From one of the most original, creative, and provocative writers on American culture comes a now-classic collection of essays, delving ‘far and wide into Black music, into film, into the beats and rhyme of culture’ (Questlove).

These pieces orbit social, pop cultural, political and economic subjects ­– from the rise of hip-hop, the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the music of Miles Davis, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains and many others, to the crisis of the Black intellectual and the irony of the GOP recruiting Black Americans. With unrivalled flair, Tate writes in a voice that is at once angry, joyous, self-critiquing, and dazzlingly witty.