Books by Nelson George
Hip Hop America
From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series, "The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between black youth culture and the mass media.
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Where Did Our Love Go?: The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound (Music in American Life)
Nelson George's chronicle of Motown Records' rise and fall remains a classic account of an essential American music company and its dynamic founder Berry Gordy Jr.
Gordy's uncanny instinct for finding extraordinary talent--from performers and musicians to songwriters and producers—packed the label's roster with a who's who of historic artists and hitmakers. Here is the story of the Supremes and superstar Diana Ross, of the towering solo acts Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, of vocal groups led by the Temptations and Four Tops, of the phenomenal Jackson Five and Michael Jackson, and of singer/songwriter and Motown executive Smokey Robinson. Up front about Gordy's manipulative and complex relationships with his artists, George reveals the inner workings of how Motown conducted its business. He also offers portraits of the Funk Brothers and other musicians who played the unforgettable songs.
George's preface shows how Motown influenced a later generation of young artists and music moguls, including R. Kelly, D'Angelo, Sean Combs, and Russell Simmons.
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Best Music Writing 2008 (DA CAPO BEST MUSIC WRITING)
by Nelson George, Daphne Carr, Daphne Carroll
The ninth entry in the acclaimed series celebrating the best writing on every style of music, from rock to hip-hop, R&B to jazz, pop to blues, and more.
Best music writing is the definitive guide to the year in music writing, an annual feast of essays, missives, and musings on every musical style by critics, novelists, and musicians themselves. Culled from publications ranging from blogs to the New Yorker, the 2008 edition captures a year in music writing as diverse and riveting as the music it illuminates.
Writers who have appeared in Best Music Writing include: Greil Marcus, Sarah Vowell, Nick Tosches, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers, David Rakoff, David Hadju, Lenny Kaye, The Onion, Gary Giddins, Jessica Hopper, Luc Sante, Kelefa Sanneh, David Byrne, Daphne A. Brooks, Jody Rosen, Anne Midgette, Sasha Frere-Jones, Elizabeth Méndez Berry, Alex Ross, Touré, Lynn Hirschberg, Chuck Klosterman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jay McInerney, Elvis Costello, Susan Orlean, Mike Doughty, Lorraine Ali, and many more.
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Thriller: The Musical Life of Michael Jackson
Thriller takes us back to a time in 1982 when Michael Jackson was king of the charts, breaking the color barrier on MTV, heralding the age of video, and becoming the ultimate representation of the crossover dreams of Motown's Berry Gordy, who helped launch Jackson's career with the Jackson 5. In this incisive and revealing examination of the making and meaning of Thriller, Nelson George illuminates the brilliant creative process (and work ethic) of Jackson and producer Quincy Jones, deftly exploring the larger context of the music, life, and seismic impact of Michael Jackson on three generations. All this from a groundbreaking journalist and cultural critic who was there. George questions whether the phenomenon Jackson became is even possible today. He revisits his early writings on the King of Pop and examines not only the stunning success of Thriller but also Jackson as an artist, public figure, and racial enigmaincluding the details surrounding his death on June 25, 2009.
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City Kid: A Writer's Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success
"City Kid is perhaps one of the seven greatest books ever written. It has the realness of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the warmth of The Color Purple, and the page count of Tuesdays with Morrie. It's a must read."-Chris Rock
From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series, "The Get Down, an affecting memoir of his coming of age.
Nelson George was the nerd of his ghetto neighborhood; the kid who devoured Captain America comics, Ernest Hemingway novels, and album liner notes. City Kid describes how George evolved into an award-winning journalist and filmmaker, becoming a key figure in framing hip hop for the rest of us. The story begins with a fractured family life-an absent father, a struggling single mother, and a sister who falls victim to the streets-but ends in triumph all around.
George overcomes both his own nerdiness, as well as the odds against him, to become a godfather of the hip hop movement-he was there at the beginning, and in City Kid he tells us what it was really like.
Writing with emotion, but without false sentiment, George creates an insightful and inspirational portrait of an emerging success, as well as the triumphant rise of hip hop culture and black artists in the 80s and 90s.
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Post-Soul Nation: The Explosive, Contradictory, Triumphant, and Tragic 1980s as Experienced by African Americans (Previously Known as Blacks and Before That Negroes)
The eighties were a colorful and contentious decade in the United States. Today's Gen-Xers have made the trade in eighties nostalgia and icons - from Rubik's Cubes to Members Only jackets - big business, but not everyone remembers the Me Decade as their carefree wonder years. Nelson George, the man Newsweek has called "the best black writer writing about black music in America," is in that category. His new book gets beyond the fads to the facts. Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America," trickle-down economics, and the steady undoing of the civil rights advances from the sixties and seventies made the 1980s a crucial and often perilous decade for an African American community that struggled to maintain a foothold amid a landscape of crack, crime, and urban destruction in an increasingly hostile American society. At the same time, black stars went supernova on television (Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey), in the movies (Eddie Murphy and Spike Lee), in the sports arena (Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan), in music (Michael Jackson and Prince), in literature (Alice Walker and Toni Morrison), and on the streets (Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan).
Organized chronologically, Post-Soul Nation is a recount of the whole of the African American experience in the 1980s. With a particular focus on culture and politics, George takes us from the release of the very first rap single in 1979 to Colin Powell's public emergence during the invasion of Panama in December 1989. Along the way, we witness the rise of political figures such as Clarence Thomas, Willie Brown, Harold Washington, W. Wilson Goode, and Marion Barry; the arrest and conviction of child murderer Wayne Williams; the identification and spread of AIDS; the designation of Martin Luther King's birthday as a national holiday; the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics; the trial of Bernard Goetz; the death of Len Bias; the Tawana Brawley affair and the rise of Al Sharpton; George Bush's Willie Horton campaign commercial; and the murder of Yusef Hawkins, among countless other events and individuals whose impact on the African American experience in the 1980s - and in turn, the American culture as a whole - has yet to be fully recognized or recorded. Nelson George has, over the last fifteen years, steadily rewritten the whole history of the African American experience within American culture as a whole. Post-Soul Nation focuses on the series of tipping points in that dynamic. After the eighties, there was no turning back.
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The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture & Style
An authoritative history of the groundbreaking syndicated television show that has become an icon of American pop culture, from acclaimed author and filmmaker Nelson George, “the most accomplished black music critic of his generation” (Washington Post Book World).
When it debuted in October 1971, seven years after the Civil Rights Act, Soul Train boldly went where no variety show had gone before, showcasing the cultural preferences of young African-Americans and the sounds that defined their lives: R&B, funk, jazz, disco, and gospel music. The brainchild of radio announcer Don Cornelius, the show’s producer and host, Soul Train featured a diverse range of stars, from James Brown and David Bowie to Christine Aguilera and R. Kelly; Marvin Gaye and Elton John to the New Kids on the Block and Stevie Wonder.
The Hippest Trip in America tells the full story of this pop culture phenomenon that appealed not only to blacks, but to a wide crossover audience as well. Famous dancers like Rosie Perez and Jody Watley, performers such as Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Barry White, and Cornelius himself share their memories, offering insights into the show and its time—a period of extraordinary social and political change. Colorful and pulsating, The Hippest Trip In America is a fascinating portrait of a revered cultural institution that has left an indelible mark on our national consciousness.
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The James Brown Reader: Fifty Years of Writing About the Godfather of Soul
Nelson George and Alan Leeds have assembled the first comprehensive collection of writings about the late, great Godfather of Soul, creating a fascinating mosaic of the man and the musician. Known as the hardest-working man in show business, James Brown embodied rhythm and blues, funk and soul, and sensuality. His musical innovations in such indelible grooves as “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,” “I Got You (I Feel Good),” and “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” transformed American music.
To appreciate Brown’s immeasurable influence, to chronicle his professional and personal triumphs and struggles, and to capture his essence, writers from four decades weigh in on the legendary Soul Brother Number One. What emerges is a tribute to a trailblazer—one that no dedicated fan or music history buff will want to be without.
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The Plot Against Hip Hop: A Novel (A D Hunter Mystery)
A bad-ass noir novel set in hip hop culture, by best-selling and critically-acclaimed author Nelson George.
―Finalist for the 2012 NAACP Image Award in Literature
“George is an ace at interlacing the real dramas of the world . . . the book’s slim length and flyweight depth could make it an artifact of this particular zeitgeist in American history. Playas and haters and celebrity cameos fuel a novel that is wickedly entertaining while being frozen in time.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“This hard-boiled tale is jazzed up with authentic street slang and name-dropping (Biggie, Mary J. Blige, Lil Wayne, and Chuck D) . . . George’s tightly packaged mystery pivots on a believable conspiracy . . . and his street cred shines in his descriptions of Harlem and Brownsville’s mean streets.” ―Library Journal
The Plot Against Hip Hop is a noir novel set in the world of hip hop culture. The stabbing murder of esteemed music critic Dwayne Robinson in a Soho office building is dismissed by the NYPD as a gang initiation. But his old friend, bodyguard/security expert D Hunter, suspects there’s much more to his death. An old cassette tape, the theft of a manuscript Robinson was working on, and some veiled threats suggest there are larger forces at work.
D Hunter’s investigation into his mentor’s murder leads into a parallel history of hip hop, a place where renegade government agents, behind-the-scenes power brokers, and paranoid journalists know a truth that only a few hardcore fans suspect. This rewrite of hip hop history mixes real-life figures including Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Russell Simmons with characters pulled from the culture’s hidden world, such as the Illuminati, FBI agents, and West Coast gangstas that roam the hard streets D Hunter walks down.
D Hunter is a tough, black-clad product of crime-ridden Brownsville, Brooklyn, a man whose family has been devastated by violence and who has dedicated himself to protecting people in an age of insecurity. Hunter has his own secrets, his own vulnerabilities, which he fights to overcome as he becomes a reluctant private eye. After reading The Plot Against Hip Hop, you’ll never hear the music the same way.
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The Lost Treasures of R&B (A D Hunter Mystery)
D Hunter, bodyguard-turned-PI, is back, investigating a murder that lures him into the heart of rhythm-and-blues history.
―Nominated for the Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize for Fiction
“This is a fine mystery and [protagonist] D Hunter is as world weary, yet steadfast, as Philip Marlowe, Spenser, Dave Robicheaux, or Easy Rawlins. A definite yes to purchase for both mystery and African American collections.” ―Library Journal, Starred Review, Pick of the Month
“George covers a lot of ground with style: the rhythm-and-blues music scene past and present, the sometimes startling evolution of Brooklyn and its environs, and the multitude of hangers-on, wannabes, and grifters who want a piece of the action.” ―Publishers Weekly
Professional bodyguard D Hunter takes a gig protecting rapper Asya Roc at an underground fight club in poverty-stricken Brownsville, Brooklyn. Unknown to D, the rapper has arranged to purchase illegal guns at the event. An acquaintance of D from the streets (and from the novel The Plot Against Hip Hop) named Ice turns out to be the courier.
During the exchange a robbery is attempted. Ice is wounded. D gets Asya Roc to safety but is then chased by two gunmen because he has the bag containing the guns. This lethal chase ends under the elevated subway where D and the two gunmen run into a corrupt detective named Rivera. A bloody shootout ensues.
D, who has just moved back to Brooklyn after decades in Manhattan, finds himself involved in multiple mysteries. Who were the gunmen? Why were they after the guns? Who was being set up―Asya Roc or Ice? Meanwhile, he gets a much-needed paying assignment to track down the rarest soul music single ever recorded.
With gentrifying Brooklyn as the backdrop, D works to unravel various mysteries―both criminal and musical―while coming to terms with the failure of his security company and the ghosts of his childhood in “old Brooklyn.” Like its predecessors The Accidental Hunter and The Plot Against Hip Hop, The Lost Treasures of R&B uses pop music as the backdrop for a noir-flavored big-city tale.
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