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Gunshots in My Cook-Up: Bits and Bites from a Hip-Hop Caribbean Life

Gunshots in My Cook-Up: Bits and Bites from a Hip-Hop Caribbean Life

Current price: $19.99
Publication Date: January 6th, 2004
Publisher:
Atria Books
ISBN:
9780743451376
Pages:
304

Description

Selwyn Seyfu Hindsaward-winning former editor-in-chief of The Sourcepresents 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.

About the Author

Selwyn Seyfu Hinds has written for Vanity Fair, Spin, The Village Voice, Vibe, and other publications. He has been the editor-in-chief for The Source magazine, a hip hop and entertainment magazine. He is also a screenwriter, writing for the new adaptation of The Twilight Zone produced by Jordan Peele, and he was a writer and co-executive producer for the TV series, Who Fears Death? A graduate of Princeton University, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Praise for Gunshots in My Cook-Up: Bits and Bites from a Hip-Hop Caribbean Life

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.