Making Beats

Despite having created one of the most important musical cultures of the last fifty years, hiphop composers who use digital sampling are rarely taken seriously as artists. But hiphop deejays and producers have collectively developed an artistic system that features a complex aesthetic, a detailed array of social protocols, a rigorous set of ethical expectations, and a rich historical consciousness.

Based on ten years of research among hip-hop producers, Making Beats is the first work of scholarship to explore the goals, methods, and values of this surprisingly insular community. Focusing on a variety of subjects - from hiphop artists' pedagogical methods to the Afro-diasporic roots of the sampling process to the social significance of "digging" for rare records - Joseph G. Schloss examines the way hip-hop artists have managed to create a form of expression that reflects their creative aspirations, moral beliefs, political values, and cultural realities.