The Big Payback - 9780451229298

How did street music from the South Bronx and Harlem evolve over forty years into a multibillion-dollar global industry?

In The Big Payback, Dan Charmas Chronicles the Volatile History of the hip-hop industry through its key players---hungry hustlers, innovative entrepreurs, visionary handlers, and shrewd executives who had the business acumen to take the music of marginal urban subculture and tranfrom it into a mainstrearm pop-culture phenomenon.

From the early long-shot successes of Sugar hill Records and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, to Run-DMC's Crossover breakthrough on MTV, to the marketing of gangsta rap and the rise of stars like jay-z and sean Combs, who each head multimillion-dollar businesses, The Big Payback is a raw, real blow-by-blow tale of inspiration and treachery---of how hip-hop records got made and marketed, how the deals were done, and who won and lost in this epic struggle.

Focusing on Successful marketing Strategies---from the branding of hip-hop artists by labels such as proflile and Def Jam to the Key management choices that broke through the color barrier on radio and MTV---Charnas provides an insider's analysis of what has allowed hip-hop not only to endure but dominate, culled from more than three hundred revealing interviews with key industry players including Russell simmons, Rick Rubin, Warner Records Chief Lyor Cohen, and more, The Big Payback is both a fascinating narrative and provocative primer on hip-hop's compelling paradigm for business success in a new, multicultral America.