Hip Hop Raised Me

Hip Hop Raised Me® is the definitive volume on the essence, experience and energy that is hip hop, and its massive and enduring impact over the last 40 years. It’s packed with contact sheets, outtakes and glory shots of artists, collectives and fans off-guard and in action from iconic photographers including Martha Cooper, Henry Chalfant, Eddie Otchere, Normski, Janette Beckman, Chi Modu, Nabil Elderkin and Mark Humphrey, as well as photographs of hip-hop ephemera and vinyl courtesy of specialist collectors. With the help of his definitive catalogue of interviews with hip-hop artists from the 1990s to today, conducted at key moments in their careers and including Jay-Z, Kanye West, Eminem, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Drake, Nicki Minaj, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan, DJ Semtex examines the crucial role of hip hop in society. He reflects on the huge influence it has had on his own life and the lives of many others, providing inspiration and purpose to generation after generation of disaffected youths. Taking a thematic approach and featuring seminal interviews he has conducted with key hip-hop artists, Semtex traces the characteristics and influence of hip hop from its origins in the early 1970s with DJ Kool Herc’s block parties in the South Bronx, through its breakthrough to the mainstream and advent of gangsta rap in the late 1980s, with artists such as Run DMC, Public Enemy and Ice T, to the impact of contemporary artists and the global industry that is hip hop today. Hip-hop artists have gone from hustlers to successful entrepreneurs and businessmen. Hip hop has come of age. Foreword by Chuck D.