My newsletter Drugs + Hip-Hop incorporates topics from my books Fentanyl, Inc., which investigates the worst drug crisis in American history, and Original Gangstas, a history of West Coast gangsta rap.
These seem like separate worlds, but they’re not. Synthetic drugs are taking over hip-hop culture, and the opioid crisis is hitting underprivileged communities mercilessly. I specialize in on-the-ground, deep investigative reporting, and my award-winning work has documented everything from how Tupac spawned a social justice movement to how the Chinese state subsidizes fentanyl production.
Once or twice a week I’ll send out a dispatch about hip-hop, or drugs, or both, including an EPIC countdown of the 25 best rap artists in history, called The Hip-Hop 25. These are long essays featuring rare photos and my never-published interviews with members of acts including Outkast, Run-DMC, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, N.W.A, and many more. I’ll also discuss my undercover infiltrations of Chinese fentanyl operations in 2018, in Wuhan and Shanghai. For the first time, I’ll reveal how I did it, publishing my conversations with the darkweb fentanyl dealers and salespeople I met along the way.
Sign up here for a ridiculously low price. Yearly subscribers get an autographed copy of one of my books, and Westhoff literary swag like bookmarks.
I’m excited to have you along for this ride!