Nik Cohn's story of the New Orleans hip-hop scene is a poignant snapshot of a vibrant world just before it was lost, writes Jim Carroll
Nik Cohn knows that he must have been quite a sight. At least, he says wryly, he was never going to be mistaken for anyone else. For a start, few other pale, middle-aged men with clipped English accents have ever taken to prowling the hip-hop clubs and ramshackle studios of a New Orleans far from the tourist beat. Certainly few have done so in a floppy fedora hat and a suit, while none at all have harboured a desire to become a hip-hop Svengali.
That low-down and dog-eat-dog world of Big Easy hip-hop became Cohn's turf for some three years. Along the way, Cohn morphed into Triksta, a hip-hop impresario who, while he didn't quite walk the walk, at least could talk the talk. The London-born, Derry-raised writer found himself toiling alongside characters called things such as Choppa, listening to tracks in studios surrounded by cats such as Jahbo and Snake Eyez Entertainment and trying to interest the world beyond Louisiana in the skills of Junie B and Stevee.
What came out of his adventures in the dirty south is one of the most impressive music books of recent years. Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap is a fascinating tale of an outsider wrestling with the unwritten initiation rites of a society to which he can never belong. It also captures the day-to-day hustles and dreams that keep that group in the game as they struggle to survive. That Triksta was written and published before Hurricane Katrina struck and wiped that world away only adds to the poignancy of what you're reading.
Cohn has considerable form when it comes to observing and inking scenes. He arrived in London from Derry in 1964, just in time to cover the Swinging Sixties for many different publications. His acclaimed Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom rock history followed in 1968, before he headed to the US.
There, he penned stories such as Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night (which provided the foundations for Saturday Night Fever) and Arfur: Teenage Pinball Queen - a Novel (which The Who borrowed for Tommy). Later on, books such as The Heart of the World and Yes We Have No saw him turning his attention towards Broadway and England respectively.
"My attraction has never been to the mainstream," Cohn says about what draws him to a story. "I've never been interested in people who are already successful. I have a natural attraction to people beyond the fringes, as you can see in the Broadway book or Yes We Have No."
He finds it hard to finger what exactly drew him to the New Orleans's hip-hop underworld. It helped, of course, that he always had a fondness for hip-hop's sound.
"I was hooked on early hip-hop, always the beats and the backing tracks. It wasn't the usual pop music you'd hear at the time. But during the 1990s, I began to have trouble with some of the 'gangsta' lyrics. I always felt that the very best of hip-hop was the very best of pop music at any particular time, though an awful lot of rap is absolute rubbish."
New Orleans too had long got under his skin. Since his first visit - on tour with The Who in 1972 - he had developed an obsession with the place and returned year in, year out. Sometimes, he would look out the window of his rented house and marvel at how the city constantly reinvented itself without a care in the world.
BY 2000, WORN-out and sick from the ravages of hepatitis C, he felt in need of some of that reinvention juice himself. He found it one Sunday afternoon at a street parade in the Treme section. A DJ on a float played Magnolia Shorty's Monkey on Tha Dick and Cohn was smitten with "bounce" - the sleazy, rudimentary sound of New Orleans-bred hip-hop.
He decided he wanted to find and produce promising rappers. Initially, he was met with suspicion, but this changed. "I think the fact that I looked so bizarre saved me," Cohn notes. "If I had come in at my age wearing hip-hop gear and calling people 'dog' with my voice , I'd really have been asking for trouble. By holding on to what I am and not fronting to be something else, I piqued curiosity. When I stuck around, they knew I was serious."
Over time, relationships developed and flourished. "I like to think that we had - we still have - a closeness. Some of the relationships are complicated, but they're emotional on both sides. Early on, when I just walked in blind, people didn't care very much about me at all. I had to prove that I had some awareness of what I was doing and that I was not there just to rip people off. They were hardly expected to trust me on sight, especially given how bizarre I probably looked to them."
As Triksta unfolds, Cohn uses old music industry contacts to unlock some money for recording budgets. He may have harboured some small dream of becoming a label boss or impresario, but this didn't materialise. With hindsight, Cohn accepts this, though he admits the dream was tempting.
"At the deepest personal level, what I got was a richness and an impact on my life that I would not have got if I had got a huge hit right out of the box. I would dearly have loved to have hooked the artists up with major label deals and for them to be multi-millionaires by now. But I wouldn't have swapped what happened; God was good."
The unlikely bond that developed between Cohn and the rappers also pleased him. "From growing up in Derry, I've always looked with envy at the male gang, people who are comfortable together in a large group. As an outsider, I've always wanted to be part of that, but realised that I never could be.
"The New Orleans rappers were probably the ultimate group that I could never be a part of. After five years, I'm obviously not one of the boys, but there's an improbable connection and a belonging there because I've established my bona fides."
Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap is published by Harvill Secker