The Notorious B.I.G.

The Notorious B.I.G. PDF

Author: Holly Lang

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2007-10-30

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 1567207359

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Over ten years since his death, Biggie Smalls, also known as The Notorious B.I.G., is considered one of the most influential rappers of all time, a credit continually given by numerous hip-hop artists. Raised in Brooklyn during the crack-cocaine boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Smalls (born Christopher Wallace) worked as a drug dealer before ultimately deciding to become a rapper. With Sean Puffy Combs and Bad Boy Entertainment, Biggie rocketed to fame as one of hip hop's most popular artists. But with the success came controversy: the friendship-turned-feud between Biggie and Tupac fueled the rivalry between East Coast and West Coast hip hop, a gangsta-rap battle that many believe led to the murder of both rappers. While still unsolved, the murder of Biggie in 1997 sparked numerous investigations, litigation, and the dismantling of a Los Angeles Police Department task force in what is considered the largest scandal in LAPD history. Ten years later, Biggie is celebrated as the King of East Coast hip hop. In this biography author Holly Lang recounts the life, music, and legacy of Biggie and investigates the events surrounding his murder.

Book of Rhymes

Book of Rhymes PDF

Author: Adam Bradley

Publisher: Civitas Books

Published: 2017-06-27

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0465094414

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If asked to list the greatest innovators of modern American poetry, few of us would think to include Jay-Z or Eminem in their number. And yet hip hop is the source of some of the most exciting developments in verse today. The media uproar in response to its controversial lyrical content has obscured hip hop's revolution of poetic craft and experience: Only in rap music can the beat of a song render poetic meter audible, allowing an MC's wordplay to move a club-full of eager listeners.Examining rap history's most memorable lyricists and their inimitable techniques, literary scholar Adam Bradley argues that we must understand rap as poetry or miss the vanguard of poetry today. Book of Rhymes explores America's least understood poets, unpacking their surprisingly complex craft, and according rap poetry the respect it deserves.

Existential Togetherness

Existential Togetherness PDF

Author: DeWayne R. Stallworth

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-08-13

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1532651619

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The notion of community entails more than just shared space in the here-and-now moment. For African Americans especially, communal engagement is a sacred experience that stretches from the mundane to the spectacular in a cyclical historical pattern. DeWayne R. Stallworth illumines the broadness of this African American religious experience by looking back to the first shared experience of unbiased community that occurred during slavery. He then explores the difficulties of maintaining such a unity under the threat of supremacy as experienced through systemic structures of both white and black privilege. Most important, Stallworth unpacks how the black religious leader, although caricatured as uncouth and ignorant, remained the moral compass for community progression and uplift until the civil rights era. This provocative book is essential reading for anyone with a desire to obtain a broader and deeper understanding of what it means to be black, religious, and American in the twenty-first-century United States.

Tom Sachs

Tom Sachs PDF

Author: Tom Sachs

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13:

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Edited by Ellen R. Feldman. Text by Jeff Fleming, Raphaela Platow.

The Grey Album

The Grey Album PDF

Author: Kevin Young

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2012-03-13

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 1555970427

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*Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism* *A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012* The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying—storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, "jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art—and artfulness—to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music: Indexes

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music: Indexes PDF

Author: Colin Larkin

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 750

ISBN-13:

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Provides information on a range of popular music genres, including rock, pop, jazz, folk, blues, heavy metal, techno, R & B, reggae, and hip-hop. This biographical encyclopedia contains a name index, an index of song titles, and bibliographies by artist and subject. Expanded to ten volumes, the new edition contains 6,000 new entries and extensive revisions and updates throughout, yielding 50% more material than the 1998 Third Edition. In addition to a fully revised 10 volume hardcover edition, The Encyclopedia of Popular Music will go online in 2007 as a regularly updated subscription product that will be interactive with Grove Music Online.

Fifty Years of the Concept Album in Popular Music

Fifty Years of the Concept Album in Popular Music PDF

Author: Eric Wolfson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2023-12-28

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1501391828

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The concept album is one of popular music's most celebrated-and misunderstood-achievements. This book examines the untold history of the rock concept album, from The Beatles to Beyoncé. The roots of the concept album are nearly as old as the long-playing record itself, as recording artists began using the format to transcend a mere collection of songs into a listening experience that takes the listener on a journey through its unifying mood, theme, narrative, or underlying idea. Along the way, artists as varied as the Moody Blues, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Parliament, Donna Summer, Iron Maiden, Radiohead, The Notorious B.I.G., Green Day, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar created albums that form an extended conversation of art and music. Limits were pushed as the format grew over the subsequent eras. Seminal albums like the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Who's Tommy, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, stand alongside modern classics like Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville, Kendrick Lamar's good kid, "m.A.A.d city," and Beyoncé's Lemonade. Mixing iconic albums with some newer and lesser-known works makes for a book that ventures into the many sides of a history that has yet to be told-until now.

Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal

Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal PDF

Author: Jonathan Green

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0393244504

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Nominated for an Edgar Award “Exceptionally authentic.”—Jill Leovy, The New York Times Book Review In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Bronx had one of the country’s highest per capita homicide rates. As crack cocaine use surged, dealers claimed territory through intimidation and murder, while families were fractured by crime and incarceration. Chronicling the rise and fall of Sex Money Murder, one of the era’s most notorious gangs, reporter Jonathan Green creates a visceral and devastating portrait of a New York City borough and the dedicated detectives and prosecutors struggling to stem the tide of violence. Drawing on years of research and extraordinary access to gang leaders, law enforcement, and federal prosecutors, Green delivers an engrossing work of gritty urban reportage. Magisterial in its scope, Sex Money Murder offers a unique perspective on the violence raging in modern-day America and the battle to end it.

Media Crossroads

Media Crossroads PDF

Author: Paula J. Massood

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2021-02-08

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1478021306

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The contributors to Media Crossroads examine space and place in media as they intersect with sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, class, and ability. Considering a wide range of film, television, video games, and other media, the authors show how spaces—from the large and fantastical to the intimate and virtual—are shaped by the social interactions and intersections staged within them. The highly teachable essays include analyses of media representations of urban life and gentrification, the ways video games allow users to adopt an experiential understanding of space, the intersection of the regulation of bodies and spaces, and how style and aesthetics can influence intersectional thinking. Whether interrogating the construction of Portland as a white utopia in Portlandia or the link between queerness and the spatial design and gaming mechanics in the Legend of Zelda video game series, the contributors deepen understanding of screen cultures in ways that redefine conversations around space studies in film and media. Contributors. Amy Corbin, Desirée J. Garcia, Joshua Glick, Noelle Griffis, Malini Guha, Ina Rae Hark, Peter C. Kunze, Paula J. Massood, Angel Daniel Matos, Nicole Erin Morse, Elizabeth Patton, Matthew Thomas Payne, Merrill Schleier, Jacqueline Sheean, Sarah Louise Smyth, Erica Stein, Kirsten Moana Thompson, John Vanderhoef, Pamela Robertson Wojcik