Queens Reigns Supreme - Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler

Informationen zum Autor Ethan Brown writes about pop music, crime, and drug policy for publications such as Wired, New York, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and GQ. This is his first book. He lives in New York. Klappentext Based on police wiretaps and exclusive interviews with drug kingpins and hip-hop insiders, this is the untold story of how the streets and housing projects of southeast Queens took over the rap industry.For years, rappers from Nas to Ja Rule have hero-worshipped the legendary drug dealers who dominated Queens in the 1980s with their violent crimes and flashy lifestyles. Now, for the first time ever, this gripping narrative digs beneath the hip-hop fables to re-create the rise and fall of hustlers like Lorenzo "Fat Cat” Nichols, Gerald "Prince” Miller, Kenneth "Supreme” McGriff, and Thomas "Tony Montana” Mickens. Spanning twenty-five years, from the violence of the crack era to Run DMC to the infamous murder of NYPD rookie Edward Byrne to Tupac Shakur to 50 Cent's battles against Ja Rule and Murder Inc., to the killing of Jam Master Jay, Queens Reigns Supreme is the first inside look at the infamous southeast Queens crews and their connections to gangster culture in hip hop today.Chapter 1 1 The Crews Coalesce Southeast Queens lies at the farthest reaches of the borough, on the Long Island border, a neighborhood so far from Manhattan it might as well be another state. With its wide, almost interstate-like boulevards (Rockaway, Sutphin, Baisley, Guy R. Brewer) and its major parkways (Belt and Grand Central), southeast Queens has little in common with the crowded, narrow streets of Manhattan or even with the remote parts of outer boroughs like the Bronx and Brooklyn. Though the area is just one small corner of the most middle-class, most immigrant-populated borough, it’s not considered a single, unified neighborhood by anyone who lives there. No one says they’re from “southeast Queens.” This isn’t a matter of pride. The area comprises a series of interlocking neighborhoods, each one distinct to its natives. Southeast Queens is home to some of the most sprawling housing projects in all of New York City, most prominently South Jamaica’s Baisley Park Houses and the South Jamaica Houses, nicknamed the “40 Projects” because its cluster of tall brick buildings sits beside Public School 40. South Jamaica is composed mostly of public housing though one area, Jamaica Estates, is dominated by the middle class and is the birthplace of Donald Trump. Further to the south are the Springfield Gardens and Laurelton sections of southeast Queens, which are made up of blocks of middle-class housing developments that breed a professional class of doctors, lawyers, and accountants. Then there is Hollis. Located just east of South Jamaica, the single-family homes of Hollis have for decades been a refuge for lower-middle-class African Americans fleeing the cramped conditions of poor neighborhoods such as the South Bronx and Harlem. Colin Powell’s parents bought their first home, a three-bedroom bungalow at 183-68 Elmira Avenue, for $17,500. The neighborhood, Powell wrote in his autobiography My American Journey, “carried a certain cachet, a cut above Jamaica, Queens and just below St. Albans, then another gold coast for middle class blacks.” Powell’s African-American neighbors no doubt shared his lofty sentiments about Hollis; though many of the homes in the area were modest, single-level units, most had ample front and backyards and even basements, a rarity in inner-city neighborhoods, even in the outer boroughs. In Hollis, residents could feel like they were part of a neighborhood but could keep their distance whenever they needed to, just like in the suburbs. By the mid-seventies, Hollis’s luster began to fade: Spurred by the busing of blacks to white schools and the decay of New York City’s infrastruct...

Product details

• Authors: Ethan Brown
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.11.2005
• EAN: 9781400095230
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-9523-0
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 234 mm x 16 mm
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Music > General, dictionaries