24-Carat Black's Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth

In 1973, the musical collective 24-Carat Black released an unheralded masterpiece on Stax Recordsand then disappeared. Ghetto: Misfortunes Wealth, a soul-funk concept album primarily written by the ex-Motown arranger Dale Warren, was too bleak, ambitious, or just outright bizarre to reach mainstream audiences. 24-Carat Black collapsed when Stax went bankrupt, and the groups only completed album sank into cultural obscurity. With deep reporting elucidating an untold story full of cinematic details, this book traces how Ghetto went from commercial flop to enigmatic underground classic embraced by the hip-hop community. It also chronicles, in infuriating detail, how the music industry of the 1970s systematically exploited soul musicians and then left them struggling to get paidand where 24-Carat Black fits into this broader injustice. This is a fascinating and multilayered story about a remarkable album nearly lost to history. Its also a rare glimpse into what its like to have your music resurrected by rap samples decades after your career fell apart.