Phat Beats, Dope Rhymes: Hip Hop Down Under Comin' Upper

Description:
Ian Maxwell's story of Australia's hip-hop scene follows the lives of a small, influential group of rappers from Sydney's Westside in the early 1990s. He conveys the excitement of the scene and the struggles of the white musicians to define Australian hip-hop, showing how discourses of nationalism and community are played out in everyday life. Whether describing composition in a bedroom, confrontation in a radio studio, tagging in a subway line, or breaking in front of a stage, Maxwell evokes the intensity of feeling and the complexity of these key experiences. The text looks at the many practices of hip-hop - graffiti, rapping, break dancing performances, compositional process, lyrics, music and fanzines - and captures the fluid contractions along with the bodily pleasures that make up the scene. Maxwell shows how these young men negotiate issues of identity by imagining themselves within an international hip-hop nation.