Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism

by Roy Christopher (Editor), Ytasha L. Womack (Introduction), Rasheeda Phillips (Contribution by), Steven Shaviro (Contribution by), Kodwo Eshun (Contribution by)

Overview

Essays that explore the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture.

"This book, edited by Roy Christopher, is a moment. It is the deconstructed sample, the researched lyrical metaphors, the aha moment on the way to hip-hop enlightenment. Hip-hop permeates our world, and yet it is continually misunderstood. Hip-hop's intersections with Afrofuturism and science fiction provide fascinating touchpoints that enable us to see our todays and tomorrows. This book can be, for the curious, a window into a hip-hop-infused Alter Destiny—a journey whose spaceship you embarked on some time ago. Are you engaging this work from the gaze of the future? Are you the data thief sailing into the past to U-turn to the now? Or are you the unborn child prepping to build the next universe? No, you're the superhero. Enjoy the journey."—from the introduction by Ytasha L. Womack

Through essays by some of hip-hop's most interesting thinkers, theorists, journalists, writers, emcees, and DJs, Boogie Down Predictions embarks on a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture and what that means for the culture at large. Introduced by Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, this book explores these temporalities, possible pasts, and further futures from a diverse, multilayered, interdisciplinary perspective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913689285
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	09/13/2022
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Roy Christopher is an aging BMX and skateboarding zine kid—that's how he learned to turn events and interviews into pages with staples. He has since written about music, media, and culture for everything from self-published zines and personal blogs to national magazines and academic journals. A Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, he is the author of Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Boogie Down Predictions offers new ways of listening to, looking at, and thinking about hip-hop culture. It teaches us that hip-hop bends time, blending past, present, and future in sound and sense. Roy Christopher has given us more than a book; it’s a cypher and everyone involved brought bars."
—Adam Bradley, author, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop

"The study of hip-hop requires more than a procession of protagonists, events, and innovations. Boogie Down Predictions stops the clock—each essay within it a frozen moment, an opportunity to look sub-atomically at the forces that drive this culture."
—Dan Charnas, author, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop and Dilla Time: How A Hip-Hop Producer Reinvented Rhythm and Changed the Way Musicians Play