|
Iceberg Slim (August 4, 1918 – April 28, 1992), also known as Robert Beck and born as Robert Lee Maupin, was an African American writer who started out as a pimp and whose writings were particularly successful among black audiences; his descriptions of the pimp lifestyle had considerable influence on African-American culture. is the 216th day of the year (217th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ...
is the 118th day of the year (119th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1992 Gregorian calendar). ...
An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black) is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
African-Americans affiliate with subcultures of all kinds; race is not itself an absolute determinant of ones culture. ...
Life
Born into abject poverty, his intelligence was evident early on. Beck spent most of his childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Rockford, Illinois. His mother worked as a maid and operated a beauty shop. She was exploited by a series of men who drifted in and out of her life. Still, it seems she was able to provide Beck with some semblance of luxury; he once said that his mother helped pave the way for his life as a pimp by pampering him. Nickname: Location of Milwaukee in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Coordinates: , County Milwaukee Government - Mayor Tom Barrett (D) Area - City 97 sq mi (251. ...
: The Forest City United States Illinois Winnebago 56. ...
He briefly studied at Tuskegee Institute, before dropping out in 1937 (legend has it he and Ralph Ellison were enrolled at the same time) and drifting into criminality. He started to pimp at age 18 in the brutal Chicago underworld, soon becoming rich and successful in the trade. He traced the motive behind and tradition of Black pimping to the days when American slaves noticed their white owners' physical attraction to and exploitation of Black women. Slim concentrated most of his efforts in the Chicago area, but he worked women throughout the Midwest. He served a total of seven years in jail for various offenses--including time at the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas, the Cook County House of Corrections, and Waupun State Prison in Wisconsin. Tuskegee University is an American institution of higher learning located in Tuskegee, Alabama. ...
Ralph Ellison (March 1, 1913[1] – April 16, 1994) was a scholar and writer. ...
Nickname: Motto: Urbs in Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in the Chicago metro area and Illinois Coordinates: , Country State Counties Cook, DuPage Settled 1770s Incorporated March 4, 1837 Government - Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Area - City 234. ...
The United States Penitentiary (USP), Leavenworth is located in Leavenworth, Kansas on 1,583 acres (6. ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
The Waupun Correctional Institution is a maximum security penitentiary on the outskirts of Waupun, Wisconsin. ...
During his second to last incarceration Slim was able to escape. He just disappeared like a wisp of smoke, as he often liked to say. He pimped for 13 more years before he was recaptured in 1960 and placed in solitary confinement at Cook County House of Corrections. It was then that he finally decided to "square up". Beck/Slim was once scored with an IQ of 162 on a prison intelligence exam. Solitary confinement, colloquially referred to as the hole (or in British English the block), is a punishment in which a prisoner is denied contact with any other persons, excluding guards, chaplains and doctors. ...
Slim contemplated the direction of his life while in prison. He decided he was getting too old to pimp. He was 43 and there were younger, tougher pimps on the street. In Pimp he wrote, "I got out of it because I was old. I did not want to be teased, tormented and brutalized by young whores." The National Observer's Monroe Anderson quoted him as saying, "I realized I had been stupid. I was elderly and tired. I had the revelation that pimping, after all, was not the most magnificent profession. I had a feeling that I had wasted myself."
On his release from prison Slim retired from street life and moved to Los Angeles, California, where he attempted to reconcile with his mother. He spent a heart-rending six months at her oxygen-tent-covered bedside, where she lay slowly dying of complications from diabetes. Her death was a great blow; it proved to be what he needed to quit heroin, which he did cold turkey, completely and abruptly. Nickname: Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates: , State County Settled 1781 Incorporated April 4, 1850 Government - Type Mayor-Council - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa - City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo - Governing body City Council Area - City 498. ...
Heroin (INN: diacetylmorphine, BAN: diamorphine) is an opioid synthesized directly from the extracts of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. ...
By 1962 Slim was seeking work anywhere he could. He finally got a job selling insecticide for $75 a week. He had been a natural salesman all of his life. He also met and married a woman named Catherine who was 20 years his junior. By all accounts, though, Slim often seemed and looked half his age. When Sepia's Bob Moore asked how he could marry after having so hard-heartedly exploited the 400 women that he had "managed," Slim replied: "I got married because I found a woman who obviously has a lot of common sense and who understands the kinds of changes that I was going through, and who is highly intelligent and extremely lovable, and who just seems to understand - has a sixth sense about what I had gone through." He also admitted that he needed a little taking care of, that marriage was an important positive step, and that he thought children would be good for him. An insecticide is a pesticide used against insects in all developmental forms. ...
For four years Slim sold insecticide. While making a sales pitch to a college professor, he mentioned that he had been a pimp. The professor offered to collaborate with Slim on an autobiography, but after the interviews had been taped, Slim discovered that he would only receive a minimal percentage of the book's royalties. Spurred on by the need to beat the professor before he stole his life story, Slim wrote his own book, Pimp: The Story of My Life, in three months. He insisted that real creativity had not been a factor, that all he had done was remember, but The Nation dismissed this notion, reporting, "There were perception and introspection, ... in the book Beck bares his mind and the pimp psychology to the reader while writing in the argot of the ghetto with descriptions to match." The Nation (ISSN 0027-8378) is a weekly [1] U.S. periodical devoted to politics and culture, self-described as the flagship of the left. [2] Founded on July 6, 1865 as an Abolitionist publication, it is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. ...
Bentley Morris of Holloway House publishers in Los Angeles recognized Slim's talent and worked with him on publishing all of his subsequent novels. Pimp was published in 1967 (though sources vary on this), and was a controversial success. And despite Slim's efforts to dissuade young men from going into "the life," the book reportedly had the opposite effect on some.
Works Reviews of Pimp were mixed and it was quickly categorized as being typical of the black 'revolutionary' literature then being created, but Beck's vision was considerably bleaker than most other black writers of the time. His work tended to be based on his personal experiences in the criminal underworld, and revealed a world of seemingly bottomless brutality and viciousness. His was the first insider look into the world of black pimps, to be followed by a half-dozen pimp memoirs by other writers. The book sold very well, mainly among black audiences; it was eventually translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, and Greek. The book was largely ignored by white America, and even the venerable Library of Congress does not own a copy. The Library of Congress is the de facto national library of the United States and the research arm of the United States Congress. ...
His other novels include Trick Baby, Mama Black Widow, Long White Con, The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim, Death Wish, Airtight Willie and Me, and Doom Fox. As a Guardian obituary put it, "each one of his novels seemed bleaker and more violent than the last". The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ...
According to his publisher Holloway House, Beck had sold over six million books as of 1998, making him one of the best-selling African-American writers (after Alex Haley). All his books were published exclusively as paperbacks. Alexander Palmer Haley (August 11, 1921 – February 10, 1992) was an American writer. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...
Iceberg Slim also released an album of poetry called Reflections in the early 1970s. An album or record album is a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public. ...
The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ...
Books - Pimp: The Story of My Life (1967)
- Trick Baby: The Story of a White Negro (1967)
- Mama Black Widow: A Story of the South's Black Underworld (1969)
- The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim: Robert Beck's Real Story (1971)
- Long White Con: The Biggest Score in His Life! (1977)
- Death Wish: A Story of The Mafia (1977)
- Airtight Willie and Me: The Story of Six Incredible Players (1979)
- Doom Fox (written in 1978, but not published until October of 1998, might be a version of the unpublished The Game for Squares)
Except for Doom Fox, which is published by Grove Press, all of Iceberg Slim's books are available through Holloway House Publishing Co.
Recordings - Reflections (1994, Infinite Zero Archive)
Movie adaptation In 1973 one of his reality novels, "Trick Baby", was adapted as a "blaxploitation" movie of the same name, directed by Larry Yust. Shaft (1971) Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made that targeted the urban African American audience; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words “black†and “exploitation. ...
A movie adaptation of Pimp has been planned for a long time. There were announcements of a movie directed by Bill Duke and staring Ice Cube; that project was put on hold. In 2004 rapper Pras acquired the rights to produce a movie based on the book. Bill Duke (born February 26, 1943) is an American actor and film director. ...
OShea Jackson (born June 15, 1969) better known by his stage name, Ice Cube, is an American rapper, actor and film director. ...
Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Pras (born Prakazrel Michel on October 19, 1972) offered up his first solo effort, Ghetto Supastar, in the fall of 1998, following in the footsteps of his fellow Fugees Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill. ...
Mama Black Widow is in pre-production as of March 2007. It is to be directed by Darren Grant and adapted by Will De Los Santos. March is the third month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ...
Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ...
Influence Iceberg Slim was an important influence on hip-hop artists and rappers such as Ice-T, Vanilla Ice and Ice Cube (among many others) who adopted their names in part from reading the author. Iceberg Slim's last book, Doom Fox, which was written in 1978 but not published until 1998, contains an introduction written by Ice-T. Ice-T's third album, The Iceberg, was another major homage. Most of the currently popular references to pimp culture, for example in the work of Too $hort and Snoop Dogg, ultimately can be traced back to Iceberg Slim. Rapper Jay-Z also refers to himself as "Iceberg Slim" whenever discussing his adventures with women. Hip hop music is a style of music which came into existence in the United States during the mid-1970s, and became a large part of modern pop culture during the 1980s. ...
Tracy Marrow (born February 16, 1958)[1], better known by stage name Ice-T, is an American rapper, rock musician, author, former United States Army soldier, and actor. ...
Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1968), better known as Vanilla Ice, is a Grammy Award nominated, American Music Award winning American rapper and actor known mostly for the 1990 single Ice Ice Baby. ...
OShea Jackson (born June 15, 1969) better known by his stage name, Ice Cube, is an American rapper, actor and film director. ...
Todd Anthony Shaw (born April 28, 1966) in South Central Los Angeles, known by stage name Too $hort, is a rapper who started his career as a youth at the age of 17 Oakland, California. ...
Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. ...
Jay-Z (aka the Jigga, HOV and Hova, born Shawn Carter on December 4, 1970 in Brooklyn, New York) is an African American rapper/hip hop artist and record label executive; one of the most popular and successful rappers of the late 1990s and early 2000s. ...
Comedian Dave Chappelle often talks about Iceberg and "The Game" during his stand-up routines. According to him, Iceberg got his name by keeping "ice-cold" in a shoot-out where he stayed at the bar drinking his drink even though a bullet pierced his hat, a story told at the end of chapter 13 in Slim's Pimp. On his 2006-07 summer tour, Chappelle told a tale of Iceberg, learning of him from Maya Angelou, and relates it to why he left $50 million at Comedy Central and secretly went to Africa. David Khari Webber Chappelle (born August 24, 1973) is an American stand-up comedian, satirist and actor. ...
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Johnson April 4, 1928)[1] is an American poet, memoirist, actress and an important figure in the American Civil Rights Movement. ...
References - Iceberg Slim: The Life as Art (2003) by Peter A. Muckley (ISBN 0-8059-5423-6)
- Pimp (1969) by Iceberg Slim (ISBN 0-87067-935-X)
- West, Hollie I. "Sweet Talk, Hustle and Muscle", The Washington Post (1973)
The Washington Post is the largest newspaper in Washington, D.C.. It is also one of the citys oldest papers, having been founded in 1877. ...
See also African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. ...
Donald Goines (pseudonym: Al C. Clark) (December 15, 1937 – October 21, 1974) was one of the original African-American novelists to write in the street tradition of Robert Beck (Iceberg Slim). ...
External links - Iceberg Slim biography and bibliography, from popsubculture.com
- "The Transcendence of Hate Over Repression", by John Swan
- "I Like Ice", a tribute by Josh Alan Friedman
- Holloway House Publishing
|
Feeds |
Contact