Canongate scoops banker-turned-writer Abbey's hip hop business 'bible'

Canongate has scooped a new work of non-fiction by banker-turned-writer Nels Abbey, author of Think Like a White Man (Canongate).

Hannah Knowles, who is now publishing director at Faber, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Zoe Ross at United Agents. The book will be edited by Simon Thorogood, editorial director at Canongate.

Abbey’s latest book, The Hip Hop MBA: Lessons in Cut-Throat Capitalism from Rap’s Moguls, will publish in April 2024. The synopsis says: "Abbey uses the stories, philosophies and data emerging from the successes, failures and highly unorthodox business methods of hip hop’s foremost moguls to explore how the business and the professional worlds work in practice.

"From Sylvia Robinson’s cutthroat business development tactics to Kanye West’s world-beating approach to innovation, Puff Daddy’s marketing prowess, Suge Knight’s unique approach to market research right through to how Jay Z and Beyoncé’s individual experiences of early rejection and failure propelled them to global success: rap industrialists took byproducts of chronic economic pain and turned it into champagne. With a business acumen often acquired in the streets, these moguls created and sustained a multi-billion-dollar industry – leaving stories of success and failure, betrayal and revenge in their wakes."

Abbey said: "Have your fees ready, a very different type of class is about to be in session. Thank God for hip hop."

Thorogood added: "As Nels sagely points out in his fascinating, entertaining new book: if you want to look at business success today, don’t look at the Titans of inherited wealth, look to the musicians and entrepreneurs who came from the streets and created a multi-billion-dollar industry."

Nels is also a co-founder of The Black Writers’ Guild