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Hip-Hop journalist

Oliver Wang has assembled over two dozen hip-hop critics around the world and

has released "Classic Material, The Hip-Hop Album Guide," the first

comprehensive review guide for hip-hop albums.

"At the beginning

of the year, if you walked into any bookstore in the country and tried to find

any books dedicated to reviewing hip-hop albums, you’d find at most, one book,

if even that," Wang told AllHipHop.com. "Compare that to the number

of dedicated guides to everything from jazz to the blues to rock to reggae to

world music, etc. It was a glaring omission to me that for whatever reason,

publishers were not willing to give a music with a 25+ year history, arguably

the most important and popular genre in the U.S. since the 1980s, a few books

for readers to learn something about hip-hop that’s more than just another slang

dictionary or set of artist profiles."

The review guide

tackles hip-hop’s history thought it’s most important albums and covers over

seventy albums, from "pioneers to pimps, platinum to politics."

The book features

commentaries from Rolling Stone’s Kris Ex, LA Weekly’s Ernest Hardy, Vibe’s

Serena Kim, former Source/XXL editor Reginald Dennis, Joseph Patel and Jon Caramanica.

"Readers won’t

agree with every opinion spoken in the book and that’s the point," Wang

continued. "’Classic Material’ taps into the conversations we have about

hip-hop everyday and aspires to be a starting point, not an ending point."

"Classic Material,

The Hip-Hop Album Guide" is edited by Wang, features a forward by legendary

hip-hop A&R, Dante Ross and is in stores now.