text: Robert Beck (born Robert Lee Maupin or Robert Moppins Jr.; August 4, 1918 – April 30, 1992), better known as Iceberg Slim, was an American former pimp who later became a writer. Beck became known for his 1967 memoir, Pimp: The Story of My Life, as well as novels such as Trick Baby.
  Early life
  Maupin was born in Chicago, Illinois. He spent his childhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Rockford, Illinois, until he returned to Chicago. When his mother was abandoned by his father, she established a beauty shop and worked as a domestic hairstylist to support both of them in Milwaukee.  In his autobiography, Maupin expressed gratitude to his mother for not also abandoning him.  She earned enough money working in her salon to give her son the privileges of a middle-class life such as a college education, which at that time was difficult for the average person.
  Slim attended Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, but having spent time in the street culture, he soon began bootlegging and was expelled as a result. After his expulsion, his mother encouraged him to become a criminal lawyer so that he could make a legitimate living while continuing to work with the street people he was so fond of, but Maupin, seeing the pimps bringing women into his mother's beauty salon, was far more attracted to the lifestyle of money and control over women that pimping provided.