Old in the Game

The first study of hip-hop and aging, featuring insights from over twenty hip-hop pioneers and veterans.

Hip-hop is now in its sixth decade. How are the culture’s oldest innovators aging in, and with, hip-hop? In Old in the Game, Murray Forman examines how hip-hop artists, audiences, and entrepreneurs negotiate the cultural process of aging, illuminating the deeper meanings and values associated with evolving within a hip-hop sensibility.

Featuring commentary from hip-hop pioneers and veterans like Chuck D, LL Cool J, Ice-T, Pepa, and Yo-Yo, Forman reveals age as an essential component of identities and forms of expression through which hip-hop–identified “heads” comprehend the world and present themselves. The book covers themes such as generational difference and dissonance, ageism, memory and nostalgia, and retirement and death and offers a new way of understanding hip-hop as generations of hip-hop heads come of age, mature, and learn to grow old within the culture.

Murray Forman is Professor Emeritus of Media and Screen Studies at Northeastern University and is author of The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop.