Rob Turner teaches literature at the University of Exeter. His work focuses on sound, poetics, and the politics of epic, including recent essays on the writings of Will Alexander and Samuel R. Delany. His first book, Counterfeit Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2019), weighed up the possibility of composing an American epic in an age of 'alternative facts'. He has also contributed to Tales of Dionysus (University of Michigan Press, 2022), a collaborative poem that reimagines a forgotten moment in Greek/Egyptian culture. He writes regularly about experimental music for the Wire magazine.

• Introduction: hip-hop and American culture Rob Turner; Part I. Sonic Roots: 1. The funk impulse Sequoia Maner; 2. Nation time(s): jazz and Hip-hop's changing same David Grundy; 3. Return of the griot? Eric Charry; 4. Afrofuturism, the Caribbean, and the loop of history Paul Youngquist; 5. From circuits to aesthetics: the samplers and beat-making styles of Hip-hop's golden era Patrick Rivers and Will Fulton; Part II. On the Mic: Wax Poetics: 6. 'Like an interstellar wind': flow and meter Rob Turner; 7. The history of Hip-hop rhyme in three samples David Caplan; 8. Spinning staves in bars: Hip-hop comes to spoken-word Patrick Turner; 9. 'Read the fine print': DOOM and persona poetry Adrian Matejka; Part III. Dollars and Bodies: Hip-Hop America: 10. 'Made a mil' off that mumblin' shit': the freestyling cyborgs of post-internet Hip-hop Michael Waugh; 11. 'How much a dollar cost': hip-hop, race, capitalism Mark Steven; 12. Community and capital: Detroit Hip-hop collectives and the business of culture creation Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie Hay; 13. The 'krip-hop' remix: disability and Hip-hop Charles L. Hughes; 14. 'Make him give me Einstein': pop trap and black women's pleasure Justin D. Burton and Brea M. Heidelberg; Part IV. Off the Mic: Hip-hop Media: 15. What is the Hip-hop novel? Daniel Levin Becker; 16. Hip-hop comics: Ronald Wimberly's intertextual adaptations of rap's minor characters Vincent Haddad; 17. 'The wrath of the math': identity, aesthetics, and representation in early Hip-hop films Amy Abugo Ongiri; 18. 'Black America's TV station': the rise and fall of reality rap Eric Harvey; 19. Notes on Hip-hop, graffiti subculture, and performing anti-imperial feminism in the United States Jessica N. Pabón-Colón.