I saw this book at Urban Outfitters but it was like $30. I loved the images and since I'm a bedroom producer, I loved the content. I hopped onto Amazon later and found it for almost half that price! The only downside is that it doesn't go in-depth enough about each producer's studios. I would've liked to learn more about their gear and environment.

If your like me and love vinyl, read liner notes front to back, spend hours in dusty un-nameable places looking for that perfect record (preferably in the dollar bin) and produce your own music then this book is a worthy addition to your stuido. Even if you don't have a studio it's still worth pickin up if you are a fan of "underground" hip hop. Raph takes you to many of the most prestigous producers "bedroom" studio's (not all of them are bedrooms) showing you their working enviroment and their gear. I can sit and flip through this book for hours on end disecting each picture finding the key elements to the studio's (and trying to pick up some new titles to go diggin for). If you are at all interested in how the sonic landscapes were crafted for some of the greatest albums in the last 10-20 years pick this up! Not to mention the fact that the DJ Ransom's Mix CD is worth the price alone as it includes rare and classic tracks!

The point of this book was NOT to provide wanna-be producers with a grocery list of production gear to buy...it was not to reduce people's studio setups to a common checklist of items for others to buy.

The point of this book was to capture these producers' LIVES through pictuers. It does this by photographing their studios beautifully. The mess of vinyl records, the stacks of equipment on top of each other, and the general chaos of alot of these pictures shows you what producing is like. While you may not see the gear listed out for you (that would take a long time for each studio), you get a great insight into what these producers use to make their music. You see a selected discography (about 5 cuts) and a small description of each producer and their studio. The photos, again, are incredible to look at. Some in color, some in black and white, all of them very "real," and vintage-looking (just like the equipment).

Don't buy this book as a study or how-to of producing. Buy it because you LOVE making music and can appreciate the beauty of the equipment used to do so.

The review for this book states that you will find "revealing" photgraphs and invites you to walk into the private world of the hip hop producer, etc, etc. I was looking for a book that would give captions that at least detailed the equipment in each home studio. Instead, what you get is a bunch of nearly useless photos with no captions. Most of the photos are taken from such a deep perspective that you can't even make out what you are looking at. My favorites are the close up picture of the torn up chair and close up picture of a sub being held together with duct tape. Those wasted close ups should have been directed towards the equipment. There are a couple of studios where pictures were close enough to see the artists racks but for the most part the pictures are way too "abstract." I would not recommend buying this book new. You will look at it once and never pick it up again.