If you’re looking for a comfortable, comprehensive read that sums up the early days of hip-hop, then Harlem World is a great place to start. Mael – a white high school teacher – presents a thorough and thoroughly academic examination of the causes and effects of one of the most momentous happenings in the birth of a cultural movement.

Mael does a great job of contextualising the lead up to the night when, on 31 July 1981, the two biggest hip-hop bands in the world – The Cold Crush Brothers and The Fantastic Romantic Five – performed their legendary rap battle at the Harlem World club in NYC. Mael is very good at establishing how the DJs, dance routines (and the complementary world of graffiti art) were as integral to early hip-hop as rapping itself. And his recounting of how the early, disco-heavy, block parties gave rise to the art of turntablism and MCing is full of bright detail.

A more visceral account of some of these events has been portrayed in Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down on Netflix. But there’s a lot of factual background here – to the Harlem Renaissance and, of course, the aftermath of the iconic battle – that shows a real understanding of the importance of hip-hop as a predominant late 20th-century artform.