Iconic Philly rapper Money B takes fans behind the music in new memoir

Finally, an iconic rapper and Philadelphia native, Money B, is used to dropping a beat, but now he's dropping a new book. As a member of Digital Underground, his memoir, ADU, Party Don't Stop, takes readers behind the music and into the life, history, and experiences that helped shape one of hip-hop's most memorable eras. Action News editor Tim Mader has more from Money B himself about his story. Really, my whole family's from Philly. And... Obviously, that's where my mother and father met. I was born there, but when my dad joined the Black Panther Party, he moved to Oakland in, I think, 71. And then my mom and I followed. I would be sent back to Philly every summer, so I kind of grew up on both coasts. Unless you ask me I don't really talk about it like that and and really it's more out of respect for Philadelphia because I didn't go to high school there and I feel like you become who you are in that age and that happened for me in Oakland and in the Bay Area. Tupac he was A member of Digital Underground, originally his mother was a New York Panther in the Black Panther Party and my parents were in the Black Panther Party out of Oakland in the Bay Area with Huey P. Newton. We kind of had similar upbringings in a sense of how we were taught. All of those things that I just shared with you guys, I kind of go in a little bit more detail in my book. Like even I talk about me and Pac's last conversation. And what he told me that he was going to do is not a book about backstage and touring and all of that. I call it more of like an American history tale because I just give you firsthand experience of what it was like in the 70s, growing up in and around the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, surviving as a teenager, the crack epidemic in the 80s and how I had to maneuver through that. Then you get halfway through my book. Then we get to the 90s and Digital Underground. What that was like, and Tupac, and all of our conversations, and the touring, and everything like that. Same song, said it, and we lived up to the words. By the end of 1990, we'd been all around the world. In those days, without the internet for assistance, it was truly amazing to discover. That what you were doing had reached distant regions of the planet. We were actually in Berlin when the Berlin Wall came down. I have... We were there that night. We had a show in November 1989. I talk about how everything was going crazy and it's interesting. You go into the late 90s and into the 2000s when our star starts to fade and it feels like your career is over but you're only 25, 26 years old. And what are you gonna do with the rest of your life? Tim Mader is a star here, and his roots in the music industry in this area, what he's bringing to the fore, that was great. It was really, really well done. Own words. Yeah. And you know what? Telling your story in every venue, in music, in books, you know, it's great.