Academic essays reflect on the 1994 album Illmatic by Nasir "Nas" Jones, covering topics ranging from jazz history to gender.

At the age of nineteen, Nasir "Nas" Jones began recording tracks for his debut album -- and changed the music world forever. Released in 1994, Illmatic was hail

Acclaimed for his writings on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as his passionate defense of black youth culture, Michael Eric Dyson has emerged as

Linking discontent and unrest in Harlem and Los Angeles to anticolonial revolution in Algeria, Egypt, and elsewhere, Black leaders in the United States have fre

In this first musicological history of rap music, Cheryl L. Keyes traces the genre's history from its roots in West African bardic traditions, the Jamaican danc