What lunacy would cause a 55-year-old white male to embroil himself in the world of New Orleans rap - as ideas man, talent-spotter, lyricist, and would-be producer? Nik Cohn has loved (and hated) hip-hop since its birth and loved (and hated) New Orleans for even longer - an addiction he's never wanted to kick. But nothing prepared him for the experience of being pitched, more or less by accident, into the role of Triksta, rap impresario. A white alien in a black world, with no funding or qualifications, and not a clue what he was doing, he had to rethink himself from scratch. Surrounded by a cast that included such names as Choppa and Soulja Slim, Big Ramp and Lil T, Bass Heavy, Fifth Ward Weebie, and Shorty Brown Hustle, he entered a world of tiny backstreet studios, broken-down slums and gun turfs. Triksta is the story of a three-year odyssey to the heart of rap, and New Orleans, and self-knowledge.

Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap

COHN, Nik

Humor & Entertainment

Vintage Books

King Death

Harcourt, Brace. Jovanovich

Pop from the beginning

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

At the age of eleven, Nik Cohn heard a record whose lyrics changed his life. Little Richard screamed: "Tutti frutti all rootie, tutti frutti all rootie, tutti frutti all rootie, awopbopaloobop alopbamboom!" For Cohn, this seemed a magical code - the language of the future.

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom

Arts & Photography

Music

Da Capo Press

King Death (Picador)

Pan Books

Peellaert, Guy / Cohn, Nik. Rock Dreams. Introduction by Michael Herr. London, Pan Books Ltd., 1982. 29.5cm x 22.5cm. 178 pages. With illustrations. Original Softcover. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. Life is but a rock 'n' roll dream. Over thirty years ago, artist Guy Peellaert teamed up with author Nik Cohn to create this fantasy tribute to Rock 'n' Roll and R&B. Through surreal texts and images, Cohn and Peellaert paint an imaginary world where the great gods of mid-century popular music appear in their own settings (The Drifters under the boardwalk, Otis Redding on the dock of the bay, The Beach Boys on the beach). Here, rock music is a secret society, an enclosed teen fantasy treated with the same kind of passion and obsession famously generated by the most fanatic of lovesick, pimply adolescents. All of the founding heroes of rock, soul, and pop appear in Peellaert and Cohn's colorful hallucinations, including Buddy Holly, Elvis, Ray Charles, Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Who, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, and many more. Taschen's revival of this unique book comes at a time when rock is making a strong comeback and young musicians are taking inspiration from the very stars featured in rock dreams. (Amazon).

Rock Dreams

Peelaert, Guy

Ball the Wall

Biographies & Memoirs

Picador

Heart of the World

Literature & Fiction

Octagon Books

Twentieth Century Dreams

Peellaert, Guy

Who introduced Babe Ruth to Albert Einstein, and why? Who was privy to the pact between Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray, the romance of the artist formerly known as Prince and Princess Di, and the fate of Marilyn Monroe? Behold Max Vail (b. Maxim Valesky, 1900, St. Petersburg; d. 1999, Manhattan)--a middleman of genius who be-strode the realms of politics, entertainment, art, sport, crime and science. "I have witnessed the world," he said simply. Yet the man who knew everyone--kept their secrets, did their deals and never forgot where the bodies were buried--was himself known to virtually none. His private diaries, here made vivid with eighty-six extraordinary computer collages, provide nothing less than the secret history of our century, confirming some long-rumored events and revealing others that are freshly shocking. In all, some two hundred iconic personalities throng these pages, and their sagas--comic, ignominious, tragic, heroic and bizarre--make a strange, compelling narrative from the conflicted desires and obsessions of our times, and a rare gift to the millennium.

20th-Century Dreams

KNOPF

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Books by COHN, Nik