This is a book only Questlove could have written: a perceptive and
personal reflection on the first half-century of hip-hop.
When hip-hop first
emerged in the 1970s, it wasn't expected to become the cultural force
it is today. But for a young Black kid growing up in a musical family
in Philadelphia, it was everything. He stayed up late to hear the
newest songs on the radio. He saved his money to buy vinyl as soon as
it landed. He even started to try to make his own songs. That kid was
Questlove, and decades later, he is a six-time Grammy Award-winning
musician, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, a New York Times
bestselling author, a producer, an entrepreneur, a cofounder of one
of hip-hop's defining acts (the Roots), and the genre's unofficial
in-house historian.
In this landmark
book, Hip-Hop Is History, Questlove skillfully traces the
creative and cultural forces that made and shaped hip-hop,
highlighting both the forgotten but influential gems and the
undeniable chart-topping hits--and weaves it all together with the
stories no one else knows. It is at once an intimate, sharply
observed story of a cultural revolution and a sweeping, grand theory
of the evolution of the great artistic movement of our time. And
Questlove, of course, approaches it with not only the encyclopedic
fluency and passion of an obsessive fan but also the expertise and
originality of an innovative participant.
Hip-hop is history,
and also his history.