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

(LA Times) - "Here's a little story that must be told," Dan Charnas writes by way of an ironic introduction to his brick-sized epic, quoting a classic rap lyric. "The Big Payback" (Amazon: http://xrl.us/BigPayback ) is ostensibly the history of the business of hip-hop, but in its ambitious scope and exhaustive detail, Charnas' 660-page book ends up being one of the most comprehensive, and certainly one of the longest, printed accounts of the music itself.

That intertwining of commerce and art is one of the author's main points: Since the day Sylvia Robinson gathered a bunch of strangers in a Harlem studio and — voila! — created the first hit rap group (the Sugarhill Gang), the story of hip-hop has been a story of hustlers. It's also a story of the transcendence of race in post- civil-rights-era America — that's Charnas' other main point. On both counts, despite some extraordinarily ugly incidents and chump moves along the way, it's a phenomenal success story...