He shaped the vocabulary of modern hip hop and sold an estimated six million books, yet Robert Beck died practically penniless. Born Robert Lee Maupin in Chicago in 1918, he was raised in comfort by a mother who built her own beauty business and sent him to Tuskegee, only for him to be expelled for bootlegging.

This deep dive follows his 24 years as the pimp known as Iceberg Slim, his transformation in solitary confinement at age 42, and his reinvention as the author of Pimp: The Story of My Life, which pioneered transgressive street literature while he was ultimately exploited by his own publisher.

• How mentor Baby Bell taught him to conceal all emotion as a survival tool
• The bizarre framed-burglary conviction he swore he never committed
• The 10 months of solitary confinement in 1961 that broke the persona
•  ...