Iceberg Slim

A former pimp turned author, Iceberg Slim wrote Pimp: The Story of My Life, believed by some to be the highest selling book by a black author ever! On Reflections, the Red Holloway Quartet makes the bed, then Slim rhythmically speaks his prose like a bass note beat poet in what became the birth of the bad, dark, none-too-taboo tales of the street that inspired a subgenre of music. Justin Gifford, author of Street Poison – The Biography Of Iceberg Slim, has penned a set of liner notes that help you grasp the immense cultural impact of this record and the hip-hop luminaries it inspired. Those notes line the gatefold jacket which also holds the original liner notes, and some badass beat poetry on icy clear vinyl. Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck was a mess of contradictions whose works have transformed African American literature and culture. There would have been no blaxploitation or hip-hop the way that we know them today without Pimp: The Story of My Life. To a wide range of readers Iceberg Slim is the definitive voice of black urban life and to his critics he is a misogynist who wrote trashy paperbacks that promote violence against vulnerable young women; both outlooks have a degree of truth to them.