"The Rap Year Book takes readers on a journey that begins in 1979, widely regarded as the moment rap became recognized as part of the cultural and musical landscape, and comes right up to the present.

1979: The Sugarhill Gang’s song “Rapper’s Delight” is the first hip-hop song to become a national Top 40 hit and to use “hip-hop” in its lyrics: Hip-hop, hippie to the hippie, to the ...