5 stars for it's brutal honestly. Doesn't hold back.
The best quality about this book is that the author doesn't hold back. He's dropping names all over the place. He's being completely open and honest with the reader. He writes to the reader like he's talking to his best friend. Sometimes, he's even ratting out his other cops. The guy was taking alot of chances with his career and his own life by writing the things he wrote. I've never seen anywhere else where a cop was so honest about what his job was.
Now, there are problems with the book. The book is long winded. It goes on much longer than it needs to. The book is very self serving. The author loves to name drop about the people he's met.
However, this seems like it's about as close to the truth as the general public will ever get to know about these murders. He's really showing outsiders what the system looks like from the inside.
Alot of the hip hop cases, the author wasn't direcly involved with. Very often he speaks of rumors that he heard regarding cases. It's alot of hearsay and supposition. On the other hand, sometimes the author is telling facts of cases that were never revealed anywhere else in the media.
I thought it was interesting that their were no arrests in any of the hip hop cases that he mentioned such as: Tupac, Biggie, Jam Master Jay, Busta Rhymes, etcetera. It's as if this was a top cop who decided he would rather be part of the hip hop scene than solve cases. I think at some point in his career he had forgotten he was a cop and just wanted to hang out with the hip hop crowd. Arresting the guilty didn't seem truly important anymore to this guy so much as serving his own personal interests.
For the no holds barred, openness and frankess of his writing; this book deserves 5 stars. The author risked everything to tell his story.
Notoriously self-serving and poor
I am a NYC Assistant District Attorney specializing in gang prosecutions. I was hoping that Det. Parker would provide insight into hip-hop crime. Instead, he simply promotes himself as the true savior of both law enforcement and hip hop. Simply put, he is frequently wrong on the law (i.e. he does not know what a predicate felony vs. a persistent felony; or how cooperation agreements work). Additionally, he fails to mention (until 2/3 the way through his book) that he currently owns a security company that is frequently hired by hip hop celebs and the music industry. It would have been helpful to know this earlier to discovery his bias. Finally, his analysis of the problem between the police and hip hop boils down to the police should be more respectfully and informed on hip hop and hip hop should stop shooting each other. Not very deep and not worth the time.
I am sure he has great stories to tell but he can't write
Extremely disjointed, skips from place to place with out explanation. Reminds us several times he is the hip hop cop. It was so badly written that I had to put it down. Too bad as he has great stories to tell but needs a good editor.
The editor should have gotten fired!
I bought this book with much anticipation as I have followed the Tupac and Biggie murders. With that being said, the read was hard due to the NUMEROUS grammatical errors on every page. Also how much can this guy pat himself on the back and call himself the "hip-hop cop"? His ego and lack of copy editing ruined a potential five star book.
I dropped it after 21 pages
This book from what other reviewers said really doesn't add much new info in terms of the much-publicized deaths of TuPac, Biggie or Jam Master Jay ... which is one of the big motivations I'm sure most of us consider reading a book like this.
Also the fact that this book was written by a cop from the once secret "Hip Hop police" is also somewhat novel.
You'll spend most of the first 20 pages sifting through this guy trying to straddle the fence -- sounding official & professional to rep police but also trying to come off as empathetic and altruistic in his quest to "save" hip hop's elite from crime & corruption.
Read this book with a grain of salt!!!!
I dropped it after Page 21 (go to a bookstore or library and read the bottom 2.5 paragraphs).
Parker's basic premise in his defense of policing hip hop is NOT that he sees the stars as needing protection (which is why soooo many rappers still roll deep, packin' heat!), but rather that so many are still so heavily involved in criminal activity he's doing what he does for public safety.
Give me a break.
Who's really afraid of Ludacris? Jay-Z? Kanye West? Chamillionaire (or 50 Cent for that matter)?
Parker dares to use the term "public safety" in this defense and discusses how any number of acts of gunplay could "breakout at any time" when rappers are in public.
Let's see, we've got ...
A raging war in Iraq & the threat of nuclear terrorism.
Ongoing police brutality issues.
Trickle down damage from crooked politicians.
Real crime.
All kinds of sexual predators.
Increasingly fragile school systems not to mention poverty, intolerance & all kinds of social ills.
Yeah, Parker's doing a great job defending society from public enemy No. 1: Poor black men who use hip hop success to rise to a better life.
Skim the book's latter chapters for the minor details you seek if you'd like, but I pass on reading more of this crap.
I'm sure he's got interesting stories to tell, but this book just reads like an opportunist looking to make a fast buck by preying on the weak-minded blind enough to believe rappers (code for young black men) must be tamed.
