I got wind of this yesterday from a Goons Gear mailout and immediately bought the eBook.
Huge disappointment followed. Clocking in at 130 pages (about 40k words) this is not an in depth polemic from Starr. The thing that really grates is the writing style or complete lack of it as this book appears to be a transcript from a podcast Starr did once. Let’s see what the PR team wrote:
The rap group Onyx started in the early 90s. Fredro Starr, Big DS, Suave and B Wiz.
B Wiz gets murdered over a drug deal gone wrong, Onyx meets Jam Master Jay and Sticky Fingaz joins the group. Onyx signs to Jam Master Jay/ Def Jam Records and introduces Slam Dancing to Hip Hop with their hit single “Slam”.
Onyx sells millions of records, national tour with Snoop and merchandizing deals. Now with money and fame, Fredro Starr’s relationship with long time girlfriend comes to an end, Sticky Fingaz starts a relationship with a Def Jam executive, Suave’s brother gets 75 years in prison and Big DS leaves the group. Onyx gets into beef with rival Rap Crew. With the odds against them Onyx wins a Soul Train Award for Best Rap Album in 1994 “BACDAFUCUP”.
I got this about 5.30pm and I’d finished it a couple of hours later, so the first issue I have as a Onyx fan is the blatant profiteering. At most this is a £1.99 book by any measure, 130 pages for £7.99 shows it must be time to get rich by rinsing your fanbase. And thats before we get to the content. There isn’t a story, I can’t imagine an editor was involved in the writing process – judging from the final product. There are typo’s galore. There is no narrative that runs through the 130 pages, it’s very much “I did this, then Big DS drank a 40” but worse.
At one point it is rattling through the song writing process for their debut LP, it feels fast and he says they are spitting out a track a day. And then he says the album took a year to finish. So er what? The album does not have 365 tracks on it.. Stuff like that is peppered throughout. As a reader I found it hard to follow and hard to figure out.
The book begins with Fredro talking about himself in the 3rd person, this only lasts a chapter or two until he’s in first person. It is liable to change mid sentence. I found myself often confused with non-sequitors. I think Starr used a speech to text app for parts of it and then failed to check it had calibrated for his acccent or actually made sense.
I was a massive Onyx fan in 94, and would really enjoy this book if it were competently made. Starr is funny in parts but also weird in others, he never speaks about anger instead over using the phrase “felt a certain way”, some of the scenes he remembers were no doubt hilarious, scary or exhilerating which simply doesn’t not come across on the page.
As it was this book is hard work to read and understand. Stories inside are interesting but the author’s lack of competence makes it a horrible experience and it’s 4 times the price it should be. I suspect i spent more time error checking this blog post than the book recieved.
2/10 – Felt more like work than pleasure
SDM