The word “hip-­hop” has various uses and overlapping meanings. People who most identify with hip-­hop recognize it as a _culture_, and this meaning was developed and is advocated in explicit contrast with the more mainstream understanding of the term as a musical _genre_. When understood as a genre, it is most often thought to be synonymous with “rap music.” The term is also used to reference a dance style, and—­in my experience—­this is the word’s primary association for those who are least familiar with it. Related to its historical association with Blackness and social critique, hip-­hop is also sometimes characterized as a cultural or social _movement_. As KRS-­ONE rhymes, hip-­hop is “more than music, hip is the knowledge, hop is the movement” (2007). The term began as a wordless vocable in scat singing that interspersed the rhymes of early rappers in the late 1970s. Keith Cowboy is credited with originating the term, Luvbug Starski popularized it in his live performances, and it was most famously appropriated on rap’s first hit, “Rapper’s Delight” (Sugarhill Gang 1979). Afrika Bambaataa, hip-­hop’s first theorist, applied the term to the culture by 1982 and announced its foundational values as “peace, unity, love, and having fun”...