Nonfiction – History – Music – Rap & Hip Hop

RELEASE DATE: 5/27/2025 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER’S WAREHOUSE)

Originally Published in Hardcover 6/11/2024

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 wasnt 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 Awardwinning musician, an Academy Awardwinning filmmaker, a New York Times bestselling author, a producer, an entrepreneur, a cofounder of one of hip-hops defining acts (the Roots), and the genres 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 hitsand 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.

AUTHOR BIO:

Questloveis a six-time Grammy Award-winning musician, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur,New York Timesbestselling author, cofounder of the Roots, and the musical director forThe Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where the Roots serves as the house band. He is the author of theNew York TimesbestsellersMo’ Meta Blues,Creative Quest,Music Is History, and his first children’s book series,The Rhythm of Time, as well as the James Beard Award-nominatedsomethingtofoodabout,Mixtape Potluck, and the Grammy-nominated audiobookCreative Quest. Questlove made his directorial debut with the Academy Award-, Grammy Award-, and BAFTA Award-winning documentary filmSummer of Soul, which broke the record for the highest-selling documentary to come out of the Sundance Film Festival. Questlove is a cofounder of Two One Five Entertainment. He is the publisher of AUWA Books, an imprint of MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Ben Greenmanis aNew York Timesbestselling author andNew Yorkercontributor who has written both fiction and nonfiction. His novels and short-story collections includeThe SlippageandSuperbad. He has been Questlove’s collaborator on a series of books, includingMo’ Meta Blues,Creative Quest, andMusic Is History, and he has written memoirs with Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Brian Wilson. His writing has appeared in numerous publications.