Book Reviews - STET, Damnit! and Ruthless

Since there's not much going on in election news and no one cares about what I have been doing, here are reviews of a couple of books I finished up in the past few days.

STET, Damnit! is the complete collection of Florence King's columns in National Review from 1991 through her retirement in 2002 (she has since come back to write a column in every other issue of the magazine). Most of them are from her back-of-the-magazine column that was in every issue for many a year called "The Misanthrope's Corner". Yes, she's my inspiration for this blog.

She's a crotchety, old (66 at the time of her retirement) Southern lady who never married and never had children. She reads voraciously, and in fact was for a very long time primarily a book reviewer. Her columns covered everything possible, so it was about much more than current events.

As I read it, I found that I could quote a passage from every one of them on this blog to show how AWESOME she is, but that would be tedious. The book is 496 pages long (and somewhat dense), but I had no problem reading it since she's one of the most fascinating writers whose work I've ever encountered. It gets a high recommendation from me, but I also realize it's not for everyone.

Ruthless: A Memior by Jerry Heller is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Heller, the co-founder of Ruthless Records with Eazy-E, tells his side of the story of the history of label. He was there from the beginning until shortly before Eazy's death, after which Ruthless quickly fell apart.

Any rap fan from the early 1990's knows that Heller was vilified by both Ice Cube and Dr. Dre after their departure from N.W.A. By Heller's account, they are not being honest. I won't give away too much of the history for those who don't know it, but he never liked Ice Cube. He thinks Dre listened to the wrong people (Suge Knight, primarily), which Dre would likely admit today.

Heller also says in the book that if those two hadn't left, they would have made tons of money together for years to come. His model was going to be similar to what the Wu-Tang Clan eventually did, which is dedicate everyone to one album at a time, be it the groups's album or a solo project for one of the members. I agree with him that with the combination of Dre's and Yella's production, Cube's lyrics, and Eazy and Heller's business sense, it could have worked.

I tend to believe Heller over Cube and others. Why? Little did I know, Heller was a very big manager in the 1960's and 1970's rock world. Among his clients were Elton John, Marvin Gaye, and Van Morrison. He hit a slump in his career from about 1975 to 1985, when he go involved in taking West Coast gangster rap national using his music industry connections. To me, he's got tremendous credibility when it comes to the business side of music.

At about 315 small pages with lots of space, this book is a quick read (I read it in two days). I give it a very high recommendation for anyone interested in the development of west coast hip-hop. He's also got lots of great stories from the 1960's and 1970's, too.