A fascinating look at hip hop, the world’s most popular music, and what it means to young people all over the globe, written by an acclaimed pop-culture critic. An excellent introduction to hip hop for young adults.

Hip hop is arguably the predominant global youth subculture of this generation. In this book Dalton Higgins takes vivid snapshots of the hip hop scenes in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and more.

American hip hop has gone through growing pains, and is questioned for being too commercialized to articulate the hopes, concerns and dreams of marginal youth and community members. Outside the US, hip hop culture is often a political tool to mobilize disenfranchised communities around hard issues, with little support from mainstream corporations or sponsors.

Higgins taps into his own powers of pop culture prognostication to predict the future of the genre and the youth culture that spawned it, as hip hop spreads its tentacles to the furthest reaches of humanity.

"[The Groundwork Guides] are excellent books, mandatory for school libraries and the increasing body of young people prepared to take ownership of the situations and problems previous generations have left them."