He wrote the book on hip-hop
EVERETT -- Ahmir Thompson was preparing to go to Juilliard in 1988 when he first heard Public Enemy's landmark album "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back ." Enthralled, the man who'd go on to become the drummer for the rap group the Roots, dove so far into the record's aural density that he claims he had to quit his summer job. Juilliard was suddenly out of the question.
Brian Coleman, a writer and self-confessed music fanatic, loves that story. Losing focus on the details of day-to-day existence over a mind-blowing new album is an experience he's had many times. The anecdote is one of Coleman's favorites in his new book, "Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies" (Villard, $16.95), a nearly-500-page doorstop compiling the back stories of three dozen classic rap albums, out today .
Though Coleman has been writing about hip-hop records for more than a decade, he considers himself less a critic than a hard-core fan. For years he worked a day job as a jazz publicist for a local firm Braithwaite & Katz , quitting last year when he signed his book deal. A month ago he took another PR job, at Timberland in New Hampshire, where he helps the boot company market itself in the rap world.
Quitting Braithwaite & Katz without a safety net, Coleman says, was "a stupid, crazy thing to do." But he wanted to make the most of his chance to produce an "official," expanded version of his self-published book, "Rakim Told Me: Hip-Hop Wax Facts, Straight From the Original Artists" (2005). Having sold out an initial pressing of 2 , 000 copies, "Rakim Told Me" was enough of an underground success for Villard to bite on an updated version -- just as an M.C.'s hot mix tape can lure a major label.
"I'm drawn to musicians who make something out of nothing. They're just trying to get something heard," says Coleman, who has a weak spot for the hip-hop of the late 1980s, when genre-defining albums by Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. and Rakim, and De La Soul were made by the seat of the pants.
That's when the author, then a punk-loving high schooler in suburban New Jersey, had his own Public Enemy epiphany. Listening to Princeton's campus radio station in his car, he had to pull over and call the DJ from a pay phone when he heard Chuck D bellowing "Miuzi Weighs a Ton."
"I realized that, just like punk, hip-hop is a subculture -- the tribal aspect, the codes," he says, sitting at the counter in the brightly painted kitchen of the Everett duplex condo he recently bought with his wife, Margot .
Tall, bespectacled , and jowly, Coleman keeps his fair hair short and his sideburns long. An armband tattoo is the only accessory to his plain black T-shirt. On a recent evening after work, he slides into house slippers.
The two-floor home is tidy and tasteful in the way of a young couple without children. For Coleman, however, the real attraction was the clean, roomy, unfinished basement.
"It's dry, with big, high ceilings. Lots of room for records," explains the writer as he bounds down the stairs. "Luckily, my wife is very forgiving."
The walls of the basement are lined with 10,000 vinyl albums -- hip-hop, of course, but also the jazz, rock , and funk records that supplied early rappers with their sample sources. A 1992 Boston College graduate, Coleman recently gave up his longstanding weekly slot on WZBC-FM (90.3) , where he spun ska and funk before zeroing in on hip-hop.
This is Coleman's playroom. Old toy keyboards fill wire racks on rollers. An Everlast heavy bag hangs below the stairwell. In the corner stands Coleman's turntable deck. As he talks, he compulsively pulls out records, lowering the needle on select cuts.
He calls the book "my album," then catches himself. "I do that a lot," he says with a laugh.
Covering a comprehensive range of early hip-hop classics from 2 Live Crew's scandal-inciting "As Nasty as They Wanna Be" to Digable Planets' mellow-vibe "Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space)," Coleman interviewed as many of the participants as he could find. The book is full of choice tidbits, from the Beastie Boys' musical use of a screw gun to Ice-T's stint as stage manager at an LA nightclub ("I take credit for telling Madonna to show more cleavage," he tells the author).
Having compiled 50 chapters (and 240,000 words) for the enormous rough draft of "Technique," Coleman has already begun work on a follow-up. "I just talked to Ice Cube last week," he says.
To promote the book, he will take part in the Harlem Book Fair: Roxbury on June 30 at Roxbury Community College. There's also a book release party downstairs at Good Life on July 21, with help from Black Moon's DJ Evil Dee .
But Coleman is not eager to thrust himself onto center stage. His job, he figures, is to stay out of the way of the material. "My agenda," says the author, "is that these are incredible albums, and I want people to know more about them. I think the artists appreciate that."
The interviews are unfailingly candid, and colorful. "Rapping," says Evil Dee's collaborator, Buckshot, "is like a snake traveling up a tree. It's so slitherful."
While it's nice to get paid, Coleman says his biggest reward has been the feedback from his subjects. "Schoolly D's wife told me he liked the chapter I did on him," he says. "He thought I captured his voice." 