From Bomba To Hip Hop

Flores investigates the historical experience of Puerto Ricans in New York, reflecting their varied areas of cultural expression in the diaspora against the background of contemporary debates in Puerto Rico and recent developments in cultural theory. Close studies of urban space and performance, popular musical styles, and Nuyorican literature highlight the complexities and contradictions of Latino identity.

New York Puerto Ricans have been an integral part of hip hop culture since day one: from 1970s pioneers like Rock Steady Crew's Jo-Jo, to recent rap mega-stars Big Punisher (R.I.P.) and Angie Martinez. Yet, Puerto Rican participation and contributions to hip hop have often been downplayed and even completely ignored. And when their presence has been acknowledged, it has frequently been misinterpreted as a defection from Puerto Rican culture and identity, into the African American camp. But nothing could be further from the truth. Through hip hop, Puerto Ricans have simply stretched the boundaries of Puerto Ricanness and latinidad.

A hybrid of reggae and rap, reggaeton is a music with Spanish-language lyrics and Caribbean aesthetics that has taken Latin America, the United States, and the world by storm. Superstars—including Daddy Yankee, Don Omar, and Ivy Queen—garner international attention, while aspiring performers use digital technologies to create and circulate their own tracks. Reggaeton brings together critical assessments of this wildly popular genre. Journalists, scholars, and artists delve into reggaeton’s local roots and its transnational dissemination; they parse the genre’s aesthetics, particularly in relation to those of hip-hop; and they explore the debates about race, nation, gender, and sexuality generated by the music and its associated cultural practices, from dance to fashion. The collection opens with an in-depth exploration of the social and sonic currents that coalesced into reggaeton in Puerto Rico during the 1990s. Contributors consider reggaeton in relation to that island, Panama, Jamaica, and New York; Cuban society, Miami’s hip-hop scene, and Dominican identity; and other genres including reggae en español, underground, and dancehall reggae. The reggaeton artist Tego Calderón provides a powerful indictment of racism in Latin America, while the hip-hop artist Welmo Romero Joseph discusses the development of reggaeton in Puerto Rico and his refusal to embrace the upstart genre. The collection features interviews with the DJ/rapper El General and the reggae performer Renato, as well as a translation of “Chamaco’s Corner,” the poem that served as the introduction to Daddy Yankee’s debut album. Among the volume’s striking images are photographs from Miguel Luciano’s series Pure Plantainum, a meditation on identity politics in the bling-bling era, and photos taken by the reggaeton videographer Kacho López during the making of the documentary Bling’d: Blood, Diamonds, and Hip-Hop. Contributors. Geoff Baker, Tego Calderón, Carolina Caycedo, Jose Davila, Jan Fairley, Juan Flores, Gallego (José Raúl González), Félix Jiménez, Kacho López, Miguel Luciano, Wayne Marshall, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Alfredo Nieves Moreno, Ifeoma C. K. Nwankwo, Deborah Pacini Hernandez, Raquel Z. Rivera, Welmo Romero Joseph, Christoph Twickel, Alexandra T. Vazquez

This cutting-edge book, located at the intersection of sociolinguistics and Hip Hop Studies, brings together for the first time an international group of researchers who study Hip Hop textually, ethnographically, socially, aesthetically, and linguistically. It is the harvest of dialogue between these two separate yet interconnected areas of study. A missing gap in the Hip Hop literature is the centrality and an in-depth analysis of the very medium that is used to express and perform Hip Hop -- language. Global Linguistic Flows fills this gap.

DIVA lyrical narration and examination of the life and death of Rafael Cortijo, an Afro-Caribbean drummer whose group--Cortijo y su Combo--influenced Puerto Rican society and music./div

A one-of-a kind survey of rap and hip hop history from 1973 to today by Chuck D, arguably the most influential rapper in the world. In the more than 40 years since the days of DJ Kool Herc and "Rapper's Delight," hip hop and rap have become a billion-dollar worldwide phenomenon. Yet there is no definitive history of the genre-until now. Based on Chuck's long-running show on Rapstation.com, this massive compendium details the most iconic moments and influential songs in the genre's recorded history, from Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'" to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to Kendrick Lamar's ground-breaking verse on "Control." Also included are key events in hip hop history, from Grandmaster Flash's first scratch through Tupac's holographic appearance at Coachella. Throughout, Chuck offers his insider's perspective on the chart toppers and show stoppers as he lived it. Illustrating the pages are more than 100 portraits from the talented artists specializing in hip hop.

From graffitera crews in Costa Rica and Nicaragua to Mexican Hip Hop in New York to Aymara rap in Boliva, La Verdad: An International Dialogue on Hip Hop Latinidades explores the global explosion of hip hop, confounding stereotypes of Latinidad and who and how hip hop is consumed, lived and performed.

New York is the capital of mambo and a global factory of latinidad. This book covers the topic in all its multifaceted aspects, from Jim Crow baseball in the first half of the twentieth century to hip hop and ethno-racial politics, from Latinas and labor unions to advertising and Latino culture, from Cuban cuisine to the language of signs in New York City. Together the articles map out the main conceptions of Latino identity as well as the historical process of Latinization of New York. Mambo Montage is both a way of imagining latinidad and an angle of vision on the city.

Spanning 25 years of serious writing on hip-hop by noted scholars and mainstream journalists, this comprehensive anthology includes observations and critiques on groundbreaking hip-hop recordings.

Since the invasion and colonization of Puerto Rico in 1898, all Puerto Ricans are both American citizens and colonial subjects by birth according to international law. Over a third of this population currently lives in the continental U.S. forming one of the nation's most significant "minority" communities. Yet no complete study of mainland Puerto Rican—or Boricua—literature has been written. Until now. Boricua Literature is the first literary history of the Puerto Rican colonial diaspora. The result of a decade of research in archives and special collections in the Caribbean and in the U.S., Lisa Sánchez González argues that the writing of the Puerto Rican diaspora should be considered an integral field of study. Covering 100 years of Boricua literary history, each chapter looks at the single writer or group of writers who are most emblematic of their respective generation, from William Carlos Williams and Arturo Schomburg, to latina feminism and salsa music. The story of an American community of color, Boricua Literature is also about contemporary critical race and gender studies. Unlike virtually all studies concerning mainland Puerto Rican writing, Lisa Sánchez González is less concerned with "cultural identity" than with unearthing a substantive cultural intellectual history. The first explicitly literary historical analysis of Boricua Literature, this definitive study proposes a new and discreet area of literary historical research in American studies.