Dead Precedents: Four More Years
Celebrating the Anniversary and New Companion Projects
Last week marked the four-year anniversary of the publication of my book Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future! In celebration, here are some pictures from the book’s release and some information on a related project you may have heard about.
Also, we’ll be returning to Volumes Bookcafé in Chicago in July for an event with Boogie Down Predictions contributors Ytasha L. Womack, Kevin Coval, and others! Look for more details on that in a future newsletter.
Read on!
We launched Dead Precedents properly at Volumes Bookcafé in Chicago with readings by me, Krista Franklin, and Ytasha L. Womack.
Ytasha and I went on to do a talk at the Seminary Co-op in Hyde Park, and I spoke at SXSW again, this time specifically about the ideas in Dead Precedents.
A couple of months later, I ventured to my adopted home in the Pacific Northwest. I got to speak at Powell’s City of Books in Portland with Pecos B. Jett. I was even on TV!
Next up was a fun chat at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle with Charles Mudede.
I was also on my favorite hip-hop podcast, Call Out Culture with my mans Alaska, Zilla Rocca, and Curly Castro.
I know Amazon is wack, but Dead Precedents was also a #1 New Release in both their Rap Music and Music History & Criticism categories.
Dan Hancox reviewed Dead Precedents for The Guardian, writing that it is, "written with the passion of a zine-publishing fan and the acuity of an academic."
Mark Reynolds at PopMatters wrote, "In Christopher’s construction, hip-hop is is not merely party music for black and brown Gen-Xers and millennials, but the first salvo in a radical, transformative way of understanding and making culture in the technological era — the beginning, in essence, of the world we’re living in now."
My photographer friend Tim Saccenti, who has several photos in the book, sent me a picture of it with the hands from Run the Jewels’ RTJ3, the cover of which he also shot.
Many thanks to all the people who bought the book, said nice things about it, came out to hear me talk about it, gave me rides, put me up at your home, or spread the word.
Companion Compendia
BOOGIE DOWN PREDICTIONS: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism
If you already have Dead Precedents, and you’re interested in more about hip-hop, cyberpunk, and Afrofuturism, a bunch of my friends and colleagues and I have put together a companion collection of essays called Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism. Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist and Media Assassin says,
“How does hip-hop fold, spindle, or mutilate time? In what ways does it treat technology as, merely, a foil? Are its notions of the future tensed…or are they tenseless? For Boogie Down Predictions, Roy Christopher's trenchant anthology, he's assembled a cluster of curious interlocutors. Here, in their hands, the culture has been intently examined, as though studying for microfractures in a fusion reactor. The result may not only be one of the most unique collections on hip-hop yet produced, but, even more, and of maximum value, a novel set of questions.”
Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism is available directly from Strange Attractor or from the outlet of your choice! If you're still not convinced, here are more details, including the table of contents, back-cover blurbs, and a nice review from The Wire Magazine!
More Companions
I also have two companion volumes of interviews: Follow for Now (Well-Red Bear, 2007) and Follow for Now, Vol. 2 (punctum books, 2021): two decades worth of discussions, 80 interviews in all. Too many to list here. Check them out!
Thank you for reading.
Hope you're well,
-royc.
http://roychristopher.com