Tha Global Cipha is the first book about Hip Hop Culture to present in-depth conversations with artists from around the world, representing the many regional scenes of the U.S. (from the East Coast to the Bay Area to the Dirty South), France, the Caribbean (from Jamaica to Puerto Rico), and Africa (from Algeria to Senegal), as well as diverse forms of street musics, such as Reggaeton, Reggae/Dancehall, Shaabi and Rai. Conversations with Jay-Z, Mos Def, Eve, Sean Paul, Young Jeezy, Foxy Brown, Booba, Buju Banton, Ivy Queen, Afrika Bambaataa, Sonia Sanchez, DJ Kool Herc, Oxmo Puccino, Trina, Cornbread, Mannie Fresh, Intik, Beanie Sigel, Cheb Khaled, Pitbull, Manu Key, Tego Calderon and many others, demonstrate these artists to be 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 global cipha!
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
[An] essential resource and reference for serious hip-hop scholars. --Jeff Chang, American Book Award-winning author of Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Y'all documenting this culture, our stories, our thoughts, and it's so important because nobody else is doing that... That's what's up!! --Xzibit, Hip Hop artist and actor
A documentary-style page turner... You can call it the [Hip Hop] movement's Bible -- an Encyclopedia Britannica even. --Philadelphia City Paper
Y'all documenting this culture, our stories, our thoughts, and it's so important because nobody else is doing that... That's what's up!! --Xzibit, Hip Hop artist and actor
A documentary-style page turner... You can call it the [Hip Hop] movement's Bible -- an Encyclopedia Britannica even. --Philadelphia City Paper
About the Author
James G. Spady is the author of the first and only trilogy of books on Hip Hop Music and Culture: Nation Conscious Rap: The Hip Hop Vision (1991), Twisted Tales in the Hip Hop Streets of Philly (1995) and Street Conscious Rap (1999), and editor of 360 Degreez of Sonia Sanchez: Hip Hop, Narrativity, Iqhawe and Public Spaces of Being (2000). His works have appeared in newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, radio, television and film and he is the recipient of many awards, including The American Book Award and the National Newspaper Publishers Association's Meritorious Award.
H. Samy Alim is an Assistant Professor in UCLA's Department of Anthropology and is author of Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (Routledge, 2006), You Know My Steez: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study of Styleshifting in a Black American Speech Community (Duke, 2004), and co-author of Street Conscious Rap (Black History Museum, 1999).
Samir Meghelli is a Richard Hofstadter Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in History at Columbia University (New York), and his work has been published in The Black Arts Quarterly, Proud Flesh, and Newsletter of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. He has organized public history programs throughout the New York, Philadelphia, and Paris (France) areas.
H. Samy Alim is an Assistant Professor in UCLA's Department of Anthropology and is author of Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip Hop Culture (Routledge, 2006), You Know My Steez: An Ethnographic and Sociolinguistic Study of Styleshifting in a Black American Speech Community (Duke, 2004), and co-author of Street Conscious Rap (Black History Museum, 1999).
Samir Meghelli is a Richard Hofstadter Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in History at Columbia University (New York), and his work has been published in The Black Arts Quarterly, Proud Flesh, and Newsletter of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University. He has organized public history programs throughout the New York, Philadelphia, and Paris (France) areas.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent work!,
By
This review is from: Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness (Paperback)
This has to be the best treatments I've seen on hip hop as a world cultural movement. The style and presentation are remarkable, matched only by the hip hop trilogy Nation Conscious Rap, Twisted Tales, and Street Conscious Rap, which presented us with hiphography as a way of researching cultural and social movements. The authors more than fulfill the path blazed by Sterling Brown, Lewis Jones, and others in their studies of Black music and culture in the deep South in the 1930s and 40s, which brought us the rich reservoir of research on the blues. Now, thanks to this project, we have the right corollary for hip hop culture and music.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tha Global Cipha-- One in a Million,
By
This review is from: Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness (Paperback)
Once in a while a book is born that is one in a million. You don't just read what's in it, you read what's in yourself as well. Tha Global Cipha is definitely one of those books. Experts don't do the talking in this book, it's the artists and each one challenges your idea of hiphop. I've seen Tha Global Cipha described as an encyclopedia...if so, it is perhaps the most refreshing example of the encyclopedic concept I've ever seen! The artists interviewed speak for themselves about their worldview and their passion: hiphop. They cover everything from history of hiphop to the language of hiphop, to art history, to personal histories, to religion and spirituality, to local and world politics. Another encyclopedia on the same subject would probably have had all these topics written up in dry stand-alone chapters with an authoritarian third person voice, but here you have each artist's authoritative voice drawing you to think of what's been said in the other interviews and providing you with different pieces of the ever-changing and growing tapestry that is hiphop. Simply put, while the book is cohesive the voices from its pages can easily drive you to ask more questions about hiphop. That's when you know you've been "hit wit it!"
Some of my favorite interviews in here were the ones with Sonia Sanchez, Beanie Sigel, Youcef, Les Nubians...It's hard to say I have favorites though, because each interview is outstanding on its own. Some of the interviews are one-on-one while others are with a group so you not only have the method of the interview as the source of information but group interviews as well-- a multiplicity of voices discussing hiphop, philosophizing about hiphop, describing it, defining it, even arguing about it! I also really appreciated the pictures that the authors included along with each interview. I believe this book is going to increase in value over time. While hiphop is constantly developing all over the world, this book will serve as a living testimony to how some of the greatest thought of it in our current day and time. While I wish I had a tiny bit more information about the interviews like when each one took place, the book overall is exquisite and proves that hiphop is not something experts can sit back and decontextualize to death....it's a living phenomena that forces you to look deeper and look to its source. I cannot thank the authors enough for it. I cannot recommend it enough.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential reading,
By Dr. Stasia DeLane (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Tha Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness (Paperback)
I am amazed by this book (as all of the other books by Spady and Alim). No series has so brilliantly addressed the sociopolitical context of the hip hop community from the perspectives of the artists themselves.
This latest book, Tha Global Cipha, expands this analysis to the international landscape, further and expertly challenging deeply-settled myths about the role of hip hop in popular culture, and about the African American contribution to social thought beyond the United States. I loved how the conversations included valuable information and insight about reggaeton in Latin America, dancehall in the Caribbean, and Hip Hop all over the US, and places like Senegal, France, Egypt, etc., etc. It's defiitely worth checking out!
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