So You Wanna Be A Rapper

So You Wanna Be A Rapper is the story of the career of one of the Hip Hop genres most versatile artists, who became a pioneer in 1980 by successfully creating Newtroit Records, the first label owned and operated by a rap artist.

So You Wanna Be A Rapper is the story of the career of one of the Hip Hop genres most versatile artists, who became a pioneer in 1980 by successfully creating Newtroit Records, the first label owned and operated by a rap artist. After interviewing the subject, Spyder D, (born Sidney Duane Hughes) for almost a decade, writer Mark Skillz paints an honest portrait of an unsung hero in the Hip Hop genre, and chronicles the ups and downs in the life and career of a rap artist. From Spyder D's early childhood days growing up in Hollis, Queens, NY, to his slow and bumpy rise in the music industry as one of the early pioneers in the rap business as a teenager that started his own label at the age of nineteen while attending Eastern Michigan University. Spyder D's career, as an artist, producer, label executive, manager, recording engineer, and studio manager are all chronicled with all the ups and downs that were a part of a career that continues to this day.

Co-writer of the award winning short film documentary "White Lines and The Fever", a film which took top honors at the Tribeca Film Fest, SXSW and S.I.F.F. For the past decade he has written in- depth feature articles about the founding fathers of hip hop for Wax Poetics. This is his first book