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.

Murray Forman is Professor Emeritus of Media and Screen Studies at Northeastern University and is author of The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop.

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: “Stronger as I Get Older”

Chapter 1: Age Representing and Prestige Titles

Chapter 2: Hip-Hop Temporality: Back in the Day and Old School

Chapter 3: Golden Age Hip-Hop and “Classic Material”

Chapter 4: Hip-Hop Nostalgia, Past, Present, and Future

Chapter 5: From Boom Bap to Snap Chat Rap: Age Difference and Dissonance

Chapter 6: Old Flow, Stillness, and Relevance

Chapter 7: Career Retirement, Death, and Other Exits

Conclusion: Hip-Hop at 50 and Beyond

Notes

Bibliography

Index