Synopsis
A history of Death Row Records, a recording label that specialized in rap music.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1998-03-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 372 pages | | Height: | 10.0 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 24.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
Death Row Records is one of the most successful music labels of all time. From its inception in 1992, it exploded on the rap music scene with sales climbing to the $125 million mark in just four years. Even more noticeable than the labels financial success is the effect it had on American youth culture, making gangsta rap more popular with suburban white youth and MTV viewers than traditional rock groups. But under the guidance of six-foot-four-inch, 300-pound CEO Marion "Suge" Knight, Death Row also became the most controversial record label in history--a place where violence, gang feuds, threats, intimidation, and brushes with death were business as usual.Have Gun Will Travel details the spectacular rise and violent fall of a music label that had at its heart a ferocious criminal enterprise cloaked behind corporate facades that gave it a guise of legitimacy. With inside access no other writer can claim, Ronin Ro, the countrys preeminent rap journalist, exposes the facts everyone else is afraid to divulge--from the initial bankrolling of Death Row by a leader of L.A.s notorious Bloods gang, to links with New Yorks Genovese crime family. "Have Gun Will Travel" lays bare the full story behind this influential label, including the still-unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., as well as Suge Knight's rise to power, his fight with East Coast rap titans such as Sean "Puffy" Combs, and his eventual imprisonment.Although it has been all over the news--from The Wall Street Journal to Rolling Stone--this is a timeless story about an empire built on greed, corruption, murder, and exploitation. With exclusive interviews and bloodcurdling eyewitness accounts, Have Gun Will Travel combines the behind-the-scenes fascination of books like Hit Men and Hit and Run with the violence and dramatic sweep of The Godfather, in a brilliant and blistering document of contemporary culture.
Industry Reviews
"[A] straight chronological account that reads like a long, well-researched newspaper article with a few juicy rumors thrown in for spice."
New York Times - Neil Strauss
"The first informed look at a world the mainstream media still seem unable to penetrate."
Kirn
"Unfortunately, Ro's writing is infuriatingly haphazard: In some places crucial information is scrambled or omitted, but elsewhere he feels the need to identify pop singer Madonna Ciccone. Still, a surrealistic tale of high-stakes thuggery."
unknown
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