An Insider’s Tale of the Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of West Coast Hip-Hop

Ballantine, 161 pp., March 25

OK, the writing in Bruce Williams’ celebrity tell-all Rollin’ with Dre is laugh-out-loud awful. The chronology is a mess. But on every page, you never know, there might be some cool detail to keep you reading.

Overall, there’s a decent payoff. You get some pretty good dirt on Andre Young, aka Dr. Dre, founding member of pioneering gangster rap group N.W.A., as he becomes a legendary hip-hop producer and brings up superstars Snoop Dogg, Eminem and 50 Cent.

Williams’ story goes from his days in the Army to the years he literally held the keys to Dre’s West Coast rap kingdom. As Dre’s friend and manager, Williams shows how tiring it was to keep his boss focused on the music. Tiring because their one-time business partner, the infamous Suge Knight, does everything he can to crush their spirits through alleged bad deals and violence. As Williams tells it, even Dre had trouble getting his cut of the insane profits generated as record sales and media attention made hip-hop a cultural force.

Along the way, Williams hangs out with more than 15 years’ worth of major rap talent, from The D.O.C. to The Game. There are countless women, some bit movie parts, rap beefs and finally, marriage for them both. You’d think all this would be fun to read about. But there’s no energy to it - just one-liners and anecdotes stuck together under chapter titles. Also, Williams can’t get over how all his hard work for Dre stifled his own acting dreams.

By the time it was over, I was tired, too. And this is a short book. After the endless parties and beatdowns, and painfully rendered attempts to explain just how street knowledge spawned a worldwide industry (an important question), you kind of wish you could just sit back, cue up The Chronic, and let the music speak for itself.

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