Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop has been a generation-defining global movement. In a postÂ-civil rights era rapidly transformed by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop gave voiceless youths a chance to address these seismic changes, and became a job-making engine and the Esperanto of youth rebellion. Hip-hop crystallized a multiracial generation's worldview, and forever transformed politics and culture. But the epic story of how that happened has never been fully told . . . until now.

It's not just rap music.
Hip-hop has transformed theater, dance, performance, poetry, literature, fashion, design, photography, painting, and film, to become one of the most far-reaching and transformative arts movements of the past two decades.
American Book Award-winning journalist Jeff Chang, author of the acclaimed Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, assembles some of the most innovative and provocative voices in hip-hop to assess the most important cultural movement of our time. It's an incisive look at hip-hop arts in the voices of the pioneers, innovators, and mavericks.
With an introductory survey essay by Chang, the anthology includes:
Greg Tate, Mark Anthony Neal, Brian "B+" Cross, and Vijay Prashad examining hip-hop aesthetics in the wake of multiculturalism.
Joan Morgan and Mark Anthony Neal discussing gender relations in hip-hop.
Hip-hop novelists Danyel Smith and Adam Mansbach on "street lit" and "lit hop".
Actor, playwright, and performance artist Danny Hoch on how hip-hop defined the aesthetics of a generation.
Rock Steady Crew b-boy-turned-celebrated visual artist DOZE on the uses and limits of a "hip-hop" identity.
Award-winning writer Raquel Cepeda on West African cosmology and "the flash of the spirit" in hip-hop arts.
Pioneer dancer POPMASTER FABEL's history of hip-hop dance, and acclaimed choreographer Rennie Harris on hip-hop's transformation of global dance theatre.
Bill Adler's history of hip-hop photography, including photos by Glen E. Friedman, Janette Beckman, and Joe Conzo.
Poetry and prose from Watts Prophet Father Amde Hamilton and Def Poetry Jam veterans Staceyann Chin, Suheir Hammad, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Kevin Coval.
Roundtable discussions and essays presenting hip-hop in theatre, graphic design, documentary film and video, photography, and the visual arts.

This expansive collection sets the stage for the next generation of Hip Hop scholarship as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the movement’s origins.
Celebrating 50 years of Hip Hop cultural history, Freedom Moves travels across generations and beyond borders to understand Hip Hop’s transformative power as one of the most important arts movements of our time. This book gathers critically acclaimed scholars, artists, activists, and youth organizers in a wide-ranging exploration of Hip Hop as a musical movement, a powerful catalyst for activism, and a culture that offers us new ways of thinking and doing freedom.
Rooting Hip Hop in Black freedom culture, this state-of-the-art collection presents a globally diverse group of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American, Arab, European, North African, and South Asian artists, activists, and thinkers. The “knowledges” cultivated by Hip Hop and spoken word communities represent emerging ways of being in the world. Freedom Moves examines how educators, artists, and activists use these knowledges to inform and expand how we understand our communities, our histories, and our futures.