In Talking About Your Mama, Elijah Wald has turned his attention to the deep roots of rap in American culture with a wide-ranging look a street tradition called "the dozens," where African American music began. Wald traces the form and its variations throughout more than a century of African American culture and music, from minstrelsy and the blues through to jazz and hip-hop. A pleasure to read from front to back, and Wald's vast knowledge of blues repertory allows him to make connections between songs themselves and between blues and other genres that employ the dozens. The many quotations from dozens exchanges make for colorful reading (Wald himself censors nothing), Wald's prose is consistently entertaining, the pace is brisk without sacrificing detail, and the breadth of sources ensures that every reader will come away with new information.