Pimp is a book that’ll surely keep you interested, but will also open your eyes to how some people chose to get around and survive in the 1900’s. Once you read it you’ll experience a type of slang that our generation today wouldn’t quite understand, which is fine because we don’t always really need to understand, but for Iceberg Slim this was his life and how he made “ a living “ if that’s an appropriate way of saying it.

Pimp is about an African American male whose birth name is originally Robert Lee Moppins,  which he changed to Robert Beck when he lived in Chicago around 1918, who at a young age turned to crime and was arrested eight times on account of petty theft and sexual misconduct. He seems to blame his mother for all of this because of her relationship with his abusive father and eventually leaving him to open up a beauty shop where her customers where majority hustlers and prostitute. From a young age Slim knew that he would turn to pimping because of how he could manipulate females and get them to do whatever they wanted for him. This drove him to different levels of the “ pimp game “ and to share his knowledge with the younger generations who think that being a pimp is cool or the lifestyle they want.

As you read along he is explaining more and more on how as he was coming up as a pimp he was facing certain hardships like; going to jail and prison as a minor, no prostitutes at times, facing death, running from the police, and overall learning more about the deeper meaning from the “ OG’s” of the pimp game. The darkness of his past as a kid who grew up living with 3 different male figures in his life, his birth father and 2 step fathers, who all set horrible examples for him except for his very first stepfather who treated both him and his mother with the utmost respect, provided everything, and had a true love for his mother and Slim, but when she left him Slim’s hatred for his mom developed more and more leading him to this point where he felt pimping woman was some sort of revenge.  He learned most of his pimping from being in jails with guys who were older than him that were there for pimping themselves, but his major go to was a pimp named Sweet who everyone considered the biggest pimp of them all. Their relationship continuously grew as Slim grew in the pimp and was going to him more and more for advice on how to manage his prostitutes, how to lay low, and how to stay “ icy “ as he pimps. Slim lived by the rules and was successful, but everytime his prostitutes fell out of line he ended up losing all of them then having to start over in a new city on the East Coast. Sooner or later after so many successful then unsuccessful attempts Slime eventually dies and goes down as the greatest pimp of his generation.

Continuously, Iceberg Slim’s story is one you’ll remember no matter if you agree with his decisions or not. We can all learn from this in some way because he tells us life as it is in the 1900’s and how his lifestyle is one that anyone shouldn’t want to experience due to the cause and effect of it. Overall I believe this book was great due to the fact that it never gets boring at any point and it’s like a time travel to the past.

By: Maliq Trice