While writer Iceberg Slim is best know for his notorious book "Pimp," in 1976 he released an album called Reflections. Recorded in Los Angeles with a jazz band. Reflections was a strange, but enticing album that featured Iceberg’s spoken-word reciting what is known as hustler toasts, a type of ghetto poetry that was popularized on street corners dark bars and prison yards, three places Slim knew a lot about from his hardcore life. https://crimereads.com/ic...flections/

Yes, music was by the Red Holloway (Quintet? Quartet?). He used to hang out at some club around LaBrea and Washington in the 70s where Red Holloway was the house band. He lived right around Crenshaw and 54th, maybe Crenshaw and Slauson. Was really good friends with Mike Tyson towards the end of his life. Died I believe the first day of the Rebellion in 1992. Died dead broke they say he sold 6 million books just in his lifetime, which makes him - by far - the best selling black American author of all-time, though he never got any respect from "the literary establishment" (black or white) during his life. I understand his books did very well in some European countries such as France and Italy.

hardwork said:

Yes, music was by the Red Holloway (Quintet? Quartet?). He used to hang out at some club around LaBrea and Washington in the 70s where Red Holloway was the house band. He lived right around Crenshaw and 54th, maybe Crenshaw and Slauson. Was really good friends with Mike Tyson towards the end of his life. Died I believe the first day of the Rebellion in 1992. Died dead broke they say he sold 6 million books just in his lifetime, which makes him - by far - the best selling black American author of all-time, though he never got any respect from "the literary establishment" (black or white) during his life. I understand his books did very well in some European countries such as France and Italy.

FWIW, "Reflections" which was originally released in 1976, was reissued by (Def?) American or a subsidiary in 1994. So I guess we can count Rick Rubin as a fan. I still have a promo cassette of the reissue that they sent to me. The guys from Cash Money bought the rights to all his books from Holloway House a while back and have been putting them out for some time now, my understanding is his heirs (he had three daughters and a son, one daughter deceased RIP) are actually being compensated now, whereas they may have been getting nothing or next to nothing for a very long time when HH was still putting the books out. I think they had to sue HH at some point just to force some $$$ out of them.