The Real Hiphop 101: That's The Joint! The Hiphop Studies Reader

Remember I said last week that the real hiphop 101 has a required textbook? Well, this is what we had to use for our class:


Released in 2004, That's The Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader is a 628-page textbook with hundreds of articles dating back to the 70s, when hip-hop first began. It covers all of the artistic and cultural elements within hip-hop in sections classified by art, race, gender, politics and hip-hop's impact on the world.

The editors of this book, Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, managed to find all types of articles, from newspapers, magazines, radio interviews and even scholarly journals. Some articles are written by different famous hip-hop scholars, including Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Nelson George, Joan Morgan and Bakari Kitwana.

I loved this book when I first bought it for the class. It included interviews with almost all of the hiphop pioneers I discussed previously in this blog, and it is a very easy read. The way this book was broken down into sections gives people a great leeway into discussing the given topics very easily. I use this book for almost every post in this blog, as well as for every forum I organize with Hip-Hop Congress. And although this book cost me about $50, it is one of the greatest investments I have ever made.