In the Time of Sky-Rhyming: How Hip Hop Resonated in Brown Los Angeles. Author Meets Respondents Session

In the Time of Sky-Rhyming: How Hip Hop Resonated in Brown Los Angeles (Oxford University Press 2024), by Jonathan Calvillo, traces Hip Hop’s reception and adaptation within the Latine communities of Los Angeles in the 1980s.  “The Time of Sky-Rhyming,” the book contends, represents a critical moment in which notions of Hip Hop authenticity became codified and eventually held up as pure, as regional and ethnic adaptations of NYC Hip Hop emerged in Los Angeles and elsewhere.  Resonating with the emergence of Pentecostalism in Los Angeles, the early Los Angeles Hip Hop scene was shaped by Black American movements, afrodiasporic practices, and multiracial innovations, including from Latinos.  Moreover, brown creatives were active in establishing key spaces of Hip Hop resonance in Los Angeles.  Religion and spirituality, it turns out, were constant influences in the lives of brown creatives present in the burgeoning West Coast scene.