Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177327 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-22
• Released on: 2005-11-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This engrossing portrait of the trigger-happy hip-hop demimonde explores the origins of the gangsta-rap ethos in southeast Queens, home to legendary narcotics gangs and many of rap's biggest stars, including 50 Cent and Ja Rule. New York magazine music editor Brown begins by chronicling the careers of three Queens drug kingpins during the 1980s crack epidemic, when maintaining a fearsome reputation for violence was a must for doing business. He continues through to the 1990s, when a younger generation of hip-hop artists and impresarios idolized such criminals and adopted their twisted moral economy of street cred. Rappers dissed rivals' lack of a criminal background while burnishing their own; the war of rhymes occasionally escalated into gunplay between hostile entourages; prison stints and shoot-out wounds were coveted markers of hoodlum authenticity. Drawing on interviews with gangsters and rappers alike, Brown looks behind the tabloid headlines about such hip-hop luminaries as Russell Simmons and Tupac Shakur, while fleshing out the dynamics of machismo, loyalty, vengeance and greed in the claustrophobic 'hood. His is a vigorous account of an American subculture that's colorful, influential and, given the body count, tragic. 16 pages photos. (Dec. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
New York journalist Brown, who covers pop music, drug issues, and crime, resifts the evidence in the city's rapper/gang wars, thoroughly exploring the connections between the big-money rap music industry and the big-money criminal enterprise of drug dealing. So doing, he makes a valuable contribution to the burgeoning literature on the violence of such heroes of the 'hood as Lorenzo "Fat Cat" Nichols, Gerald "Prince" Miller, Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff, and Thomas "Tony Montana" Mickens as well as the rappers who glorified and shared with them a glitzy, murderous urban pleasure-dome existence. In the 1980s "hip-hop and hustling inhabited separate social spheres," but in time, hip-hoppers, "particularly those who were teenagers in the eighties," looked up to drug dealers, who had "all of the accoutrements that would come to define hip-hop's 'bling' lifestyle in the late nineties." The fast-money, heavily armed -criminals-cum-rappers world eventually erupted in murders, such as those of Jam Master Jay and Tupac Shakur, and a festering series of rap feuds. A good, detailed report on an ongoing, epic social problem. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
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.

Customer Reviews

From South Side to the darkside..Jamaica Queens!
The book Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip Hop Hustler really depicts the inner circle of the 80's drug culture in South Side Queens. Growing up in Bedstuy,Brooklyn and hanging out in Jamaica, Queens gave me a whole new prospective of the "suburbs". I thought growing up in the projects in Bedstuy was bad enough and it was a condition you could not help. From murders, robberies to stick up kids, you name it, we had it. So when I went to high school in Queens I never thought that kids that grew up in houses, parents with the high paying city jobs could be be so dubious, cut throat and down right murderous all in the name of the almighty dollar from drugs sales. This book slices the cake straight down the middle and lets you taste the filling inside!

From Queens Come KINGS!!!
Great book and great body of work documenting the origins of much of what commercial hip hop currently reflects. A must have for any rap music aficionado. Although rap was created in the Bronx the successful blueprint for the business of rap was drafted in Queens. While Bronx artists like Afrika Bambaata and The Furious Five were inspired by Funk and Soul acts of the time such as Parliment Funkadelic the rappers in Queens were heavily influenced by some of NY's most notorious hustlers and gangsters. Men like Lorenzo "Fat Cat" Nichols and Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff who also hail from Queens. Essentially, the legendary criminal figures of Queens influenced an entire generation worldwide through the pop icons who emulated them and also called Queens home. From Fat Cat to 50 Cent... Queens Reigns Supreme!

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Book Reigns Supreme
Excellent Book, I read the entire book in less than 5 days, and I don't read many books. I lived in the south Jamaica Queens in the 80's, so I can relate to the story of the hustlers and gangsters that were roaming around during that time. The book gives you a peep at a underworld few people actually lived to tell. It blends the drug hustlers of that era with what is going on in Hip Hop these days. The book brillantly captures the rise and fall of the drug lords running Queens in the 80's. This book is hard to put down. Hopefully a lesson will be learned for whom ever reads this book.