Hip-HOP is History

By QuestLove

White Rabbit / HB / Audio / E-Book / 11 June 2024

Questlove’s Hip-Hop is History has been acquired by Lee Brackstone, Publisher at White Rabbit. Brackstone has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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 skilfully 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 encyclopaedic 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.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker, drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, and member of The Roots – Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, is the unmistakable heartbeat of Philadelphia’s most influential hip-hop group. He is the Musical Director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where his beloved Roots crew serves as house band. Beyond that, this 6-time GRAMMY Award winning musician's indisputable reputation has landed him musical directing positions for everyone from D'Angelo to Jay-Z. Questlove made his directorial debut with the Academy Award winning feature documentary Summer of Soul. The movie broke the record for the highest-selling documentary to come out of Sundance, and it has since gone on to win “Best Feature Documentary” at the 2022 Academy Awards, “Best Documentary” at the 2022 British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) and “Best Music Film” at the 2022 Grammy Awards, as well as a Peabody Award. In addition, Summer of Soul was crowned the “Best Movie of 2021” by The New York Times and included among the “best of the year” by The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and more. Outside of Summer of Soul, Questlove partnered together with Black Thought of The Roots to launch a production company, Two One Five Entertainment. Together, the pair announced a first-look deal with Universal Television to develop scripted and non-scripted programming. In 2022, the company executive produced the acclaimed feature documentary Descendant about the historic discovery of The Clotilda—the last known slave ship to arrive in America illegally transporting enslaved Africans. The documentary, which made its world premiere at Sundance in 2022, was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground—President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company. The film earned an impressive three nominations for “Best Documentary Feature,” “Best Director,” and “Best Historical Documentary” and took home the award for “Best Historical Documentary” at the 2022 Critics Choice Documentary Awards. It also received a nomination for “Outstanding Documentary” for the 2023 NAACP Image Awards and was also named one of the “Top 5 Documentaries” of 2022 by the National Board of Review. Questlove’s web series, Quest for Craft, produced by Two One Five and launched in partnership with the single malt whiskey brand, The Balvenie, took home a Webby Award in 2023. Up next, Questlove will make his feature film directing debut with a live-action hybrid reimagining of The Aristocats for Walt Disney Studios. Two One Five is set to produce the film alongside Olive Bridge. Questlove has written multiple books, including the New York Times bestsellers Mo’ Meta Blues, Creative Quest, Music is History, and The Rhythm of Time, as well as the GRAMMY nominated audio books Music Is History and Creative Quest. Expanding his literary endeavors, in 2023 he launched his own book imprint, AUWA Books, within MCD Books, a publishing division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The imprint will publish both nonfiction and fiction on a wide range of topics.

Ben Greenman is a New York Times bestselling author and New Yorker contributor who has written both fiction and nonfiction. His novels and short-story collections include The Slippage and Superbad. He has been Questlove's collaborator on a series of books, including Mo’ Meta Blues, Creative Quest, and Music Is History, and he has written memoirs with Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Brian Wilson. His writing has appeared in numerous publications.

Publisher Lee Brackstone said: ‘If you had to choose any practitioner and writer in the world to write a personal history of hip hop, arguably the greatest art form of the late twentieth century, it would be Questlove of The Roots. Written to recognise the 50th anniversary of hip hop’s birth in the Bronx, Hip Hop is History is a landmark publication for White Rabbit, a book that will surely become the canonical work on the genre, its origins, many mutations and superstars. This book will be in print for decades, enrich your musical lexicon, remind you of artists you loved but have forgotten, and introduce you to pioneers you’d heard of but perhaps neglected. A masterpiece.’

All press enquiries should be directed to:

Emma Finnigan emma@emmafinniganpr.co.uk , Sarah Bennie sarah@sarahbennie.com or Francesca Pearce francesca.pearce@orionbooks.co.uk

The contact for Questlove’s team is Carleen Donovan carleen@theoriel.co

White Rabbit is dedicated to publishing the most innovative books and voices in music and literature and creating magic from the alchemical reaction where these two things meet. Led by Publisher, Lee Brackstone, White Rabbit publishes titles encompassing memoir, history, fiction, translation, traditional pop culture, lyrics, illustrated books and high-spec limited editions. Since launching in spring 2020, White Rabbit has published several Sunday Times Bestsellers (including the likes of Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep, Carl Cox’s Oh Yes! Oh Yes!, Chris Frantz’s Remain in Love, and Ten Thousand Apologies by Lias Saoudi and Adelle Stripe), and established itself as the go-to destination for books emerging from and celebrating the counter-culture. Feed Your Head!

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HIP-HOP IS HISTORY BY QUESTLOVE