Books
Hip Hop between New York and Paris: A Transatlantic History of Hip Hop (forthcoming from University of California Press).
New Perspectives on the History of Marcus Garvey, the U.N.I.A., and the African Diaspora (co-edited with James G. Spady and Louis Jones). Philadelphia: Marcus Garvey Foundation Publishers, 2011.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Marcus Garvey Foundation (a nonprofit educational organization), this collection brings together short essays by established and emerging scholars that examine a wide range of topics relating to the history of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, as well as broader issues in local, global, and transnational histories of the African diaspora.
The Global Cipha: Hip Hop Culture and Consciousness (co-authored with H. Samy Alim and James G. Spady). Philadelphia: Black History Museum Press, 2006.
A documentary history that covers more than 30 years of the global Hip Hop movement and includes oral histories with musicians, visual artists, dancers, DJs, and record producers from around the United States, Europe, Africa, and Caribbean. Featured are: well-known Hip Hop artists—such as Jay-Z, Eve, Foxy Brown, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Young Jeezy, Pitbull—as well as figures like Black Arts Movement poet/professor Sonia Sanchez, Funk legends George Clinton & Rick James, and international musicians such as Puerto Rico's Ivy Queen, Algeria's Cheb Mami, and Jamaica's Lady Saw, among many others.
Book Chapters
Liner Notes in the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap (Washington, DC: National Museum of African American History & Culture and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2021):
• Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)”
• Nas, “NY State of Mind”
• Mobb Deep, “Shook Ones (Part II)”
• Jay Electronica, “Exhibit C”
“‘Fear of a Black Planet’: The Transnational Racial Politics of Hip-Hop in France, 1990-1991.” In Hip-Hop en Français: An Exploration of Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World, edited by Alain-Philippe Durand. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
“‘A Weapon In Our Struggle For Liberation': Black Arts, Black Power, and the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival." In The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision: Media, Counterculture, Revolt, edited by Timothy Scott Brown and Andrew Lison. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
“Der globale HipHop als ‘Global Cipha'" (translated into German from the English, “Global Hip Hop as Global Cipha") (co-authored with James G. Spady and H. Samy Alim). In Translating Hip-Hop, edited by Detlef Diedrichsen, Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt, and Susanne Stemmler. Frieburg: Orange Press, 2012.
“From Harlem to Algiers: Transnational Solidarities Between the African American Freedom Movement and Algeria, 1962-1978." In Black Routes to Islam, edited by Manning Marable and Hishaam Aidi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Scholarly Articles
“Modern American History and the Smithsonian” with Anthea Hartig, Michael Neufeld, Tey Marianna Nunn, and Damion L. Thomas, Modern American History, vol. 6, issue 2, July 2023, pp. 244-258.
“Remixing the Historical Record: Revolutions in Hip Hop Historiography." Western Journal of Black Studies , vol. 37, no. 2, 2013, pp. 94-102.
“The Making of a Global Hip Hop Nation, From the Bronx to the Banlieues: An Oral History with Sidney Duteil." Black Arts Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 1, Winter 2007.