The Roots’ Questlove Announces New Hip-Hop Is History Book

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is releasing another book. The Roots drummer and acclaimed director will issue Hip-Hop Is History on June 11 via his own Auwa Books. See the book’s cover, designed by Reed Barrow, below.

Questlove wrote Hip-Hop Is History with Ben Greenman—the musician’s collaborator on 2016’s Something to Food About: Exploring Creativity With Innovative Chefs; 2018’s Creative Quest; 2019’s Mixtape Potluck Cookbook: A Dinner Party for Friends, Their Recipes, and the Songs They Inspire; and 2021’s Music Is History.

A press release offers the following preview of Hip-Hop Is History:

Questlove skillfully traces the creative and cultural forces that made and shaped hip-hop, highlighting both the forgotten but influential gems and the undeniable chart-topping hits—and weaves it all together with the stories no one else knows. It is at once an intimate, sharply observed story of a cultural revolution and a sweeping, grand theory of the evolution of the great artistic movement of our time. And Questlove, of course, approaches it with not only the encyclopedic fluency and passion of an obsessive fan but also the expertise and originality of an innovative participant.

Questlove won the 2022 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film for his directorial debut, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Along with his duties with the Roots, the drummer has been hard at work on a new version of The Aristocats.

Read the 2021 interview “Questlove on Restoring Black Music History and Making One of the Year’s Best Films.”