Caught between two men she once loved and the one who holds her heart, now. With a baby on the way, she has to face the music and deal with the karma she brought onto herself. Confined in total darkness with little to no food or water, her thoughts become her refuge… But those same thoughts haunt her with the demons from her past and the hateful actions against her baby sister. Seemingly all hope is gone, Salimah slowly gives up. Wishing she’d thought things through. Is life worth living? Tyrone is caught between a rock and a hard place. Once the brother with all the answers, he’s left broken-hearted and discarded. Torn between the facts and his feelings. How could the same girl who he loved and claimed to love him double cross him? Did he miss the signs? Now, his brothers are in jeopardy and Tyrone is partially to blame. Even through this, Torin, the same brother he attacked and belittled is the only person he trusts during this trying time in his life. Will Torin be the bigger person and help his brother or will he hold a grudge and hang him out to dry? A rocky past unraveling itself leaves Fatima in a rut. Defying Torin’s wishes and snooping around The Windy City for answers. Left handcuffed to a bed, Fatima must come to grips with all the secrets she’s kept from Torin. From her sneaking out of the house to meet with his estranged sister to keeping her pregnancy a secret. With Torin ten steps ahead of her there’s no room for lies and games. Not to mention, she and her best friend are on the outs, leaving Fatima with nobody to run to. Will she open up to Torin about everything she’s been up to or add more gasoline to the fire? Crack open Promising My Love to a Boss 3 and find out how these stories unveil. There’s no love in these streets and the city that hates itself will swallow you whole.

    

    He has his woman, his position as head of his family lucrative drug business and he still has rapping. Life is going good until it isn’t. Secrets that his mother kept hidden from him while she was alive comes out while a family enemy hell bent on revenge surfaces to take Kasam and his brothers down. Erin is in college pursing her dreams while being with the man that she loves. Life is almost fairytale like until things come out to show her that Kasam is no Prince Charming. Erin has to decide if she can deal with groupies and infidelity while trying to manage her own life’s issues. A storm is brewing. Danger is headed Kasam and Erin’s way as people are out to tear them apart. For two people who are so much better together than they are apart will they crumble under pressure or will they prove to the world that they are indeed meant to be together? Erin and Kasam first appeared in Hold You Down

    She was born into a life of poverty that she never asked for. Her mother dropped her off at the local fire station as a newborn and her father could have been any of the local crackheads that she passed by on the daily. Jumping from foster home to foster home and living a life that gave her nothing, she was tired of it, she wanted more. She deserved more– she desired to live the life of the rich and famous.  Nothing was more memorable than the day she met Boogie. Boogie had the paper, the cars, the money, and the drugs that could help her with her come up– until an unfortunate turn of events happen to Boogie. There’s a new dealer on the block… and her name is Swiss.

    This shift was triggered by the release of the Sugarhill Gang's single, Rapper's Delight. Not only did it usher rap music into the mainstream's consciousness, it brought us the word "hip-hop." And It Don't Stop, edited by the award winning journalist Raquel Cepeda, with a foreword from Nelson George is a collection of the best articles the hip-hop generation has produced. It captures the indelible moments in hip-hop's history since 1979 and will be the centerpiece of the twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration. This book epitomizes the media's response by taking the reader on an engaging and critical journey, including the very first pieces written about hip-hop for publications like The Village Voice--controversial articles that created rifts between church and state, the artist and journalist, and articles that recorded the rise and tragic fall of the art form's appointed heroes, such as Tupac Shakur, Eazy-E, and the Notorious B.I.G. The list of contributors includes Toure, Kevin Powell, dream hampton, Harry Allen, Cheo Hodari Coker, Greg Tate, Bill Adler, Hilton Als, Danyel Smith, and Joan Morgan.

    

    In the hit TV show on the Disney Channel, actress Miley Cyrus (daughter of Billy Ray) leads a double-life, playing a mild-mannered 8th grader by day, and famous pop sensation Hannah Montana by night. Our PVG folio features all 13 songs from the soundtrack, which was among the ten bestselling albums of 2006! Includes: The Best of Both Worlds * I Got Nerve * If We Were a Movie * Pop Princess * Who Said * more!

    Acclaimed writer Charles Schaar Murray's Boogie Man is the authorized and authoritative biography of this musician whose extraordinary career spanned over fifty years and included over one-hundred albums and five Grammy Awards. Murray was given unparalleled access to Hooker, and lets him tell his own story in his own words, from life in the Deep South to San Francisco, from the 1948 blues anthem "Boogie Chillen" to the Grammy-winning album The Healer nearly a half-century later. Boogie Man is far more than merely a brilliant biography of one man; it also gives the story of the music that inspired him. "When I die," Hooker said, they'll bury the blues with me. But the blues will never die." Here is the book that does him and his music full justice.

    In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Tricia Rose, described by the New York Times as a "hip hop theorist," takes a comprehensive look at the lyrics, music, cultures, themes, and styles of this highly rhythmic, rhymed storytelling and grapples with the most salient issues and debates that surround it.Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and History at New York University, Tricia Rose sorts through rap's multiple voices by exploring its underlying urban cultural politics, particularly the influential New York City rap scene, and discusses rap as a unique musical form in which traditional African-based oral traditions fuse with cutting-edge music technologies. Next she takes up rap's racial politics, its sharp criticisms of the police and the government, and the responses of those institutions. Finally, she explores the complex sexual politics of rap, including questions of misogyny, sexual domination, and female rappers' critiques of men.But these debates do not overshadow rappers' own words and thoughts. Rose also closely examines the lyrics and videos for songs by artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One, Salt N' Pepa, MC Lyte, and L. L. Cool J. and draws on candid interviews with Queen Latifah, music producer Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, dancer Crazy Legs, and others to paint the full range of rap's political and aesthetic spectrum. In the end, Rose observes, rap music remains a vibrant force with its own aesthetic, "a noisy and powerful element of contemporary American popular culture which continues to draw a great deal of attention to itself."

    Growing up, Thomas Chatterton Williams knew he loved three things in life: his parents, literature, and the intoxicating hip-hop culture that surrounded him. For years, he managed to juggle two disparate lifestyles, "keeping it real" in his friends' eyes and studying for the SATs under his father's strict tutelage-until it all threatened to spin out of control. Written with remarkable candor and emotional depth, Losing My Cool portrays the allure and danger of hip-hop culture with the authority of a true fan who's lived through it all, while demonstrating the saving grace of literature and the power of the bond between father and son.

    Another book from another musician. Let's guess: He rose from the depths of hell with his talent and went big time. He changed the face of music and made millions. Yeah, a few drug addiction, arrest, and STD stories are sporadically sprinkled throughout for excitement and authenticity, but at the end of it all, he finished his ride a musical legend. He finally gave up dressing room groupies and nose candy; he currently resides with his wife and the children that aren't illegitimate in Calabasas, CA.[Insert snoring] Who the hell can really relate to that besides other prestigious, millionaire musicians?My name is J-Zone. If you actually know who the hell I am, either you listen to way too much rap music, you're a Tim Dog fan, or you stood outside my distributor's warehouse the day my CDs and records were destroyed. I was on the hip-hop come-up, then I came down - hard. Splat. Some critical success, incessant praise from pop stars and hip-hop legends alike, and then...abysmal commercial failure. I did tours on Greyhound buses filled with wide-bodied, Jheri curled women and knife-wielding gang members. I witnessed my life-long passion for music dissolve in 12 hours and my final album sell a whopping 47 copies in its first month for sale. I left my little-known spot in a small, niche quadrant of the hip-hop world and joined my fellow overqualified stiffs with useless college degrees in the world of dead end jobs. For some sick reason, I find all of the above hilarious and have made an omelette out of any egg that wound up on my face.I pin my cross-hairs on everyday bullsh*t just as accurately as I do the dysfunctional ways of the music biz. I ask the public at large questions like "Are men the new women?" and "Is going out on Friday night worth it when you're a socially homeless man in a deceptively segregated New York City?" Chapters dedicated to cassette tapes, defunct record stores, the SP-1200 sampling drum machine, hip-hop recording studios of the 1990s, and overlooked rap artists like The Afros, Mob Style, and No Face all point to my fascination with the obscure. The annoyances of a cell phone-driven society, dating in America, and Facebook are also explored. A collection of memoirs and think pieces written by a curmudgeonly commercial failure who is somehow laughing hysterically at both himself and the stupidity of the world large probably won't become a New York Times best-seller, either. Be honest though, you need something to place drinks on when you have company; at worst, my book is a perfect cocktail coaster.

    According to some, Robert Johnson learned guitar by trading his soul away to the Devil at a crossroads in rural Mississippi. When he died at age 27 of a mysterious poisoning, many superstitious fans came to believe that the Devil had returned to take his due. This diligent study of Johnson’s life debunks these myths, while emphasizing the effect that Johnson, said to be the greatest blues musician who ever lived, has had on modern musicians and fans of the blues.

    The first, Thomas, is an entitled deadbeat, content to pass the rest of his days in Asia skating by on the fact that he's white, while the second, a recent college graduate named Daniel, is an idealist at heart. Over the course of the novel, these two characters fight to establish primacy in Ningyuan, a remote town in the south of Hunan, with one of their more overzealous students, Bella, caught in between. Quincy Carroll's cleverly written debut novel examines what we bring from one country to another.

    Based on scores of interviews with his family, friends and compatriots, along with voluminous research, this book gives the reader insight into the elusive and often eccentric personality of the composer. It paints a vivid picture of the difficulties faced by a serious jazz performer in the 50's and 60's who had to battle to overcome racism to make his mark as a musician. Beautifully illustrated with rare photos.

    Will she be able to get away, or will she become Ramos’ next victim? Jamir’s put in a position where he makes another enemy who becomes a real threat. Due to that, he puts killing the man in the picture with Kay on the back burner...for now. His hit list is getting longer; however, he’s not moved. That only makes him go harder. On the hunt for Yummy, he finds out that the plot thickens with her and she’s planning to take him down by any means necessary. Will he find her before she gives him up to the FEDS, or sends someone to murk him? Keeping DEA Agent Daniels on his payroll is also proving to be a waste when he admits to not having a way to keep a warrant from being issued for his arrest. With that looming over his head, he tries to focus on protecting Kay, as well as keeping his own life and freedom intact. He also notices a drastic change in Kaylen that he never saw coming. Kaylen is frantic to find her sister Kylie, who has been taken by DFACS and returned to her unfit mother Connie. In the process, she is attempting to cope with what has happened to Laila. Feeling like everything is too much to bear, she decides to shed the layer of innocence that was once her shell. Now, she feels the burning desire to get vengeance, even if it means she must commit the act of murder herself. The hate she feels for Yummy is festering and all she wants to do is end her life. It starts to become an obsession. However, Jamir wants her to stay out of it and let him handle the situation. Will she back down and let her man be her voice of reason, or will she stick to her guns? Was Kylie’s decision to go back to her mother a big mistake that she’ll regret, or has Connie really made a change for the better? With the chaos surrounding Jah and Kay on one hundred, it’s a fight for these young lovers to stay alive and in love. Will they come out on top in the end, or will one of them, or both, be added to the growing body count?