Grade 9 Up—This is a well-organized, thoughtful examination of hip-hop culture in its many permutations. A timely and perceptive definition in the introduction defines hip-hop as an African-American urban youth culture and distinguishes it from rap. Burns explains that the culture originally consisted of four components: "rapping, DJ-ing, breakdancing, and graffiti art," providing a context for the essays that follow. Consisting of writings by scholars, journalists, and researchers, the chapters cover dance, graffiti art, and hip-hop as a social and political movement, as an extension of traditional Afrocentric cultural forms, and as a destructive force that endorses violence against women, gang affiliation, and crime. This text provides a history, a dissection, and a critique of the culture.
