Essays that explore the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture. "This book, edited by Roy Christopher, is a moment. It is the deconstructed sample, the researched lyrical metaphors, the aha moment on the way to hip-hop enlightenment. Hip-hop permeates our world, and yet it is continually misunderstood. Hip-hop's intersections with Afrofuturism and science fiction provide fascinating touchpoints that enable us to see our todays and tomorrows. This book can be, for the curious, a window into a hip-hop-infused Alter Destiny--a journey whose spaceship you embarked on some time ago. Are you engaging this work from the gaze of the future? Are you the data thief sailing into the past to U-turn to the now? Or are you the unborn child prepping to build the next universe? No, you're the superhero. Enjoy the journey."--from the introduction by Ytasha L. Womack Through essays by some of hip-hop's most interesting thinkers, theorists, journalists, writers, emcees, and DJs, Boogie Down Predictions embarks on a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture and what that means for the culture at large. Introduced by Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture , this book explores these temporalities, possible pasts, and further futures from a diverse, multilayered, interdisciplinary perspective. "Boogie Down Predictions offers new ways of listening to, looking at, and thinking abouthip-hop culture. It teaches us that hip-hop bends time, blending past, present, andfuture in sound and sense. Roy Christopher has given us more than a book; it's acypher and everyone involved brought bars." Adam Bradley, author, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop "The study of hip-hop requires more than a procession of protagonists, events, and innovations. Boogie Down Predictions stops the clock--each essay within it a frozen moment, an opportunity to look sub-atomically at the forces that drive this culture." Dan Charnas, author, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop and Dilla Time: How A Hip-Hop Producer Reinvented Rhythm and Changed the Way Musicians Play "How does hip-hop fold, spindle, or mutilate time? In what ways does it treat technology as, merely, a foil? Are its notions of the future tensed...or are they tenseless? For Boogie Down Predictions, Roy Christopher's trenchant anthology, he's assembled a cluster of curious interlocutors. Here, in their hands, the culture has been intently examined, as though studying for microfractures in a fusion reactor. The result may not only be one of the most unique collections on hip-hop yet produced, but, even more, and of maximum value, a novel set of questions." Harry Allen, Hip-Hop Activist & Media Assassin "Boogie Down Predictions offers new ways of listening to, looking at, and thinking about hip-hop culture. It teaches us that hip-hop bends time, blending past, present, and future in sound and sense. Roy Christopher has given us more than a book; it’s a cypher and everyone involved brought bars." -- Adam Bradley, author, Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop "The study of hip-hop requires more than a procession of protagonists, events, and innovations. Boogie Down Predictions stops the clock—each essay within it a frozen moment, an opportunity to look sub-atomically at the forces that drive this culture." --Dan Charnas, author, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop and Dilla Time: How A Hip-Hop Producer Reinvented Rhythm and Changed the Way Musicians Play Roy Christopher is an aging BMX and skateboarding zine kid--that's how he learned to turn events and interviews into pages with staples. He has since written about music, media, and culture for everything from self-published zines and personal blogs to national magazines and academic journals. A Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, he is the author of Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future .