New Books in Music

Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole blazed paths that salvaged socially conscious rap at a pivotal time in history. Conscious rap, a subgenre of hip-hop music that engages in dialogue about social and political issues and often challenges systems of oppression, ascended with pioneers like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Public Enemy, Ice Cube, A Tribe Called Quest, and other acts at the helm. But in recent decades, it lost much of its favor in pop culture and mainstream hip-hop. In Raps of Resistance: How Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole Reignited a Hip-Hop Tradition (Bloomsbury, 2026) Jeremy C. McCool and Earl Hopkins explore the evolution of the subgenre and chronicle the rise of Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole. The two rappers are synonymous with chart-topping hits and platinum-selling albums, but their confessional poetry and soul-stirring lyrics establish them as the two biggest names in conscious rap within the new millennia. While many new artists have abandoned the subgenre in exchange for music trends linked to instantaneous success and acclaim, Cole and Lamar have preserved the lyrical prowess and revolutionary spirit of their hip-hop forefathers. They tackle issues such as drug addiction, poverty, systemic racism, and domestic violence while still appealing to mainstream audiences. McCool and Hopkins provide a fascinating look into Lamar and Cole's ascension: their humble upbringings, their past personal and musical challenges, and their eventual rise to becoming the two most prolific rap artists of their time.

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1976 marked a turning point in New York City history. It was arguably the city's lowest point since 1776, when much of lower Manhattan burned following the British occupation during the American Revolutionary War. Two centuries later, the city was burning again, this time in isolated pockets of the South Bronx and North Brooklyn, where years of disinvestment and the closure of firehouses left neighborhoods increasingly vulnerable. New York's fiscal crisis had reached a breaking point.
At the same time, a new generation of musicians, artists, and nightlife entrepreneurs was reshaping the city's cultural landscape. From disco and punk to downtown art and underground music, New York became the center of a cultural moment whose influence continues to shape how we think about the city today. In this special episode, we look back at 1976 and the years that followed through the exhibition You Should Be Dancing: New York, 1976 and Beyond, exploring the music, personalities, and places that defined the era.
Produced in collaboration with the New-York Historical Society, host Ryan Purcell sits down with historian Ted Widmer, guest curator of the exhibition. Widmer is a historian, author, and former presidential speechwriter whose work explores American politics, culture, and history. He also has a less conventional connection to the music world as a member of The Upper Crust, a Boston-based rock band known for performing in powdered wigs and eighteenth-century aristocratic dress.
We talk about his experience in the band, the relationship between music and history, and what it takes to bring a complicated period of New York's cultural history into a museum exhibition. Purcell also reflects on his own work as a curatorial consultant on the project, collaborating with Widmer and New-York Historical Society curator Allison Robinson.

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For nearly two decades, 100 Words or Less has become one of independent music's most respected interview podcasts, capturing thoughtful, unfiltered conversations with the artists, writers, musicians, and creative voices who have shaped punk, hardcore, and underground culture. What began as a podcast has evolved into an enduring archive of stories that might otherwise disappear into the endless scroll of digital media.
100 Words or Less: Interviews from Independent Culture (Book 1) collects twenty of the podcast's most memorable conversations in print for the first time. Featuring interviews with Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, AFI, Quicksand, American Football, Terror, Have Heart, Scowl, Lucero, Snapcase, Chelsea Wolfe, Hanif Abdurraqib, Dan Carlin, Roman Mars, and many more, the book explores creativity, longevity, community, and the values that continue to define independent culture.
More than a collection of interviews, this volume serves as a snapshot of a creative community told in its own words. Through honest conversations and shared experiences, host Ray Harkins documents not only the artists themselves, but the ideas, relationships, and DIY spirit that have connected generations of musicians and fans.
Published by Iodine Recordings, this first volume is presented as a 300+ page softcover edition featuring a soft-touch cover with French flaps and premium interior paper, designed to be both a lasting document and an essential addition to any music library.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ray Harkins is the host of the long-running music interview podcast 100 Words Or Less, where he has spent years in in-depth conversation with artists across the punk, hardcore, and independent music worlds. A lifelong participant in underground music culture, he first gained recognition as the vocalist for the influential hardcore band Taken in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Beyond performing and broadcasting, Harkins has built a career on the industry side of music, working as an A&R at Century Media Records and later as a manager at Tandem, where he continues to advocate for and develop emerging and established artists. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience on both sides of the microphone, this book collects and contextualizes conversations that document the creative lives, histories, and perspectives of a wide range of musicians.

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Gentrification is often considered through a visual lens, where development, progress, and neighborhood changes are observed. But what does gentrification sound like?
In Intersectional Listening: Gentrification and Black Sonic Life in Washington, DC, (Oxford UP, 2025), author Allie Martin engages this question in Washington, DC, asking how Black people experience gentrification as a sonic, racialized process. Drawing from music, interviews, soundscape recordings, and more, Martin argues that gentrification ultimately serves to silence some voices and amplify others. Martin employs a combination of methodologies from ethnomusicology, Black Studies, geography, and digital humanities to make audible the ways in which gentrification disrupts and disturbs community. Throughout, she centers Black feminist listening practices, thinking through digital modes of listening and imagining emancipatory soundscapes.
Intersectional Listening benefits from an innovative combination of sources, from interviews and soundwalks to passive acoustic recording and machine learning. Martin shares compelling stories of music and sound in the nation’s capital, and in doing so shifts conversations about how we listen to Black life. By foregrounding how processes of gentrification systematically seek to devalue, mishear, and ultimately silence Black possibility, Intersectional Listening posits how we can challenge ourselves to refute the consistent mishearing of Black people in Washington, DC and beyond.​
Allie Martin is an ethnomusicologist and artist from Prince George’s County, Maryland. She is an assistant professor in the Music Department and the Cluster for Digital Humanities and Social Engagement. Her work is attuned to questions of race, sound and power. Her first book, Intersectional Listening: Gentrification and Black Sonic Life in Washington, DC, explores the relationships between race, sound, and gentrification in the nation's capital. Allie is the director of the Black Sound Lab, a research environment dedicated to amplifying Black life and decriminalizing Black sound through digital practice.

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From the inside flap:
In Alive in the Sound: Black Music as Counterhistory (Duke UP, 2025), Ronald Radano proposes a new understanding of US Black music by focusing on the key matter of value, manifested musically in its seemingly embodied qualities—spirit, soul, and groove. While acknowledging these qualities are always embedded in Black music, Radano shows they developed not simply from performance but from musicians’ status as laborers inhabiting an enduring racial-economic contradiction: Black music originated publicly as an exchangeable property owned by people whose subhuman status granted them—as “natural” musicians—indelible properties of sound. As a contradiction of the rules of ownership, wherein enslaved property was forbidden the right to own, modern Black music emerges after emancipation as a primary possession, moving dialectically into commercial markets and counterhistorically back into Black worlds. Slavery’s seminal contest of ownership underlie modern musical sensations of aliveness, which become the chief measure of value in popular music. By reconceiving US Black music history as a history of value, Radano rethinks the music’s place in US and global culture.
Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University
nathan.smith@yale.edu

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