This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Charting connections between the artist and the hip-hop culture of early 1980s New York—graffiti and music in particular—it explores the territory that Basquiat shared with such luminaries of the scene as Lee Quiñones, Rammellzee, and Lady Pink. Alongside works by these and other artists, the book reproduces film and video stills, historical photographs, and ephemera.

It includes a foreword by Matthew Teitelbaum; essays by J. Faith Almiron, Hua Hsu, Carlo McCormick, and the exhibition’s cocurators, Greg Tate and Liz Munsell; and an analysis by Dakota DeVos of the radical approaches to writing that Basquiat and hip-hop shared.