In this groundbreaking book, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar celebrates hip-hop and confronts the cult of authenticity that defines its essential character. Deftly balancing an insider's love of the culture with a scholar's detached critique, he traces hip-hop's rise as a cultural juggernaut and persuasively challenges widely held notions that hip-hop is socially dangerous - to black youth in particular. ""Hip-Hop Revolution"" is a balanced cultural history that looks past negative stereotypes of hip-hop as a monolith of hedonistic, unthinking noise to reveal its evolving positive role within American society.