Download or read book Original Gangstas written by Ben Westhoff and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Raw, authoritative, and unflinching ... An elaborately detailed, darkly surprising, definitive history of the LA gangsta rap era." -- Kirkus, starred review A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur. Amid rising gang violence, the crack epidemic, and police brutality, a group of unlikely voices cut through the chaos of late 1980s Los Angeles: N.W.A. Led by a drug dealer, a glammed-up producer, and a high school kid, N.W.A gave voice to disenfranchised African Americans across the country. And they quickly redefined pop culture across the world. Their names remain as popular as ever -- Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. Dre soon joined forces with Suge Knight to create the combustible Death Row Records, which in turn transformed Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur into superstars. Ben Westhoff explores how this group of artists shifted the balance of hip-hop from New York to Los Angeles. He shows how N.W.A.'s shocking success lead to rivalries between members, record labels, and eventually a war between East Coast and West Coast factions. In the process, hip-hop burst into mainstream America at a time of immense social change, and became the most dominant musical movement of the last thirty years. At gangsta rap's peak, two of its biggest names -- Tupac and Biggie Smalls -- were murdered, leaving the surviving artists to forge peace before the genre annihilated itself. Featuring extensive investigative reporting, interviews with the principal players, and dozens of never-before-told stories, Original Gangstas is a groundbreaking addition to the history of popular music.

Download or read book A Gangsta s Pledge 2 written by E. L. Griffin and published by . This book was released on 2018-07-02 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the culprits still after them and new enemies forming, it seems like a peaceful life is the last thing possible for Saint and Nya. Friendship and family bonds are strained while the pieces from the fatal night are slowly put back together.Tables have turned and the characters find themselves trying to rebuild what was lost.Will Nya step up to the plate and be the woman a gangsta like Saint needs, or will their love become another casualty of the game?

Download or read book A Gangsta s Pledge written by EL Griffin and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Real Gangstas written by Timothy R. Lauger and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Street gangs are a major concern for residents in many inner-city communities. However, gangs’ secretive and, at times, delinquent tendencies limit most people’s exposure to the realities of gang life. Based on eighteen months of qualitative research on the streets of Indianapolis, Real Gangstas provides a unique and intimate look at the lives of street gang members as they negotiate a dangerous peer environment in a major midwestern city. Timothy R. Lauger interviewed and observed a mix of fifty-five gang members, former gang members, and non-gang street offenders. He spent much of his fieldwork time in the company of a particular gang, the “Down for Whatever Boyz,” who allowed him to watch and record many of their day-to-day activities and conversations. Through this extensive research, Lauger is able to understand and explain the reasons for gang membership, including a chaotic family life, poverty, and the need for violent self-assertion in order to foster the creation of a personal identity. Although the book exposes many troubling aspects of gang life, it is not a simple descriptive or a sensationalistic account of urban despair and violence. Steeped in the tradition of analytical ethnography, the study develops a central theoretical argument: combinations of street gangs within cities shape individual gang member behavior within those urban settings. Within Indianapolis, members of rival gangs interact on a routine basis within an ambiguous and unstable environment. Participants believe that many of their contemporaries claiming gang affiliations are not actually “real” gang members, but instead are imposters who gain access to the advantages of gang membership through fraud and pretense. Consequently, the ability to discern “real” gang members—or to present oneself successfully as a real gang member—is a critical part of gangland Indianapolis. Real Gangstas offers an objective and fair characterization of active gang members, successfully balancing the seemingly conflicting idea that they generally seem like normal teenagers, yet are abnormally concerned with—and too often involved in—violence. Lauger takes readers to the edge of an actual gang conflict, providing a rare and up-close look at the troubling processes that facilitate hostility and violence.

Download or read book The Vengeance of San Gennaro written by James Ward and published by Cool Millennium. This book was released on 2019-08-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By universal consensus, there’s only one exhibition worth seeing at this year’s Venice Biennale. Giuditta Cancellieri’s Il Timore di Dio, six paintings of something as yet undisclosed. Don’t bother buying tickets, though. A court order means no one’s getting in, not even the artist’s closest associates. And just lately, the city’s been crawling with felons. Most observers don’t think that’s a coincidence. For Signorina Cancellieri is no ordinary artist. A 25-year-old AIDS-victim from one of the toughest districts in Naples, she’s also closely linked to one of MI7’s oldest foes. And she has a truckload of enemies of her own. As the Venetian temperature rises to boiling point, agent Gavin Freedman is dispatched from London to discover whether she’s biddable. Which seems unlikely. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained... But Gavin has issues of his own. He recently lost his wife in a car accident and, although his psych evaluation says All Clear, deep down he's hoping he won't come back. All of which suits Giuditta just fine. Because she already has plans for him.

Download or read book Nuthin but a G Thang written by Eithne Quinn and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-17 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1980s, gangsta rap music emerged in urban America, giving voice to—and making money for—a social group widely considered to be in crisis: young, poor, black men. From its local origins, gangsta rap went on to flood the mainstream, generating enormous popularity and profits. Yet the highly charged lyrics, public battles, and hard, fast lifestyles that characterize the genre have incited the anger of many public figures and proponents of "family values." Constantly engaging questions of black identity and race relations, poverty and wealth, gangsta rap represents one of the most profound influences on pop culture in the last thirty years. Focusing on the artists Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, the Geto Boys, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur, Quinn explores the origins, development, and immense appeal of gangsta rap. Including detailed readings in urban geography, neoconservative politics, subcultural formations, black cultural debates, and music industry conditions, this book explains how and why this music genre emerged. In Nuthin'but a "G" Thang, Quinn argues that gangsta rap both reflected and reinforced the decline in black protest culture and the great rise in individualist and entrepreneurial thinking that took place in the U.S. after the 1970s. Uncovering gangsta rap's deep roots in black working-class expressive culture, she stresses the music's aesthetic pleasures and complexities that have often been ignored in critical accounts.

Download or read book Rap and Religion written by Ebony A. Utley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-06-11 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an enlightening, representative account of how rappers talk about God in their lyrics—and why a sense of religion plays an intrinsic role within hip hop culture. Why is the battle between good and evil a recurring theme in rap lyrics? What role does the devil play in hip hop? What exactly does it mean when rappers wear a diamond-encrusted "Jesus" around their necks? Why do rappers acknowledge God during award shows and frequently include prayers in their albums? Rap and Religion: Understanding the Gangsta's God tackles a sensitive and controversial topic: the juxtaposition—and seeming hypocrisy—of references to God within hip hop culture and rap music. This book provides a focused examination of the intersection of God and religion with hip hop and rap music. Author Ebony A. Utley, PhD, references selected rap lyrics and videos that span three decades of mainstream hip hop culture in America, representing the East Coast, the West Coast, and the South in order to account for how and why rappers talk about God. Utley also describes the complex urban environments that birthed rap music and sources interviews, award acceptance speeches, magazine and website content, and liner notes to further explain how God became entrenched in hip hop.

Download or read book The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games written by Christopher A. Paul and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An avid gamer and sharp media critic explains meritocracy’s negative contribution to video game culture—and what can be done about it Video games have brought entertainment, education, and innovation to millions, but gaming also has its dark sides. From the deep-bred misogyny epitomized by GamerGate to the endemic malice of abusive player communities, gamer culture has had serious real-world repercussions, ranging from death threats to sexist industry practices and racist condemnations. In The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games, new media critic and longtime gamer Christopher A. Paul explains how video games’ focus on meritocracy empowers this negative culture. Paul first shows why meritocracy is integral to video-game design, narratives, and values. Games typically valorize skill and technique, and common video-game practices (such as leveling) build meritocratic thinking into the most basic premises. Video games are often assumed to have an even playing field, but they facilitate skill transfer from game to game, allowing certain players a built-in advantage. The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games identifies deep-seated challenges in the culture of video games—but all is not lost. As Paul argues, similarly meritocratic institutions like professional sports and higher education have found powerful remedies to alleviate their own toxic cultures, including active recruiting and strategies that promote values such as contingency, luck, and serendipity. These can be brought to the gamer universe, Paul contends, ultimately fostering a more diverse, accepting, and self-reflective culture that is not only good for gamers but good for video games as well.

Download or read book The Gangster s Guide to Sobriety written by Richie Stephens and published by Post Hill Press. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richie Stephens is an actor who often plays hardened gangsters and criminals. This is easy for him because he was a drug trafficker, kidnapper, drug addict, alcoholic, and all-around criminal himself. His life twisted and turned in harrowing self-destructive adventures that took him from his native Ireland to San Francisco, Australia, and finally, Los Angeles, coalescing into a classic tale of a man trying to run from his problems by moving to new and more exotic locations—a hard and painful realization that comes at a point in which he’s about to take his own life. The only reason there is a story to tell is because he did not. Instead, he found help, and in doing so, found himself. More than that, he found that help comes in different forms, and oftentimes it just takes the right thought to hit at the right time for it all to make sense. The Gangster’s Guide to Sobriety chronicles Richie’s descent into the abyss of crime and dependency, and how his personal understanding of freedom allowed him to become the functioning positive force he is today. Richie’s story is sprawling and epic, but the key to the book is the same key to his recovery: the 12 Steps. With his own flair and original understanding of life and the world, he followed the 12 Steps to find the clarity he needed to save his own life and evolve into a positive force for others. As Richie says, “Hopefully if people see that someone as fucked up as me could change their life, then there is hope for anyone.” The Gangster’s Guide to Sobriety is gripping in its honesty and openness. Even at its darkest moments, there is a keen understanding of the absurd nature of life as the author comes to grips with his failings and his faith, while also entering a place of self-acceptance. This is a story of redemption and the power of the human spirit, and how sometimes you have to turn to something greater than yourself.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor written by Thomas M. Kitts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential part of human expression, humor plays a role in all forms of art, and humorous and comedic aspects have always been part of popular music. For the first time, The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor draws together scholarship exploring how the element of humor interacts with the artistic and social aspects of the musical experience. Discussing humor in popular music across eras from Tin Pan Alley to the present, and examining the role of humor in different musical genres, case studies of artists, and media forms, this volume is a groundbreaking collection that provides a go-to reference for scholars in music, popular culture, and media studies. While most scholars, when considering humor’s place in popular music, tend to focus on more "literate" forms, the contributors in this collection seek to fill in the gaps by surveying all kinds of humor, critical theories, and popular musics. Across eight parts, the essays in this collection explore topics both highbrow and low, including: Parody and satire Humor in rock and global music Gender, sexuality, and politics The music mockumentary Novelty songs Humor has long been a fixture of the popular music soundscape, whether on stage, in performance, on record, or on film. The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor covers it all, presenting itself as the most comprehensive treatment of the topic to date.

Download or read book Gods Gangsters 2 written by SLMN and published by Kingston Imperial. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bloodthirsty and thrumming, an original take on the source material. ... The writing is skillfully evocative, and readers will appreciate the excitement of a high-stakes power play " - Kirkus Reviews A brilliant retelling of William Shakespeare's Othello with an urban twist by New York Times best selling author SLMN Trust no one,not even those closest to you, the brothers you grew up with on the corners,the woman who lies beside you at night. Make the mistake of trusting them, you die or they die, because the only way for two people to keep a secret is if one of them is in the ground. Same as it ever was. When a new power rises up on the streets the game changes. Othello announces himself in furious violence, taking down the old gods and gangsters of the city. His crew are at his side, he is the man, but unseen around him fractures are forming, loyalties breaking . The only way to become the king is to kill the king... and he has a target on his back.

Download or read book Alice Walker written by Maria Lauret and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'The Color Purple', is one of America's major and most prolific writers. She is also among its most controversial. How has Walker's work developed over the last forty years? Why has it often provoked extreme reactions? Does Walker's cultural, political and spiritual activism enhance or distort her fiction? Where does she belong in the evolving tradition of African American literature? 'Alice Walker, second edition': * examines the full range of Walker's prose writings: her novels, short stories, essays, activist writings, speeches and memoirs * has been thoroughly revised in the light of the latest scholarship and critical developments * brings coverage of Walker's work right up to date with a new chapter on 'Now is the Time to Open Your Heart' (2004), and discussion of her recent non-fictional writing, including 'Overcoming Speechlessness' (2010) * traces Walker's lineage back to nineteenth-century visionary black women preachers and activists * assesses Walkers prose oeuvre both in terms of its literary and its activist merits and shortcomings. Ideal for students and scholars alike, this established text remains an essential guide to the work of a key US author as it explains her unique place in contemporary American letters.

Download or read book The Return of a Gangster s Girl written by Chunichi and published by Urban Books. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Broken-hearted, scorned Ceazia is home back in Virginia up to her old ways. With her road dawg, Diamond, by her side she's unstoppable, until the attention she's used to falls on the new booty and envy rears its ugly head. Trust no one without knowing their agenda in the scheme of things or be ready to find out who's game is tighter??

Download or read book The Bad Sixties written by Kristen Hoerl and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2018-06-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 Book Award from the American Studies Division of the National Communication Association Ongoing interest in the turmoil of the 1960s clearly demonstrates how these social conflicts continue to affect contemporary politics. In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change. Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the "bad sixties." These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy. These warped messages contribute to "selective amnesia," a term that stresses how popular media renders radical ideas and political projects null or nonexistent. Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality.

Download or read book Spy written by and published by . This book was released on 1996-07 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smart. Funny. Fearless."It's pretty safe to say that Spy was the most influential magazine of the 1980s. It might have remade New York's cultural landscape; it definitely changed the whole tone of magazine journalism. It was cruel, brilliant, beautifully written and perfectly designed, and feared by all. There's no magazine I know of that's so continually referenced, held up as a benchmark, and whose demise is so lamented" --Dave Eggers. "It's a piece of garbage" --Donald Trump.

Download or read book Gangster Government written by David Freddoso and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 2011-04-04 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scathing attack on the Obama administration and the current government equates them to common criminals and tries to offer a better way.

Download or read book Black John 3 16 written by Shawn Travis and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life can be rough on the streets of Chicago, especially for a young black man growing up in the hood. As gangs are created, drugs are distributed and violence begins to take hold on one's life. There's nowhere to go, but down after enduring the sights of someone being murdered in the backyard of your poverty infested neighborhood at a young age, to being initiated into a gang, where it's death before dishonor. Black John 3:16 is a graphic, deep and propelling tale about gang rivalaries, sex, drugs, crime, lies and chilling truths. Could you survive the streets of Chica