The Big Payback
The History of the Business of Hip-Hop

This is an encyclopedic guide to hip-hop history and hip-hop business deals which I would recommend to anyone interested in modern music history. The first half of this book reads incredibly well, as Dan Charnas is able to weave together various, seemingly unrelated stories with such ease. This book......more

Feel like I learnt way more about the business from this than you could from some textbook. It's so thorough in looking at exactly what deal did what for who and when. As scummy as it all was, I find myself looking at how things worked then more fondly; the endless warrens of regional radio, street......more

This was a cool book. I almost think calling it the history of the "business" of hip-hop is doing it a disservice. It's a huge book and I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to read that much about the business side. But this is a pretty comprehensive book about the history of hip-hop. At least the ear......more

This is too thoroughly detailed and well put together to give any less five stars, but I could spend all day nitpicking it if I wanted to. (I've got a lot of free time, but I've also got a lot of "hobbies.") So I'll just point out a few things. (1) The author is a lot less clever than he thinks he is......more

This was a great reference for filling in many of my missing links in hip-hop. You get an idea of who the artists are as people, how they got into the industry and how they were discovered. What you also get is a window into the depths of the music business - more than "industry rule 4080/record com......more