Music: Before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, uncovering a world of poverty that America had tried to keep hidden, a 55-year-old white man from Derry immersed himself in that world and uncovered some uncomfortable home truths about rap, gangsta culture, black identity and, ultimately, himself.
Nik Cohn's fascination with rock's iconography led to his acclaimed history of rock 'n' roll, Awopbobaloobop Alopbamboom, and his treatise on New York's burgeoning disco scene directly influenced the movie Saturday Night Fever, but Triksta finds the writer straying recklessly into a forbidden zone - the fiercely territorial and dangerously volatile world of New Orleans rap.
Before Katrina wrought its devastation, life (and death) was already teeming in the rundown projects and wards behind the touristic façades of Bourbon Street and the French Quarter; its soundtrack was bounce, a grimy, pneumatic cousin of hip-hop, and its movers and shakers were young black rappers with such handles as Soulja Slim, Choppa, Fifth Ward Weebie, Che Muse, Jubilee, Junie B and Shorty Brown Hustle.
Around 2001, their ranks were infiltrated by an odd-looking white guy in a suit and fedora, who may or may not have had music biz connections in the Big Apple. Cohn had already fallen in love with this balmy city on the bayou, and had been taking frequent trips there from his home in New York, spending lazy afternoons and warm, fevered nights watching the colourful cavalcade of daily life in New Orleans.
One afternoon, however, Cohn stopped being a voyeur and became swept up into the beat-driven heart of the city. He was strolling down Rampart Street when a 10-year-old black kid spat on his brand new Kenneth Cole jacket. Something snapped inside him, and Cohn marched angrily into the notorious Iberville project, where he was immediately surrounded by a hostile gang of black youths. What self-destructive urge made him take those fateful steps he'll never know, but when he emerged, mercifully unmugged, to the sound of a bounce tune blasting from a nearby car, he was a changed man. He had turned into Triksta, a born-again hip-hopper hooked on the real, raw sound of New Orleans.
You could say it was another self-destructive urge that made Cohn try his hand at becoming a rap entrepreneur; it seemed at best a quixotic venture, doomed to failure, at worst a fool's errand that was more likely to end with a bullet than a big hit. Nevertheless, he made it his mission to sign up some local rappers and shape them into something that would attract the interest and chequebooks of the big players in New York.
He persuaded DreamWorks to appoint him a freelance A&R man, and soon became known in the wards as "the man from DreamShit". He set up a small studio in a converted oyster shack, and found his first protégé, a charismatic young tyro named Choppa, whose signature tune, Choppa Style, was a massive local hit.
Try as he might, however, Cohn couldn't get Choppa to transfer his elusive magic onto disc. He tried again with a female rapper, Junie B, and again with a chap called Che Muse, but still couldn't get that breakthrough that would put his acts on a par with the Kanye Wests and Fifty Cents of this world. New Orleans might be known as the Big Easy, but for Triksta it was tough times all the time.
Part of the problem was Cohn's age and colour: many of the young rappers he encountered displayed open mistrust of this old white guy trying to tell 'em what to rap about. A greater part of the problem, though, was the inherent nihilism of the scene, the all-pervading futility that trickled down the streets of the projects, seeping into the lyrics and dampening hopes and dreams. Although the rappers put up a fearless front, they knew that their lives and endeavours could be snuffed out anytime with a single bullet.
Most of the rappers Cohn encountered glorified gangsta style - they had to, in order to save face with their compadres; some, however, lamented the waste of life, and tried to swing hip-hop in a less-confrontational direction. Their voices went largely ignored.
Cohn's account of his travails in the rap business is backed up by a very knowledgable history of rap and hip-hop, just what you'd expect from an accomplished scholar of rock and popular culture. He wasn't flying blind in this strange world: Cohn already had a vast knowledge of the blues music of Louisiana and the Southern States, and it didn't take a great leap of imagination to jump across the years from Jelly Roll Morton to Missy Elliot. He also has an understanding of the market forces that drive mainstream hip-hop, and how the language, moves and attitude of gangsta rap crossed over to an affluent white audience, who eagerly bought into the whole image while neatly avoiding the grimy reality of life on the streets.
What emerges from this voyage into the heart of hip-hop is a very personal account of one man's redemption through the most unlikely medium, and a lesson in the hard realities of rap that apply to any US city you'd care to mention. Triksta had already gone to press before Katrina struck, and before rapper Kanye West appeared on national television and slammed the Bush administration for its poor response to the crisis. But Cohn has candidly captured a time when New Orleans bounced to a grime beat, and rap's ravaged heart was beating louder than bullets.
Kevin Courtney is an Irish Times journalist
Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap By Nik Cohn Harvill Secker, 211pp. £12.95
