HARI In-House Blog

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We archive the Hiphop Underground.
In order to do so, we have to reimagine what an archive can be.


HARI is uncompromising in our commitment to build and support intellectually challenging and innovative scholarship that both reflects the rigor and achievement of performance in Hiphop as well as transforms our thinking and our lives. We serve to organize and develop collections, initiate and participate in research activities, sponsor events and acquire material culture associated with Hiphop in the U.S. and throughout the world. We curate all forms of Hiphop material culture including recordings, videos, websites, films, original papers, works, references, productions, conferences, meetings, interviews, publications, research, formal proceedings, etc.

Check out the latest additions to our collections: 
 

THE VINYL AIN'T FINAL: HIPHOP AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF BLACK POPULAR CULTURE
Edited by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle


In the preface of The Vinyl Ain't Final, Robin Kelley exclaims 'Hip Hop is Dead! Long Live Hip Hop', and the rest of the contributors in this edited volume respond by providing critical perspectives that bridge the gap between American-orientated hip hop and its global reach.

From the front lines of hip hop culture and music in the USA, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, Hawaii, Tanzania, Cuba, Samoa and South Africa, academics, poets, practitioners, journalists, and political commentators explore hip hop - both as a culture and as a commodity. From the political economy of the South African music industry to the cultural resistance forged by Afro-Asian hip hop, this potent mix of contributors provides a unique critical insight into the implications of hip hop globally and locally. Indispensable for fans of hip hop culture and music, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in cultural production, cultural politics and the implications of the huge variety of forms hip hop encompasses.

 

 

HIPHOP AND THE LAW
Edited by Pamela Bridgewater, André Douglas Pond Cummings and Donald F. Tibbs


What is important to understanding American law? What is important to understanding hip hop? Wide swaths of renowned academics, practitioners, commentators, and performance artists have answered these two questions independently. And although understanding both depends upon the same intellectual enterprise, textual analysis of narrative storytelling, somehow their intersection has escaped critical reflection. Hip Hop and the Law merges the two cultural giants of law and rap music and demonstrates their relationship at the convergence of Legal Consciousness, Politics, Hip Hop Studies, and American Law. No matter what your role or level of experience with law or hip hop, this book is a sound resource for learning, discussing, and teaching the nuances of their relationship. Topics include Critical Race Theory, Crime and Justice, Mass Incarceration, Gender, and American Law: including Corporate Law, Intellectual Property, Constitutional Law, and Real Property Law.

 

 

OUR VINYL WEIGHS A TON: THIS IS STONES THROW RECORDS
Directed by Jeff Broadway
 

Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton is a feature-length documentary about avant-garde Los Angeles-based record label Stones Throw Records. The film weaves together rare concert footage, never-before-seen archival material, inner-circle home video and photographs and in-depth interviews with the artists who put Stones Throw on the map.

 

 

THE HEART OF THE RACE: BLACK WOMEN'S LIVES IN BRITAIN
By Beverly Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe
 

A powerful document of the day-to-day realities of Black women in Britain.

The Heart of the Race is a powerful corrective to a version of Britain’s history from which black women have long been excluded. It reclaims and records black women’s place in that history, documenting their day-to-day struggles, their experiences of education, work and health care, and the personal and political struggles they have waged to preserve a sense of identity and community. First published in 1985 and winner of the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize that yearThe Heart of the Raceis a testimony to the collective experience of black women in Britain, and their relationship to the British state throughout its long history of slavery, empire and colonialism.

This new edition includes an introduction by Lola Okolosie and an interview with the authors, chaired by Heidi Mirza, focusing on the impact of their book since publication, and its continuing relevance today.

 

 

UNAPOLOGETIC: A BLACK, QUEER, AND FEMINIST MANDATE FOR RADICAL MOVEMENTS
By Charlene A. Carruthers
 

Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders.

 

 

HIPHOP IN AMERICAN CINEMA
By Melvin Donalson
 

Hip Hop in American Cinema examines the manner in which American feature films have served as the primary medium for mainstreaming hip hop culture into American society. With their glamorizing portrayals of graffiti writing, break dancing, rap music, clothing, and language, Hollywood movies have established hip hop as a desirable youth movement. This book demonstrates how Hollywood studios and producers have exploited the profitable connection among rappers, soundtracks, and mass audiences. Hip Hop in American Cinema offers valuable information for courses in film studies, popular culture, and American studies.

 

 

 
"AWAKEN, MY LOVE!"
By Childish Gambino (Vinyl + CD)
 

"Awaken, My Love!" is the third studio album by Donald Glover, under his stage name Childish Gambino. It was released by Glassnote Records on December 2, 2016.

 

 

BECAUSE THE INTERNET
By Childish Gambino (Vinyl + CD)
 

Because the Internet is the second studio album by Donald Glover, under his stage name Childish Gambino. It was released by Glassnote Records on December 10, 2013.

 

 

CAMP
By Childish Gambino (Vinyl + CD)
 

Camp is the debut studio album by Donald Glover, under his stage name Childish Gambino. It was released by Glassnote Records on November 15, 2011.

 

 

SOCIAL LINGUISTICS AND LITERACIES: IDEOLOGY IN DISCOURSES
By James Paul Gee
 

In its first edition, Social Linguistics and Literacies was a major contribution to the emerging interdisciplinary field of sociocultural approaches to language and literacy, and was one of the founding texts of the ‘New Literacy Studies’. This book serves as a classic introduction to the study of language, learning and literacy in their social, cultural and political contexts. It shows how contemporary sociocultural approaches to language and literacy emerged and:

  • Engages with topics such as orality and literacy, the history of literacy, the nature of discourse analysis and social theories of mind and meaning
  • Explores how language functions in a society
  • Surveys the notion of ‘discourse’ with specific reference to cross-cultural issues in communities and schools. 

This fifth edition offers an overview of the sociocultural approaches to language and literacy that coalesced into the New Literacy Studies. It also introduces readers to a particular style of analyzing language-in-use-in-society and develops a distinctive specific perspective on language and literacy centered on the notion of "Discourses". It will be of interest to researchers, lecturers and students in education, linguistics, or any field that deals with language, especially in social or cultural terms.

 

 

FRESH DRESSED
Directed by Sacha Jenkins
 

Fresh Dressed is a fascinating, fun-to-watch chronicle of hip-hop, urban fashion, and the hustle that brought oversized pants and graffiti-drenched jackets from Orchard Street to high fashion's catwalks and Middle America shopping malls.

Reaching deep to Southern plantation culture, the Black church, and Little Richard, director Sacha Jenkins' music-drenched history draws from a rich mix of archival materials and in-depth interviews with rappers, designers, and other industry insiders, such as Pharrell Williams, Damon Dash, Karl Kani, Kanye West, Nasir Jones, and André Leon Talley. The result is a passionate telling of how the reach for freedom of expression and a better life by a culture that refused to be squashed, would, through sheer originality and swagger, take over the mainstream.

 

 

SHAKE THE DUST
Executive Produced by Nasir "Nas" Jones, Directed by Adam Sjöberg
 

From executive producer and rapper Nasir “Nas” Jones and journalist-turned-filmmaker Adam Sjöberg, Shake the Dust chronicles the influence of breakdancing, exploring how it strikes a resonant chord in the slums, favelas and ghettos of the world and far beyond. Showcasing some of the most jaw-dropping breakdancing moves ever committed to film, Shake the Dust is an inspiring tribute to the uplifting power of music and movement. Director's Edition DVD includes full menu and over 30 minutes of bonus features wrapped inside a see-through Amaray case.

 

 

HEAVY: AN AMERICAN MEMOIR
By Kiese Laymon
 

In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.

 

 

HOW TO SLOWLY KILL YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN AMERICA
By Kiese Laymon
 

Author and essayist Kiese Laymon is one of the most unique, stirring, and powerful new voices in American writing. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of his essays, touching on subjects ranging from family, race, violence, and celebrity to music, writing, and coming of age in Mississippi. In this collection, Laymon deals in depth with his own personal story, which is filled with trials and reflections that illuminate under-appreciated aspects of contemporary American life. New and unexpected in contemporary American writing, Laymon’s voice mixes the colloquial with the acerbic, while sharp insights and blast-furnace heat calls to mind a black 21st-century Mark Twain. Much like Twain, Laymon's writing is steeped in controversial issues both private and public. This collection introduces Laymon as a writer who balances volatile concepts on a razor's edge and chops up much-discussed and often-misunderstood topics with his scathing humor and fresh, unexpected takes on the ongoing absurdities, frivolities, and calamities of American life.

 

 

HIPHOP ON FILM: PERFORMANCE CULTURE, URBAN SPACE, AND GENRE TRANSFORMATION IN THE 1980s
By Kimberley Monteyne
 

Early hip hop film musicals have either been expunged from cinema history or excoriated in brief passages by critics and other writers. Hip Hop on Film reclaims and reexamines productions such as Breakin' (1984), Beat Street (1984), and Krush Groove (1985) in order to illuminate Hollywood's fascinating efforts to incorporate this nascent urban culture into conventional narrative forms. Such films presented musical conventions against the backdrop of graffiti-splattered trains and abandoned tenements in urban communities of color, setting the stage for radical social and political transformations. Hip hop musicals are also part of the broader history of teen cinema, and films such as Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style (1983) are here examined alongside other contemporary youth-oriented productions. As suburban teen films banished parents and children to the margins of narrative action, hip hop musicals, by contrast, presented inclusive and unconventional filial groupings that included all members of the neighborhood. These alternative social configurations directly referenced specific urban social problems, which affected the stability of inner city families following diminished governmental assistance in communities of color during the 1980s.

 

 

THE BLACKEST JOY
By Akua Naru (Vinyl)
 

The Blackest Joy is the fourth album by 2018-19 Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow Akua Naru. It was released on April 27, 2018 via Urban Era, a label co-founded by Naru.

 

 

THE MINER'S CANARY
By Akua Naru (Vinyl)
 

The Miner's Canary is the third album by 2018-19 Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow Akua Naru. It was released on February 20, 2015 via Urban Era, a label co-founded by Naru.

 

 

NASIR
By Nas (Vinyl)
 

NASIR is the eleventh studio album by Nas. It was released on June 15, 2018 through Mass Appeal Records and Def Jam Recordings, debuting at number 5 on the Billboard 200. NASIR is executively produced by Kanye West; the fourth of the five seven-track albums he produced during the “Wyoming Sessions.” It follows the release of Pusha T’s Daytona, West’s Ye, and West’s and Kid Cudi’s Kids See Ghost, and precedes the release of Teyana Taylor’s K.T.S.E.

 

 

HIPHOP AT THE END OF THE WORLD
By Ernie Paniccioli
 

With exclusive, behind-the-scenes access, preeminent photographer Brother Ernie captures the last four decades of the evolution of hip-hop--the styles that grew from it, and the artists who shaped it. Complete with Brother Ernie's personal anecdotes of time spent with subjects, and stories behind the photographs, Hip-Hop at the End of the World shares intimate moments from the most important era of hip-hop.

After picking up a camera in the 1973 to document the graffiti art that dominated New York City, Ernest Paniccioli started his journey of whole-heartedly capturing the scene during the most fertile years of hip-hop. Always armed with a 35mm camera, he successfully photographed nearly every rapper of note since the genre's inception, making him the go-to photographer for magazines like Word Up and Rap Masters. Hip Hop at the End of the World is a carefully curated selection of photographs from Brother Ernie's extensive archives, celebrating over 40 years of swag in one of the most complete records of the most crucial movements in American music.

 

 

ZORA & ME: THE CURSED GROUND
By T.R. Simon
 

A powerful fictionalized account of Zora Neale Hurston’s childhood adventures explores the idea of collective memory and the lingering effects of slavery.

“History ain’t in a book, especially when it comes to folks like us. History is in the lives we lived and the stories we tell each other about those lives.”

When Zora Neale Hurston and her best friend, Carrie Brown, discover that the town mute can speak after all, they think they’ve uncovered a big secret. But Mr. Polk’s silence is just one piece of a larger puzzle that stretches back half a century to the tragic story of an enslaved girl named Lucia. As Zora’s curiosity leads a reluctant Carrie deeper into the mystery, the story unfolds through alternating narratives. Lucia’s struggle for freedom resonates through the years, threatening the future of America’s first incorporated black township — the hometown of author Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960). In a riveting coming-of-age tale, award-winning author T. R. Simon champions the strength of a people to stand up for justice.

 

 

CONTACT HIGH: A VISUAL HISTORY OF HIPHOP
By Vikki Tobak
 

Featuring rare outtakes from over 100 photoshoots alongside interviews and essays from industry legends, Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop takes readers on a chronological journey from old-school to alternative hip-hop and from analog to digital photography. The ultimate companion for music and photography enthusiasts, Contact High is the definitive history of hip-hop’s early days, celebrating the artists that shaped the iconic album covers, t-shirts and posters beloved by hip-hop fans today.

With essays from BILL ADLER, RHEA L. COMBS, FAB 5 FREDDY, MICHAEL GONZALES, YOUNG GURU, DJ PREMIER, and RZA

 

Check out the HARI Bibliography to learn more about our collections and materials!