The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture: Beneath the Surface [Hardcover]

The underground is a multi-faceted concept in African American culture. Peterson uses Richard Wright, KRS-One, Thelonius Monk, and the tradition of the Underground Railroad to explore the manifestations and the attributes of the underground within the context of a more panoramic picture of African American expressivity within hip-hop.1. Roots Rhymes and Rhizomes: An Introduction to the Concepts of the Underground 2. Verbal and Spatial Masks in the Underground 3. The Deep Structure of Black Identity in American Literature 4. Defining an Underground at the Intersections of Hip-Hop and African American Culture 5. A Cipher of the Underground in Black Literary Culture 6. Tears for the Departed: See(k)ing a Black Visual Underground in Hip-Hop and African American Cultures 7. The Depth of the Hole: Intertextuality and Tom Waits's "Way Down in the Hole." Epilogue: The Ironies Underground: Revolution, Critical Memory, and Black Nostalgia

The Hip-Hop Underground is an exciting and important read that leaves, as any good text does, readers with many questions and a taste for further review of the pieces of culture that those of us in black communities remember, expunge, and hold forever dear. (Andreana Clay, Journal of American History, Vol. 103, 2016)

By applying the interpretive sensibility of hip-hop culture to some of the most significant questions in contemporary arts and letters, James Braxton Peterson challenges received wisdom and replaces it with a more sophisticated, more practical, and ultimately more honest picture of America, itself. The Hip-Hop Underground and African American Culture firmly establishes Peterson's place in the vanguard of modern cultural scholarship. - Joseph Schloss, author of Making Beats: The Art of Sample Based Hip-Hop