Bøger af Ben Westhoff

Now in paperback, ORIGINAL GANGSTAS is the acclaimed definitive history of West Coast hip-hop, revealing how a cohort of then-unknown rappers, including Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur, grappled with crime, drugs, gangs, bad cops, and racial tension to create the defining music movement of a generation.

"Little Brother tells the story of investigative journalist Ben Westhoff's relationship with Jorell Cleveland through the Big Brother, Big Sister program in St. Louis, Missouri, and investigates Jorell's tragic unsolved murder at the age of nineteen"--

A remarkable four-year investigation into the dangerous world of synthetic drugs-from black market drug factories in China to users and dealers on the streets of the U.S. to harm reduction activists in Europe-which reveals for the first time the next wave of the opioid epidemic

Rap music from New York and Los Angeles once ruled the charts, but nowadays the southern sound thoroughly dominates the radio, Billboard, and MTV. Coastal artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, and Ice-T call southern rap “garbage,” but they're probably just jealous, as artists like Lil Wayne and T.I. still move millions of copies, and OutKast has the bestselling rap album of all time.In Dirty South, author Ben Westhoff investigates the southern rap phenomenon, watching rappers “make it rain” in a Houston strip club and partying with the 2 Live Crew's Luke Campbell. Westhoff visits the gritty neighborhoods where T.I. and Lil Wayne grew up, kicks it with Big Boi in Atlanta, and speaks with artists like DJ Smurf and Ms. Peachez, dance-craze originators accused of setting back the black race fifty years. Acting both as investigative journalist and irreverent critic, Westhoff probes the celebrated-but-dark history of Houston label Rap-A-Lot Records, details the lethal rivalry between Atlanta MCs Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy, and gets venerable rapper Scarface to open up about his time in a mental institution. Dirty South features exclusive interviews with the genre's most colorful players.Westhoff has written a journalistic tour de force, the definitive account of the most vital musical culture of our time.

A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR.An undercover investigation into the synthetic-drug epidemic.A new group of chemicals is radically transforming the recreational-drug landscape. Known as novel psychoactive substances (NPS), they range from so-called `legal highs¿ like Spice, to synthetic opioids ¿ most famously, the deadly fentanyl.Designed to replicate the effects of established drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and heroin, NPS are synthesised in laboratories. They are cheap to produce and easy to transport. They are also extremely potent and often deadly. Originally developed for medicinal purposes, and then hijacked by rogue chemists, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, these chemicals¿ effects can be impossible to predict. What we do know is that they have triggered the biggest drug epidemic that America has ever seen, and which is now spreading internationally.In Fentanyl, Inc., award-winning journalist Ben Westhoff goes undercover to investigate the shadowy world of synthetic drugs ¿ becoming, in the process, the first journalist to infiltrate a Chinese fentanyl lab. He tracks down the drug baron in New Zealand who unintentionally helped to start the synthetic-drug revolution; prowls St. Louis streets with a former fentanyl dealer to understand how the epidemic started; and chronicles the lives of addicts and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug-awareness organisers in the US and Europe. Fentanyl, Inc. is essential reading on a global calamity we are only just beginning to understand.

Sick of gentrification, $15 cosmopolitans, and clean bathrooms? Then this revised edition of the best-selling New York City's Best Dive Bars is the guide for you. Featuring all new reviews of one hundred of the best dive bars in the five boroughs of New York City and surrounding cities such as Jersey City and Hoboken, this book takes you where other bar guides fear to tread. Broken urinals and $2 PBRS? Yes!