Flip it and Reverse it: Hip-Hop Worldwide

24 Bars to Kill: Hip Hop, Aspiration, and Japan’s Social Margins. By Andrew B. Armstrong. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. 193pp. ISBN: 9781789202670

Reviewed by Anthony Bak Buccitelli

This text is an excerpt from Laurent Fintoni's book Bedroom Beats & B-Sides: Instrumental Hip-Hop and Electronic Music at the Turn of the Century

With the rise of digital technology, images of Black people murdered at the hands of law enforcement have inundated various media outlets and influenced a surge in social activism. Recent protests, spearheaded by Black Lives Matter (BLM), have pressured America and its lawmakers to reckon with its “peculiar institutions” rooted in white supremacy and systemic racism (Wacquant 2010).

Whether it’s through the media and entertainment industries or academia, Los Angeles hip hop has been

The TR-808 Rhythm Composer looms large in the world of drum machines (electronic musical instruments that mimic the sound of drums). You know its sounds, even if you are unaware of their origin.