This book is about is the many ways that the foundations of hip-hop appropriation--allusions and creative language use, as well as technology and sampling--inform the new millennium.   Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future , uses the concerns and conceits of cyberpunk to thoughtfully remap hip-hop's spread from around the way to around the world. Its central argument is that the cultural practices of hip-hop culture are the blueprint to the 21st century, and that an understanding of its appropriation of language and technology is an understanding of the now. This book is about is the many ways that the foundations of hip-hop appropriation--allusions and creative language use, as well as technology and sampling--inform the new millennium. "It's exciting to be quoted so close to the beginning of a book with so much energy and passion in it..." —  Samuel R. Delany , author of  Dhalgren "An intellectual hornet's nest, buzzing with ideas. The canon of hip-hop crit welcomes a bold new entry, calculated to blow the doors off the usual moribund academic fare. Theory finds its own uses for things."  —  Mark Dery “Hip-hop has been around for well over forty years now, and in many ways, it has been absorbed into mainstream culture. Roy Christopher argues, however, that its radical practices still contain untapped possibilities.  Dead Precedents  shows how this cultural movement opens new hope for the future by changing our understanding of the past.” —  Steven Shaviro , author of  Discognition "Written with the passion of a zine-publishing fan and the acuity of an academic..." —  Dan Hancox ,  Guardian Roy Christopher marshals the middle between Mathers and McLuhan. He has written about music, media, and culture for over three decades for everything from regional newspapers and homegrown zines and blogs to books, academic journals, and national glossy magazines. He most recently contributed to both the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip-Hop Culture (St. James, 2018) and The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (Routledge, 2015). He was assistant editor on Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (MIT Press, 2008) and self-published an interview collection called Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes (2007). He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As a child, he solved the Rubik's Cube competitively. His newest book is Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future (Repeater, 2019).