LibGuides: Rap and Hip-Hop Research Resources: Rap & Hip-Hop Around the World

Introduction

The Library also has a considerable collection of materials on rap and hip-hop around the world. See the two selections below for a general introduction to hip-hop in an international context. The next box collects resources divided by region, showcasing some of the diverse material available at MPAL and other campus libraries.

Hip Hop around the World by George Ciccariello-Maher; Melissa Ursula Dawn Goldsmith (Editor)
Call Number: MPAL Reference Non-circulating ML102.R27 H56 2019
Hip Hop around the World includes more than 450 entries on global hip hop culture as it includes music, art, fashion, dance, social and cultural movements, organizations, and styles of hip hop. Virtually every country is represented in the text.
Tha Global Cipha by James G. Spady; H. Samy Alim; Samir Meghelli
Call Number: Oak St Library ML3531 .S689 2006
This book presents in-depth conversations with hip-hop 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.

Rap & Hip-Hop Around the World

To find additional related materials, try a subject search in the library catalog for one of the following subject headings: Hip Hop -- Africa or Rap (Music) -- Africa -- History and criticism. You can also try limiting the subject to Hip-Hop or Rap (Music) and typing the name of a country or region as a keyword.

Hip Hop Africa by Eric S. Charry
Call Number: Online Resource
Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. This volume offers unique perspectives on the presence and development of hip hop and other music in Africa and their place in global music culture.
East African Hip Hop by Mwenda Ntarangwi
Call Number: HQ799.A353 N73 2009
Mwenda Ntarangwi analyzes how young hip hop artists in the East African nations of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania showcase the opportunities and challenges brought by the globalization of music. Combining local popular music traditions with American and Jamaican styles of rap, East African hip hop culture reflects the difficulty of creating commercially accessible music while honoring tradition and East African culture.
Neva Again by Adam Haupt (Editor); Quentin Williams (Editor); H. Samy Alim (Editor); Emile Jansen (Editor)
Call Number: Main Stacks 305.2350968 N41
The culmination of decades of work on hip hop culture and activism, Neva Again weaves together the many varied and rich voices of the dynamic South African hip hop scene. The contributors--including scholars, activists, and the artists themselves--present a powerful reflection of the potential of youth art, culture, music, language, and identities to shape both politics and world views.
Native Tongues: An African Hip-Hop Reader by Paul Khalil Saucier
Call Number: ML3531 .N385 2011
Native Tongues brings together critical and new writings on rap and hip-hop in Africa. It explores the influence of hip-hop on the continent and brings to light the pressing issues that are echoed in the lyrics and images displayed by youths, from the Townships to South Africa to the streets of Bamako. Readers will learn about the music, both as an art form and a socio-cultural force that shapes youth culture and affects social change.

To find additional related materials, try a subject search in the library catalog for Hip-Hop or Rap (Music) and typing the name of a country or region as a keyword.

Hanguk Hip Hop by Myoung-Sun Song
Call Number: Online Resource
It explores the nuanced meaning of hip hop in South Korea, outlining the local, global, and (trans)national flows of musical and cultural exchanges. Throughout the chapters, Korean hip hop is examined through the notion of buran--personal and societal anxiety or uncertainty--and how it manifests in the dimensions of space and place, economy, cultural production, and gender.
The Globally Familiar: digital hip hop, masculinity, and urban space in Delhi by Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan
Call Number: ML3917.I4 D388 2020
Dattatreyan shows how these aspiring b-boys, MCs, and graffiti writers fashion themselves and their city through their online and offline experimentations with hip hop, thereby accessing new social, economic, and political opportunities while acting as consumers, producers, and influencers in global circuits of capitalism.
24 bars to kill : hip hop, aspiration, and Japan's social margins by Armstrong, Andrew B., author.
Call Number: Online Resource
The most clearly identifiable and popular form of Japanese hip-hop, “ghetto” or “gangsta” music has much in common with its corresponding American subgenres. Contrary to depictions of an ethnically and economically homogeneous Japan, gangsta J-hop gives voice to the suffering, deprivation, and social exclusion experienced by many modern Japanese.
Hip-Hop Japan by Ian Condry
Call Number: ML3531 C66H5
Illuminating different aspects of Japanese hip-hop, Condry chronicles how self-described "yellow B-Boys" express their devotion to "black culture," how they combine the figure of the samurai with American rapping techniques and gangsta imagery, and how underground artists compete with pop icons to define "real" Japanese hip-hop.

To find additional related materials, try a subject search in the library catalog for Hip-Hop or Rap (Music) and typing the name of a country or region as a keyword.

Flip the Script: European hip hop and the politics of postcoloniality by J. Griffith Rollefson
Call Number: ML3918.R37 R66 2017
Flip the Script offers a close look at the role of hip hop in Europe, where it has become a politically powerful and commercially successful form of expression for the children and grandchildren of immigrants from former colonies. J. Griffith Rollefson shows how this music created by black Americans is deployed by Senegalese Parisians, Turkish Berliners, and South Asian Londoners to both differentiate themselves from and relate themselves to the dominant culture.
Brithop: the politics of UK rap in the new century by Justin A. Williams
Call Number: Online Resource
Through themes of nationalism, history, subculture, politics, humor and identity, Brithop explores multiple forms of politics in rap discourses from Wales, Scotland and England. Williams investigates how rappers in the UK respond to the "postcolonial melancholia" of post-EmpireBritain. Brithop shows a rich, multifaceted cultural reality reflective of both the postcolonial condition of the UK and the importance of localism within its varying cultures.
Hip Hop at Europe's Edge by Milosz Miszczynski (Editor); Adriana Helbig (Editor)
Call Number: Online Resource and ML3531 .H567 2017
Essays examining the impact of hip hop music on pop culture and youth identity in post-Soviet Central and Eastern Europe. Originally strongly influenced by aesthetics from the United States, hip hop in Central and Eastern Europe has gradually developed unique, local trajectories, a number of which are showcased in this volume.
Hip Hop Ukraine by Adriana N. Helbig
Call Number: Online Resource and ML3499.U37 H45H5 2014
In Hip Hop Ukraine, we enter a world of urban music and dance competitions, hip hop parties, and recording studio culture to explore unique sites of interracial encounters among African students, African immigrants, and local populations in eastern Ukraine.

To find additional related materials, try a subject search in the library catalog for Hip-Hop or Rap (Music) and typing the name of a country or region as a keyword.

La Verdad: an international dialogue on hip hop Latinidades by Melissa Castillo-Garsow (Editor); Jason Nichols (Editor)
Call Number: ML3918.R37 V473 2016
La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades brings together exciting new work about Latino/a hip hop across more than a dozen countries, from scholars and practitioners in the United States and in Latin America, highlighting in new ways the participation of women, indigenous peoples, and Afro-descendants in a reimagined global, hip hop nation.
The Chican@ Hip Hop Nation by Pancho McFarland
Call Number: Online Resource
Far from antiquated concepts of mestizaje, recent scholarship has shown that Mexican@/Chican@ culture is a mixture of indigenous, African, and Spanish and other European peoples and cultures. No one reflects this rich blend of cultures better than Chican@ rappers, whose lyrics and iconography can help to deepen our understanding of what it means to be Chican@ or Mexican@ today.
Cuban Underground Hip Hop by Tanya L. Saunders
Call Number: Main Stacks F1789.N3 S28 2015
Cuban Underground Hip Hop focuses on a group of self-described antiracist, revolutionary youth who initiated a social movement (1996-2006) to educate and fight against inequalities through the use of arts-based political activism intended to spur debate and enact social change.

To find additional related materials, try a subject search in the library catalog for Hip-Hop or Rap (Music) and typing the name of a country or region as a keyword.

Hip Hop Harem: women, rap and representation in the Middle East by Angela S. Williams
Call Number: Online Resource
Although hip hop culture has widely been acknowledged as a global cultural movement, little attention has been given to women's participation in hip hop culture in various parts of the world or how this participation interacts with and impacts the lives of other women. Hip Hop Haremis the first book solely dedicated to female rap artists in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop by miriam cooke (Editor); Bruce B. Lawrence (Editor)
Call Number: Online Resource and Main Stacks 306.697 M974
This book invokes the past not only to understand the present but also to reimagine the future through the prism of Muslim networks, at once the shadow and the lifeline for the umma, or global Muslim community. An interdisciplinary book, with some content related to hip-hop.

Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes by Kyle T. Mays
Call Number: ML3531 .M29H5 2018
From rapping about land and water rights from Flint to Standing Rock, to remixing "traditional" beading with hip hop aesthetics, Indigenous people are using hip hop to challenge their ongoing dispossession, disrupt racist stereotypes and images of Indigenous people, contest white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, and reconstruct ideas of a progressive masculinity.
We Still Here by Charity Marsh (Editor); Mark V. Campbell (Editor); Murray Forman (Foreword by)
Call Number: Online Resource
We Still Here maps the edges of hip-hop culture and makes sense of the rich and diverse ways people create and engage with hip-hop music within Canadian borders. Contributors to the collection explore the power of institutions, mainstream hegemonies, and the processes of historical formation in the evolution of hip-hop culture. The volume foregrounds the generative issues of gender, identity, and power, in particular in relation to the Black diaspora and Indigenous cultures.
Australian Indigenous Hip Hop by Chiara Minestrelli
Call Number: Main Stacks ML3917.A8 M56 2017
This book investigates the discursive and performative strategies employed by Australian Indigenous rappers to make sense of the world and establish a position of authority over their identity and place in society.
Indigenous Pop: Native American music from jazz to hip hop by Jeff Berglund (Editor); Jan Johnson (Editor); Kimberli Lee (Editor)
Call Number: Online Resource
Popular music compels, it entertains, and it has the power to attract and move audiences. With that in mind, the editors of Indigenous Pop showcase the contributions of American Indian musicians to popular forms of music, including jazz, blues, country-western, rock and roll, reggae, punk, and hip hop.