Hip-Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production Mark V. Campbell (University of Toronto Scarborough) 9781789388428

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 analyzes 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. He is co-founder of the Bigger than Hip Hop radio show (1997-2015) and founder at Northside Hip Hop Archive. Mark is an Assistant Professor of Music and Culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media.

Murray Forman is among the first generation of hip-hop studies scholars, his academic research having directly
engaged various facets of hip-hop culture since the early 1990s. His books include The 'Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (2002), and (with co-editor Mark Anthony Neal) That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (1st edition 2004; 2nd edition, 2012) as well as One Night on TV is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early Television (2012). An inaugural Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow at the Hip Hop Archive & Research Institute, Harvard University (2014-2015), he is Professor of Media & Screen Studies at Northeastern University.

"The variety of voices in Hip-Hop Archives is impressive. The mix of international contexts, especially incorporating the voices of scenes that developed under oppressive regimes, are eye-opening for the central metaphor of knowledge production. Campbell and Forman truly get at the egalitarian and universal form of hip-hop, while acknowledging both African American roots and the varying reasons some founders are left out, closing with beautiful, insightful, and passionate interviews."

"This innovative and accessible collection explores hip-hop practices that attest to its longevity, impact, and value. Of course, even with the global dissemination, adoption, and adaptation of hip-hop, this is also about the politics, community, and culture of Black people as the fount of this vital practice and knowledge, underlining the necessity of recording and archiving this history. Many contributors speak from empirical experience and their role in establishing the culture and its preservation attests to book's authority and authenticity."