A large part of Goines's thirty-nine years were spent being a pimp, a thief, a bootlegger, an armed robber, and a small-time dope dealer. He lived the life of the streets and out of that experience he created Prince, the anti-hero of Black Gangster. It's the story of the shocking underworld of black organized crime and the fledgling black "godfather" who goes from teenage ganglord to powerful Detroit mobster. Like the gangsters of the 1920s, he begins with bootlegging and branches out into every known crime.