Kanye West Owes Me $300: & Other True Stories From A White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big, Jensen Karp

I ran into Jensen Karp because I listened to his Bachelor podcast (now defunct) although I guess I should have run into him 10 years ago when I was paying a lot of attention to Pete Wentz. (Let's be serious: I was/am always paying more attention to Patrick Stump.)

So this is the story all about how his life got flipped -- turned upside-down. Sorry. I'll stop. In college Karp used his obsession with rap and rap battles to become a famous rap-battler on local L.A. radio, which led to a music deal with Interscope, which was eventually shelved because Interscope also represented Eminem and seemed to feel they could only promote one white rapper.

The joy of the book is all the run-ins he had with famous people, and since we're about the same age, I loved all his stories. I want to hear about pre-fame Kanye, and Sisqo, and Fred Durst, and Mark McGrath, and the Justin-Britney dance-off, and Suge Knight. I was obsessed with a lot of the same pop-culture Karp was, only he met all these people and I was in college watching TRL.

The flip side is that Karp didn't deal well with losing out on fame; he was already depressed because of his parents' divorce and his father's cancer, and the end of the book is a little bit emotionally brutal. As a reader, it feels like he never totally believed his rap career was going to happen (the lyrics he includes are always jokey) and when it fizzled out he just collapsed. But I get it -- I've queried a novel, gotten great feedback and talked to editors and agents, and then had them say, "Oh, you know what, this just isn't... quite... Good luck in the future!" and then collapsed in on myself and wanted to go hide for months and/or years. I'm delicate, and it's hard. And I didn't even have a pen name that's an awkward sex act from urban dictionary.

I highly recommend this book if you want some great stories about the rap scene in the early 2000s, or if you want a rise-and-fall fame story that won't crush your soul forever (just make you a little sad). I just wish he'd explained how he met Pete Wentz.

Grade: B
#70 in 2016