Wild Style: The Sampler
by Charlie Ahearn

Everything you ever needed to know about hip-hop’s Citizen Kane

Published to mark the 25th anniversary of Wild Style the movie, and awash with previously unpublished production stills and selected historic images from Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper and director Charlie Ahearn himself, Wild Style: The Sampler is a riot for the eye, and an access-all-areas style insight into the stories behind the greatest film in the history of hip-hop bar none. Comprehensively covering its subject, Ahearn’s highly informative text incorporates interviews with cast members including Fab 5 Freddy, Lee Quinones, The Chief Rocker Busy Bee, Grandmaster Caz, Grand Wizzard Theodore and Frosty Freeze of The Rock Steady Crew. In this super deluxe scrapbook, the Wild Style saga is charted all the way from the germ of the initial idea, through the gradual piecing together of the storyline and the shooting schedule, to the film’s 1982 world premier in Tokyo, its record-breaking run on Times Square and the global explosion of hip-hop and graffiti culture that followed in its wake. This spectacular treasure trove won’t disappoint fans desperate for anecdotes, artefacts and inside information on what remains the last word in hip-hop celluloid.

ISBN 9781576873649

Reviewed by Grahame Bent
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