I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto

"Jared Ball is determined to rescue hip hop and left activism from increasingly subversive corporate control. This book is a manifesto that needs to be read, argued about, and yelled from the rooftops. Let the bricks fly!"—Todd Steven Burroughs, co-author of Civil Rights Chronicle

"The Funkiest Journalist breaks it all down for all servants of Soul/Funk music and Art in the 21st Century. His Mixtape Manifesto explains what we are up against battling corporate empires that control the coveted consumer-merchant access points, and offers us an option to distribute, connect, and popularize our culture."—Head Roc, political hip-hop artist

"The revolutionary power of this book lies in its capacity to interrogate staid constructs of thought and re-pose vital questions pertaining to 'emancipatory journalism.' For the power to pose the question is the greatest power of all."—Frank B. Wilderson, III, author of Incognegro

In a moment of increasing corporate control in the music industry, Jared A. Ball analyzes the colonization and control of popular music and posits the homemade hip-hop mixtape as an emancipatory tool for community resistance. Equally at home in a post-colonial studies class and on the shelves of an indie record store, I Mix What I Like! is a revolutionary investigation of the cultural dimension of anti-racist organizing in African America.