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The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip-Hop's Greatest Songs

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth/Running Press (October 7, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1568583354

By Felicia Pride

Who would have thought that you could get deep life lessons from hip-hop? Learn to deal with regrets by jamming to Jay-Z? Foster self-esteem listening to Mos Def? Exert your self-worth based on cues from a Queen Latifah song? Get career advice from an Ice-T rhyme? Reflect on spirituality through a Kanye West tune?

In her new book The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip-Hop's Greatest Songs (Thunder’s Mouth Press/October 2007/$15.95), Felicia Pride extracts empowering lessons embedded within the genre’s most popular songs. Growing up with hip-hop, she has come to realize the way it shaped how she thinks, writes, and reacts, making her the person she is today. In The Message, she uses short essays, aptly titled after a hip-hop song, and written in the language of the culture, to explore the themes of spirituality, success, business, and love. Incorporating her own experiences and reflections with the rapper’s message, Pride goes on to share the wisdom she has learned from hip-hop and focuses on the positive influence the music has on its audience.

The Message turns the often negative perceptions of hip-hop completely around, offers a fresh perspective on why the culture is loved worldwide, and simultaneously provides motivational material for the hip-hop generation culled from its own unique artistic expression. In the introduction she writes, “This book is about searching for the power within and using motivational aspects of hip-hop music to help us successfully maneuver our worlds.”

The Message unleashes the power in the music and leaves readers with a compendium of wisdom to incorporate in their own lives, proving in Pride’s words that “we can learn from hip-hop.”
 

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Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies

Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Villard (June 12, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812977750

By Brian Coleman

Hip-hop fans, mark your calendars for the June 12, 2007 release of Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies (Random House / Villard), by veteran music journalist Brian Coleman.

Presenting never-before-told, behind-the-scenes histories ranging from influential ‘80s masterpieces De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising and Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back to ‘90s classics like the Fugees’ The Score and the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head, the book’s approach is one that Coleman calls Invisible Liner Notes – retracing the story of an album step by step, in collaboration with the artists themselves. Weighing in at over 500 pages, the 36-chapter book includes lively, in-depth, provocative interviews with 75 artists, DJs, producers and industry insiders. [See below for full chapter list]

As Coleman explains, “My goal with Check the Technique is to let people eavesdrop on some amazing conversations I’ve had with hip-hop legends over the years. To me, the most important thing about the book is that the facts, stories and opinions come from the artists themselves. Hip-hop artists have a certain image on video screens and in press-junket interviews, but Check the Technique does its best to strip all of that away and talk to these innovators as people, with respect and fan-fueled curiosity. My hope is that readers will walk away feeling that it was one of the most entertaining music guidebooks they’ve ever read.”

Coleman’s self-published 2005 book, Rakim Told Me: Hip-Hop Wax Facts, Straight from the Original Artists,received worldwide praise from press, artists, industry insiders and around-the-way rap fans alike. “This is the hip-hop book of 2005” – Paine, AllHipHop.com. “Rock historiography is full of lore about the making of canonical albums, but there hasn’t been much like that for the rap world – until now.” – Michaelangelo Matos, VillageVoice.com. “Ounce for ounce, Rakim Told Me is one of the most intimate glances at the magic behind hip-hop that I’ve ever experienced.” – Chris Faraone, Weekly Dig. “If you like reading about hip-hop as much as you like listening to it, there are few better literary companions to the music.” – Spine Magazine (UK)

Planet B-Boy (2007)

Unrated
Running time: 101 minutes
Studio: Elephant Eye Films

Film Review by Kam Williams

Excellent (3.5 stars)

Back in the Seventies, when black and Latino teenagers from the Bronx first began gyrating wildly and spinning on their heads on pieces of cardboard to hip-hop beats emanating from thudding boom-boxes, I doubt if anybody expected the street fad to last. But breakdancing has not only flourished, but it has spread around the planet like wildfire, finding even greater acceptance in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East than in its birthplace. Read More

Universal Zulu Nation
Required Reading Page
http://www.zulunation.com/required.html

Chuck D: Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary
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ISBN: 0974948411
Pub. Date: January 2007
Format: Paperback, 364pp
Publisher: Off Da Books

by Chuck D, Yusuf Jah

Book Description
The power is in the mic, and the power has been unleashed in clubs, arenas, stadiums, stages, and parks all over the planet. MC’s are able to connect with its audience in a way that the music alone cannot. Hip Hop, via the MC, has undoubtedly become the voice of a new generation. Much attention has been paid to the staggering impact hip hop music and culture has had on the greater American and world cultures; its influence on fashion, television, advertising, and the attitudes of the world’s youth. However, not nearly as much attention has been paid to the social and political impact that the art form and its artists have had. Lyrics of a Rap Revolutionary is designed to transcend rap and venture into the realm of offering commentary and analysis into some of the deeper aspects of life itself. As one of rap’s preeminent political and social groups of all time, front man Chuck D offers direct explanations and interpretations of what his lyrics are about as a tool to help set minds free in this "hustle and flow and get rich or die tryin’ times’." Chuck delves into the inspiration and writing of such rap classics as "Fight the Power," "Don’t Believe The Hype," "Can’t Truss It," and "Welcome to the Terrordome." As Chuck D explains, "We must remain mindful that there’s a road to freedom, and resist the embarrassingly popular trend that ignorance and a ghetto mentality, which is cast upon us, is our only food for thought or food for non-thought. As MC’s we must become more responsible and revolutionary in our approach, because we have young people around the globe listening to our every word and watching our every step."

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Born in the Bronx:
A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop

Born in The Bronx
9 X 11 inches / 200 illustrations
HC ISBN: 978-0-7893-1540-3
$45.00 US / $57.00 Can / £25.00 UK
Rizzoli New York
Release date: November 9th, 2007

Edited by Johan Kugelberg
Photographs by Joe Conzo
Foreword by Afrika Bambaataa
Original Flyer Art by Buddy Esquire
Timeline by Jeff Chang

Born in the Bronx is a striking anthology of Hip Hop's baby steps. Not only does it capture the emergence of a burgeoning culture but also the fashion and character of the surrounding community. From rare photographs of MC's and DJs to records, flyers, and other ephemera, writer Johan Kugelberg has pulled together the scattered remains of a movement that never has its eye on posterity. The book includes the improvisational artwork of previously unpublished street flyers of the era, Polaroids buried for decades in basements across the Bronx, and testimonials from the most scholarly historians of Hip Hop culture - the legends and pioneers who lived it! Through Born in the Bronx, Joe Conzo (described by The New York Times as "the chronicler who took hip hop's baby pictures") presents a unique cross-section of an explosive and experimental time in music history.

- Hip Hop's first photographer, Joe Conzo provides the majority of images of legends and urban scenes from 1977-1982. Additional photos were contributed by fellow pioneering documentarians Charlie Ahearn and Henry Chalfant.

- Photos feature The Cold Crush Brothers, Treacherous 3, Afrika Bambaataa, Busy Bee, Run DMC, Wayne "The Hip Hop Ventriliquist" & Charlie, Fantastic Romantic, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, Funky Four + 1, Kool DJ AJ Scratch, GrandWizzard Theodore and more.

- Flyers created by Buddy Esquire feature Hip Hop jams from 1978-1985. Obscure flyers advertise early Hip Hop jams in Brooklyn, Queens and even Connecticut!

- Essays were contributed by legends: GrandMaster Caz, JDL, Joe Conzo, Mare 139, GrandWizzard Theodore, LA Sunshine and Jorge "Fabel" Pabon plus a poem by DJ Disco Wiz and an interview with Buddy Esquire.

- The hard cover is embossed. The dust cover unfolds to reveal a poster: "The Hip Hop Map of the Bronx" by Joe Conzo and Tony Tone.
 

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Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm

Hardcover: 128 pages
Publisher: Vertigo (DC Comics)
Date: September 5, 2007
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1401210465

Written by Percy Carey; Art and Cover by Ronald Wimberly

Underground rap icon Percy Carey tells the true story of his life in the "Hip-Hop Game" — the dizzying heights and heartbreaking losses — in the raw and brutally honest hardcover graphic novel memoir SENTENCES: THE LIFE OF M.F. GRIMM.

In SENTENCES, Carey chronicles his life in the sometimes glamorous, and often violent, hip-hop industry; from the first time he picked up a microphone at a block party as a youngster, to the day he lost the use of his legs to gang violence, to his incarceration, and eventually, to his self-reinvention and rise back to the top of his game, becoming a Hip-Hop Grand Master and being placed among the pantheon of the culture. No questions are left unanswered and no apologies are made, resulting in what's sure to be a groundbreaking graphic novel.

Joining Carey is up-and-coming artist Ronald Wimberly (LUCIFER, HELLBLAZER: PAPA MIDNITE covers), who breathtakingly illustrates this gritty tale of righteous redemption. If what you know about hip-hop is the flashy cars and voluptuous women that music videos try to sell, be prepared to experience the real side of the industry that only someone who has survived the rise, fall, and rise again, can tell.