Welcome 2 Houston

Hip Hop Heritage in Hustle Town

by Langston Collin Wilkins

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Pub Date Aug 01 2023 | Archive Date Sep 26 2023

University of Illinois Press

Arts & Photography | Multicultural Interest | OwnVoices

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Description

Langston Collin Wilkins returns to the city where he grew up to illuminate the complex relationship between place, identity, and music in Houston’s hip hop culture. Interviews with local rap artists, producers, and managers inform an exploration of how artists, audiences, music, and place interact to create a heritage that musicians negotiate in a variety of ways. Street-based musicians, avant-garde underground rappers, and Christian artists offer candid views of the scene while Wilkins delves into related aspects like slab, the area’s hip hop-related car culture. What emerges is a portrait of a dynamic reciprocal process where an artist, having identified with and embodied a social space, reproduces that space in a performance even as the performance reconstructs the social space.

A vivid journey through a southern hip hop bastion, Welcome 2 Houston offers readers an inside look at a unique musical culture.

Advance Praise

“In Welcome 2 Houston, Langston Collin Wilkins examines hip hop’s deep connections to space, place, and heritage by weaving interviews, observations, and his own Houston upbringing into a richly informative and emotionally resonant work about an essential part of Black Americana.”--Eric Harvey, author of Who Got the Camera? A History of Rap and Reality

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9780252087295
PRICE	$24.95 (USD)
PAGES	200

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Additional Information

Average rating from 4 members

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Featured Reviews

Jade �, Reviewer

I grew up listing to HipHop & Rap , and being born and raised in the Houston area i requested this book to read something that i am familiar with and to get the opportunity to learn more. I appreciate the amount of time the author took to do their research and interview artists who are apart of the foundation of Houston HIpHop.

I also like how the author took his time with going into detail about certain aspects of hiphop that many people don’t even pay attention to.

Thank you to NetGalley and to The University of Illinois press for the opportunity to read this book early. I cannot wait for its official release.

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Reviewer 1051716

Very informative book based on Houston rap artist. I grew up sixty miles south of Houston and frequent the city but this opened my eyes to a ton of information. I took notes and googled many things mentioned in this book. Of course I’ve also gone down to take photos of some of the artist murals close to Minute Maid park.

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Alexandra L, Reviewer

For me who grow up in the 90s in Europe this was really interesting to read especially since I really like to listening to hiphop and also dance it.

If you are looking for a gift for a person or are a person who loves hiphop then this is the book for you. I would bet if I lived in the States it would have given me more but I did enjoy it.