Books by Cheo Hodari Coker

CHEO HODARI COKER: CHEO HODARI COKER, 28, is an award-winning music journalist and freelance screenwriter. Coker has written cover stories, major features, and reviews for VIBE, the Los Angeles Times, Premiere, Essence, Details, The Face, Spin, Rolling Stone, The Source, XXL, Rap Pages, and the Village Voice.

Coker began writing for The Source, VIBE, and Essence, while still enrolled at Stanford University, where he completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in English in January 1995. Soon afterward, he moved to Los Angeles to work as a writer/producer for the short-lived MTV News movie segment program "MTV Screening Room". He left MTV in May 1995 to pursue his freelance journalism career, soon finding a home at the Los Angeles Times by September of that year.

Over the next two years, Coker became the paper's resident expert on R&B and Hip Hop. In 1997, Coker was named Second Place Winner in the competition for Music Journalist of the Year at the Third Annual Music Journalism Awards.

1997 was also the year Coker wrote the VIBE cover story "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," published shortly after the murder of the Notorious B.I.G. This article contained excerpts the Notorious B.I.G.'s last full-length interview. Coker was a featured expert in the VH1 Behind the Music episode devoted to Biggie, as well as in episodes about NWA and other rap legends.

Coker also wrote the chapter on NWA in the VIBE History of Hip Hop.

Coker left the Times in September 1997 to co-write the hip-hop thriller "Flow" with Richard (Uptown Saturday Night) Wesley, which was purchased by New Line Cinema for John (Boyz N' The Hood) Singleton to produce and direct.

Other recent screenplays include "Living For The City: The Marion Barry Story" for HBO, "When I Get Free: The Life and Times of Tupac Amaru Shakur" for MTV and the feature film "Legend: A Bob Marley Story" for Warner Bros. Coker also wrote, executive produced and created the animated horror series "The Devil's Music" for www.urbanentertainment.com.