-There has never been a better book about hip-hop...a record-biz portrait that jumps off the page.---A.V. Club
THE INSPIRATION FOR THE VH1 SERIES THE BREAKS

The Big Payback takes readers from the first $15 made by a -rapping DJ- in 1970s New York to the multi-million-dollar sales of the Phat Farm and Roc-a-Wear clothing companies in 2004 and 2007. On this four-decade-long journey from the studios where the first rap records were made to the boardrooms where the big deals were inked, The Big Payback tallies the list of who lost and who won....