Table of Contents

Introduction: the interdisciplinary world of hip-hop studies Justin A. Williams; Part I. Elements: 1. MC origins: rap and spoken word poetry Alice Price-Styles; 2. Hip-hop dance Imani K. Johnson; 3. Hip-hop visual arts Ivor Miller; 4. DJs and turntabilism Kjetil Falkenberg Hansen; 5. The fifth element: knowledge Travis Gosa; 6. Hip-hop and religion: from the mosque to the church Christina Zanfagna; 7. Hip-hop theater and performance Nicole Hodges Persley; Part II. Methods and Concepts: 8. Lyrics and flow in rap music Oliver Kautny; 9. The musical analysis of hip-hop Kyle Adams; 10. The glass: hip-hop production Chris Tabron; 11. Hip-hop and racial identification: an (auto)ethnographic perspective Anthony Kwame Harrison; 12. Thirty years of rapsploitation: hip-hop culture in American cinema Geoff Harkness; 13. Barbz and kings: explorations of gender and sexuality in hip-hop Regina Bradley; 14. Hip-hop and politics Chris Deis; 15. Intertextuality, sampling, and copyright Justin A. Williams; Part III. Case Studies: 16. Nerdcore hip-hop Amanda Sewell; 17. Framing gender, race, and hip-hop in Boyz in the Hood, Do the Right Thing and Slam Adam Haupt; 18. Japanese hip-hop: alternative stories Noriko Manabe; 19. Council estate of mind: the British rap tradition and London's hip-hop scene Richard Bramwell; 20. Cuban hip-hop Sujatha Fernandes; 21. Senegalese hip-hop Ali Coleen Neff; 22. Off the grid: instrumental hip-hop and experimentalism after the golden age Mike D'Errico; 23. Stylized Turkish German as the resistance vernacular of German hip-hop Brenna Byrd; 24. 'Bringin' '88 back': historicizing rap music's greatest year Loren Kajikawa; 25. 'Where ya at?': Hip-hop's political locations in the Obama era Michael Jeffries.

Promotional Information

This Companion covers the hip-hop elements, methods of studying hip-hop, and case studies from Nerdcore to Turkish-German and Japanese hip-hop.

About the Author

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).

Reviews

'… The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop provides a powerful account of what it presents, persuasively, as the most revolutionary music since rock'n'roll.' Andrew Warnes, The Times Literary Supplement

'For those new to the scene as well as hip-hop heads looking to broaden their understanding and appreciation of this complex and often misappropriated culture, Justin A. Williams's The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop stands out as a valuable addition to one's library. … Justin A. Williams has succeeded in his aim to bring a comprehensive, globally aware and culturally situated exploration of hip-hop to light.' Patrick K. Cooper, Journal of Popular Music Education