“I found Hip-Hop Japan fascinating. Ian Condry writes with both authority and intimacy. Taking on the movement of musicians, CDs, soundtracks, graffiti, breakdancing, fashion, racialized culture, style, musical genre, lyrics, and history from the United States to Japan, he offers a groundbreaking transcultural study of popular culture explored through an ethnography of the local.”—Anne Allison, author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination “Ian Condry’s book moves masterfully between ground-level observation of the Japanese hip-hop scene and sharp insight into the global flows of cultural influence. His analysis of the urban spaces in which Japanese hip-hop culture unfolds is fascinating and smart. So, too, is the book’s careful mapping of hip-hop’s place within the complex history of Japanese popular music since World War II. Condry is one of the handful of writers breathing new life into popular music ethnography with lively, evocative writing and a firm grasp of contemporary cultural theory.”—Will Straw, author of Cyanide and Sin: Visualizing Crime in 50s America "Ian Condry's years of contact with the main players in Japanese hiphop allow him to create a keenly observed oral history of rap in Japan from its very earliest days, and the story is longer and more complex than might be expected. . . . Hip Hop Japan is initially academic in focus, but Condry has done his research in clubs and the studios, and as a result it's of considerably wider interest."
The Wire