As the famed civil rights -- and hip-hop -- slogan goes. "If you don't know your past, then you don't know your future." And although nowadays hip-hop is as ubiquitous as international conflict, most people have no idea how it started or -- barring the odd VH1 Behind the Music faux-exegesis -- who its early practitioners were. In fact, most MTV addicts these days think hip-hop begin and ends with Dre, Snoop and Jay-Z. Gangs, poverty, breakdancing, grafitti? They could care less. But they're poor saps no longer if they pick up the excellently meticulous Yes Yes Y'all, which features in-depth oral histories from the likes of Kool DJ Herc, Grandmaster Flash, members of the Rock famed Steady Crew, Afrika Bambaata and many more. Painstakingly embellished with flyers, artwork and startling photography from the period that President Gerald Ford told New York -- everyone's current geopolitical darling -- to "Drop Dead" and onward, Yes Yes Y'all is an invaluable cultural history delivered just in time for a fashion-obsessed populace bent on revisionism. Grab it.