Hip-hop is in crisis. Over the past twelve years, the most commercially successful hip-hop has become increasingly saturated with caricatures of black gangsters, thugs, womanizers, and 'hos. The controversy surrounding hip-hop deserves attention and critical examination, as academic and cultural critic Tricia Rose argues, hip-hop has become a major medium for discussing race in the United States. In the book The Hip-Hop Wars, Rose explores the most critical issues underlying the polarized claims from each side of the debate: Does hip-hop provoke violence or merely reflect a violent ghetto culture? Is hip-hop sexist, or are its representatives simply anti-sex? Does the portrayal of black culture in hip-hop undermine black progress? A powerful exploration of a divisive and important topic, The Hip-Hop Wars concludes with a call to revitalize the progressive and creative heart of hip-hop. What Rose calls for is not a sanitized image of the form but one that more faithfully reflects a much richer space of culture, politics, anger, and, yes, sex, than is provided by current ubiquitous images in sound and video.