There was a time that rappers who wanted to expand their income portfolio would simply look around for a juicy acting role, but it looks like the new wave is putting their pen skills to use writing books. Gucci Mane kicked off the trend with an autobiography, while Logic tried his hand at writing a novel. Both have become bestsellers. Even Snoop Dogg jumped on the bandwagon, contributing a cookbook of his favorite recipes. The next logical genre for someone to tackle is the motivational aisle and if you ever wanted a self-help book written by a rapper, you’re in luck — Russ has you covered.
Inside the press release for his newest song, “Paranoid,” which you can listen to above, his publicists tucked the info about Russ’ upcoming self-help book and its planned release date. Talk about burying the lede. It’s called It’s All In Your Head and it’s due November 12 via Harper Design. Each chapter will be named after Russ’ most popular songs and it will include illustrations throughout as the did-it-all-myself rapper shares his personal motivations and life lessons.
Considering what usually happens when he tries to give his advice, like the time he wore an anti-drug T-shirt to decry the popularity of pills and lean, or his promotion of Tunecore for independent artists, fans can probably expect more brusque, straightforward advice that might be controversial to some but beloved by others. One thing is for sure: If the rapper-to-writer transition pattern holds steady, the engineer-producer-rapper-singer can likely add another hyphenate to the ever-growing list that he loves to cite.
