Abdul Qadim Haqq

The Book Of Drexciya Volume Two Softcover Edition

BOOKDREX2 SOFTCOVER • 2021 • from 35.99€

Does anyone actually still does this: sell out? While 99% of the music world is chasing instant success on Spotify, TikTok, and YouTube, some subcultures still turn up their noses when someone can make the monthly rent from the music. Hip-hop, techno, punk: certain genres can’t reconcile making money from art with how they’d like to view themselves. Journalist Dan Ozzi takes a look at the post-Nirvana music industry, that is, more precisely, major labels that latched onto pop-punk bands like Green Day, even lured in anarchist groups like Against Me!, and finally made prog-rockish emo a mainstream sensation with thanks to My Chemical Romance, who in their own way anticipated the logic of the streaming era. The examples could be applied to other fields from techno to rap, making Ozzi’s book all the richer. Kristoffer Cornils

DJ Semtex

Hip Hop Raised Me Updated Edition

Thames & Hudson • 2018 • from 29.99€

From rock to country, from hip-hop to punk, what the genres mentioned on the cover of this book have to do with each other is one thing above all: they all have, in their own way, changed the Western world a bit over the past decades, supposedly democratizing it but nonetheless further dividing it. In »Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres«, New York Times pop critic Kelefa Sanneh explores the sociopolitical implications and effects of particular sounds, genres, and subcultures, but most importantly, how they divided different audiences – and in the U.S. context, of course, these are primarily Black and white. By the same token, however, »Major Labels« can be read just as much as a manifesto for a music culture without borders, in which perhaps not everyone is the same, but everyone is at least united under one groove. Kristoffer Cornils

Kool Savas

King Of Rap - Die 24 Gesetze

Droemer • 2021 • from 22.00€

Somewhere, I bet, some Stephen is writing a book about Bob Dylan, or the Beatles, perhaps even about Led Zeppelin. The kind of masturbatory books that pile up to a gigantic canon of boredom. Lesley Chow on the other hand has shown that it can be done differently. In her book »You’re History – The Twelve Strangest Women in Music«, she takes on Janet Jackson, Kate Bush or Nicki Minaj and listens to their records to analyse their lyrics – and, of course, to destroy Rihanna’s »Umbrella« forever. Christoph Benkeser

Carole King

Tapestry By Loren Glass

33 1/3 • 2021 • from 9.99€

On September 13, 1996, Tupac died from being shot with a gun. Or he was abducted by aliens. Anyone who isn’t taking a course in applied conspiracy theory knows what’s going on — and Sheldon Pearce does, too. The New Yorker journalist has written »Changes. An Oral History of Tupac Shakur«, a book about the man himself and talked to a lot of people in his circle for this. Spoiler: no one has since seen Tupac sipping cocktails in Cuba. Too bad, isn’t it? Christoph Benkeser