“The best hip-hop scholarship book of 2006 (and
maybe 2007?)… [An]
essential resource and reference for serious hip-hop
scholars…
Spady, Alim and Meghelli are keenly concerned with letting
the
artists speak for themselves, not mediating their voices.”
– Jeff Chang, American Book Award-winning author
of Can't Stop, Won't
Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
............................................................................................................................
“Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness
isn't just a
matter of words – multigenerational totems from
Blowfly to Mos Def
– raining down like fists upon hip-hop's history.
There's also a
mountain of pictures to be found in this documentary-style
page
turner, trimmed to a scant 704 pages from its original
1,500… You
can call it the new movement's Bible – an Encyclopedia
Britannica
even…”
– Philadelphia City Paper
............................................................................................................................
“An amazing work and a wonderful source of information.
It's a real
privilege for me to be in such company.”
– Henry Chalfant, co-producer of Style Wars
and co-author of Subway
Art and Spraycan Art, on his inclusion
in Tha Global Cipha
............................................................................................................................
“Y’all documenting this culture, our stories,
our thoughts, and it’s
so important ‘cause nobody else is doing that.
You’re puttin’ in
every word we say. That’s what’s up.”
– Xzibit, Hip Hop Artist and Actor
...........................................................................................................................
“A groundbreaking project... that traverses and
unites various
geophysical and metaphysical spaces – the text
is indeed Global.”
– George Yancy, editor of The Philosophical
I and The Cornel West Reader
...........................................................................................................................
"I am honored to be included in Tha Global Cipha.
It has Hip Hop
artists from around the world: Africa, Europe, the Caribbean
and
throughout the United States. This book has all of them:
Beanie
Sigel, Damon Dash... And it has CORNBREAD. I want to
tell anybody
that's about Hip Hop Culture to get your own copy of
this book. If
you want the history of Hip Hop, check out Tha Global
Cipha."
– CORNBREAD, the Pioneer Hip Hop Graffiti Writer
...........................................................................................................................
“Hip Hop Culture is all over the world. When you
look at Hip Hop alongside
and in thesame line as Blues and Jazz, the Spirituals
and so on, you will
see that it is in the traditionof African American orature.
African America's
cultural impact is global, and so, now,Hip Hop is being
expressed in African
languages. And now, we have Tha Global Cipha:Hip Hop
Culture and
Consciousness. Congratulations!”
– Ngugi wa Thiong'o, African scholar and novelist,
author
of Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language
in African
Literature and Moving the Centre: The Struggle
for Cultural
Freedoms
...........................................................................................................................
“A collection of firsthand interviews with an
impressive range of
rap and hip hop groups and personalities from across
the nation...
The three books – Nation Conscious Rap
(1991), Twisted Tales in
the Hip Hop Streets of Philly (1995) and Street
Conscious Rap (1999)
– are perhaps the most comprehensive collection
available of in-depth
conversations with rap artists... The interviews explore
each performer's
background, techniques and influence as well as the
gang violence
and misogyny so often associated with hip hop
culture.”
– Publisher’s Weekly
“Poet Ezra Pound once told literary critic Hugh
Kenner that he had
an obligation to visit the great people of his time.
In Street
Conscious Rap, H. Samy Alim takes this counsel
to heart and hand,
as he, with James G. Spady, records the words and ideas
of
hip-hop’s innovators and creators. The resulting
rarity – the
makers of hip-hop speaking, without interpretation,
of what they,
themselves, think and do – is a resource for study
and insight; a
document with archival muscle; a testimony for all time.”
– Harry Allen, “Hip-Hop Activist & Media
Assassin"
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