RAPPERS GONE BAD - HOW THE DRUG TRADE AND MUSIC INTERTWINED

Queens Reigns Supreme Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip-Hop
Hustler By Ethan Brown

Anchor. 239 pp. $12.95

Money-laundering trials often involve complex diagrams or wire
transfer records. The current case against Murder Inc. record label
founders Irving and Christopher Lorenzo, however, involves shoe boxes.

According to the case being put forward by prosecutors in a U.S.
District Court in Brooklyn, convicted drug dealer Kenneth McGriff
bankrolled the brothers' early efforts in the rap game with dirty
money, and they returned the favor by laundering his profits,
dropping off shoe boxes of cash at Murder Inc.'s Manhattan offices.

This shoestring operation might sound implausible, but it sounds less
so after reading Ethan Brown's scintillating work of gumshoe
musicology, Queens Reigns Supreme, which describes how hardcore
criminals and big-time rap became fatefully intertwined over the last
two decades in New York City.

Drawing on scores of trial transcripts, wire taps, and interviews
with some of the toughest thugs in prison, Brown connects the dots of
the most shocking moments of recent rap history, from the rise of Run
DMC to the murder of Jam Master Jay, from the beef between Tupac
Shakur and the East Coast to the shooting of 50 Cent, just a few years ago.

All these events, Brown argues, can be traced back to the New York
City borough of Queens, where in the 1980s several rival crews had an
iron grip on the drug trade. There was Fat Cat, a family man who ran
a shockingly lucrative operation out of his family deli, while
McGriff and his "Supreme Team" plied their trade in fancy red leather jackets.

The profits and exploits of this era were as outsized as their
personalities. According to Brown, McGriff's nephew spent $100,000
outfitting a Mercedes with gun turrets and the ability to lay down an
oil slick. His lieutenants wore bulletproof vests - on top of their clothing.

Another dealer, Thomas "Tony Montana" Mickens, bought real estate and
automobiles at a shocking clip, and once plunked down over $110,000
in cash for a yacht, a counting job that kept the salesman busy for
almost three hours. Although these profits had the attention of
Queens narcotics agents from the beginning, the drug trade didn't hit
the national eye until a rookie cop was shot and killed on the New
York streets. Suddenly, Mayor Ed Koch was calling for help, George
H.W. Bush was campaigning with the fallen officer's badge in his
pocket, and the players turned on themselves in a bloody civil war.

Growing up in the shadow of all this violence were a number of rap's
biggest players today - such as Russell Simmons, future founder of
Def Jam Records; Curtis Jackson (a.k.a. 50 Cent); and Chris and Irv
Lorenzo, who rose out of DJ work in middle-class Queens to run one of
the most powerful record labels.

As Brown describes it, the crackdown on the drug trade in the late
'80s meant that real-life toughs wound up in the rap game, tilting
the balance of values away from artistry and toward street credibility.

Tupac Shakur, writes Brown, was the first victim of this kind of
burlesquing of street violence. Raised in Baltimore and California,
and well-educated, he didn't know when to stop, or who not to tick
off, Brown argues. And then it was too late.

50 Cent is an interesting twist on this world. Unlike Shakur or even
Ja Rule, he actually was a hustler. As Brown writes, 50 ran a small
crew, and his mother was a crack addict who was murdered. If
anything, 50 had too much authenticity - as record executives found
out when, just before he made his blockbuster debut, 50 was shot nine
times in front of his grandmother's house - and lived.

Only the courts can decide whether the Lorenzo brothers were as
deeply involved as prosecutors allege they were. But one thing is
clear from this bold and unabashedly cautionary book: They probably
wished they were. Or as 50 Cent puts it: "It's a sad story... . It's
a story about a guy that was blessed with the opportunity to make
music to make him appear to be the gangster he's not. [He was]
associating himself with gangsters... . I guess he's a gangster now."
John Freeman is awards chairman of the National Book Critics Circle.