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Paid in Full: The Battle for Black Music review – the racism that’s seen artists brutally ripped off for 100 years

Nile Rodgers, Ice T and Trevor Nelson join music historians to lay bare the horrific industry practices that have denied Black musicians millions. It’s just a shame it doesn’t offer more anti-capitalist analysis

In 1975, James Baldwin wrote about “the terrifying economics” lived by his friend Billie Holiday, observing: “The music industry is one of the areas of the national life in which the blacks have been most persistently, successfully and brutally ripped off.” It is not that the record business has a monopoly on American racism, of course. Once across the Atlantic, episode three finds firmer ground in detailing how Black British music culture has evolved a proudly DIY ethos that has proved impervious to top-down industry control. Later it’s mooted that Stormzy, with his #Merky Records, is realising the change that Sam Cooke said was coming – a suggestion that feels far-fetched at first, but Zawe Ashton’s coolly neutral narration talks us round.

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