Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies is a book by music journalist Brian Coleman that covers the making of 36 classic hip hop albums, based on interviews with the artists who created them, also providing a track-by-track breakdown for each album entirely in the words of the artists.

It is an expanded and updated version of the book Rakim Told Me,[3] also by Brian Coleman, and it features a foreword by Questlove of the Roots.

[2] The book received positive reviews from numerous press outlets,[4] such as Entertainment Weekly,[5] AllHipHop,[6] ALARM Magazine,[7] and The Onion/The A.V.

"[10] He added, I've never really been interested as much in the sociological, sociopolitical, academic view of hip hop and where it exists in popular culture.

Where others might want to intellectualize the stories of an urban artist's rise from obscurity to legendary status, in Coleman's hands these tales are anything but academic.