Music

Non Phixion’s Guide To Good Reads

The Future Is Now Illmatic

Videos by VICE

Strange Universe
Sabac Red on: Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, by Neale Donald Walsch (Putnam, 1996).

Cult Leader
Goretex on: The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion, by Ed Sanders (E P Dutton, 1971).

The CIA is Trying to Kill Me
DJ Eclipse on: Man of Honor, by Joseph T. Bonanno (Buccaneer Books, 1998).

Joseph Bonanno is one of the original five family leaders of the Mafia here in New York. So in this book, you’re hearing it first- person from someone who was there throughout the whole thing, just talking about the early days. There was one episode where Bonanno was kidnapped by his uncle Steven Magadino, who was a godfather from his own family in Buffalo. Supposedly, he wasn’t too happy with how popular Joseph Bonnano was getting so he kidnapped him and had him upstate for a while. People were saying that it was a setup for Bonanno to get out of the public view, because at that particular time he was under a lot of heat from all the other Mafia heads and the government was just getting ready to nail him. I think he did everything in a way that was pretty much honorable. He played by the rules and wasn’t a scumbag.

Rock Stars
ILL BiLL on: Kiss and Make-Up, by Gene Simmons (Crown Publishing, 2001).

Basically, this guy is the reason why I’m in the music business. Like my parents, he’s from Israel. The book basically explains him first coming to America with his mother. They had no money and didn’t know a word of English. For him to be able to rise to such fame and fortune, it really hit close to home. It’s also hilarious to see him shit on Ace and Peter. Him and Paul were like brothers and they saw things eye to eye, whereas Ace and Peter were always on drugs. They would miss rehearsals and were just major-league fuck-ups. He rips them to shreds. You know, he never did any drugs and he always talks about living life to the fullest because of his mother’s experience in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Non Phixion has a similar point of view when we say “There is no future, the future is now.” Enjoy today, enjoy the moment, live. A lot of Jewish people in the entertainment world try to sweep their Jewishness under the rug but he’s very upfront about it. He wears it on his sleeve. That’s what makes him a Super-Jew, on top of being the king of the goons.

The Future Is Now is out on Uncle Howie Records/Landspeed.