This book explores how a vital, expressive culture, which began in a New York black and Latino impoverished working-class community, has become a global delineating sign of the new millennium.

Praise

"Halifu Osumare's reach into the global importance of the [hip-hop] genre is a much needed cultural reclamation."--Chuck D, Public Enemy

"Halifu Osumare's work--a power move in and of itself--compels us to acknowledge the power of technology and capitalism to co-opt and transform a culture-specific phenomenon into a global assault...Highly recommended."--Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Culture

About the Author(s)

Halifu Osumare

Halifu Osumare is Associate Professor of African American and African Studies at University of California, Davis

Table of Contents

Introduction: Power Moves from the Hip Hop Nation to the Hip Hop Globe * Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes, and Def Moves: The Africanist Aesthetic Meets the Hip Hop Globe * Beat Streets in the Global Hood: Hip Hop's Connective Marginalities * Props to the Local Boyz: Hip Hop Culture in Hawai'i * "It's All about the Benjamins:" Postmodernism and Hip Hop's Appropriation