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Title: Gangsta: Merchandizing the Rhymes of Violence by Ronin Ro ISBN: 0-312-14344-3 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: July, 1996 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

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Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: A Friend Of Interpretable Subjects
Comment: Robert Christgau can't do everything, and perhaps at sixtysomething he's no spring chicken -- but neither is Ronin Ro, who is one of Christgau's more important isotopes (if such a thing is possible). Ro is not a polyglot, but neither was Lester Bangs; he's not a samurai, either. He *is* a *polymath*: as he makes clear in this book in the least cloying manner possible, he understands the hip-hop industry in its many facets from the standpoint of a participant observer. That is, none too romantically, as his later books on Puff Daddy and Suge Knight (both formidable undertakings) make clear; it is about making money, and making money for relatively large numbers of "unaffiliated" people.

Ro gets away with he what gets away with (telling the truth and not running) because he is essentially the friend of the people he chronicles, as he is the personal friend of some of them -- the serious who wants to tell hip-hop artists a useful but hard truth in a nice way, not siphon off some of their money. As for the music, Ro is upfront about its real lack of an inherent appeal: what makes hip-hop interesting is the people who do it and the perspectives they mix into an American popular culture which still understands them none to well. Furthermore, judging by the (slightly anemic) Amazon listing for him Ro makes a living as a freelance writer, which has always been a hard industry and now has less competition, in a manner of speaking. *Gangsta* is one of the mass-market books of recent years well worth reading.

Rating: 5
Summary: Gangsta is an incredible book!
Comment: Ronin Ro's Gangsta is much better than Have Gun Will Travel. Ro's writing was more artistic, and had more feeling. He spent most of this book reflecting on the future of America and music and the nature of life and death. Portions of the book were heart-rending; some were hilarious; others were unbelievable. This book showed me where most of the rap-writing styles out there today came from. Ronin was at his best in this book.

Rating: 1
Summary: A waste of time
Comment: The author knows that NWA started gangsta rap and not much else. After a promising, well-written introduction, the rest of the book is sheer disappointment. Ro writes about his sexual exploits, his alcoholism, his brother's suicide, and his crush on a young Japanese girl. In short, everything except gangsta rap. The introduction was well worth reading twice, but not worth special oredering this poor attempt at attacking the subject.