"You know what?" the novelist Rick Moody began his Sunday Times review of the novelist James McBride's new book about James Brown, "Kill 'Em and Leave." What thought compelled Moody to snag his reader's attention with the print equivalent of a blind-side shove? This: "It's an undeniable truth that when African-American writers write about African-American musicians, there are penetrating insights and varieties of context that are otherwise lost to the nonblack music aficionados of the world, no matter how broad the appeal of the musician under scrutiny."
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