Word is Bond: Hip-Hop Journalism
Featured writers: Syreeta Gates, Karen Good Marable, and Nadirah Simmons
Learn about a pivotal chapter in how American writers documented and shaped their communities. Hip-hop publications revolutionized journalism by introducing community-centered reporting that challenged mainstream objectivity standards. The forthcoming book Word Is Bond: The Untold Story of Hip-Hop Journalism, edited by Syreeta Gates, explores this impact for the first time. Gates is joined in conversation by fellow journalists and hip-hop scholars Karen Good Marable and Nadirah Simmons.
About the writers:
SYREETA GATES is the founder of The Gates Preserve, a company devoted to protecting the creative record and making sure the worlds we shape outlast us. Her work lives across mediums. She’s led archival research and produced award-winning docs, including Netflix’s Ladies First, Peacock’s Black Pop, The Remix: Hip Hop X Fashion, and A Ballerina’s Tale. Currently, she’s producing her first feature, Shaping the Culture—a definitive excavation of hip-hop journalism from Xerox to Twitter. Syreeta was the first Black woman on LEGO® Masters (U.S. Season 2). Where she didn’t just build with bricks, she built Most Incredible Studio. This creative house crafts cultural compositions and collectible artifacts, transforming memories into experiences and intellectual property (IP) into tangible form. She also founded Yo Stay Hungry—a live culinary competition where rap meets recipes and food becomes freestyle. Because when the format doesn’t exist, she invents it. Gates has been featured in and has been recognized by The New York Times, Vogue, Forbes, Black Enterprise, Refinery29, Red Bull, and more. Her work lives on the page in books such as Fresh Fly Fabulous, BLK MKT Vintage, Stand Up!, The Quarter-Life Breakthrough and Creating Innovators.
Raised in the HBCU town of Prairie View, Texas, KAREN GOOD MARABLE is an award winning writer known for her distinctive voice and Southern sensibilities. With a career spanning three decades, Karen’s byline has appeared in numerous magazines and journals including The New Yorker, Vibe, Oxford American, and Essence. Her essays and poetry have been published in several books and best-of collections, most recently Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic (Lookout Books). Karen’s first book, Yaya and the Sea (Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers) was chosen as one of the top ten Illustrated Children’s Books of 2024 by the New York Times and New York Public Library. She is completing her memoir.
NADIRAH SIMMONS is a digital content creator dedicated to preserving Black history, Hip-Hop history, and pop culture. In 2018, she founded The Gumbo, a platform that uses content, events, and cultural commentary to support, reframe, and re-energize Black women’s relationship with Hip-Hop. In January 2024, Nadirah released her debut book, First Things First: Hip-Hop Ladies Who Changed the Game, a celebration of the women in Hip-Hop who broke the mold.
First Things First: Hip-Hop Ladies Who Changed The Game
by Nadirah Simmons
This enlightening book reframes the history of hip-hop—and this time, women are given credit for all their trailblazing achievements that have left an undeniable impact on music. Altogether, First Things First is a celebration of the achievements of women in hip-hop who broke down barriers and broke the mold. So the next time someone doesn’t have their facts straight on the ladies in hip-hop, you can hit them with “first things first…”
Word Is Bond: The Untold Story of Hip-Hop Journalism (forthcoming 2027)
edited by Syreeta Gates
A groundbreaking work of journalism history, Syreeta Gates’s Word Is Bond reveals how The Source, VIBE, XXL, Rap Pages, Honey, and dozens of other publications changed American media forever. Drawing from a decade of archival research and unprecedented insider access, Gates chronicles how these outlets became laboratories for narrative innovation, redefining who gets to tell stories, what counts as news, and how cultural criticism shapes journalism itself. Weaving together the voices of Greg Tate, Joan Morgan, Cheo Hodari Coker, Mimi Valdés, bonz malone, dream hampton, and more, this is the definitive account of hip-hop journalism’s rightful place in the American media canon.
Yaya and the Sea
by Karen Good Marable
A family goes on a trip from the city to the sea in search of renewal in this “lively and lovely…beautiful” (Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming) picture book that’s an ode to sisterhood, nature, and being present. On the first day of spring, when the city is quiet and still, little Yaya takes the A train down to New York City’s southern shores with her mama and aunties to greet Mama Ocean and celebrate the arrival of a new season through a ritual of letting go of the past and embracing the new.