Books

Through essays by some of hip-hop’s most interesting thinkers, theorists, journalists, writers, emcees, and DJs, Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism (Strange Attractor/MIT Press, 2021) is a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture, as well as what that means for the culture at large. Introduced by Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, this book explores these temporalities, possible pasts, and further futures from a diverse, multi-layered, interdisciplinary perspective. See the full Table of Contents below.

Follow for Now, Vol. 2: More Interviews with Friends and Heroes (Punctum Books, 2021) picks up and pushes beyond the first volume with a more diverse set of interviewees and interviews. The intent of the first collection was to bring together voices from across disciplines, to cross-pollinate ideas. At the time, social media wasn’t crisscrossing all of the lines and categories held a bit more sway. Volume 2 aims not only to pick up where Follow for Now left off but also to tighten its approach with deeper subjects and more timely interviews. Featuring conversations with thinkers like Carla Nappi, Rita Raley, Dominic Pettman, Ian Bogost, Mark Dery, Douglas Rushkoff, and Dave Allen, and musicians like Tyler, The Creator, Matthew Shipp, Sean Price, Rammellzee, and Sadat X, as well as writers like Ytasha L. Womack, Chris Kraus, Pat Cadigan, Bob Stephenson, Simon Critchley, Simon Reynolds, Malcolm Gladwell, and William Gibson, Follow for Now, Vol. 2 is another critical cross-section of the now. See the full Table of Contents below.

My chapter in Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production (Punctum Books, 2019) edited by Alfie Bown and Dan Bristow, is called "The Meme is Dead, Long Live the Meme." My essay aims to kill the Dawkinsian meme by showing that it has been supplanted by the internet meme. It hints at more than that, but that's the big idea. The book also includes pieces by Dominic Pettman, Scott and McKenzie Wark, Yvette Granata, Patricia Reed, and several more, including the editors.

My new book, Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future, uses the concerns and conceits of cyberpunk to thoughtfully remap hip-hop’s spread from around the way to around the world. Its central argument is that the cultural practices of hip-hop culture are the blueprint to the 21st century, and that an understanding of its appropriation of language and technology is an understanding of the now. This book is about is the many ways that the foundations of hip-hop appropriation—allusions and creative language use, as well as technology and sampling—inform the new millennium. Get yours: Repeater / IndieBound / Amazon

I contributed several entries to the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop Culture (St. James, Press, 2018), including ones on Gangsta Rap, Horrorcore, Rap Metal, and the hip-hop scene in my beloved Pacific Northwest. This massive, 500-page encyclopedia covers all aspects of hip-hop culture and is essential for libraries, institutions, and researchers alike.

I have an essay in The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (Routledge, 2014) collection, co-edited by Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, and xtine burrough. They describe my chapter (“The End of an Aura: Nostalgia, Memory, and the Haunting of Hip-hop”) like this: “Christopher’s text by and large comprises a series of quotes by divergent authors, ranging from cyberpunk to hip-hop, which take the shape of an intertextual collage that turns into a case study of authenticity in the time of constant digital reproduction.” I was more than glad to have an opportunity to combine sampling, mediated memories, Walter Benjamin, and cyberpunk.

I have an essay in the collection The First Time I Heard My Bloody Valentine (Rosecliff Press, 2014) edited by Scott Heim, which recounts the first time I saw them live (opening for Dinosaur Jr. in 1992). Other people in the book include folks like Bob Mould, members of Slowdive, Pale Saints, God is an Astronaut, Maps, Failure, and dälek. Other artists in the series include David Bowie, Kate Bush, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, Joy Division/New Order, Abba, Kraftwerk, R.E.M., The Pixies, and Roxy Music, with more in the works.

I was Assistant Editor to Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky on his essay collection, Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (MIT Press, 2008). Contributors include Erik Davis, Manuel De Landa, Cory Doctorow, Chuck D, Brian Eno, Dick Hebdige, Vijay Iyer, Jaron Lanier, Jonathan Lethem, Moby, Steve Reich, Simon Reynolds, Scanner a.k.a. Robin Rimbaud, Bruce Sterling, Lucy Walker, and Saul Williams, among many others. David Byrne says Sound Unbound is “a nice antidote to the usual way music and the history of music is often categorized into high/low, pop/classical, or black/white,” Branford Marsalis says, “Sound Unbound is an excellent reference on art–in the popular context–in the twenty-first century”; and Laurie Anderson agrees, saying, “What a marvelous collection! … I love this book!”

I was a contributing writer to Freestylin’ Magazine‘s reunion book, Generation F (Wizard/Endo, 2008). Thanks to Mark Lewman, I got to reminisce about my early days of riding BMX and making my zines “The Unexplained” and “Front Wheel Drive,” as well as what I learned doing them with fellow travelers Luke Strahota, Dave Fox, Todd Sines, The Swami, and Bill Keaggy, among others. It was an honor and a rare treat. You can flip through the book virtually here.

Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes is an anthology of forty-three interviews with minds of all kinds. Published through my own Well-Red Bear imprint, Follow for Now is an eclectic, independently-minded snapshot of the intellectual landscape at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Disinformation named it “among the most important books published in 2007,” Erik Davis called it “a crisp and substantial remix of the major memes of the last decade or so,” and David Barker wrote that it and I were “about new ideas and trying to figure things out. I think he is about trying to make connections between things that no one else has connected.” Follow for Now includes an extensive bibliography, a full index, and weighs in at nearly 400 pages. Find out more, and order yours at the book’s own site, IndieBound, or Amazon.

I have a little piece in Disinformation‘s first book, You Are Being Lied To (Disinformation, 2001), a compendium of dissent, which also includes essays by Noam Chomsky, Howard Bloom, Douglas Rushkoff, Howard Zinn, Russ Kick, Richard Metzger, Alex Burns, and Mark Pesce, among many others. I was a part of a virtual round table discussion about when and where we are being lied to. It was the first of many such germinal books from The Disinformation Company, and I’m proud to have had a small part in it.