Rhythm and Blues, Rap, and Hip-Hop (American Popular Music)

The eight-volume American Popular Music set includes more than 1,400 entries for musical artists, styles, events, and terms relating to music genres. Rhythm and Blues, Rap, and Hip-Hop is the volume examined for this review (other volumes cover classical music, country music, folk music, and jazz, and the final volume is a comprehensive index). Entries vary in length from one or two paragraphs to several pages, with most being of the shorter variety. Each musician's entry includes name, birth and death dates, musical role, and biographical information. There are also entries for styles and other related topics, for example, Censorship. Recent artists, such as young producer Puff Daddy (with a cross-reference from Diddy, his most recent name change), are included. Various appendixes--a chronology, a glossary of terms, and a bibliography--follow the A-Z entries in the volume. Although the volume is relatively short, it could be useful for libraries that do not have an extensive music reference collection.