Queens Reigns Supreme

Starred review from October 24, 2005
This engrossing portrait of the trigger-happy hip-hop demimonde explores the origins of the gangsta-rap ethos in southeast Queens, home to legendary narcotics gangs and many of rap's biggest stars, including 50 Cent and Ja Rule. New York
magazine music editor Brown begins by chronicling the careers of three Queens drug kingpins during the 1980s crack epidemic, when maintaining a fearsome reputation for violence was a must for doing business. He continues through to the 1990s, when a younger generation of hip-hop artists and impresarios idolized such criminals and adopted their twisted moral economy of street cred. Rappers dissed rivals' lack of a criminal background while burnishing their own; the war of rhymes occasionally escalated into gunplay between hostile entourages; prison stints and shoot-out wounds were coveted markers of hoodlum authenticity. Drawing on interviews with gangsters and rappers alike, Brown looks behind the tabloid headlines about such hip-hop luminaries as Russell Simmons and Tupac Shakur, while fleshing out the dynamics of machismo, loyalty, vengeance and greed in the claustrophobic 'hood. His is a vigorous account of an American subculture that's colorful, influential and, given the body count, tragic. 16 pages photos.

December 15, 2005
Focusing on the record label Murder, Inc., this work chronicles the rise and eventual unraveling of the marriage between hip-hop and organized crime on the East Coast during the 1990s. When the Queens-based drug kingpins who came to the fore during the late-Eighties crack explosion found themselves lionized as street heroes by rappers, their entry into the music business was assured. Soon major drug cartel figures, like Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff, and record-label executives, like Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo of Murder, Inc., were working together, riding a wave of success built on street cred, drug money, and bling. Brown (music editor, New York magazine) brings together accounts of dozens of greater and lesser figures associated with Murder, Inc., and East Coast rap. Drawing from court documents, wiretap transcripts, and exclusive interviews with hip-hop luminaries like Russell Simmons, as well many of those closely connected with the various criminal proceedings, he offers a glimpse into the dark underbelly of gangster rap. Unfortunately, the book reads more like a court account than a narrative, with endless anecdote after anecdote but little critical perspective. For hardcorepun intendedenthusiasts only.Dave Valencia, King Cty. Lib. Syst., Seattle

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2005
New York journalist Brown, who covers pop music, drug issues, and crime, resifts the evidence in the city's rapper/gang wars, thoroughly exploring the connections between the big-money rap music industry and the big-money criminal enterprise of drug dealing. So doing, he makes a valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature on the violence of such heroes of the 'hood as Lorenzo "Fat Cat" Nichols, Gerald "Prince" Miller, Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff, and Thomas "Tony Montana" Mickens as well as the rappers who glorified and shared with them a glitzy, murderous urban pleasure-dome existence. In the 1980s "hip-hop and hustling inhabited separate social spheres," but in time, hip-hoppers, "particularly those who were teenagers in the eighties," looked up to drug dealers, who had "all of the accoutrements that would come to define hip-hop's 'bling' lifestyle in the late nineties." The fast-money, heavily armed -criminals-cum-" -"rappers world eventually erupted in murders, such as those of Jam Master Jay and Tupac Shakur, and a festering series of rap feuds. A good, detailed report on an ongoing, epic social problem.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)