Get rich or die tryin': the shady nexus of drugs and rap

Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler
By Ethan Brown
Anchor, 239 pp., illustrated, paperback, $12.95

The farther hip-hop travels from its origins -- from a Bronx-born invention to a global art form, an underground youth movement to a multibillion-dollar industry, a culture of political resistance to one that expertly reproduces sites of oppression -- the less hip-hoppers can take for granted, from one another or the world.

Once upon a time, when there was less history to be learned and less music to be digested, members of the Hip-Hop Nation (as it was then called) were expected to know certain things: the names and accomplishments of the founding fathers (Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash compose the holy trinity), the so-called four elements, or artistic vectors (rapping, deejaying, break-dancing, and graffiti), the canon of classic recordings.

But hip-hop generations are not like normal generations; a new one is born every six years, thanks to a frenetic media determined to turn ever-younger people into super-consumers and incredibly skilled at eclipsing the past with the present. And so hip-hop history takes on a sheen of romance; complex events are shaved into truisms, and each new generation bathes in a more diluted pool of cultural knowledge than the last. What is celebrated, and what sells, end up defining a culture far more complex than 50 Cent's latest thug-glamour rant.

New York magazine music editor Ethan Brown's ''Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler" is a fascinating look at the way one generation's reality becomes the next's mythology, and how living up to it can turn reality upside down. Here, diligently researched and trenchantly observed, is a treatise on the much-discussed but often-misunderstood interplay between hip-hop and gangsterism, street credibility and industry legitimacy, ancient neighborhood beef and contemporary rap-feud intrigue. Or, how drug dealers from an outer-borough New York neighborhood altered the course of hip-hop history -- and helped create an environment in which 50 Cent can reign supreme.

The neighborhood in question is southeast Queens, where local drug hustlers rose to infamy and wealth in the bloody crack wars of the 1980s. Brown traces the rise of three organizations, profiling their differing methods and iconic leaders: the calculating, visionary Kenneth ''Supreme" McGriff and his cold-blooded nephew Gerald ''Prince" Miller, the magnanimous Lorenzo ''Fat Cat" Nichols and his tough lieutenant Howard ''Pappy" Mason, and the flamboyant, yacht-buying Thomas ''Tony Montana" Mickens. Such men, some running million-dollar drug rings and living lavish lifestyles, were the neighborhood's celebrities. They were scrutinized by countless admirers, including the aspiring rappers of Queens -- whose industry, at the time, was dismissed as financially unrewarding.

But soon the tide would turn. By the late '80s, hip-hop would become a legitimate source of wealth, due largely to the success of the Hollis, Queens, group Run-DMC and mogul Russell Simmons, older brother of group member Joseph ''Run" Simmons. Meanwhile, law enforcement was decimating the drug rings and putting their leaders behind bars.

As the rappers who had grown up idolizing these jailed gangsters came to prominence, the industry learned to share their fascination; soon, the same rappers who'd begun name-checking Fat Cat and Supreme in their songs realized they needed street credibility to succeed. The men who could best supply it, meanwhile, needed entree into a new moneymaking hustle, and that hustle became hip-hop. As drug dealers were released from prison, they began finding their way into the rap game that had lionized them.

When real gangsters crossed paths with the rappers who emulated them, the results were explosive. Brown chronicles the myth-making, nonfatal shootings of Tupac Shakur and 50 Cent, both of which he traces to varying shades of beef with Queens gangsters. Brown also spends considerable time analyzing the unsolved 2002 murder of Run-DMC DJ Jam Master Jay. It is here that the inescapability of southeast Queens is most poignant. Jay never left Hollis, and eventually the violence he'd always navigated around found him; his death, too, is situated in relation to a web of long-simmering feuds.

The story that gives the book its currency is a result of another partnership of mutual convenience: the 2005 federal indictment of hip-hop mogul Irv Gotti on charges of laundering millions of drug dollars for Supreme. Though no conviction was brought in the case, the story of their relationship is indicative of just how seductive street credibility can be.

Perhaps the book's most revealing moment comes when Gotti, in an exclusive interview, rhapsodizes over Supreme's power in the '80s, when his Supreme Team allegedly was running the drug trade. Gotti recalls that although Supreme was omnipotent, he was unseen. When informed that Supreme was unseen because he spent most of the period in prison, Gotti seems nonplussed; nothing, not even the facts, can sway his idolization of the man who then had the power to bring about his downfall.

Adam Mansbach is the author of the novel ''Angry Black White Boy, or the Miscegenation of Macon Detornay."