Coleman Told Me

Hip-hop has had its share of writers, from the insiders to the intellectuals, tackle various aspects of its history. Brian Coleman has been writing about hip-hop for the past decade, and when he self-published his book, Rakim Told Me, in 2005, it was immediately added to the list of essential hip-hop reading. Coleman explored seminal hip-hop recordings and the artists who created them and compiled what he termed “invisible liner notes”: the stories behind each of these albums, including a track-by-track breakdown of each recording. (STOP SMILING excerpted his account of The D.O.C.‘s 1989 masterpiece No One Can Do It Better in our Hip-Hop Nuggets issue.) The expanded version of Coleman’s book, Check The Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies, has over 75 interviews with some of hip-hop’s best, brightest, most interesting and infamous figures. This one is definitely at the top of our year-end reading lists, a necessary tome for even the most casual music fan.