The book features portraits of DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D, and Ice Cube, among others, and is based on numerous interviews with graffiti artists, gang members, DJs, rappers, and hip hop activists.

[1] On Metacritic, the book received an aggregate score of 81/100 from twelve reviews—indicating "universal acclaim".

According to The New York Times, "Chang is interested in hip-hop as a revolutionary medium... [so] he more or less leaves music behind... as a result, his provocative, intermittently brilliant history begins to lose its form and focus,"[3] and "by the end of Chang's history, the four elements have fallen away entirely, and politics are all that remain to tie the hip-hop generation together.

But Biggie Smalls and Missy Elliott get just one mention apiece, and Eminem is excluded from history altogether."

It’s meant to be a small contribution to the larger wave of thinking about the hip-hop generation.