Tentatively, Convenience's Reviews > Chosen by Fate: Life and Death Inside Death Row Records

I read this b/c I wanted an insider's view of gansta rap culture - wch I usually dislike. I thought it might give me a better appreciation of it. Instead, I just thought this guy is one idiotic person. "Malik" was Snoop Doggy Dogg's bodyguard. By the time I'd read his description of Doggy Dogg I was not impressed. Just another no-talent pop star as far as I cd tell. But then I'm not familiar w/ his music. Maybe I'd like it. "Malik" killed somebody protecting Snoop. The whole thing just seemed so unbelievably stupid. "Malik" got off. I was at least expecting some sort of extremely-rough-life-story-to-justify-whatever but "Malik" came across, to me, as some sort of normal middle-class guy who just fell into the Death Row Records bodyguard biz just like other people fall into other jobs. He got it b/c he had a football player's body. Whatever.

When I originally read it I thought I might write a hopefully insightful highly political in-depth review of it for my anarchist magazine the "Street Ratbag". By the time I'd finished it it didn't seem worth bothering. It just seemed like American business-as-usual amplified by poverty. Not that that's news or a brilliant revelation on my part. It was just disappointing that the 'author' (it was written for "Malik" (or w/ him) by Frank B. Williams) had so little of substance to say about the socio-political circumstances of the culture he was reporting about. To make matters worse, he begins his "Acknowledgements" w/: "First, I give all honor to my Heavenly Father and my Lord and savior Jesus Christ". Whatever.