This collection of essays investigates how hip hop, a musical practice that originated in African-American urban society in the 1970s, was adopted and transformed in central and eastern Europe after the collapse of the communist regime in the early 1990s. This book eschews straightforward narratives of musical exoticism or capitalist expansion; instead, its sixteen chapters conceptualize hip-hop as a global phenomenon that exhibits “unique trajectories in each locale,” to quote the book's editors, Milosz Miszczynski and Adriana Helbig. The volume achieves its goal of providing a detailed, versatile panorama of hip-hop on Europe's eastern edge through discussion of an impressive scope of questions. How does hip hop and popular culture, more broadly reflect the complex social, political, and economic realities of post-communist transition? Does hip-hop continue to implement its original social function as music of protest, and if so, how does it do this within the authoritarian regimes found in many post-communist countries? Finally, how does the lack of historic connections to the genre's African-American roots affect the development of hip-hop culture in this region? The answers vary depending on the historical destiny, culture, and musical traditions in each country as well as on the diverging paths of transition from the communist era to capitalism. Altogether, the essays in this volume enhance our understanding of the social, political, and aesthetic meanings of hip-hop in the post-communist world.

The book is thoughtfully organized. It is divided into four sections, each focusing on one aspect of hip-hop's functioning during the era of systemic transition. The first section discusses the link between hip-hop and politics in the music and culture of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Russia. This set of articles displays the versatile potential of hip-hop as a genre that is either highly politicized or apolitical, and that may either express ethnic and cultural divides or bridge them.

The book becomes even more compelling in its second section that explores the link between hip-hop and evolving market economies. Similar to the way hip-hop emerged on the streets of the South Bronx, low-income musicians from poor neighborhoods initially created east European hip-hop. Eventually, in the context of growing modernization and commercialization of the arts, hip-hop became the expression of a growing capitalist society. In Serbia, hip-hop is performed by middle-class youth who use it to express their cosmopolitan identity; in Poland, references to famous western brands have become an indispensable part of hip-hop culture; Slovak rap celebrates the ideals of financial success; and the theme of capitalist mobility is central to Estonian rap as well. This section valuably demonstrates the altered semantics and social function of hip-hop in the context of nascent capitalist economies.

The third section examines the new concept of marginalization in east European hip-hop. This section includes the discussion of how hip-hop produced by Albanian migrants in Greece differs from Albanian rap within the country of origin. The chapter on the so-called “arabesk rap” discusses this unique fusion created by the unemployed segment of youth in Turkey. Another marginalized group, the Roma of the Czech Republic, use hip-hop to vocalize their experiences of discrimination. Finally, the Sakha part of Russia has produced a highly entertaining form of rap. As such, hip-hop continues to serve as a voice of marginalized communities, and its message is unique in each particular case.

The last section of the book discusses the connection between hip-hop and global circulations of blackness. The idea of “ghetto” as a metaphorical expression of post-communist society is central to discussion of Serbian hip-hop videos; and Czech hip-hop demonstrates deep connections with US hip-hop in terms of its content; Croatian hip-hop artists are deeply connected to DJ culture, creating their own version of hip-hop with the purpose of “keeping it real.” This last section of the book demonstrates how the origins of the hip-hop genre continue shaping its semantics and major tenets thousands of miles away from where it was created and in significantly different social and political contexts.

The interdisciplinary approach is among the book's major strengths; hip-hop is considered from the perspectives of political science, sociology, ethnomusicology, literature, philosophy, and media studies. A vast array of examples makes the discourse well-grounded and solid. The book is fluently written and pleasant to read. As a scholar and educator, I plan to include selected chapters of this book in the course that I currently teach on the popular music of Europe and Asia.

Emphasizing once again my high esteem of this publication, I would like to share one area that needs further elaboration. There are plentiful but brief references to the local forms of music and culture that influenced the adoption of hip-hop, including Turkish arabesk, Serbian turbo-folk, Polish disco-polo, and Romanian manele. A more detailed discussion of the ways this fusion has been accomplished and how these local forms affected the paradigms of genre would add value to the present research. Within this discussion, analysis of how local languages function within hip-hop aesthetics would also enhance the discourse and effectively serve its main goal.

To summarize, the reviewed book is an important contribution to existing scholarship on hip-hop culture. It enhances the history of hip-hop with knowledge of how the idioms of this genre have been adopted and reincarnated through a prism of east European culture. The value of the book should also be weighed in the context of colonial/post-colonial and communist/post-communist studies. The authors show how hip-hop has served social and political needs during the challenging period of transition from communism to capitalism, and how it continues to help newly-independent nation-states define their new status in Europe.