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Table of Contents
About The Book
Selwyn Seyfu Hinds—award-winning former editor-in-chief of The Source—presents an extraordinary memoir/history of hip-hop as seen through the eyes of one fan-turned-luminary.
The moment nine-year-old Hinds heard "Rapper's Delight" in Guyana, he embarked upon an amazing, if occasionally contentious, relationship with hip-hop—one that would continue through his migration to Brooklyn as a teenager and on through adult life. Here, he takes readers to a murky nightclub in the violent streets of late-eighties Brooklyn; to an Ivy League campus caught up in political rap during the early nineties; to a curbside in Los Angeles where Notorious B.I.G. has just been shot; to the achingly poor streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as a sea of black humanity surges to touch a hip-hop native son.
Interspersing recollections of life in the hip-hop trenches with profiles of figures like Lauryn Hill, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Dr. Dre, Wyclef Jean, and more, Hinds traces the heights and depths of his hip-hop love affair. Like the Guyanese rice dish "cook-up," Gunshots in My Cook-Up ingeniously pulls wide-ranging elements into an irresistibly cohesive dish.
The moment nine-year-old Hinds heard "Rapper's Delight" in Guyana, he embarked upon an amazing, if occasionally contentious, relationship with hip-hop—one that would continue through his migration to Brooklyn as a teenager and on through adult life. Here, he takes readers to a murky nightclub in the violent streets of late-eighties Brooklyn; to an Ivy League campus caught up in political rap during the early nineties; to a curbside in Los Angeles where Notorious B.I.G. has just been shot; to the achingly poor streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as a sea of black humanity surges to touch a hip-hop native son.
Interspersing recollections of life in the hip-hop trenches with profiles of figures like Lauryn Hill, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Dr. Dre, Wyclef Jean, and more, Hinds traces the heights and depths of his hip-hop love affair. Like the Guyanese rice dish "cook-up," Gunshots in My Cook-Up ingeniously pulls wide-ranging elements into an irresistibly cohesive dish.
Product Details
- Publisher: Atria Books (January 6, 2004)
- Length: 304 pages
- ISBN13: 9780743451376
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Raves and Reviews
Russell Simmons [Hinds does] for hip-hop what Langston Hughes did for jazz.
Publishers Weekly Hinds knows hip-hop as well as any journalist around. This account is part memoir, part behind the music [and it] works because he still believes in the power of this new, brash, and still-not-fully charted art.
Kirkus Reviews Refreshing and insightful....An alert take on hip-hop's trajectory.
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High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Gunshots in My Cook-Up Trade Paperback 9780743451376(2.6 MB)