Long before LeBron/Wade/Bosh, long before Rick Ross and Trina, long before DJ Khaled, but after Luther Campbell, Trick Daddy made it his sole mission to embed Miami on the Hip-Hop map. Trick’s legacy is important, for lack of a better phrase. A lot of people don’t know he was one of 27 (yes, 27) children. His music has always been a reflection of his coming up and trials he experienced in the streets. He has never comprised his sound and he has never shied away from telling the entire country he was proud of being a thug. A thug who never second guessed himself when speaking on ills not only in his own city, but the world as a whole. From Slip-N-Slide to Dunk Ryders to several hit records in between, the entire story will officially be told with the November 16 release of his autobiography, Magic City: Trials of a Native Son.

Magic City: Trials of a Native Son, chronicles Trick Daddy’s story against the backdrop of Miami, the Magic City. It is an extraordinary story, of a childhood marked by poverty, a crime-laden adolescence, an incarceration, a meteoric rise to fame, and a struggle with a potentially fatal medical condition. It’s the story of a boy whose father was a pimp; who, left to his own devices, learned to hustle to survive and whose only role model was his brother, the drug dealer he watched plying his trade on the block. But while his story is remarkable, the most astonishing part is that he is not only still alive, but that he got out.

Magic City: Trials Of A Native Son is the story of how that potent mixture of extremes, the dazzling beauty and glittering wealth of the Magic City, and the crime, the corruption and the despair playing out in its shadows gave rise to what has now become the most dominant sound in hip hop, in the process revitalizing a stagnant art form. MAGIC CITY, told in Bailey’s artful prose, is an ode to the city of Miami, a riveting tale of a paradise lost.

Looks like I may have some winter reading.