“Chronicling Stankonia” by Regina Bradley: Now Available as an Audiobook

Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South by Regina N. Bradley, a critically acclaimed bestselling UNC Press title, is now available as an audiobook read by Bradley via Libro.fm, Audible, and Kobo.

Praise for Chronicling Stankonia:

This treatise from leading Southern hip-hop scholar Regina N. Bradley is a revelatory collection of essays—part literary criticism, part sonic analysis, part personal memoir—that serves as an overdue and thrilling intervention on the NYC/L.A.-centric canon of hip-hop criticism. . . . A masterful work of criticism.”—Rolling Stone

“With vivid narrative and critical analysis, Bradley presents an innovative examination of the profound legacy and influence of Southern hip hop music and culture.”—Ms. Magazine

For scholar and critic Regina N. Bradley, Outkast’s work is the touchstone, a blend of funk, gospel, and hip-hop developed in conjunction with the work of other culture creators—including T.I., Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward. This work, Bradley argues, helps define new cultural possibilities for black southerners who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s and have used hip-hop culture to buffer themselves from the historical narratives and expectations of the civil rights era. André 3000, Big Boi, and a wider community of creators emerge as founding theoreticians of the hip-hop South, framing a larger question of how the region fits into not only hip-hop culture but also contemporary American society as a whole.

Regina N. Bradley is Associate Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies, Department of English, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA.