3rd Edition
That's the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader
This newly expanded and revised third edition brings together the most important and up-to-date hip-hop scholarship in one comprehensive volume.
This intellectual mixtape is composed of 46 readings that are organized into nine sections representing key concepts and themes: the history of hip-hop, authenticity debates, gender, the globalization of hip-hop, identities, disability, politics, hip-hop and academia, and hip-hop and the media. This new edition also includes greater coverage of gender, sexuality, and racial diversity in hip-hop; hip-hop’s global influence; and hip-hop’s role in social movements and political activism. The pedagogical features include detailed critical introductions framing each section and brief chapter introductions to help readers place each piece in context and within a broader scholarly dialogue.
This text is essential reading for anyone seeking deeper understanding of the profound impact of hip-hop as an intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural movement.
Prologue "What Is Hip-Hop?" Greg Tate Part I "They Reminisce Over You": Hip-Hop History and Historiography Murray Forman 1. The Politics of Graffiti Craig Castleman 2. Zulus on a Time Bomb: Hip-Hop Meets the Rockers Downtown Jeff Chang 3. Hip-Hop’s Founding Fathers Speak the Truth Nelson George 4. First Ladies Cristina Verán 5. Physical Graffiti: The History of Hip-Hop Dance Jorge "Popmaster Fabel" Pabon 6. Postindustrial Soul: Black Popular Music at the Crossroads Mark Anthony Neal Part II "Real Niggas Do Real Things": Hip-Hop Culture and the Authenticity Debates Mark Anthony Neal 7. Puerto Rocks: Rap, Roots, and Amnesia Juan Flores 8. Lookin’ for the Real Nigga: Social Scientists Construct the Ghetto Robin D.G. Kelley 9. Rapping and Repping Asian: Race, Authenticity and the Asian American Oliver Wang 10. "Things Done Changed": Recalibrating the Real in Hip-Hop Murray Forman 11. Sampling Ethics Joseph Schloss 12. What Does Authenticity Mean in Today’s Hip-Hop and How Much Does it Still Matter? Aaron Williams Part III "Baby, Look the Other Way": Hip-Hop and Gender Regina N. Bradley 13. The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay Aisha Durham, Brittney C. Cooper, and Susana M. Morris 14. From Boys to Men: Hip-Hop, Hood Films and the Performance of Contemporary Black Masculinity Robin M. Boylorn 15. I Used to be Scared of the Dick: Queer Women of Color and Hip-Hop Masculinity Andreana Clay 16. A Ratchet Lens: Black Queer Youth, Agency, Hip Hop, and the Black Ratchet Imagination Bettina L. Love 17. "Put Some Bass in Your Walk": Notes on Queerness, Hip Hop, and the Spectacle of the Undoable Scott Poulson-Bryant Part IV "Different Modes, Different Area Codes": Hip-Hop, From the Local to the Global Regina N. Bradley 18. "Represent": Race, Space, and Place in Rap Music Murray Forman 19. The Mountaintop Ain’t Flat Regina N. Bradley 20. "The World is Yours": The Globalization of Hip Hop Language Marcyliena Morgan 21. "I Got the Mics On, My People Speak": On the Rise of Aboriginal Australian Hip Hop Rhyan Clapham & Benjamin Kelly 22. Ciphers, ‘Hoods and Digital DIY Studios in India: Negotiating Aspirational Individuality and Hip Hop Collectivity Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan & Jaspal Naveel Singh 23. Connection and Complicity in the Global South: Hip Hop Musicians and US Cultural Diplomacy Kendra Salois 24. Hip Hop Matters: Race, Space, and Islam in Chicago Su'ad Abdul Khabeer Part V "I am Hip-Hop": Hip-Hop Identities Regina N. Bradley 25. "Each One, Teach One": B-boying and Ageing Mary Fogarty 26. Listening for the Interior in Hip-Hop and R&B Music Tennille Nicole Allen & Antonia Randolph 27. Citizenship Without Representation?: Blackface, Misogyny, and Parody in Die Antwoord, Lupé Fiasco and Angel Haze Adam Haupt 28. Decolonial Hip Hop: Indigenous Hip Hop and the Disruption of Settler Colonialism Kyle T. Mays 29. Fat Mutha: Hip Hop's Queer Corpulent Poetics Mecca Jamilah Sullivan Part VI "Krip-Hop": Disability and Hip Hop Mark Anthony Neal 30. Back to the Community: My Life in Rap, Poetry, and Activism Leroy Moore 31. "And So I Bust Back": Violence, Race, and Disability in Hip Hop Anna Hinton 32. (Live!) The Post-Traumatic Futurities of Black Debility Mikko O. Koivisto Part VII "Fight the Power": Hip-Hop and Politics Mark Anthony Neal 33. This is America: Hip-Hop and the Black Lives Matter Movement Lakeyta M. Bonnette-Bailey, Lestina Dongo, and Michael Westberg 34. Occupy Wall Street, Racial Neoliberalism, and New York’s Hip-Hop Moguls Eithne Quinn 35. Amicus Brief: Taylor Bell v. Itawamba County School Board Erik Nielson, Charis E. Kubrin, Travis L. Gosa, Michael Render (AKA "Killer Mike"), et. al. 36. "AmeriKKKa’s most wanted": Hip Hop Culture and Hip Hop theology as challenges to oppression Daniel White Hodge Part VIII "Put You on Game": Academia, Pedagogy, and Institutionalized Knowledge Murray Forman 37. Hip Hop Studies in Black P. Khalil Saucier & Tryon P. Woods 38. Hip Hop and the University Sara Hakeem Grewal 39. Let Me Blow Your Mind: Hip Hop Feminist Future in Theory and Praxis Treva B. Lindsey 40. Hip-Hop Archives or an Archive of Hip-Hop?: A Remix Impulse Mark V. Campbell 41. "Be Current, or You Become the Old Man": Crossing the Generational Divide in Hip-Hop Education Jason D. Rawls and Emery Petchauer Part IX "Post It or It Didn’t Happen": Hip-Hop in and as Media Murray Forman 42. Black College-Radio on Predominantly White Campuses: A ‘Hip-Hop Era’ Student-Authored Inclusion Initiative Anthony Kwame Harrison 43. "Playas’ and Players": Racial and Spatial Trespassing in Hip Hop Culture Through Video Games Michael Austin 44. "Every Time I Dress Myself, It Go Motherfuckin' Viral": Post-Verbal Flows and Memetic Hype in Young Thug's Mumble Rap Michael Waugh 45. City Girls, Hot Girls and the Re-Imagining of Black Women in Hip Hop and Digital Spaces Kyesha Jennings 46. The Audacity of Clout (Chasing): Digital Strategies of Black Youth in Chicago DIY Hip-Hop Jabari M. Evans and Nancy K. Baym
Biography
Murray Forman is Professor of Media & Screen Studies at Northeastern University. Along with co-editing the previous editions of That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004, 2012), he is author of The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (2002), and One Night on TV Is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early Television (2012). He was an inaugural recipient of the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University (2014–2015).
Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor at Duke University. He is the founIding director of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADC) at Duke and co-directs the Duke Council on Race and Ethnicity. He is author of What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1999), Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002), Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013), and New Black Man, Second Edition (2015). He is host of the video webcast Left of Black.
Regina N. Bradley is Associate Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University. She is the author of Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip Hop South (2021), editor of An OutKast Reader: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Postmodern South (2021), and a faculty editor for Southern Cultures journal. She was a recipient of the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University (2016), and can be reached at www.redclayscholar.com.
"That's The Joint! has been an essential classroom companion for me ever since I started teaching about Hip-Hop. Tireless research, firsthand accounts from cultural icons, as well as thought-provoking post-article summaries and questions make this collection of writings a must-have in any Hip-Hop Studies environment." - Akrobatik, Hip-Hop Artist, Associate Lecturer at University of Massachusetts Boston, Honors College and American Studies Department, USA
