That's the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader brings together the best-known and most influential writings on rap and hip-hop from its beginnings to today. Spanning nearly twenty-five years of scholarship, crticism, and journalism, this unprecedented anthology showcases the evolution and continuing influence of one of the most creative and contested elements of global popular culture since its advent in the late 1970s.Presented thematically, the selections address the history of hip-hop, identity politics of the 'hip-hop nation', debates of 'street authenticity', gender, relvolutionary politics, aesthetics, technologies of production, hip-hop as a cultural industry, and much more.