Author(s): Roy Christopher (Editor); Ytasha L. Womack (Contribution by); Rasheeda Phillips (Contribution by); Steven Shaviro (Contribution by); Kodwo Eshun (Contribution by)

Film & Tv

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.