What does race sound like in mainstream US hip-hop? And exactly how is it sounded? These questions are at the heart of Loren Kajikawa's book, Sounding Race in Rap Songs. The book examines the poetics of racial identity in rap music from 1979 to 1999, using case studies from some of rap's most successful songs, artists and producers to explore the question: ‘how has rap's projections of racial identity varied over time from artist to artist?’ (p. 4). Kajikawa does this through musical analysis of both beat and flow, with a particular focus on the production techniques. Through analysis and cultural theory, he offers a fresh perspective on the first 20 years of rap on record. By looking through a specifically racial lens at how rap's musical meanings are created, the book provides new insight even to those of us who know the repertoire all too well.

Kajikawa looks at rap songs as a primary unit of analysis, and acknowledges that the rap genre has been a ‘singles market’ from the start, something which shouldn't appear as a novel academic insight but is framed and discussed in such a way that it is. While data from a first-hand music industry perspective in terms of race and genre are presumably unavailable, Kajikawa seems to have a good grasp of the rap industry while firmly looking at identity creation in the music as the focal point of the book.

Sounding Race is short, densely packed with information and rarely, if ever, strays off topic. The book feels carefully considered at every page, yet the high concentration of information is not presented at the expense of readability. Its stars are selected from the canon of commercially successful rap songs: The Sugarhill Gang's ‘Rapper's Delight’, Public Enemy's ‘Rebel Without a Pause’, Dr Dre's ‘Nuthin but a “G” Thang’ and Eminem's ‘My Name Is’. Hip-hop studies that foreground the music are still relatively sparse, and keeping the playlist relatively short helps to give the sounds of rap their due attention.

In Chapter 1, Kajikawa discusses the transition from hip-hop music's origins as a party music and its translation into commercial rap singles, using a Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five live performance incorporating Chic's ‘Good Times’ at the Armory in Jamaica Queens (6 October 1979) to compare with the Sugar Hill Gang's commercial recording of ‘Rapper's Delight’ (released in September 1979). The chapter also highlights early rap recordings' proximity to disco and associations with blackness. Chapter 2 foregrounds Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy, and in particular the latter's use of sampling to construct a revolutionary identity associated with a specific form of blackness. Chapter 3 shifts to the 1990s and the moment when rap crosses over into the mainstream pop market. A comparative analysis of Dre's production work with N.W.A. and on his solo album The Chronic demonstrates how Dre's sound mapped black youth in post-riot Los Angeles, creating a consumable sound and imagery that may have appeared less threatening than N.W.A did. With the first three chapters we see ever-shifting and evolving notions of blackness that are both reflected in and shaped by these different rap subgenres throughout the 1980s.

The final chapter in the book, on Eminem, began as an article in the Journal of the Society of American Music. It is a piece I frequently assign to my hip-hop classes, and one that is always well received by students. Last year, it felt as if half of my students chose to write essays on Eminem--clearly the artist and the scholarship on it is triggering something. The chapter version discusses Eminem's white identity in relation to blackness, and how Eminem Signifies (in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. Signifyin(g) sense) on whiteness as part of a ‘sincere reconciliation with blackness and black culture’ (p. 140). Like previous chapters, Kajikawa deploys a comparative approach, analysing Eminem's flow on his pre-major label album Infinite (1996) and on the major label song ‘My Name Is’ (1999).

In terms of social context, the chapter points to this late 1990s moment as when ‘whiteness as a social category was undergoing profound change’ (p. 142). It would have been useful at this point for Kajikawa to go into more detail regarding how exactly this was shifting – Eminem's references to Elvis, Jason Voorhees and Leave it to Beaver often give the impression that little has changed (especially for those who don't get the parody or Signifyin(g)). While the intra-musical analysis of Eminem's whiteness is rich and details, there could be more detail extra-musically regarding how white privilege is articulated, re-articulated or downplayed parodically in the late 1990s, and how Eminem influences that social context. Such an investigation would potentially interact more forcefully with class and sexuality, two areas touched on only briefly by Kajikawa. Ultimately, the chapter is a study of how Eminem becomes uses rap lyrically and stylistically to discuss the ‘numerous faces of whiteness’ (p. 126). It is a groundbreaking and eloquent exploration of race and the musicological study of it and would benefit any music scholar regardless of their interest in rap or not.

In terms of methodology, Kajikawa believes that we should not rely on older musicological tools uncritically. For this reason (and others), he applies his own tools, adapted and expanded from earlier hip-hop studies such as Krims and Kyle Adams. Much of his analysis focuses on a breakbeat-centric perspective, as this is how the early DJs (and many producers that followed) constructed hip-hop beats, and his block-style mapping of them includes further details of layering, looping and record transitions compared to earlier studies. Bootleg recordings of Grandmaster Flash at the Audubon Ballroom are used to show this approach. This style of musical representation is novel without obscurity, and gets to the heart of DJ production and what was so revolutionary about hip-hop. The music of Run-D.M.C. is analysed in a similar fashion, and with Dr Dre's ‘Nuthin but a “G” Thang’, Kajikawa uses transcription into Western notation which feels appropriate given Dre's straying from the breakbeat-based approach. The Eminem chapter looks at internal and multiple-word rhymes as well as the relationship between beat and flow on the chorus of ‘My Name is’. Looking at the ‘dual rhythmic relationship’ (p. 11) between beat and flow, explored in detail with Eminem, as well as the break-centred notation from the first chapter are particularly useful methods that can be easily applied to future studies.

Given that Kajikawa fully proves his points, answering his initial questions with the subsequent case studies, there are no glaring omissions from the world that he has framed for the reader. Despite the risk of academic overexposure by including some of the most analysed artists and songs in rap, he finds new ways to talk about them. I would, however, have liked to see some more discussion about class, not only for Eminem, but in light of the fact that Run-D.M.C. were from the black middle-class neighbourhood of Hollis, Queens. The compact nature of the book does not allow for such diversions, and in a sense, a parallel book on class in rap would also be welcome in the field.

The same goes for longer theoretical asides: for example, Eminem's use of parody (via Linda Hutcheon) would have also allowed for a longer discussion vis-à-vis satire and irony and the nuanced differences in terminology, although Linda Hutcheon's work is used. After all, minstrelsy and vaudeville had elements of humour even if it solidified stereotypes rather than Signify on them at a sophisticated level. Kajikawa also misses an opportunity to discuss neoliberalism more fully. Although the second half of the book is entitled the ‘neoliberal 90s’, Kajikawa offers a short definition without much description of the theories behind the nexus of concepts we might consider as neoliberalism. The Los Angeles Riots as a political event centred around race is taken for granted in the book, and there is little mention of its events or aftermath and how it fits in with performing race in other ways (although he does discuss Dre's potential foresight in the gentrification of post-riot Los Angeles). But not theorising class, riots, or humour at greater length in the book is not a real fault of the book, simply a sign than his near watertight discussions of music and race could overspill into more avenues if so desired.

A more credible critique given the aims of the book is that the Beastie Boys receive relatively little attention, and a further exploration of the group would only help the arguments on race, not least the assumptions the music industry has/had about the (white) mainstream US market. Given the last chapter's focus on whiteness, and the fact that Run-DMC and Beastie Boys were both signed to Def Jam, it could make for a stronger comparative study of rap and race at that point in rap history. Additionally, given the important emphasis on geography in the Dr Dre chapter, I wonder if Kajikawa could have given additional attention to social and geographical mobility and the spatial for other chapters. For example, did Sugar Hill Records' location in New Jersey make it easier to be distanced from, yet still influenced by, the party scene in Queens or the Bronx?

Sounding Race opens up an important conversation regarding how race has been constructed musically in rap. Such a thorough discussion of race in rap scholarship has been missing for a long time, and the book also adds to the small-but-growing literature that gives serious attention to the sonic elements of the genre. I hope this begins a wider, more direct, conversation about music and race in popular music worldwide.