>>>As the first book about Hip Hop to present in-depth conversations with artists from around the world, Tha Global Cipha is a documentary history that addresses what it means to be a part of the global Hip Hop community, illuminating the connections between Hip Hop and Reggae, Reggaeton, Raï, Dancehall, and Shaabi musics. It covers over 30 years of global Hip Hop history from the perspectives of the leading rappers, DJs, entrepreneurs, B-Boys and dancers, graffiti artists, and others who embody a common Hip Hop heritage. The central themes emerging from the conversations that comprise this history are: gender and identity politics, the globalization and localization of Hip Hop Culture(s), Hip Hop and religion, Afrodiasporic cultural flows between Hip Hop, Dancehall, and Reggaeton, and the languages, histories, and styles of the Global Hip Hop Nation.

>>>Faithful to its title, Tha Global Cipha theorizes Hip Hop Culture (really, Hip Hop Cultures) and its global diffusion as a cipha, a highly-charged communal and competitive circle of rhymers or dancers. In the same way that local Hip Hop artists build community through the cultural practices involved in the cipha, Hip Hop communities worldwide interact with each other (through media and cultural flow, as well as international travel) in ways that organize their participation in a mass-mediated, cultural movement. For youth around the world, Hip Hop Culture operates as a site of identity formation, a place where they can be(come) themselves.

>>>Building upon previous works of the Black History Museum Committee, such as Nation Conscious Rap: The Hip Hop Vision (1991), Twisted Tales in the Hip Hop Streets of Philly (1995), and Street Conscious Rap (1999), the authors document the internal histories/herstories of the Global Hip Hop Nation. They explicate hiphopography, a methodological paradigm that integrates the varied approaches of ethnography, biography, and social, cultural, and oral history to arrive at emic views of Hip Hop Cultures. This approach reveals artists – such as Jay-Z, Afrika Bambaataa, Mos Def, Eve, Ivy Queen, Sean Paul, Young Jeezy, Oxmo Puccino, Trina, Mannie Fresh, Booba, Beanie Sigel, Foxy Brown, Buju Banton, Cheb Khaled, Pitbull, Tego Calderon and many others – as critical interpreters of their own culture and of the world around them. Here is a book that centers the usually marginalized voices of Hip Hop communities, presenting a remarkably refreshing and revealing view of Hip Hop Culture from the inside-out… Enter tha cipha.