Iceberg Slim

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Iceberg Slim (August 4, 1918 – April 28, 1992), also known as Robert Beck, was born as Robert Lee Maupin. He was an African American writer who started out as a pimp and whose writings were particularly successful among black audiences; his descriptions of the pimp lifestyle had considerable influence on African-American culture.

Life

Born into abject poverty, his intelligence was evident early on. Beck spent most of his childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Rockford, Illinois. His mother worked as a maid and operated a beauty shop. She was exploited by a series of men who drifted in and out of her life. Still, it seems she was able to provide Beck with some semblance of luxury; he once said that his mother helped pave the way for his life as a pimp by pampering him. and he briefly studied at Tuskegee Institute, before dropping out in 1937 (legend has it he and Ralph Ellison were enrolled at the same time)and drifting into criminality. He started to pimp at age 18 in the brutal Chicago underworld, soon becoming rich and successful in the trade. He traced the motive behind and traditon of Black pimping to the days when American slaves noticed their white owners' physical attraction to and exploitation of Black women.Slim concentrated most of his efforts in the Chicago area, but he worked women throughout the Midwest. He served a total of seven years in jail for various offenses--including time at the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas, the Cook County (Illinois) House of Corrections, and Waupan State Prison in Wisconsin.

During his second to last incarceration Slim was able to escape. He just disappeared like a wisp of smoke, as he often liked to say. He pimped for 13 more years before he was recaptured in 1960 and placed in solitary confinement at Cook County. For nearly a year he lived in a cell no more than eight feet deep and four feet wide; he described it as a steel casket. The food was often infested with worms, but he ate it anyway, deeming the pests protein after much self-persuasion.

It was in 1960, during his third prison stay, a 10 month prison sentence in solitary confinement at the Cook County House of Corrections, that he finally decided to "square up" and turn to writing. Beck/Slim was once scored with an IQ of 162 on a prison intelligence exam.

Slim did a lot of soul-searching in that metal box. He decided he was getting too old to pimp. He was 43 and there were younger, tougher pimps on the street. In Pimp he wrote, "I got out of it because I was old. I did not want to be teased, tormented and brutalized by young whores." The Nation's Monroe Anderson quoted him as saying, "I realized I had been stupid. I was elderly and tired. I had the revelation that pimping, after all, was not the most magnificent profession. I had a feeling that I had wasted myself."

On his release from prison Slim retired from street life and moved to Los Angeles, California, where he attempted to reconcile with his mother. He spent a heart-wrenching six months at her oxygen- tent-covered bedside, where she lay slowly dying of complications from diabetes. Her death was a great blow; it proved to be what he needed to quit heroin, which he did cold turkey, completely and abruptly.

By 1962 Slim was seeking work anywhere he could. He finally got a job selling insecticide for $75 a week. He had been a natural salesman all of his life. He also met and married a women named Catherine who was 20 years his junior. By all accounts, though, Slim often seemed and looked half his age. When Sepia's Bob Moore asked how he could marry after having so hard-heartedly exploited the 400 women that he had "managed," Slim replied: "I got married because I found a woman who obviously has a lot of common sense and who understands the kinds of changes that I was going through, and who is highly intelligent and extremely lovable, and who just seems to understand--has a sixth sense about what I had gone through." He also admitted that he needed a little taking care of, that marriage was an important positive step, and that he thought children would be good for him.

For four years Slim sold insecticide.


Contents

[edit] Works

While making a sales pitch to a college professor, he mentioned that he had been a pimp. The professor offered to collaborate with Slim on an autobiography, but after the interviews had been taped, Slim discovered that he would only receive a minimal percentage of the book's royalties. Spurred on by the need to beat the professor before he stole his life story, Slim wrote his own book, Pimp: The Story of My Life, in three months. He insisted that real creativity had not been a factor, that all he had done was remember, but The Nation dismissed this notion, reporting, "There were perception and introspection, ... in the book Beck bares his mind and the pimp psychology to the reader while writing in the argot of the ghetto with descriptions to match."

Bentley Morriss of Holloway House publishers in Los Angeles recognized Slim's talent and worked with him on publishing all of his subsequent novels. Pimp was published in 1967 (though sources vary on this). It shocked the public and sold like hotcakes. And despite Slim's efforts to dissuade young men from going into "the life," the book reportedly had the opposite effect on some, who figured they'd be slicker than Iceberg Slim.

Reviews of Pimp were mixed, but no one denied the importance of

Beck's first work, a fictionalized autobiography called Pimp, was published in 1967 and was quickly categorized as being typical of the black 'revolutionary' literature then being created; however, Beck's vision was considerably bleaker than most other black writers of the time. His work tended to be based on his personal experiences in the criminal underworld, and revealed a world of seemingly bottomless brutality and viciousness. His was the first insider look into the world of Black pimps, to be followed by a half-dozen pimp memoirs by other writers. The book sold very well, mainly among Black audiences; it was eventually translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, and Greek. The book was largely ignored by White America.[citation needed]

His other novels include Trick Baby (turned into a movie by the same name in 1973), Mama Black Widow, Long White Con, The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim, Death Wish, Airtight Willie and Me, and Doom Fox. As a Guardian obituary put it, 'each one of his novels seemed bleaker and more violent than the last'.

According to his publisher Holloway House, Beck had sold over six million books as of 1998, making him one of the best-selling African American writers (after Alex Haley). All his books were published exclusively as paperbacks.

Iceberg Slim also released a powerful album of poetry called Reflections in the early 70s. Interestingly, he is referenced in several hip hop tunes, and his influence may be seen in the stage names of rappers such as Ice T, Vanilla Ice, and Ice Cube. One of his reality novels, "Trick Baby", was adapted as a "Blaxploitation" movie.

[edit] Books

  • Pimp: The Story of My Life (1967)
  • Trick Baby: The Story of a White Negro (1967)
  • Mama Black Widow: A Story of the South's Black Underworld (1969)
  • The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim: Robert Beck's Real Story (1971)
  • Long White Con: The Biggest Score in His Life! (1977)
  • Death Wish: A Story of The Mafia (1977)
  • Airtight Willie and Me: The Story of Six Incredible Players (1979)
  • Doom Fox (written in 1978, but not published until October of 1998, might be a version of the unpublished The Game for Squares)

Except for Doom Fox, which is published by Grove Press, all of Iceberg Slim's books are available through Holloway House Publishing Co.

[edit] Recordings

  • Reflections (1994, Infinite Zero Archive)

[edit] Movie adaptation

A movie adaptation of Pimp has been planned for a long time. There were announcements of a movie directed by Bill Duke and staring Ice Cube; that project was put on hold. In 2004 rapper Pras acquired the rights to produce a movie based on the book.

"Mama Black Widow" is in production to be directed by Darren Grant (Diary Of A Mad Black Woman / Janet Jackson "Anytime")

Mama Black Widow (2007) Pre-Production as of March 1, 2007

Directed by Darren Grant

Writing credits Robert Beck (book) Will De Los Santos (adaptation)


[edit] Influence

Iceberg Slim was an important influence on hip-hop artists and rappers such as Ice-T and Ice Cube (among many others) who adopted their names in part from reading the author. Iceberg Slim's last book, Doom Fox, which was written in 1978 but not published until 1998, contains an introduction written by Ice-T. Most of the currently popular references to pimp culture, for example in the work of Snoop Dogg, ultimately can be traced back to Iceberg Slim. Rapper Jay-Z also refers to himself as "Iceberg Slim," an homage to original Iceberg Slim whenever discussing his adventures with women.

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. On his 2006 summer tour, Chappelle tells a tale of Iceberg and relates it to why he left $50 million at Comedy Central and secretly went to Africa.

[edit] Reference

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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