Making beats: the art of sample-based hip-hop

First book on hip-hop sampling as a musical process, now with a new foreword and afterword

Winner of IASPM's 2005 International Book Award

Based on ten years of research among hip-hop producers, Making Beats was the first work of scholarship to explore the goals, methods, and values of a surprisingly insular community. Focusing on a variety of subjects―from hip-hop artists' pedagogical methods to the Afrodiasporic roots of the sampling process to the social significance of "digging" for rare records―Joseph G. Schloss examines the way hip-hop artists have managed to create a form of expression that reflects their creative aspirations, moral beliefs, political values, and cultural realities. This second edition of the book includes a new foreword by Jeff Chang and a new afterword by the author.