The biggest book we've ever seen to focus on the photography of Jamel Shabazz – a Brooklyn photographer who was out on the streets in the glory days of the old school – famous for his work capturing key sides of the early hip hop scene, and plenty of other New York culture as well! The book follows strongly from other volumes to collect the work of Shabazz – like Back In The Day and Time Before Crack – but the presentation is a bit different, as each page represents a page in one of Jamel's photo albums – usually with a few different color photographs on each page, often in arrays that bring together images from a single location or which have a way of resonating with each other. Subject matter is similar to other books of the photos of Shabazz – lots of early 80s New York street scenes and street portraits – and the huge book comes with a few essays on the work as well. Hardcover, 320 pages, and full color throughout – with hundreds of images! Book

We're not normally the biggest fans of hip hop photo books, but this one really does a great job of breaking the mold – by featuring excellent photographs of live performers and their audiences by David Scheinbaum – and interspersing the images with writings by Michael Eric Dyson, Brian Hardgroove, Gaye Theresa Johnson, and others! The book's got a nicely poetic feel – and although contemporary, some of the images almost have a timeless feel that recalls the Back In The Day book by Jamel Shabazz – while others are abstractions that really change up a conventional mode of hip hop portraiture. Photos are both color and black and white, and the book is 160 pages, hardcover, and done in a very nice style by Damiani Press. Book

A fantastic book of images from the early 80s hip hop scene in New York – put together by a photographer who was right on the scene for a number of key years – and snapped hundreds of images of performers, clubs, street scenes, graffiti artists, and all the other forces that made hip hop happen! The book's a bit like the classic Back In The Days by Jamel Shabazz, but it also goes even further – as Bramly managed to capture a heck of a lot of key DJs and rappers, and also includes comments and memories from many of them too – snippets of text that are every bit as essential as the images – although the images are more than enough on their own! Bramly's got a great eye – both for a key moment, and composition within the frame – and the book is stuffed with images throughout, both color and black and white – in a hefty softcover volume that's over 300 pages in length. Book