender, and politics. Intended for students, scholars, and the most serious of 'hip-hop heads', this collection incorporates methods in studying hip-hop flow, as well as the music analysis of hip-hop and methods from linguistics, political science, gender and film studies to provide exciting new perspectives on this rapidly developing field.

Author: Justin A. Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 02/12/2015
Pages: 370
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.95lbs
Size: 9.80h x 6.70w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781107037465

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2015

About the Author
Williams, Justin A.: - Justin A. Williams is Lecturer in Music at the University of Bristol, and the author of Rhymin and Stealin: Musical Borrowing in Hip-hop (2013). He has taught at Leeds College of Music, Lancaster University and Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and has been published in Popular Music, Popular Music History, and The Journal of Musicology. As a professional trumpet and piano player in California, he ran a successful jazz piano trio and played with the band Bucho! which won a number of Sacramento Area Music Awards and were signed to two record labels. He has co-written (with Ross Wilson) an article on digital crowd funding for The Oxford Handbook to Music and Virtuality and is co-editor, with Katherine Williams, of The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter (2016).