Book Review: Hip-Hop is History by Questlove

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Admittedly, I’m not much of a hip-hop listener so it might come as a surprise that I’m reviewing this book. I am a boomer when it comes to music and I don’t know what is popular these days, but I do know that one of the dominant genres in the present day is hip-hop. You can’t go anywhere without seeing or hearing hip-hop. A lot of people think it’s a rather new genre, but really it started as we know it 50 years ago, but I believe that there were previous forms of hip-hop, ancestors you might say, like talking blues, spoken word recordings, or Jamaican toasting.

The Jubalaires’ 1946 recording “Noah” has been dubbed on TikTok as Season 1 Episode 1 of hip-hop. It’s a banger, and I’m a hardcore atheist who knows nothing about the Bible. Other songs that come to mind are various Bob Dylan talking blues songs, Love’s “Bummer in the Summer”, Jefferson Airplane’s “Plastic Fantastic Lover”, and of course Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”.

Back to what I said at the very beginning, I am a classic rock blogger and historian so what am I doing talking about hip-hop? Part of my mission here at The Diversity of Classic Rock is to not limit myself. I always try to keep an open mind and I don’t want to limit myself to just classic rock since that would get boring and same-y pretty quickly, so when I saw that there was an opportunity to review Questlove’s new book Hip-Hop Is History I jumped on it, pardon the pun.

It’s a sequel of sorts to his 2021 book Music Is History, which looks at the history of mid-late 20th century popular music through a historical lens. As someone with a big interest in history, I was eager to read this book and find out more about this vibrant, influential genre. I’m ready to get an education on hip-hop! That’s why I don’t look down upon newbies to rock and roll. There’s a lot of curious minds out there and I want to encourage curiosity, getting out of your comfort zone, and trying new things. The best artists aren’t stagnant, they’re ever-evolving. Curiosity is an intelligent trait and a good trait to have. Hip-hop and rock music may be two totally different aesthetics and styles of music, but through this book I’ve found out that they have a lot more in common than we would initially think. Like I say in my blog’s tagline, it really is really more than meets the eye and ear. What I try to do here on this blog is build understanding and bridges between things that you may not think are similar. Through this, I want to open my mind as well as your mind.

Why 50 years ago? Well, in the intro, Questlove explains that one origin story of hip-hop was a party in August 1973 in New York hosted by Kool Herc’s sister. The book is divided into chapters that focus on different eras with most of the chapters focusing on a 5 year period: 1982-1987, 1987-1992, 1992-1997, 1997-2002, 2002-2007, 2007-2012, 2012-2017, and 2017-2022.

The first section of the book focuses on the years of 1979-1982: the birth of hip-hop. What famous pioneering hip-hop song came out in 1979? Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”, which samples Chic’s disco hit “Good Times” and was released on Sylvia Robinson’s record label, Sugar Hill Records, named after a posh part of Harlem. Sylvia Robinson was a well-established name in the music industry at that point. A little over 20 years before that, she was in an R&B duo with Mickey Baker and they got a chart topper with a Bo Diddley composition called “Love Is Strange”. That song was famously covered by Buddy Holly and the “how do you call your lover boy” line was referenced in The New York Dolls song “Trash”.

Like I’ve said many times on this blog and Questlove says in the book, the music of the present builds upon the music of the past, like Legos. You couldn’t have hip-hop without the music that came before it and disco, funk, and R&B were major influences on hip-hop. For Questlove, hearing “Rapper’s Delight” was like kids in the 50s listening to Bill Haley’s “Rock Around The Clock” or Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog”. From there, Questlove got into other rap music and he lists some songs he loves. Keep your favourite streaming service or YouTube handy and queue up these songs as you’re reading the book for the best experience.

Kurtis Blow also made history in 1979 as the first rapper to sign with a major record label. His debut single was “Christmas Rappin’” but his first chart hit was “The Breaks”, released in 1980. Not long after that, you had white rock musicians trying their hand at hip-hop like Blondie with “Rapture”, The Clash with “The Magnificent Seven”, and The Tom Tom Club with “Genius of Love” and “Wordy Rappinghood”. The bassline for Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” was inspired by Chic’s “Good Times” – John Deacon is a big fan of R&B and funk and with his favourite band being Tower of Power, some people in the Queen fandom have dubbed him Disco Deaky. He even tried his hand at hip-hop in 1983, playing bass on Man Friday & Jive Junior’s “Picking Up Sounds”. And of course we can’t forget how Aerosmith teamed up with Run DMC for a remake of “Walk This Way”.

Want another shocking fact about hip-hop? Did you know that it has British roots? That’s right! The song considered hip-hop’s national anthem “Apache” was originally an instrumental rock song written by Jerry Jordan and performed by The Shadows, who were Britain’s answer to The Ventures. So cool to see the cultural exchange in music! That’s right, that hip-hop classic would not exist without this 60s guitar instrumental.

When you really think about it, early hip-hop has some similarities to socially conscious R&B of the 60s and 70s like The Impressions’ “Keep On Pushing” or Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and folk and rock protest music of the 60s (Phil Ochs’ discography, Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” – famously sampled by Akon in his hit “Bananza”), or leftist punk music (The Clash, Patti Smith, Dead Kennedys). Even if hip-hop isn’t your thing, it’s important to appreciate the roots of hip-hop – there were socially conscious songs like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s “The Message” and “White Lines (Don’t Do It)” or Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” or NWA’s “Fuck Tha Police”. People really aren’t that different after all. The Reagan years were when a lot of today’s social problems started, those neoliberal policies that screwed over the working class, the statistics and charts say it all, just look at what happened from the 80s onwards, I rest my case. Music was one way that young people made themselves heard because there’s not a lot of young people in politics, let’s be honest.

The second chapter of the book focuses on the years 1982-1987, when hip-hop starts to take off. You got crossovers with electronic music with Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” sampling Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express”. Afrika Bambaataa also collaborated with the Godfather of Soul James Brown. R&B, Soul, and Funk were the basis of hip-hop with a lot of hip-hop songs even to this day sampling 60s and 70s R&B, soul, and funk. Run DMC’s crossover with rock music didn’t actually begin with Aerosmith and I’ve learnt that through this book. Two years before they collaborated on their breakthrough version of “Walk This Way” (this collab broke down barriers and from there more hip-hop musicians started getting airplay on MTV and they became the first rappers to be on the cover of Rolling Stone), they released “Rock Box”, which heavily featured Eddie Martinez on guitar. Their inspiration came from hearing heavy metal band Riot playing while waiting for their turn in the studio.

Much like rock and roll, hip-hop wasn’t taken seriously by the establishment at first and was seen as a fad and not serious. Some people don’t even consider rap music because there’s no guitars or singing in it and I think that’s a closed minded attitude to have. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the charts were still segregated and you wouldn’t see much hip-hop in the Billboard Hot 100 in those days. The Grammys didn’t have a rap category until the 90s (similarly, rock and roll was not a Grammy category until the 90s so during classic rock’s glory days these musicians got little to no recognition by the Recording Academy unless their music was poppy enough and appealed to those old fogeys there. You want another similarity? Just like punk’s simplicity was a response to the excesses of glam rock and prog rock and grunge was a response to glam metal, hip-hop’s simplicity and minimalism was a response to the flashiness of disco. There’s even a similarity again in Tipper Gore’s reaction to “sexual” or “violent” lyrics in R&B and rap just like parents in the 60s freaked out over the garage rock standard “Louie Louie” or parents in the 50s freaking out over Elvis Presley or Little Richard (the one that really boggles my mind is the fact that Link Wray’s instrumental “Rumble” was banned from the radio – how the hell is an instrumental offensive? The levels of snowflake behaviour in the 50s, far too high!). When MTV banned NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” and record stories refused to carry their album it reminded me of The Kinks’ “Dead End Street” being banned by the BBC and them being banned from touring the US for 3 years and The Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen” being banned by The BBC back in 1977. 

Speaking of Elvis, Questlove says that hip-hop had its Elvis moment with The Beastie Boys, a group of white rappers who helped make the genre mainstream. From the late 80s onward, hip-hop really became beloved among every race. The War on Drugs was in full force and we had a couple hip-hop groups talking about social issues: Public Enemy and NWA. By this point too, MTV had caught on and started their Yo! MTV Raps programme. With more television exposure, there came rap that was poppier and more acceptable to listen to in front of your parents was more “wholesome”. Around this time you also got more black representation on TV with shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which had many musicians making cameos – the star Will Smith not only is an actor, he also crossed over into making rap music. Martin, starring Martin Lawrence, similarly had guest appearances from rappers. With greater visibility came the FBI putting hip-hop artists with “radical” views on a watchlist. But it shows that they didn’t learn from history because the feds going after rock stars didn’t kill rock and roll, if anything it made them more popular, young people just like to rebel. And they did that once again with hip-hop, the taboo increased the genre’s mystique.

However, in the early 90s you had pop rap hits like MC Hammers’ “U Can’t Touch This” and Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” doing very well on the charts (both ended up becoming one hit wonders) and becoming party music staples. It was Disneyfied hip-hop. But there was still a lot of genuine hip-hop that is very well loved and not a novelty or one-hit wonder.

With hip-hop becoming more commercial, just like in rock and roll, some rappers played characters and basically Flanderised themselves and gave up authenticity for this over the top dangerous character. Questlove cites NWA as going from gangsta rap pioneers to becoming cartoons of themselves.

The 90s is considered to be the golden age of hip-hop and during that decade was the East vs West Rivalry, kind of like the British versus American rock and roll rivalry in the 60s, except in this case there was a lot more violence. During this time, Questlove’s hip-hop group The Roots released their debut independently and a couple years later they got a record deal. Some popular artists of the 90s include Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, P. Diddy (who is in really big trouble right now), Busta Rhymes, Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Method Man, The Fugees, and Wu-Tang Clan. Just like a lot of rock bands in the late 60s took an interest in Indian culture fashion and sound wise, Wu-Tang Clan took a lot of inspiration from martial arts, naming themselves after the Hong Kong martial arts film Shaolin and Wu Tang. But where did this influence come from? Well, a lot of these hip-hop artists were latchkey black kids who watched a lot of television and they would watch kung fu movies on TV and Bob’s your uncle.

1996-1997 was a painful time in hip-hop with the murders of two hip-hop superstars: Tupac and Biggie happening about six months apart. Questlove had his own story about how Biggie felt like The Roots’ music video for “What They Do” made a mockery of him and his music videos. He usually liked their music and had said good things in the past about The Roots and Questlove wanted to respond and say that it wasn’t their intention but just as they were about to send their statement to Biggie, he was dead. Much like Otis Redding’s biggest hit was the posthumously released “Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay”, Biggie became best known for “Hypnotise” and “Mo Money Mo Problems” – both topping the charts in 1997. The following year, the hip-hop answer to that famous Art Kane photograph A Great Day in Harlem came out: 177 hip-hop musicians showed up for a photoshoot on 29 September 1998 and it’s considered to be one of the most iconic photos in hip-hop history. The photographer was Gordon Parks.

As we enter the new millennium, a hip-hop superstar named Eminem impresses Dr Dre and starts to make a name for himself, winning the Grammy for Best Rap Album for The Slim Shady LP. And that was just the beginning, The Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show were big successes and he starred in a semi biographical film called 8 Mile. These releases made a lot of impact.

September 11, 2001 was a day where everything changed. If you’re a millennial, you know where you were when you heard the news about the hijacked planes crashing into the Twin Towers. What the JFK assassination was for the boomers, that was what 9/11 was for millennials. Not only did travelling by plane change forever, so did politics: things started getting really conservative again and you had this new McCarthyism of sorts – if you dare say anything against America you’re a traitor and you’ll get cancelled (look up The Dixie Chicks). Another important historical moment in hip-hop history was when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, leading to a lot of destruction and devastation and Kanye West famously said on national television that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”: an iconic moment in his career and him speaking the truth. Later in the decade you had him jump on stage and steal the mic from Taylor Swift who won the VMA for Best Video by a Female Artist, “I’mma let you finish but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!”

It was still a homophobic time and a sexist time too with sexual harassment being normalised on television and toxic, unrealistic beauty standards being pushed on women. Hip-hop too changed with mixtape culture taking off and with the south emerging as a powerhouse in hip-hop with artists like Pharrell Williams (also an incredibly influential producer), Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Chris Brown hailing from Virginia and artists like Outkast, Ludacris, Lil Jon, TLC, Ciara, and T.I. coming from Atlanta. Still there were famous New York rappers like 50 Cent. Chicago’s most famous rapper is none other than Kanye West, even though he’s gone completely insane, there’s no doubt he had a lot of influence, not just as a musician but as a music producer too. 

Hip-hop really became a nationwide thing by the early 2000s with musicians from all over America and by the late 2000s/early 2010s, the Obama years, it became international with musicians like Drake, Nicki Minaj, Wyclef Jean, and Iggy Azalea. The Obama years chapters of the book make for an interesting read and discussion even though it’s definitely not my favourite era of music. Millennials started to come of age and make names for themselves in the music industry, music transitioned from traditional media like TV and radio to streaming and social media where albums aren’t as important anymore, and there was this mixed feeling where while Obama’s slogan was hope, there was a lot of division in society with race relations becoming more full of tension and we see this trend even now.

The second to last chapter of the book (2017-2022) covers the Trump years and the early Biden years and with it being recent memory, it’s a challenge to write about it with a historical perspective, but in short it seemed like things were going backwards. Politically things were going backwards (I’m pretty sure the slogan Make America Great Again makes it obvious) with the repeal of Roe v Wade and the unveiling of Project 2025. Usually it takes a few years for a decade to find itself, but the 2020s were an exception because of a little thing called COVID-19. Finally, the book ends with a look at the state of hip-hop in 2023 and what Questlove was up to. Finally, the book ends with an epilogue and a list of hip-hop songs that Questlove loves.

Hip-Hop is History is a thought-provoking, comprehensive read about hip-hop history full of facts about the musicians and music, historical context, some opinions with him sharing some albums he thinks are the greatest of all time, and some personal stories about the music. Questlove as a musician and someone who grew up in a musical family knows his music history and provides a valuable perspective and I love how he draws parallels to other genres of music like rock and roll and jazz and shows how really all genres of music are interconnected. There’s a family tree of music and rock and rap aren’t really as far apart as you’d think. It helps if you know a lot about hip hop, but even if you don’t it’s still an enjoyable read with lots of great suggestions of what to listen to, giving you a good starting point in your hip-hop listening journey.

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