Charnas — The Big Payback

Author: Dan Charnas
Title: The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop
Year: 2010
Type: Book (New American Library)

The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop is a book by the journalist and former record executive Dan Charnas, published by New American Library in 2010. It tells the history of hip hop from 1968 to 2008 as a business history, asking how street music from the South Bronx and Harlem became a multibillion-dollar global industry, from the fifteen dollars DJ Hollywood earned for picking up a microphone to the multimillion-dollar sales of Def Jam and the clothing company Rocawear. It rests on more than three hundred interviews, conducted by an author who had worked at Profile Records and The Source and had run the rap department of Rick Rubin’s American Recordings. Oliver Wang called it one of the most important books on pop music, and Spin praised its reporting. Wang wrote that it centers on New York and gives little space to the South, and Evelyn McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times praised its research while finding that it largely ignores Atlanta, Houston and Miami.

New American Library published the book in New York in 2010.¹ Charnas, a journalist, started in the mailroom at Profile Records, the label of Run-DMC, wrote for The Source in its early years, and was recruited by Rick Rubin in 1991 to run the rap department at American Recordings.² The book covers forty years, from 1968 to 2008, and asks how street music from the South Bronx and Harlem became a multibillion-dollar global industry.³ It runs from the first time DJ Hollywood made fifteen dollars for picking up a microphone and the early successes of Sugar Hill Records to the multimillion-dollar sales of Def Jam and Rocawear.³ Its subjects include the early rap shows on New York radio and the rivalries among their DJs and stations, the programming of the San Francisco station KMEL, and Sprite’s hip-hop advertising campaign.⁴ Charnas interviewed more than three hundred people for it.⁵

Oliver Wang, reviewing it on his blog Soul Sides, called it “one of the most important books on pop music, period.”⁴ Spin called it “Pulitzer-level reporting.”⁵ Wang also listed its omissions: it concentrates on the largest stories, it is centered on New York with less on Los Angeles and little elsewhere, it gives little space to Southern labels and artists, and it leaves out the independent labels and crews of the 1990s. He was skeptical of its argument that hip hop helped elect Barack Obama.⁴ Evelyn McDonnell, reviewing it in the Los Angeles Times, called it a must-read and its research meticulous, but found that it largely ignores Atlanta, Houston and Miami.⁶ Meredith Aska McBride reviewed it together with Tricia Rose’s The Hip Hop Wars (2008) and wrote that Rose’s book addresses the ethical side of hip hop that is largely absent from Charnas’s.⁷

Key contributions

• Hip hop’s history told as a business history, through its deals, labels, radio and marketing, from 1968 to 2008.
• A body of more than three hundred interviews, conducted by an author who had worked inside the industry.
• Detailed accounts of rap radio, in New York and at KMEL in San Francisco, and of corporate marketing such as Sprite’s campaign.

See also

• Black Noise — Tricia Rose’s 1994 study of rap music and Black culture
• Can’t Stop Won’t Stop — Jeff Chang’s 2005 history of the hip-hop generation