Fallin' Up: My Story - Hardcover

Taboo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1439192065 ISBN 13: 9781439192061

Verlag: Touchstone, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Taboo, Grammy Award–winning performing artist and founding member of the Black Eyed Peas, shares the inspiring story of his rise from the mean streets of East L.A. to the heights of international fame.

Few bands can ever hope to achieve the sort of global success that the record-breaking Black Eyed Peas have attained, selling more than 30 million albums since their formation in 1995. From their album The E.N.D., which debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, to The Beginning, the Black Eyed Peas continue to dominate the music scene. The group recently broke the all-time record for longest successive stay at the #1 position on Billboard’s Hot 100 list, and their song “I Gotta Feeling” became the first single to surpass six million digital downloads in the United States. But in this revealing autobiography—the first book to emerge from the group—founding member Taboo reminds us that great accomplishments are often rooted in humble beginnings.

Born in East L.A. in an area notorious for street gangs and poverty, Taboo was haunted by that environment, which seemed certain to shape his destiny. Yet, steered by his dreams to be a performer and assisted by fate, the young Taboo was thrown a rope when he discovered the world of hip-hop, where talent and love of the music itself transcended all. Supported by his one true champion, his grandmother Aurora, Taboo chased his dreams with a relentless tenacity. He refused to surrender, regardless of what life threw at him— including becoming a father at age eighteen.

But even after the Black Eyed Peas beat seemingly insurmountable odds and achieved stardom, it wasn’t all Grammys and platinum albums. Taboo delivers a searingly honest account of his collision with fame’s demons, including his almost career-ending struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism. He takes us deep into a world few of us can even imagine: a show-business heaven that became a self-made hell. But inspired by the love of his family and tapping anew into the wellspring of self-belief that had sustained him in the past, Taboo learns to keep his demons at bay, his addictions in check.

Full of intimate glances into the highest reaches of the music industry—including a visit to Sting’s castle, hanging out with Bono and U2, and, at forty-one thousand feet, the high-flyingest karaoke ever—Fallin’ Up takes readers on a revealing, personal journey through stardom—and one man’s triumph over adversity times two.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Taboo is a rapper, singer and dancer and member of the Grammy award winning hip-hop group The Black Eyed Peas. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.

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LEAVING DOG TOWN

We all say we’re misfits in the Black Eyed Peas, and I really was born one. I’ve often imagined the looks on everyone’s faces when I arrived into the world on July 14, 1975, shortly after one o’clock on a baking Los Angeles afternoon. There I was waiting to burst onto life’s stage as this eagerly awaited, dark-skinned Mexican-American boy with Native American ancestry, and then I arrived . . . as light-skinned as could be.

“Oh look, he’s as white as a coconut!” were the first words that greeted my birth, spoken by my father, Jimmy.

With parents who were both dark and with Shoshone blood running thick on Mom’s side, this was not the shade of baby that had been ordered.

Uncle Louie, my mom’s brother, arrived in the room, took one look at me and said: “He looks like a long white rat!”

Mom said she was just grateful I came out fast.

I’m not saying I was a disappointment. I’m just saying that I was breaking the mold from the moment I came out of the gate. It should, therefore, have come as no surprise to anyone that a) I grew up feeling a bit of an outcast, and b) there was a good chance I’d follow through and be a nonconformist. From day one, it was clear that I wasn’t going to fulfill anyone’s expectations of me.

Nanny got it: she would later tell me that she knew I was going to be different from that first minute. But in her accepting eyes, “different” in a good way. I guess even then she could tell I wasn’t going to be your average pea in a pod.

I was born at East Los Angeles Doctors Hospital, directly off Whittier Boulevard—a seemingly never-ending street that today is crammed with markets and dollar stores but which was once a cruising capital for the young chavalos in their low-riders on the Eastside in the 60s, as immortalized by a seven-piece Chicano group called Thee Midniters. Not much came out of East L.A. back then beyond their 1965 hit “Whittier Boulevard,” which led to them being referred to as “the local Beatles,” though I doubt John Lennon and Paul McCartney sweated it too much.

At the baby shower a few weeks before my birth, my mom couldn’t stop dancing. She heard music and just had to start moving.

“Laura!!” everyone said—Laura was short for Aurora—“you’re going to have the baby if you’re not careful!”

“But I can’t stop dancing. I need to dance!” she told them.

And she danced and danced, and everyone laughed, for about two hours solid.

Mom says she knew I was going to be a handful then and there. It’s good to know that, even in the womb, I was injecting the Black Eyed Peas vibe, jumping around, rocking it, getting everyone on their feet. Mom said it was like that for the last three months of her pregnancy.

That’s why I like to think I started dancing even before my life truly began.

I also like to think that I gave Mom fair warning.

If you met me in the street and you knew nothing about the Black Eyed Peas and asked my name and where I was born, the reply could mislead you. I’d give you my birth name: Jaime Luis Gomez. I’d tell you where I first grew up: a Mexican-American community in East L.A. That would probably surprise you, because you might, as many do, mistake me for an Asian. If I told you the projects I grew up in and you knew the Eastside, I’d catch that look in your eye and I’d say, yeah, that’s right—the neighborhood nicknamed after a street gang called Dog Town. These are the stamps of my identity, about as informative as markings in a passport. They tell you nothing about who I am or what my story is, and what it further explains to me, looking back, is why I never felt I belonged from day one. Don’t get me wrong: no one is prouder than I am of my Mexican-American roots, but these are merely my roots and national identity. This information doesn’t completely define me.

Mr. Callaham, my sophomore English teacher, once said every story needs a good beginning, middle and end. I remember him saying that. It must have been one of the few times I was listening and not daydreaming my way through class.

The thing is, I didn’t much like the story that was laid out for me: the Latino who should understand his place in the world, stay loyal to the ’hood, get “a real job” and do the nine to five thing. I didn’t see a good beginning, middle or end in that.

What you’ve got to understand is that in my community, there was the story you were handed at birth—a carbon copy of the one issued to everyone else around you; a future of limitations that asks the dreamer that dares to be different: “What makes you think you’re so special?” I think that I was born with something of that Indian warrior spirit that Nanny talked about, providing me with a defiance that refused to respect pre-established boundaries. To me, you’ve got to be willing to smash your way out of any ice block that’s encased you. You’ve got to be willing to break out and be as original as you want to be, become the person you have the potential to be, as opposed to being the person others expect you should be. It is about ripping up the hopeless story and rewriting the dreamer’s script. Something innate within me knew this from being a boy.

There is a quote that me and my homie and best friend David Lara often remind each other of: “Those who abandoned their dreams will always discourage the dreams of others.”

I learned from an early age that few people tell you what is really possible, except for free spirits like Nanny. Because, if you become the one who does make it happen, then it reminds others of their own limitations and what they, maybe, could have done, but didn’t choose to. Find any tight community and then find the dreamer within it—and there’ll always be a gang of naysayers pissing on his or her parade.

That is why there is much more to me than where I come from. Because it is what was invisible—the determination, the belief, the perseverance—that shaped my story, and for those people who stonewalled me with doubt or never believed where I was headed, only one silent reply ran through my mind: Oh, you don’t think so? Okay, just watch me.

My mom, Aurora Sifuentes, and dad, Jimmy Gomez, met at a Mexican market on the Eastside. Mom was out shopping with Nanny, Aurora senior, when their paths crossed. It probably says a lot that I don’t know much more about the romantic part. Mom was a twenty-year-old student, securing qualifications that would ultimately get her a job as an official with the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Dad was a twenty-three-year-old mechanic. He’d previously had a relationship with a woman named Esther that produced a son—my half-brother Eddie who is four years older than me. I don’t know the details of that messy story other than Eddie ended up staying with Dad.

Mom and Dad fell in love, got married and she was pregnant with me at twenty-two, but the honeymoon period didn’t last long because, as Mom would tell me, there were two sides to my father. His better side was the kindhearted, affectionate gentleman. His bad side was the drinker, and, when this side kicked in, the good-looking charmer fell away and exposed the flawed man. He wasn’t a bad man, but alcohol sadly changed him. He would later get his act together, but not before it was too late as far as Mom was concerned.

Apparently, he performed a drunken dance called the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Touchstone
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1439192065
• ISBN 13: 9781439192061
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Enizelhändler; 1772888517; rotmistrz83@googlemail.com; ; Westarpstr. 2; Westarpstr. 2; Berlin; Berlin; 10779; Deutschland