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Hip Hop America
- Narrated by: Brandon Dirden
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's Summary
From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between Black youth culture and the mass media.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
In 1999, a former dishwasher from Detroit named Marshall Bruce Mathers III became the most controversial and polarizing musical artist in the world. He was an outlier, a white artist creating viable art in a black medium, telling stories with such verbal dexterity, nimble wit, and shocking honesty that his music and persona resonated universally. In short, Eminem changed the landscape of pop culture as we knew it. In 2006, at the height of his fame and one of the biggest-selling artists in music history, Eminem all but disappeared.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Boring
- By Heath R. on 12-03-19
By: Anthony Bozza
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Whatever You Say I Am
- The Life and Times of Eminem
- By: Anthony Bozza
- Narrated by: Josh Hamilton
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
On assignment for his first cover story for Rolling Stone, the very first national cover story on Eminem, Anthony Bozza met a young blond kid, a rapper who would soon take the country by storm. But back in 1999, Eminem was just beginning to make waves among suburban white teenagers as his first single, "My Name Is," went into heavy rotation on MTV.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not really all about Em
- By cosand on 09-20-11
By: Anthony Bozza
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The Butterfly Effect
- How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America
- By: Marcus J. Moore
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
Kendrick Lamar is at the top of his game. The 13-time Grammy Award-winning rapper is just in his early 30s, but he’s already won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, produced and curated the soundtrack of the megahit film Black Panther, and has been named one of Time’s 100 Influential People. But what’s even more striking about the Compton-born lyricist and performer is how he’s established himself as a formidable adversary of oppression and force for change.
By: Marcus J. Moore
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White Negroes
- When Cornrows Were in Vogue...and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation
- By: Lauren Michele Jackson
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
American culture loves Blackness. From music and fashion to activism and language, Black culture constantly achieves worldwide influence. Yet, when it comes to who is allowed to thrive from Black hipness, the pioneers are usually left behind as Black aesthetics are converted into mainstream success - and White profit. Weaving together narrative, scholarship, and critique, Lauren Michele Jackson reveals why cultural appropriation - something that's become embedded in our daily lives - deserves serious attention.
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5 out of 5 stars
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White people: Don’t steal this book. Learn from it.
- By Michael Loeb on 12-03-19
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Music Is History
- By: Ahmir Khalib Thompson, Questlove
- Narrated by: Questlove
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 114
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 113
Best-selling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove harnesses his encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and his deep curiosity about history to examine America over the past 50 years. Choosing one essential track from each year, Questlove unpacks each song’s significance, revealing the pivotal role that American music plays around issues of race, gender, politics, and identity.
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3 out of 5 stars
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This would be better read than listened to
- By HomeChef on 11-05-21
By: Ahmir Khalib Thompson, and others
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Vibrate Higher
- A Rap Story
- By: Talib Kweli
- Narrated by: Talib Kweli
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 211
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 197
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Story5 out of 5 stars 194
Before Talib Kweli became a world-renowned hip hop artist, he was a Brooklyn kid who liked to cut class, spit rhymes, and wander the streets of Greenwich Village with a motley crew of artists, rappers, and DJs who found hip hop more inspiring than their textbooks (much to the chagrin of the educator parents who had given their son an Afrocentric name in hope of securing for him a more traditional sense of pride and purpose).
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5 out of 5 stars
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Dropping Gems
- By Steve B. on 02-26-21
By: Talib Kweli
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Jay-Z
- Made in America
- By: Michael Eric Dyson, Pharrell - foreword
- Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson, Nick Cannon
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,493
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,290
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,283
Jay-Z: Made in America is the fruit of Michael Eric Dyson’s decade of teaching the work of one of the greatest poets this nation has produced, as gifted a wordsmith as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and Rita Dove. But as a rapper, he’s sometimes not given the credit he deserves for just how great an artist he’s been for so long.
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3 out of 5 stars
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No Surprises for Fans
- By Tim & Ty on 12-22-19
By: Michael Eric Dyson, and others
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With Amusement for All
- A History of American Popular Culture since 1830
- By: LeRoy Ashby
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 33 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
With Amusement for All is the first comprehensive history of two centuries of mass entertainment in the United States, covering everything from the penny press to Playboy, the NBA to NASCAR, big band to hip hop, and other topics including film, comics, television, sports, and music. Paying careful attention to matters of race, gender, class, economics, and politics, LeRoy Ashby emphasizes the complex ways in which popular culture simultaneously reflects and transforms American culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So Much Fun!
- By Paul on 11-28-13
By: LeRoy Ashby
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The History of Rock & Roll
- Volume 1: 1920-1963
- By: Ed Ward
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 79
Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative - from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the Beatles prepared for their first American tour.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Author's blindspots mar this book
- By Mark Clark on 03-28-17
By: Ed Ward
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Shock and Awe
- Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century
- By: Simon Reynolds
- Narrated by: Nicholas Camm
- Length: 23 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
Shock and Awe offers a fresh, in-depth look at the glam and glitter phenomenon, placing it in the wider '70s context of social upheaval and political disillusion. It explores how artists like Lou Reed, New York Dolls, and Queen broke with the hippie generation, celebrating illusion and artifice over truth and authenticity. Probing the genre's major themes - stardom, androgyny, image, decadence, fandom, apocalypse - Reynolds tracks glam's legacy as it unfolded in subsequent decades, from '80s art-pop icons to 21st-century idols of outrage.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolute Perfection
- By Tom on 04-26-18
By: Simon Reynolds
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Pure Invention
- How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World
- By: Matt Alt
- Narrated by: Matt Alt
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 186
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 165
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 164
Japan is the forge of the world’s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon, online imageboards and emojis. But as Japan media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation, these novelties did more than entertain. They paved the way for our perplexing modern lives.
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3 out of 5 stars
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great book ruined by ending
- By Grant Holder on 06-07-22
By: Matt Alt
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Can't Stop Won't Stop
- A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
- By: Jeff Chang
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 19 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 110
Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not About Hip Hop Music
- By A. Yerkes on 09-06-19
By: Jeff Chang
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On the Shoulders of Giants
- My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance
- By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Raymond Obstfeld
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
In On the Shoulders of Giants, indomitable basketball star and best-selling author and historian Kareem Abdul-Jabbar invites listeners on an extraordinarily personal journey back to his birthplace. He leads us through one of the greatest political, cultural, literary, and artistic movements in our history, revealing the tremendous impact the Harlem Renaissance had on both American culture and his own life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best of both worlds
- By Marianne on 10-06-08
By: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and others
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Liberation Through Hearing
- By: Richard M. Russell
- Narrated by: Richard Russell
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story5 out of 5 stars 21
For almost 30 years as label boss, producer and talent conductor at XL Recordings, Richard Russell has discovered, shaped and nurtured the artists who have rewritten the musical dictionary of the 21st century, artists like The Prodigy, The White Stripes, Adele, M.I.A., Dizzee Rascal and Giggs. Growing up in north London in thrall to the raw energy of 80's US hip hop, Russell emerged as one part of rave outfit Kicks Like a Mule in 1991 at a moment when new technology enabled a truly punk aesthetic on the fledgling free party scene.
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5 out of 5 stars
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F@ckin’ Brilliant!
- By Robert on 08-24-20
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Otis Redding
- An Unfinished Life
- By: Jonathan Gould
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
In Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life, Jonathan Gould finally does justice to Redding's incomparable musical artistry, drawing on exhaustive research, the cooperation of the Redding family, and previously unavailable sources of information to present the first comprehensive portrait of the singer's background, his upbringing, and his professional career.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a brilliant musical history lesson
- By John M. Twomey on 03-11-21
By: Jonathan Gould
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Rock Me on the Water
- 1974 - The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics
- By: Ronald Brownstein
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 255
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 212
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 211
Los Angeles in 1974 exerted more influence over popular culture than any other city in America. Rock Me on the Water traces the confluence of movies, music, television, and politics in Los Angeles month by month through that transformative, magical year. Ronald Brownstein reveals how 1974 represented a confrontation between a massive younger generation intent on change, and a political order rooted in the status quo. Brownstein shows how the voices resistant to change may win the political battle for a time, but they cannot hold back the future.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Poor Quality
- By Victoria Q. on 04-02-21