Hip-Hop Is History
Questlove, writing with Ben Greenman, is attentive to the genre’s splendor as well as its stumbles. He’s sympathetic to the aspirational and at times gleefully materialistic ethos of rap’s most mainstream figures ... The book’s very project acts as an advertisement for elastic fandom. It’s fondness without fanaticism; ardor with secure attachment steez ... Questlove dares us to choose, for once, to love Black people over Black culture.
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Lively, if self-limiting ... In many ways, the book is made up almost entirely of asides, for better or worse ... There are times when this adherence to Questlove’s personal relationship and perspective weighs things down. The very structure of the book hews to his theory that hip-hop has historically entered a new era every five years, and each introduction to the chapter briefly assesses the changing sociopolitical and cultural milieu. Considering how brilliant he is, and how much of both a player and courtside observer he is to these shifts, many hip-hop fans are likely to yearn for more of this analytical, journalistic sensibility. Put another way, one simply wishes he would occasionally just sit with subjects a little longer.
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Occasional informal shifts from objective and omniscient narration of 'important events' that sound like traditional history to incredibly personal and subjective opinions ... Questlove makes his musical likes and dislikes known with little reservation throughout, dismissive of anything that isn’t directly related to the nation as he knows it ... The indices containing Questlove’s playlists are perhaps the book’s most instructive and representative parts.
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