WRITING
I have written and edited several books and chapters about music, media, and culture.
Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future
My book, Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future, is out on Repeater Books! Emerging alongside cyberpunk in the 1980s, the hallmarks of hip-hop — allusion, self-reference, the use of new technologies, sampling, the cutting and splicing of language and sound — would come to define the culture of the new millennium. Taking in the ground-breaking work of DJs and MCs, alongside science-fiction writers like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, as well as graffiti and DIY culture, Dead Precedents is a counter-cultural history of the twenty-first century, showcasing hip-hop’s role in the creation of the world in which we now live.
“This book extracts detail after detail on hip-hop and cyberpunk and gracefully weaves together a clear and fresh perspective on where we are today. Such a refreshing nonstop read!” — M. Sayyid, Antipop Consortium
“An intellectual hornet’s nest, buzzing with ideas. The canon of hip-hop crit welcomes a bold new entry, calculated to blow the doors off the usual moribund academic fare. Theory finds its own uses for things.”— Mark Dery, author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
“Dead Precedents shows how hip-hop culture opens new hope for the future by changing our understanding of the past.” — Steven Shaviro, author of Discognition
“A book with so much energy and passion in it… a lively screed.” — Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren
“Written with the passion of a zine-publishing fan and the acuity of an academic.”
— Dan Hancox, The Guardian
PRESS:
- Okay Player: The 15 Best Hip-Hop Books Published in 2019 [by John Morrison]
- The Guardian: Dead Precedents by Roy Christopher Review: How Hip-hop and Cyberpunk Hijacked Culture [by Dan Hancox]
- Concrete Islands: Unmoored from the Flow of Time: Roy Christopher’s Dead Precedents [by Stewart Gardiner]
- PopMatters: Dead Precedents Explores How Hip-Hop Created the Future [by Mark Reynolds]
- Two Beard Gaming: Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future – Book Review [by Reviews by Hughes]
- The New Inquiry: Death by Association [by Aida Amoako]
- Lit Hub: Literary Allusion Runs Deep Through the History of Hip-Hop [a book-adjacent essay by Roy Christopher]
- The Quietus: Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Hacked The Future [exclusive excerpt from the book by Roy Christopher]
- The Mantle: Dead Precedents: The Lost Tapes [book background and supplementary music, picked by Roy Christopher]
Get your copy now from Repeater, IndieBound, or Amazon!
INTERVIEWS:
- AllMusicBooks’ Deep Dive podcast [by Steve Jurgensmeyer, 06/09/2020]
- SCAD District: Roy Christopher and the Ubiquity of Writing [by Colleen Miller, 02/06/2020]
- Afternoon Live interview on KATU-TV (abc) in Portland, Oregon [05/16/2019]: