HIP HOP WORLD

A solid addition to the Groundwork Guide series, this overview of hip-hop covers an impressive amount of ground and spans the landscape of the art form’s global origins and modern existence. In a work of nonfiction that reads something like a combination of academic treatise and an article in a music magazine, Higgins’s journalistic roots shine through, and the pithy, unapologetically political narrative that results is sure to engage readers. There are quirks that may cause some to question for whom this guide is intended—as, for example, when the author parenthetically explains that the term “wack” means “not good,” but later leaves the phrase “publishing cottage industry” undefined. However, the examination of issues of co-optation, race, sex, sexual orientation, religion and class (among others) in the field of hip-hop is provocative, intelligent and well-sourced. Interviews with a wide range of artists, informational sidebars about particular events and phenomena, a global timeline and lists of required reading and viewing round things out nicely. (Nonfiction. 12 & up)