[2] His text is accompanied by illustrations by Torres, "bright, colorful, and offbeat cartoons...featuring depictions of Kanye and Jay-Z on a movie poster, Dr. Dre in scrubs, Drake using a pottery wheel, and more.

"[6] Ice-T wrote the book's preface,[4] and critics, including Wesley Morris and Jessica Hopper, contributed short rebuttals arguing for alternative choices as the most important song of a given year.

[8] PopMatters reviewed the book as "both educationally useful and shamelessly fun...tailor-made to counter every criticism levied against routine, overly generalized music retrospectives.

"[6] In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Oliver Wang said that while Serrano's essays take a position on what constitutes the most important song of each year, "he doesn’t browbeat his reader into agreement; he writes confidently but not condescendingly.

More importantly, the main pleasure in reading The Rap Year Book isn’t in agreeing with Serrano’s choices but rather in following the elliptical paths he takes to explain them.