Feel the wide cultural reverberations of the decade’s lyrical legend from those who felt, wrote, and listened.
An in-depth biographical and historical contextualization of one of the decade’s most heralded rappers.
“Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” was the heartfelt testimonial standout track from Kendrick Lamar’s debut studio album, good kid, m.A.A.d city, a massive success upon its release in 2012. The album cemented Lamar as one of the new “top dawgs” in the game, much like the record label that incubated his talent, Top Dawg Entertainment. Lewis introduces Lamar via his first interactions with the musician, composing a promotional interview for his second album, the jazz-influenced To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). That award-winning album’s biggest hit, “Alright,” organically synced with the growing Black Lives Matter protests unfolding across the country. Joining Marcus Moore’s The Butterfly Effect (2020), this book uncovers avenues for understanding Lamar’s craft, which potently reveals the upheaval within Black communities and the music industry. A respected intergenerational chorus of Black cultural voices—Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ivie Ani, Greg Tate, Farrah Jasmine Griffin, Jay Smooth, Alicia Garza, and kris ex—offer illuminating commentary, while original artwork and reprinted photography reinforce the magazine-profile aesthetics of the text. Like all good hip-hop fans, Lewis recounts how his own life experiences are enmeshed with the music, and the biography lovingly challenges Lamar, as needed, on themes of political ideology and gender relations. All fans of Lamar recognize that he is incredibly honest, transparent, and vulnerable on his records, all of which so far could be defined as classic for the genre. Yet at the same time, his increasing unavailability to media outlets has created the conditions for veteran cultural insiders to fill in the gaps. Lewis does that well and also creates a shadow historiography of an entire generation of Black urban culture while leaving room for Lamar to remain the master lyricist of his own life.
Feel the wide cultural reverberations of the decade’s lyrical legend from those who felt, wrote, and listened.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-23168-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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