The Top 20 Hip Hop Books of All Time

In Good Will Hunting, that movie about the genius young janitor who studies with a Harvard professor, the professor takes Matt Damon's cynical character Will (the janitor) to all these pyschologists, of which he has read each one's book beforehand. That's me with Hip Hop books. I've read a lot. I've read more than a lot. I've read enough to make a personal list of the best, most insightful works in this genre of Hip Hop scholarship. Here they go. IN particular order...

20. Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (Cultureamerica) by Jeffrey Ogbonna Green Ogbar

19. The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters by Tricia Rose

18. Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip Hop's Hold on Young Black Women by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting

17. Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry--from Music to Hollywood by Terrance Dean

16. Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents by Nicholas Ganz

15. The Tao of Wu by The RZA

14. Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Music Culture) by Joseph Glenn Schloss

13. Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic by Michael Eric Dyson

12. The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop by Saul Williams 

11. Somebody Scream!: Rap Music's Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power by Marcus Reeves

10. Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies by Brian Coleman

9. That's the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader by Murray Forman

8. The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture by Bakari Kitwana

7. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Music/Culture) by Tricia Rose

6. Hip Hop America by Nelson George

5. Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing by Roni Sarig

4. Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop by Adam Bradley

3. Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD's First "Hip-Hop Cop" by Derrick Parker, and Matt Diehl

2. To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic by William Jelani Cobb

1. Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang

If I forget any please let me know so I can expand this to a top 25 and maybe even a top 50...