Marginalia – Roy Christopher

November 27, 2018

Preorder My New Book: Dead Precedents

I am stoked to announce that my new book, Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future, is now available for preorder! Dead Precedents 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.

Here’s the cover:

Here are some nice words about it:

“Hip-hop has been around for well over forty years now, and in many ways, it has been absorbed into mainstream culture. Roy Christopher argues, however, that its radical practices still contain untapped possibilities. Dead Precedents shows how this cultural movement opens new hope for the future by changing our understanding of the past.” — Steven Shaviro, author of Discognition

“It’s exciting to be quoted so close to the beginning of a book with so much energy and passion in it… a lively screed.”
— Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren

“This book dives into the essential nature of hip-hop re-invention and cyberpunk’s relationship to our web2.0 construct. Roy extracts detail after detail on these two topics and gracefully weaves together a clear and fresh perspective of these genres and their impact 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 comes out March 19, 2019 on Repeater Books.

Preorder yours now from IndieBound or Amazon!

Thank you!

September 28, 2018

Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production

I am proud to announce that I have a chapter in Alfie Bown and Dan Bristow’s collection, Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, coming soon from Punctum Books. The book also includes pieces by Angela Nagle, Dominic Pettman, Scott and McKenzie Wark, the editors, and many others. Here is the cover:

My essay, “The Memes is Dead, Long Live the Meme,” argues that Dawkinsian memes have been supplanted by internet memes and are therefore dead. Here’s an excerpt:

If memes are indeed analogous to genes, then the real power of memes is that they add up to something. I’m no biologist, but genes are bits of code that become chromosomes, and chromosomes make up DNA, which then becomes organisms. Plants, animals, viruses, and all life that we know about is built from them.24 “The meme has done its work by assembling massive social systems, the new rulers of this earth,” writes Howard Bloom. “Together, the meme and the human superorganism have become the universe’s latest device for creating fresh forms of order.”

Perhaps that was true two decades ago, when Bloom wrote that, or three decades ago when Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, but the biases and affordances of memes’ attendant infrastructure has changed dramatically since. After all, memes have to replicate, and in order to replicate, they have to move from one mind to another via some conduit. This could be the oral culture of yore, but it’s more and more likely to be technologically enabled. Broadcast media supports one kind of memetic propagation. The internet, however, supports quite another.

Get your copy here.

Many thanks to Alfie Bown, Dan Bristow, and everyone at Punctum.

March 17, 2018

St. James Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop Culture

I contributed several entries to the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop Culture, including ones on Gangsta Rap, Horrorcore, Rap Metal, and 1500 words on the hip-hop scene in my beloved Pacific Northwest, where I first lived from 1993 to 1998 (and three other times after). Here’s an excerpt from the latter:

Underground Hip Hop nationwide saw a resurgence during the mid-to-late 1990s. Having remained primarily underground since its inception, Pacific Northwest Hip Hop soldiered on… Wordsayer (Jonathan Moore, 1969-2017) formed the group Source of Labor in 1989. After moving back to Seattle in 1992, Moore, along with members of Source of Labor and soul group Beyond Reality, formed Jasiri Media group. “The artists in Jasiri forced the Seattle hip hop scene to move from the grandiose, self-aggrandizing rap of Sir Mix-a-Lot to a more educated, meaningful form of musical expression” (Key, 2010, p. 294). Fighting the Teen Dance Ordinance, which had all but killed all-ages events in Seattle since its implementation in 1985, Moore promoted “Sure Shot Sundays” in 1999 to open up possibilities for local youth to experience and perform Hip Hop. He passed away at age 47 in March of 2017 of kidney failure.

Labels like Loose Groove, Do the Math, Impact Entertainment, and Conception Records released definitive compilations showing and proving that the Pacific Northwest’s underground was rife with intriguing and engaging Hip Hop artists in the 1990s. 14 Fathoms Deep: Seattle Hip Hop Compilation (Loose Groove 1997) featured Source of Labor, the Ghetto Children, and Prose and Concepts. Do the Math (Tribal Music, 1998) featured Wordsayer, DJs Topspin, B-Self, and Vitamin D, and three tracks by the Ghetto Children. Classic Elements (Impact Entertainment, 1998) boasted Ghetto Children’s love letter to classic Hip Hop, “Hip Hop Was?” Walkman Rotation (Conception Records, 1998) was a DJ-blended mixtape, a form popular in the underground at the time, mixed by J-Rocc of the Beat Junkies. Other local DJs include Vitamin D, B-Mello, and Topspin.

This massive, 500-page encyclopedia of all-thing hip-hop is out now!

Reference:

Key, Rachel. 2010. From the SEA to the PDX: Northwest Hip Hop in the I-5 Corridor. In Mickey Hess (Ed.), Hip-Hop America: A Regional Guide. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, pp. 287-314.

October 12, 2017

Journal of Hip-Hop Studies Publication

I am happy to announce a contribution to the Journal of Hip-Hop Studies (Volume 4, Issue 1). I wrote a review of André Sirois’ book Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology (Peter Lang, 2016).

Sirois’ book is not only a great fit for coverage in this particular journal, but it’s also one of the many pieces of the multiple puzzles I’m trying to assemble in the research for one of my own books-in-progress. Here’s an excerpt of my JHHS review:

André Sirois, a.k.a. DJ Food Stamp, the man behind the turntables on mixtapes by some of my favorite emcees, including Sean Price, Planet Asia, Common, M.F. Doom, and Atmosphere, grasps that tonal history [of turntablism]. In his book Hip-Hop DJs and the Evolution of Technology: Cultural Exchange, Innovation, and Democratization, Sirois argues that in its complexity, hip-hop culture is itself a new media culture. Current so-called ‘new media’ can be traced back from smartphones and the internet to landlines and the telegraph. Following hip-hop DJs’ hacking of recording technology and playback from Grandmaster Flash’s mixer toggle-switch and Grand Wizard Theodore’s manual scratch to digital sampling and Serato, Sirois historicizes the technical evolution and cultural practices of Hip Hop DJs as new media. Emphasizing the network mentality present from the beginning of Hip Hop, he employs an open source metaphor to characterize the culture. ‘From my perspective,’ Sirois writes, ‘what these South Bronx DJs started was the foundation of the new media ideology present in popular culture today: sample, mix, burn, share, and repeat’ (XVII).

You can read the full issue and my review on their site. You can also download it [.pdf], just my review [.pdf], and all previous issues as the JHHS is a free-to-access, electronic journal.

Many thanks to the homie Travis Harris for dropping this opportunity on me.

September 12, 2017

A Book that Changed My Life

I am proud to announce that I was recently a part of 9 Muses Photo’s A Book that Changed My Life project, “an open series focused on people and the books that changed their lives.” Dennis Sevilla took this photo of me with the book that changed my life:

Here’s my story:

James Gleick’s Chaos (Viking, 1987) changed my life. Quite simply, I was on a path, and after reading it I was on a different one. I was a music journalist. When I came across Chaos, I had spent a lot of time and effort becoming a music journalist. The book is about chaos theory. It’s about the disparate scientists who were working between the lines of different disciplines. It’s about sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It’s about how paths can change unexpectedly. Reading Chaos blew my head wide open. I was suddenly aware of so many other possibilities. I quit my job and went back to school. Now I teach college and write my own books. I still write about music, but now I write about a lot of other things. Also, after a few false starts with books that didn’t stick, Chaos turned me into a reader. I starting reading it 20 years ago this month, and I haven’t stopped reading since.

Having recently been interviewed about this book, I tried to focus on the fact that Chaos turned me into a reader. It’s the one that stuck.

You can see the rest of the series here. Many thanks to Dennis for including me in this project, my dude Tim Baker for hipping me to it, and of course to James Gleick.

August 19, 2017

dälek Logo Design

Sometimes they take a while to come together… Unlike my HKRB logo, which came together overnight, this one’s been brewing for over a year. dälek is one of my all-time favorite groups, and I’ve known them for a minute now. Though unsolicited, it was an honor to finally put something like this together.

As I often do, I started with similarities in the first and last letters. Though the D and the K can be drawn structurally similar, the going was rough at first. I had to let it marinate.

When I came back to it the other day, I found a few new ways to bring the letters together.

Hollowing them out gave it a bit more life, but it still wasn’t quite there.

Much like my Alaska logo, once I found the X in the background, I knew I had it.

I tried a few more iterations after this one, attempting to make the D a bit stronger, but I like this one the best. I even went back to the very straight, less organic style I started with, and this is still the best version. It’s live, it’s dangerous, it’s like the band it represents.

June 2, 2016

Doug Stanhope’s Digging Up Mother on Splitsider

I have a bit about Doug Stanhope‘s new memoir, Digging Up Mother: A Love Story (Da Capo, 2016) over on Splitsider today.

Here’s an excerpt:

The book, as it states right on the cover, is a love story and a memoir. If you want to know what he’s done since his last DVD or since the last time you saw him live, check Youtube. Most of this book happens before that was even possible. Many a buried back-story is unearthed here: Doug’s earliest days as a road comic, when he actually lived on the road – in his car. His stint as an innovative, master cold-calling telemarketer. One-nighters, hell gigs, middling, featuring, telling jokes to the elderly on a tour bus, and “making it” in all of its elusive meanings. Many days and nights of performances, beverages, and substances. There’s quite a lot of the latter, and Mother is there for every phase, step, and bump along the way.

Read the full story here.

Many thanks to Doug, Bonnie, Bingo, Chaille, Brett, and the whole Unbookables/Panamint Lifers crew, as well as Adam Frucci at Splitsider.

April 26, 2016

“Swarm Cities” on How We Get to Next

Very happy to announce my first piece for Steven Johnson‘s How We Get to Next. Their theme for April is “Metropolis,” so I did a little piece about what I’ve termed “swarm cities.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Our capital-driven, networked societies produce, more than anything else, ephemeral things — that is, things that are built, not to last, but to disappear and be displaced by newer versions of themselves. As David Byrne wrote in his Bicycle Diaries, cities “are physical manifestations of our deepest beliefs and our often unconscious thoughts, not so much as individuals, but as the social animals we are.” If our collective consciousness is flitting and flickering from one thing to the next, so shall our cities follow suit.

They even used my sketch of Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” sculpture here in Chicago:

Many thanks to Ian Steadman and everyone at How We Get to Next, Read the whole piece here.

March 12, 2016

HKRB Logo Design

My friend Alfie Bown runs the Hong Kong Review of Books. In addition to running some of my illustrations, he recently asked me to come up with a new logo for the site. I woke up a few days later with an idea.

Somehow the shapes in the negative space of the letters just fell into place.

The B was the only part I struggled with since it looked more like an 8 in my original sketches. The other letters seemed obvious. I hinted at more of a B-shape by having the background outline bisect the circles. It’s still the weak point in the legibility of the logo but also possibly the most visually interesting part.

Here it is with some color:

And then I did one more iteration for good measure:

This is only my second requested logo design (Rapper friend Alaska was the first). Thanks to Alfie Bown for the opportunity.