Esquire

The self-styled "boy who invented rap," esQuire was a striking and much-appreciated alternative to his contemporaries within the Detroit hip-hop scene -- favoring colorful, tongue-in-cheek lyrics and funky, swaggering beats over the ridiculously grim-and-gritty approach of Eminem and his ilk, his music evoked the halcyon days of old school rap while infusing the genre with a glitz and showmanship all his own. esQuire was born Kevin Herron in Detroit in 1976 -- the child of a musician father and dancer mother, he later recalled that his first exposure to rap was Blondie's class...