Questlove wasn't crazy about the idea of writing a book about the history of hip hop. Not because he had to write it – in fact, the Roots drummer is an accomplished author whose catalog includes the acclaimed 2013 memoir Mo' Meta Blues and the recent Music is history. The problem was that he didn't know where to place himself, now over fifty, in today's rap scene.
“She used to be my girlfriend,” Questlove says of hip hop. “In a way we're still married, but I don't really know how I feel about her anymore. And so it worried me to discover that I didn't have much to say about post-2015 hip hop.”
Hip Hop Is History, which is about to be released in English by his publishing house AUWA Books, is the book he wrote after resolving this doubt. It is divided into chapters that represent key changes that occurred every five years in the development of hip hop (in 1982, 1987, 1992, and so on). In addition to quoting the lyrics that define the various eras, from those of Jay-Z to Nicki Minaj and Lil Yachty, Questlove paired each five-year period with the drug that defined it: crack for the period from 1987 to 1992, lean from 2002 to 2007, opioids from 2017 to 2022. According to the musician, fentanyl will be the most important drug until 2027.
“I'm convinced that the sound of black music is based on the substances we use to relieve pain,” he says. «I understood this when Chuck D told me: “We wanted the world to know the effect that crack had on us”. After he put it in these terms, I wrote down a big episode-type graph at home CSI».
Questlove began his investigative work in New York State at the beginning of the lockdown, a period that for him began with a couple of weeks of “panic in the fetal position.” He then got into the habit of listening to new music every Sunday for three, four, five hours, to try to understand contemporary hip hop. And he ended up writing the book with longtime collaborator Ben Greenman, former editor of the New Yorker whom Questlove jokingly calls “the adult in the room.”
«If I had done it alone, it would most likely have become a memoir», he explains and specifies that «I always made sure to let the reader know when a certain thing was a subjective opinion and if and when there was my personal involvement.”
Another author might have written about Kanye West's determination pre College Dropouts through quotes or excerpts from texts. Questlove chose to share the hilarious story of young West reciting his bars to Black Thought backstage at a concert while the latter is pulling on his pants before going on stage. There's also a touching story about how the Roots learned that Notorious B.I.G. had been killed in 1997 (before they had a chance to tell him they weren't dissing him in the video of What They Do).
In the book's prologue, Questlove recounts the tension he experienced in his role as performance coordinator for the 50th anniversary of hip hop at the Grammys in 2023, as well as revealing the repercussions his unyielding work ethic had on his love life. Hip Hop Is History in short, it is not an encyclopedia written in a dry way, but the gaze of a great exponent of the genre who lived a life in contact with rap.
When I speak to Questlove via Zoom, it's only an hour after the publication of Euphoria, Kendrick Lamar's diss to Drake. “I'm not sure I'm in the same league as Drake and Kendrick,” he says. «Listening to their back and forth, I feel involved just because I'm part of this story, but I'm not, so to speak, all the way in it»
A few weeks later, he attracted the ire of a lot of people by writing that in the beef between Lamar and Drake “no one won” and that “hip hop is dead” also at the hands of those who incited the two to fight . After another week, Questlove responded to detractors by saying that the book will contain even bolder opinions: “If good morning starts in the morning, you'll have a lot of fun with this stuff.” Only time will tell which parts of Hip Hop Is History will end up irritating rap fans.
From Rolling Stone US.