The Lab: An Outsider’s Adventure Inside the World of Hip-Hop is a memoir about what happens when an Upper West Side political aide takes over his family’s old warehouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant and ends up running a hip-hop club for seventeen years.

Inside The Lab, Friday nights weren’t just about music—they were about power, ego, survival, and community. The book follows brawls and raids, hustlers and cops, ballroom kids and ravers, along with the constant pressure to keep the doors open and the peace intact.

It’s a story about an outsider learning the rules of the block in real time, and what it costs to hold a space together when everything around you is wired for chaos.