Never Drank the Kool-Aid: Essays

Touré

Picador, Apr 1, 2007 - Social Science - 416 pages

His name is Touré--just Touré--and like many of the musicians, athletes, and celebrities he's profiled, he has affected the way that we think about culture in America. He has profiled Eminem, 50 Cent, and Alicia Keys for the cover of Rolling Stone. He's played high-stakes poker with Jay-Z and basketball with Prince and Wynton Marsalis. In Touré's world, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. sits beside Condoleezza Rice who sits beside hip-hop pioneer Tupac Shakur, and all of them are fascinating company.

Never Drank the Kool-Aid is the chronicle of Touré's unparalleled journey through the American funhouse called pop culture. Its rooms are filled with creative, arrogant, kind, ordinary, and extraordinary people, most of whom happen to be famous. It is Touré's gift to be able to see through the artifice of their world and understand the genuine motivations behind their achievements--to see who they truly are as people. This is a searingly funny, surprisingly unguarded, and deeply insightful look at a world few of us comprehend.

What people are saying

NEVER DRANK THE KOOL-AID: Essays

User Review  - Jane Doe - Kirkus

Collected dispatches of the de Tocqueville of the Hip-Hop Nation.Journalist Touré's (Rolling Stone; the New Yorker) impassioned, insightful and stylish articles on hip-hop make up the bulk of these ...

Never drank the kool-aid: essays

User Review  - Not Available - Book Verdict

This collection of essays and journalistic features doesn't differ much from other anthologies by contemporary pop culture writers. Not only does Tour� dish on intimate moments shared with ...

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• 1 Im Audi: 13
• 2 Sensitive Thugs: 19
• 3 Big Willies: 73
• 4 Icaruses: 115
• 5 Almost Famous: 171
• 6 Get Up Get Out and Get Involved: 231
• 7 Microphone Fiend: 295
• 8 Strange Fruit: 315
• 9 Somehow Theres Love in the Hiphop Nation: 331
• 10 Boys Will Be Boys: 359
• 11 Who Do You Think You Are?: 375
• 12 I Cant Take It: 399

About the author

Touré is the author of the novel Soul City and the story collection The Portable Promised Land. A contributing editor at Rolling Stone, his writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Tennis Magazine, The Best American Essays, and Da Capo Best American Music Writing, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Never Drank the Kool-Aid: Essays
• Author: Touré
• Publisher: Picador, 2007
• ISBN: 1429901098, 9781429901093
• Length: 416 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Entertainment & Performing Arts; Social Science / Popular Culture