Cornell Hip Hop Collection
Cornell University Library
Cornell University Library's archive of more than 250,000 hip-hop items, including recordings, photographs by Joe Conzo Jr. and others, and over 1,000 digitized Bronx party flyers from 1976–1984 with performers, venues and admission prices.
More resources on Hip-Hop History & Culture
DJ Premier – Red Bull Music Academy Lecture (Toronto 2007)
Full transcript and audio of a long interview with DJ Premier of Gang Starr about his beat-making methods, sampling, and working with Nas, Jay-Z and other New York artists in the 1990s.
Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop
Ethnographic study of sample-based hip-hop producers, drawn from interviews and fieldwork. Covers crate digging, chopping and looping, the ethics of sampling, and the aesthetic standards producers use to judge beats.
Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop
Reads rap lyrics as poetry, covering rhythm, rhyme, wordplay, style and storytelling with close readings of verses from Rakim to Jay-Z. A study of lyrical craft rather than a history of the genre.
Yes Yes Y'all: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop's First Decade
Oral history of hip-hop's first decade (about 1974–1984) in the words of Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and other DJs, MCs and dancers. Includes Charlie Ahearn's photographs and period flyers from the Bronx party era. First-person testimony from the founders is the closest thing to a primary source on the origins; covers the period more closely than Chang's broader history.
Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
Narrative history of hip-hop from Jamaican sound systems and the 1970s South Bronx through the 1990s. Built on original interviews with DJs, b-boys, graffiti writers, rappers and activists, and places the music inside its political and economic setting. The most-cited single-volume history of hip-hop culture, based on primary interviews rather than secondary summaries.