Ego Trip’s Big Book of Racism
By Sacha Jenkins, Elliott Wilson, Chairman Mao, Gabriel Alvarez and Brent RollinsReganbooks, $23
Did you know that David Bowie once called Adolf Hitler “a tremendous morale booster”? Do you remember Hole’s 1995 Madison Square Garden gig, when Courtney Love tried to get the crowd to join her in a chant of “nigger”? Do you recall Ice Cube’s 1991 song “Black Korea” — “So don’t follow me up and down your market/Or your little chop suey ass will be a target”?
The editors of Ego Trip do. In 13 issues from 1994 to ’98, the hip-hop-obsessed Ego Trip was one of America’s sharpest zines. The Big Book of Racism is a hilarious stoner’s paradise of their best short articles, photo collages and high-concept gags. The editors pit the Beatles’ “White Album” against Prince’s Black Album (the Fab Four win by a nose) and coolly reduce punk priestess Patti Smith to just another bigot simply by quoting her lyrics — “Jimi Hendrix was a nigger/Jesus Christ and Grandma, too” — in “N-Word Up! Rock Songs By Whites That Employ ‘Niggers.’ ”
The Big Book of Racism lampoons its subjects with facts instead of sermons. Its merciless timeline, “The True Race Adventures of the Rolling Stones,” points out every instance when the Stones stole lyrics from a black artist, or when “deadbeat” Mick Jagger impregnated a brown-skinned supermodel. They declare Ike Turner, Robert Johnson and Bad Brains the three “Hardest Rocking Blacks of All Time.” There are also unsound judgments, like Soul Train’s Don Cornelius calling James Taylor “the funkiest nigga that ever walked” and Professor Griff’s naming of Ben & Jerry’s cofounder Ben Cohen as his “favorite” Jew. Sammy Davis Jr., meanwhile, ranks tenth.
“This book in no way endorses a belief in racism,” notes Racism’s reassuring epigraph. “We just hate everybody.” According to Ego Trip, everybody hates everybody. “The most snooty, cocksure, anal people” was Kurt Cobain’s take on . . . the English. Celebrate the hate!
—Neal Pollack
