42 years after the 1973 Bronx block party hosted by Kool Herc, Shea Serrano published The Rap Yearbook. The ultimate guide to understanding more about the songs of Hip-Hop and how they impacted the movement. Each song gets remarkably detailed and tells the story of the artist and the background of the song. The narrator compares other songs that were in the running and how they were impactful at that time as well. The book can connect from anyone that has been apart of Hip-Hop to a follower of Hip-Hop or is just curious on the culture behind the top selling genre in the world. Even if you think you know it all, you probably do not. I was stumped when I found out some facts that I had no idea about. The first thing that really got me and showed me that this author really did his research, was when he was talking about the most influential song of 1982, “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. If you do not know this song, it is about being a poor black minority living in the ghetto. I did not know this before the book but this was the first rap record to be ever registered into the library of congress. Regardless, the fact that tripped me up was that Grandmaster Flash has zero parts on the song. Which is crazy because this is his most famous rap record ever and most people know him for this song. Another thing is that nobody in the group wanted to even record this song; after this song was put out they never recorded again. Learning all this only 33 pages into the book I realized I was in for a treat.

Throughout reading this book, I started to take annotations because I did not know a lot of this knowledge even though I have been studying this topic heavily in the last year and a half. There came points on some of the rap history where it was very hard for me to agree with the author. Mainly because there was too much good Hip-Hop coming out in that year and then it is left to the person's opinion on what the more impactful song was. The year I am talking about was 1994 the winner in the book was “Juicy” by The Notorious B.I.G. which makes sense because I know Juicy line for line, and it is just an astounding rap record. The only thing is that the best of the best Hip-Hop came out that year from Gang Starr, Hard to Earn to Warren G, Regulate to the jazzy Digable Planets, Blowout Comb to Chicago's very own Common, Resurrection, and to top it all off with my favorite Hip-Hop album of all time the Queens native Nas, Illmatic. The author did a very good job to recognize all of these artists which I was happy with so I cannot be mad. He also threw some shade at Nas’ fans when he said “... trying to convince a Nas fan that Illmatic is anything short of God’s will is no different than trying to explain to a fish how to climb a tree, in that both would be neat to see but neither are very likely to happen” (103). I liked when he did that mainly because it is true and it was nice hear a joke coming from his writing tongue. The idea of what I am saying is he connected with the reader while telling the facts of the song, making it way more interesting to follow what is going on in the book.

This book was magnificent, there is no way anyone could gain more knowledge about this topic elsewhere. I recommend this book to everyone, great quick read and great knowledge to know. I doubt most pioneers know all this, the information is endless in this book from 1973 to infinity. Hip-Hop will continue to influence everyone and everything from Pop music to Country, the ideas will never die. 42 years strong and it is already history.