Have you ever wanted to know more about the history of some of Hip-Hop's groundbreaking albums? If you're reading this then the chances are the answer is yes. Journalist Brian Coleman who has covered Hip-Hop for over 10 years in magazines like URB, XXL, and his current home Scratch Magazine, has penned a book that essentially walks you through the making of 21 of the greatest Hip-Hop albums of the 1980's (and is currently laying the ground work for a 90's edition). In "Rakim Told Me" Coleman takes the back seat for the most part and lets the artists themselves tell their story about what went into making of their defining albums. From "It Takes A Nation of Millions," to "Life Is Too Short," to "Critical Beatdown," and from East, West and everywhere in between this book covers it all and is a piece of Hip-Hop history.

ThaFormula.Com - Talk about the motivation of putting together a book like this…

Brian Coleman - Basically for about 10 years I've been doing this but it wasn't really something that I really planned on doing, I just kind of happened into it which is sometimes the better way for it to happen because you're not really trying...

ThaFormula.Com - Right, and the pressure and deadlines aren't there…

Brian Coleman - Yeah, I've always kind of done writing on the side but I feel worse for other writers who have to write about really shitty artists just so they can pay their rent and that's the best thing about what I've done, that I've been able to pick and choose what I write about. Also, I'm not a big fan of word counts, I don't like hearing "o.k., you only have 1000 words" because the articles I like to write are really long ones and to be honest the subjects I want to write them on are not the kind that the magazines that pay decent money are going to give me 5000 words to write on them. I mean, the XXL article ("Classic Material") has been great and it's been incredible writing and been a great thing to do but it's like I was saying with my verbosity and my dislike of word counts, every time I write I'm like "shit, why couldn't I do one five times as long?" But I know why, the people that buy the magazines may not want to read 3000 words on The D.O.C. so I think books lend themselves to a whole different kind of discourse, so that's why I kind of happened upon writing the book. I mean, I had all these amazing interviews that I had done over the years and I'm the only one who knew about them except for 700, or 1000 word chunks here and there.

ThaFormula.Com - That's terrible man, I feel the same way about the word count thing…

Brian Coleman - Yeah you know I would always be calling up people and be like "oh shit, you know what Slick Rick told me?" and then they would be like "nah, I didn't read that?" The book is just basically me telling their story in the fullest way, I could have gone longer with any of them still, but it was a way of kind of expanding for people who wanted to know more than the artist features that I've done.

ThaFormula.Com - I think you may have referred to it this way in the introduction, and others have told me the same thing, but the book kind of serves as liner notes to some of these history making albums that never had any liners…

Brian Coleman - Yeah, that was kind of my vague conception of the book, invisible liner notes. Because these albums should have had liner notes but they never did. You could look back, and I'd like to be corrected if I've missed a bunch of liner notes over the years because I'd like to read them, but aside from like the first two Salt-N-Pepa records (which is kind of amusing because you wouldn't think their albums would need them, but they were good liner notes), who else really had them? Why did Public Enemy never have liner notes on their albums? It's ridiculous!

ThaFormula.Com - Maybe Chuck was saving them for one his books because he knew it was going to be an important album (laughs)

Brian Coleman - (laughs) Yeah, it interesting because I do some promotion for some Jazz artists and the liners are the backbone for Jazz releases, and then Rock and Blues are kind of somewhere in between there, and then there's Hip-Hop. I haven't really done any investigative research but I have no idea why they never had any. But yeah, that was the idea to kind to tell the stories of these albums, how they were made and it usually goes beyond that because a lot of the times the album I covered was the artist's first album so it goes back to the history of the group or artist and how they came be.

ThaFormula.Com - Yeah, because I never realized how far back for instance Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo went with Schooly D and if I had known I may have known to keep an eye out for him before Kris Kross and Ruff House stuff…

Brian Coleman - Yeah, he had a record he put out in like '88 or '89 that was called "Butcher's Breaks" or something, I think it was on Atlantic or something strange. But yeah, Schooly talked about that because they were the ones that got him into Hip-Hop because he was a rock guy (at least from the impression I got from him) because you know there wasn't really that much of a Hip-Hop infrastructure in Philly at the time.

ThaFormula.Com - You know how tough the independent music scene is, but people are out there looking for music, comparatively there aren't nearly as many people out there looking for Hip-Hop books, how tough is it to get a Hip-Hop themed book out there and independently at that?

Brian Coleman - It's kind of interesting. I had talked to publishers during the past year and had got varying levels of interest from them and they all kind of liked what I was doing but they knew this wasn't going to make them a lot of money so they'd rather go with something that was. So I started to think about some of the artists that I was covering in the book like Too Short, Schooly and the 2 Live Crew who all wanted to put out records on other labels but the labels weren't gonna put them out. Then Luke came along who was like the ultimate and said "fuck you" and put it out himself. It's kind of a tribute to that kind of spirit. So there's really not that much difference in a way. Plus I'm selling more to record stores than book stores so it's kind of the same idea.

ThaFormula.Com - Tell me a little about your background and your exposure to Hip-Hop because I was surprised by the variety of albums you covered, the book goes from Ultramagnetic to Too Short, someone who almost no one outside of LA would acknowledge in a book like this…

Brian Coleman - I grew up on the East Coast and went to High School in New Jersey so my High School years were when I started getting into Hip-Hop and understanding it more. My whole thing is that the whole time since I was 12 or 13 even up until now I've never listened to one kind of music. I know a lot of people say that, but I'll still go to a lot of metal shows, or punk shows at the same time I'm a big Hip-Hop fan. I think what drew me to Run DMC and Public Enemy early on was that they kind of had that Punk Rock spirit to them. I don't really remember when it actually hit me because I was always listening to everything and I didn't ever separate the music like "I only like Hip-Hop." I was kind of exposed to Hip-Hop in two phases, the first was videos when they stared coming out…you know the group that kind of gets overlooked by more than any is the Fat Boys…

ThaFormula.Com - Yeah, that was the second tape I ever bought, the "Crushin'" album…

Brian Coleman - Yeah, I mean obviously there was a gimmick there, but it was produced by Kurtis Blow and it was dope, and then their videos! People don't really remember, well I hope they do but they were getting heavy play on MTV like "All You Can Eat," "The Fat Boys are Back" and "Can You Feel It," and that was big. So that was kind of my first exposure and then in High School I kind of became aware of Hip-Hop as more of an entity and a culture.

ThaFormula.Com - That Too Short chapter really threw me by it even being included, that was ill…

Brian Coleman - You know I'll tell you what, here's an interesting thing. Growing up outside New York, Red Alert was god. I used to listen to him every weekend. You know, there was people on the West Coast, I've talked to a lot of artists from the West Coast and I think if you didn't grow up in the East people would just be like "you're just being paranoid" but when people like Tony G or Ice-T say that "oh people really hated on the West Coast," they were right. (laughs) I mean, I was brain-washed for a while, I didn't really want to hear anything from the West Coast, because Red Alert would go off on that shit on the air. He'd play something or someone would mention a West Coast group and he would just laugh and be like "yeah right, we'll play that, sure." Being a young kid I'd just laugh and be like "yeah!" and it sucks because years later I regret it so much and had to play catch up so many albums that I should have bought back then.

ThaFormula.Com - What are some of the albums that didn't make it into the book that you really wish you could have included but weren't able to?

Brian Coleman - Aw, that's a good question. One would have been either Stetsaonic's first or second album. I would have loved to have done a Kurtis Blow record too. Obviously "Straight Outta Compton," but you know…

ThaFormula.Com - (laughs) Yeah, we all know how difficult that would be to get done.

Brian Coleman - (laughs) Yeah, that would take so much time to lock down. Then there's the "movie star syndrome" with an album like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince where having to go through all the agents and publicists makes it impossible to do, same with LL Cool J and Queen Latifah. So those are definitely some of the ones I'm upset aren't in there, but that's not to say they won't be in future editions.

ThaFormula.Com - Without giving away too much, what were a couple of the most interesting pieces of information you picked up during the course of the writing of the book?

Brain Coleman - Let's see…well in the Public Enemy chapter where Chuck D talks about how difficult it was for him to get some of his vocals down and how hard he had to work to get them down…

ThaFormula.Com - Yeah, that's one of the last things you would think of hearing about with Chuck just because of how confident his voice and delivery are…

Brian Coleman - Yeah, he was talking about how he got so upset that he would throw the tape across the room or out the window and you just wouldn't think of hearing that about him, that kind of shit I love because you would never think of him as an artist that struggles to do shit just like you and I do you know? It just kind of lets you know that even Chuck had to work at it and I guess it might make some of us feel a little bit better about ourselves. (laughs)

Written for URB, XXL ("Chairman's Board"), Boston Herald and can be found at his regular at Scratch Magazine where he pens numerous columns in any given issue.

"Rakim Told Me" can be previewed and purchased at Coleman's site (www.waxfacts.com) or at www.amazon.com.

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