Culture
12 Mar 01

A Life Of Rhyme

IT S A great concept, you ve got to admit. A Limey journalist who doesn t know his Big Punishers from his Lil Kims goes to South Central, spends a year hanging out with the local hip hop hopefuls and produces the first book on gangsta rap that you don t have to be dope, fly or packing heat to understand.

Weighing in at a suitably meaty 384 pages, Westsiders displays admirable even-handedness by reinforcing as many myths as it shatters. Yes, most rappers treat their women deplorably, but no, they re not anti-white. Ice Cube sums it up perfectly when he says, It ain t the most terrible place to live in the world, but it s just so unpredictable.
You can go for weeks, months, years even without seeing any violence and then, bop, your best mate s killed in a motiveless drive-by shooting.
Without resorting to wishy-washy liberalspeak, Shaw explains the surrogate family aspect of being in a gang, the upside of drug dealing and why the 1992 L.A. riots were the most fun South Centrallers have had in years.
Disgustingly easy to read I polished it off in the one sitting Westsiders is the first must-have music book of the millennium.