Nik Cohn's 'The Trickster'
I read this over the Christmas holiday and really liked it (big up Tony Collins for passing it to me). It’s the story of Cohn, a middle-aged Ulsterman with a background in (mainly sixties) rock journalism, taking up residence in New Orleans’ projects in the late 90s and slowly immersing himself in the local bounce/rap scene…this culminates in him playing an executive producer role for some recordings and playing middleman between local rap acts (Choppa, Che Muse, Junie Bezel, Jahbo) and the mainstream music industry (this all taking place shortly before the hurricane and flooding last summer).It’s engagingly written though his hang-ups sometimes become tiresome. The book written to celebrate life in the downtown “ward” communities, and about the local “bounce” rap scene, but it often seemed to be about Cohn’s own acceptance into those communities and the ‘rap game’ than anything else. But that said, he did brilliantly illuminate life (and death) there, and how boundless aspirations (usually) morphed into desperate despair.
I read this over the Christmas holiday and really liked it (big up Tony Collins for passing it to me). It’s the story of Cohn, a middle-aged Ulsterman with a background in (mainly sixties) rock journalism, taking up residence in New Orleans’ projects in the late 90s and slowly immersing himself in the local bounce/rap scene…this culminates in him playing an executive producer role for some recordings and playing middleman between local rap acts (Choppa, Che Muse, Junie Bezel, Jahbo) and the mainstream music industry (this all taking place shortly before the hurricane and flooding last summer).It’s engagingly written though his hang-ups sometimes become tiresome. The book written to celebrate life in the downtown “ward” communities, and about the local “bounce” rap scene, but it often seemed to be about Cohn’s own acceptance into those communities and the ‘rap game’ than anything else. But that said, he did brilliantly illuminate life (and death) there, and how boundless aspirations (usually) morphed into desperate despair.
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