Nelson George is an established author and filmmaker with a passion for telling stories of the black experience in America. George is the author of several ground breaking histories of African American music, including Where Did Our Love Go: the Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound, The Death of Rhythm & Blues and Hip Hop America. He has published two collections of music journalism, Buppies, BBoys, Baps & Bohos: Notes on Post-Soul America and the The Nelson George Mixtape, which is available through Pacific Books. www.pacificpacific.pub.
As a novelist he has written several popular novels with music themes (The Accidental Hunter, The Plot Against Hip Hop, The Lost Treasures of R&B, To Funk and Die in LA). The fifth book in the D Hunter music noir series, The Darkest Hearts, was published by Akashic Books in August 2020.
In television, George was a producer on the Emmy Award winning The Chris Rock Show (HBO), a producer on Hip Hop Honors (VH1), executive producer of the high rated American Gangster crime series (BET) and a writer on A Grammy Salute to The Sounds of Change (CBS) in 2021.
Travel has also been one of his major subjects, as he hosted Soul Cities for the VH1 Soul Channel and Black Atlas web series for American Airlines.
As a filmmaker George has co-written the screenplays to Strictly Business and CB4. He directed Queen Latifah to a Golden Globe in the HBO film Life Support, which he also co-wrote. He directed the Lifetime film The Real MVP and was a writer/producer on Netflix’s The Get Down series.
He has directed a number of documentaries including Finding the Funk (VH1), The Announcement (ESPN), and Brooklyn Boheme (Showtime). George was a producer on the award winning documentary on black music executive Clarence Avant, The Black Godfather (Netflix). His theatrical documentary on ballerina Misty Copeland is called A Ballerina's Tale. His most recent docs are Say Hey, Willie Mays! (HBO MAX) and Thriller 40 (Sony Music).
Currently he is editing a documentary called a Great Day in Hip Hop Revisited, parts of which have been screened at various museums and is an executive producer on documentary series about Tupac Shakur, Dear Mama, directed by Allen Hughes that will air on FX in 2023.
Nelson does most of his work through his production company, Urban Romances. He post regularly on his Substack titled The Nelson George Mixtape.