The Rap Year Book

By Shea Serrano, Arturo Torres (illustrator),

Book cover of The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since 1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed

Book description

The Rap Year Book takes readers on a journey that begins in 1979, widely regarded as the moment rap as a genre became recognised as part of music's landscape and comes right up to the present. Shea Serrano deftly pays homage to the most important song of each year. Serrano…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Rap Year Book as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Reading Shea Serrano is like kicking back with an old friend... who can expertly trace rap's evolution from the Bronx and "Rapper's Delight" to the LA vs. NY rivalries, to the rise of the South, the bling era, the blog era, and up to the present (or at least 2014, when this book was published).

Equal parts conversational and cunning, this book is a master class in voice from which I still pull inspiration. Whenever I'm thinking, "How could this thing I'm writing sound less like an online encyclopedia article but still harness all these arcane details I want to…

From Chris' list on music and New York City.

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