Hip-Hop Archives. This item is unavailable.Hip-Hop Archives

This book focuses on the culture and politics involved in building hip-hop archives. It addresses practical aspects, including methods of accumulation, curation, preservation and digitization and critically analyses institutional power, community engagement, urban economics, public access and the ideological implications associated with hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values.

The collection of essays are divided into four sections: Doing the Knowledge, Challenging Archival Forms, Beyond the Nation and Institutional Alignments: Interviews and Reflections. The book covers a range of official, unofficial, DIY and community archives and collections and features chapters by scholar practitioners, educators and curators.

A wide swath of hip-hop culture is featured in the book, including a focus on dance, graffiti, clothing and battle rap. The range of authors and their topics span countries in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and North America.

Mark V. Campbell is a DJ, scholar and curator. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations, hip hop archives and notions of the human. He is assistant professor of music and culture and director of the Afrosonic Innovation Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Contact: University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, ON m1c 1A4, Canada.

Murray Forman has engaged in research about hip hop culture for over thirty years, helping to forge the foundations of hip hop studies. He is author of The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press, 2002) and co-editor of three editions of That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Routledge, 1st ed., 2004; 2nd ed., 2011; 3rd ed., 2023). In 2023, he co-edited Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production (Intellect, 2025).

Contact: Professor Emeritus, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.