iceberg slim

Tiger Man downstairs is screaming something about the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali and some pimp he knew back in the day named Iceberg Slim. Yelling in the tune of Mission Impossible or James Bond, and saying "I owe you one." The sounds of people kicking doors, handcuff keys, shackles, arguments, hunger strikes, people yelling for grievances, guys playing chess cell-to-cell yelling out their next move, refusing to cuff up, holding the trap door hostage, flooding cells, breaking fire sprinklers, chaos within a city within a city.

The movie star, who ended her much-publicized relationship with Iceberg Slim in September, was previously married to one Kwadwo Safo jnr, the son of Ghanaian electronic engineer, Apostle Kwadwo Safo.

For example, I was captivated by "Street Poison," Justin Gifford's biography of Iceberg Slim, the influential pimp-turned-author.

"It's a book for devotees to read and savor," notes the Washington Post, "but for those new to this author, there remains only one source for getting to know Iceberg Slim, and that is his imperishable memoir."

When the first of his three marriages broke down Tyson turned to a pimp - Iceberg Slim - for advice on women.

premiere of Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp, produced by Ice-T.

A labor-of-love biodoc that nonetheless offers a warts-and-all evaluation of its subject, "Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp" intrigues and illuminates as it considers the life and work of the notorious ex-procurer turned bestselling author whose raw and brutal books most based on his own experiences have been favorably compared with the literature of Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and other chroniclers of the African-American experience.

Led by the creative genius of Robert "Iceberg Slim" Beck and Donald Goines, the real grit of pimps, hoes, drugs, and more became the corollary in fiction of the cinematic representation of urban black life.

He called himself Ice-T in homage to Iceberg Slim, a pimp-turned-author who wrote hard-hitting novels about the criminal underworld.

Street lit's provenance, though, goes back to Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim (who inspired the naming of Ice Cube and Ice T, respectively).

According to Publishers Weekly, the acquisition includes approximately 400 backlist titles but does not include seven titles by Robert Beck, also known as Iceberg Slim.

It shares ancestry with the work of 1970s authors such as Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim, whose gritty depictions of street life and shady characters catapulted them to international fame.

The book has many uses: as film history whose interpretations you can freely argue with (I liked Shaff--the first one anyway--better than he did); as freewheeling tour through the black pop museum (James's Q&A subjects include The Last Poets, Iceberg Slim, Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas and blaxploitation's big daddy, Melvin Van Peebles); and as idiosyncratic vision of black aesthetics that takes in, rather than flinches at, hoary stereotypes.

But by including stretches of personal and political autobiography and some excellent interviews with unjustly marginalized figures (who, as it happens, were only tangentially involved with blaxploitation - Pedro Bell, The Last Poets, Iceberg Slim, Melvin Van Peebles), James reveals that the book had higher ambitions that were thwarted by laziness.

The actress was recently in the news after breaking up with Nigerian rapper Iceberg Slim.