Entertaining, and likely to hold strong appeal for hip-hop fans.
A former NYPD member teams up with journalist Diehl for a gritty memoir chronicling Parker’s transformation from a regular cop pounding the city streets to a hard-bitten lead detective in the “Rap Intelligence Unit.”
Crime and hip-hop have been inexorably linked ever since the genre emerged from the graffiti-covered New York City streets in the late 1970s. Parker, who grew up in an urban, African-American neighborhood, was an ardent hip-hop fan, but he wound up enforcing the laws flouted by many of the folks creating the music he loved. Delineating this process, and some of his most famous cases, the text at first favors a pulpy prose style, as if the coauthors were paying homage to hack crime fiction. (“Tersely we said our goodbyes. A.J. had other people to call. So did I.”) This affectation is quickly shed as Parker gets down to business, rattling off some visceral recollections of his early days on the force. Hip-hop was on the rise just as his career was kicking into gear, and he soon realized that many of the perps he was dealing with on the streets, such as Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff of the World Famous Supreme Team, were the same guys who were tearing up the charts. Things only escalated from there, and Parker was asked to head up the newly formed Rap Intelligence Unit in the ’90s, a response to the slayings of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. The former cop believes both these cases were solvable, but bungled by the police—a common theme to which Parker returns throughout the book, giving the impression that he was often fighting a lone battle against hip-hop-related crime. In a neat touch, the book ends with a few anecdotes from his post-NYPD career as head of a security firm whose clients are, naturally, some of the biggest figures in the rap world.
Entertaining, and likely to hold strong appeal for hip-hop fans.Pub Date: July 5, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35251-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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