The special-edition reprint of Wax Poetics Magazine Issue 50--our bestselling issue ever--featuring Prince on the cover, with features on Prince and the Revolution; Morris Day and the Time; the Time's guitarist Jesse Johnson; Grand Central: the roots of Prince and Andre Cymone; Prince's jazz side project Madhouse; the Prince side project the Family; early Prince recordings, 94 East; and Questlove's commentary "33 Reasons Why Prince Is Hip-Hop." Also featuring Larry Graham, Blood Orange, Toro y Moi, DJ Quik, and Frank Ocean. This special-edition reprint contains no advertisements.

The special-edition reprint of Wax Poetics Magazine Issue 50--our bestselling issue ever--featuring Prince on the cover, with features on Prince and the Revolution; Morris Day and the Time; the Time's guitarist Jesse Johnson; Grand Central: the roots of Prince and Andre Cymone; Prince's jazz side project Madhouse; the Prince side project the Family; early Prince recordings, 94 East; and Questlove's commentary "33 Reasons Why Prince Is Hip-Hop." Also featuring Larry Graham, Blood Orange, Toro y Moi, DJ Quik, and Frank Ocean. This special-edition reprint contains no advertisements.

First published in December 2001, Brooklyn-born Wax Poetics hit news stands with a new vision of music journalism. Wax Poetics created a bridge between the old and the new, revealing the numerous connections between musical forefathers and musical future. Although originally created for a concentrated market of music aficionados, the Wax Poetics audience has grown exponentially. This anthology gathers the first five issues into a deluxe must-have hardbound edition.

“Alan Leeds was a protegé of James Brown and a true historian of the world that nurtured the great entertainer. Alan was a witness to the vibrant black music scene of the ’60s and ’70s—whose book is both a memoir and a document of a lost world of sound.”—Nelson George, an American author, columnist, music and culture critic, journalist, and filmmaker A behind-the-scenes look at the Chitlin’ Circuit during American’s most vital period of soul music—from the eyes and ears of a young, Jewish kid from Queens who joined the team of the hardest working man in show business and learned the art of the music business at the hand of the performer who mastered it. In the mid-’60s, Alan Leeds was a young DJ looking for his way into the music business. An interview with James Brown to promote a local show in Virginia led to an opportunity to promote one of Brown’s concerts, which then led to Brown hiring him to help run his tours. Soon Leeds was wearing many hats and traveling around the country as Brown battled a complicated web of local promoters and managers, all too willing to try to rip him off. In this riveting book—part memoir, part history—Leeds weaves a wholly new and remarkable portrait of Brown as an idiosyncratic iconoclast, determined artist, and forceful businessman. It is a rare look into a world little known to white America immediately following the Civil Rights Movement. Leeds discovers that Brown is a fascinatingly complex man and their experiences, both business and personal, range from emotional to humorous. All the while, they navigate the complicated world of popular Black music in America, told by someone who actually lived it. “Over the course of his long life in music as a tour manager, archivist, writer, and fan, Alan Leeds had a ringside seat for some of the greatest moments in soul and funk history—from James Brown in the sixties to Prince in the eighties to D’Angelo in the first years of the 21st century. His eye for detail and his abiding love for the music shine through in this affectionate, inspirational memoir. Alan is one of my all-time heroes!” –Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson

From the author of Music Is... Brandon Stosuy comes a second pitch-perfect board book that’s a kid-friendly music history lesson—perfect for the little record collectors in your life. From music writer and The Creative Independent/Kickstarter Editor in Chief, Brandon Stosuy, comes a new board book called We Are Music that dives into the history of music. It starts with clapping, tapping, and drums, and from there the music moves in many different directions. From classical to blues to jazz to country to rock to punk to rap to hip hop, there is one important thread that weaves through every song that has ever been created: us.

Hold On World revisits Lennon and Ono's love affair and startling collaborations. John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band was arguably the most emotionally honest album ever made. It wasn't merely another record but more like a sonic exorcism, a spiritual, public bloodletting. Lennon's album drove a stake through the heart of the Beatles' myth while confronting everything else in John's life, from Dylan to God to his glorified status as a "Working Class Hero." Determined to rid himself of past traumas—abandonment by his father and the death of his mother, Julia—Lennon wrote the most powerful song cycle of his career, confronting fear, disappointment, and illusion, all the while espousing his love for Yoko Ono. Released simultaneously, Ono's album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is emotionally raw and challenging. It inspired bands like the B-52s and Yo La Tengo to employ pure sound, whether shrieking vocals or guitar feedback, to express their deepest feelings.

If asked to list the greatest innovators of modern American poetry, few of us would think to include Jay-Z or Eminem in their number. And yet hip hop is the source of some of the most exciting developments in verse today. The media uproar in response to its controversial lyrical content has obscured hip hop's revolution of poetic craft and experience: Only in rap music can the beat of a song render poetic meter audible, allowing an MC's wordplay to move a club-full of eager listeners.Examining rap history's most memorable lyricists and their inimitable techniques, literary scholar Adam Bradley argues that we must understand rap as poetry or miss the vanguard of poetry today. Book of Rhymes explores America's least understood poets, unpacking their surprisingly complex craft, and according rap poetry the respect it deserves.

From Prince's superstardom to studio seclusion, this second book in the Prince Studio Sessions series chronicles the years immediately following the Purple Rain era. Interview accounts of over 260 recording sessions and two tours reveal the indistinguishable majesty of Prince's artistry.

Since his 2008 monograph, Ian Johnson has had six solo shows and undergone an evolution, while remaining just as jarringly cool and full of life. This new book presents all-new paintings and drawings by Johnson in his signature style: portraits of jazz musicians from the '40s, '50s, and '60s that were produced using gouache, acrylic or pen on paper or wood panel. Johnson combines abstract background shapes with figurative representations to create jaw-dropping pieces that succeed at evoking the music of each artist.

Love and tragedy dominate book four of Virgil's most powerful work, building on the violent emotions invoked by the storms, battles, warring gods, and monster-plagued wanderings of the epic's opening. Destined to be the founder of Roman culture, Aeneas, nudged by the gods, decides to leave his beloved Dido, causing her suicide in pursuit of his historical destiny. A dark plot, in which erotic passion culminates in sex, and sex leads to tragedy and death in the human realm, unfolds within the larger horizon of a supernatural sphere, dominated by power-conscious divinities. Dido is Aeneas' most significant other, and in their encounter Virgil explores timeless themes of love and loyalty, fate and fortune, the justice of the gods, imperial ambition and its victims, and ethnic differences. This course book offers a portion of the original Latin text, study questions, a commentary, and interpretative essays. Designed to stretch and stimulate readers, Ingo Gildenhard's incisive commentary will be of particular interest to students of Latin at both A2 and undergraduate level. It extends beyond detailed linguistic analysis to encourage critical engagement with Virgil's poetry and discussion of the most recent scholarly thought.