Since the dawn of my relationship with hip-hop, I have always been in awe of how this culture finds new ways of making itself feel at home with my soul. By origin, I am Dwayne Michael Carter’s descendant, with Tha Carter 3 being my gateway drug into hip-hop. I am supposed to be a New Orleans representative in terms of my American ancestry, but as soon as I found Illmatic, 1999, The Blueprint, I knew I would switch sides and ride harder for New York, the mecca of this rap shit.
One thing I never expected from hip-hop which was a beautiful discovery as the fact there is literature, movies, documentaries other content outside of music that incorporates the elements of the life that drives the music. Things you eventually know off by heart because you have access to so much of it, which is why I advocate for us to keep this culture of documenting our stories alive.
Not to digress any further, the journey that led me to Sistah Souljah was a very skewed one. I have never listened to her music, but boy, I have read 3 of her books which form a cannon series which give me a more vivid feel of New York, I could feel the boroughs, I could see the cars, I could taste the struggles of the projects primarily because in some way shape or form I was already exposed to it.
I started with Midnight: A Gangster Love Story before going to Midnight and the meaning of love only to realize when I got my hands on this book it is where I was supposed to start as it is an alternative timeline in which a character such as Midnight who is the main character of the sequel books of this timeline was introduced even then, his presence, his demeanor, his elusive self was still enough to make you understand why we got a worldview into his world when his books came through.
The coldest Winter ever released in 1999 follows Winter Santiaga and how she navigated the street life of New York being from a wealthy family, which did not attain their wealth from legal and upstanding means. Her father Ricky Santiaga was the local drug kingpin in the are, and for a hot minute, he was running everything, rich enough to bend the law, smart enough to have the world do his dirty work while he was reaping more than he was losing.
As much as Winter was the protected princess, she believed herself to be the bad bitch and ran the streets doing hoodrat shit with her friends mainly because they knew that around her, they can be bosses, they can loiter, and neither side of the legal coin will harass them because they are under the protective wing of a powerful man, that is until he loses it all. The crash of the highlife and withdrawal from wealth is a telling tale of survival.
From mixing with the wrong crowds, being betrayed by friends, sleeping with rappers, and stealing fancy clothes to keep with the image, there is little that winter wouldn’t give for the adrenaline of a fast life. She dwindles into a space ties to keep her family together while her dad is in prison. Her mom is on crack, and her siblings are in the foster system life dwindles to the point where even she gets arrested and serves a 15-year sentence, only being allowed to go out to attend her mothers funeral, where she meets her father and younger sister who is following in her destructive footsteps and her future, well that’s just a story that will tell itself when I read her book.
Here’s the thing, I am a very easily distracted person. I rarely let something like a book consume me to a point where ai have to warn myself to sleep or do my chores as it won’t go anywhere; I will find it when I come back. This is what this book had done for me. I enjoyed how vivid it was. You could from your repertoire of American culture see when the greed, clubs, prostitution, gang violence, and everything took place it was extremely realistic
It also reminded me of the dangers of listening to your ego before reason; to think that being on top of the world with a plethora of enemies is by no means a safe space to be. I was the 92′ HIOV, big jacket, NY Fitted, watching the bad deals, crooked cops, predatory men getting up to no good, and I carried with empathy a lament on what life in the 90s \must have been like, being the bottom, of the barrel knowing that a million is a criminals dream you could never see that amount of money without blood on your hands.
I can barely find much fault in this book other than it being relatively short and Sistah Souljah making herself a character which was a little weird, but I grew into it. Another source of trouble will come with not knowing too much of New York culture to picture the locations or be familiar with the slang that is being used in the book, however, given how friendly we are with American, I don’t feel like this is a real problem, but I stand to be corrected.
All in all, a thrilling read, one that sets you up for a gripping tale of the life you hear about in your favorite New York Rapper’s music with a hint of it being an everyday reality, the betrays, the risky behavior, the plagues pumped into the community all pieced together in a telling tale about the consequence of greed.
My Rating: 8/10 Pens.
Purchase the book here: https://m.takealot.com/the-coldest-winter-ever/PLID36789285
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