Shea Serrano’s Revolution

October 23, 2015

By: Connor Lenahan

Shea Serrano is a New York Times best selling author. How he got there is relatively amazing.

Serrano is best known for one of two things. Either for his writing career at Grantland where he regularly comments on topics from rap, Houston, Texas athletes, or movies – best of all his experiences watching Pixar films with his kids. The more powerful role is being potentially the best Twitter presence on the planet. His entire timeline is hilarious, and you can get lost for hours looking at @SheaSerrano. I have, and you should too.

But Shea just wrote a new book called The Rap Year Book. This is admittedly one of the more goofy-brilliant concepts for a book ever. He goes year by year and selects not what was the “best” rap song of the year, but instead the most “important.” Sound good? It should, because the book is amazing. I’m still working my way through it currently, but like all things else that he releases, it’s straight fire.

Shea’s amazing sense of humor and oddly powerful gift for capturing the hearts (and wallets) of people everywhere took this book from a project to a revolution. Think about when people are trying to sell you something – most of the time they just give you a heads up that it’s available and say that purchases are appreciated. That’s classic, it works, it’s how we get these things done.

Not the legendary Serrano. He decided to start making half-joking tweets about how everyone needed to get down with the cause. He turned the book from a purchase to a sign that you’re part of a movement. He got people engaged by sending them emojis on Twitter if they showed him that they bought the book. No lie, I did exactly this so he’d send me a Twitter message.