At the age of nineteen, Nasir Nas Jones began recording tracks for his debut albumand changed the music world forever. Released in 1994, Illmatic was hailed as an instant masterpiece and has proven one of the most influential albums in hip-hop history. With its close attention to beats and lyricis[...]

Delving deeply into the life of an American icon, the author interviews the people who knew him best to reconstruct a compelling portrait of Gaye as a flawed artist, troubled by addiction and prone to domestic abuse, who nevertheless helped define America in the turbulent 1970s. Reprint. 50,000 firs[...]

Whether along race, class, or generational lines, hip-hop music has been a source of controversy since the beats got too big and the voices too loud for the block parties that spawned them. America has condemned and commended this music and the culture that inspires it. Dubbed the Hip-Hop Intellec[...]

In this provocative book, writer and cultural critic Toure explores the concept of Post-Blackness: the ability for someone to be rooted in but not restricted by their race. Drawing on his own experiences and those of 105 luminaries, he argues that racial identity should be understood as fluid, compl[...]

The author shares the saga of an African American family that extends from his ancestor Kunta Kinte, an African brought to mid-eighteenth-century America as a slave, to himself.

Roughcut pages[...]