Music man: writer Christopher John Farley's biography of the late pop singer Aaliyah is one of the latest books to capitalize on the success of black music

Black Issues Book Review, May-June, 2002 by Brett Johnson

BIBR: Books like this come out so quickly that some might question if the commercial interest is more important than doing justice to the subject.

CJF: No doubt there's a commercial aspect to doing a book like this. I want it to sell really well. It's my take on music that a lot of people buy. But also I wasn't going to put my name on a piece of junk. I wanted to write a book that was as good as it could possibly be, especially regarding Aaliyah. I think it's a well-written book. I think it's a book that has some insight into the meaning of tragedy. And it puts the tragedy in context with others where stars have died young in plane crashes--from Glenn Miller to Patsy Cline to Otis Redding to Richie Valens. People need that kind of information, and people were not getting it in the newspapers, and in the magazine articles that came out.

BIBR: Still, some might direct the same criticism regarding the spate of posthumous music being released toward your book, which came out so soon after her death.

CJF: To some extent I agree with that. To some extent I disagree. It depends on how good the work is, and you have to hope that the surviving family members and the folks who worked with the artists have some quality control. If you just canceled out the work we experienced when people died, we wouldn't have seen a lot of good things.

For example, some of Bruce Lee's best work was released after he died. James Dean's Giant and Rebel Without a Cause were released after his death. You would want his stuff out there. Then again, you have Marvin Gaye sampled on an Erick Sermon song. Would he have wanted to be there? I don't know. Marvin was such a stickler for his own material, making Motown release What's Going On the way he wanted to. Did he want to be sampled by people? I would doubt that.

BIBR: Other music books have come out recently, do you see a trend, a market emerging for biographies about urban artists, music personalities?

CJF: We'll see. There's an opportunity, and there are just as many hip-hop stars branching out into cinema, such as Will Smith. I think that there is an opportunity for hip hop to branch out into literature as well. Fiction and nonfiction have a major impact there. It hasn't happened to a major extent, yet. There have been other biographies about black people in the past, of course. Billie Holiday wrote her autobiography. Aretha Franklin came out with her autobiography. So I think you'll see a lot of the younger figures, as they establish enough of a track record, do that. Puff Daddy had a biography in the works, but he called it off. It's on hiatus, it's not rolling like it was before. And DMX has something in the works.

BIBR: What is more satisfying to do, fiction or nonfiction?

CJF: I would have to say fiction is more satisfying and the reason is: fiction feels like it's more completely yours. It's a world you've created that you invite other people into. When you write about another person, to a certain extent, you're making yourself a little bit subservient to them because you're sort of saying, they're more important so that's why you're writing about them. I always wonder about biographers who spend 10 years researching a subject. I didn't want to give 10 years of my life to anybody. That is why there's an attraction to doing a shorter, instant book. I give up a month or two of my life rather than 10 years. I can't think of a person I'd like to give up 10 years of my life for who's not in the Bible.