A fascinating look at hip hop, the world's most popular music, and what it means to young people all over the globe, written by an acclaimed pop-culture critic. An excellent introduction to hip hop for young adults.
Hip hop is arguably the predominant global youth subculture of this generation. In this book Dalton Higgins takes vivid snapshots of the hip hop scenes in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and more.
American hip hop has gone through growing pains, and is questioned for being too commercialized to articulate the hopes, concerns and dreams of marginal youth and community members. Outside the US, hip hop culture is often a political tool to mobilize disenfranchised communities around hard issues, with little support from mainstream corporations or sponsors.
Higgins taps into his own powers of pop culture prognostication to predict the future of the genre and the youth culture that spawned it, as hip hop spreads its tentacles to the furthest reaches of humanity.
"[The Groundwork Guides] are excellent books, mandatory for school libraries and the increasing body of young people prepared to take ownership of the situations and problems previous generations have left them." - Globe and Mail
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.1
Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.2
Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.3
Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.6
Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed in the text.
In "Hip Hop World, " Dalton Higgins comprehensively examines the hip hop scene as it exists throughout the world. The book reveals the form's musical inspirations from Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, African American sex satirists, comedians, civil rights-fuelled funk musicians, spoken word luminaries, and dub and Nuyorican poetry. Author Higgins examines hip hop's racial, multicultural, and multilingual listening audiences, the development of global rap slanguage and its influence on standard English lexicons, and hip hop herstory and cultural taboos around sexuality. He highlights the burgeoning Aboriginal hip hop scenes in Canada and Australia, and movements in colleges across North America and Europe that use hip hop lyrics and artistry to help engage students in learning. Critical of hip hopsters' use of language, the cult of bling, violence, and money, this book takes readers beyond a superficial look and delves into all the issues surrounding this form. Higgins taps into his own powers of pop culture prognostication to predict the future of the genre and the youth culture that spawned it, as this irresistible musical and cultural form spreads literally to the furthest reaches of humanity.
