Spotted Reading “The Big Payback”…

I told my wife last year that I wouldn’t feel truly fulfilled as a first-time author until I saw a random person on the train reading my book. Last night, it happened. Her name is Ephrat, she’s a dancer (and a b-girl at that), and she actually got the book from a friend of mine, […]

Going Going, Back Back To Cali, Cali, Cali

Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop, will be appearing this Saturday, April 30, 2011 at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books alongside renowned music scribes Fred Goodman, Simon Reynolds and Randall Roberts on a panel entitled “In Flux: The Music Biz.”

VIDEO: 5 Hip-Hop Business Tragedies

In the latest installment of The Big Payback video series, I explore five tragedies of the hip-hop business, including: The Eclipse of Sugar Hill Records The Demise of Macola Records Public Enemy’s Raw Deals The Black-Owned Distributor Fails The Death of KDAY Get more of the story below! Play it, embed it, circulate it! Peep […]

VIDEO: Jay-Z… REALLY Decoded

In this new installment of my video series for The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop, I discuss a vital factor in the Jay-Z-Damon Dash breakup that you won’t find in Jay-Z’s new book, Decoded, or in any other book for that matter… Play it, embed it, circulate it! Peep the video […]

Critical Raves for “The Big Payback”

Dan Charnas’ The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (New American Library, December 7, 2010) is already getting big love from critics: Charnas’ “exhaustive, engrossing history of the genre” is #8 on the “Must List” — Entertainment Weekly “A classic of music business dirt-digging as well as a kind of pulp epic.” […]