Pimp Status – My Message To The Streets

Welcome Home.
Things are in order here at Your Friendly Neighborhood PimpHop.com, and I decided to take a few days off to focus on the exact course of travel for the rest of the year and beyond.

This of course requires reflection, and it has brought to light some extremely interesting scenarios, which make this a perfect time to address the streets.

My own life experience perhaps like yours is in fact worthy of a few novels and film/reality show adaptations, yet for the sake of this conversation, acting as an author, I recall that the book cover above is one that had the most prolific impact on me as a reader and is a primary source of inspiration as far as my ventures in the literature arena are concerned.

For those who may not be familiar with the works of this author, his name is Robert Beck who is known by his “P” name as Iceberg Slim. If the term Ice sounds familiar to you through your exposure to Hip Hop notables, you now know where the name was borrowed from.

I invite you to pick up some copies of his works, for your own collection and do your own research in order to form your own opinions. This particular entry has to do with the Hollywood/Pop Culture connection to the story. and things seem to often turn up at the correct time as if there really is some truth in the age old human concepts of  fate and destiny.

Comedian Dave Chappelle often talks about Iceberg and “The Game” during his stand-up routines. According to him, Iceberg got his name by keeping “ice-cold” in a shoot-out where he stayed at the bar drinking his drink even though a bullet pierced his hat, a story told at the end of chapter 13 in Slim’s Pimp. On his 2006-07 summer tour, Chappelle told a tale of Iceberg, learning of him from Maya Angelou, and relates it to why he left $50 million at Comedy Central and secretly went to Africa.
Wikipedia Link

An even more interesting part of actual history rests in the fact that Robert Beck actually moved to Los Angeles after exiting the street life in Chicago Illinois, and became an author through sheer coincidence by speaking with a college professor that he had become acquainted with, who recommended that he consider making his fascinating true life stories available for the world to hear.

Pimp still holds as perhaps the greatest chronicle ever written on male-female relations. In the flush of literary success, white feminist-journalist types sought out interviews like intellectual groupies. Pimp philosophy, Iceberg believed, might be adapted to mainstream relationships. “My theory is that some quantum of pimp in every man would perhaps enhance his approach to women,” he told the Washington Post. Iceberg Slim Tribute Link.

The book and author himself both have had an interestingly powerful impact in society unbeknown to many, which has resulted in rumors of a film adaptation of the book, with a hotly contested quest for film right from many Hollywood notables, including Quincy Jones.

Slim’s books were met with great success and immediately garnered widespread attention. The film rights to Pimp were purchased by Universal Pictures following the success of The Godfather, however the project was considered “too hot” and put on hold indefinitely

Even better, the whole concept of so called urban slang, by which an actual online urban dictionary exists, was first developed by Robert Beck as a glossary that came along with his works, to explain the terminologies that he used, many of which are still used in urban culture.

• bottom woman: pimp’s main woman, his foundation
• breaking luck: a whore’s first trick of a working day
• chili pimp: small-time, one whore pimp
• jasper: lesbian
• macking: pimping
• square up: to get out of the life
• to pull someone’s coat: to inform and teach

My message to the streets is that for whatever reason, this book seems to be destined to be made into a film, yet for whatever reason, the project has yet to reach completion, as if there may be a need to simply create a new and updated space age pimpin version of a true life story regarding the highly coveted status known as PIMP, and with the capabilities of the technologies in the digital age, it may actually soon show up in front of a screen near you.

As far as the course being charted for this online publication, while I was at the mall last weekend, pondering on this very subject, I passed by the movie theater,  and looked through the upper level window to see

the homie Tip from the Pimp Squad Click, on the big screen,

as trailer for the new film Takers was playing at the exact moment that I arrived.

Like we say at PimpHop.com, the time that we spend telling you, is better invested in showing you, so for those of our viewers who may have had a frequently asked question in mind which is

wait, is this some Pimp Shit, or some ole Hollywood Shit?

Well, whatever it is, we invite you to fill in your own blanks, and continue to stay tuned for your own viewing pleasure as one way to look at the book title is as the life story of a pimp(noun), and another is to pimp(verb) the story of my life.

Again, in actuality, it’s PimpHop.com,
where we keep it ALL THE WAY West Coast.

A different perspective to consider.