I covered nearly forty years in the history of an art form — from its birth in the early 1970s to the latest technological developments — in my new book, Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ. I wanted to highlight some of the most important events in that rich history and for you to enjoy the accompanying sights and sounds.

There are some great moments in the new documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest: Q-Tip revealing the drums he sampled for “Can I Kick It?”; Black Thought of The Roots clowning Tribe’s early fashions (“They were wearing some real questionable-type shit,” he said, referring to their dashikis); and Busta Rhymes’s smile when reminiscing over “Lyrics to Go,” his favorite Tribe song. There is also a slew of rare archival footage from the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s. (Check out the mullet on Dennis Miller!) Even though the documentary occasionally sinks into VH-1 “Behind the Music” territory, the director Michael Rapaport did a fine job chronicling the group’s history, its dynamic and what made them so loved. He got lucky too, filming during the group’s tense 2008 reunion tour.

An oral history of the Beastie Boys.

Tech N9ne explains how he comes up with his incredible flows and how he manages to deliver them on stage.

He's worth an estimated $450 million and hobnobs with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. How the Brooklyn-born performer has become the leading music impresario of his generation.

Normally I don’t mind being out of the pop-cultural loop—I’ve even learned, over the years, to wear my ignorance with a certain musty old-man pride. Given, however, that I am a professional studier of words, my hip-hop blind spot has come to seem indefensible: I am clueless about one of the culture’s most vital fronts of verbal artistry. It would be like an art critic who’s never seen a comic book, or a choreographer who’s never heard of Michael Jackson.

From Robert Krulwich: Four friends are gathered on a street corner in East Oakland, California, at the very spot where the half brother of one of them was killed a few days before. It's raining. They are there to remember their friend. They do this, dancing. That is their way, I guess, of saying 'thank you' to the one who is no longer there. At the end of the dance, they say thank you to each other. To them, I say thank you for a celebration so fierce and so tender that it took my breath away.

He recorded as The Notorious B.I.G. People knew him as Biggie Smalls, or Biggie. He was murdered when he was only 24 years old. Yet he's one of the most revered, emulated and biggest-selling rappers in the game.