The definitive chronicle of rapper, singer, and producer Ron Browz— an epic fusion of coming-of-age saga, hip-hop history, and true crime direct from the Harlem crack era
Since he was seven years old, Ron Browz wanted to be a musician. Growing up in Harlem during the crack epidemic, he knew two things: that all the dealers outside his apartment and school were making a fortune, and that they all listened to the "New Jack Swing" pioneered by Teddy Riley on Hot 97 while applying their trade. Unconsciously, Ron was already absorbing the paradoxical pulse of Harlem: brutal violence and groundbreaking beats, danger and innovation, the glorious light of getting rich fast and the absolute dark of losing it all to a bullet in a second.
But Ron didn't realize just how connected the crack and music game were until his first middle-school band, Uptown Kidz, was signed to the Big Boss Records label, presided over by the notorious kingpin Kevin Chiles.
And that was just the beginning of Ron Browz's story.
Because when the Feds kicked the door down and slapped Kevin with a RICO suit, the rest of Ron’s band gave up in despair over losing their father-figure, benefactor, and producer. But Ron was only getting started.
Ron's subsequent journey would take him on a breakneck ride through the music business: from collaborations with Big L, to the halls of power with Nas and running afoul of Jay-Z, to becoming one of the top remixers in the game, to lending a creative beat infusion to Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, and Foxy Brown, to hitting his artistic stride with his hit single "Pop Champagne", leading to a record deal that would prove illusory. And through it all, Ron never lost his spirit of reinvention, of the patented Harlem hustle, and the burning desire to create.
Beat the Odds is not only the triumphant story of watching an artist being created over the course of two decades, but it's also a behind-the-scenes view into the hip-hop industry itself, and the stars, producers, and label politics that hold sway.
Ron Browz is an American hip-hop record producer, rapper, and singer from Harlem, New York. He began his career as a rapper in local groups before transitioning to production with underground hits such as Big L's “Ebonics” in 1998, then achieving worldwide success in 2001 for crafting the ominous instrumental used in Nas's diss track "Ether" against Jay-Z. Browz earned the nickname "Ether Boy" from this credit and later founded his own imprint, Ether Boy Records, under which he has produced numerous hit records such as “Pop Champagne” and “She Don't Like Me”, and worked with a long list of the biggest names in hip-hop, including Fat Joe, Nicki Minaj, Busta Rhymes, DMX, Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, AZ, Nas, 50 Cent, Papoose, Remy Ma, Fivio Foreign, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, Diddy, Keri Hilson, Amerie, Lloyd Banks, T Pain, and many many more...
Nicholas Mennuti is the writer of the espionage thriller Weaponized (Mulholland Books/Little Brown), which had film rights purchased by Universal Pictures and Scott Stuber and Scrap (NeoText). Nicholas's short stories have appeared in AGNI and Conjunctions, and he has written about the intersection of technology and entertainment for the Huffington Post. He is also a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing program.
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