Dan Charnas

Dan Charnas is a music industry veteran, writer, and curator with a deep connection to hip‐hop culture. He is the author of The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop (2011) and Work Clean, a book on chefs’ organization techniques. His career began in the mailroom at Profile Records in 1989, later expanding into comedy writing for MTV’s Lyricist Lounge Show and BET’s Comic View, and ultimately led him to create and executive produce the VH1 series The Breaks. Today, Charnas lives in Harlem and shares his expertise as an instructor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.