Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Enter the New York Ricans

Part I: A Historical Narrative

3. 1970s and Early 1980s: "It's Just Begun"

4. The Late 1980s and Early 1990s: Whose Hip Hop?

5. The Mid to Late 1990s: Ghettocentricity, Blackness and Pan Latinidad

Part II: Topics at the Turn of the Century

6. Latin@s Get Hot and Ghetto-Tropical

7. Butta Pecan Mamis

8. Navigating Blackness and Latinidad Through Language

9. Remembering Big Pun

10. Between Blackness and Latinidad: A Historical Overview

APPENDIX: Interviews and Articles

Fat Joe

La Bruja

Angie Martínez

Dynasty Rockers' Diana

Hip Hop Meets Bomba at the Real Wedding of the Millennium

Of Artists and Cuties

El Barrio's Graffiti Hall of Fame

Raquel Z. Rivera is a freelance journalist and has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the City University of New York Graduate Center.

  Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, she has lived in New York City since 1994.

 A freelance editor, translator and interpreter, her first love is writing. Her articles, stories and poetry have appeared in newspapers El Diario/La Prensa, Siempre and Hoy in New York, and El Nuevo Día, The San Juan Star and Claridad in Puerto Rico; and in magazines One World, Críticas, In the House and Stress.

Her academic work has been published in Puerto Rican Jam: Essays on Puerto Rican Culture and Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 1997), Revista de Ciencias Sociales (University of Puerto Rico, 1998), Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York (Columbia University Press, 2001) and Latina/Latino Popular Culture (New York University Press, 2002). E-mail: rzrd@aol.com