BOOKS
WILD HUNDREDS
“‘The Hundreds’ is a place, a people, and one way to define centuries. ‘Wild’ is an epithet-become-style. Ergo, Wild Hundreds is a style of centuries. If our third millennium lyric ever comes to terms with America, it will have to accommodate symbols and syntax once denigrated and dismissed. With his dynamic debut collection, Nate Marshall is making space. And it’s wild.”
—Patrick Rosal, Author of Brooklyn Antediluvian
THE BREAKBEAT POETS
"Every generation needs its poets; we never doubted that the rappers were poets, but as The Breakbeat Poets shows, the rappers didn’t put the poets out of work.”
—Mark Anthony Neal, co-editor of That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader
"Finally! Here’s the anthology that puts in print what we’ve known all along: Rap is Poetry, and Hip-Hop is a genre of poetry bigger than poetry itself. Read these poems and get rid of the notion once and for all that Hip-Hop poems are meant for the stage and don’t work on the page. And the author’s statements and essays place these poems straight in the American grain, the current iteration of the African-American poetic lineage. The Breakbeat Poets is the essential text for anyone who wants to know what’s up with American poetry in the Digital Age."
—Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club
BLOOD PERCUSSION
Nate Marshall was paying close attention when Chuck D said, “Rap is CNN for Black people.” In his hard-hitting chapbook, Blood Percussion, Marshall takes the Hard Rhymer’s words and masterfully applies them to poetry, turning his eye toward gun play, free lunches, skull caps, prayers, and praise songs. With wit and fierce music, these poems take on the subjects that can’t find a space on the evening news, reminding the reader again and again that there is power and grace in truth-telling even when those truths are difficult to hear.
–Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke
1989, The Number
This project, much like Drake and Future’s, was put together in six days as the creativity was in abundance. And yes, some of the greatest works ever were created in environments such as these, and 1989 is no exception.
–Andrew Barber, Fake Shore Drive