“Dr. Jenkins’s work provides a framework for other educators to creatively engage their students, as well as encourages them to lean into their own authentic hip-hop selves as they do their work.”

—From the Foreword by Walter Kimbrough, president, Dillard University

“Dr. Toby Jenkins is one of our foremost educators, scholars, and working professionals for the people, all people, in America today. With her incredibly generous new book, The Hip-Hop Mindset, she has gifted us what hip-hop culture gifted us 50 long years ago: how to win on our own terms, how to make something from nothing, and how to create rules that allow us to thrive against any odds.”

—Kevin Powell, poet, human and civil rights activist, author of 16 books, Tupac Shakur biographer

“Dr. Toby Jenkins’ book The Hip-Hop Mindset triggers rarely thought-of and ‘dope’ views about the power of a hip-hop mindset and how it can effectively be embodied in praxis. I have never seen such prolific writing about hip-hop and its value proposition and impact on creative and forward thinking, practice, knowledge, and community connectedness for good. The read reps the foundation for understanding hip-hop as unapologetically driven and positively strategic.”

—P. Thandi Hicks Harper, president, Youth Popular Culture Institute, Inc.

“The Hip-Hop Mindset offers professionals in other industries insight into what those of us in the music industry have known for decades: that hip-hop is a mainstream culture of power, drive, excellence, and success. Professor Toby Jenkins’s profile of the ‘hip-hop habits of mind’ is accurate, authentic, and filled with all of the creativity, flavor, flow and style required by the culture.”

—A.J. Savage, former director of radio promotion, J Records, Arista Records, and RCA Records; vice president of promotions and marketing, Warner Bro. Records

“In true hip-hop scholar fashion, Dr. Toby Jenkins presents an educational approach borne of the aesthetics of hip-hop: the Hip-Hop Mindset. It goes to the core of what education and professional discipline should do: begin with students’ human audacity, push past basic test scores into higher realms of creativity and a superstar mindset, where guts and love are core to an ethic of professional practice.”

—Elaine Richardson, professor of literacy studies, The Ohio State University