A review of autobiographies of hip hop artists in the 21st century – Examples from the USA and the Balkan countries

Autobiographies are literary works in which the authors themselves describe their lives. In an autobiographical book, the author writes subjectively and covers events and topics that he or she considers to be of particular importance to the reader. These books have become increasingly popular in recent decades, as the author shares his or her triumphs, defeats, and way of thinking. The purpose of this paper is to review published autobiographical books by hip hop artists from the United States in the 21st century, as well as a review of autobiographies of hip hop artists from the Balkan countries. For the purposes of the paper, a research methodology and secondary data sources were used by analyzing the content of autobiographical literature related to hip hop artists as well as the Internet. A chronological analysis and a tabular overview of the past three decades in which autobiographies of hip hop artists have been published, both in the United States and in the Balkan countries, were made. Research for this paper shows that, in the period 2000-2025, 42 autobiographical editions of hip hop artists were published in the United States. Six autobiographical editions were published by hip hop artists from the Balkan countries, three of which are related to hip hop artists from Serbia, and one autobiographical book each was published by artists from Croatia, Bulgaria, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.