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Book Review: No More Mr. Nice Guy by James Alston

No More Mr. Nice Guy
by James E. Alston
(Book Surge)
4 out of 5 Stars


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In No More Mr. Nice Guy, James Alston holds absolutely nothing back in this chilling tale of self-sacrifice to a company whose executives either participated in or enabled racial misconduct and sexual harassment towards its employees and customers. A true company man, Alston always looked out for the the company’s well-being, even if it meant holding the company legally accountable for 27 years of abuse by the company’s “good old boys” network.

When are “a son of a sharecropper”, you are a sharecropper. That is a family-level event. From that early childhood experience, Alston’s desire to rise above adversity by proving his ability to perform regardless of his color was instilled in him by his elders. Alston says, “I was never a stranger to hard work, and I worked hard to achieve results.” Alston carried that mindset with him through various low-paying odd jobs and brought that to Handly’s Food Corporation. (This is a fictitious name used to satisfy the terms of his lawsuit.)

No More Mr. Nice Guy gives the reader a historical account of James Alston’s experience with Handly’s Food Corporation. After making his way into Handly’s upper management, Alston never ceased to work hard and surpass the company’s performance goals. In addition to the praise and recognition, Alston also got his fair share of discrimination. From being the brunt of racial jokes to suffering the mental anguish that comes with given tasks with unrealistic expectations, No More Mr. Nice Guy unveils the male dominated racism present in multi-million dollar corporations scattered across the U.S.

This is the story of metal-on-metal struggle. Handly’s Food Corporation’s “good old boy” network systematically profited from Alston undying work ethic while constantly putting him in precarious situations in terms of job performance and job security. Alston consistently met each attempt at his derailment with the company’s core values: meeting the problem head on, make moves with the company’s profit in mind and retain the best human assets. While most of his superiors placed him in certain conditions with the intention of causing his failure, Alston shook his feelings of inadequacy by bringing his company profits and his customers and employees the best possible experience.

Not only does Alston fight the racism he faces, he also brings discrimination and sexual harassment issues experienced by employees and customers to the highest ranking executives in Handly’s Food Corporation. Each time, Alston’s requests for investigations were pushed to the side while misconduct was given little attention. This company culture not only affected his mental and physical well-being, Alston’s financial prowess was also hindered. His buying powers was artificially limited by phony performance reviews, low raises and the shifting of his most profitable stores and store managers to peers who were simply unscrupulous moves used to hold him back. He was making $15,000 to $20,000 less per year than his peers.

Alston’s situation is akin to a marriage gone bad. Alston was fully committed to Handly’s Food Corporation. He faced the challenges of this relationship with dignity and hard work only to find out the executives only wanted what they could get from him with no intentions being respectable. Eventually, Alston begins to itemize his contributions to the company. He looks at his contributions in respect to what Handly’s Food Corporation offered him during the course of a stellar 27 year career of profits and customer satisfaction.

Alston begin to realize the utter disregard that the executives of Handly’s Food Corporation had for him. This brings forth the decades of anger, mental anguish, depression, embarrassment and other negative feelings and emotions. Instead of apologizing and making the situation right, Handly’s Food Corporation offers to sweep it under the rug and give him a little money for his troubles. The legal manuverings of Handly’s Food Corporation and James Alston’s pit bull determination clash for a final time. But are there any true victors?
Drawbacks: Although I understand that the book cover reflects that Alston was not looked at as a real person and therefore a commodity, the book cover’s illustration should have been better drawn/sketched. There were run-on sentences and misuse of punctuation marks that should have been picked up by the editor. There were a paragraph where 3 or 4 sentences didn’t begin with a capital letter.

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Book Review: Dancing with the Devil by Mark Curry

Dancing With The Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of HipHop
by Mark Curry
(New Mark Books)
5 out of 5 Stars


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Did you ever want to know what it’s like rolling with Diddy and being a part of the world-famous Bad Boy Records? Mark Curry gives you his experience with the mogul in Dancing With The Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of HipHop. Curry fans away the smoke and dismantles the mirrors with his debut release as an author. What you will find is the good, the bad and gritty lifestyle that Diddy provides to those artists unfortunate to get caught up in the Bad Boy empire.

Although Curry had the talent to carry Bad Boy into the new millennium after the death of The Notorious B.I.G., Diddy dangled a lucrative multimillion dollar career in front of Curry to use him for personal development for Diddy as a HipHop artist. A perfect example of this mimicry is seen and heard in the “Bad Boy For Life” video where Diddy emulates Mark Curry’s style perfectly. Throughout the decade Curry spent getting swindled for his knack for being a superb lyricist and performer, Curry either saw or experienced what Diddy did to become a media magnate. From enticing his artists with riches to doling out terrible contracts to injecting himself on each track and in each Bad Boy video, Diddy did what ever it took to make him richer.

If you grew up listening to HipHop during the Bad Boy era, Dancing With The Devil will give you an intriguing history of rap music during that time from a person lived it. Curry’s attention to detail and ability to weave his personal experiences and research makes this book easy to read and hard to put down. This is more than an expose from a disgruntled artist. Dancing With the Devil is a journey that separates the fact from the fiction. This book shows you the music industry for what it is — harsh and cut throat. If you can go online, Google and YouTube will be your best friend as you journey with Mark Curry through the maze of music, murders and mayhem.

Fans of The Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac will find Dancing With The Devil especially interesting. Curry links together Diddy, Suge Knight and their associates in a way that is sure to get you sitting on the edge of your seat fully attentive to a captivating back story that lead to the early deaths of the brightest HipHop stars the world will ever know. If you thought there was more than meets the eye with Diddy’s situation with Shyne, Curry will lay out what he saw as Shyne’s room mate in one of Diddy’s three-bedroom apartments during the time of the club shooting and Shyne’s subsequent prison sentence. If you wanted to know who wrote the rhymes while Diddy wrote the checks, Curry will give you an inside look at what means to be heard but not seen.

As a biographer, Curry makes this book much more than an expose on Puffy and Bad Boy. He documents his own history, even shedding light on his musical roots. Curry does a great job of detailing his families roots in Gospel, his dad’s connection to early Rock and Roll and his own immersion into the hip hop culture swept across America in the late 70s and early 80s. He even details his experience with the then prepubescent music in Atlanta in the late 80s and early 90s. There is also a section of pictures in the middle of the book that gives you a look in the development of Mark Curry from a little boy to a grown man. It’s almost like Curry invites you into his house to sit down and have dinner with him.

Once you finish with this book, you will have taken a trip that few have the heart to speak about. Dancing With The Devil is more than a one-sided account of a wannabe artists mad at the world. You will have a thorough understanding of why artists such as The L.O.X., Faith Evans, 112, Total, etc. are no longer a part of Bad Boy’s roster. You will hear those Bad Boy classics in a new light once you gain the understanding of why Diddy added his chatter to songs and his presence to the videos.

You might even feel sorry for current Bad Boy artists such as Danity Kane (or what’s left of them), Day 26 and Da Band. The infamous contract signing scenarios take on a new meaning once you are aware of Diddy’s history of jerking people with terrible deals. Curry acts more like a journalist than anything else as he sifts through tons of information and personal experiences to show how the music industry can promise you diamonds with intentions of giving you coal.

Curry’s Dancing With The Devil can easily be considered Bad Boy Records’ version of Fredericks Dannen’s The Hit Men.

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Book Review of Blood Money: The Beginning by Toni Coleman

Blood Money: The Beginning
Toni Coleman
(Seraphim Publications)
4 out of 5 Stars


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Blood Money by Toni Coleman is roller coaster ride through a world where the music industry and criminal activities are mutual bedfellows. Jameelah Cole marries her long-time boyfriend, inherits a multi-million dollar record company and gets a huge house complete with two million dollars in cash in its safe. Not bad for a “little girl from Compton”, right? Wrong… Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jameelah’s female intuition leads her to be suspicious of her boyfriend, Michael Mine. Being the CEO of G-Styles, women throw themselves at Michael left and right since its the hottest West Coast record label out. Jameelah is naturally suspicious when Michael rushes to drop her off and go handle some “record company business”.

Michael meets up with the other woman and swiftly swooshes her to his mini-mansion. In the throws of passion, Michael becomes the victim of a serious jack move. His late-night rendevous steps to the side and lets two burglars beat Michael to a pulp and demand the location of the money hidden somewhere within the house.

Gun in hand, Jameelah finds Michael hogtied and hanging onto dear life as the two hooligans hold him hostage. A couple blasts from the shotgun sends the floozy flying out of the room like a ghetto roach and the thugs splattered on the floor like extras in a horror flick. The shots also partially paralyzes Michael, but he survives. That would have been highly unlikely if Jameelah wasn’t a woman that shoots first and asks questions later.

While laid up in the hospital, two of Michael’s closest business partners plan and plot like vultures over the remnants of Michael’s anticipated demise. Bruce Kelly shares ownership of G-Style records with Michael. Ruthless by nature, this red-haired Irishman will stop at nothing to make the business moves that keep him financially secure and keep his business partners satisfied.

The sexy R&B crooner Alan Wise is G-Style’s flagship artist. He was Michael’s bestfriend when they were petty thugs on the rise in the drug game. Allan becomes rapped up in Bruce’s evil manipulations just like everyone else who is too afraid to cross Bruce’s path. Allan’s loyalty quickly shifts from Michael to Bruce because he believes he is going to take Michael’s place as a partner in G-Style.

At the hospital, Michael not only asks for Jameelah’s hand in marriage but also give her all of the inside details of his business operations. Michael had been working on transitioning his interest in G-Style records into his own record company. Jameelah pays attention but has no idea how what she learns in that hospital will be crucial to her survival both physically and business-wise.

Michael’s untimely passing brings much more than his past lovers out of the woodwork. Micael’s former partner in crime and business, Bruce, begins to set in motion the steps neccessary to make G-Style records a burgeoning music empire. He also feels he now has the room needed to turn the record label into a perfect money laundering operation for his “silent partners”.

As Jameelah sorts through the things left to her by her forward-thinking husband, she happens upon the stash of money Michael was getting robbed for. Jameelah and her best friend Renee hand-count one million dollars only to realize they only made it halfway through the total stash. The money turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing for reasons you’ll have to read in Blood Money.

Unbeknownst to both Bruce and Allan, Michael’s secret marriage to Jameelah gives her control over Michael’s interest in G-Style and its transition to a new record label. Her private attraction for Allan come to the forefront as they meet for a sensual encounter that is deliciously guilty and too complex for either party to truly understand.

Blood Money is the perfect title for this fast-paced, action-packed thriller that will keep the reader off-balanced and rushing through the pages for the next plot twist. Blood Money: The Beginning is the perfect title not only because of the money’s origin but also the resulting outcomes the money generates for those who are connected to it. As the marriage and its implications come into play, all three parties attempt a deadly game of chess full of death, deception and dishonesty never experienced before in Urban Lit.

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