As a former editor-in-chief of hip-hop magazine the Source
and a fan since he was a nine-year-old living in Guyana, Hinds knows hip-hop as well as any journalist around. This account is part memoir, part behind the music: we get days in the life of Puffy, Lauryn Hill at the Grammys and guerrilla touring with the Wu-Tangs. We get Hinds's writerly woodshedding at Princeton and the
Village Voice, the rise of the Source, sweaty clubs in Brooklyn and the escalation of the East Coast–West Coast feud until two of rap's superstars, Tupac and Biggie Smalls, are lost. An excellent storyteller, Hinds can write with equal intensity about his little brother's aspiration to be an MC, hiring an intern to go through "the Wack Box" or hurtling down the highway with Raekwon and Ghostface. Even though he knows it's business, Hinds's book works because he still believes in the power of this new, brash and still-not-fully charted art: this is a fan's memoir first, and a journalist's chronicle second. (Oct.)
Forecast:While non-fans will not get it,the
Source's mid-'90s legend lives on, and the many devotees of the era will find out about this book by word of mouth, if not targeted ads.
