This concise book provides a thoughtful and well-grounded treatment of the various ways in which Filipino American youths' involvement in hip-hop DJ-ing contributes to the reconceptualization, reformulation, and redefinition of notions of hip-hop legitimacy and perceived boundaries of Filipino-ness. Combining analyses of popular academic/journalistic accounts of hip-hop and interviews with eight Bay Area DJs, Tiongson maps the landscape of hip-hop authenticity and presents strategies used by (primarily) second-generation Filipinos – male and female – to claim a position within hip-hop culture. One of the book's strengths is the series of thought-provoking questions Tiongson consistently poses – for instance:

– none of which are easily answered but which collectively move scholarly discussions forward. Ultimately, Filipinos Represent joins several recent works in presenting hip-hop as a key social arena through which to assess competing claims about cultural ownership, race, and authenticity.

The book's first two chapters offer a critical review of the relationship between race and authenticity debates in existing hip-hop scholarship. Chapter 1 considers standard narratives regarding hip-hop's origins, the position of specific groups (notably Puerto Ricans), and issues surrounding hip-hop's global spread. Chapter 2 further focusses on each of the supposed core elements of hip-hop: MC-ing, graffiti writing, breaking, and DJ-ing. Through examining the different ways that knowledge surrounding hip-hop culture is constructed in each of these expressive fields, Tiongson makes a valuable contribution to hip-hop scholarship in general and sets the stage for his later exploration of the experiences and perspectives of Filipino DJs.

The next three chapters cover the interviews: starting with general information on each interviewee's connection to DJ-ing – including how they became involved, the investments they've made, and their career aspirations (chapter 3); moving to their efforts to establish cultural legitimacy and belonging in what some view as an African American cultural field (chapter 4); and finally exploring the extent to which such participation succeeds in redefining the normative boundaries of Filipino-ness (chapter 5). In these chapters, Tiongson pays particular attention to gendered constructions of both DJ culture and Filipino-ness. Indeed, among the most compelling contributions of Filipinos Represent is its showcasing of the varied and at times contradictory ways that Filipina DJs stake a place for themselves through renegotiating existing gender conventions. Particularly revealing are their testimonies, for example when Celskiii recalls the attitude of a male DJ friend advising her on what equipment to buy: “he was shady from the beginning … It seemed like he was purposely even trying to limit me from what I could do” (74–75), or when a DJ named Tease grapples with her decision to wear provocative clothing while simultaneously asserting, “I want to be known as a DJ who is good and not because I'm just a girl” (84). So too are the color-blind, and arguably “reactionary” (60), views of most interviewees, who, according to Tiongson, tend to ignore “the racialized and political specificity of hip-hop that accounts for much of its potential as a transformative force” (61), thus reducing Filipino participation to “a difference that doesn't make a difference” (31).

The book's conclusion is mainly an overview of the trope of nationhood in hip-hop culture, introduced through the example of the 2005 Battle of the Year global b-boy competition. While Tiongson provides an impressive review of existing scholarship, I think he misses an opportunity to connect this issue to the politics of Filipino identity – most notably, as colonial/imperial subjects whose second-generation youth (in America) struggle with a vague and often ambivalent connection to their Philippines homeland and culture. Tiongson is unquestionably aware of such cultural dynamics. His previous coedited book, Positively No Filipinos Allowed (2006), is one of a number of excellent works on the topic. Integrating the concept of diaspora – and questions of deterritorialized national identities that are implicated in it – would have given fitting closure to an otherwise commendable study of the place of second-generation Filipino Americans in hip-hop. Regrettably, the conclusion does not make any significant mention of Filipinos or DJs until its final two pages.

In sum, Filipinos Represent is a very good book that gives a singular academic treatment to a topic that has yet to be examined in this much detail. In constructing his analysis of racial authenticity in hip-hop and what it means to be Filipino at this contemporary moment, Tiongson moves a number of critical debates in hip-hop scholarship productively forward. Yet by limiting the inclusion of Filipino American cultural criticism in the book's conclusion, Filipinos Represents falls a bit short on delivering all that this reader had hoped for.