Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD's First "Hip-Hop Cop"

Derrick Parker has a story to tell. This story is an inside look into hip hop-related crime, but is also a tale of a disgruntled former cop who thinks he has all the answers. If you can get past Parker's ego, you may enjoy what this book holds. For a hip hop fan outside of New York, Parker actually puts forth some interesting links between some of the high profile hip hop indiscretions and the gritty street-level crime that is commonplace in most big cities. He lays out descriptions of some of New York's most notorious street criminals, and shows how their world has become enmeshed with the big-dollar business of hip hop music. Parker's information reflects his inside access to informants and rumors, even if he doesn't necessarily blow the lid off of unsolved cases. The first quarter of the book is really more of a outline of Parker's early police career rather than a discussion of hip hop crime. Nonetheless, they are good cop stories. The strength of the book builds when he begins to weave the lives of the stickup kids with multi-platinum rappers, and shows how old rivalries and greed have created such a maelstrom of violence. He discusses the highly-publicized crimes involving Biggie, Tupac, Murder Inc., 50 Cent, P. Diddy, Lil Kim, Freaky Tah, Busta Rhymes, Foxxy Brown, and especially Jam Master Jay. He doesn't bring anything shocking to the table on these crimes, but his inside opinions and information are still intriguing. Parker tries to build suspense to a crescendo of "solving" Jam Master Jay's homicide, but that climax falls a little flat in the end. The most aggravating aspect of this book is the atrocious copy editing. I've never seen a fairly wide-circulating book have so many obvious grammatical and typographical errors. It really was a terrible editing job. The other maddening part is Parker's self-serving recollections of the way cases were handled. In Parker's opinion, he apparently knows everything about solving every hip hop crime, and every other cop is an ignorant joke. The constant narratives where Parker confronts superiors about their mishandling of cases seem contrived and self-serving; Parker is always right and the others are always wrong. The incorporation of popular hip hop song lyrics in the writing is extremely hokey, but expected in a book like this. Parker puts forth an argument that police must be culturally-equipped to make progress on hip hop-related criminal cases, and this seems very plausible. His depiction of himself as the unerring epitome of the "culturally-equipped" cop, however, too often overshadows this argument. Overall, the information in the book is intriguing and entertaining, if you can get past all of the basic proofreading errors. I would recommend this book to hip-hop fans, especially those who were deep into it in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The best quality about this book is that the author doesn't hold back. He's dropping names all over the place. He's being completely open and honest with the reader. He writes to the reader like he's talking to his best friend. Sometimes, he's even ratting out his other cops. The guy was taking alot of chances with his career and his own life by writing the things he wrote. I've never seen anywhere else where a cop was so honest about what his job was. Now, there are problems with the book. The book is long winded. It goes on much longer than it needs to. The book is very self serving. The author loves to name drop about the people he's met. However, this seems like it's about as close to the truth as the general public will ever get to know about these murders. He's really showing outsiders what the system looks like from the inside. Alot of the hip hop cases, the author wasn't direcly involved with. Very often he speaks of rumors that he heard regarding cases. It's alot of hearsay and supposition. On the other hand, sometimes the author is telling facts of cases that were never revealed anywhere else in the media. I thought it was interesting that their were no arrests in any of the hip hop cases that he mentioned such as: Tupac, Biggie, Jam Master Jay, Busta Rhymes, etcetera. It's as if this was a top cop who decided he would rather be part of the hip hop scene than solve cases. I think at some point in his career he had forgotten he was a cop and just wanted to hang out with the hip hop crowd. Arresting the guilty didn't seem truly important anymore to this guy so much as serving his own personal interests. For the no holds barred, openness and frankess of his writing; this book deserves 5 stars. The author risked everything to tell his story.

NOTORIOUS C.O.P. by Derrick Parker gives the unknown stories of many hip-hop crimes. Parker was a detective with the New York Police Department and the first cop on the special unit set up strictly to solve hip-hop crimes. Parker was raised in the same neighborhoods and personally knew many of these hip-hop icons which gave added depth to his story. He was in Las Vegas after the Tupac Shakur murder and in Los Angeles following the murder of Biggie Smalls. He even had details that never made the papers, yet pointed directly to the killers. He gave interesting details of Li'l Kim's conviction on perjury and good reasons why she did it. Before Jam Master Jay's murder, Derrick Parker had retired from the police department, but he was still very interested and as a result, he personally protected one of the eye witnesses and requested witness protection from the department for her. Needless to say, they reneged after promising to help and it angered him very much. He also tells of hip-hop crimes that were never reported such as the home invasion Foxy Brown and her mother endured. If you've ever wondered what is really going on in the hip-hop world, then NOTORIOUS C.O.P. is the book to read. It gives the background of the rappers as well as a vivid description of the neighborhoods and backgrounds they come from. Parker even explains why there is so much crime in the hip-hop music business. As he so realistically points out, it is going on in the regular business world also, just on a much lower key and so we never hear about it until an Enron explodes. It is a fascinating and enlightening book. Reviewed by Alice Holman of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

The reader can avoid about the opening 26 pages in Notorious C.O.P., as Derrick Parker mentions that he was the NYPD'S "hip-hop cop" so many times that it ruins what could have been a good introduction. But putting his ego aside - or at least dishing it out in smaller doses - the compelling book becomes hard to put down. Parker took his affinity for the music industry and his concerns about its expanding linkage to organized crime to eventually spearhead a "hip-hop" unit. He is careful to explain that he was working for the safety of the artists - which was not always the goal of other police officials - while also taking steps to clean out the criminal element that made victims of the artists, neighborhoods and others who innocently got caught up in the drama. What I found especially interesting is the normal, daily manipulations that you may hear about, but really don't see in print; the politics from his bosses that oftentimes came from a media-hungry and -savvy City Hall, the department jealousies, the ignorance & corruption, along with the bitter racism. Parker's growing disenchantment with the NYPD reached a boiling point when he was brought up on bogus departmental charges due to others who wanted his "hip-hop" post for all the wrong reasons and when a superior ordered him to compile a dossier on hip-hop artists that had all the trappings of COINTELPRO-styled abuse. The sensationalistic subtitle sets those chapters up for a letdown, and that is what happened in the cases of Tupac and Biggie. Parker really adds very little to what has been made public over the past decade, but does justify his findings with credible evidence. Though retired from the NYPD, Parker's private investigation of the Jam Master Jay murder, his attempts to get his former colleagues engaged into a solid investigation with a prime witness and the games played that has now made solving the crime virtually impossible brings the book to an apt conclusion. Organized crime has been in the music industry for many years; the original gansta was probably Frank Sinatra, who reportedly had some "assistance" in the early 1940s to get out of his contract with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra to start a solo recording/touring career. Parker shows - through a text unfortunately marred with numerous typographical errors - that the vicious game in a multi-billion-dollar industry is still being played, but with oftentimes much greater tragic conclusions. And those with the power to help clean things up refuse to do so for a variety of reasons that are as much racial as they are political.

Parker is a true character, and he and Diehl really make this book into a conversation between him and me (or you, when you read it). I appreciate the attention lavished on the old-school (Jay bookends the story) and the explanation of the continental divide that started in the 90s. Parker really cares about the material -- both sides: the industry and the NYPD. Shocking (but in a good way) to hear such praise lavished on Bernie Karik. Meantime, the pacing, the stories, the characters all make this a (sorry to use the cliche) page-turner. Can't wait until it's on the big or little screen (CSI: Adidas). Two reasons I don't give it five stars: sad copy editing and underwhelming photos. Page-turners suffer when every page has at least one and often two no-excuse, let-me-read-that-again grammatical errors. And Parker, considering the interesting cops and music artists he's run with, ought to have a better array of photographs to complement the narrative. They'll fix this up for the second edition and get that fifth star.