Spurred by his own deep love of the music and its central role in his life, but troubled by the current state of mainstream bling-bling, life-long hip-hop fan Patrick Neate sets off to discover if the music and culture that means so much to him has retained true cutlural significance anywhere in the world. Neate treks from New York record companies to Tokyo's flashy hip-hop clubs, to Cape Town's impoverished townships and Johannesburg's crime-ridden ghettos; to Paris and to Rome and to Rio, where he finds a burgeoning scene deep in the heart of violent favelas. What Neate discovers is never what he expects; in consistently surprising and provocative ways, the Bronx-born music and culture that he thought he understood so well has woven itself differently into the urban cultures of the distant corners of the globe. With a fan's passion and a poet's effervescent writing style, Neate brings us deep into the heart of hip-hop and makes us believe €” as he does €” in the power of the music and the culture.