Book Review: Don’t Sweat the Technique: A Performers’ Guide to Hip-Hop and Rap

Melissa Foster is Musical Theatre faculty at Northwestern University and a voice pedagogue who brings a fresh perspective to the contemporary singing conversation. She is a highly-regarded clinician and consultant to an array of performing arts organizations such as the Contemporary and Commercial (CCM) Vocal Pedagogy Institute at Shenandoah University, Lyric Unlimited (a division of the Chicago Lyric Opera), and the ArtsLink Foundation. Foster has been a guest artist at dozens of universities and has served as a vocal coach for numerous New York City and touring musical theatre productions. Her students per- form on Broadway, in national tours, and in professional contexts across the world. In addition to these contributions to the theatrical arts industry, she has now organized and codified historical and stylistic understandings of the hip-hop and rap landscapes in her new book, Don’t Sweat the Technique: A Performers’ Guide to Hop-Hop and Rap.