No beat, and you can’t dance to it.
The most successful producer in rap…is duller than Perry Como?
Hip-hop journalist Ro (Raising Hell, 2005, etc.) recounts the storied career of Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, arguably the most significant producer in the history of rap music. His accomplishments are legion: As a co-founder of the controversial group N.W.A., he helped establish the genre of “gangsta” rap, which focused on violent, reportorial tales of street life, in stark contrast to much of rap music’s historically light-hearted, party music approach. As a producer, he pioneered a sonically rich palette of layered drum machines, synthesizers, samples and live instruments that came to be known as “G-funk,” a highly commercial sound that defined the West Coast hip-hop approach. As a solo artist, he released The Chronic, one of rap’s defining albums. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded Aftermath Records, and he has been instrumental in establishing the careers of such luminaries as Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, 50 Cent, The Game, Eve and many others. He has successful soundtracks on his resume, has directed music videos and even acted in some small film roles. It is a mystery, therefore, that in Ro’s chronicle he comes off as a singularly uninteresting person: A remote perfectionist and workhorse with little direct exposure to the “thug life” he so lucratively celebrated, Dre seems to have spent the majority of the past 20 years behind a mixing board, cranking out hits like some marijuana-driven savant. The occasional glimpses of Dre the man are unflattering; he has run into trouble for striking women, and many of his collaborators have alleged that Dre has taken more credit for his productions than he perhaps deserves. Ro’s journalistic approach is impressive in its comprehensiveness, but the endless dry descriptions of contract negotiations, petty intramural beefs and depressingly frequent violent outbursts quickly become monotonous. The lack of musical or socio-cultural analysis leaves the book an impressively researched but dryly assembled resume.
No beat, and you can’t dance to it.Pub Date: May 15, 2007
ISBN: 1-56025-921-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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