Hip Hop Samples Jazz: Dynamics of Cultural Memo y and Musical Tradition in the African American 1990s

Rhymin’ and Stealin’. Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop. By Justin A. Williams. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2013. 256 pp. ISBN 978-0-472-11892-2

“…While Williams notes correctly that ‘Jazz is, of course, by no means univocal’ (p. 66), he displays a creeping reductionism by emphasising the New Yorkness of both jazz and of jazz rap, despite the fact that the first remixing of jazz and hip hop was by DJ Jazzy Jeff in Philadelphia, a city that was, at different times, home to John Coltrane and Sun Ra. Finally, given the scant attention paid by academics to jazz rap, the absence of any discussion of Tom Perchard's 2011 article on the subject is perplexing.…”