Not without flaws but an insightful firsthand account of hip-hop’s vanguard.
Reflections on a life of artistic commitment during hip-hop’s golden age.
“I wasn’t trying to become a rapper, I just enjoyed doing it,” writes Rakim in his debut memoir. From his first exposure to hip-hop as a boy to being universally recognized as a contender for the greatest MC of all time, Rakim makes his love of rap manifest throughout the book. Whether rapping “from 10 in the morning to midnight, every day,” or refusing to change his style to meet the approval of Marley Marl or Dr. Dre, he presents himself as deeply committed to the art of rap. His experience crafting lyrics transfers nicely to prose; the narrative is reflective in the way of good memoir and revelatory in the way of good reportage. The scenes from Rakim’s childhood are especially vivid and establish him early on as the smart and fiercely independent person his fans would come to know through his music. One consequence of that independence has been the number of people he has been at odds with over the course of his career. Ever the competitor, Rakim uses the book as a chance to settle scores with seemingly every rapper of his era other than Tupac, for whom he has only respect. About his longtime collaborator Eric B., he writes, “I’m really hip-hop and Eric really wasn’t….I think deep down, Eric wanted to be an R&B singer.” The book wavers when the author turns didactic or lets sections of lyrics and commentary interrupt the narrative. Readers gain so much from Rakim’s story and his insights into artistry that the moments of didacticism—e.g., “if it’s your first tour, be prepared for the unique variety of challenges that come with being a rap artist”—become grating. The author’s lyrics, as groundbreaking as they were, don’t read as well as they sound in Rakim’s voice, nor do they add to what the book otherwise does so well: tell the personal story of one of hip-hop’s greatest icons.
Not without flaws but an insightful firsthand account of hip-hop’s vanguard.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-285023-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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