Fantastic oral history of hip hop. An old head like myself still learned about plenty from it. Could have benefited from contributions from more of the big names in the art.

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of hip hop, the author takes you on an Indepth look into the genre from the people who were apart of it. If you're a lover and one that studies hip hop, this would be a great book to add to your arsenal. Some parts did seem to drag a little, and there was a present, albeit very small amount of interview from the women who were and still apart of the genre.

I didn't like this book. I didn't follow who the people were being interviewed. I am not the target audience for this book.

I am a big fan of oral histories and a fan of hip hop, although a relatively recent fan by the standards of this book. The breadth and depth of this oral history is impressive with a long timeline, tons of interviews, and many times capturing the moment in multiple different locations during the same timeframe. The stories told were engaging and in most cases they were told by the key figures in the moment that was being discussed. This is definitely a comprehensive oral history for any hip hop fan, but it could be almost too comprehensive for the more casual fan. However, the way the chapters are set up a reader could always skip around to the areas that interest them most. I would recommend this oral history and would also be interested in it as an audiobook.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It was packed with so much information that I found insightful as it captured the origins of hip-hop. I’m into music heavy especially rap and just to read something that goes into depth on its history I learned so much.

It took awhile to get through this one but I enjoyed the authors personal perspective and how well he constructed the interviews, stories, talent, and backgrounds of so many artist into this one book. Definitely worth the hype and recommend you read if you’re into music. Special thanks to the author, Crown publishing, and Netgalley for my advanced copy!!!

A must read for music lovers, whether you’re a hip hop fan or not. The interviews were through and will definitely read this book again.

The concept of this book is great--an oral history of Hip Hop from those who were present for the major and minor moments. A behind the scenes, fly on the wall perspective of all things hip hop. Reading it however fell flat for me. It was like reading a transcript of a documentary series. It dragged on; after while and I found myself not paying attention then I had to re-read those parts. For me this is definitely better enjoyed as an audiobook. I love the cover and wide range of topics explored. It's a great gift for anyone into hip hop and black music history.

A walk down memory lane. Johnathan Abrams takes us all the way back to the birth of hip-hop. And it was a reminder for me, if some great times and lots of fun. As he went through the growing years, mentioning crews and songs, memories came flooding back to me. This is a definitive chronicle of the building of what we know now as hip-hop culture. Johnathan Abrams seemingly spoke with everyone who was someone bringing this book alive. Hearing from some of hip-hop’s luminaries as they don the 20-20 lens of hindsight fills in some of the mysterious holes. You know, those rumors you heard about rapper X, but never could quite confirm. Some of those underground stories are brought to surface here.Thanks to the Crown publishing group and Netgalley for an advanced digital copy.

The Come Up is an incredibly comprehensive look at the history of hip-hop, told through the voices of those who made it. Award-winning journalist Jonathan Abrams, who spent four years conducting over 300 interviews with key players in the industry traces the evolution of hip-hop with the same eye to detail he used to examine The Wire.

Featuring stories from Grandmaster Caz, Duke Bootee, DMC, Ice Cube, and Kool Moe Dee, among others, The Come Up offers a unique and vivid perspective on the history of this genre. It’s an essential read for fans of rap, and accessible regardless of their level of fandom. The Come Up is sure to have readers reaching for their music streaming app as they make their way through its pages.

This book was so good! Abrams is 2/2 for oral histories with me, after loving his oral history of The Wire. I love good oral histories because you get such a variety of perspectives. There's an art to making an oral history flow well and have the people speaking complement each other and Abrams is fantastic at it.

There are so many cool things I didn't know in here. From the very origins of DJing and scratching and how it started the movement, how the commercialization of rap affected the genre and subculture, to the origins of the west coast vs east coast feud (main sparks: Suge Knight and.....Outkast!?). I thought the book was pretty comprehensive and gave due to artists who don't get a lot of recognition outside of hip-hop circles for their contributions to culture. I have so much homework now. I also have a much deeper appreciation for the different styles of rap and how the genre has overlayed on top of each other in response to other regions/rappers trying something new and levelling up what people thought could be done and the influences that could be brought in. As an aside, it always makes me sad when people dismiss rap as people just talking fast. Rap is art, rap is poetry, it's storytelling and it's culture. And I think this book does an outstanding job of celebrating it in all of its forms, even if I'm not a fan of certain subgenres.

Also, while I knew it intellectually, seeing just how many incredible rappers are mentioned in this book just made me realize how deep the bench is for phenomenal talents that don't get enough appreciation. Highly recommend this book for hip hop-heads but also just for anybody who wants to dig deeper into a subculture, especially one that has influenced our modern era of music so totally.

This was a phenomenal look at the origins of hip hop told by those who created it. It’s a massive book, but we’ll worth the time it will take to read.

The premise of this nonfiction work sounded promising but the format wasn't exactly my favorite. I also had issues with the visual format on my kindle.

Look, if you’re into hip-hop you need this book. It’s a lot of fun, it’s interesting, and it lends so much authority to a genre that’s often disregarded. I really loved hearing the different voices on the same events, and looking up songs and people I didn’t know. The chapter on 2pac and Biggie was easily my favorite, I honestly can’t get enough of their stories, and I learned a lot about each of the men.
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It sucks that the book couldn’t get into everything and everyone, it’s just not possible. It also sucks that more big big names didn’t participate, though Ice Cube, Russell Simmons, DMC and many others lend their voices. The book is really fulfilling but I felt Abrams didn’t focus on certain subjects because he didn’t always have the right person to discuss it. Overall I really enjoyed the book and was impressed and am so glad I read it.

What a great book this was I learned a lot about the differen Types of rap and how The producers and songwriters presented this to this world. I know it's started in the South Brooks And how they were trying to express their views through their music. And how this was really interesting to me because I didn't ever know there were so many different aspects of this and however rap was different depends on where you are going and what part of the country you are in. How West Coast and East Coast had a rivalry because they had 2 different ways of looking at things. I think this book is really important because it shows the producers and how people start at this Music and how they were just trying to be who they were because the mainstream really didn't understand who they were. The basic record companies really didn't really want to embrace us so they started their own movement which is pretty amazing for people who really have nothing at all to start with. Every region had a different form of wrap which was pretty interesting how they compared it to these areas and how it changed over the years. You're not this book is great because it shows people these people are very intelligent people and how they cooperate in these different music and even produce when produce music for movies based on their experience. I wish more people would look at this type of music because it's important. Every music is important but this is especially because it's explaining the way of life from these people. Even winning a Poets are a prize for this type of music that wasn't amazing.

A must read for music fans. Abrams has written a comprehensive history of a genre which has changed the music world, blending straight reporting with the voices of those involved. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. Not my genre (musically) so I learned a great deal.

Great history. Interesting selection of voices to tell the history of hip hop. Loved it. Will recommend it to my students.

Despite nearing 50 years of existence, hip-hop has very few authoritative histories, and the personal stories of the trailblazers and early innovators are at risk of being lost as many early pioneers start receiving their AARP cards. New York Times reporter Jonathan Abrams attempts to fill this gap with his new hip-hop oral history The Come Up and does a fantastic job.

I’ll get this out upfront: I’ve been reviewing books for about ten years now and I haven’t ever been as excited for an advanced copy as I was for The Come Up. I absolutely loved Abrams’ previous books Boys Among Men and All the Pieces Matter and I’m a huge hip-hop fan from Aceyalone to Zev Love X to AZ. And I’m pleased to say that Abrams delivers on this remarkably-personally-compelling premise.

The book’s foundation comes from more than 300 interviews conducted over 4 years. Abrams sits down with DJs, rappers, producers, label executives, reporters, and more, giving a full view of the history of both hip-hop music and the culture surrounding it. Like all oral histories, participation matters. Even the best writer is going to be hamstrung if they can’t get the right people with this. And thankfully Abrams is able to largely deliver on that front, with genre icons and pioneers across all eras covered. You get Kool Moe Dee, Kurtis Blow, Russell Simmons, Ice Cube, Killer Mike, Bun B, and loads more from all cities and eras. And sure, some luminaries like Chuck D and Rakim don’t make an appearance but both artists are covered well through people very close to them like Hank Shocklee from the Bomb Squad and Marley Marl. This helps ensure that no key topic gets short shrift in the narrative. I also thought it was neat how Abrams includes interviews from artists from all eras and cities to show how they influenced each other.

The Come Up proceeds in a largely chronological fashion, hitting on all of the major moments and players that you’d expect. It begins in the early 1970s and continues through roughly the early 2000s. There is some brief coverage of major events from the last 20 years like DAMN by Kendrick Lamar winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 and hip-hop becoming the top genre in the US according to Nielsen in 2017 but those passages are largely to illustrate where the genre has gone since rather than analyze recent history in-depth. If you view Eric B and Rakim’s 1987 LP Paid in Full as a dividing line between “early hip-hop” and the start of its “golden age” then about the first third of The Come Up is devoted to that early, pre-1987 era when the rhymes and production were generally simpler. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of early releases from artists like Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow, and the Sugarhill Gang (especially the latter), compared those who followed, but it’s still fascinating to learn about the genre’s roots and early stages when there was so much freewheeling innovation going on and no codified “rules.”

The remaining two-thirds of the book feature Abrams hopscotching across boroughs and regions to illustrate the genre’s spread, still largely chronologically. Some major luminaries like Russell Simmons/Def Jam get entire chapters devoted to them that cover longer timeframes, but it never comes off as disorienting. The book is well-structured overall. Abrams intersperses helpful context between many passages and the reading experience flows very smoothly and Abrams never overshadows the interviews. There are also no awkward transitions or interview non sequiturs that plague some oral histories. Everything fits together like a perfect mosaic, not too dissimilar from the production on Paul’s Boutique or 3 Feet High and Rising (before sample sources got extra litigious). Abrams’ focus extends beyond the music to hip-hop as a cultural phenomenon, with extended coverage of films like Wild Style and the controversies surrounding 2 Live Crew and Ice T that also helped mold all aspects of the genre.

While there haven’t been any oral histories of hip-hop at the scale of The Come Up, the book is going to cover some stories and moments that a fan of the genre will be familiar with. Outside of some southern rappers (I’m not hugely into the Houston scene, mea culpa) I had at least passing familiarity with every artist/album/event that garnered a decent amount of mentions. But, I acknowledge I’m in my early 30s now and have devoted over half my life to inhaling every possible shred of content about hip-hop, and Abrams unearths some entertaining new insights about material I was quite familiar with and fond of. Case in point: I’ve listened to Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest billions of times but I had no idea that their record label Jive were so amused by Industry Rule #4080 (record company people are shady) from the song Rap Promoter that they created their own t-shirts celebrating it.

There are way more interesting nuggets like that, such as how legendary producer Pete Rock’s poorly-scheduled barber appointment nearly scuppered a recording session with Will Smith. And how Peanut Butter Wolf (founder of the legendary underground label Stones Throw Records) opened for a young Jay-Z and predicted Hov would never amount to anything. And how Q-Tip got his name, and how Chuck D wrote much of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back on the Long Island Expressway going back and forth from the studio, how (the apparently super-elusive?) Pete Rock flat-out missed recording with Shaquille O’Neal because he just wasn’t home when they came to his house and couldn’t be found anywhere. And and and.

If I haven’t made it abundantly clear how much I liked this book, then I should just hang up my reviewing keyboard and give it up. But yes, I really enjoyed this. It is one of the top 3 (out of many, many, many) books about hip-hop that I’ve ever read. I don’t have any big quibbles with it. I would have appreciated a bit more of a focus on production throughout (though there is a late chapter going into some dedicated detail on the craft of beatmaking), I’m a bit bummed that some of my favorites like De La Soul didn’t participate (but again, the roster of participants is massive and very strong), and I thought the Roots probably warranted more than about half a page (but they’ve always been a sorta self-contained group that is hard to link to other artists/cities outside of I guess the brief-lived Soulquarians) but those are tiny nits that all have parenthetical caveats. If you have no interest in hip-hop whatsoever I guess you won’t get a ton out of The Come Up. But you also wouldn’t have read this far if that was the case, or read this review at all. Simply put, if you like hip-hop at all you owe it to yourself to check this out and you should find it to be outstanding.

9/10

If You Liked This Book:

All the Pieces Matter by Jonathan Abrams. A very compelling oral history of the legendary television show The Wire. As I just tried to make clear in my review, Abrams is deft at composing readable and well-constructed oral histories and he works this magic on an oral history of one of the best television shows ever. He got great participation for this one too and draws out some compelling insights from the show’s major players.

Check the Technique 1 and 2 by Brian Coleman. This is basically an oral history format and features rappers and producers reflecting on their biggest albums. There is some brief exposition, interviews teeing up the album and recording process, and then the creators break everything down track-by-track. It includes interviews with Common, De La Soul, Black Moon, Ice-T, Redman, Run DMC, El-P, The Beastie Boys, and loads more. Most of the artists open up and share some great stuff (with Slick Rick sadly being a notable exception).

Ego Trip’s Big Book of Rap Lists by Ego Trip Magazine. Ego Trip was a short-lived magazine devoted to hip-hop that was published in the mid-nineties. It was irreverent and freewheeling but still clearly written by folks who had encyclopedic knowledge and deep love for the genre. This book is precisely what it claims to be: a bunch of lists and commentary about said lists. You have Big Boi’s favorite Atlanta strip clubs, DMC’s all-time NFL team, best and worst hip-hop advertising copy, best hip-hop songs about food, and a ton more. Utterly delightful.

The Big Payback by Dan Charnas. This is subtitled as “The History of the Business of Hip-Hop” and I feel that it’s an accurate description. Remarkably readable and gripping history of how hip-hop became big business and all the titans, rivalries, and artists who helped elevate it into an economic juggernaut. And if you want to geek out about rap production I also highly recommend Charnas’ 2022 book Dilla Time about J Dilla.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Crown Publishing for an advanced copy of this book on the history and impact of hip-hop music.

How does an artistic movement begin. One person with an idea, a group of like minded people trying to entertain their friends, family, and others. People hopping on an idea to get them out of a place they know will probably keep them down or even kill them. Or as one person says in this book and I am paraphrasing, your brain is not the same as my brain, and we are not the same brain as this other guy, so what we can do with beats and samples will be totally different. That sounds as good a reason as any. The history of hip-hop has tons of stories about talent, musical and lyrical skills, breaks, helping some, dissing others, and a lot of using brains. Jonathan Abrams author and journalist has done his best to bring all their stories back to us in The Come Up: An Oral History of the Rise of Hip-Hop, in which players discuss the game from its beginnings up to the present day.

The book covers over fifty year of history, starting in the block parties of New York City, expanding to the West Coast, and back to New York. Miami and the South are discussed as is the Mid-West. The book is a chronological history, but does move around a bit to get a sense of the scene and the people involved. The interviews share a theme discussing the ideas behind the block parties, the rise of the DJ and the scene, finding the beats to get the party started, and keep the people moving. The coming of MCs to hype up the people, evolving into rhymes and rhythms that started to get socially aware, as well as body moving. Disco influences, drum machines, West Coast sound, horror core, drill, trap. All with historical asides to tie-in events and movements that keep the narrative moving.

The book is worth the hype. Most of my knowledge of hip-hop is of a person living in Connecticut watching on MTV and even I was amazed at what I remembered. The interviews are very good, informative, and when a story goes one way, Abrams finds another person, to go, hmm no this is what really happened. There are so many good stories, of people so just loving the music and getting behind it, helping each other out, sharing beats, rhymes, studio time, and supporting each other. Reading this one is amazed at how many lives were changed by hip-hop, some for good, but for others tragically. Abrams keeps the narrative going and describes, even to a neophyte like myself, the different sounds of different areas, and never loses track, or bogs down. With so large a cast that he interviewed I can't imagine that was easy, and I am quite impressed by all his work and how he arranged it. My favorite chapters are near the end, where the questions are more about creativity. People discussing filling journals with lines, or others just thinking about it in traffic, laying it down in the studio. Or just blasting back in rap battles right off the cuff. For so much talk about the evils of hip-hop that this kind of skill is just amazing to even think about, and I am in awe at their abilities on the mike, on the turntables, or in producing these songs.

A book that needs a playlist. Readers will be on Spotify or checking out vinyl racks to see what secrets might be in their collections. This book is not just a history but a celebration of an American made form of music that could only have been created at a certain time, under certain conditions. Highly recommended for music fans, and cultural studies fans. This is a book that others will be compared to.

A must-read for fans of rap, regardless of how avid or casual your fandom. You’re going to want to keep your Spotify app open while you read this book because it’s impossible not to want to listen to the rap as you work your way through this oral history.

Abrams worked on this project for 4 years, and it shows. It’s meticulous, accessible & well crafted.

Solid 5 stars, huge thanks to Netgalley & Penguin Random House for the ARC

I received this as an eGalley from NetGalley.

Best fact learned from this book:
Pharrell Williams' early rap name was....."Magnum the Verb Lord."