Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Music / Culture)

First book on hip-hop sampling as a musical process, now with a new foreword and afterword

Winner of IASPM's 2005 International Book Award

Based on ten years of research among hip-hop producers, Making Beats was the first work of scholarship to explore the goals, methods, and values of a surprisingly insular community. Focusing on a variety of subjects―from hip-hop artists' pedagogical methods to the Afrodiasporic roots of the sampling process to the social significance of "digging" for rare records―Joseph G. Schloss examines the way hip-hop artists have managed to create a form of expression that reflects their creative aspirations, moral beliefs, political values, and cultural realities. This second edition of the book includes a new foreword by Jeff Chang and a new afterword by the author.

JOSEPH G. SCHLOSS is an adjunct associate professor of Black and Latino studies and sociology at City University of New York. He is the author of Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York. His writing has appeared in URB, Vibe, The Seattle Weekly, The Flavor, and the anthologies Classic Material and Total Chaos. JEFF CHANG is the executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts + Committee on Black Performing Arts at Stanford University. He is the author of Can't Stop Won't Stop, winner of the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award.