A person wearing a flat cap and a striped button-up shirt stands on a city street with buildings in the background during twilight.

Dan Charnas

Dan Charnas is a bestselling author, award-winning music and business journalist, producer of records and television, and professor. He has written four books; was the co-creator and executive producer of the VH1 TV series The Breaks; and is an Associate Arts Professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University. Charnasโ€™s latest book is Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, The Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm (2022). A New York Times Bestseller, Dilla Time is the winner of the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, and was named a 2022 Notable Book by the Library of Michigan, and made 2022 โ€œBestโ€ lists for Pitchfork, Vulture, Rolling Stone, New York Times, Financial Times, Amsterdam News, Spin, HipHopDX, Esquire, and Variety. Danโ€™s first book, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (2010) was called โ€œa classic of music-business dirt digging as well as a kind of pulp epicโ€ by Rolling Stone. He has been a contributor to the New York Times, NPR, Billboard, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, and many other publications.