Roy Christopher

This book is about is the many ways that the foundations of hip-hop appropriation--allusions and creative language use, as well as technology and self-reference--inform the new millennium. In Dead Precedents, Roy Christopher traces the story of how hip-hop invented the twenty-first century. Emerging alongside cyberpunk in the 1980s, the hallmarks of hip-hop - allusion, self-reference, the use of new technologies, sampling, the cutting and splicing of language and sound - would come to define the culture of the new millennium. Taking in the groundbreaking work of DJs and MCs, alongside writers like Burroughs, Dick and Gibson, as well as post-punk and DIY culture, Dead Precedents is a counter-culture history of the twentieth century, showcasing hip-hop's role in the creation of the world we now live in. Dead Precedents uses the means and methods of cyberpunk and hauntology to thoughtfully remap hip-hop's spread from around the way to around the world. Its central argument is that the cultural practices of hip-hop culture are the blueprint to 21st century culture, and that an understanding of the appropriation of language and technology is an understanding of the now. Memories once firmly rooted in places in the past now float free of historical context. We all share memories courtesy of the mass media, and its rampant reproduction of artifacts.

How Hip-Hop Defines the Future

Dead Precedents

Steven Shaviro

Kodwo Eshun

Ytasha L. Womack

Rasheeda Phillips

Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism

Boogie down Predictions

"Rather than leave behind what so often fades in memory, the poems in Roy Christopher's 'Abandoned Accounts' hold onto each hypercolor detail even as 'giant, plate-glass plans' are made. But the real joy comes from the seemingly random and temporary connections described with sensuous turns of phrase. To borrow a line from 'Body Language', Christopher 'betrays [our] best effort / to remain innocent, quiet, and disengaged.'" -- Rebecca Guess Cantor, author, The Other Half "Roy Christopher's Abandoned Accounts is an easy conversation in a breezy beer garden with an old friend you haven't seen for years. Talk of music, memories, stolen moments, and philosophical musings share time with stories about life lived in cities across the country. The style is laidback, wandering, and effortless, just like any good conversation should be. Pull up a chair and shoot the shit, you'll be glad you did." -- Scott Wozniak, author, Shooting Gallery Vultures "My favorite book of poetry since Lana Del Rey's." -- Peter Relic, author, Ping Pong on the Periodic Table

Poems 2020 - 2021

Abandoned Accounts

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Follow for Now, Volume 2

Interviews with Friends and Heroes

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Roy Christopher

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