You heard, yet? The brand-new project from Brad "Scarface" Jordan, Houston's preeminent gangsta poet, drops today. Predictably, it's dope. But don't go scurrying off to Spotify to find it -- try Amazon instead.
At long last, 'Face has broken his offstage silence and dished the goods in his new book, Diary of a Madman. Written together with longtime hip-hop scribe Benjamin Ingram-Meadows, the autobiography covers the rap superstar's entire bumpy and blessed existence, from his beyond-rough childhood in some of Houston's darkest places to his current exploits tearing up the city's best-manicured golf courses. It's about as complete a self-portrait of the intensely private MC that we're ever likely to get.
If you see him around town and you ask real politely, he might even sign your copy. Just don't ask him to read it.
"I don't ever want to read that book, OK?" Scarface says. "I know what I told the writer, and I just hope he used it, because I never want to read it. I never want to relive those moments again in my life. Good or bad, right, wrong or indifferent, I never want to relive those moments."
It isn't difficult to see why. There's plenty of bad recounted in Diary of a Madman, like the years Scarface spent as a child locked up in the metal-health wing of Houston International Hospital. Or his young adult years spent slinging crack to his neighbors on the south side of town. Or the ten months he spent behind bars for failure to pay child support. Or the time he got shot.
To be sure, there are plenty of triumphant moments in the book, too. Putting Houston on the hip-hop map once and for all with the Geto Boys was no small thing, of course, and 'Face never seems more proud than when he's recounting his time as a music executive with Def Jam South, where he helped break Ludacris. But reading the book, it becomes clear that pain and depression have been a constant struggle for the rap legend -- one Diary of a Madman doesn't shy away from confronting.
If you're one of the many fans who has been waiting for the unfiltered version of Brad Jordan's existence, read it now. Because Scarface ain't planning on going over it again.
"We had to go digging back in my past and my childhood, how I was raised," Scarface says. "It was deep, writing that story. There were some very deep moments, heartfelt moments, that really kind of broke me down, just reliving them. To the point where I didn't want to talk about it no more, I got so upset. It was just deep, man. My life story is deep."
Deep, but rarely dull, and Ingram-Meadows does a remarkable job of telling that story in Scarface's own voice. Madman is an uncensored tale, with all of the appropriate "bitches" and "motherfuckers" intact.
"There's no reading between the lines," 'Face chuckles. "It's right there in your face. Bam."
Story continues on the next page.
