From the Hip: A Concise History of Hip Hop

" From the Hip reinvigorates the now eight hundred year-old form of the sonnet, remixing it to the rhythms and rhymes of hip hop. These sonnets, companions to songs by everyone from the Beastie Boys to Kanye West, are shot through with both nostalgia and novelty. Together they comprise a literary testament to a cultural revolution still very much under way. What distinguishes Cramer's hip hop poetics from that of so many other young poets is the way he is alive to hip hop beyond the beat-to the image, the style, the gesture. This collection is animated by a voice every bit as playful, spirited, and incendiary as the music itself." -Adam Bradley, author of Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop From the Hip "For any hip hop aficionado, Cramer's poems are another act of preservation, another head-nodding contribution to the culture in your ear and on the page. Fo'shizzle." -Major Jackson