“Hip-hop has always kept the bare facts of its creative process hidden, but Brian Coleman’s Check the Technique saves the genre by steering rap towards the classic respect it deserves, alongside jazz, blues and rock. This book is a fantastic guide for all we do.”
— Chuck D
“Brian Coleman has produced the best kind of oral history, getting some of the greatest figures in hip-hop (and some of the most important obscure ones) to talk about the music, straight-up. If you listen to it and love it, if you just want to know where it comes from, Check the Technique is the source-point.”
— Dave Marsh
“I definitely appreciate [Check the Technique]. It’s good to see somebody going in-depth in hip-hop, not just surface sh*t. I really do feel that this book is good for the history of hip-hop.”
— Ice Cube
“Brian Coleman’s writing is a lot like the albums he covers: direct, uproarious, and more than six-fifths genius.”
— Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop
“Brian Coleman gets props for the exhaustive effort it took to interview the writers and producers of three dozen seminal hip-hop albums for Check the Technique. He doesn’t merely compile fresh liner notes and anecdotes from stars like Q-Tip, Chuck D and Too $hort. He captures hip-hop’s spirit from the ‘80s to the mid-‘90s, when inner-city kids discovered music through samples crammed into SP-1200 drum machines, learned the biz from shady contracts, and built their personae from their stage names up. Most admirably, Coleman sits back and lets these born storytellers talk. [Grade: B+]”
— Entertainment Weekly
“The rap must-read of the year.”
— Boston Herald