Old in the Game

The first study of hip-hop and aging, featuring insights from over twenty hip-hop pioneers and veterans.Hip-hop is now in its sixth decade. How are the culture’s oldest innovators aging in, and with, hip-hop? In Old in the Game, Murray Forman examines how hip-hop artists, audiences, and entrepreneurs negotiate the cultural process of aging, illuminating the deeper meanings and values associated with evolving within a hip-hop sensibility.Featuring commentary from hip-hop pioneers and veterans like Chuck D, LL Cool J, Ice-T, Pepa, and Yo-Yo, Forman reveals age as an essential component of identities and forms of expression through which hip-hop–identified “heads” comprehend the world and present themselves. The book covers themes such as generational difference and dissonance, ageism, memory and nostalgia, and retirement and death and offers a new way of understanding hip-hop as generations of hip-hop heads come of age, mature, and learn to grow old within the culture.