Starting out as a drummer for The Roots, Ahmir Thompson, aka Questlove has further made his name as a film director, producer and book author.
Now, Questlove is set to publish another book, co-authored with Ben Greenman, titled Hip-Hop Is History, with a publishing date set for June 11, 2024, via his own Auwa Books.
A press release offers the following preview of Hip-Hop Is History:
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.
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 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 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.
You can pre-order Questlove’s new book Hip-Hop Is History now through Amazon.
