The former editor-in-chief of "The Source" offers a memoir of his youth as an immigrant from Guyana and his life covering the hip-hop scene, from gun-toting violence to the vitality of the music and its performers.

Gunshots in My Cook-Up: Bits and Bites from a Hip-Hop Caribbean Life

Biographies & Memoirs

Hinds, Selwyn Seyfu

Arts & Literature

Atria

Selwyn Seyfu Hinds -- award-winning former editor-in-chief of The Source -- presents an extraordinary memoir/history of hip-hop as seen through the eyes of one fan-turned-luminary. The moment nine-year-old Hinds heard "Rapper's Delight" in Guyana, he embarked upon an amazing, if sometimes contentious, relationship with hip-hop -- one that would continue through his migration to Brooklyn as a teenager and on through adult life. Here, he takes readers to a murky nightclub in the violent streets of late-eighties Brooklyn; to an Ivy League campus caught up in political rap during the early nineties; to a curbside in Los Angeles where Notorious B.I.G. has just been shot; to the achingly poor streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as a sea of black humanity surges to touch a hip-hop native son.... Interspersing recollections of life in the hip-hop trenches with profiles of figures like Lauryn Hill, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Dr. Dre, Wyclef Jean, and more, Hinds traces the heights and depths of his hip-hop love affair. Like the Guyanese rice dish "cook-up," Gunshots in My Cook-Up ingeniously pulls wide-ranging elements into an irresistibly cohesive dish.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

In To a Young Jazz Musician, the renowned jazz musician and Pulitzer Prize—winning composer Wynton Marsalis gives us an invaluable guide to making good music–and to leading a good life. Writing from the road “between the bus ride, the sound check, and the gig,” Marsalis passes on wisdom gained from experience, addressed to a young musician coming up–and to any of us at any stage of life. He writes that having humility is a way to continue to grow, to listen, and to learn; that patience is necessary for developing both technical proficiency and your own art rather than an imitation of someone else’s; and that rules are indispensable because “freedom lives in structure.” He offers lessons learned from his years as a performer and from his great forebears Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and others; he explores the art of swing; he discusses why it is important to run toward your issues, not away; and he talks about what to do when your integrity runs up against the lack thereof in others and in our culture. He poetically expresses our need for healers: “All of it tracks back to how you heal your culture, one patient at a time, beginning with yourself.” This is a unique book, in which a great artist offers his personal thoughts, both on jazz and on how to live a better, more original, productive, and meaningful life. To a Young Jazz Musician is sure to be treasured by readers young and old, musicians, lovers of music, and anyone interested in being mentored by one of America’s most influential, generous, and talented artists.

To a Young Jazz Musician: Letters from the Road

Marsalis, Wynton

Humor & Entertainment

Random House Publishing Group

Arts & Photography

Music

Random House]

Lingering on the threshold between history and legend, the home of Mardi Gras and the birthplace of Jazz, New Orleans is also known as the most haunted city in America: a town of centuries-old ghosts and new spirits of those drowned by Katrina; where Loup Garous, Vampires and Voodoo Spirits make their home. Ruling over all of this are the powerful Voodoo Queens, whose influence stretches into politics, business and crime as they maintain the delicate equilibrium between the mortal and supernatural worlds. But that careful balance has been upset. The Queen has been murdered, and Tulane grad student Dominique Laveau is the No. 1 suspect--and marked for death.

Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child 1

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

Vertigo

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Books by Hinds, Selwyn Seyfu