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Since it’s inception, hip-hop has infiltrated more than neighborhood boomboxes.  As of late, hip-hop has turned it’s eye towards dominating the literary world. Decoded written by Jay-Z and dream hampton hit the New York Times’ Best Sellers List in the fourth quarter of last year and remained there for quite some time. Following the trend, rappers have started putting out their own literary works. XXL Magazine took notice and created a list of the Top 10 Hip-Hop Books.

The Urban Daily is especially proud because our Chief Content Officer Smokey D. Fontaine co-authored an entry. He and DMX collaborated on E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX. Here’s what XXL had to say about our friend and boss:

It was DMX’s passion and revealing honesty that helped the Ruff Ryder thrive as an artist in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and those same factors ensured that his book, E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX (Harper Collins), was as gripping as the emotional prayers heard on his albums. The autobiography focuses more on the man than on his music, with the Dark Man opening up about violence, imprisonment, familial neglect and building his family during his formative years. The unpredictability that has marked much of the Yonkers rapper’s career was, unsurprisingly, also present during the writing process. What ensued for co-author Smokey D. Fontaine was months on the road, hundreds of hours of tape and full immersion in DMX’s everyday life. “I carried a micro-cassette [recorder] in my pocket everywhere we went. Had my hand in my pocket. We’d be in conversation, whenever we started getting into it, I’d press record,” Fontaine says. “We never had one scheduled time to sit down and talk about his life. It was all fly-on-the-wall. It was all completely organic.” Like X.

Check out the rest of the list at XXL.com.

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