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Hip-Hop Is History by Questlove review – a soundtrack for the world, from the Sugarhill Gang to Kanye West

The Roots drummer, DJ, author and director is the ‘Ken Burns of black music’, and his personal reflections on a genre that last year turned 50 are full of wisdom and charm

It is generally accepted that it was born on 11 August 1973, when 18-year-old DJ Kool Herc first cut up breakbeats at a party in the Bronx and his friend Coke La Rock rapped along, but this DJ-driven art form, which evolved parallel to disco, took another six years to spawn its first hit single, the Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight. During the 1980s, hip-hop went from delightful novelty to scowling bogeyman, with leading scold Tipper Gore claiming: “The music says it’s OK to beat people up.” Then, in the decade between KRS-One insisting “It’s not about a salary, it’s all about reality”, and the Notorious BIG boasting “It’s all about the Benjamins”, it became a money-making machine. Photograph: Raymond Boyd/Getty ImagesQuestlove’s life-cycle thesis is embodied by the 30-year journey of his favourite act, A Tribe Called Quest: the youthful chutzpah, the rapid maturation, the diminishing returns, the dispiriting break-up and the extraordinary comeback that became a swansong with the death of founding member Phife Dawg.

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