1. For a discussion of the malleability of Black Power, see Kevin Ovenden, Malcolm X: Socialism and Black Nationalism (London: Bookmarks, 1992), 51-56.

2. See Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), chapter 6; Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: St Martin's Press, 1996), chapter 15; Craig Werner, A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America (New York: Penguin Books, 1998), sections 37-38.

3. See Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: South End Press, 2000).

4. See Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 27-34.

5. The Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight (Sugar Hill Records, 1979) is generally remembered as the first recording to bring hip-hop music before a wider public; it was preceded, however, by the release one week earlier of the Fatback Band's King Tim III (Personality Jock).

6. For an account of hip-hop with special attention to its business aspect, see Nelson George, Hip Hop America (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).

7. Basquiat was the New York graffiti artist "SAMO"; his canvases, however, are not graffiti art. For a sensitive and insightful discussion of Basquiat's complex relations with the white art world, see bell hooks, "Altars of Sacrifice: Re-membering Basquiat," in Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (New York: Routledge, 1994).

8. Krims, Bibliography. The exception is David Toop, The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip-Hop (Boston: South End Press, 1984).

9. Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), chapter 8.

10. Rose, Black Noise.

11. See hooks, 118. The expurgated interview was published in SPIN (April 1993). The complete interview was eventually published as "Ice Cube Culture: A Shared Passion for Speaking Truth" in hooks, 125-43.

12. Russell A. Potter, Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995). The analyses included songs by radical black nationalists, Paris, socialists, The Coup, and (by way of contrast) the more commercial b-girl crew, Salt 'n' Pepa.

13. William E. Perkins, Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).

14. Robin D.G. Kelley, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998).

15. Greg Dimitriadis, Performing Identity/Performing Culture: Hip Hop as Text, Pedagogy and Lived Practice (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

16. Tony Mitchell, Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, forthcoming).

17. Raymond Williams, in Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), offers a useful framework here: cultural practices can be emergent or residual, and in either case can function to reinforce the dominant culture, provide an alternative to it, or oppose it. Different communities may, of course, assign different functions to the emergent culture of hip-hop: gangsta rap may be seen as alternative and sometimes oppositional by its direct producers; as oppositional by white conservative fomenters of moral panic over rap; but the CEOs of the record companies that distribute it may see it ultimately as reinforcing the dominant culture by confirming stereotypes of criminality and entrenching misogyny.

18. See bell hooks's incisive analysis, "Gangsta Culture--Sexism and Misogyny," in hooks, 115-23.

19. The comment, "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?," was taken out of context, and the fact that it was a common joke in black communities passed over. Clinton's immediate concern was to avoid being Hortonized by George Bush Sr., and Sistah Souljah's comment merely a convenient pretext.

20. KRS-One in Boogie Down Productions' "The Bridge is Over" from the celebrated and influential album, Criminal Minded (B-Boy Records, 1987).

21. Record companies' desire for star vocalists had led to the demotion of DJs, and a series of law suits in the early 90s led to restrictions on the use of samples--fees now had to be paid to copyright holders in advance of a recording's release.

22. KRS-One, "MCs Act Like They Don't Know," KRS-One (Jive, 1995).

23. Krims discusses the particular predilection of reality rap for dissonant combinations of samples, or indeed combinations that are not in tune with each other, calling such textures the "hip-hop sublime" (in the original Burkean sense of inspiring fear and pleasure simultaneously). See pp. 73-74.

24. Aside from all these considerations, Ice Cube's oppositional stance is blatantly obvious; this is not like the classic post-colonial studies task of putting one's ear to a Kipling text until the faint whimper of a resistant, Indian voice is heard.

25. See pp. 25-27. Fordism is a system of industrial mass production of standardized products involving Taylorism ("scientific management" of labor), assembly lines, and machinery specific to the production of one type of product. The high investment required to sustain this kind of production demands guaranteed markets--hence state intervention, including protectionist measures, and heavy expenditure on advertising.

26. For further analysis of Post-Fordism's misconceptions, see Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism (Oxford: Polity Press, 1989), chapter 5, especially 132-44. The above arguments (and others) all appear in this analysis; lest readers imagine that this is another conservative diatribe, Callinicos is a revolutionary socialist (anti-Stalinist), who traces much of the motivation behind post-modernism to the crisis in Stalinist (i.e., Moscow-dominated) Communist parties in the West, beginning with the undermining of May 1968 by the French Communist party through to the 1989-91 transfer of power in the Soviet Union and its former satellites.

27. See Ovenden, 63-65, and Greg Applegate, 25 Years on the MOVE, Part 5, http://www.angelfire.com/ga/dregeye/move5.html and Part 6 http://www.angelfire.com/ga/dregeye/move6.html.

28. Of the first 5000 to be arrested, 52% were Latino, 38% Black and 10% White. See Alex Callinicos, Race and Class (London: Bookmarks, 1993), chapter 8.

29. See Noel Ignatiev, "Abolitionism and White Studies," Race Traitor, http://www.postfun.com/racetraitor/features/whitestudies.html and "The Point is not to Interpret Whiteness but to Abolish It," Race Traitor, http://www.postfun.com/racetraitor/features/thepoint.html

30. Ignatiev, "Abolitionism and White Studies." For an excellent (left) critique of identity politics, see Sharon Smith, "Mistaken Identity--Or Can Identity Politics Liberate the Oppressed?," International Socialism 62 (Spring 1994), 3-50.

End of footnotes