Rapper’s Deluxe: How Hip Hop Made the World

Boyd (Study of Race and Popular Culture, Univ. of Southern California; African Americans and Popular Culture) charts hip-hop’s influence on movies, fashion, and more. It begins in the 1970s and ends with the hip-hop-centric halftime show at the 2022 Super Bowl. Boyd correlates the popularity of Adidas sneakers, worn by Run-D.M.C., with Nike’s Air Jordans and the rise of sneaker culture in the 1980s, while in the 1990s, movies such as Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society tackled some of the same issues (police brutality; the crack-cocaine epidemic; urban violence) as gangsta rap of the same era. In the 2010s, hip-hop artists Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams, among others, created clothing lines that grew popular with regular consumers and the fashion elite. Boyd’s argument is that hip-hop influenced everything that came after it. However, he also makes the counterpoint, that movies and politics, in return, equally impacted hip-hop culture; readers might be put off by this inconsistency in the book’s main argument. The book includes 430 photographs and advertisements that are appealing but also make the volume feel cluttered at times.