How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop

"Here it is--bam! The definitive story of rap, race, radio, and marketplace during hip hop's Golden Age. Amy Coddington combines an archivist's rigor and a raconteur's wit in documenting what those of us of a certain age remember but, perhaps, never fully grasped: how, amidst expanding racial inequalities and against all odds, rap music became the most popular genre in America."--Anthony Kwame Harrison, author of Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification "Making use of trade publications that have received little scholarly attention, Coddington has crafted a provocative and lucid alternative history that tracks how the radio industry's engagement with hip hop in the 1980s and 1990s both reflected and shaped changing ideas about race and music."--Loren Kajikawa, author of Sounding Race in Rap Songs