With bright colors for summer heat, Wax Poetics 29 blasts into the funky avant-garde with Herbie Hancock and his Mwandishi band, written by producer Kirk Degiorgio. Mark Skillz returns with another old-school hip-hop cover feature: Spoonie Gee lit up the streets with his tales of gritty realism. Get your Waxpoetics at Boundless NY.

Our first issue of 2008 showcases a strong redesign. Hip-hop legend Grandmaster Flash gets cover honors, but it's the whole Furious Five who get the props inside. The late, great Eddie Harris is on our back cover; writer John Kruth fleshes out his story by speaking to those who worked with the saxman.

Mighty Mandrill get their due on the front cover of Wax Poetics Features this time around include bits on Marcos Valle, Andy Smith, Leroy Burgess, Oh No, Larry Harlow, Eddie Cheba, Joe Sample, Herman Hitson, and others -- a great mix of jazz, funk, soul, Latin, Brazilian, and hip hop elements.

Bill Withers from the soul, Herbie Mann,Detroit Techno, Brazilian Soul, Cut Chemist, Studio One.

Cover Story: Album Cover Art vividly explores an element of music culture that has withered with the advent of MP3s and digital downloading. Records possess a visual as well as an aural capacity for storytelling. The record cover--eye candy for the music lover--speaks a language rooted in the environment and era of the music itself. And, more intimately, a record can create a profound sense of analogy with its owner, and it's this relationship that we share.

Preface by Brian DiGenti and introduction by Dave Tompkins. The Wax Poetics team handpicked twenty albums apiece, 240 albums in all, twelve chapters: editor-in-chief Andre Torres; editor Brian DiGenti; contributing editors Matt Rogers, Andrew "DJ Monk One" Mason, Dante Carfagna, and J. P. Jones; contributing photo editor Brian "B+" Cross; contributing writers Jeff "Chairman" Mao, Oliver Wang, Robbie Busch, and Dave Tompkins; and label head Amir Abdullah.

After the overwhelming response from our first anthology, Wax Poetics has compiled the greatest hits from issues 6 through 10 in another collectible, hardbound edition. Wax Poetics Anthology 2 includes all your favorite stories from these early issues, and includes additional photos, illustrations, and album cover montages not included in the original editions.

Highlights

• Hip-Hop juggernauts Pete Rock, DJ Premier, and Dante Ross
• Thorough retrospectives of jazz giants Joe Zawinul, Eumir Deodato, and Sun Ra
• Disco architects Randy Muller and Pierre Jaubert
• Blaxploitation pioneer Melvin Van Peebles
• Southern soul heavyweights Eddie Bo and Willie Mitchell
• The premier of Dante Carfagna’s LP oddity column, Left Field Americana