Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide 2 volumes

Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide

Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide

VOLUME 1: EAST COAST AND WEST COAST

Mickey Hess, Editor

GREENWOOD PRESS

An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2010 by Mickey Hess All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hip hop in America : a regional guide / Mickey Hess, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-34321-6 (set: paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34322-3 (set: ebook) — ISBN 978-0-313-34323-0 (vol. 1: paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34324-7 (vol. 1: ebook) — ISBN 978-0-313-34325-4 (vol. 2: paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34326-1 (vol. 2: ebook) 1. Rap (Music)—History and criticism. I. Hess, Mickey, 1975– ML3531.H573 2010 782.4216490973—dc22 2009034923 ISBN: 978-0-313-34321-6 (set) ISBN: 978-0-313-34323-0 (vol. 1) ISBN: 978-0-313-34325-4 (vol. 2) EISBN: 978-0-313-34322-3 (set) EISBN: 978-0-313-34324-7 (vol. 1) EISBN: 978-0-313-34326-1 (vol. 2) 14 13 12 11 10

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Greenwood Press An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction: ‘‘It’s Only Right to Represent Where I’m From’’: Local and Regional Hip Hop Scenes in the United States, Mickey Hess Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop, Mickey Hess

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VOLUME 1: EAST COAST AND WEST COAST 1. Hip Cats in the Cradle of Rap: Hip Hop in the Bronx, David Diallo 2. Uptown, Baby!: Hip Hop in Harlem and Upper Manhattan, David Shanks 3. From Queens Come Kings: Run DMC Stomps Hard out of a ‘‘Soft’’ Borough, Ericka Blount Danois 4. Brooklyn Beats: Hip Hop’s Home to Everyone from Everywhere, Jennifer R. Young

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5. ‘‘Brooklyn Keeps on Takin’ It!’’: A Conversation with Bushwick, 107 Brooklyn’s Da Beatminerz, Mickey Hess 6. A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People: Staten Island Steps Up, Matthew Brian Cohen 7. The Sound of Philadelphia: Hip Hop History in the City of Brotherly Love, Mickey Hess 8. The Bricks and Beyond: Hip Hop in Newark and Northern New Jersey, Andrea Roberts 9. Hip Hop in the Hub: How Boston Rap Remained Underground, Pacey C. Foster

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Contents 10. From Electro-Rap to G-Funk: A Social History of Rap Music in Los Angeles and Compton, California, David Diallo

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11. Between Macks and Panthers: Hip Hop in Oakland and San Francisco, George Ciccariello-Maher and Jeff St. Andrews

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12. From the SEA to the PDX: Northwest Hip Hop in the I-5 Corridor, Rachel Key

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VOLUME 2: THE MIDWEST, THE SOUTH, AND BEYOND Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

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13. The Evolution of the Second City Lyric: Hip Hop in Chicago and Gary, Indiana, Warren Scott Cheney

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14. Heartland Hip Hop: Nelly, St. Louis, and Country Grammar, Amanda Lawson 15. From St. Paul to Minneapolis, All the Hands Clap for This: Hip Hop in the Twin Cities, Justin Schell 16. Welcome to tha D: Making and Remaking Hip Hop Culture in Post-Motown Detroit, Carleton S. Gholz

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17. The Long, Hot Grind: How Houston Engineered an Industry of Independence, Jamie Lynch

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18. ‘‘The Sound of Money’’: Atlanta, Crossroads of the Dirty South, Matt Miller

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19. Virginia Is for Lovers and Rappers: Hampton Roads Rappers, Changing the Game, Laurie Cannady 20. Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty: Community and Dance in New Orleans Rap, Rich Paul Cooper

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21. Soul Legacies: Hip Hop and Historicity in Memphis, Zandria F. Robinson 22. Tropic of Bass: Culture, Commerce, and Controversy in Miami Rap, Matt Miller

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23. Paradise Lost and Found: Hip Hop in Hawai’i, Rohan Kalyan

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Appendix: Regional Hip Hop Playlist, Danielle Hess Selected Bibliography Index Acknowledgments About the Editor and Contributors

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Introduction: “It’s Only Right to Represent Where I’m From”: Local and Regional Hip Hop Scenes in the United States

Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide profiles 23 local hip hop scenes across the United States, from the Bronx to Honolulu. This two-volume set is organized into broad regions of East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and Dirty South, and each chapter is dedicated to showcasing the history of the local scene, through the MCs, DJs, b-boys and b-girls, label owners, hip hop clubs, and radio shows that have created distinct styles of hip hop culture. Through extensive research— including exclusive interviews with rap artists such as Run DMC, Da Beatminerz, The Force MDs, Phat Kat, MC Spice, DJ DATKID, and the Hawaiian group Sudden Rush—our contributing authors highlight the importance of place and region to hip hop identity, showcase the pioneers who brought hip hop to each region, and profile the hip hop artists who created styles all their own by developing slang, fashion styles, and musical and lyrical structures meant to represent their hometowns. With an eye toward illuminating the social contexts that fostered the unique hip hop styles of each region, the chapters in this collection trace hip hop’s development from 1970s club DJs in Harlem and block parties in the South Bronx to a nationwide, and worldwide, phenomenon with unique musical styles created in several major cities and regions in the United States. The roles of place and region are central to hip hop culture, which was born in the United States in the 1970s. The competitive nature of hip hop, seen in MC and DJ battles, b-boy competitions, and the inherent territorialism of graffiti

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writing and tagging (which was initially used by street gangs to mark turf, and later became an artists’ war on the establishment), lends itself to a local pride that sees rappers name-check the regions, cities, boroughs, streets, and neighborhoods that they call home. American rap artists emphasize representing the places they come from, whether the broad regions of East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, and Dirty South, or any one of New York City’s five boroughs, or even a specific neighborhood. For example, Mr. Cheeks of Queens group The Lost Boyz, whom I quote in my title, expresses that ‘‘it’s only right to represent where I’m from: East Coast, bottom line’’ (‘‘Music Makes Me High’’). Other artists get much more specific: N.W.A. emphasizes their ties to Compton, California. Ed O.G. emphasizes that he comes from the Roxbury section of Boston. Jay-Z mentions Brooklyn’s Marcy Housing Projects on many of his songs, and Lil Wayne makes clear that he represents the Holly Grove neighborhood in New Orleans, and—in one of the strongest examples of hip hop’s geographical specificity—the street corner at the intersection of Apple and Eagle Streets. A Tribe Called Quest were even more specific on their 1990 single, ‘‘I Left My Wallet in El Segundo,’’ where Q-Tip rhymes, ‘‘490 Madison, we here, Shah,’’ including his bandmate Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s actual Brooklyn street address in the song’s lyrics. In the most intensive study of place in hip hop to date, The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (2002), Murray Forman proposed that hip hop music’s focus on the local goes beyond territorial allegiance to stand for a particular black urban experience that is symbolized by places like Compton, California, or South Bronx, New York. Forman identified the ‘‘urgency’’ with which rappers use local imagery to examine and critique power dynamics, place, race relations, and identity, stating that: Whereas blues, rock, and R & B have traditionally cited regions or cities . . . contemporary rap is even more specific, with explicit references to particular streets, boulevards and neighborhoods, telephone area codes, postal zip codes, or other sociospatial information. Rap artists draw inspiration from their regional affiliations as well as from a keen sense of what I call the extreme local, upon which they base their constructions of spatial imagery. (xvii) A focus on the ‘‘extreme local’’ can lend credibility to an artist through his or her familiarity with local landmarks, hip hop spots, and even restaurants, as seen in the widespread references to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles in hip hop music from Los Angeles, or in Paul Wall’s references to the ‘‘ghetto grub’’ served at the Houston restaurant Timmy Chan’s (on Mike Jones’ song ‘‘They Don’t Know,’’ for example). In his chapter on Houston hip hop included in Volume 2, Jamie Lynch illustrates the strength of long-standing local independent rap labels in Houston, a city that, until 2000, was for the most part ignored by national radio and major labels, and where it is common for artists to distinguish between Northside and

Introduction Southside Houston and to call out local landmarks and neighborhood figures as a way of enhancing their credibility with local listeners. Outside this question of audience, rap artists may invoke icons of the extreme local in order to fit with a tradition of territorialism within their communities. Many critics, Forman included, have linked hip hop’s territorialism and focus on the extreme local to the influence of street gang culture. Several hip hop pioneers were members of street gangs before they made the transition to music: Afrika Bambaataa was a member of the Black Spades, for example, and Russell Simmons was a member of the Seven Immortals. The influence of gang culture remains felt in 2009 in the street gang imagery of artists like L.A.’s The Game and New Orleans’ Birdman. In his chapter on hip hop in the Bronx, included in Volume 1, David Diallo provides an overview of the links between the territorial practices of street gang culture and hip hop, especially as these practices influenced hip hop music and culture in its formative years. In his Los Angeles chapter, Diallo also analyzes this influence of gang culture on rap music in L.A. Whether or not their territorial allegiance is rooted in gang culture, the symbolic capital of a ghetto location lies at the heart of the biographies of many (although not all) hip hop stars, as well as the stories they tell in their lyrics. However, beyond invoking ‘‘the ghetto’’ or ‘‘the hood’’ to connect themselves to an overarching experience of being young, poor, and disenfranchised in the United States, hip hop artists also illuminate the specific struggles and pleasures that come with living in their particular neighborhoods. In this sense, a focus on a particular location becomes more about establishing credibility and authenticity on the continuum of tradition and innovation that is central to hip hop culture: to come from New York City gives a new artist a built-in level of credibility because of the music’s origins there in the 1970s. However, invoking a more precise location within the city can distinguish a new artist from the multitudes of other NYC artists. Wu-Tang Clan, for example, when they debuted in 1993, emphasized that they came from Staten Island, the one New York City borough from which almost no major rap artists (except an early 1980s group called The Force MDs) had come before. Wu-Tang claimed Staten Island—arguably New York’s least credible borough for hip hop—even though three members of the group (GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, and Masta Killa) lived in Brooklyn. As Matthew Brian Cohen shows in his Staten Island chapter included in Volume 1, Wu-Tang changed the preconception of Staten Island as ‘‘an island of all white people,’’ when they wrote songs about the living conditions in Stapleton and Park Hill, two of Staten Island’s biggest housing projects. Making their location even more specific, Wu-Tang emphasized their connections to ‘‘the one-six-ooh’’—Park Hill’s Building 160, which was infamous as a center of drug trafficking. Wu-Tang’s success put Staten Island, which they nicknamed Shao-Lin, on the map, and at the same time set them apart from the old guard of New York City hip hop; the group’s name, in fact, is borrowed from the kung fu film about a group of renegade martial artists who rebel against

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their teachers and elders. In breaking with the hip hop tradition in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, and instead emphasizing their connections to Staten Island, Wu-Tang made a lesser-known geographical location a distinct part of their brand and identity. Inversely, rappers who come from less traditionally credible locations can link themselves to a broader region in order to establish more credibility. Lexington, Kentucky’s CunninLynguists devote several songs to connecting themselves to ‘‘the South,’’ a hip hop region that includes Miami, Atlanta, and Houston, cities with far more hip hop history than Lexington. CunninLynguists also devote one song, ‘‘Seasons,’’ to reminiscing about the golden era of old school hip hop, lamenting the commercialization that took hip hop away from its origins, and connecting themselves to hip hop’s origins by saying, ‘‘It’s about time for the cycle to start over.’’ However, another Kentucky group, Nappy Roots, chose a farm motif for their 2002 ‘‘Awnaw’’ music video: they wore overalls and posed in front of tractors and barns, although R. Prophet, one of the group’s members, hailed from Oakland, California (itself a long-standing hotbed of hip hop talent). Relying on this popular conception of Kentucky as a rural locale, Nappy Roots put forth an image that was distinct from the urban neighborhoods connected to rappers from Houston and Atlanta. Nappy Roots wasn’t the first rap group to put forth a stereotypically ‘‘Southern’’ identity. In the Atlanta chapter included in Volume 2, Matt Miller describes the way the Atlanta group Arrested Development (whose lead MC grew up in Milwaukee) created a particular Southern image for its 1992 debut album: Rural themes in songs such as ‘‘Tennessee’’ and the group’s penchant for overalls and other rustic signifiers contributed to a vision of Southernmess consciously framed as an antidote to the materialism and violence present in other rap music popular at the time. (478) Geographical location, then, becomes one marker of authenticity along the continuum of tradition and innovation. Using fashion markers such as overalls, Nappy Roots and Arrested Development play on a stereotype of rural Southernness that has proven marketable to mainstream audiences. In his book, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, Richard Peterson shows that the 1920s hillbilly group The Skillet Lickers went from dressing in formal wear for its performances at Nashville, Tennessee’s Grand Ole Opry, to dressing in straw hats and overalls for its first publicity photographs after signing to a national record label (94–96). As Peterson has stated about the ways country and western musicians communicate their authenticity to fans, hip hop artists must prove that they fit the accepted model, while at the same time proving that they aren’t merely copying the model (220). Across the four decades that hip hop has existed, the model of authenticity for hip hop culture tends to be black, male, urban, and American. Adam Krims, in his book Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, finds that hip hop culture in

Introduction countries such as Canada, France, and The Netherlands typically holds up the model of African American hip hop as ‘‘real’’ hip hop (154–57). Ian Condry’s Hip Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization shows that Japanese rappers such as ECD use their lyrics to pay homage to ‘‘the New York City pioneers—Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc, Rakim, KRS-One—and energy of the Bronx that started the movement’’ (1). The Berlin group Spezializtz similarly devotes a song, ‘‘Kettenkreation,’’ to celebrating hip hop’s origins ‘‘back in the day’’ in Uptown Manhattan and the Bronx. When studying hip hop culture in the United States, historians invariably trace its origins to New York City. As the story goes, hip hop began in the Bronx on August 11, 1973, when Cindy Campbell, sister of Clive ‘‘Kool Herc’’ Campbell, threw a block party, where a new music culture was born. Within a fuller timeline of hip hop history, Kool Herc’s August 11 block party may more accurately mark the birth of the hip hop DJ—Kool Herc is called the ‘‘father of hip hop’’ because he invented the breakbeat, the backbone of hip hop music, by using two turntables and two copies of the same record to loop the same instrumental break over and over. Kool Herc was undoubtedly influential in creating the culture and music that has come to be known as hip hop. The question of when and where hip hop culture began, however, is more complicated than this August 11, 1973 birthdate acknowledges. First, Herc drew heavily from the DJ routines of Eddie Cheeba and DJ Hollywood, who were working in Harlem nightclubs—these routines included Hollywood’s use of two copies of the same record to extend the break (although he tended to play different types of records than Kool Herc did), and Eddie Cheeba’s call-and-response routines with the audience, many of which were later used by MCs in the Bronx. Second, it is widely accepted that hip hop culture has four central elements: MCing, DJing, b-boying, and graffiti art. These four elements did not come into existence in the same moment (in fact, hip hop pioneer Fab Five Freddy claims, in the documentary The Freshest Kids, that he and filmmaker Charlie Ahearn were the first to bring all four elements together, in their 1982 film Wild Style). Although graffiti has existed for centuries, the style of graffiti art that came to be associated with hip hop came to New York by way of a graf writer named Top Cat from Philadelphia, where graf writers like Cornbread had been tagging walls since 1967 (Jenkins 35–36). Michael W. Brooks, in his book Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York, says of hip hop graffiti, ‘‘It was born in Philadelphia. In the mid-sixties teenage gang members there began staking out territory with markings made with felttipped pens. Before long, a few graffiti writers, more interested in self-display than territory, began marking their names on the city’s subways and buses’’ (212). Graffiti became so prevalent in Philadelphia that a July 25, 1971 New York Times article referred to Philadelphia as the ‘‘Graffiti Capital of The World’’ (3). Cornbread and Cool Earl developed the tall, stylistic lettering we now associate with hip hop, and Cool Earl invented the use of the arrow as a stylistic element. Both of these

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elements can be seen in the 1983 graffiti documentary Style Wars, but there is no mention of Cornbread and Earl, or any other graffiti writer living outside New York City. The history of b-boying and hip hop dance also tends to focus on New York to the exclusion of other cities in the United States. In Los Angeles in 1970, Don Campbell invented his locking style of dance, which would become a central component of hip hop dance. To acknowledge these contributions from other cities does not discredit the Bronx as the borough that spawned hip hop, but instead challenges the typical narrative of hip hop as a local phenomenon stolen from the South Bronx and sold to the rest of the world. The most widely accepted stories of hip hop’s origins place its birth in the Bronx, and these Bronx origins make it tempting to tell the story of hip hop as the story of a local culture that was removed from its original neighborhoods and transformed by outsiders into a watered-down, or even corrupted, mainstream form. For example, Jeff Chang’s much-lauded book Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation depicts the Bronx as hip hop’s Garden of Eden. ‘‘It may be hard to imagine now,’’ Chang writes, ‘‘but during the mid1970s, most of the youthful energy that became known as hip-hop could be contained in a tiny seven-mile circle’’ (109). Chang also speaks of hip hip’s expansion out of the Bronx in terms of a fall from grace: he marks 1979 as ‘‘the first death of hip-hop’’ (127), as bootleg cassettes of Bronx artists spread to other New York City boroughs, and early rap recordings (most notably Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’) took hip hop out of the Bronx and into radio stations and record stores across the globe. Furthering his nostalgic take on hip hop history, Chang presents the debut of the Hollis, Queens group Run DMC, who recorded rap’s first platinum album, as ‘‘the end of innocence’’ (189). Chang’s nostalgia for 1970s Bronx hip hop is common in the rap world. As I wrote about in my 2007 book Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music, rappers and music journalists have long displayed their nostalgia for hip hop’s early days before major record labels and MTV got involved. Films such as Wild Style and nostalgic songs such as Nas’s ‘‘Hip Hop Is Dead’’ (2007), CunninLynguists’ ‘‘Seasons’’ (2003), and Common’s ‘‘I Used to Love H.E.R.’’ (1994) tell the story of a vibrant culture being sold out for profit. This story of hip hop’s crossover to the mainstream often laments the music and culture’s move out of the neighborhoods where it began, so it creates a tension between the Bronx and the other boroughs, and between New York City and other regions. Chang’s nostalgia for a pure, noncommercial moment in hip hop leads him to overwrite the history of contributions from other cities, pre-1979. When Chang discusses graffiti, for instance, he neglects to mention the contributions of Philadelphians. When he discusses dance, he neglects L.A.’s Don Campbell. And although Chang rightly acknowledges that New Jersey’s Sugar Hill Gang stole some of its ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ lyrics from the Bronx MC Grandmaster Caz,

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Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar also identifies the roots of one ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ verse in a Chicago street gang rhyme from the 1960s: ‘‘evidence suggests that the rhyme is anchored in classic urban badman styles found throughout urban centers in the United States’’ and ‘‘reflect[s] a style that was not unique to New York or hiphop’s early years’’ (76–77). The danger in overwriting the histories of other cities’ contributions is that if hip hop historians agree that hip hop in its purest form is 1973 Bronx hip hop, then the hip hop created in other areas comes to look like a symptom of commercialism, rather than a part of hip hop’s original culture, or a localized form of that culture. ‘‘The Old School,’’ the mythological moment when hip hop was a pure form of positive, energetic, noncommercial cultural expression, is intrinsically tied to New York, so much that several Southern rappers took offense to Nas proclaiming the death of hip hop in 2007, during an era in which Southern hip hop was thriving and had taken hold on the national charts. Atlanta’s Ludacris, for example, appeared on stage wearing a t-shirt that read, ‘‘Hip Hop Ain’t Dead. It Lives in the South.’’ The story of hip hop’s expansion from New York City to the rest of the nation (and the world) is a complicated story of corporate annexation as well as African American entrepreneurialism. It is on one hand an essentially American story of artists overcoming the adversity of being born into poverty and hopelessness to achieve multimillion dollar careers in music (a story told in songs like The Notorious B.I.G’s ‘‘Juicy’’ and The Game’s ‘‘Dreams,’’ and critiqued in Rich Boy’s ‘‘Let’s Get That Paper’’), and on the other hand another very American story of rising to success by glamorizing the very societal ills that these same artists faced along their paths to careers in entertainment. Throughout its history, hip hop has faced countless charges of promoting violence and drug trafficking, which several artists have justified as necessary evils for financing time in a recording studio, founding a record label, or even feeding one’s family. Much American rap music tells (and sells) stories about American ghettoes. Even those artists well into their careers and living in posh suburbs continue to set many of their songs in the ghetto. Rappers’ boasting about the rough neighborhoods they come from has led critics to complain that hip hop glorifies the ghetto. In his 2007 book, Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop, Michael Eric Dyson addresses such criticism by writing: the metaphysical root of hip hop is connected to the ghetto whether or not many of its artists grew up there . . . . A lot of people in the ghetto are trying to get the hell up out of there. They don’t want to romanticize it. So it’s not the ghetto that’s being romanticized—its physical geography—so much as the intellectual attachment and intimacy that it breeds, a bond established between those who suffer and struggle together who long for an exit from its horrible limits. (11)

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Dyson’s comment points to the notion that ‘‘the ghetto’’ can supersede a specific geographical location, just as Forman argued that ‘‘the hood’’ can symbolize a particular black urban experience. As Trenton, New Jersey emcee Wise Intelligent puts it on his song ‘‘Go with Me’’ (2006), ‘‘You don’t have to be Wise Intelligent to relate to this one; all you gotta do is be from a hood.’’ Just as invoking the hood or the ghetto can stand for a larger experience, representing one of the regions of East Coast, West Coast, or Dirty South can speak for a particular social experience and link an artist to a tradition of hip hop from that region. Even when writing songs about the ghetto, hip hop artists tend to emphasize local culture by dropping the names of local establishments and landmarks important to the hip hop culture of their particular cities and neighborhoods. Wise Intelligent acknowledges the universal appeal of the stories his songs tell, but at the same time his lyrics criticize Trenton’s mayor, describe the poverty of New Jersey’s state capital and the failures of the Trenton public school system, and include Trenton landmarks like the Capitol Rink and the New Jersey Transit station. Wise Intelligent’s lyrics focus on the universal effects of living in poverty, but he illustrates these effects through his stories of living in Trenton. This continuum of universal topics and unique details gives hip hop some of its power. Most literary writing, and autobiographical writing in particular, seeks to accomplish this same combination of making the personal universal. W. E. B. Yeats called this technique the mirror-turn-lamp—self-examination and personal revelations shed light on the larger culture. Hip hop lyrics are not always autobiographical (and many times artists tell fictional stories in the first person), but because representing where you’re from is so important to hip hop culture, hip hop artists tend to link their first-person stories to specific geographical locales. Just as hip hop authenticity centers on a continuum of tradition and innovation, artists must also prove themselves both local and universal. Hip hop artists who release albums and make music videos represent their hometowns for a global audience. Hip hop is an African American cultural force that influenced the nation and the world. It has without question been a global force since 1979, when Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ charted in several countries around the globe. Although Chang and other hip hop historians have criticized Sugar Hill Gang for their lack of authenticity (they were based in Englewood, New Jersey, rather than the Bronx, and worse, they stole lyrics from a Bronx MC, Grandmaster Caz, who had yet to release a record), this group was the first version of hip hop heard around the world, and many rap artists give Sugar Hill Gang credit for introducing them to a music and culture that had previously been isolated to Uptown and the Bronx. St. Louis radio DJ Gentleman Jim Gates was the first DJ to play ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ on the radio, thus sparking a nascent hip hop scene that would not emerge onto national radio until Nelly’s debut in 2000. In an interview for this two-volume set, Skippy White, the father of Boston hip hop, recalls ordering 500 copies of Sugar Hill Gang’s record for his store in Boston, and selling out within a week.

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Even within New York City, Sugar Hill Gang’s radio hit introduced new listeners to hip hop. In another interview, Da Beatminerz credit Sugar Hill Gang with introducing them to a new style of music. Although Da Beatminerz were living in Bushwick, Brooklyn, they were too young to travel to see hip hop in Harlem and the Bronx. Even though they were living only a few miles away from these areas, hip hop music first came to them by way of Sugar Hill Gang on the radio. Sugar Hill Gang brought hip hop to the masses, but, as this collection will reveal, hip hop, even pre-1979, was part of national, local, and global streams of culture, even as territorial as its participants could be. Hip hop MCs were influenced by the rhyming boats of street gangs around the United States, as well as by rhyming radio DJs such as Dr. Jockenstein in St. Louis and Jocko Henderson in Philadelphia. In one take on history, hip hop was global before it became local. Two of hip hop’s three founding fathers were born in the Caribbean: Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler) was born in 1958 in Barbados; and Kool Herc was born in 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica. The third founder, Afrika Bambaataa, is of Caribbean descent, and founded the Bronx Zulu Nation Organization after a trip to Africa in the early 1970s. Slick Rick, another early Bronx MC, was born in Great Britain in 1965. Doug E. Fresh, a pioneering MC and beatboxer, was also born in Barbados, in 1966. Although Kool Herc denies such a connection, many scholars believe that he, even unconsciously, brought the influence of Jamaican selectors, or radio DJs, to the music scene in New York. The lineage of Caribbean influence on hip hop is complicated, however, in that Clement ‘‘Sir Coxsone’’ Dodd, one of the Jamaican pioneers of the mobile sound systems, first heard rhythm & blues music when he was working in the southern United States as a young man, and he took this music back to Jamaica with him. Just as Herc’s sound system had a precedent in Jamaica, the rhymes that early rappers like Coke La Rock spit over Herc’s beats had their roots not only in the toasting of Jamaican selectors, but also in the toasts of black comedians such as Rudy Ray Moore, which can be traced directly to the American street gang culture of the 1950s and 1960s (see Abrahams or Bryant), and to African bad man legends and the tradition of signifyin’ that Henry Louis Gates links to African Yoruba tribes in his book The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. In his chapter on Kool Herc in Greenwood Press’s Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Music, Movement, and Culture, Wayne Marshall reminds his readers that the Jamaican influence did not stop with hip hop’s founding father; it is heard in the more recent music of second-generation Jamaican-Americans like Busta Rhymes and Notorious B.I.G. Hip hop continues to see international influence via the music of an artist like Immortal Technique, who moved with his family from Peru to Harlem in the early 1980s, and the music of Wyclef Jean, a second-generation Haitian-American. Paul Butler contends that ‘‘Hip-hop foreshadows the future of the United States—one in which no racial group will constitute a majority. It is the most diverse form of American popular culture . . . .The Neptunes, among hip-hop’s most acclaimed producers, consist of Chad Hugo, a

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Filipino American, and Pharrell Williams, an African-Korean American’’ (984). Paul Gilroy, in his influential book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and DoubleConsciousness, contends that black culture has become global culture: because hip hop and other cultural forms developed along with the capitalist structures that created the black Atlantic world, black culture’s styles have crossed national boundaries and spawned localized responses (80). In 2009, hip hop is a global movement with local variants across the world. At the same time, though, hip hop is an intrinsically American, and African American form. The Great Migration—the label given to the mass exodus of African Americans from the South to the North in the first half of the twentieth century—also influenced the sounds of hip hop. As I discuss in my history of Philadelphia hip hop included in this volume, W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Philadelphia Negro (1899) attributed crime, broken homes, and alcoholism to the disorienting, intergenerational effects of Africans having been displaced from their homeland and within a few generations moving from Southern farms to Northern industrial cities. Hip hop’s lineage within the African diaspora is evident, as is the influence of rural Southern culture from past generations. In fact, several hip hop stars are second-generation Southerners. The rise of the Dirty South came as no surprise to listeners who heard the Southern drawls of California rappers Snoop Dogg, whose family comes from Mississippi and Alabama, and Too $hort. The Southern influence in slang, rhythm, and pronunciation is felt throughout rap. Philadelphia rapper Bahamadia’s family comes from Georgia, as does the mother of Posdnuos from the Long Island group De La Soul, and the family of Chicago artist Kanye West. In his memoir, Sentences: The Life of M. F. Grimm, Percy Carey, who performs as M. F. Grimm, notes that his mother moved from Alabama to the Upper West Side of New York when she was in her teens. The influence of the cadences of Southern speech can be heard in hip hop made in all parts of the country. Just as hip hop was born in New York out of a mix of Caribbean and Puerto Rican immigrants, American Southerners, and native New Yorkers, the story of many regional scenes across the United States often begins with someone moving to the area from New York. Symbiotically, New Yorkers brought hip hop culture with them as they traveled to other cities. In this collection, Warren Scott Cheney’s chapter on Chicago hip hop reveals that a New York graffiti writer named Angel moved to Chicago and started a graffiti crew in the Logan Square neighborhood in 1978. David Diallo’s history of Los Angeles hip hop credits Tony Joseph, a DJ from East Elmhurst, New York, for taking turntablism’s mixing techniques to L.A. when he moved there in 1979. Matt Miller’s history of Atlanta hip hop begins with MC Shy D, who moved from the Bronx to Georgia in 1980. Justin Schell’s piece on Twin Cities hip hop traces its history back to 1981, when New Yorker Travis ‘‘Travitron’’ Lee matriculated at the University of Minneapolis. Pacey Foster chronicles the contributions of MC Spice, a New York transplant, to the Boston hip hop scene. Laurie Cannady marks the beginning of hip hop in Virginia with Harlem’s Teddy Riley moving to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia,

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opening a recording studio, and ultimately mentoring Timbaland, who would become Virginia’s most iconic producer. While emigration from New York spread hip hop to other parts of the country, there is also the story of immigration to the five boroughs. As I stated above, hip hop’s story begins with immigration: Kool Herc moved from Kingston, Jamaica to the Bronx. Grandmaster Flash and Doug E. Fresh were both born in Barbados and moved to New York as children. Beyond this international influence, the music that came to represent New York felt the influence of other U.S. regions. The group Gang Starr was extremely influential in creating the Brooklyn Sound, but its members hailed from Boston (Guru) and Houston (DJ Premier). This story is common in hip hop: Kanye West, who brought Chicago’s hip hop scene to the forefront of the mainstream, was born in Atlanta. Eminem, who brought Detroit rap to the mainstream, was born in St Joseph, Missouri. Shock-G, an icon of Bay Area hip hop, spent his early years in New York and worked as a DJ in Florida before moving to Oakland. And Shock’s prote´ge´, Tupac Shakur, who became the primary avatar of the West Coast during the East Coast vs. West Coast conflict of the 1990s, was born in New York and went to high school in Baltimore, Maryland. There are also those figures who are iconic to certain areas, but who relocate throughout their careers. Too $hort, one of the earliest and most cherished hip hop icons of the San Francisco Bay Area, moved to Atlanta in 1994 and within a few years began working with a new group of Southern artists before he moved back to the Bay Area in 2006. MF DOOM was born in Great Britain, and represented Long Island with his first group, KMD, before more recently moving to Atlanta. Queen Latifah’s collaborator and Native Tongues affiliate Monie Love is also a British emigrant to the United States, and currently lives in Philadelphia. Ice-T, icon of Los Angeles gangsta rap, grew up in New Jersey and moved to L.A. as a teenager after his parents were killed in a car accident. Big Daddy Kane, icon of Brooklyn hip hop, recently moved to North Carolina and began recording with a new group named Butta Team. J-Ro, of Tha Alkaholiks, moved from California to Texas after his group took a hiatus after 2006’s Firewater, and currently resides and records as a solo artist in Sweden. Donald D moved from North Carolina to New York, and worked early in his career with Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Islam, before moving to Los Angeles and becoming a member of Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate, and ultimately relocating to his current home in Italy. Maxx Stoyanoff-Williams, of the Philadelphia rap-rock forerunner The Goats, moved to Germany and recorded an album under the name Hack Tao before returning to Philly in 2006 and forming his current group, Black Landlord. Recently, several scholars have noted the role of regions across the United States in the development of hip hop culture. Along with Ogbar’s look at the rhymes spouted by street gangs, Kyra D. Gaunt’s The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip Hop shows that hip hop lyrics were influenced by playground chants and rhymes invented by black girls in the 1940s in several American cities. Looking to other precursors to hip hop, The Vibe

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History of Hip Hop traces hip hop’s rhymes back to rhyming radio DJs from several American cities, such as Detroit, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Austin, Texas (Szwed 8–9). Tracing hip hop’s rhyme lineage in another direction, Ogbar and Imani Perry each credit Louisville, Kentucky’s Muhammad Ali with laying the foundation for hip hop. Ogbar points to Ali’s ‘‘style, confidence, consciousness, and defiance’’ (72), and Perry calls Ali ‘‘part of the foundation for the explosion of hip hop’’ (58). Ali’s rhyming boasts, often used to taunt his opponents before a fight, influenced hip hop culture as well; rapper Darryl ‘‘DMC’’ McDaniels has called Ali’s ‘‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,’’ couplet ‘‘the most famous rap lyrics ever’’ (Szwed 10). Certainly, there is a difference between identifying a cultural form that influenced hip hop versus identifying a form that was part of the burgeoning hip hop culture. Muhammad Ali influenced rap, but he shouldn’t be considered a rapper. Neither should Dick Gregory, the Saint Louis comedian whose 1964 autobiography, Nigger, employed a title that was denied Nas for his 2008 album. But this does go to show that across the United States, the foundation of hip hop culture had been forming, in the Civil Rights Movement, the Watts Riots, and The Black Panther Party in Oakland. These movements influenced hip hop culture, but they are not the same thing as hip hop. The tension between global and local plays out in much the same way: as far as hip hop has spread, its artists are careful to pay tribute to the old school, and are dedicated to keeping hip hop close to its roots. Sociologist Andy Bennett, in a study of white hip hop artists from the small town of Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, found that several white British rappers were very forthcoming in expressing their dedication to African American hip hop: There was a carefully fashioned sensitivity which dictated that in being frank about their dedication not only to African-American hip hop but to the stylistic and ideological forms of address they deemed to be part of it, they were in turn revealing an honesty and integrity within themselves, thus setting the group apart from the small town mentality which was deemed to prevail in Newcastle. (14) For those rappers in Newcastle, being involved in hip hop becomes a marker against racism and closed-mindedness, a way to expand their horizons by engaging with a culture outside the one into which they were born. Bennett uses the concept of glocality (developed by Robert Robertson) to say that localizing hip hop doesn’t necessarily entail any obvious transformations of the music and style, ‘‘but may, alternatively, rely on localized affinities which are experiences more at the level of the experiential’’ (14–15). In other words, hip hop emphasizes lived experience and firsthand accounts—these stories tend to be set within one’s own neighborhood. Condry, in Hip Hop Japan, explains that ‘‘Japanese hip hop draws inspiration from American artists while at the same time

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integrating the language and everyday understandings of Japanese youth’’ (2) and that ‘‘Japanese rappers are expected to respect the African American roots of the music while also producing something uniquely authentic and original’’ (27). As hip hop grew from a local phenomenon into a global cultural force, rappers around the world were faced with questions of imitation and appropriation of African American hip hop culture: from one direction, they faced criticism of imitating African American stars or making blackness ‘‘a fad’’ (Bynoe 83), and from the other, they were criticized for making hip hop that was too local, and thus too far removed from the African American roots of the culture. Tony Mitchell, editor of Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA, argues that ‘‘Hip-hop and rap cannot be viewed simply as an expression of African American culture; it has become a vehicle for global youth affiliations and a tool for reworking local identity all over the world,’’ yet admits that ‘‘the flow of consumption of rap music within the popular music industry continues to proceed hegemonically, from the USA to the rest of the world, with little or no flow in the opposite direction’’ (2). So, like many American rappers from the South and the Midwest during the 1990s, before these regions reached their current level of credibility, the British and Japanese rappers of Bennett’s and Condry’s studies must show their respect for the New York innovators while at the same time making their own brand of hip hop a uniquely local expression. Hip hop’s emphasis on the local began with the shout-outs to NYC landmarks included on songs like Spyder D’s ‘‘Big Apple Rappin’ ’’ (which he recorded while attending college in Michigan in 1980), and the images of a decaying Bronx shown in the music video for Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five’s ‘‘White Lines (The Message)’’ in 1982. Such songs established a New York model of the authentic, to which rappers from other regions soon began to respond, telling stories of what life was like in their own neighborhoods: In 1985, Chicago’s MC Sugar Rae Dinky released ‘‘Cabrini Green Rap,’’ which chronicled life in one of the city’s most dangerous housing projects. In 1986, Newark, New Jersey’s MC Hassan and DJ 7-11 released ‘‘Livin’ in the City,’’ an ode to their hometown, and Philadelphia’s Tuff Crew released ‘‘My Part of Town’’ in 1988. Hip hop’s local pride has bred competition between neighborhoods, cities, and even sides of the country, and territoriality has become a topic of several hip hop conflicts over where true hip hop resides. The three moments of regional conflict that stand out across hip hop history are the Bridge Wars of the 1980s, and the East Coast vs. West Coast beefs of the 1990s, and, more recently, the offense some Southern rappers took to Nas’s 2006 album Hip Hop Is Dead. The competitive nature of hip hop music can be traced back to before 1979, when the first hip hop records were released. When hip hop existed only in live performance, DJs would challenge each other to battle to see who could rock a party the hardest. The winner was chosen based on crowd reaction, and local allegiances were called into play as DJs and MCs shouted out their own neighborhoods and called for a reaction from the audience members who came from that

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same place. In Philadelphia’s Two One Five Magazine, Angela Carter wrote that as early as 1985, ‘‘every ’hood throughout Philly had a DJ crew’’ (15). As MCs developed more complex rhymes and moved into the spotlight in their own right at hip hop shows, they began to battle as well, and this translated to dis records and answer records as hip hop was put onto wax. Answer records began in 1985 with Roxanne Shante’s ‘‘Roxanne’s Revenge,’’ which was a response to the UTFO song, ‘‘Roxanne, Roxanne.’’ The exchange between these two artists spawned, by some estimates, over 100 answer records. Beginning in 1986, the first hip hop battle over turf, now known as the ‘‘Bridge Wars,’’ was waged in a series of answer records between Boogie Down Productions (BDP) in the Bronx and the Juice Crew in Queens. In 1986, Queens artist MC Shan recorded ‘‘The Bridge,’’ a song that chronicled life in Queensbridge and claimed that hip hop had actually begun in Queens. Bronx-based group BDP responded with the songs ‘‘South Bronx’’ and ‘‘The Bridge Is Over.’’ Throughout the series of answer records between these two groups, the Juice Crew became a primary representative of Queens, although two members, Big Daddy Kane and Masta Ace, were from Brooklyn. During this same era, Philadelphia artists stepped into the ring, with MC Breeze’s ‘‘It Ain’t New York’’ (1986), and Cool C’s ‘‘Juice Crew Dis’’ (1988), both records aimed at New York crews who saw their city as the center of the rap universe. Another Philadelphia artist, Schoolly D, recorded the first gangsta rap record, 1985’s ‘‘P.S.K. (What Does it Mean?),’’ a song that influenced Ice-T to record ‘‘Six N the Mornin,’’ the first gangsta rap record in Los Angeles, the city that would become synonymous with gangsta rap, through Ice-T (although he grew up in New Jersey) and the Compton group N.W.A. N.W.A.’s 1988 album Straight Outta Compton emphasized the credibility of the group’s greater Los Angeles neighborhood from the first to the last track, with lines like ‘‘born and raised in Compton.’’ The popularity of the album, and the controversy surrounding it, made Compton synonymous with gangsta rap. The emerging West Coast gangsta style was controversial and highly marketable; its graphic violence captured attention outside the realm of entertainment, effectively shifting attention away from the New York City neighborhoods where hip hop music began. New York’s resentment of rap’s move to L.A. may have first become evident in Bronx artist Tim Dog’s 1991 song, ‘‘Fuck Compton,’’ which responded to the rise of West Coast gangsta rap in general, and Compton artists N.W.A., Ice Cube, and Eazy-E, specifically. In 1992, Compton’s Tweedy Bird Loc responded to Tim Dog with his single, ‘‘Fuck the South Bronx/This Is Compton,’’ and Compton’s DJ Quik responded with ‘‘Way 2 Fonky.’’ Following N.W.A.’s breakup after the 1991 album Efil4zaggin, Dr. Dre responded with a dis against Tim Dog on 1993’s ‘‘Dre Day,’’ where Dre also dissed Miami’s Luther Campbell, who entered the ring with a single of his own, 1993’s ‘‘Cowards in Compton,’’ which cautioned that ‘‘cowards in Compton get sprayed in Dade [County, Florida].’’

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Even with the burgeoning tensions between East and West Coast, artists from both sides of the country did work together. After leaving N.W.A. in 1989, Ice Cube worked with New York’s Bomb Squad, the same crew that produced Public Enemy’s music, to produce his first solo album, 1990’s AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Brooklyn-born Masta Ace presented New York rhymes over L.A. beats on 1993’s Slaughtahouse. Ace recorded two albums (Slaughtahouse and 1995’s Sittin’ on Chrome) for the L.A. label Delicious Vinyl, and immersed himself in the car culture of the L.A. rap scene. The Beastie Boys moved from New York to L.A. to record their sophomore album Paul’s Boutique, which featured production by the West Coast duo The Dust Brothers. Even the primary players in the East Coast vs. West Coast battle were not as staunchly territorial as the coastal wars would indicate. After all, Tupac featured Brooklyn’s Buckshot on ‘‘Military Minds,’’ and is featured on Masta Killa’s ‘‘School’’ professing his love for Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan: ‘‘I feel as though they represent the East Coast the way we represent the West Coast, and I love them.’’ Dr. Dre signed the Texas artists CPO and D.O.C., and Snoop Dogg signed Lil Bow Bow, from Cleveland. The dis songs between regions lasted several years, however. In 1994, the Midwest entered the fray when Chicago artist Common Sense (now Common) released ‘‘I Used to Love H.E.R,’’ which lamented that hip hop music and culture had strayed from its roots. L.A.’s Ice Cube and his group Westside Connection took offense to Common’s suggestion that hip hop went downhill when she went ‘‘out west,’’ which sparked a dis against Common on Mack 10’s ‘‘Westside Slaughterhouse’’ (1995) and a response song from Common (1996’s ‘‘The Bitch in Yoo’’). While the East Coast and West Coast duked it out, new styles of hip hop were burgeoning in the South. As regional tensions heated up in 1994, Too $hort moved from Oakland to Atlanta. Too $hort’s 1988 album Life Is . . . Too Short chronicled life in East Oakland with songs such as ‘‘Oakland’’ and ‘‘City of Dope,’’ and he made Oakland a major part of his persona. Too $hort’s relocation predated the dominance of the Southern subgenres of crunk and snap, which would produce hits for artists like Lil Jon in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the early 1990s, hip hop’s focus had not yet turned to the South; in fact, hip hop was presented in a coastal binary of East Coast vs. West Coast, or New York vs. Los Angeles. The clash between NYC’s Bad Boy Records and L.A.’s Death Row Records had gripped the public’s interest, and dis records from Death Row artist Tupac Shakur and Bad Boy artist the Notorious B.I.G. stirred up turmoil. Atlanta was home to producer Jermaine Dupri, who began his career as a dancer for the NYC group Whodini. Dupri enlisted Chicago’s Da Brat (Shawntae Harris). Da Brat met Dupri through his prote´ge´s, the group Kriss Kross, in Chicago in 1992, and Dupri produced her debut album, Funkdafied, in 1994. T Hasan Johnson, writing about this early 1990s wave of Dupri-produced Atlanta artists in Icons of Hip Hop, explains that ‘‘their sound was much more experimental, colorful, and club-friendly. Compared to The Geto Boy’s brutal realism and 2 Live Crew’s

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rampant sexuality, these newer groups included a more youthful energy’’ (459). This Dupri wave was followed by a second wave of Atlanta hip hop that introduced the Southern drawls of groups like Outkast and Goodie Mob, who began performing locally in 1993. Around this same time, Norfolk, Virginia producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott were beginning to produce songs for major releases, such as Aaliyah’s 1996 album One in a Million. Southern hip hop was making a name for itself. A true turning point in the perception of rap music as an East Coast or West Coast thing came with the 1995 Source Awards. Hip hop, from its inception, had been fiercely territorial, but this second annual event, held in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on August 3, 1995, brought regional tensions in hip hop to a head. The list of performers included several artists from both Bad Boy and Death Row, including East Coast artists Lil Kim, Notorious B.I.G, Junior Mafia, Craig Mack, and Faith, and West Coast artists Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, and Tha Dogg Pound. The New York audience members remained loyal to their hometown artists and booed Snoop, one of rap’s biggest stars. Snoop famously responded, his voice incredulous, ‘‘The East Coast ain’t got no love for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and Death Row?’’ The audience booed again. The rest of the ceremony showcased posturing from both camps, with Death Row CEO Suge Knight calling out Bad Boy CEO Sean ‘‘Diddy’’ Combs for speaking in the backgrounds of songs and dancing in so many of his artists’ videos: ‘‘Anyone out there who wanna be a recording artist and wanna stay a star, but don’t wanna have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the videos, all on the records, dancing, come to Death Row.’’ The 1995 Source Awards was the boiling point for the East Coast/West Coast rivalry that would ultimately see both Tupac and Biggie gunned down in unsolved murders, but the ceremony was also the turning point in our perception of regional hip hop in the United States. Although the roster of performers at the 1995 Source Awards was almost entirely made up of New York and L.A. artists, it was rounded out with Cleveland’s Bone Thugs N Harmony, Miami’s 69 Boyz, and Atlanta’s Outkast. Bone Thugs N Harmony, though discovered by Compton, California’s Eazy-E and signed to his L.A.-based Ruthless Records, made their Ohio roots clear; with Krayzie Bone performing in a Cleveland Indians jersey, Bone Thugs reminded the audience that hip hop existed between the coasts. The biggest regional statement, however, came from Big Boi and Dre of Outkast. As the duo accepted their award for Best New Artist, and the audience booed them just as they had Snoop Dogg, Outkast simply and quietly stated, ‘‘The South got somethin’ to say. And that’s all I’ve got to say.’’ Outkast’s 1994 album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, along with Goodie Mob’s Soul Food album from 1995, established Southern hip hop as a force to be reckoned with. The two groups, both members of the larger collective the Dungeon Family, brought musical, vocal, lyrical, and stylistic innovation to hip hop.

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A further boost to Southern hip hop’s credibility in New York circles came when Jay-Z asked the Houston group UGK (Underground Kingz) to guest star on his 2000 song ‘‘Big Pimpin’.’’ For 2003’s The Black Album, Jay-Z recruited producers from around the country, including North Carolina’s 9th Wonder, New Jersey’s Just Blaze, Virginia’s The Neptunes and Timbaland, Detroit’s Eminem, Compton’s DJ Quik, Long Island’s Rick Rubin, and Chicago’s Kanye West, who in 2002 relocated from Chicago to Hoboken, New Jersey to be closer to the New York studios where he found work producing tracks for major artists such as Jay-Z. Recently, hip hop’s move away from its New York City origins has prompted a stance of unity across the five boroughs. KRS-One and producer Marley Marl, who were bitter rivals during the Queens vs. Bronx rap wars of the late 1980s, joined forces for the 2007 album Hip Hop Lives. LL Cool J’s 2008 track ‘‘The Five Boroughs is Back’’ brings together representatives from Queens (LL Cool J), the Bronx (KRS-One), Manhattan (Jim Jones), Brooklyn (Lil Kim), and Staten Island (Method Man). A new breed of cross-country collaborations began when Brooklyn’s Talib Kweli paired up with Cincinnati, Ohio’s DJ Hi-Tek to form the group Reflection Eternal in 1997. Atlanta’s Cee-Lo teamed up with New York-born producer Danger Mouse to form the group Gnarls Barkley in 2003. L.A. underground rapper Murs and Brooklyn rapper Buckshot have each worked with North Carolina producer 9th Wonder to record multiple full-length albums. 9th Wonder also produced the debut album of Jean Grae, an MC from New York by way of Cape Town, South Africa. When I began writing this introduction in 2008, the #1 song in the country was ‘‘Lollipop’’ by Lil Wayne from New Orleans and Static Major from Louisville. Posse cuts, which originally showcased all the MCs in a local crew, have gone nationwide, and worldwide as well. The 2007 hit ‘‘We Takin Over’’ featured the Palestinian-American DJ Khaled from Miami, the Senegalese-American singer Akon from New Jersey, and rappers T.I. from Atlanta, Lil Wayne and Birdman from New Orleans, and Rick Ross from Miami. While writing the Philadelphia entry for this collection, I discovered two CDs, both released in 2008, featuring local artists in collaboration with artists in other countries. Traum Diggs’ The Essential Traum Diggs Mixtape, was mixed by DJ Knew Rulz in London and Nigeria. Black Snow, from the German group Snow Goons, features a who’s who of Philadelphia’s underground MCs, as well as MCs from Boston, RaleighDurham, Los Angeles, and New York City. As Traum Diggs (aka David Shanks, who wrote the Harlem chapter included in Volume 1 of this set) says on the intro to his mixtape, ‘‘We’re taking this all over the world. It’s not just a local thing. That’s not what it’s about right now, man, it’s about spreading our borders.’’ These borders are not only international, but symbolic. As I have discussed in this introduction, hip hop critics ranging from Murray Forman to Michael Eric Dyson have described the symbolic capital that ‘‘the ghetto’’ or ‘‘the hood’’ holds for a hip hop artist. Dyson even links ‘‘the metaphysical root of hip hop’’ to the ghetto (11). The future of space and place in hip hop may see the music created

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out of very different locations, and virtual places may play as much of a role as physical locales. The closing of many small hip hop clubs across the country because of security concerns and insurance worries, and the creation of several online forums devoted to hip hop has created a new sense of place and its role in making the music. Several groups have formed via online spaces: Underground Chicago sensation The Cool Kids are made up of Chuck Inglish (from the Detroit suburbs) and Mikey Rocks (from the Chicago suburbs), who formed the group after they met each other on the Internet in 2005; the hip hop Web site www.okayplayer.com provided a collaborative forum for Dutch producer Nicolay and Houston rapper Kay, who met on the Web site in 2004 and began collaborating on songs via the Internet; that same year, Nicolay released the debut album of his group Foreign Exchange, a collaboration with Durham, North Carolina rapper Phonte—the duo made the album by sending beats and rhymes back and forth over email and AOL Instant Messenger. With the advent of such collaborative technologies, American hip hop, while still staunchly local in devoting its lyrics to stories that represent the places its artists come from, has become increasingly national, and international, in designing collaborations between artists from different regions. The multiregional group who has taken this new concept of place the furthest is Tanya Morgan, which consists of MCs Donwill and Ilyas from Cincinnati and producer/MC Von Pea from Brooklyn. Donwill and Von Pea met online via a message board at the hip hop Web site www.okayplayer.com, the same Web site where Kay met Nicolay. Like Nicolay and Kay, they began exchanging beats and rhymes over AOL Instant Messenger, and soon added Ilyas to the trio. Beyond the fact that Tanya Morgan was formed as a cross-country collaboration via the Internet, the group may point to the future of place in hip hop with the concept of its third album, 2009’s Brooklynati. In celebration of both their hometowns, and to promote the new album, the group launched the Web site www.brooklynati.com, which purports to be run by the Chamber of Commerce of the ‘‘thriving metropolis’’ of Brooklynati, which exists only as a virtual city created by combining aspects of Brooklyn and Cincinnati. The Brooklynati Web site includes a map of the city, links to restaurants, shopping, and attractions, and even invites online visitors to print Brooklynati postcards to mail to their friends. The virtual city of Brooklynati may be the first ‘‘place’’ to represent a new trend in hip hop’s relationship with space and place. As small hip hop clubs disappear even in New York City (Wolf), and more MCs and producers look to the Internet to release music independently of record labels, to establish a fan base, and to network with other rap performers, in the future we may see more Tanya Morgans, Cool Kids, and Nicolay and Kays—groups who formed and first collaborated via online interchanges—than we will see groups fostered by the physical spaces like the Hevalo and The Rooftop that gave Bronx and Uptown Manhattan performers a place to trade beats and rhymes in the 1970s and 1980s. In an art form born in some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in America, Brooklynati stands out among the cities shouted out in most hip hop songs. Hip hop’s first virtual city

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prides itself on its progressiveness more than its adherence to the ghetto location that, as I discussed earlier, has formed the basis and setting for most of the hip hop music recorded in the United States. Rather than establish this virtual city’s credibility to the model of surviving the ghetto, the fictitious Chamber of Commerce’s Web site touts the attributes of its city: ‘‘Politically progressive, culturally diverse and socially concerned, Brooklynati prides itself on having one of the smallest homeless populations in the United States as well as the lowest unemployment rate among major cities . . . . Brooklynati finds itself at the top of the Western World in terms of technology and new energy.’’ Brooklynati, then, combines the best aspects of two major American cities with the amenities of the suburbs, which until fairly recently, have been viewed as distant from hip hop culture, and not a credible locale to claim to represent in one’s music. Rappers have tried to downplay or even hide their suburban upbringings. In 1990–1991, white rapper Vanilla Ice was criticized for claiming, in his official artist biography, to come from a Miami ghetto when he actually grew up in the Dallas suburbs. This history led to Eminem’s emphasis, both in his music and in his partly autobiographical film 8 Mile, on the impoverished neighborhoods of Detroit, where he grew up. In a defining scene from 8 Mile, Eminem’s character B. Rabbit defeats his opponent, Papa Doc, at a rap battle, by revealing that Doc grew up in a stable family and went to a private school, both characteristics associated with life in the suburbs rather than the Detroit ghetto where B. Rabbit grew up. In 2009, however, a suburban background is proving less detrimental, and even beneficial, to the careers of some rappers. Two white rappers, John Brown (from Davis, California) and Asher Roth (from Morrisville, Pennsylvania), eschewed the hood and instead laid claim to America’s suburbs. Brown, the winner of ego trip’s and VH1’s The (White) Rapper Show, claims to be ‘‘king of the burbs,’’ and Asher Roth claims that he’s ‘‘bringing hip hop into the burbs.’’ Wayne Marshall has pointed out that Brown actually resides in Williamsburg, Brooklyn rather than the California suburbs (Gaunt et al. 51), so Brown is actually reversing the typical hip hop narrative of claiming association with a major city, especially one with Brooklyn’s hip hop heritage. Based on the history of hip hop’s reaction against the suburbs (aside from Vanilla Ice’s fake bio, both Run DMC and the Beastie Boys were criticized for taking hip hop to the suburbs in the 1980s), it will be interesting to see how this new breed of suburban rap artist is received in the long run. With this history and the importance of place in mind, Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide traces the spread of hip hop across the United States, with a particular focus on the social contexts that spawned new styles in each region. From the response to Hurricane Katrina by New Orleans rappers to the response to the U.S. annexation of Hawaii by rap artists in Honolulu, the chapters in this twovolume set illuminate local history and the social environments that have inspired unique and innovative hip hop scenes across the United States.

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REFERENCES Abrahams, Roger D. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Adline Publishing Company, 1973. Bennett, Andy. ‘‘Rappin’ on the Tyne: White Hip Hop Culture in Northeast England— an Ethnographic Study.’’ The Sociological Review 1999: 1–24. Brooks, Michael W. Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Bryant, Jerry H. Born in a Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Bullard, Robert D., ed. In Search of the New South: The Black Urban Experience in the 1970s and 1980s. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989. Butler, Paul. ‘‘Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment.’’ Stanford Law Review 56.3 (2004): 963–1016. Bynoe, Yvonne. ‘‘Getting Real about Global Hip Hop.’’ Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 3, no. 1 (2002): 77–84. Carey, Percy, and Ronald Wimberly. Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm. New York: DC Comics, 2007. Carter, Angela. ‘‘Touch and Go: How DJ Jazzy Jeff’s Studio Spawned a Musical Legacy.’’ Two One Five Magazine 1, no. 2 (2008): 15–20. Castleman, Craig. ‘‘The Politics of Graffiti.’’ In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 21–30. New York: Routledge, 2004. Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005. Condry, Ian. Hip Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Dyson, Michael Eric. Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop. New York: Basic Civitas, 2007. Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and HipHop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. The Freshest Kids: A History of the B-Boy. Dir Israel. Image, 2002. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Gaunt, Kyra D. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip Hop. New York: NYU Press, 2006. Gaunt, Kyra, et al. ‘‘Roundtable: VH1’s (White) Rapper Show: Intrusions, Sightlines, and Authority.’’ Journal of Popular Music Studies 20, no. 1: 44–78. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. Hess, Mickey. Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.

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Jenkins, Sasha. ‘‘Graffiti: Graphic Scenes, Spray Fiends, and Millionaires.’’ In Vibe History of Hip-hop, edited by Alan Light, 35–41. New York: Vibe, 1999. Johnson, T. Hasan. ‘‘Outkast.’’ In Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, edited by Mickey Hess, 457–80. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007. Krims, Adam. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Mitchell, Tony, ed. Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the U. S. A. New York: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. ‘‘Philadelphia, Graffiti Capital of the World.’’ New York Times July 25, 1971, 31:3. Reeves, Marcus. ‘‘Regional Scenes.’’ In Vibe History of Hip-Hop, edited by Alan Light, 217–27. New York: Vibe, 1999. Robertson, Robert. ‘‘Glocalization: Time-space and Homogeneity-heterogeneity.’’ In Global Modernities, edited by M. Featherstone, S. Lash, and R. Robertson, 25–44. London: Sage, 1995. Style Wars. Dir. Tony Silver. PBS, 1984. Szwed, John F. ‘‘The Real Old School.’’ In Vibe History of Hip-Hop, edited by Alan Light, 3–11. New York: Vibe, 1999. Wolf, Mike. ‘‘Where’s Hip Hop At? NYC Gave Birth to Hip-Hop Music and Culture —So Why Is it Disappearing from the City’s Clubs?’’ Time Out New York Issue 621: August 23–29, 2007. http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/music/21438/ wheres-hip-hop-at.

FURTHER RESOURCES Alim, H. Samy, Awad Ibrahim, and Alastair Pennycock. Global Linguistic Flows: Hip Hop Cultures, Youth Identities, and the Politics of Language. New York: Routledge, 2008. Alim, H. Samy, and Hi-Tek. ‘‘ ‘The Natti Ain’t No Punk City’: Emic Views of Hip Hop Cultures.’’ Callaloo 29, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 969–990. Baxter, Vern Kenneth, and Peter Marina. ‘‘Cultural Meaning and Hip-Hop Fashion in the African-American Male Youth Subculture of New Orleans.’’ Journal of Youth Studies 11, no. 2 (May 2008): 93–113. Cohen, Judah. ‘‘Hip-hop Judaica: The Politics of Representin’ Heebster Heritage.’’ Popular Music 28, no. 1 (January 2009): 1–18.

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Dennis, Christopher. ‘‘Afro-Colombian Hip-Hop: Globalization, Popular Music and Ethnic Identities.’’ Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 25 (January 2006): 271–295. Durham, Aisha S. ‘‘Behind Beats and Rhymes: Working Class from a Hampton Roads Hip Hop Homeplace.’’ Policy Futures in Education 7, no. 2 (2009): 217–229. Grem, Darren E. ‘‘The South Got Something to Say’’: Atlanta’s Dirty South and the Southernization of Hip-Hop America. Southern Cultures 12, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 55–73. Hammett, Daniel. ‘‘Local Beats to Global Rhythms: Coloured Student Identity and Negotiations of Global Cultural Imports in Cape Town, South Africa.’’ Social & Cultural Geography 10, no. 4 (June 2009): 403–419. Harrison, Anthony Kwame. ‘‘Cheaper than a CD, Plus We Really Mean It: Bay Area Underground Hip Hop Tapes as Subcultural Artifacts.’’ Popular Music 25, no. 2 (May 2006): 283–301. Henderson, April K. ‘‘Dancing Between Islands: Hip Hop and the Samoan Diaspora.’’ In The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, edited by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 180–199. Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006. Hines, Alan. ‘‘Brooklyn’s Mighty Mobile Jocks: Just Across the Bridge, Disco Is on the Move.’’ Discothekin’ June 1976: 14–17. Khabeer, Suad Abdul. ‘‘Rep that Islam.’’ Muslim World 97, no. 1 (Jan. 2007): 125–141. McFarland, Pancho. Chicano Rap: Gender and Violence in the Postindustrial Barrio. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. Munby, Jonathan. ‘‘Signifyin’ Cinema: Rudy Ray Moore and the Quality of Badness.’’ Journal for Cultural Research 11, no. 3 (July 2007): 203–219. O’Hanlon, Renae. ‘‘Australian Hip Hop: A Sociolinguistic Investigation.’’ Australian Journal of Linguistics 26, no. 2 (Oct. 2006): 193–209. Omoniyi, Tope. ‘‘Hip-hop through the World Englishes Lens: A Response to Globalization.’’ World Englishes 25, no. 2 (May 2006): 195–208. Pennycook, Alistair. ‘‘Language, Localization, and the Real: Hip-Hop and the Global Spread of Authenticity.’’ Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 6, no. 2 (2007): 101–115. Plummer, Ronald. ‘‘A Personal View: One of Disco’s Finest Young Deejays Looks Back on his Brooklyn Beginnings.’’ Discothekin’ June 1976: 13. Reiter, Bernd, and Gladys L. Mitchell. ‘‘Embracing Hip Hop As Their Own: Hip Hop and Black Racial Identity in Brazil.’’ Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 27 (January 2008): 151–165. Rivera, Raquel Z. New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003. Santoro, Marco, and Marco Solaroli. ‘‘Authors and Rappers: Italian Hip Hop and the Shifting Boundaries of Canzone d’Autore.’’ Popular Music 26, no. 3 (October 2007): 463–488.

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Schloss, Joseph G. ‘‘Like Old Folk Songs Handed Down from Generation to Generation: History, Canon, and Community in B-boy Culture.’’ Ethnomusicology 50, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 411–432. Spady, James G. ‘‘The Fluoroscope of Brooklyn Hip Hop: Talib Kweli in Conversation.’’ Callaloo 29, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 993–1011. Thompson, Cheryl. ‘‘Standing in the Shadows of America: Afro-Diasporic Oral Culture and the Emancipation of Canadian Hip-Hop.’’ Canadian Theatre Review (Spring 2007): 113–116. —Mickey Hess

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

1958

Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler) is born in Barbados and soon moves with his family to the Bronx.

1959

Brooklyn’s Big John Ashby becomes a mobile DJ who plays records at basement parties.

1964

Cassius Clay, ‘‘The Louisville Lip,’’ fights Sonny Liston. The day before the fight, he taunts his opponent with the rhyming boast, ‘‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,’’ which DMC (of Run DMC) later calls ‘‘the most famous rap lyrics ever’’ (Szwed 10). After Clay defeats Liston, he announces that he is a member of the Nation of Islam and has changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

1965

Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan.

1966

Black Panther Party is founded in Oakland, California. Doug E. Fresh is born in Barbados.

1967

Clive ‘‘Kool Herc’’ Campbell moves from Kingston, Jamaica, to New York City. Philadelphia graffiti artists Cornbread and Cool Earl begin spray-painting their names on public structures in a tall, exaggerated script that is a hallmark of the graffiti style that comes to be associated with hip hop.

1968

The Last Poets form in Marcus Garvey Park in East Harlem, New York City. Their mix of jazz, funk, and poetry has been a major influence on xxxi

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop hip hop, and they are featured vocalists on Common’s 2005 single ‘‘The Corner,’’ produced by Kanye West. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1969

Brooklyn’s Grandmaster Flowers opens for James Brown at Yankee Stadium.

1970

Gil Scott-Heron releases Small Talk at 125th & Lenox, featuring the poem ‘‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.’’ Scott-Heron’s poetry has influenced hip hop, and he appears on the 2002 Blackalicious album Blazing Arrow. Don Campbell invents a new style of dance called ‘‘locking’’ or ‘‘The Campbellock’’ in Los Angeles. Rudy Ray Moore releases the comedy album Eat Out More Often, which features the ‘‘Dolemite Toast.’’ Moore’s combination of X-rated humor with traditional African toasts influenced hip hop’s storytelling. Moore is featured on Big Daddy Kane’s 1990 album Taste of Chocolate and on 2 Live Crew’s Back at Your Ass for the Nine-4. Taki 183, a Greek teenager from Washington Heights, begins spraypainting his nickname and street number as the tag ‘‘Taki 183’’ in subway stations during his train rides to high school in Midtown Manhattan.

1971

The New York Times profiles Uptown Manhattan’s Taki 183 as the man who spawned a New York City graffiti phenomenon. Brooklyn DJ Ras Maboya is invited to perform in London. The New York Times refers to Philadelphia as the ‘‘Graffiti Capital of The World.’’ Los Angeles poet-musicians Watts Prophets release Rappin’ Black in a White World. With their political topics and spoken word performances over jazz music, the group was a forerunner to hip hop.

1973

DJ Kool Herc spins records at his sister’s block party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York. Last Poets member Jalal Nuriddin (AKA Lightnin’ Rod) records the solo album Hustler’s Convention, a major influence on hip hop music. Afrika Bambaataa founds the Universal Zulu Nation on November 12, 1973. Don ‘‘Campbellock’’ Campbell forms The Campbellock Dancers (later shortened to The Lockers), featuring Slim the Robot, Fluky Luke, Greg ‘‘Campbellock Jr.’’ Pope, and Penguin (aka Fred Barry, who would go on to play Rerun on the sitcom What’s Happening).

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1975

10-year-old Ricky Walters, who goes on to record as Slick Rick, moves with his family from South Wimbledon, London, England to the Bronx.

1977

The Rocksteady Crew forms in the Bronx. At the urging of his manager, Russell Simmons, Kurtis Blow moves from Harlem to Simmons’s home borough of Queens, where Simmons begins billing him as ‘‘The Number One Rapper in Queens.’’ Crash Crew forms in Harlem. Grand Wizzard DJ Johnny O begins DJing in Cleveland, Ohio. The Bronx’s DJ Disco Wiz, hip hop’s first Latino DJ (his father was Puerto Rican and his mother Cuban), teams up with Grandmaster Caz to create hip hop’s first mixed plate or dub record.

1978

Lovebug Starski becomes the house DJ at Club Disco Fever in the Bronx. Graffiti writer Angel moves to Chicago from New York and tags in the northwest Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square. He and local tagger Berto (or B-Boy-B) form the Angel Berto Crew (ABC). Roger Clayton and Gid Martin form the DJ crew Unique Dream Entertainment in Los Angeles.

1979

The first rap records are released: • Philadelphia’s rhyming radio DJ Jocko Henderson releases ‘‘Rhythm Talk’’ on Philadelphia International Records. • New York City’s Fatback Band releases ‘‘King Tim III (Personality Jock).’’ • Englewood, New Jersey’s Sylvia Robinson puts together a group called Sugarhill Gang, that records ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ hip hop’s first international hit. • Bronx’s Funky Four Plus One More releases ‘‘Rapping and Rocking the House.’’ • Harlem-born Queens rapper Kurtis Blow releases ‘‘Christmas Rappin’.’’ • Philadelphia’s Lady B releases ‘‘To The Beat, Ya’ll,’’ the first hip hop record by a female artist. • Harlem’s Paulette and Tanya Winley release ‘‘Rhymin’ and Rappin’.’’ • Connecticut native Mr. Magic releases ‘‘Rappin’ with Mr. Magic.’’ St. Louis radio DJ Gentleman Jim Gates is the first DJ to play Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ on the radio.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Lonzo Williams opens Eve’s After Dark club in Compton, California, and forms The World Class Wreckin’ Cru with future N.W.A. members DJ Yella and Dr. Dre. Tony Joseph, a DJ from East Elmhurst, New York, relocates to Los Angeles and introduces New York’s turntable innovations to L.A. DJs. West Coast dance crew the Electric Boogaloos perform on Soul Train, introducing the nation and the world to the West Coast dance style known as popping.

1980

Chicago’s DJ Casper releases ‘‘Casper’s Groovy Ghost Show,’’ the first hip hop record from a Chicago artist. During a campaign rally, Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan says that the landscape of the Bronx reminds him of the destruction he saw in Dresden, Germany, during World War II. The Harlem group The Treacherous Three releases ‘‘The New Rap Language,’’ which debuts a new rhyme style that would become known as speed rap. Harlem’s Crash Crew releases its first single, ‘‘High Power Rap.’’ Seattle’s KFOX 1250 begins airing the West Coast all-rap radio show, Fresh Tracks, produced by DJ Nestor ‘‘Nasty Nes’’ Rodriguez. Spyder D (Duane Hughes) records the song ‘‘Big Apple Rappin’ ’’ with Motown bass player Billy ‘‘Motley’’ Wilson while attending college in the Detroit area. The Atlanta label Shurfine releases ‘‘Space Rap’’ by Danny Renee and the Charisma Crew. This is the first rap record issued by an Atlanta label. Dr. Donda West moves from Atlanta with her three-year-old son Kanye to take a faculty position at Chicago State University. Samoan-American dancer SugaPop brings the East Coast b-boy dance styles of the Rocksteady Crew back to his home in California, introducing West Coast dancers to breaking.

1981

Kool Moe Dee battles Busy Bee at Harlem World in New York City. The Bronx’s Lovebug Starski releases his first single, ‘‘Positive Life.’’ Too $hort sells homemade tapes in the Oakland Coliseum during Oakland Raiders games. Force MCs (later changed to the Force MDs) form in Staten Island.

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Bronx native Afrika Bambaataa releases his first record, ‘‘Zulu Nation Throwdown,’’ produced by Harlem’s Paul Winley. Travis ‘‘Travitron’’ Lee, the godfather of Twin Cities hip hop, moves from Brooklyn to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota. Bond Hill Crew forms in Cincinnati, Ohio. Common, a Chicago MC, cites Bond Hill as a major influence. Common’s cousin was a member of Bond Hill and he used to visit Cincinnati during summers. New York City’s Mean Machine records ‘‘Disco Dreams,’’ one of the first rap records to feature lyrics in Spanish. 1982

Boston’s Michael Jonzun (Michael Johnson) releases the electro 12’’ single ‘‘Pack Jam (Look out for the OVC),’’ a classic hip hop breakbeat record that would become particularly influential on the Miami Bass Sound. Afrika Islam’s ‘‘Zulu Beats,’’ an all-hip hop mix show, debuts on New Jersey’s WHBI. Bronx’s Kool DJ AJ releases the single ‘‘Ah, That’s the Joint.’’ Mexican-American Kid Frost (Arturo Molina Jr.) begins his rap career in Los Angeles.

1983

Queens group Run DMC signs to Profile Records. DJ Kut begins playing house parties in and around the Peabody Projects in St. Louis. Boston’s Kevin Fleetwood and the Cadillacs release ‘‘Sweat it Off,’’ the first hip hop single from a Boston artist. The hip hop film Wild Style premiers in Boston. Two of the film’s stars, Pink (Sandra Fabara) and Heart (Gloria Williams) come to town to promote the film. Ice-T, who had moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, records ‘‘The Coldest Rap’’ b/w ‘‘Cold Wind Madness’’ with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. This is the first hip hop record produced in Minnesota. Connecticut transplant Mr. Magic launches his Friday and Saturday night radio show, Rap Attack, in New York City. The PBS documentary Style Wars chronicles subway graffiti in New York City.

1984

Philadelphia’s Schoolly D releases his first record, ‘‘Maniac’’ b/w ‘‘Gangster Boogie’’ on his own Schoolly D Records. Queens rap pioneer Davy DMX releases ‘‘One for the Treble.’’

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Atlanta’s Mo-Jo releases ‘‘Jump, Stomp, and Twist.’’ Miami’s first independent rap label, 4-Sight Records, releases its first record, ‘‘Beef Box’’ by Ervin ‘‘M.C. Chief’’ German (featuring Sexy Lady). Members of the Bronx and Harlem’s Rock Steady Crew perform at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons form Def Jam Records, initially selling records out of Rubin’s dorm room at New York University. Def Jam Records releases its first single, ‘‘It’s Yours’’ by the Bronx’s T La Rock, featuring the South Carolina-born Jazzy Jay. Brooklyn native Uncle Ralph McDaniels launches Video Music Box, the first television show to focus primarily on hip hop, on New York’s WNYC-TV. Travitron begins hosting KMOJ’s ‘‘The Hip Hop Shop,’’ the Twin Cities’ first hip hop radio show. Kevvy Kev debuts the first Bay Area hip hop show on Stanford’s KZSU. Sir Mix-A-Lot begins hosting Friday night dances at the Boys and Girls Club in Seattle’s Central District. California-based 2 Live Crew releases a single, ‘‘Revelation,’’ which sells well in Florida and leads to the group’s relocation to Miami in 1986.

1985

Chicago’s MC Sugar Rae Dinky releases ‘‘Cabrini Green Rap,’’ which chronicles life in one of the city’s most dangerous housing projects. Queens rapper LL Cool J releases his debut album, Radio. Elizabeth and Plainfield, New Jersey’s Word of Mouth releases ‘‘King Kut,’’ featuring the turntablism of DJ Cheese. MC Shy D, from Atlanta by way of the Bronx, releases ‘‘Rapp will Never Die’’ on Miami’s 4-Sight Records. Philadelphia’s MC Breeze releases ‘‘Discombobulatorlator,’’ the first rap song to be banned from the radio. The hip hop phenomenon of answer records begins with 14-year-old Queensbridge rapper Roxanne Shante’s ‘‘Roxanne’s Revenge,’’ a response to the Brooklyn group U.T.F.O’s song, ‘‘Roxanne, Roxanne.’’ The exchange between these two artists would spawn, by some estimates, over 100 answer records.

Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

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Miami’s Gigolo Tony and Lacey Lace enter the Roxanne Wars with their record, ‘‘The Parents of Roxanne.’’ 1986

The Bronx’s Jazzy Joyce, one of the earliest female turntablists, releases her debut single, ‘‘It’s My Beat,’’ a collaboration with Sweet T. MC Shan releases ‘‘The Bridge,’’ which ignites the Bridge Wars, conducted via a series of dis records between the Bronx’s Boogie Down Productions and Queens’s Juice Crew. Harlem’s Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew release their debut album Oh, My God! Philadelphia’s DJ Jazzy Jeff wins New Music Seminar DJ Battle for World Supremacy. Fort Greene, Brooklyn’s Just-Ice releases Back to the Old School. Seattle’s Sir Mix-A-Lot releases ‘‘Square Dance Rap,’’ which sees radio play in Great Britain. Geto Boys form in Houston. J. Prince founds Rap-A-Lot Records in Houston. Houston’s Real Chill releases the single, ‘‘Rockin It.’’ Luther Campbell (aka Luke Skyywalker, Luke, and Uncle Luke) founds Skyywalker Records in Miami. 2 Live Crew relocates from Riverside, California, to Miami and adds new members Luther Campbell (from Miami) and Brother Marquis (born in Rochester, New York) to their roster of Californian Mr. Mixx and Fresh Kid Ice, born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Brooklyn. Detroit’s Most Wanted begin performing in Michigan. Kurupt leaves Philadelphia, relocates to Los Angeles, and meets Snoop Dogg. Newark, New Jersey’s MC Hassan and DJ 7-11 release ‘‘Livin’ in the City,’’ an ode to the music scene of their hometown. Run DMC collaborates with rock group Aerosmith in a remake of its 1975 hit ‘‘Walk this Way.’’ New York group The Show Boys releases ‘‘Drag Rap,’’ which would go on to form the backbone of the New Orleans rap subgenre called bounce, which heavily samples the Show Boys’ ‘‘triggaman beat.’’

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Afeni Shakur moves her family from Brooklyn to Baltimore, Maryland, where her son Tupac attends the Baltimore School for Performing Arts and meets classmate Jada Pinkett.

1987

Long Island’s Public Enemy releases Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Ice T’s ‘‘Six N The Morning,’’ launches Los Angeles gangsta rap. Boogie Down Productions releases its debut album, Criminal Minded. Founding member DJ Scott La Rock is killed in the Bronx. Guru founds Gang Starr in Boston. Brooklyn’s Audio Two releases ‘‘Top Billin’,’’ which would become one of hip hop’s most sampled songs. Artists ranging from Queens’s 50 Cent to Mobile, Alabama’s Rich Boy, to Berlin, Germany’s Harris have sampled or reworked portions of this song in their music. Newark, New Jersey’s Queen Latifah releases her first single, ‘‘Princess of the Posse.’’ Philadelphia’s Tuff Crew collaborates with Camden, New Jersey’s Krown Rulers to make the album PH.A.N.J.A.M. (PHiladelphia And New Jersey All-star MCs), which features production work by Ced Gee and Kool Keith, members of the Bronx group Ultramagnetic MCs. Oakland group Digital Underground’s ‘‘Underwater Rimes’’ hits #1 in the Netherlands. Philadelphia’s Money B moves to Oakland and joins Digital Underground. Long Island’s Eric B. & Rakim release Paid in Full. Samoan-American brothers Paul, Ted, Donald, Roscoe, Danny, and David Devoux (later known as Boo-Yaa Tribe) leave South Bay, Los Angeles to perform rap music in front of audiences in Japan.

1988

Long Island’s Public Enemy releases It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back. Philadelphia’s DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince win the first Grammy award presented to a rap artist. N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton is released. Bronx group Ultramagnetic MCs releases Critical Beatdown. Das EFX forms at Virginia State University when Skoob (from Brooklyn) and Krazy Drayzy (from Teaneck, New Jersey) meet at college.

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Orlando, Florida’s DJ Magic Mike collaborates with Miami’s Beat Master Clay D on ‘‘Rock the House,’’ a single that features beatboxing by Queens native Prince Raheim, who had moved to Miami in the early 1980s. Detroit’s Prince Vince releases ‘‘Gangster Funk’’ on Mercury Records. Detroit’s Awesome Dre & the Hardcore Committee release a debut album on Priority Records. Camden, New Jersey’s Krown Rulers release their debut album, Paper Chase. Tupac Shakur moves with his family from Baltimore to Marin City, California. Brooklyn’s MC Lyte releases her debut album Lyte as a Rock. Two Harvard students, Dave Mays and John Schecter, begin printing The Source. MC Shy D releases ‘‘Atlanta, That’s Where I Stay,’’ the first rap single to celebrate living in Atlanta. Harlem’s Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock release ‘‘It Takes Two.’’ The Samoan-American Devoux brothers take on the name Boo-Yaa Tribe and return from Japan to Los Angeles. 1989

Bronx duo Nice & Smooth release their self-titled debut album. Long Island’s De La Soul releases its debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising. Brooklyn’s Big Daddy Kane includes a live version of ‘‘The Wrath of Kane,’’ performed at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, on his album, It’s a Big Daddy Thing. Guru moves from Boston to New York. Houston-born DJ Premier joins Gang Starr. Brand Nubian forms in New Rochelle, New York. Dutch group Urban Dance Squad sees airplay on MTV and on U.S. radio with its debut album Mental Floss for the Globe and the single ‘‘A Deeper Shade of Soul.’’ Urban Dance Squad’s music is a fusion of rap and rock. Houston’s Geto Boys release Grip It! On That Other Level, which is later picked up and reissued by Rick Rubin’s Def American label.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Newark, New Jersey’s Queen Latifah releases ‘‘Ladies First,’’ featuring British rapper Monie Love. Atlanta group Success-N-Effect’s debut album, In the Hood, sells more than half a million copies. Cleveland’s Bango the B-Boy Outlaw releases a single, ‘‘Big Bango Theory,’’ on Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate Records. Cleveland’s Brothers 4 the Struggle release the single, ‘‘Ready Rocks,’’ which sees nationwide airplay. Cuban-American Mellow Man Ace releases ‘‘Mentirosa,’’ a landmark single in Latin rap.

1990

Bronx’s Lord Finesse and DJ Mike Smooth release Funky Technician. Master P founds No Limit Records in New Orleans. Queens group A Tribe Called Quest releases its debut album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Professor Griff, having left the Long Island group Public Enemy in the wake of controversy over his anti-Semitic comments, signs to Luther Campbell’s Miami-based Skyywalker Records. Ice Cube works with New York’s Bomb Squad to produce his first solo album, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Long Island’s Public Enemy release Fear of a Black Planet. Detroit’s Kid Rock releases his debut album, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast, on Jive Records. Atlanta’s Kilo releases ‘‘America Has a Problem . . . Cocaine,’’ which sells around 40,000 copies nationwide. Cincinnati’s Ronnie Ron scores a regional hit with his single ‘‘When Da Hum Plays.’’ Trenton, New Jersey’s Poor Righteous Teachers release ‘‘Rock Dis Funky Joint.’’ The music video features the group rhyming underneath the ‘‘Trenton Makes’’ bridge. 2 Live Crew’s 1989 album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be, is declared legally obscene by Judge Mel Grossman in Broward County, Florida. San Jose’s Peanut Butter Wolf and Charizma meet and begin recording together.

1991

Brian ‘‘Baby’’ Williams founds Cash Money Records in New Orleans. Queens group Organized Konfusion releases a self-titled debut album.

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Miami’s 2 Live Crew releases Live In Concert, the first live rap album in history. Chicago’s Tung Twista (now Twista) releases his first album Runnin’ Off at Da Mouth. Boston’s Ed O.G. and Da Bulldogs release their debut album Life of a Kid in the Ghetto, and the national hit single ‘‘I Got to Have It.’’ The Micranots form in Minneapolis. Jibri Wise One becomes Cincinnati’s first rap artist to reach Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart, with his first single, ‘‘The House the Dog Built.’’ Flint, Michigan’s MC Breed’s ‘‘Ain’t No Future in Your Frontin’ ’’ becomes a national hit. Memphis’s Gangsta Pat releases his debut album, #1 Suspect. Dr. Dre and Suge Knight found Death Row Records in Los Angeles. Bronx artist Tim Dog releases ‘‘Fuck Compton,’’ which initiates a series of East Coast/West Coast dis records. Staten Island’s UMCs release their debut album, Fruits of Nature. 1992

The Bronx’s Diamond and the Pyschotic Neurotics release Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop. Compton’s Tweedy Bird Loc releases ‘‘Fuck the South Bronx/This Is Compton.’’ Atlanta’s Arrested Development releases the countrified single ‘‘Tennessee.’’ The group is led by Todd ‘‘Speech’’ Thomas, a Milwaukee native who spent summers with his grandmother in rural Tennessee. Atlanta’s Success-N-Effect releases the single ‘‘The Ultimate DriveBy,’’ in which the song’s narrator fantasizes about killing President George Bush. Virginia’s The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) produce SWV’s single, ‘‘Love Will Be Right Here.’’ Port Arthur, Texas’s UGK releases its debut album, The Southern Way, on Big Tyme Records. Ice Cube concert ends in a riot at downtown Minneapolis’s First Avenue club. Newark’s Redman releases his debut album, Whut? Thee Album. Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Litefoot releases The Money E.P. Litefoot claims to be the first Native American to perform rap music.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

1993

Minneapolis’s Rhymesayers releases Headshots, Volume One. Queens group Onyx releases a debut album, Bacdafucup, featuring production from Run DMC’s Jam Master Jay. Memphis’s Eightball and MJG release Comin’ Out Hard on Houston’s Suave label. Atlanta’s Outkast releases its first single, ‘‘Player’s Ball,’’ a tribute to Atlanta’s black youth culture. The song spends six weeks at the top of the Billboard rap charts. Japanese MCs Scha Dara Parr and Takagi Kan are featured on De La Soul’s ‘‘Long Island Wildin’,’’ marking the first appearance of Japanese rap on a song by a U.S. group. Newark’s Lords of the Underground release their debut album Here Come the Lords. Tha Alkaholiks release the group’s debut album 21 and Over. This L.A. -based group consists of E-Swift (from Toledo, Ohio), Tash (from Columbus, Ohio), and J-Ro (from Pacoima, California). Philadelphia’s The Roots releases its debut album Organix. Brooklyn’s Black Moon releases its debut album Enta Da Stage. Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan releases Enter the 36 Chambers, bringing mainstream attention to NYC’s forgotten borough. Detroit’s The Boss releases Born Gangstaz. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic goes platinum. On songs from the album, Dre disses his former N.W.A. bandmate Eazy-E, as well as Bronx artist Tim Dog and Miami’s Luke. Miami’s Luke releases ‘‘Cowards in Compton,’’ a response to Dr. Dre’s ‘‘Dre Day.’’ Brooklyn’s Masta Ace records Slaughtahouse for the L.A. label Delicious Vinyl. Digable Planets debuts as one of the first rap groups since 2 Live Crew to be made up of musicians from multiple cities. Although the group is based in Brooklyn, it is made up of Seattle’s Butterly, Philadelphia’s Doodlebug and King Britt, and Ladybug Mecca, from Washington, D.C. Sudden Rush, originator of Hawaiian hip hop, begins performing as a group.

Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

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Philadelphia-based hip hop music video show, Urban X-pressions, first airs on WGTW TV 48. Bronx rapper Fat Joe releases his debut album Represent. Charizma, from the San Jose suburb of Milpitas, is shot and killed in a mugging. Los Angeles’s Funkdoobiest releases its debut album Which Doobie U B? The three members are Son Doobie (a Puerto Rican MC), DJ Ralph M (a Chicano DJ), and Tomahawk Funk (a Lakota Nation MC). 1994

Chicago’s Common Sense (now Common) releases his breakout sophomore album Resurrection and the single ‘‘I Used to Love H.E.R.,’’ which laments that hip hop has strayed from its roots. Brooklyn MCs Masta Ace, Buckshot, and Special Ed form the supergroup Crooklyn Dodgers for the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s film Crooklyn. Cleveland’s Bone Thugs-N-Harmony releases Creepin on ah Come Up on Eazy-E’s L.A.-based Ruthless Records. Phoenix’s WithOut Rezervation, a Native American group, releases Are You Ready for W.O.R.? Bronx-born Raul ‘‘DJ Raw’’ Medina, Jr., who had moved to Miami at the age of 11, stages the first Hoodstock, a free, all-day hip hop festival in Miami’s Roberto Clemente Park. Ted Lucas founds Slip-N-Slide Records in Miami. The Atlanta rap duo Outkast releases its debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. The Source’s November issue devotes a large section to the Atlanta hip hop scene, with articles on Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin, OutKast, and the Organized Noize production team. Too $hort relocates from East Oakland to Atlanta. Micranots relocate from Minneapolis to Atlanta.

1995

L.A.’s Snoop Dogg and Atlanta’s Outkast are booed at the Source Awards in New York City. Outkast wins best new artist, and states, ‘‘The South got somethin’ to say.’’ L.A. rappers Tha Dogg Pound are fired upon as they record a video for ‘‘New York, New York’’ in NYC. Bronx rapper Nine releases his debut album Nine Livez.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop The Bronx’s Camp Lo releases its debut album, Uptown Saturday Night. Harlem’s Big L releases his debut album LifestylE-Z ov da Poor and Dangerous. Memphis’s Three 6 Mafia releases Mystic Stylez. Atlanta’s Goodie Mob releases its debut album, Soul Food, which sells 500,000 copies. Bay Area rap artists Del the Funky Homosapien, Souls of Mischief, and Casual found Hieroglyphics Imperium Recordings, which would become one of hip hop’s strongest independent labels.

1996

San Jose’s Peanut Butter Wolf founds Stones Throw Records in Los Angeles. Six Western Kentucky University students form the group Nappy Roots in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The group consists of Fishscales from Milledgeville, Georgia, R. Prophet from Oakland, California, and Skinny DeVille, Ron Clutch, Big V, and B. Stille from Kentucky. Willie D, formerly of the Geto Boys, begins hosting a radio show, Reality Check, in Houston. Tupac Shakur is shot several times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. He dies seven days later. Many fans still attribute his murder to the East Coast vs. West Coast wars. Cincinnati’s Kenny P releases the Unfadeable mixtape. Washington, D.C.’s Nonchalant reaches #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 with her single, ‘‘5 O’Clock.’’ Detroit’s Eminem releases his first full-length record, Infinite. Virginians Timbaland and Missy Elliot write and produce ‘‘If Your Girl Only Knew,’’ a top 10 hit for Aaliyah.

1997

Virginia’s Missy Elliott releases her first solo album, Supa Dupa Fly. Miami’s Trick Daddy Dollars (he would later drop ‘‘Dollars’’ from his name) releases his debut album, Based on a True Story. Six months after his rival Tupac was murdered in Las Vegas, the Notorious B.I.G. is shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in California. DJ Charlie Chan and Luq begin hosting freestyle battle nights at the Hi Pointe Cafe´ in Saint Louis. Michael ‘‘5000’’ Watts, a Northside Houston native, founds the Swisha House record label.

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San Diego’s Lil Rob releases his debut album Crazy Life. 1998

Cash Money Records CEO Brian ‘‘Baby’’ Williams signs a $30 million pressing and distribution contract with Universal. Cash Money artist Juvenile releases the albums Solja Rags and 400 Degreez. Dr. Dre signs Detroit’s Eminem to his Aftermath label. Phonte, Big Pooh, and 9th Wonder form the group Little Brother at North Carolina Central University in Durham. Fat Pat is shot to death in Houston. South Bronx’s Big Pun, a Puerto Rican rapper, releases his debut album Capital Punishment.

1999

Providence, Rhode Island’s Sage Francis releases the mixtape Sick of Waiting . . . . Pontiac, Michigan’s Binary Star releases Waterworld. B.G. releases the hit song ‘‘Bling-Bling,’’ which brings a piece of New Orleans slang into the mainstream. Big L is shot to death in Harlem. East Orange, New Jersey’s Lauryn Hill is nominated for 10 Grammy awards for her debut solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Too $hort collaborates with several Southern rappers on his eleventh album, Can’t Stay Away. France’s MC Solaar guest stars on Missy Elliot’s ‘‘All N My Grill.’’ Kansas City, Missouri’s Tech N9ne releases his debut album The Calm Before the Storm.

2000

Jay-Z collaborates with Texas rappers UGK and Virginia producer Timbaland on his single ‘‘Big Pimpin’.’’ Nelly puts St. Louis on the hip hop map when his debut album, Country Grammar, hits # 1 on the Billboard chart. Outkast’s album Stankonia sells five million copies and is the first allrap record nominated for the ‘‘Album of the Year’’ award at the Grammys. Houston’s DJ Screw, who pioneered the Screwed production style, dies of a heart attack attributed to his abuse of promethazine, a drug closely associated with Screwed music.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Jackson, Mississippi’s David Banner releases his debut album Them Firewater Boyz Vol. 1. South Bronx’s Big Pun dies of respiratory failure in New York at the age of 28.

2001

Kahokule’a ‘‘Hoku’’ Haiku founds Ill Valley Productions in Hawaii. The group mixes pidgin with local dialects in songs like ‘‘Old School Toyota.’’ Lexington, Kentucky’s CunninLynguists release their debut album Will Rap for Food. Nas releases ‘‘Da Bridge 2001,’’ featuring Queens all-stars Marley Marl, MC Shan, Tragedy, Cormega, Millenium Thug, Nature, and Mobb Deep. The song is a tribute to the original Queens anthem, MC Shan’s 1986 single, ‘‘The Bridge.’’ Kanye West moves from Chicago to Hoboken, New Jersey, in order to be close to the production scene in New York City. Milwaukee’s Stricklin guest stars on Masta Ace’s Disposable Arts.

2002

Kentucky’s Nappy Roots release their debut album Watermelon, Chicken, and Gritz. Kentucky Governor Paul Patton declares September 16, 2002 ‘‘Nappy Roots Day.’’ Philadelphia DJs Diplo and Low Budget form the group Hollertronix and begin playing parties at a Ukrainian social club in North Philadelphia. Chicago’s Kanye West is severely injured in a car crash in L.A. Louisville’s Code Red releases a debut album featuring Brooklyn’s Masta Ace and Bronx MCs Whipper Whip, Grandmaster Caz, and C-Rayz Walz. Houston’s Color Changin’ Click wins The Source’s award for best independent album for Get Ya Mind Correct. Prophetix releases the debut album High Risk. The group consists of Eddie Meeks from Decatur, Georgia, Mello Melanin from Memphis, Tennessee, and Jon Doe from Glasgow, Kentucky. Run DMC’s Jam Master Jay is shot and killed in Queens.

2003

Bronx rapper C-Rayz Walz releases Ravipops (The Substance). Queens rapper 50 Cent releases Get Rich or Die Tryin’.

Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

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RZA, mastermind behind the Staten Island supergroup Wu-Tang Clan, releases The World According to RZA, an album that features rappers from France, Germany, Sweden, and other countries around the world. Harlem’s The Diplomats releases its first group album, Diplomatic Immunity. Brooklyn’s Jay-Z releases The Black Album, which features producers from around the country: Durham, North Carolina’s 9th Wonder; Chicago’s Kanye West; Paterson, New Jersey’s Just Blaze, Virginia’s The Neptunes and Timbaland; Detroit’s Eminem; Compton, California’s DJ Quik; and Long Island’s Rick Rubin. Kansas City, Missouri’s Mac Lethal releases his debut album Men Are from Mars. Pornstars Are from Earth. 2004

Danger Mouse, a DJ originally from White Plains, New York, who had spent years working in Athens, Georgia, before living in England in 2004, releases The Grey Album, a mashup of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ The White Album. Durham, North Carolina’s Phonte collaborates with Dutch producer Nicolay to form the group Foreign Exchange, whose first album, Connected, was made by sending beats and vocals back and forth via email and instant messenger. Chicago’s Kanye West releases The College Dropout. L.A.’s Snoop Dogg recruits Virginia’s The Neptunes to produce several tracks for his album R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece. Virginia’s Pharrell and L.A.’s Snoop Dogg collaborate on ‘‘Drop It Like It’s Hot.’’ Norfolk, Virginia’s Clipse forms the group Re-Up Gang, joining forces with Philadelphia MCs Ab-Liva and Sandman. Boston DJ Clinton Sparks records Re-Up’s first mixtape, We Got it 4 Cheap: Volume 1. RA Scion and Sabzi begin recording together in Seattle. They go on to form the group Common Market. RA Scion (Ryan Abeo) was born in Louisville in 1974, and lived abroad in Greece and Zambia before moving to Seattle. Brooklyn’s Masta Ace and Boston’s Edo G team up to make an album, Make Some Noise. Dutch producer Nicolay and Houston rapper Kay meet on the Web site www.okayplayer.com and begin collaborating on songs via the Internet.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Bay Area rapper Mac Dre is killed in a drive-by shooting in Kansas City, Missouri. Stones Throw Records releases The Third Unheard: Connecticut Hip Hop, 1979–1983, a compilation of fourteen tracks from old-school Connecticut rappers. Omaha, Nebraska’s Mars Black releases his debut album Folks Music. Nashville’s Young Buck releases his debut album Straight Outta Cashville.

2005

Hurricane Katrina displaces New Orleans rappers to other cities across the country, spreading New Orleans influence. Memphis’s Three 6 Mafia beats fellow Tennessean Dolly Parton to win a Grammy for their song ‘‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’’ from the Hustle and Flow soundtrack. Brooklyn’s Buckshot and Raleigh-Durham’s 9th Wonder release their debut collaboration, Chemistry. London-born Sri Lankan artist M.I.A. is denied entry to the United States to work with Virginian producer Timbaland on her second album, Kala. Tallahassee, Florida’s T-Pain releases his debut abum Rappa Ternt Sanga.

2005– 2006

New Orleans rappers respond to Katrina: Lil Wayne releases ‘‘Georgia (Bush),’’ a song that criticizes President George W. Bush for his lack of action to help the city of New Orleans. Juvenile, who lost his home in the hurricane, releases the video for ‘‘What’s Happenin.’’ The video depicts the destruction of New Orleans neighborhoods and the lack of reaction from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who are portrayed in the video as uncaring politicians.

2006

Miami’s Rick Ross releases his debut album, Port of Miami. Queens rapper Nas angers some Southern rappers with his album title Hip Hop Is Dead. Atlanta’s Ludacris appears on stage wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘‘Hip Hop Ain’t Dead. It Lives in the South.’’ Houston’s Big HAWK is shot to death in his hometown, eight years after his brother Fat Pat was murdered. Atlanta rapper T.I. and his entourage are involved in an altercation after a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio. T.I.’s assistant and childhood friend Philant Johnson is shot and killed.

Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

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Washington, D.C.’s Tabi Bonney, born in West Africa, releases his first hit single, ‘‘The Pocket.’’ Dutch MC Jerome XL records ‘‘The Power of Speech’’ with Queens MC Craig G. Ann Arbor, Michigan’s Tadd ‘‘Dabrye’’ Mullinix releases his debut album Two/Three. Princeton University hosts a hip hop symposium, featuring Princeton professor Cornel West, rapper Talib Kweli, and U.S. Representative Maxine Waters. Dutch hip hop producer Nicolay moves from Utrecht, The Netherlands, to Wilmington, North Carolina. Mac Lethal founds Black Clover Records in Kansas City, Missouri. 2007

New York state officials declare 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx as ‘‘The Birthplace of Hip Hop.’’ The Bronx’s KRS-One and Queens’s Marley Marl bury the Bridge Wars hatchet and join forces to make Hip Hop Lives. DJ Khaled releases ‘‘We Takin Over,’’ a nationwide posse cut featuring DJ Khaled and Rick Ross from Miami, Akon from New Jersey, T.I. from Atlanta, and Lil Wayne and Birdman from New Orleans. Mobile, Alabama’s Rich Boy releases his self-titled debut album. Chicago artists Kid Sister and The Cool Kids launch a new wave of Chicago hip hop. Houston’s Pimp C, of UGK, dies of sleep apnea complications attributed to his abuse of promethazine. Trenton, New Jersey’s Wise Intelligent, of the 1990s group Poor Righteous Teachers, releases The Talented Timothy Taylor, the first of a series of new solo albums. Wise Intelligent founds Intelligent Kidz, an after-school tutoring program for children in the Trenton school system.

2008

Brooklyn’s Killah Priest and Philadelphia’s Chief Kamachi team up to make an album, Beautiful Minds. Columbus, Ohio’s Camu Tao dies of lung cancer at 30 years of age. The Snow Goons (German producers) release Black Snow, featuring American rap artists from Philadelphia, North Carolina, Brooklyn, and Boston.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop New York Governor David Paterson pardons Bronx rapper Slick Rick, who had been facing deportation to his native United Kingdom since 2002. Flint, Michigan’s MC Breed dies of kidney failure in Michigan, having recorded his last song, ‘‘Everyday I Wait,’’ two days before his death. Morrisville, Pennsylvania’s Asher Roth releases The Greenhouse Effect, Volume 1, a mixtape produced by Don Cannon and DJ Drama, who moved from Philadelphia to Atlanta to form the production team The Aphilliates. Louisville’s Static Major dies during a surgical procedure in his hometown. Lil Wayne’s ‘‘Lollipop,’’ the last song on which Static Major performed, reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Cleveland, Ohio’s Kid Cudi releases the acclaimed mixtape A Kid Named Cudi.

2009

Washington D.C.’s Wale—a second-generation Nigerian-American, releases Back to the Feature, a mixtape with production from North Carolina’s 9th Wonder. Tanya Morgan, a group with members from Brooklyn and Cincinnati, releases Brooklynati, and develops a Web site touting the virtual city of Brooklynati. Bronx organizations The Point CDC and City Lore present ‘‘Bring Out the Sound System: The West Indian Roots of Hip Hop,’’ featuring Kool Herc, Kool DJ Red Alert, and Ralph McDaniels. East St. Louis’ Scripts and Screwz see MTVU airplay for their video, ‘‘Brick.’’

—Mickey Hess

CHAPTER 1 Hip Cats in the Cradle of Rap: Hip Hop in the Bronx David Diallo Rap historians generally consider that, before 1979, hip hop was a local phenomenon that had spread out geographically in poor neighborhoods around New York City, in particular Harlem and the Bronx. Journalist Alex Ogg remarks that rap music, in its early stages, was party music for impoverished people (7). Jefferson Morley, who similarly underscores hip hop’s localized origins, specifies that when the movement started, it was strictly limited to some of New York’s black neighborhoods (qtd. in Stanley 5). When Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 song ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ widely regarded as the first nationwide rap single, gained popularity, rap music had long been flourishing in New York’s disadvantaged districts and had already developed into an influential cultural and commercial phenomenon. It had principally been burgeoning in the Bronx, a borough which has held an unfaltering legendary status in the hip hop community ever since.

THE BOROUGH THAT SPAWNED HIP HOP: SOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE BRONX In his 1994 book The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture, and Attitudes of Hip-Hop, S. H. Fernando talks about the difficulty to put into words the poverty that afflicted the geographical and sociocultural matrix that spawned rap music and hip hop. He points out the problems one may have describing the Bronx without falling back on cliche´s and presents a list of the most common names that were given to this borough in the early 1970s; names such as ‘‘America’s worst slum,’’ ‘‘the city of despair,’’ ‘‘ghetto of the ghettoes,’’ ‘‘the stain,’’ ‘‘the cancer.’’ To make his point, Fernando relates that during a campaign rally in 1980, Ronald Reagan compared the Bronx to Dresden, the German town that was destroyed almost completely by allied bombs during WWII. Later on, he puts the finishing touches to his depiction of the Bronx in revealing that many of the residents of the South Bronx, the 35 km area located in the south of the borough, where DJ Grandmaster Flash 1

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used to scavenge junkyards for the inoperative appliances that he needed to build his own sound system, simply refer to it as ‘‘Vietnam’’ (Fernando 31). The structural forces responsible for the difficult living conditions and the urban decay which characterized the Bronx at that time (and other sites of relegation to be found in American large urban centers) have been brought to light by many urban ethnographers and social scientists. Several studies have exposed the extent to which the policy of social disengagement instigated by the Nixon administration —a policy which was reinforced under Ronald Reagan’s presidency (with a Republican government and a predominantly Democrat Congress)—resulted in severe reductions of welfare programs which, allegedly, promoted inactivity. The ideologists who initiated this neo-liberal bend firmly believed that a federal disengagement from social affairs represented a solution to social pathologies that were affecting a large segment of the urban population living in postindustrial America. According to Losing Ground, a book written by Charles Murray—the mastermind of the politics of the Reagan Administration on welfare—and to The Bell Curve, a book co-written by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, a liberal policy towards the poor was supposedly rewarding inactivity and leading to moral degeneration, and was responsible for the increase of poverty in the United States and was the ultimate factor for the predicaments of modern societies, especially urban violence. Berkeley sociologist Loı¨c Wacquant considers this disengagement as one of the main reasons for the shift from communal ghettoes to what he calls, together with William Julius Wilson, ‘‘hyperghettoes’’ (Wacquant and Wilson 32–33). According to Wacquant, the combined political effort to neglect such neighborhoods through measures undermining public programs and drastic cuts in budgets aimed at helping their residents led to a ‘‘systematic destruction’’ of ghettoes, turning them into urban purgatories fitting the evocative descriptions of the Bronx presented by S. H. Fernando (267) and those presented in 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s, Gary Weis’ 1979 documentary about street life in the South Bronx. The appalling situation faced by Bronx residents in the early 1970s has been portrayed in numerous cultural expressions. Some of Donald Goines’ pulp fictions set in New York, like Never Die Alone for instance, offer credible representations of the poverty and the violence which characterized the city’s most impoverished quarters. They realistically reveal the depacification of everyday life and the overpowering mood of violence and fear caused by the dereliction of neighborhood infrastructure, high rates of violent crimes, and the gradual desertion of middleclass households (and values). The film industry also provided several descriptions of the Bronx from the early 1970s which, regardless of their stereotypical characters, managed to give a feel of its decrepitude. Films such as Enzo G. Castellari’s Bronx Warriors (1982), Daniel Petrie’s Fort Apache: The Bronx (1981), and a multitude of vigilante movies like Dirty Harry (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), or Death Wish (1974), highlighted the primal violence of the streets and caricatured the Bronx (or Harlem for that matter) as an urban jungle. The theatrical poster for Fort Apache: The Bronx for instance, advertised the Bronx in these

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terms: ‘‘15 minutes from Manhattan there’s a place where even the cops fear to tread.’’ Such films, in spite of the questionable ideological messages that they conveyed, exposed how the combined deficiency of labor demand, institutional desertification, and failings of welfare support were nurturing the growth of an informal economy led by the drug trade and by other criminal activities run by juvenile street gangs. This fearsome reputation of hip hop’s home is acknowledged by journalist David Toop in his groundbreaking history of rap music. On the one hand, Toop notes that the Bronx’s grim project housing and burnt-out buildings had little of the political and cultural resonance of neighboring Harlem. He nonetheless remarks that it was within the Bronx (and to a lesser extent Harlem) that ghetto youths developed hip hop as an alternative to street gang warfare to dominate and divide neighborhoods north of Central Park (Toop 12).

THE BOOGIE DOWN BRONX In spite of the harshness of its living conditions and of the realistically bleak descriptions of its streets abounding in the works of many urban ethnographers, the Bronx drew a mythical aura from the various expressive forms that it spawned in the early 1970s. Dubbed the Boogie Down Bronx because of the musical effervescence that characterized its musical scene, the Bronx became, at that time, the melting pot of vanguard mixes that rocked heterogeneous crowds at improvised block parties organized in parks, on street corners, or in community centers. As Gerald Maze Alicea, a 32-year-old resident of Longwood Avenue recalls, there was no escape from the hip hop community if you were from the Bronx; block parties were all over the borough (qtd in Jacobs). Those parties, which brought together an assorted ensemble of ghetto dwellers, were especially appreciated by a mixed crowd of hustlers and partygoers (Williams 30). In a conversation concerning the early days of hip hop in the Bronx, pioneers Afrika Islam and Grandmaster Caz confirm that rap music became popular in a downtown, bourgeois type of hustler crowd (Eure and Spady xxvii). Some of these parties, according to the main actors, would start spontaneously in a park or on a street corner, at times clandestinely. Many historical accounts describe how the first hip hop DJs illegally plugged their equipment into the power source for the neighborhood streetlights. In Nation Conscious Rap, for instance, Grandmaster Caz details the procedure of setting up a jam in the park. He explains that, drawing their inspiration from the open-air parties performed by radio stations on flatbed trucks, groups of youngsters would spontaneously bring their equipment out in parks, schoolyards, or street corners, generally on Fridays and Saturdays, and illegally tap the city’s power to get parties going (Eure and Spady xiv) These block parties drew their inspiration, under the notable impulsion of DJ Kool Herc (born Clive Campbell on April 16, 1966), from Jamaican sound systems. Herc, who had emigrated from Jamaica at the age of 12, had the idea to transplant to the Bronx the basic principle of the mobile sound systems of his home

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Kool Herc (Chip East/Reuters/Corbis)

island. Sound systems, extremely popular in Jamaica, consisted in setting up massive speakers in the back of a truck to play proto-reggae music all around the island. This Jamaican variant of the itinerant discotheque had rapidly become one of the main components in the lives of the residents of Jamaican slums. As Ulf Poschardt explains in his book DJ Culture, the bass volume was the determining criteria to assess the quality of a sound system. The louder the sound system, the bigger the crowd. As for the names of the performing DJs, considered the first pop stars in Jamaica because of the success of their sonic jousts, they frequently referred to their greatness and regularly evoked a criminal imagery. As rap DJs would later do, Jamaican selectors (i.e. disc jockeys) were constantly boasting and bragging about their skills and wore flashy gangster’s outfits. Duke Reid for instance, would deejay in an ermine coat, a golden crown, a colt 45 on both hips, with a shotgun strapped on and cartridges on his belt. Such an oppositional gangster style turned Reid and other star DJs into inspirational models for ghetto hipsters of the 1950s and the 1960s (Poschardt 164). This observation interestingly bears out the important place of a criminal imagery in the music from Jamaican ghettoes which, like calypso and rap, emerged from a sociocultural matrix subjected to structural forms of domination similar to those that afflicted the Bronx and many other ghettoes across the United States in the early 1970s. Rap historians assert that in adapting Jamaican sound systems to his new environment, DJ Kool Herc was the first hip hop DJ. He certainly was the individual who kick-started the sonic and technical contests where DJs competed imaginatively to increase the volume of their speakers and strived to find the track or the mix that would rock the crowd. After a legendary house party that took place

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CEDAR PARK Sedgwick Avenue and Cedar Park are unanimously referred to as the epicenters of hip hop culture. For many hip hop aficionados, August 11, 1973, the date Cindy Campbell decided to throw a back to school party in her building’s small recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, is the day hip hop culture was born. That day, spinning records at his sister’s party, DJ Kool Herc introduced extended break beats that awestruck the jam-packed audience and launched the movement. Shortly after this legendary party, Herc started to organize block parties outside and down the street to Cedar Park. His parties soon drew hundreds of ghetto youths throughout the night to witness and contribute to the development of the hip hop movement. Before long, Cedar Park started to gather, on a regular basis, creative musicians and dancers who would come out and plug their sound systems into the street lights to party. 123 Park was another early area where DJs, B-Boys and MCs gathered. In Spring 2005, legendary hip hop pioneers like DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Caz, Melle Mel, and a wide range of early figures in hip hop lent their names to Sedgwick & Cedar, an old school hip hop fashion line which referred reverently to the original location of hip hop’s early outdoor parties. Capitalizing on the high symbolic status of the Sedgwick Avenue and Cedar Park intersection of the Bronx, this upscale fashion line claimed to pay tribute to the original pioneers of the entire hip hop movement. Founded by business manager Ray Riccio and Cold Crush’s MC Grandmaster Caz, this urban apparel business honors those who paved the way to hip hop on their t-shirts and draws its legitimacy and street credibility from the place where it all began.

at his parents’ home on Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx, Herc started to throw block parties around his neighborhood, from Sedgwick Avenue up to Cedar Park, at 179th and Sedgwick (see sidebar: Cedar Park). Gaining popularity, he rapidly landed gigs in clubs like the Twilight Zone, the Hevalo and venues like the TConnection, The Godfather’s Club, or the Galaxy 2000 (Marshall 7). The Ecstasy garage, located in the Bronx around 173rd street was another hot spot for what DJs, laying the emphasis on their musical contribution, unrewardingly labeled ‘‘breakbeat music.’’ Located on Jerome Avenue, between 180th and 181st street, the Hevalo (which later became Salvation Baptist Church) was the place where, in 1975, many youths from the Bronx would go on Fridays and Saturdays to hear Herc’s beats (see sidebar: The Hevalo). Herc had quickly made a reputation for himself with a monster system that nobody could rival. It was bigger, better, had speakers the size of refrigerators and had bigger amps. Herc had also made a reputation for himself by playing records in a certain order to build up the crowd.

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Grandmaster Flash (Photofest)

He would start with a rousing song to get dancers into a groove and would then throw another one on to stir their blood. At that point he usually played records that would blow their minds like ‘‘Sex Machine,’’ ‘‘Apache’’ (one of his favorites), or ‘‘Baby Huey.’’ As Afrika Bambaataa would do soon after, Herc also played records that were very difficult for other DJs to find. Later on, Herc moved to another club called the ‘‘Executive Playhouse’’ (which became Sparkle), right on Jerome Ave. At that time, as Grandmaster Caz recalls, he was the first DJ to have a home base. Other DJs were only playing at house parties or at parties that took place in Cedar Park, Webster Park, and in all kinds of school yards across the Bronx (Eure and Spady xviii). Herc’s success rapidly granted him an iconic status in the Bronx. By 1976, as Wayne Marshall remarks, his hulking frame (his moniker was short for Hercules) and his larger-than-life sense of fashion attracted audiences from across the Bronx and beyond. His achievement also paved the way to up-and-coming Bronx-based DJs like Afrika Bambaataa (born Kevin Donovan on April 17, 1957) or Grandmaster Flash (born Joseph Saddler on January 1, 1958), who were spurred on by the same ambition and love of deejaying and equally eager to challenge their equipments and record collections with those of other DJs.

HIP HOP’S FOUNDING FATHERS If DJ Kool Herc is unequivocally considered as a pioneer, more uncertainties remain concerning the evolution of the hip hop movement. The autonomous and

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THE HEVALO In 1975, DJ Kool Herc (also called Kool DJ Herc) secured a steady gig at The Hevalo, a famous Bronx venue located on Jerome Avenue, between Tremont and Burnside (this building was later turned into a car park). Herc had started to work professionally as a DJ in 1973. He got his first professional job at a place called the Twilight Zone. According to the legend, one night, as he was handing out flyers for one of his parties at the Twilight Zone in front of The Hevalo, one of the most popular venues, Herc was asked to leave the premises by the security staff. He then promised he would be back to play in this club. Two years later, his fame had peaked to such a level in the Bronx and beyond that The Hevalo eventually hired him as a resident DJ. At that time, Herc was among the first DJs to have his own home base. Others were mostly restricted to house parties. Shortly after, he joined forces with Coke La Rock and Clark Kent and formed the first rap crew known as Kool Herc and the Herculoı¨ds. Herc’s period at The Hevalo is often considered as pivotal since he most likely started to specialize in short breakbeats while deejaying at this club. He notably turned the Incredible Bongo Band’s ‘‘Apache’’ into what he calls ‘‘the national anthem of hip hop.’’ Herc, who had discovered the Bongo Rock album through his colleague DJ Timmy Tim, used its explosive track ‘‘Apache’’ to drive The Hevalo’s dancers crazy. As he explains in a recent New York Times interview, he used this record to start what he called the Merry-Go-Round, which was a segment where he played all the records with beats that he had in his collection. He would use that format at the ‘‘hypest’’ part of the night, between 2:30 and 3 AM. As the Merry-Go-Round evolved, Herc played extended percussion-driven sections of songs through hand manipulation of his turntables, thus creating magnetic rhythmic breakbeats that later developed into rap music as we know it today.

REFERENCES Henderson, Errol A. ‘‘Black Nationalism and Rap Music.’’ Journal of Black Studies 26, no. 3 (January 1996): 308–39. Hermes, Will. ‘‘All Rise for the National Anthem of Hip-Hop.’’ New York Times, October 29, 2006.

clandestine development of hip hop somehow complicates any attempt to establish peremptory histories and chronologies. Nelson George nevertheless succeeded, in an interview with Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash—the three DJs unanimously considered as the pioneers of the movement—in establishing a consensual history acknowledged by most rap critics. Nelson George

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convened these ‘‘Founding Fathers’’ of hip hop in the New York offices of The Source in 1993 to obtain clarifications on diverging stories and made-up legends concerning the beginnings of rap music. George’s article, ‘‘Hip Hop’s Founding Fathers Speak The Truth,’’ confirmed or invalidated stories previously published in books and articles that sometimes contradicted each other on several points. By establishing a coherent version of the development of hip hop in the Bronx (with insignificant variations in dates), this article canonized these three deejays and the movement to which they considerably contributed. This article clearly established the Bronx as the indisputable matrix of rap. Herc was the name on its West Side, Flash in the South Bronx, and Bambaataa over in Bronx River. Chronologically, Kool Herc, using the principle of Jamaican sound system, defined the norms of reference for hip hop deejaying and determined the standard way to accomplish this practice. Under his influence, sound systems became instruments leading to a new musical form. Using a basic set of two old Gerard turntables, a mixing table, and bass speakers, Herc came up with the breakbeats technique. This technique, which consisted in alternating two copies of a record by making a loop out of a chosen part—the break—laid the foundation of rap music. It was instantly taken on by several deejays (Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and many others) who emulated his style and technique and established this elemental structure as the basis of rap music. As Ulf Poschardt explains in DJ Culture, breakbeats were as simple as they were revolutionary. He remarks that before hip hop appeared, most DJs considered songs as units while Herc and his epigones considered tracks as musical quarries from which they could extract stones to build their own pieces and make people dance. Old tunes suddenly served as materials for a new musical form, transcending the preexisting one, in the Hegelian sense of the term (Aufheben), simultaneously rejecting, preserving, and elevating it (Poschardt 172). Vanguard DJs like Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash, using assemblages and sequences of breakbeats, clearly launched, in the early 1970s, the history of hip hop in the Bronx. In the early years of the movement, these DJs were amongst the most prominent personalities. They were the sole architects of the avant-garde musical sensation that wowed partygoers and made b-boys and b-girls (break-boys and break-girls) spin on cardboard. The considerable success of these pioneers, who could play up to five gigs in a single night, rapidly turned them into independent entrepreneurs who made (a little) money from their talents and hopped from one party to the other with their portable sound systems and their huge records collections. For Steven Hager, this success elevated Bronx DJs to the rank of ‘‘new folk heroes’’ (33). If Herc invented the basic principle of the breakbeats, deejaying was pushed further by another Bronx resident, Grandmaster Flash, and his virtuoso manipulations of turntables. Dubbed the ‘‘Toscanini of Turntables’’ by Life Magazine, Grandmaster Flash used his skills in electronics (he had studied this subject at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School) (Williams 29) to perfect the synchronization of the

Hip Cats in the Cradle of Rap | 9 breakbeats introduced by Kool Herc. Influenced by veteran disco DJ Pete Jones’s precuing technique, Flash created what he called the peek-a-boo system. He manually equipped his mixing table with a cross fader to switch easily from one record to the other. This device, a button sliding from side to side on an horizontal slot, enabled Flash to switch smoothly on an off both turntables. H. C. Williams explains that in the standard DJ style, the right turntable is the only one producing sound when the fader is on the right, and vice versa (Williams also points outs that the opposite option is the hamster style—when the fader slides to one side, that particular turntable’s sound cuts out). Thanks to this technique that permitted him to listen to a track before playing it, Flash perfected the mixing of breakbeats to a point that it could no longer be heard by the audience. He also developed styles and established technical innovations which would all prove to be fundamental to the formation of today’s hip hop and introduced methods that still inspire today’s turntablists. The clock theory, for instance, a relatively simple concept that makes it possible to immediately set the needle down on the right track of a record is still widely used by contemporary DJs. Indeed, to know exactly what part of the record they want, many DJs still mark their records with tape or a crayon, as Flash did. Such improvements are just two of the many mechanical modifications that Grandmaster Flash made to the ‘‘wheels of steel’’ (a slang term for turntables) that stretched out DJs’ existing possibilities. The beat box is another significant innovation that he introduced. This machine, an electronic set of drums that repeated indefinitely prerecorded rhythmic loops completed the equipment of the DJ, which simply consisted, until then, of two turntables plus a mixing table. The beat box perfected, along with scratching techniques, the basic forms of deejaying. Between 1977 and 1979, a period often considered as the golden era of hip hop deejaying, many DJs contributed to its development in establishing different disciplines and in exploring unsuspected technical possibilities and styles. It is extremely important to consider in all their details and particularities the technical contributions of these emblematic Bronx musicians, as well as the different conventions that they established, to understand how the streets of the Bronx became the paradigmatic space of reference of rap music. DJ Kool Herc’s block parties, Grandmaster Flash’s smooth breakbeats or the group-minded ideology and the vanguard mixes of Afrika Bambaataa defined the legitimacy standards of the rap practice in attributing a glaring symbolic status to the streets of the Bronx and in establishing reference norms which determined the ‘‘proper’’ way to make rap. The examination of this structural normalization of the practice and of its cultural legitimacy helps to understand in detail the large number of rappers’ nostalgic references evocative of the mythic past of the Bronx. The inspection of the formal origins of rap music enables to localize the locus of this expressive cultural form in the inner-city and to elucidate the institution of the Bronx as the archetype of sites of social relegation valorized by rappers all across the United States. This detailed review of the main steps of the development of this music in areas blighted by crime, poverty, and

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unemployment (but nevertheless valorized) facilitates the understanding of the profoundly ghettocentric discourse which prevails in rap and brings to light the stylistic conventions established in a borough that, more than 30 years after the birth of rap, still holds a prominent symbolic status.

REPRESENTING THE BRONX The emerging sound system scene in the Bronx was spatially or, more accurately, territorially distributed as follows: Kool Herc had the West Side, Afrika Bambaataa had Bronx River, and Grandmaster Flash had the South Bronx, from 138th Street up to Gun Hill. This parting of the Bronx into sectors separating each DJ’s territory distinguished the locations that covered the key operative areas for the competing sound systems. This spatial distribution reveals rap music’s particular relationship to specified places. As the core element of early hip hop, sound systems featured a series of practices that rapidly linked the music to other activities such as breakdancing and graffiti painting. As Grandmaster Caz recalls, hip hop, at this stage was mostly about who had the ‘‘baddest’’ beats and the best moves (Eure and Spady xvii). Not everybody had a microphone at that time. This element came into play later on, first to urge b-boys and b-girls on to greater fervor, to sing the praises of a performing DJ (and of the crew of 20 people with his name on their sweatshirts), or to extol the virtues of their places of residence. Then, as Caz suggests, microphones contributed to elevate generic DJs’ formulas into what rhyming is today. As rap scholar Murray Forman remarks, all these closely related practices and methods of ‘‘constructed place-based identities’’ (rap, breakdancing, and grafitti) shaped symbolic bonds upon which connections were produced within specific social geographies (70). Identifying a significant relation between the territorial practices of street gangs and hip hop practices that maintained, and in some cases, intensified the structuring systems of turf, Forman brings to light a connection which is essential to the understanding of the regional aspect of rap music explored in this volume. Kevin Donovan, before he took the alias Afrika Bambaataa, had been a member of the Black Spades, one of the most infamous street gangs in New York (Kool Herc had also been a member of this gang, which, unlike New York’s ‘‘clubs’’ like the Savage Skulls or the Savage Nomads, was strictly composed of black teens). Grandmaster Flash, while deejaying, was running with the Casanova Crew, another notorious gang whose reputation was so bad that MC Grandmaster Caz admits that he had to shorten his initial alias from Casanova to Caz to avoid confusion (Eure and Spady xxiv). In accordance with gang principles, the Black Spades provided a substitute family for ghetto kids from dysfunctional households or for those attracted to the idea of joining a structured organization that would ensure them emotional backing and protection in a dangerous environment.

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Afrika Bambaataa (Photofest)

The violence that characterized gang warfare led Afrika Bambaataa to leave the Black Spades in 1975, after the brutal death of one of his friends, and to put a lot of effort into setting up a good sound system and collecting records to follow DJ Kool Herc’s steps. Later on, he founded an organization intended to wander away from violence through artistic battles: the Zulu Nation. The Zulu Nation debuted in the East Bronx as the Bronx River Organization (or The Organization), spread out to neighboring blocks Castle Hill, Soundview, Patterson and Forest projects, then, later, to other cities and states. At one point, Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation were visible everywhere. They rapidly became, along with Cold Crush, Fantastic Five, Furious Five, and Soulsonic Force, one of the most prominent forces in hip hop. Combining Black Nationalism and radicalism while, somewhat paradoxically, lauding open-mindedness and tolerance, Bambaataa set up an entity that borrowed its structure to juvenile street gangs but that was unified by the hip hop movement. Owing to this seminal link with street gang culture, hip hop practices—rap music, breakdance, and graffiti writing—are profoundly stamped with some of its characteristics. One of the main retentions is the spirit of competition which prevails in these expressive forms. Numerous rap critics have mentioned, though shyly, the narrow link between street gang culture and rap. Fernando considers the hip hop movement an epiphenomenon of street gang culture. He remarks that breakdance started during gang warfare as an alternative to physical violence and provided the opportunity to defeat an opponent or a rival gang with one’s personal style, technique, and personality. Charles Ahearn also insists on such an undeniable link between street gangs and hip hop’s practices in his account of the early years of the hip hop movement (3). As Wayne Marshall remarks, though they were less violent, the style wars raging between various hip

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hop crews were no less competitive than those that street gangs waged on each other (7). Style wars started among DJs and gradually extended to other practices like breakdancing, graffiti, and emceeing. They generally opposed various groups of hip hop artists competing for supremacy. DJ Kool Herc, for instance, would frequently perform in the company of the Herculoı¨ds, a crew of versatile DJs/MCs/BBoys that lengthily reigned undisputed in the Bronx and beyond. As he recounts in his anthology of old school rap for Rhino records, Harlem-based rapper/b-boy Kurtis Blow, one of the first rap musicians to get a record deal, loved to travel up to the Bronx and battle with them (Ogg 12). Kurtis Blow’s story illustrates the notion of rivalry that is essential to the understanding of the dynamics of rap music. It conjointly reveals two of the most noteworthy retentions from street gang culture which characterize rap music: a strong regional allegiance and a pronounced spirit of rivalry. The symbolic attachment of early DJs and crews to their places of residence remarkably expresses the persistent affiliation of rap artists to a specified territory. The term territory, which in this particular context refers to zoological sciences, designates a privileged habitat delimited (with graffiti for example as Alejandro Alonso demonstrates in his research on Los Angeles’s street gangs) and defended against intruders. The symbolic appropriation of a turf and the group spirit which characterize street gangs are expressed through the great number of references that rappers usually make to their relations (group, posse, label, etc.) or to their home territory (neighborhood, city, state, etc.). Mentioning one’s geographical origin (and that of one’s rivals) articulates the prevalence of a regional vision in rap music. This prevalence finds its illustration in rappers’ constant celebration of their geographical origins. Blow’s desire to battle b-boys from the Bronx expresses the eagerness of hip hop musicians to impose or maintain some kind of authority or prerogatives over a specified territory while simultaneously revealing the responsibility to ensure the radiance of their home turf. Through his assertion of his geographic origin, Blow sustains such a discourse. He is defending the reputation of his home turf in the Bronx by challenging its residents and to claim Harlem’s supremacy over the Bronx. This conventional aspiration to mark, defend, or to valorize one’s territory is undeniably the most apparent manifestation of the spirit of community and of territory of street gangs. In turning away from the violence of ethnic ghettoes in favor of artistic challenges (commonly referred to as battles), hip hop practices introduced in the Bronx by Kool Herc and Bambaataa, whether they were DJs duelling through overpowering speakers blasting decibels, dancers trading steps and techniques, or later on, MCs battle rhyming, preserved the territory spirit of street gangs. Murray Forman brought to light this emphasis on the local in his outstanding book on the matter (see sidebar: Space and Place in Rap and Hip Hop), where he demonstrates how rap lyrics, more specifically and to a greater extent than other musical genres, generally show signs of a salient emphasis on place and locality through explicit references to particular streets, area codes, and other sociospatial information.

Hip Cats in the Cradle of Rap | 13 According to Forman, rappers draw inspiration from their regional affiliations as much as from a sense of what he calls the ‘‘extreme local’’ (xvii). Most rap texts and practices, let alone stylistic variations and other idiosyncrasies, satisfy tacit thematic conventions established by the first rap artists. Mentioning one’s geographic origin is part of the stake of supremacy and of the agon which characterized the sonic battles of the first hip hop DJs. Rappers, as they so often remind their listeners, represent a specific place. In other words, they proudly carry the banner of a place and, occasionally, of a posse. They represent both a family and, inseparably, a home turf. Indeed, in rap music the home turf is, like other status symbols, determining inasmuch as it confers legitimacy to an artist. Owing to the contributions that we have just considered, the Bronx holds a prominent symbolic status in rap music, having initiated most of its forms. Numerous musicians that it spawned have repeatedly capitalized on the authority conferred by its eminent historical and symbolic status to assert their legitimacy and supremacy in rap.

KRS-ONE KRS-One (Laurence ‘‘Krishna’’ Parker, also known as Kris Parker, The Blastmaster, or The Teacher) is one of the first to have taken of the torch. Born in Brooklyn in 1965, Kris moved to the South Bronx in his early teens after he had dropped out high school and left his home. He developed an interest in hip hop during that period and started to write his first rhymes and to tag under the alias KRS-One (both an abbreviation for ‘‘Kris Number One’’ and an acronym for Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone). At age 19, hustling in the streets and sleeping in homeless shelters, Kris met Scott Sterling, a social worker who was also a DJ performing under the name Scott La Rock. They rapidly became friends and formed a rap group whose name ostentatiously proclaimed their geographical origin: Boogie Down Productions. In 1986, they independently released ‘‘Crack Attack.’’ This first single landed them a deal on B-Boy Records, a small independent label which released CriminalMinded, their debut album. Along with distinguished albums from other emerging artists who were establishing a broader choice of rap styles, Criminal-Minded signalled a break from the sounds and genres that had been prevailing since 1984 (Forman 165). When it appeared in 1987, the album, now considered a classic, immediately earned BDP a large following. Its realistic, street-oriented material (the cover picture of the album shows KRS-One and La Rock draped in ammunition and brandishing guns), KRS-One’s skilful delivery and Scott La Rock’s sober and catchy productions connected greatly with a rap audience eager to hear less aesthetically compromising and nonradio friendly productions (exemplified by the music of Public Enemy or N.W.A.) (Forman 164). Several tracks of Criminal Minded also featured productions by Ced Gee, a member of the Ultramagnetic MCs. This MC/producer had already produced ‘‘Advance,’’ KRS-One’s very first rap, in his Bronx-based home studio (the ‘‘Ultra

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SPACE AND PLACE IN RAP MUSIC AND HIP HOP In The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop, where he examines the articulation of this triad in the discourse of rappers, rap scholar Murray Forman demonstrates to what extent rap music and satellite cultural practices and expressive productions like breakdancing and graffiti are the products of a multifaceted sociohistorical and geocultural matrix that prevails largely in high density inner cities inhabited predominantly by cultural minorities. Concentrating his study on rap and hip hop’s conspicuous emphasis on what he calls the ‘‘extreme local,’’ a refinement of the spatial scale, Forman analyzes the recurrence of place references in rap lyrics and rap videos by detailed decoding and reveals how they abound with signifiers (basketball team, architectural landmarks, area codes, streets, venues) meant to concentrate viewer attention on the scenery and urban terrain that constitute the rapper’s ‘‘home.’’ Forman also examines the connotations and implications of discursively constructed ‘‘spacemyths’’ attributed to a ‘‘ghettocentric’’ sensibility, such as ‘‘inner city,’’ ‘‘ghetto,’’ and ‘‘hood,’’ and significantly demonstrates how they epitomize ‘‘authenticity’’ in the discourse of rappers. The dual referential strategy of rappers, who refer at the same time to both their places and spaces of origins, can, on the other hand, be explained by an idea which supplements that of the ‘‘extreme local.’’ In their latest album, in spite of multiple references to their Virginia home, Clipse rappers announce that they are no longer ‘‘local’’ but ‘‘global.’’ The discourse of these rappers is definitely consistent with that of many others who regularly send shout-outs to a wide variety of American ghettoes, and somewhat conflicts, occasionally, with the idea of the ‘‘extreme local’’ introduced by Forman. For example, on multiple occasions, Pusha-T and Malice refer to the famous TV series Miami Vice to sanction their Virginia-based gangsta narratives with an extremely evocative symbolic reference (‘‘Miami Vice, Pusha spits this shit for ya’ll’’). For that reason, it seems that the frequent references that rappers make both to their homes and to corresponding symbolic social spaces (’hoods, ghettoes, projects) correspond, to a larger extent, to a celebration of a symbolic community of ghettoes whose similarities are the result of the comparable structural forces that they are submitted to, and whose social practices, especially criminal ones, confer credibility and cultural authenticity in rap music.

REFERENCE Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.

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Lab’’). In 1988, he produced Critical Beatdown, the debut album of Ultramagnetic MCs, which also consisted of MC Kool Keith and DJs Moe Love and T. R. Love. This album (featuring popular singles like ‘‘Ego Trippin’,’’ ‘‘Ease Back,’’ and ‘‘Funky’’), which was rather ignored at its release but whose reputation has gotten bigger in the years, is considered a bona fide classic of ‘‘old-school’’ hip hop by many, mostly thanks to Ced Gee’s expert productions and Kool Keith’s uncanny lyrics and distinctive rhyming style. Rolling Stone Magazine, for example, considers it the quintessential release from the late 1980s ‘‘fast rap’’ era. On Criminal Minded, KRS-One was amongst the first MCs, alongside rappers like Ice-T or Rakim (not to mention the influential Schoolly D), to shift rap lyrical content to firstperson narratives expressing various views and experiences of young black ghetto dwellers (including criminal activities) with an unprecedented graphic imagery. Slick Rick (Ricky Walters), a British-born rapper whose family had moved to the Bronx in the mid-1970s, was another distinguished storyteller hailing from the Boogie Down. This highly influential MC, also know as ‘‘The Ruler,’’ had burst onto the hip hop scene one year before BDP with a couple of memorable firstperson ghetto narratives and tongue-in-cheek rhymes about prostitutes and holdups. Famous for popularizing brightly colored Kangol hats and matching blazers, Slick Rick, with the help of Doug E. Fresh’s beatboxing, stood out in the early Bronx rap scene in 1985 with ‘‘La Di Da Di,’’ a landmark a cappella tale that rapidly landed him a deal on the prestigious Def Jam label. He subsequently released The Great Adventures of Slick Rick (1988), a platinum album considered as a classic by recognized rap historians like Bill Adler and Jeff Chang (Reischel 2007). Otherwise, Boogie Down Productions resumed the geographic and localized turf affiliation that had been central to the hip hop scene from the start through a celebrated battle involving MC Shan and KRS-One. In 1987, MC Shan had released ‘‘The Bridge,’’ a single in which he brought the Queensbridge projects to the fore and challenged the rap supremacy of the Bronx as the epicenter of hip hop. Shan and the other members of the Juice Crew, a group of MCs and DJs that consisted of Roxanne Shante´, Marley Marl, Biz Markie, and Big Daddy Kane, were, at that time, amongst the most prominent banner bearers of the rap from the borough of Queens. KRS-One retorted on wax with the vindictive records ‘‘South Bronx’’ and ‘‘The Bridge Is Over’’ (1987). On these response songs, meant to set the record straight, KRS-One incisively questioned the legitimacy of Queens and reaffirmed that of the Bronx through razor sharp lyrics that greatly contributed to his fame as a distinguished MC. On the musical level, BDP were amongst the very first rap musicians to include elements of Jamaican ragga and dancehall in their productions. They were even promoted as a reggae act for a while (Haring I). Their classic ‘‘9 mm Goes Bang,’’ where they innovatively blended rap and reggae, represents a landmark in the history of rap music. Superstar rapper Fat Joe paid homage to this classic and to its author in his track ‘‘All or Nothing’’ where he imitates KRS-One’s famous chorus.

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Scott La Rock’s reggae-inflected productions and KRS-One’s flamboyant flow soon attracted the attention of RCA affiliate Jive, which signed them to a record contract. Sadly, not long afterwards, Scott La Rock was shot dead trying to break up an argument at a party in the Bronx. KRS-One, though devastated by this tragic loss, far from being a one-off event on the violent streets of black ghettoes, nevertheless carried on BDP with a new line-up. His younger brother Kenny Parker replaced La Rock on production, and side members like D-Nice and Ms Melodie (who was also KRS’s wife for a time) completed the group. In 1988, they recorded By All Means Necessary, on which KRS-One’s lyrics, dualistically hardcore (which had owed him his Blastmaster moniker) and political so far, tipped heavily on the political side. His irate political raps earned him a nickname that would greatly contribute to his iconic status in the pantheon of rap music, ‘‘The Teacher.’’ Insightful social commentaries and militant tracks like ‘‘My Philosophy’’ and ‘‘Stop the Violence’’ greatly contributed, with those of Public Enemy, to the ascension of a New York-based Afrocentric/Black Nationalist impulse. The same year, after the death of a young fan during a concert featuring these two groups, KRSOne got involved in several projects and associations. Walking in Afrika Bambaataa’s footsteps, he founded the Stop the Violence Movement and raised half a million dollars for the National Urban League in 1989 with the all-star charity 12-inch single ‘‘Self-Destruction.’’ This single featured high-profile Bronx artists like Kool Moe Dee, the front man of the ‘‘speed rapping’’ Treacherous Three. This pioneering hip hop group, which consisted of childhood friends Kool Moe Dee, DJ Easy Lee, L. A. Sunshine, Special K, and Spoonie G (who is generally credited as a member even though he left the group in the late 1970s), became popular in the early 1980s with songs like ‘‘Feel the New Heartbeat,’’ ‘‘New Rap Language,’’ and ‘‘Body Rock,’’ the first ever crossover rap song mixing rap and rock. In 1986, after the breakup of the group, Kool Moe Dee went on to pursue a solo career and released several successful hit singles that became classics (titles such as ‘‘Wild Wild West,’’ ‘‘Go See the Doctor,’’ or ‘‘How Ya Like Me Now’’). In 1989, Boogie Down Productions released Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop, a strongly politicized album whose discourse contrasted clearly with that of the emerging West Coast gangsta subgenre embodied by Ice-T and N.W.A. On the musical level, the album’s minimalist productions were meant to distance themselves from what KRS-One perceived as a damaging pop-crossover mentality overtaking hip hop. Tackling issues like black-on-black crime, police brutality, education, or spirituality, KRS-One found many proponents amongst rap scholars and rap critics in search of rappers whose image seemingly stood out against that of stick-up kids popularized by Run DMC and their ‘‘Felon Sneakers.’’ Labelled conscious rapper, street poet, or street philosopher, KRS-One rapidly secured an intellectual image. For instance the New York Times invited him to write editorials, and he started to tour extensively on the college lecture circuit.

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His everywhere political stance, more manifest on Edutainment—BDP’s next album, somewhat disconnected him from his early fan base. The group’s audience started to slip, primarily because of the national appeal of street-oriented California based rappers whose commercial success was progressively overshadowing that of the more socially conscious and preachy New York rap scene. In spite of its hit single ‘‘Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love),’’ Edutainment was roundly criticized as being replete with preachy, didactic lecturing, which came at the expense of compelling musical backing. KRS-One’s feud with pop rappers P. M. Dawn, who had sarcastically questioned his legitimacy as a ‘‘teacher’’ during a magazine interview, further separated the rapper from his audience. During a P. M. Dawn New York’s concert, the founder of the Stop the Violence movement and his entourage, as a reaction to what they considered a softening of rap, kicked the group off the stage and started playing their own songs. BDP’s leader later apologized publicly in the face of the negative reactions that followed. This eventful period did not prevent the group from recording. In 1991, they released the bouncing Live Hardcore Worldwide, one of the first live hip hop albums. As Steve Huey explains, this LP was meant to collect the royalties from Criminal-Minded that a dispute with their former label had prevented them from getting. Later that year, KRS-One made a guest appearance on R.E.M.s’ single ‘‘Radio Song’’ and recorded Civilisation Vs. Technology with the educationoriented side project H.E.A.L. In 1992, the rapper sought to reestablish his street credibility. He came up to his fans expectations with Sex and Violence. This zeitgeist album marked a return to his earlier material and was hailed by some critics as a return to form. Reduced to a simpler expression (by that time the group only featured frontman KRS-One, Willie D, and Kenny Parker) BDP reverted to the hard-hitting beats and resumed their street-oriented discourse in order to win back their former audience. Unfortunately, the second-rate sales of the album tolled the bell of the group. Alongside other street-oriented New York rappers who were developing crude sonorities that clearly differed from the G-Funk sound that was taking over (Wu Tang Clan’s Enter the 36th Chamber [RCA/1993], Mobb Deep’s Infamous [RCA/1995], and Nas’ Illmatic [Sony/1994]), KRS-One, now recording under his own name, released his solo debut album, Return of the Boom Bap (1993). This album included collaborations with producers DJ Premier, Kid Capri and featured the celebrated hardcore standard ‘‘Sound of the Police’’ (produced by Showbiz) whose catchy chorus and ‘‘officer/overseer’’ amalgamation turned it into an instant classic (Wyclef would later take up the chorus in his song ‘‘Thug Angels’’). Showing that his celebrated booming flow was still worthy of serious consideration, KRS-One released KRS-One in 1995. Consistent with its author political stance, the album featured a protest song against Mumia Abu-Jamal’s controversial death row sentence. It also featured an impressive list of guest stars like Busta Rhymes, Brooklyn’s Das EFX, and Bronx rapper Fat Joe.

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The following year KRS-One and his old rival MC Shan joined forces to release Battle for Rap Supremacy, a record that included the highlights of their famous rap battle. He then put his career on hold after his best-selling 1997 I Got Next album (whose eclectic content and lead single ‘‘Step into a World’’ [Rapture’s Delight], built around a sample of Blondie’s crossover landmark ‘‘Rapture’’ helped him reach number three on the Billboard). Capitalizing on the established and recognized symbolic status that he had earned in the rap milieu through his longstanding and relentless efforts to champion the Bronx and underground rap, KRS-One kept on collaborating in various high-profile recordings. He particularly exhibited his versatile lyrics on Zach De La Rocha’s single ‘‘C.I.A. (Criminals In Action)’’ on the first Lyricist Lounge album, released in 1999 (see sidebar: The Lyricist Lounge), or, more recently, on DJ Premier’s single ‘‘Classic’’ featuring Rakim, Nas, and Kanye West. KRS-One’s important achievements and his longevity have granted him a high status not only in the American rap industry, but also abroad. As the ambassador of the seminal New York scene, he was invited to record the opening track of the Ma 6-T Va Craquer album, a highly praised soundtrack for an eponymous French film set in the banlieues (projects). Consistent with his Afrocentric sensitivity, he also appeared alongside MC Supernatural on New York/Paris/Dakar, the album of Senegalese rappers Positive Black Soul (1997) and, in 2000, was invited on Xzibit’s Restless album to ‘‘drop science.’’ He eventually returned to recording his own material in early 2001 with The Sneak Attack. This album was followed, within the next few years, by various efforts exploring different styles and themes (Spiritual Minded that featured an updated version of ‘‘South Bronx’’: ‘‘South Bronx 2002,’’ and The Mix Tape in 2002, Kristyles and D.I.G.I.T.A.L in 2003, Keep Right in 2004, and Life in 2006). Though no longer at the fore front of the rap scene, KRS-One remains, to this day, one of hip hop’s most respected lyricists and MCs. His important achievements and his longevity have granted him an iconic status in the rap industry worldwide that few other rappers can claim.

FAT JOE More recent Bronx rappers like Fat Joe and Big Punisher reminded rap listeners, as KRS-One did with his 1987 hymn to the Bronx, of this borough’s role in originating hip hop. Also known as Fat Joe Da Gangsta, Bronx Terra, or Joey Crack, rapper Fat Joe (born Joe Cartagena on August 19, 1970) grew up in the South Bronx during the early years of hip hop. Influenced by emblematic musicians such as Grandwizard Theodore (Grandmaster Flash’s prote´ge´) and the Furious Five, young Joe started to rap in his teens. He signed his first contract with Relativity in the early 1990s and released his debut album, Represent, in 1993, explicitly introducing himself to the hip hop world as ‘‘Another Wild Nigga From the Bronx.’’ In this album, whose hit single ‘‘Flow Joe’’ topped Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart, Fat Joe devoted several rhymes to his home uptown. In ‘‘Bad Bad Man’’ for

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Fat Joe (Photofest)

instance, his gangsta persona drives around the Boogie Down in luxury cars while tracks like ‘‘Da Fat Gangsta’’ or ‘‘Another Wild Nigga from the Bronx’’ contain several shout-outs to a crime-ridden Bronx. Fat Joe’s generic gangsta narratives (and music videos) documented the range of survival strategies of crack dealers of the Bronx. In his book In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, anthropologist Philippe Bourgois examines the symbols and symptoms of ghetto life amongst Nuyorican hustlers. Bourgois’ book, a remarkable insight into the thought processes of the subjects involved in the underground drug economy of El Barrio presents a documented reality often as shocking as in Fat Joe’s narratives. Acknowledging that addiction, drug abuse, and violent behaviors are the immediate facts shaping daily life on the streets, the anthropologist brings to light the dynamics of the social marginalization and alienation experienced by individuals caught in this socioeconomic niche. According to Bourgois, the drugs and violence glorified in Fat Joe’s gangsta raps and in other like hyperbolic narratives presented as ‘‘reality raps’’ are only the symptoms, or symbols of deeper changes in the culture of modern America. The actions of young drug dealers, whether actual or hyperbolically glorified in stylized raps are nothing more or less than an alternative forum for an autonomous personal dignity denied them by mainstream culture. In the song ‘‘Da Fat Gangsta,’’ Fat Joe exalts a parochial gangsta lifestyle through figuratively homicidal lyrics evoking ostentatiously the danger of what he calls the ‘‘Boogie Down Battleground’’ or ‘‘West Bubblefuck.’’ Interestingly

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THE LYRICIST LOUNGE In the early 1990s, New York’s MCs from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Long Island and from other areas used to gather on the weekend at West 4th St. and Washington Square Park to kick rhymes and create ciphers—circles where MCs deliver top-of-the-head rhymes. This location quickly became a non promoted hot spot for freestylers from the Big Apple. Rap legends like MC Supernatural or Mos Def tested their wits and skills as freestylers at this location where MCs had to go in order to get their stripes and stars as distinguished rhymers. Before long, this open air forum had to move indoors because of the frequent interventions of the police. Considering such gatherings like some kind of public disturbance, the NYPD began to break out ciphers of youths who were either searching a palliative expressive form to their poverty and to their social alienation or simply having a good time, and repeatedly got them out of public parks. In 1991, willing to give an indoor forum to hip hop performers, Danny Castro and Anthony Marshall started to hold ‘‘The Lyricist Lounge,’’ a series of open mic nights located in a small studio apartment in the Lower East Side. This venue quickly began an exceptional springboard for new talents and unsigned hypes from the city’s five boroughs. Later on, The Lyricist Lounge was held at various venues throughout New York City and went on to develop successful events. This experience has now matured into an internationally recognized and respected brand name and business. Indeed, in addition to a series of New York City-based showcases, The Lyricist Lounge spawned three critically acclaimed full-length album releases, several domestic tours, and helped launch the careers of some of rap music’s most successful rap musicians like Mos Def, Eminem, Talib Kweli, and The Notorious B.I.G, musicians who went on to secure recording contracts and deals with major record labels.

REFERENCE Fitzgerald, Kevin. Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme. Organic Films, 2000.

enough, Fat Joe uses a famous sample from Californian rap group Cypress Hill’s gangsta anthem ‘‘A to the K’’ to convey his murderous temper and the terror that reigns in the streets of the Bronx. This referential strategy is indicative of the rapprochement of what could be called a ‘‘community of multiple ghettoes’’ where the celebration of one ghetto resonates to all ghettoes cursed with similar difficult conditions inherent to their sociocultural marginalization. As the sociocultural

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matrix of rap music, ghetto streets remain, especially those of the Bronx, its paradigmatic habitat. In rap music, issues of authenticity, credibility, and legitimacy are integrally linked to the streets of the ghetto and to their social practices. To evoke street corner activities enabled Fat Joe to exhibit a cultural authenticity than can be measured to his rooting in a culture whose criminal practices operate as metonymies. By threatening crews coming from outside the Bronx with death, as he did on ‘‘Da Fat Gangsta’’ and as KRS-One had done on ‘‘The Bridge is Over,’’ Fat Joe reaffirmed the hardheadedness and supremacy of his home borough. His second album, Jealous One’s Envy, featured an impressive cast. Bronx’ finest KRS-One appeared on ‘‘Bronx Tale,’’ the first song on the album. He proclaimed Joe and himself ‘‘Kings of the Boogie Down’’ and justified his high status by drawing listeners’ attention to his longevity in rap (he reminded that he had been in it for 10 years). Such a practice is extremely common amongst rappers. Distinguished rappers and producers like Nas, Common, Rakim, and Dr Dre frequently underline the fact that they have been in the game for a long time. This gimmick has also been used by DJ Jazzy Joyce, a well respected female DJ who, since the mid-1980s, has been a thriving force behind many of NYC’s clubs and radio shows. Born, raised, and still based in the Bronx, DJ Jazzy Joyce started deejaying in the early 1980s, at age 12. She won her first DJ award at the New Music Seminar in 1983 and has not stopped performing since, representing, as she advertises on her personal myspace page, ‘‘Hip-Hop’s past, present and future.’’ Gang Starr’s DJ Premier, a distinguished producer discovered by Lord Finesse, another hip hop artist and producer hailing from the Bronx (he was the leader of the D.I.T.C. rap crew), provided first-rate productions on Jealous One’s Envy with ‘‘The Shit Is Real.’’ On this album, Fat Joe also paired with Wu Tang’s Raekwon on ‘‘Respect Mine,’’ a song consistent with the importance of the notion of respect amongst ghetto dwellers brought to light by Bourgois’s three-year field work amongst Nuyorican drug dealers and repeatedly emphasized by the Puerto Ricans gang members interviewed in 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s. Jealous Ones’ Envy necessarily featured obligatory shout-outs to the rapper’s home. On ‘‘Bronx Keeps Creating It,’’ whose chorus is a cut and scratched sample of KRS-One’s classic ‘‘The Bridge is Over,’’ Fat Joe emphatically puts his home borough back to the forefront and pays homage to KRS and Lord Finesse, two of its greatest representatives. Meanwhile, he appeared extensively on other high-profile rapper’s materials. For example, in 1995 he was featured, alongside Foxy Brown and Keith Murray, on LL Cool J’s hit single ‘‘I Shot Ya.’’ As many other star rappers turned entrepreneurs, Fat Joe also diversified and developed his own brand of street wear (FJ560), and opened a clothing store (Fat Joe’s Halftime). In 1998, he switched labels and signed to Atlantic Records. He carried on the Mafioso/gangsta imagery introduced in his earlier releases and recorded Don Cartagena which featured rappers Jadakiss, Nas, and Raekwon on the track ‘‘John Blaze’’; and Big Pun (on ‘‘John

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Blaze,’’ ‘‘Triplets,’’ and ‘‘My World’’). His next effort, Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.), featured a just as impressive ensemble of rappers. Up and coming rapper Ludacris was featured on ‘‘Get the Hell On With That,’’ M.O.P. on ‘‘Fight Club,’’ and superstar rapper Xzibit on ‘‘The Wild Life,’’ a gangsta anthem on which Fat Joe and his guest joined up the dangerous streets and street corners activities that both distinguish and draw together ghettoes from both coasts. In 1998, Fat Joe had teamed up with Big Pun (Big Punisher), another superstar rapper from the Bronx and from Puerto Rican origins (who had just scored a huge hit with his song ‘‘Still Not a Player’’), to found the Terror Squad. The group, cashing in on the status of these two superstars, became famous in the late 1990s East Coast rap scene. Along with Fat Joe and Big Pun, Terror Squad included fellow Bronx rappers Cuban Link, Armageddon, Prospect, and Triple Seis, plus singer Tony Sunshine. Such posse efforts had become legion in the wake of the Wu Tang Clan’s success (the most notable being Murder Ink, Flipmode Squad, Ruff Ryders, and/or D12). Fat Joe showcased the group extensively on Don Cartagena. Armageddon appeared on ‘‘Find Out’’ and ‘‘My Prerogative’’ and all its rappers on ‘‘Bet Ya Man Can’t (Triz)’’ and ‘‘Terror Squadians.’’ Shortly after Terror Squad had released its debut album in 1999, the group suffered the abrupt loss of Big Pun in early 2000. Meanwhile, Fat Joe carried on with his solo career and appeared on several radio-friendly commercial hits like Ashanti’s ‘‘What’s Love,’’ R. Kelly’s ‘‘We Thuggin,’’ and Ginuwine’s ‘‘Crush Tonight.’’ In 2002, he recorded Loyalty, an album that featured his Terror Squad colleagues whose line up now consisted of Armageddon, Tony Sunshine, Prospect, and Remy. Two years later they released True Story, their sophomore album (Universal 2004). ‘‘Lean Back,’’ its lead single, became an instant hit and reached the top five of Billboard’s Hot 100. Definitely in tune with the clubby zeitgeist that seemed to prevail in rap music and videos at the time (like 50 Cent’s ‘‘In Da Club’’ or Nelly’s ‘‘Hot in Herre’’), this track, produced by hit-making producer Scott Storch and benefiting from heavy rotations, put Fat Joe back in the spotlight. The rapper released All or Nothing in 2005 and has managed to stay in the limelight thanks to high-profile guest appearances and multiple collaborations with hit-makers like DJ Premier or Scott Storch (on the recent hit single ‘‘Make It Rain’’).

CAPITALIZING ON A PARADIGMATIC BRONX As a mythical matrix, the Bronx has spawned many rap musicians who, while they keep on representing the BX, also celebrate a community of multiple ghettoes that transcends the principle of the extreme local introduced by Murray Forman. Indeed, as many rap songs suggest, the territory celebrated by rappers is, paradoxically, both local and, say, translocal. For example, in their debut album Uptown Saturday Night (1997), Camp Lo, another celebrated rap duo hailing from the Bronx, informs us that their music, though inspired by and directed towards

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hustlers from the Bronx, is also intended for an imagined community of hustlers from all over New York. Filling their music and videos with 1970s references and clothing styles, this duo, composed of Sonny Cheeba (Salahadeen Wilds) and Geechi Suede (Saladine Wallace), whose distinctive rhyming styles and smooth melodies secured them a cult following and an opening spot on tour with Long Island’s De La Soul, became very popular by rapping mainly about the Bronx and the status symbols of its residents involved in criminal activities. However, while they notably address their lyrics to ‘‘All the crooks in the BX’’ on their song ‘‘Black Connection,’’ they equally direct them to all the residents from the ‘‘Tri-borough’’ (the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens). This dual geography of reference reveals an inter-ghetto’s deep-rootedness unchallenged by rivalry between areas. The regional logic deployed by rappers to justify their symbolic supremacy intervenes below the ghettocentrism that confers them a stable referential identity. The hit single ‘‘Jenny From The Block,’’ as corny as it could be considered by rap fans and critics, offers a representative example of the guarantee of legitimacy, authenticity and credibility conferred by direct references to a specific space (‘‘the block’’) and a specific place (‘‘the South Bronx’’). Aiming at presenting herself as ‘‘real’’ after a socioprofessional trajectory that has made her a celebrity in the entertainment industry, Jennifer Lopez exploits her sociogeographic origins (the South Bronx) to legitimate her hip hop/R&B career. Throughout this song, she ‘‘keeps it real’’ in mentioning the harsh living conditions of her birthplace through a sample of BDP’s ‘‘South Bronx.’’ Calling the attention to the diversity of economic activities (both legitimate and illegitimate) which characterize the Bronx, Jennifer Lopez embraces the codes of representations of a ghetto whose poverty is repeatedly suggested (as opposed to her present material and financial wealth). The rappers from L.O.X, who feature on a remix of this song, boost the singer’s street credibility up. They claim their sociogeographic origins several times in the course of the song. They immediately announce that they are pure products from the ghetto (‘‘we off the block’’) and insist on their authenticity (‘‘nothin’ phony with us’’). The listener is equally directed towards the ghetto through the self-portraits presented by the rappers. They refer to acknowledged status symbols (white tee-shirts) and use ghetto vernacular and idioms pointing directly towards street life. Jennifer Lopez, as I already pointed out, is a major personality in the entertainment industry. As an actress, singer on a major record label, and Egeria for famous brands of beauty products, she holds a considerably high status in an industry whose public image generally differs from that of the ghetto. These elements help in understanding the legitimating strategy which stands out in her discourse, especially in the chorus of the song. Throughout the chorus, the singer complies with the ghettocentric discourse that prevails in the rap production and justifies her street credibility despite her new social status in the entertainment industry. She repeatedly insists on her ‘‘realness’’ and expresses her attachment to the ghetto and to the Bronx throughout the whole song. The final section of her hit single,

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with her sentimental references to the Bronx (through the repetition of the ‘‘South Bronx’’ sample) reveals this attachment. Putting the ghetto at the core of one’s discourse, as Jennifer Lopez does in ‘‘Jenny From The Block,’’ is a means to ‘‘keep it real’’ in rap. If the symbolic closeness that she claims in presenting herself as Jenny from the block confers her considerable credibility, her credibility is equally due to her mentioning her Bronx origins.

THE FUTURE OF BRONX HIP HOP Though it is generally quite difficult to know what the future has in store, it is more than likely, owing to its noteworthy status, that the Bronx will, over the years, keep spawning new generations of significant rappers. In a musical genre characterized by a purely discursive distinction between MCs who claim to ‘‘keep it real,’’ who act as guarantors for a ‘‘true’’ hip hop which remains faithful to the musical and thematic traditions established by Bambaataa et al., and MCs who are not considered ‘‘true’’ enough, Bronx rappers inherently hold a valuable symbolic capital. Underground sensation C-Rayz Walz, for instance, a respected freestyler signed to the independent label Definite Jux, seems to owe his current status as one of the most underrated MCs of the alternative rap scene (a condition shared by rappers such as Immortal Technique, Eyedea, and Sage Francis) to his Bronx origins as much as to the stripes he has won through his notable career as a battle rhymer (during which he allegedly defeated freestyle legend Supernatural). For example, he profusely emphasizes his sociogeographical origins on his 2003 album Ravipops (The Substance), notably on ‘‘3 Card Molly,’’ a bleak though ethnographically accurate portrayal of a crime-ridden Bronx, juxtaposed with the celebratory chorus: ‘‘BX, the place I was from. BX, man I love that stuff.’’ True to form and like many Bronx rappers before him, C-Rayz Walz capitalized significantly on his BX and, by extension, New York origins, on his early records not only to make a name for himself, but also to establish his sociocultural credibility in the rap milieu on the mythical aura of his home. Indeed, breakthrough records by Bronx musicians like Afrika Bambaataa and The Soul Sonic Force’s ‘‘Planet Rock’’ and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s ‘‘The Message,’’ the first hip hop song to explore the problems of innercity life, laid the foundation of what would become, 20 years later, one of the most successful musical genres in the United States and abroad. Even though scores of regions across the country have developed their own unique styles and innovations, brought to light in this volume, the Bronx has remained, because of its historical background and legacy, a mythical place with an emblematic status. This special status shows through the multiple tributes that rap musicians from the Bronx and beyond pay to this borough and through the interest of institutional commentators (journalists and academics), who were determining operators, through their documented histories of the movement, of the symbolic transformation of the Bronx into a mythical place. The turf/style wars established by the Founding Fathers

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and perpetuated in 1987 when Boogie Down Productions burst on the rap scene by strongly proclaiming their Bronx roots with the anthems ‘‘The Bridge Is Over’’ and ‘‘South Bronx’’ which have become essential conventions in rap music. In their wake, hip hop musicians have been devoting albums and songs to their places of residence, whether a city, a neighborhood, or even a street.

REFERENCES Ahearn, Charles, ed. Yes Yes Y’all: Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002. Alonso, Alejandro A. ‘‘Urban Graffiti on the City Landscape.’’ Paper presented at Western Geography Graduate Conference, San Diego State University, February 14, 1998. Bourgois, Philippe. In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Eure, Joseph D., and James G. Spady, eds. Nation Conscious Rap: The Hip Hop Vision. New York: PC International Press, 1991. Fernando, S. H, Jr. The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture, and Attitudes of Hip-Hop. New York: Anchor, 1994. Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and HipHop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. George, Nelson. ‘‘Hip-Hop’s Founding Fathers Speak The Truth.’’ The Source, November 1993, 44–50. Hager, Stephen. Hip Hop: The Illustrated History of Breakdancing, Rap Music and Graffiti. New York: St Martins Press, 1984. Haring, Bruce. ‘‘Many Doors Still Closed to Rap Tours.’’ Billboard, December 16, 1989, 1. Haveloc, Nelson, and Michael A. Gonzalez. Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture. New York: Harmony Books, 1991. Huey, Steve. Boogie Down Productions. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll? p=amg&sql=11:hifqxq95ld6e~T1 (accessed September 30, 2009). Jacobs, Sonji. ‘‘Hip Hop’s Heart Still Beating in the Bronx,’’ http://128.59.96.28/ studentwork/bronxbeat/1999/april/april12/hiphop.html (August 21, 2007). Marshall, Wayne. ‘‘Kool Herc.’’ In Icons of Hip Hop, edited by Mickey Hess, 1–25. Wesport, CT: Greenwood, 2007. Murray, Charles, and Richard Herrnstein. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press, 1994. Ogg, Alex. Rap Lyrics: From the Sugarhill Gang to Eminem. London: Omnibus Press, 2002. Poschardt, Ulf. DJ Culture. Paris: Kargo, 2002. Reischel, Julia. ‘‘Slick Trouble.’’ Village Voice, January 9, 2007 http://www .villagevoice.com/2007-01-09/music/slick-trouble/

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Stanley, Lawrence A. Rap: The Lyrics. New York: Penguin Books, 1992. Toop, David. Rap Attack 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000. Wacquant, Loı¨c. ‘‘L’Ame´rique comme utopie a` l’envers.’’ In La mise`re du monde, edited by Pierre Bourdieu, 263–78. Paris: Seuil, 1993. Wacquant, Loı¨c, and William J. Wilson. ‘‘The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City.’’ In The Ghetto Underclass: Social Science Perspectives, edited by William J. Wilson, 25–42. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993. Williams, H. C. ‘‘Grandmaster Flash.’’ In Icons of Hip Hop, edited by Mickey Hess, 27–49. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007.

FURTHER RESOURCES Bourgois, Philippe. ‘‘Crack in Spanish Harlem: Culture and Economy in the Inner City.’’ Anthropology Today 5, no. 4 (August 1989), 6–11. ———. ‘‘Homeless in El Barrio.’’ In La Mise`re du Monde, edited by Pierre Bourdieu, 317–36. Paris: Seuil, 1993. Forman, Murray. ‘‘ ‘Represent’’: Race, Space and Place in Rap Music.’’ In That’s the Joint!: The Hip Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 201–22. New York: Routledge, 2004. Kozol, Jonathan. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Youth and the Conscience of a Nation. New York: Crown Publishers, 1995.

FILMS Simon, David and Burns, ed. The Wire (TV Series). Home Box Office, 2002–2006. Weis, Gary. 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s. Above Average Productions, 1979.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force Planet Rock: The Album. Tommy Boy, 1986. Big Pun Capital Punishment. Relativity, 1998. Yeeeah Baby. Relativity, 2000. Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded. B-Boy Records, 1987. By All Means Necessary. Jive/RCA Records, 1988. Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop. Jive/RCA, 1989. Edutainment. Jive, 1990. Busy Bee Running Thangs. Uni/MCA Records, 1988.

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C-Rayz Walz Ravipops. Definite Jux, 2003. Monstermaker. Babygrande, 2007. Camp Lo Uptown Saturday Night. Profile, 1997. Cold Crush Brothers ‘‘Weekend.’’ Elite, 1982. ‘‘Punk Rock Rap.’’ Tuff City, 1983. ‘‘Fresh, Wild, Fly, and Bold.’’ Profile, 1984. ‘‘Cold Crush Brothers at the Dixie.’’ Wild Style Original Soundtrack, 25th Anniversary Edition. Mr. Bongo, 2007. D-Nice Call Me D-Nice. Jive, 1990. To tha Rescue. Jive, 1991. Diamond and the Pyschotic Neurotics Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop. Chemistry/Mercury, 1992. Diamond Hatred, Passions, and Infidelity. Mercury/Polygram, 1997. Grown Man Talk. Diamond Mine, 2003. The Diamond Mine. Diamond Mine, 2003. The Huge Hefner Chronicles. Babygrande, 2008. Fantastic Five ‘‘Can I Get a Soul Clapp?’’ Soul-O-Wax, 1982. Fat Joe Represent. Relativity, 1993. Jealous Ones’ Envy. Relativity, 1995. Don Cartagena. Mystic Records/Big Beats, 1998. Jealous Ones Still Envy. Atlantic, 2001. Funky Four Plus One More ‘‘Rapping and Rocking the House.’’ Enjoy, 1979. ‘‘That’s the Joint.’’ Sugarhill, 1980. Furious Five ‘‘Step Off.’’ Sugar Hill, 1984. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five The Message. Sugar Hill, 1982. Kool Keith Sex Style. Funky Ass, 1997. Black Elvis/Lost in Space. Ruffhouse/Columbia, 1999. Matthew. Funky Ass, 2000. Kool Keith (As Dr. Octagon) Dr. Octagynecologist. Dreamworks, 1996.

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Kool Keith (As Dr. Dooom) First Come, First Served. Funky Ass, 1999. KRS-One Return of the Boom Bap. Jive, 1993. KRS-One. Jive, 1995. I Got Next. Jive, 1997. KRS-One and Marley Marl Hip Hop Lives. Koch, 2007. KRS-One and Buckshot Survival Skills. Duck Down, 2009. Lord Finesse and DJ Mike Smooth Funky Technician. Wild Pitch, 1990. Lord Finesse Return of the Funky Man. Giant/Reprise, 1992. Melle Mel and Duke Bootee ‘‘Message 2 (Survival).’’ Sugar Hill, 1982. Nice & Smooth Nice & Smooth. Fresh/Sleeping Bag, 1989. Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed. RAL/Columbia, 1990. Jewel of the Nile. RAL/Polygram, 1994. Blazing Hot, Vol. 4. Scotti Brothers, 1997. Nine Nine Livez. Profile, 1995. Showbiz and A.G. Soul Clap. Payday, 1992. Runaway Slave. Payday, 1992. Slick Rick The Great Adventures of Slick Rick. Universal/Def Jam, 1988. The Ruler’s Back. Def Jam, 1991. Behind Bars. Def Jam, 1994. The Art of Storytelling. Def Jam, 1999. T La Rock Lyrical King (From the Boogie Down Bronx). Fresh/Sleeping Bag, 1987. Terror Squad True Story. Universal, 2004. Tim Dog Penicillin on Wax. Ruffhouse, 1991. Do or Die. Ruffhouse, 1993. BX Warrior. Big City, 2006. Ultra (Kool Keith and Tim Dog) Big Time. Our Turn, 1996.

Hip Cats in the Cradle of Rap | 29 Ultramagnetic MCs Critical Beatdown. Roadrunner, 1988. Funk Your Head Up. Mercury/Polygram, 1992. The Four Horsemen. Wild Pitch, 1993. Various Artists Lyricist Lounge, vol. 1. Rawkus Records, 1998.

CHAPTER 2 Uptown, Baby!: Hip Hop in Harlem and Upper Manhattan David Shanks Harlem, New York, has been the center of African American culture and arts since the early twentieth century. Often referred to as the Mecca of Black America, Harlem’s roots run deep with tradition—this neighborhood has been home to some of the greatest artists in American history. From Sir Duke Ellington in the 1920s to Langston Hughes and James Baldwin during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, Harlem has housed a virtual who’s who of poets, singers, musicians, writers, and performers. Harlem has always been the place to find whatever is new and happening in Black America. Whether it’s the newest fashion trend or slickest slang terminology, you can find it in Harlem before anywhere else in the world. It’s no surprise that Harlem played a key role in the origins and early development of hip hop music and culture. If the South Bronx is the birthplace of hip hop, then Harlem is where the newborn culture took its first steps. Many of hip hop’s pioneers took the short train ride into Harlem to spread the new phenomenon to their uptown neighbors at clubs like Harlem World and the legendary Apollo Theater (see sidebar: Apollo Theater). The first hip hop block parties, thrown by Kool Herc at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue and Cedar Park in the Bronx, drew from the routines of Harlem DJs Eddie Cheeba and DJ Hollywood, who wrote rhymes and call-and-response routines to keep the crowd hyped. Many of the second wave of artists who came after the undisputed founding fathers—the Bronx’s Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc, and Afrika Bambaataa—were native Harlemites, and Harlem rappers in 2009 continue to bring something fresh to the culture. From the Treacherous Three to Dipset, Harlem MCs have always been the trendsetters.

HIP HOP’S FORGOTTEN FOREFATHERS Two names that are seldom mentioned in commercial recollections of hip hop’s early days but never forgotten by the other architects of the culture are Eddie 31

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APOLLO THEATER If Harlem is considered the ‘‘Mecca’’ of Black America then the Apollo Theater is the one true monument that signifies this distinction. Like Harlem itself, The Apollo has seen many ups and downs but has stood the test of time and is now in the midst of a major revitalization and reemergence to the forefront of African American and mainstream culture. The original structure was built at 253 W 125th street in 1914 and was home to one of the city’s most popular burlesque reviews. Ironically, The Apollo was a ‘‘whites only’’ establishment until 1934 when it began featuring its own ‘‘colored review’’ and a new live feature called ‘‘Amateur Night at the Apollo’’ founded and hosted by Ralph Cooper, Sr. Music legend Ella Fitzgerald was one of the first artists to perform at amateur night using her dazzling vocals to become a weekly staple at the venue. Billed as ‘‘the place where dreams are born and legends are made,’’ the Apollo and the amateur night feature would play a major role in launching the careers of some of the most popular African American artists in American history. Among them are Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, James Brown, The Supremes, The Jackson 5, Gladys Knight, James Brown, Lauryn Hill, and countless others. The amateur night contest was adapted for television as Showtime at the Apollo, a long-running, nationally syndicated series. The Apollo Theater has also played host to a ‘‘who’s who’’ of hip hop artists. A live version of Big Daddy Kane’s ‘‘The Wrath of Kane’’ performed at the Apollo was included on his 1989 album, It’s a Big Daddy Thing. Legendary DJ Kid Capri recorded a dedication song called ‘‘The Apollo’’ in 1991 to show his respect to the famous venue. The Apollo was added to the U.S. National Registry of Historic Places in 1983 and is a city, state, and federal historic landmark.

FURTHER RESOURCE Apollo Theater Foundation, Inc. http://www.apollotheater.org/.

Cheeba and DJ Hollywood. The two friends, partners, and competitors are credited by many as the original ‘‘rappers’’ of the hip hop era. Hollywood and Cheeba’s rhyme routines predated and influenced Kool Herc in the Bronx, but their contributions tend to be grouped with the club scene of the 1970s and the dominance of disco music in some of the Manhattan clubs where they played. DJ Hollywood (born Anthony Holloway in 1954) began playing clubs across NYC in the early 1970s and soon gained a huge reputation and following for his unique crowd motivation techniques. Fellow pioneers such as Kurtis Blow credit

Uptown, Baby! | 33 Hollywood (or ‘‘Wood,’’ as he is often called) as the first person to use hip hop raps over recorded music and the inventor of the oft-used party phrases such as ‘‘throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care . . . .’’ Hollywood is also credited for spreading hip hop from the Bronx and Harlem to the boroughs in NYC and for attracting a more mature audience, bringing hip hop from the block party to the clubs. On some nights, Wood was playing two to three different clubs per night charging $500 for each appearance. Most deejays from that era were not making that much for one gig (Skillz). At the height of his popularity, DJ Hollywood was a featured act at the Apollo Theater, entertaining the crowds between sets of some the most popular performers of the time. Hollywood’s influence can be heard in many of hip hop’s original rap stars including Melle Mel (of the Furious Five), Kurtis Blow, and particularly the Sugar Hill Gang, specifically the hip hop classic ‘‘Rapper’s Delight.’’ Hollywood was also a pioneer of the mixtape. As early as 1972, he was selling eighttracks of his mixes for up to $20.00 on the streets of New York. Unfortunately, the original ‘‘King of Rap’’ (Kurtis Blow would later adopt the name as his own) did not record any music for a label, aside from one single, 1980’s ‘‘Shock Shock the House,’’ which left him behind as the groups he influenced were signed to major labels. Those who were there at hip hop’s beginning, however, have nothing but respect, admiration, and gratitude for his contribution to the art form. Like his contemporary, DJ Hollywood, Eddie Cheeba (born Edward Sturgis in Harlem’s Douglass Housing Projects) gained an early reputation as a disco DJ in clubs throughout NYC. Influenced by Hollywood, Cheeba began crafting his own crowd motivation raps, which added to his popularity. Cheeba was able to fuse the disco and hip hop worlds to create a style that would allow him access to clubs throughout the city, uptown, downtown, and across town. He played the venues that Kool Herc and Flash played such as Disco Fever but also played the more ‘‘classy’’ establishments such as Charles Gallery. Cheeba was considered by many to be the number one club DJ in the mid-1970s. He traveled with an entire show and crew, The Cheeba Crew, including seven female dancers and his DJ, Easy Gee. They played clubs in the Bronx, Harlem, Downtown Manhattan, Queens, and even Long Island. Hip hop legend, Kurtis Blow even served as an understudy of Eddie Cheeba before going on to make his own mark. Like Hollywood, and other pioneers like DJ Lovebug Starski, Cheeba’s style and rhymes were duplicated on what would become rap music’s earliest recordings, where the pioneer would receive no credit, or royalties, for his material.

HARLEM WORLD AND THE EARLY YEARS OF HIP HOP (1979–1985) In 1979, as hip hop began to move out of the parks and clubs and onto recordings, Harlem’s Paul Winley joined the first wave of rap records, along with The Fatback

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Kurtis Blow (Michael Ochs Archives/ Getty Images)

Band’s ‘‘King Tim III,’’ Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ and Kurtis Blow’s ‘‘Christmas Rappin.’ ’’ Paul Winley recorded ‘‘Rhymin’ and Rappin’,’’ one of the earliest records by a female rap artist. Winley’s daughters Paulette and Tanya Winley released ‘‘Rhymin’ and Rappin’ ’’ in 1979, just after Philadelphia’s Lady B released her own debut single ‘‘To the Beat Ya’ll.’’ Winley, who produced Afrika Bambaataa’s first record, 1981’s ‘‘Zulu Nation Throwdown,’’ was also the first producer to create a break record. His Super Disco Brakes was the first albumlength compilation of the ‘‘break’’ parts of popular songs, which is the heartbeat of the party DJ, and the backbone of hip hop music. DJs, most notably Grandmaster Flash, would find the section of the song where there was some sort of breakdown in the original rhythm and then continuously loop that section using two turntables and two copies of the same record (the break section of the record would later be used to create brand new hip hop records with the aid of digital sampling). Winley gathered all of the popular breaks of the time and put them on Super Disco Brakes, making the DJ’s job that much easier. Winley is an important figure within Harlem’s DJ culture, which laid the foundation for many of the musical innovations that came with hip hop. Harlem’s first rapper to make it big on records, however, eschewed his Harlem roots for the borough of Queens. Born in Harlem in 1959, Curtis Walker made an early name for himself as a party DJ named Kool DJ Kurt. In 1976, he enrolled at City College of New York where he met fellow student and party promoter, the Queens native Russell Simmons. He soon joined Simmons’ group of promoters known as The Force and they promoted parties throughout Harlem before expanding their operation to Queens in 1977. Inspired by DJ Hollywood’s crowd

Uptown, Baby! | 35 motivation routines, Kool Kurt became an MC, and at the urging of Simmons, his new manager, changed his name to Kurtis Blow. Simmons set about promoting Blow as ‘‘The Number One Rapper in Queens,’’ and his popularity grew among the young fans of hip hop. One admirer of Blow was Simmons’s younger brother Joe, who would become Kurtis Blow’s DJ known as, DJ Run, Son of Kurtis Blow. DJ Run would become one third of Run-DMC, one of hip hop’s most influential groups. By the late 1970s, Kurtis Blow was making a name for himself in the streets and Russell Simmons was making connections in the music industry. These connections led to Kurtis Blow recording his first record, 1979’s ‘‘Christmas Rappin.’’ The success of the single eventually led to a monumental moment in hip hop history as Kurtis Blow became the first rapper to sign a contract with a major recording label. Blow followed up ‘‘Christmas Rappin’’ in 1980. The new ‘‘King of Rap’’ released his debut self-titled album that same year. Kurtis Blow released 10 albums in the next 11 years and cemented his position as hip hop loyalty with hits such as ‘‘Basketball,’’ ‘‘AJ,’’ and ‘‘If I Ruled The World’’ (the latter would resurface years later when Nas covered it, featuring Lauryn Hill on the chorus). Throughout the years and many changes in the genre, Kurtis Blow maintained his relevance as a pioneer and ambassador of the art form starring in films like Krush Groove (1985), producing artists, and lending his time and energy to many social causes. Kurtis Blow still resides in New York where he serves as founder, DJ, and worship leader at the first hip hop church, in Harlem. While Blow’s rhyme style was closer to the steady pace of the Bronx rapper Melle Mel, another Harlem group, The Treacherous Three, are credited with developing new, intricate rhyme styles that influenced many hip hop MCs. The Treacherous Three, consisting of Special K, L.A. Sunshine, Kool Moe Dee, and DJ Easy Lee, formed in the late 1970s and became one of the first rap acts to record on a major label. The Treacherous Three are credited with being some of the first true lyricists in hip hop; most notably, Kool Moe Dee who would go on to solo success and is regarded as one of the greatest emcees of his era. In 1980, The Treacherous Three recorded ‘‘The New Rap Language,’’ the B-side to rapper and friend Spoonie Gee’s classic single, ‘‘Love Rap,’’ on Enjoy Records. In the song, The Treacherous Three would employ a new style dubbed ‘‘speed rapping’’ that would influence many of the rappers that came after them including LL. Cool J, T La Rock, Kool G. Rap, and Big Daddy Kane. They followed that up with ‘‘Body Rock’’ and ‘‘At the Party’’ and then left Enjoy Records to join the legendary Sugar Hill records in 1981 where they released the classic singles ‘‘Feel the Heartbeat,’’ ‘‘Whip It,’’ ‘‘Yes We Can Can,’’ and ‘‘Action.’’ They also had a cameo performance in the 1984 movie Beat Street performing ‘‘Santa’s Rap’’ with Doug E. Fresh. The group disbanded shortly after that but reunited for the 1994 album Old School Flava. The Harlem-raised Doug E. Fresh (Douglass Davis, born 1966 in Barbados) began his music career at age 13. Legend has it that a young Doug E. Fresh (then

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Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew (Photofest)

named Dougie Fresh) was booed several times at Harlem World until one distinct performance when he came with something the crowd had never seen before. He used his mouth to vocally simulate the sounds of drums and other instruments which is now known as the human beat box. Instead of trying to rhyme like a traditional MC, Doug became a crowd motivator and inventor of beatboxing, one of the five elements of hip hop. That night birthed the legend of the self-proclaimed ‘‘world’s greatest entertainer.’’ In 1984, Doug E. Fresh appeared in the movie Beat Street and made his solo recording debut with the singles ‘‘Just Having Fun’’ and ‘‘Original Human Beat Box.’’ Doug E. Fresh would truly make his mark on hip hop in 1985 after forming the Get Fresh Crew with DJs Chill Will, Barry B and a London, England born, Bronxbred rapper, MC Ricky D (hip hop legend, Slick Rick). The two-sided, multiplatinum singles ‘‘The Show’’ and ‘‘La Di Da Di,’’ are two of the most celebrated records in hip hop and are still party favorites over 20 years later. In 1986, the Get Fresh Crew released their full-length album Oh, My God! The 1988 follow up, The World’s Greatest Entertainer, featured the hit single ‘‘Keep Rising to the Top,’’ but is most noted for its lack of input from MC Ricky D who was reportedly removed from the group’s lineup by their record label. MC Ricky D would change his name to Slick Rick and release his debut album, The Adventures of Slick Rick, in 1989 on Def Jam Records. The album reached #1 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip Hop chart. Although Doug E. Fresh had countless cameos and single releases, he did not release another album until 1992 when he returned with Doin’ What I Gotta Do,

Uptown, Baby! | 37 on MC Hammer’s Bust It imprint. Although the album was not commercially successful, Doug E. Fresh continued to be a relevant force in hip hop lending his talents to a host of music’s best, including Chaka Khan, and rock group, Living Colour. In 1993, he released the hit single ‘‘I-Ight’’ which was followed up in 1995 with a successful LP titled Play on Gee Street Independent. The album featured a collaboration with former partner Slick Rick. Doug returned the favor, appearing on Slick Rick’s 1999 release The Art of Story Telling. The two have performed together on many occasions but never released another album as the Get Fresh Crew. Doug E. Fresh is recognized world wide as a hip hop ambassador and is among the first rap artists to perform in Africa and the Caribbean. His list of collaborations stretches across all genres of music and includes hip hop greats, Tupac, The Notorious BIG, Eminem, Dr. Dre, jazz legends, Grover Washington, Jr., and George Benson, as well as other greats such as Prince, Roberta Flack, Stevie Wonder, and reggae legends Sly and Robbie. He is also respected for his community activism, championing many causes including inner city violence, illiteracy, police brutality, and homelessness. He participated in rapper KRS-One’s Stop The Violence Movement and is a board member of The Artist Empowerment Movement.

LATE 1980S AND THE CRACK ERA Hip Hop culture has always grown from the streets. Whatever was going on in the neighborhoods was expressed in the music and culture. As much as the late 1970s and early 1980s were influenced by the b-boys, the clubs, and unique wardrobes; the late 1980s can be categorized as the ‘‘Crack era’’ in Harlem and in hip hop. The fly suits and gloves were replaced by tons of jewelry, Gucci sneakers, and foreign cars. The street hustler became the main influence for the emcee and three hustlers from Harlem became the primary influential source. Alberto ‘‘Alpo’’ Martinez, Richard Porter, Azie ‘‘AZ’’ Fasion became the poster boys for the underworld of the late 1980s and their influence extended far beyond Harlem. Alpo could be seen hanging out with the likes of LL Cool J, Eric B & Rakim and even Mike Tyson. The ‘‘dooky’’ rope chains, the clothes from Dapper Dans (clothing store in Harlem), and the Benzes (Mercedes Benz) and Beemers (BMW) became the signature look of the era. The style and influence is depicted in the 2002 film Paid in Full, starring Mekhi Phifer and Harlem rapper Cam’ron. The screenplay for the movie was written by Fasion and was loosely based on his life. When the music video show Yo! MTV Raps premiered in August 1988, hip hop music and culture was no longer contained to New York or New Jersey or Philadelphia, it was now available to kids across the country. The styles and images portrayed in many of these videos would carry the influence of the Harlem street culture. The music became less about partying and having fun and took on more combative themes flooded with the vernacular of the street. However, very few Harlem-bred artists were involved in this transition. Doug E. Fresh was a star

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and Kool Moe Dee had established his solo career, but both artists held on to their ‘‘old school’’ traditions of peace, unity and having fun. Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock emerged with one of the biggest hits of 1988, ‘‘It Takes Two.’’ The multiplatinum single was named one of the top 100 hip hop songs of all time by VH1 and the Harlem duo has toured the world for years off of its success. ‘‘It Takes Two,’’ however, was a throwback to the era of party rap, and Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock would not match the success of this song as a new, harder, breed of rap music took hold.

THE EARLY 1990S Further expansion of hip hop culture meant that no one place or region could hold on to it as its own. Hip hop now belonged to everyone and every region had its own interpretation. West Coast gangsta rap was the dominating force during this time with much credit for that belonging to Eazy E and N.W.A.. There were no torchbearers from Harlem that would emerge to carry on the traditions of the Harlem World era and the early 1980s until much later in the decade. From 1990 to 1995 there was a period of transition and the one voice from Harlem being heard was very loud but much more musically influenced than traditional hip hop music. This was the era of the ‘‘New Jack Swing’’ and the architect was a gifted musician and composer named Edward Theodore (Teddy) Riley. Riley performed as a youngster at Club Harlem World (see sidebar: Harlem World). and got his first production credit at age 15 producing the underground classic ‘‘Raps New Generation’’ by Classical II. With his ‘‘New Jack Swing’’ sound, Riley ruled the early to mid-1990s composing hits for rappers Kool Moe Dee, Heavy D & The Boys, Big Daddy Kane, and Redhead Kingpin, superstars such as Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown, and his own groups Guy, Wreckx ‘N’ Effect, and Blackstreet. Riley is a VH1 Hip Hop Honors inductee.

THE MID TO LATE 1990S It is arguable which period of time had the most impact and influence on hip hop music and culture. Many feel the late 1970s and early 1980s took hip hop from the streets to vinyl, from uptown to downtown, making what started in the parks of the Bronx and Harlem into a cultural phenomenon. Others would argue that the era that began in the mid-1990s was the birth of what is now a corporate machine and billion dollar industry in which rappers have parlayed their slick raps and unique styles onto Wall St., Madison Avenue, and Forbes Magazine. For better or worse, hip hop is now mainstream culture and there are two individuals who may be most responsible for this journey. Both are Harlem natives who emerged on the scene around 1994. One is most obvious and the other obscure. One is a story of triumph that is still being crafted, the other a story of tragedy, filled with ‘‘what-ifs’’ and lost promise. One is Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Puffy,

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HARLEM WORLD One of the centers of Harlem’s early hip hop scene was Club Harlem World, located on 116th Street and Lennox Avenue. Harlem World was the major hot spot for the hip hop partygoers. It also played host to some of the most historic battles in hip hop involving some of the great emcees and groups of the day, most notably the Cold Crush Brothers and The Fantastic Five. On one memorable night in 1981 a battle took place between Chief Rocka Busy Bee and Kool Moe Dee of the Treacherous Three. This battle is now considered one of the most significant in the history of hip hop and the recording is still being played around the world today. Many artists who would go on to superstardom received their first break performing for the Harlem World crowd including a young Teddy Riley (producer and founder of groups Blackstreet and Guy), Keith Sweat, New Edition (in their first New York City performance), and Doug E. Fresh. Harlem World also featured its own crew of ‘‘house emcees’’ called the Harlem World Crew. The crew consisted of Charlie Rock, Son of Sam, DJ Randy, DJ Kool D, and later on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They recorded the hit record ‘‘Rapper’s Convention’’ in 1980 for Tayster Records. Dr. Jekyll (real name Andre Harrell) would go on to start Uptown Records, discover talents like Mary J. Blige and Jodeci, and give a young Sean ‘‘P. Diddy’’ Combs his start in the music business. Harlem World would close its doors in 1985 due in part to financial woes and community pressure.

Shiny Suit Man, Mr. Vote or Die), and the other is Lamont Coleman, known simply as Big L. Combs began his career as an intern at Uptown Records under the watchful eye of the label’s president, Andre Harrell (of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame). The ambitious Combs was soon promoted to an A&R position within the company where he was responsible for launching the careers of R&B sensations Jodeci and Mary J. Blige. His ambitious nature would actually lead to him being fired from Uptown by Harrell which may be the catalyst that created the ‘‘monster’’ that is P. Diddy. Shortly after his demise at Uptown, Combs started his own record company which he named Bad Boy Entertainment. His first release, Craig Mack’s platinum selling debut Project: Funk the World, featured the 1994 hit ‘‘Flava in Your Ear.’’ Of course it was Bad Boy’s second release, the classic Ready to Die from The Notorious BIG that would cement Combs’ place in history and begin the reign of P. Diddy and Bad Boy. The year 1994 also marked the debut of another Harlem native son, Big L. Lamont ‘‘Big L’’ Coleman (May 30, 1974–February 15, 1999) was born and raised on 139th St and Lennox Avenue on Harlem’s Westside. It was evident at a very

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early age that ‘‘L’’ was a gifted lyricist with an undying love of hip hop. He would gain a name for himself battling emcees at the neighborhood park on 139th St and around Harlem. In the early 1990s, Big L formed a crew called Children of the Corn (COC). The group included a young Mason ‘‘Murder Mase’’ Betha, Cameron ‘‘Killa Cam’’ Giles, and Cam’s cousin, Derek ‘‘Bloodshed’’ Armstead (now deceased). Production was done by Darrell ‘‘Digga’’ Branch who would go on to produce hits for Jay-Z and 50 Cent. Mase and Cam were outstanding basketball players at Manhattan Center High School and both had dreams of the NBA. ‘‘L’’ by most accounts, was the only group member seriously pursuing a career in rap and his dreams would soon come true shortly after meeting rap veteran Lord Finesse who recruited Big L to join his Diggin’ In the Crates (DITC) Crew. His first official cameo appearance would come in 1992 on Lord Finesse’s ‘‘Yes You May’’ remix which was the B-Side to the single ‘‘Party Over Here.’’ Fresh off his cameo, Big L recorded a four-song demo which caught the ears of executives at Columbia Records who signed him soon after. Post high school plans would differ for the members of COC as Cam and Mase went off to college and Big L prepared his debut album for Columbia. In 1995, Big L released the critically acclaimed Lifestylez ov da Poor and Dangerous. While not a commercial success, the album showcased the superb lyrical talents of L who quickly became a favorite amongst hip hop fans nationwide. Big L left Columbia Records in 1996 soon after his debut citing the label’s lack of publicity and support. Ironically, Mase, while attending a music conference in Atlanta with hopes of meeting Jermaine Dupri (Founder of So So Def Music and Def Jam Records executive), met P. Diddy who signed him shortly after hearing him rap. Mase appeared on fellow Bad Boy artists 112’s ‘‘Only You (Remix)’’ and shot to stardom. In 1997, backed by the Bad Boy hit machine, Mase released the multiplatinum Harlem World and became a global star. Through his new found fame and connections he was able to land a solo deal for friend and former COC member Cam who dropped the ‘‘Killa,’’ changed his name to ‘‘Cam’ron,’’ and signed to Lance ‘‘Un’’ Rivera’s Untertainment. Jaded by the lack of success of his debut, many say Big L contemplated retiring from rap. It would take the start of a long awaited DITC (a hip hop supergroup made up of rapper/producer Lord Finesse, Fat Joe, OC, Showbiz & AG, rapper/ producer Diamond and producer Buckwild, along with Big L) project to bring Big L back to what he loved the most. In 1997, L resurfaced with heralded appearances on DITC songs ‘‘Internationally Known’’ and ‘‘The Enemy.’’ He also made a cameo appearance on DITC group member, OC’s 1997 release, Jewelz. Big L also went on tour with DITC leading up to what was supposed to be the release of their first group album. Big L also began working on his own solo material again, this time as CEO of his own label Flamboyant Entertainment. He dropped the classic single ‘‘Ebonics’’ for ‘‘Size ’Em Up’’ and the streets began listening and talking again. Big L soon

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Jim Jones at the VH1 Hip Hop Honors in New York City on October 2, 2008. (AP Photo)

caught the attention of Harlem native and Roc-a-fella Records CEO, Damon ‘‘Dame’’ Dash (who would later sign Cam’ron) who approached L with interest in signing him to the label. L initially declined due to Dash’s lack of interest in signing his friend and longtime collaborator Herb McGruff and his new prote´ge´, C-Town. Negotiations did not break off however and it is reported that Big L was very close to signing a label deal for his Flamboyant Entertainment imprint with Roc-a-fella when he met his tragic and untimely demise on February 15, 1999. The impact of Big L’s death was felt throughout the hip hop community as friends and collaborators including Mase and Cam’ron expressed their hurt over the tragedy. The eventual posthumous release of Big L’s second album The Big Picture not only served as a reminder of Big L’s lyrical prowess and influence on many of his associates, but it showed how quickly a promising life can be snatched away. Many critics, fans, and hip hop aficionados consider Lamont Coleman to be the greatest rapper from Harlem. Three months after Big L’s death, NYC police arrested Gerard Woodley, a childhood friend of Big L’s, for his murder.

DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY—2000 AND BEYOND Cam’ron, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, Freekey Zeeky, JR Writer, 40 Cal, Hell Rell, Duke da God, comedian Kat Williams, and female artist, Jha Jha. Harlem’s Diplomats, or Dipset, originally consisted of childhood friends Cameron ‘‘Cam’ron’’ Giles, Joseph Guillermo Jones II or ‘‘Jim Jones,’’ and E-Zekiel ‘‘Freeky Zeeky’’ Jiles, who grew up together on Harlem’s Eastside. A young Laron ‘‘Juelz Santana’’

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James was recruited shortly after and the core of the group was formed. The Diplomats first appeared on Cam’ron’s sophomore album SDE, released in 2000 on Epic Records. It was in 2002, however, when Cam joined forces with friend and mentor Dame Dash’s Roc-a-fella Records that he and the Diplomats would become one of the premier collectives in hip hop. Cam’s first Roc-a-fella release Come Home with Me featured the hit singles ‘‘Oh Boy’’ and ‘‘Hey Ma’’ which both featured Juelz Santana. The hits would help secure a deal for the crew’s Diplomatic Records with Cam and Jim Jones serving as co-CEOs, and Freekey Zeeky as president. In 2003, The Diplomats released their first group album, Diplomatic Immunity, via their Diplomat/Roc-a-fella Records imprint and the ‘‘movement’’ was in full motion. The album further cemented Dipset’s growing popularity and introduced new members including Hell Rell. In 2004, Diplomatic Immunity 2 was released and the world was introduced to the likes of JR Writer, 40 Cal, and Jha Jha. Dipset now had a complete roster of artists with diverse backgrounds that stretch outside of Harlem. Dipset is one of the most influential collectives in hip hop putting out dozen’s of mixtapes and major releases, securing label deals with multiple record companies (Warner Bros., Koch, Def Jam, etc.), and creating new fashion crazes. In fact, Cam’ron single-handedly made the color pink a ‘‘must have’’ on men and women alike. Many say the Harlem Diplomats brought the famed and historic ‘‘Harlem swagger’’ back to the forefront of hip hop.

WHO’S NEXT? THE FUTURE OF HIP HOP IN HARLEM Many artists have begun to emerge with hopes to carry the torch for Harlem. Battle emcees Jae Millz, Posta Boy, and Murda Mook have been seen and heard from plenty on mixtapes, DVDs, and in the streets. Former Dipset/Byrdgang affiliate Max B has also garnered huge buzz in the streets and on the Internet. Charles Hamilton is a unique emcee/producer with a much cleaner image than his contemporaries but who seems to be on the cusp of superstardom. Ron Browz, a producer and artist, gained initial recognition as producer for Nas’s classic battle record ‘‘Ether.’’ In 2008, Ron Browz emerged as an artist with the popular club hit, ‘‘Pop Champagne,’’ featuring Dipset’s Jim Jones and Juelz Santana. This new wave of artists range from gangster rap to alternative but all maintain one common trait—the confidence that exudes from every emcee that claims Harlem as his home. There are also new institutions in place with the mission to keep alive the legacy and traditions that the fathers of hip hop culture created in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Rap legend and pioneer, Kurtis Blow, is founder and pastor of Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion Church (located at 160 West 146th Street), the first official Hip Hop Church in Harlem equipped with a choir and DJ. Grandmaster Caz works with Hush Tours, a company that conducts guided hip hop tours of Harlem giving visitors a first hand look at the landmarks of Harlem’s early hip hop scene. There is

Uptown, Baby! | 43 also the Hip Hop Cultural Center (located at the Magic Johnson Theater, 2309 Frederick Douglass Boulevard) founded by the Global Artists Coalition to help preserve the culture and offer events and activities for the youth of the inner city.

REFERENCES Morris, Colin. ‘‘Celebrating Harlem’s Hip-Hop History.’’ Columbia News, June 23, 2005. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/06/winley_paul_hiphop.html (accessed August 10, 2008). Skillz, Mark. ‘‘The Disco Side of Hip Hop.’’ Wax Poetics, July 2005.

FURTHER RESOURCES Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem. On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey through the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. Banks, William. Beloved Harlem: A Literary Tribute to Black America’s Most Famous Neighborhood: From the Classics to Contemporary. New York: Harlem Moon/Broadway, 2005. Bascom, Lionel C. A Renaissance in Harlem: Lost Voices of an American Community. New York: Bard, 1999. Boyd, Herb. The Harlem Reader: A Celebration of New York’s Most Famous Neighborhood, from the Renaissance Years to the Twenty-First Century. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003. Faison, Azie, and Agyei Tyehimba. Game Over: The Rise and Transformation of a Harlem Hustler. New York: Atria, 2007. Lewis, David L. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Knopf, 1981. Maurrasse, David. Listening to Harlem: Gentrification, Community, and Business. New York: Routledge, 2006.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Big L LifestylEZ ov da Poor and Dangerous. Columbia, 1995. Biz Markie Goin’ Off. Cold Chillin’, 1987. The Biz Never Sleeps. Cold Chillin’, 1989. I Need a Haircut. Cold Chillin’, 1991. Cam’ron Confessions of Fire. Untertainment, 1998. S.D.E. Diplomat Records, 2000. Come Home with Me. Diplomat Records/Roc-a-Fella, 2002.

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Purple Haze. Diplomat Records/Roc-a-Fella, 2004. Killa Season. Diplomat Records/Asylum, 2006. Cannibal Ox The Cold Vein. Definitive Jux, 2001. Children of the Corn Children of the Corn—the Collector’s Edition. Bullet Proof Records, 2003. Crash Crew ‘‘High Power Rap.’’ Mike & Dave Records, 1980. ‘‘We Want To Rock.’’ Sugar Hill Records, 1981. The Crash Crew. Sugar Hill Records, 1984. High Powered Rappers. Ol’ Skool Flava, 1996. Diplomats Diplomatic Immunity. Diplomat Records/Roc-A-Fella, 2003. Diplomatic Immunity 2. Diplomat Records, 2004. D.I.T.C. D.I.T.C. Tommy Boy, 2000. DJ Hollywood ‘‘Shock Shock the House.’’ CBS, 1980. Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew Oh, My God! Reality/Fantasy, 1986. The World’s Greatest Entertainer. Reality/Fantasy, 1988. Eddie Cheeba ‘‘Looking Good (Shake Your Body).’’ Tree Line, 1980. Fearless Four ‘‘Rockin’ It.’’ New York Connection, 1982. Immortal Technique Revolutionary Vol. 1. Viper, 2001. Revolutionary Vol. 2. Viper, 2003. Kool Moe Dee I’m Kool Moe Dee. Jive, 1986. How Ya Like Me Now. Jive, 1987. Knowledge Is King. Jive, 1989. Funke, Funke Wisdom. Jive, 1991. Mase Harlem World. Bad Boy, 1997. Double Up. Bad Boy, 1999. Welcome Back. Bad Boy, 2004. MF Grimm MF EP (with MF DOOM). Brick, 2000. The Downfall of Ibliyis: A Ghetto Opera. Day by Day/Metal Face, 2002. Digital Tears: E-Mail from Purgatory. Day by Day, 2004.

Uptown, Baby! | 45 Scars & Memories. Day by Day, 2005. American Hunger. Day by Day, 2006. Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock It Takes Two. Profile, 1988. The Incredible Base. Profile, 1989. Ron Browz EtherBoy. EtherBoy/Universal Motown, 2009. Spoonie G (misprinted Spoonin’ G on the 12’’ label) ‘‘Spoonin’ Rap.’’ Sound of New York, 1979. ‘‘Love Rap.’’ Enjoy, 1980. The Treacherous Three ‘‘The New Rap Language’’ (b-side to Spoonie Gee’s ‘‘Love Rap’’). Enjoy, 1980. ‘‘Feel the Heartbeat.’’ Enjoy, 1980. ‘‘Body Rock.’’ Enjoy, 1980. The Treacherous Three. Sugar Hill, 1984. Old School Flava. Wrap, 1994. Vast Aire Look Mom . . . No Hands. Chocolate Industries, 2004.

CHAPTER 3 From Queens Come Kings: Run DMC Stomps Hard out of a “Soft“ Borough Ericka Blount Danois ‘‘People thought Queens was soft, point blank. Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan—everybody thought that Queens was soft. Even Staten Island. Until Run DMC came and put Queens on the map. Before that we were soft suburban kids. Even when we put out our first record, Melle Mel and even our idols the Cold Crush Brothers were like who are these kids from Queens?! We proved everybody wrong.’’ —Darryl ‘‘DMC’’ McDaniels, personal interview, October 2007. It was soft until we said it ain’t soft. Soft until we looked deeper under. —Rev Run, personal interview, October 2007.

When Run DMC debuted at the Bronx nightclub Disco Fever, wearing checkered jackets, white pants, and black and white shell-toe Adidas, they were greeted by laughter from the crowd. The mostly Bronx-born crowd found out that these kids from Queens could rock the mic and the feeling in the club that night was that Queens was trying to take over the rap scene. Then Run DMC performed their B-side hit ‘‘Sucker MCs,’’ from the single, ‘‘It’s Like That.’’ By then, there wasn’t anything anyone could do but throw their hands in the air and turn the Fever into one huge sweatbox. The crowd got a taste of what would become Run DMC’s legendary live show. On the cut, ‘‘Jam Master Jay,’’ Run DMC slyly announced that the Bronx may have started hip hop, but some new kids on the block had come to take it to new places: ‘‘The good news is there is a crew. Not five, not four, not three, just two.’’ According to DMC, this song was directed at Bronx legends the Furious Five, the Fearless Four, and the Treacherous Three. In 1984, Melle Mel, of the group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, answered Run DMC’s boastful rap with one of his own, ‘‘The Truth,’’ which acknowledged their talent while at the same time denouncing the idea that they would ever match the originators: ‘‘You got a little bit of fame and wealth, now you think you did it all by yourself, hah!’’ 47

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Run DMC in Tougher Than Leather (1988). (New Line Cinema/Photofest)

For the hip hop pioneers that lived in the Bronx and Harlem, where hip hop had begun, the last thing on anyone’s mind was that the unassuming borough of Queens would be the one that would share it with the world. Run DMC was the first rap group to achieve a gold record, and they set the bar for a flood of Queens artists to come. DMC sums up Queens’s reign on hip hop: ‘‘We were in Hollis, five minutes from me was Farmers Boulevard where LL was, five minutes from Farmers Boulevard was Tribe Called Quest, five minutes from Tribe Called Quest on Francis Lewis Boulevard was Davy DMX, five minutes from them was Salt n Pepa, five minutes from them was Nas and them. We were so close, but we all portrayed a different characteristic of the community we lived in,’’ DMC remembers. ‘‘And that’s what was so beautiful, because what Nas said would teach me, what we said would teach LL, and on and on.’’ Although Run DMC became Queens’s first breakout group in 1983, hip hop in Queens got its start in the late 1970s. The members of Run DMC give credit to Queens DJ, Davy DMX (born David Reeves, aka Davy D), as one of the pioneers of hip hop in their borough. In a 1998 lecture at the United DJ Mixing School in Sydney, Australia, Jam Master Jay noted that DJ Davy DMX was to Queens what Afrika Bambaataa was to the Bronx. As a guitarist, Davy D worked with bassist Larry Smith and drummer Trevor Gale to form Orange Krush, a group that recorded singles and backing tracks for Run DMC, Sweet G, and Lovebug Starski. He also contributed to Kurtis Blow’s albums as a DJ and guitarist and had a few successful singles of his own, including the 1984 club classic, ‘‘One for the

From Queens Come Kings | 49 Treble.’’ Describing the impact of Davy DMX’s reputation across New York City, Run, in an interview for Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide, said, ‘‘Bambaattaa even knew about Dave. Dave was so serious about his record collection that you would have to hear about him from all over if you’re in the game. You would realize that there’s this other dude that does what I do, pretty good from his hood, and maybe those couple of people will come to a Queens block party and hear an extra special beat.’’ Unlike Manhattan, the Bronx, and some parts of Brooklyn, in the 1970s Queens was a borough less suited for traveling to by public transportation. It would take two subway trains and often a bus to get to Hollis from Manhattan. Other boroughs were usually just a single train ride away. Queens’s image as a suburban borough was made that much stronger by this inconvenience. Still, despite the relative inconvenience of getting to Queens, there were some club goers who would make the trek to go to clubs like The Renaissance or The Encore on Jamaica Avenue, or The Fantasia on Linden and Merrick Boulevards, Le’ Chalet, or Olympia Palace. This came in large part to the work ethic of Russell Simmons who would bring the hip hop acts he managed to perform at these clubs in Queens. ‘‘Hollis Ave. was full of energy and night life,’’ remembers Danny Simmons, who is four years older than Russell and 11 years older than Run. ‘‘There were clubs up on Hollis Ave.—nightclubs, after hour spots, drug spots. It made for an environment for people to make a new music out of it. People would come from Manhattan to clubs in Queens. On Jamaica Ave. there was a bunch of hot clubs. That song, ‘Funkin for Jamaica’ [by Tom Browne], they were talking about the clubs on Jamaica Ave.’’ Outside of Queens, Russell Simmons would advertise his parties on New York subway cars with stickers that bore the logo ‘‘Rush Productions.’’ At the time there were few hip hop promoters, and Russell played a large part in bringing groups from Queens to the forefront. In 1976, two young college students, Hollis-born Russell Simmons (born October 4, 1957), and Manhattan-born Kool DJ Kurt (born Curtis Walker, August 9, 1959), formed a group called The Force, which Simmons moved from Harlem to Queens in 1977. Walker moved away from DJing and into MCing, and changed his name to Kurtis Blow. Simmons’ younger brother, Joseph, became Kurtis Blow’s DJ, billing himself as ‘‘DJ Run, the Son of Kurtis Blow.’’ Russell Simmons gave his brother Joseph his first job in the music business at age 13. ‘‘I would be sitting there when they came home from the club, deejaying from the attic from the little knowledge I had,’’ remembers Run. ‘‘They were like ‘Joey can deejay!’ ’’ Joseph ‘‘Run’’ Simmons (born November 14, 1964), became the black Stetson hat, and laceless shell-toe Adidas wearing lead rapper of Run DMC. Run and Darryl McDaniels or DMC (born Darryl Lovelace, May 31, 1964), literally shouted verses back and forth to each other, finishing each other’s lines like an old married couple. Jason Mizell, the third member of Run DMC, lived on 203rd Street with his father, a social worker, and his mother who was a schoolteacher. He spun records with neighbor Jeff Fludd, who was his MC. They called

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themselves Two-Fifth Down. Mizell was known in the area for participating in high risk robberies in well-to-do areas like Jamaica Estates. Unlike many rappers in the Bronx, a borough where the evidence of urban decay was more obvious, Run DMC’s journey started in a two-story home in what was then the mostly white enclave of Hollis, Queens. Queens, with its detached houses, finished basements, and manicured lawns in neighborhoods like Hollis and Jamaica, was far removed from the overcrowded tenements and city living of places like the Bronx and Harlem. It was seen as the ticket out, or a refuge from the chaos. But there was something innovative bubbling underneath all of the perceived suburban bliss. Daniel Simmons Sr., the father of the three Simmons brothers, was a social worker and youth counselor who worked at a neighborhood recreation center. Their mother, Evelyn, worked for the New York City Parks Department and painted in her spare time. The Simmons’ parents were both college educated and expected the same of their sons. The Simmons’ grandparents had moved to Queens with money earned from the GI Bill after World War I and bought their first house in Jamaica for $6,000. Their grandfather worked for the post office and their grandmother was a nurse. The Simmons’ parents lived in this house until they could afford to buy their own house in Hollis. They were part of the first wave of black families to move to 205th Street before white flight to the suburbs led Hollis to become virtually all black. The neighborhood was characterized with wildlife like snakes, rabbits, and raccoons. But there was another side to Hollis that was not as evident to outsiders. Hollis Avenue was a hub for after-hours spots, gangs, and heroin in the late 1970s. Run recalls, ‘‘It would seem that the Bronx or Brooklyn would be the crazier neighborhood, but a lot of times we had crazy people too. I didn’t go to the clubs [in Queens] a lot, but I would perform at some of them once Run DMC came out. But there was Encore in Queens and there were parties given in Queens by Russell years before, at Fantasia on the Southside, and crazy things would happen there. Queens was, at the end of the day, kind of crazy as well as obviously, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Queens was just as thugged out. We had gangs—the Savage Skulls and the Seven Immortals. [The drug dealer] Fat Cat lived up the block from me, and DMC knew Fat Cat. D would go out and play and see the drug dealers and crazy people. When Run DMC put Hollis on the map, we had a cool swagger, so people thought those dudes must be drug dealers, but we wasn’t. Those kind of rumors would roll—they don’t horseplay, Run carries a gun. That kind of stupid thought would go through somebody’s mind because of the way we carried ourselves with Jay and the way we folded our arms and had mean faces. The demeanor of Run DMC was how you were supposed to carry yourself in the street. Puffy [Sean Combs] said to me recently, ‘I thought you would walk like that in your bedroom the way you walked across the stage at the Garden. I thought that in your underwear in the morning, I thought you would walk to the bathroom like that. You was the coolest thing I ever saw, and the most b-boy.’ That was the

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demeanor I got from the people I saw getting out of jail or on Hollis Ave’s corner. I guess I was copying how you walk around there if you want to survive. Not that it was crazy crazy, but it was crazy enough. It was crazy enough.’’ Run-DMC grew up amid one of the most violent epochs in New York history, where drug kingpins had strongholds on formerly stable neighborhoods like Hollis, with little fear of retribution. Notorious drug kingpins and hustlers like Kenneth ‘‘Supreme’’ McGriff, the head of the crack dealing crew known as The Supreme Team, terrorized Southeast Queens, employing over 100 people to commandeer the Baisley Park Projects and its neighboring areas. Meanwhile, Fat Cat was ruling over 150th St. Ethan Brown’s book, Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler, connects the dots between hustlers who looked to move from a life of crime into the music business when hip hop started to sell, and many hip hop artists who got their street style and swagger from local hustlers and used many local legends in their narratives on their records. Hustlers in the 1980s in Southeast Queens had the money, the girls, street credibility, the cars and clothes —all of the accoutrements that would later encompass gangsta rap and the material ‘‘bling’’ lifestyle of hip hop stars in the late 1990s and new millennium. With the onset of heroin in the 1970s, a street culture developed in Hollis. Danny, the oldest of the Simmons clan, became known in the area as T.O.D.—or Tripped Out Danny—because of his $50 a day heroin habit. By high school he was sent to live with his grandparents in St. Albans. Middle brother Russell was running with a street gang called the Seven Immortals. And the baby of the family, Joey, immersed himself in the musical sounds emerging from the South Bronx. Danny served two years in prison before eventually enrolling, first at Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania, and then at New York University. Today, he is a world-renowned visual artist. Russell enrolled at the City College of New York in Harlem, where he connected with aspiring party promoters, including Kurtis Blow. Competition in Harlem forced him into the untapped hip hop markets of places like Hillside Avenue and clubs like the Renaissance in Queens. The turning point in his career as a party promoter came when he threw a jam at the Hotel Diplomat in Times Square. More than 2,000 hard rocks turned out to hear Grandmaster Flash spin and Kurtis Blow rhyme. On some occasions, Russell would lose money on his ventures and his family would be there to support him financially. This access to money allowed Russell to make mistakes without suffering major consequences. Still, his parents viewed his party promotions ventures as a hobby, while Russell saw it as the beginnings of his career. Eventually his parents grew tired of losing what amounted to thousands of dollars and they told him to finish his college studies. But Russell had other ideas. Russell managed Run DMC under his company, Rush Management, and helped broker their deal with Profile Records. Their first 12 inch single in 1983, ‘‘It’s Like That,’’ which featured the song, ‘‘Sucker MCs,’’ a track that relied only on electronic beats and was produced by Russell and Larry Smith and mixed by Kurtis Blow, would put Queens on the hip hop map.

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Russell’s entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic would later serve as a blueprint for producers like Sean ‘‘P. Diddy’’ Combs. In 1984, when Russell joined forces with NYU student Rick Rubin to create the most influential and longest running hip hop label, Def Jam, it became just one piece in Simmons’ corporation, Rush Communications, which grew to include a management company, Phat Farm clothing company, a movie production house, television shows such as Def Comedy Jam and Def Poetry Jam, One World magazine, and an advertising agency. P. Diddy would later imitate Simmons’ entrepreneurial spirit with Bad Boy, creating his own clothing line and television shows like Bad Boys of Comedy, among many other business ventures. Russell’s brother Run was one third of the group. His partner DMC was a mildmannered, straight ‘‘A’’ Catholic school student who enjoyed playing basketball and reading comic books and creating characters. He would sneak home from school and throw on his street gear so the public school kids wouldn’t see him with his uniform on and try to rob him. He had a basketball rim in his backyard and all of the neighborhood kids—including Run—would come over to his house to play. One day, in the eighth grade, he let Run into his house to get a drink of water (disobeying his mother who didn’t allow people in her house when she wasn’t at home) and let Run see his turntables that were set up in the basement for deejaying. By the next year DMC had traded his turntables for notebooks and showed Run about 50 notebooks filled with rhymes. Run promised him that if his brother, Russell, ever got him a record deal that he wanted DMC to join him. With their black Levis, leather outfits, thick gold chains, and ever-present Adidas footwear, Run DMC’s fashion statements, not to mention impact on retail cash registers, set a precedent for generations to come. Whereas earlier groups, like the Furious Five, dressed in elaborate costumes, Run DMC’s outfits were fly, b-boy minimalist. In his book, It’s Like That: A Spiritual Memoir, Run remembers watching Jam Master Jay as he walked down the streets of Hollis in leather pants, a leather jacket, Adidas sneakers, a gold rope chain, black hat, and Cazal glasses: ‘‘Jay was helping to create a nationwide trend and didn’t know it,’’ Run said. Encouraged by Russell Simmons, Jam Master Jay would become the mastermind behind their b-boy look. Run remembers that Jam Master Jay was the coolest out of the whole crew: ‘‘He would spend his extra dollars on something very cool like a hat and some sneakers. Russell would tell us that upon that rock, we are going to build our foundation. We kept our style straight from the hood.’’ Run DMC’s style signaled to their fans that they were regular guys that weren’t out of reach. They built their fashion, their swagger, and their look around Jay’s style. The group molded their image wearing black velour Stetsons with black leather suits and white laceless Adidas during the winter, and Adidas warm-up suits and terry-cloth Kangol hats when the weather got warmer. DMC, who wore glasses ever since he was a kid, thought that he should lose the glasses to look cooler. But it was Run that told him, ‘‘Those glasses are gonna make you famous!’’ Run’s prophecy came true—people all over the

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world started wearing his Cazal glasses, so big that they almost swallowed their faces. ‘‘People up until this day tell me that you make wearing glasses cool,’’ says DMC. They tried different looks throughout their career: wearing all black with calfhigh Army boots and bald heads and trading in their Cazals for crucifixes when Run became a Reverend. But their signature style would always be the b-boy image that embraced the everyman and allure of the slick, cutting edge style of street hustlers. In their songs, they would boast about their style, in some cases shunning brand name labels like Calvin Klein (‘‘no friend of mine’’) on the 1984 single, ‘‘Rock Box,’’—‘‘Don’t want nobody’s name on my behind’’—because that wasn’t a b-boy style, but then boast about their own particular brand name favorite on their 1986 single, ‘‘My Adidas,’’—‘‘Now the Adidas I possess for one man is rare. Myself, homeboy, got 50 pair.’’ Their love affair with their sneakers won them an endorsement deal with Adidas, the first in rap history. ‘‘That was easy,’’ Run remembers. ‘‘We wore them, we wore them, we wore them. They started selling like crazy ‘cause people loved us, so our managers figured it out that they make their way to corporate Adidas. Russell went to them, was like yo, come to a show, look at this, see how many people are wearing Adidas, did you know your sales went up, that’s cause of this group named Run DMC. And then they would go and negotiate and make it happen. So it was really on the behalf of Russell Simmons or Lyor Cohen or whoever our managers were at the time who could close these type of deals. Russell would close them. His job was to see who got our money.’’ According to Run DMC, some of the major hip hop acts out of the Bronx, like Melle Mel, Afrika Bambaataa, and the Treacherous Three, started their careers wearing b-boy clothes, but when they hit it big and starting opening for funk acts like Rick James and Parliament Funkadelic, they started dressing like those acts, with furs, cornrows, and chains, and other outlandish clothes. While the young group idolized these originators, they were turned off by their fashion choice when they saw them perform live. They made the decision that they would stay true to themselves and dress like they would if they were out on the corners of Hollis. ‘‘Our whole look came from those dudes that was 16 and older,’’ said DMC, ‘‘with the Adidas and the Lee suits and the mock neck and the gold chains and the medallions, and the gold chains, and the godfather hats and all of that. Our whole influence was what people in our neighborhood was already doing. Before Melle Mel, the Treacherous Three, the Sugarhill Gang started making records, before they made records, when they did their shows in the parks and Russell used to hire them to come to play the clubs in the PAL centers, they would dress like Run DMC, with the sheepskins, and the godfather hats, the Kangols. When they started making records, they were like, oh, we’re in show business now. We had the rappers to look up to. We dressed like Melle Mel and them used to dress before they got famous. Melle Mel and them only had Parliament Funkadelic, and Rick James as their idol, that’s why if you go back and look at those covers, they look like Rick James.

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Before they started making records, if you go back to all those flyers and pictures of the Cold Crush, they all got on sheepskins and leathers, and Adidas, just like Run DMC, cause we told Russell, we’ll figure out a costume, we’ll wear black leather blazers, and black leather pants with our Adidas, but we ain’t wearing that other stuff.’’ With their unlaced Adidas sneakers, fedoras, and b-boy stances, Run DMC brought hip hop into the living rooms of middle America while simultaneously keeping their fan base with hardcore hip hop heads. It was a risk that paid off and welcomed hip hop into a whole new audience. The song that alternately confused and delighted hardcore hip hop fans was the remake of rock band Aerosmith’s ‘‘Walk This Way’’ (1986). The idea to create this song originated with Def Jam record label founder Rick Rubin (born March 10, 1963 in Lido Beach, New York) and his soon to be partner Russell Simmons. ‘‘When Russell told us about the song, my first instinct was like, ‘What the hell?!’ ’’ remembers Run, now Reverend Run. ‘‘But Russell was worldly. He went to white clubs. He was like let’s make it full of guitars. Being open has been my biggest gift from God. A lot of good ideas would come to me through our partners and they were my biggest projects.’’ Run DMC made history with rock and rap genre mixing with the single, ‘‘Walk this Way,’’ a remake of Aerosmith’s single from their 1975 album, Toys in the Attic. The single from Run DMC’s 1986 Raising Hell album helped to resurrect Aerosmith’s career and catapulted Run DMC into the mainstream. It was the first rap single to reach Billboard’s Top 10. It peeked in the fall of 1986 at No. 4 and stayed on the chart for a total of 16 weeks. The group had already proven with their 1985 sophomore album, King of Rock, and their subsequent appearance on the Fresh Fest tour, that hip hop could draw arena sized crowds. They opened the doors for hip hop with their muscular rhyme style and transformed rap into a commercial entity with their fearless creativity. ‘‘All of these people are worried about what people think about them. All of these hip hoppers from the 80s, people say things started changing after Biggie and Pac died cause you don’t get good albums, you get good records. We don’t want you to like us. We didn’t want to make the same record we made a week ago. We weren’t afraid to be different. And keep it real and be who we are.’’

MARLEY MARL AND THE JUICE CREW In 1977, the same year that Russell Simmons and Kurtis Blow moved their hip hop endeavors from Harlem to Simmons’ home borough of Queens, Marley Marl (born Marlon Williams on September 30, 1962 in Queens), was forming a neighborhood rap crew called the Sureshot Crew. Across town in the 49-acre sprawl of the Queensbridge projects in a section of Queens called Long Island City, Marley Marl began experimenting on his brother’s turntables. He would spin disco classic instrumentals at River Park and the Jacob Riis Center. He worked as an intern at Unique Studios, where he learned from producer Arthur Baker who had done

From Queens Come Kings | 55 production for the likes of Afrika Bambaataa. He produced his first record, Sucker DJ’s for his girlfriend Dimples D, an answer record to Run DMC’s ‘‘Sucker MCs,’’ and used the proceeds to invest in a drum machine. In 1984, Marley Marl combined forces with Mr. Magic, a deejay made famous throughout the city with his Friday and Saturday night radio show, Rap Attack, the first radio show on a major station to exclusively air rap music. The show aired from 9 PM to midnight on 107.5 WBLS FM. During the same time slot Kool DJ Red Alert’s show on 98.7 KISS FM had rap fans switching back and forth between dials, fingers ready on the button for their pause tapes. At home, Marley Marl was converting his sister’s apartment in Queensbridge into a recording studio (see sidebar: Cold Chillin’ Records). He called the studio, The House of Hits. Here he pulled together an assembly of talent that would later be called The Juice Crew. The Juice Crew included Big Daddy Kane (born Antonio Hardy, September 10, 1968, in Brooklyn), Biz Markie (born Marcel Hall, April 8, 1964, in Harlem), Kool G. Rap (born Nathaniel Wilson, July 20, 1968, in Corona Queens), and DJ Polo (born Thomas Pough [birthdate unknown] in New York City), Masta Ace (born Duvall Clear, December 4, 1966, in Brooklyn), MC Shan (born Shawn Moltke, September 9, 1965, in the Queensbridge projects), Roxanne Shante (born Lolita Shante Gooden, November 9, 1969, in Queensbridge), and Craig G. (born Craig Curry [birthdate unknown] in Queens). From that basic studio Marley Marl would lay the foundation for what would be some of the finest hip hop to ever be heard in what can only be called the Queensbridge explosion, which would later come to include rappers like Nas, Cormega, and the group Mobb Deep. With his high-top fade and player style velour suits, Big Daddy Kane was to hip hop what Sam Cooke was to R&B, a sex symbol. He was a smooth, sometimes socially conscious lyricist with sex appeal to match. Kane followed the ideology of the Five Percent Nation, a religious sect that began in the early 1960s by Clarence Edward Smith, who believed that all black men were living Gods and that only 5 percent of the population were the chosen few that were enlightened enough to liberate the masses. He was introduced in junior high and as an adult became a member, inspired by rapper Rakim. But Kane was no anomaly in the contradictory nature of hip hop. In public appearances he sported gold medallions, heavy link chains, fedoras, and would be seen with attractive women fawning over him. He posed partially nude for a 1991 issue of Playgirl and for Madonna’s 1992 book, Sex. His lyrics bounced from fervent and enlightening to romantic and seductive to salacious and trivial. He signed with Marley Marl’s Cold Chillin’ Records as an artist in 1987. His rapidfire vocal style was heavily influenced by Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush Brothers. His 1989 album, It’s a Big Daddy Thing, produced by an all-star cast including Marley Marl, Mister Cee, Prince Paul, Easy Mo Bee, soon-to-be ‘‘New Jack Swing’’ King Teddy Riley, was a hit. (New Jack Swing was the fusion of hip hop and R&B that would take flight in the 1980s.) The album included ‘‘Pimpin Ain’t Easy,’’ which featured the Bronx duo Nice & Smooth, and

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COLD CHILLIN’ RECORDS Marley Marl first ran Cold Chillin’ Records out of his sister’s apartment in the Queensbridge Houses. Most of the label’s releases were by members of the Juice Crew. In 1988, they signed a five-year distribution deal with Warner Bros. Records. By the mid-1990s it was distributed by Epic Street/SME. Their subsidiary label, Livin’ Large, released Roxanne Shante’s second album and was distributed by former Warner Bros. subsidiary Tommy Boy Records. Tommy Boy would come to be known as another premiere hip hop label, like Def Jam before them, producing artists like Juice Crew members, Roxanne Shante and Biz Markie, and Queens natives, Capone-nNoreaga, among many notable hip hop stars.

showcased lyrics that would set the stage for the glorified pimp lifestyle that would dominate rap in the 1990s well into the millennium. In 1984, Kane met Biz Markie in downtown Brooklyn and soon joined him in the Juice Crew in Queensbridge. Kane co-wrote some of the Biz’s songs, like the 1988 classic ‘‘Vapors,’’ and the comically puerile ‘‘Pickin’ Boogers.’’ He also wrote rhymes for fellow Juice Crew member Roxanne Shante, like ‘‘Have a Nice Day’’ and ‘‘Go on Girl.’’ Though the Biz is actually a Harlem native (born Marcel Theo Hall on April 8, 1964 in Harlem), he gets love in every borough, especially in Queens where he got his start with the Juice Crew. His song, ‘‘Vapors,’’ was one of the first to introduce the concept of the gold digger turned groupie who catches the ‘‘vapors’’ once her man starts getting paid: ‘‘When Swan tried to kick it, she always fessed. Talkin’ bout nigga, please, you work for UPS!’’ His selfdeprecating humor in songs like ‘‘Just a Friend’’ and ‘‘Pickin’ Boogers,’’ endeared him to a rap public accustomed to macho posturing. He started out as a beat box artist and was one of Cold Chillin’ Records first acts that helped to put the company on the map. Roxanne Shante was another one of the original members of the Juice Crew and grew up in the Queensbridge Housing projects. She made a name for herself at age 14 with her Marley Marl produced release, Roxanne’s Revenge, an answer record to U.T.F.O.’s 1984 hit, ‘‘Roxanne, Roxanne.’’ It was a massive hit and sold over a quarter of a million copies in the New York area alone. It also set a trend for the answer record, spawning well over 100 answer records. By the time she was 25, she retired from the record industry. MC Shan, raised in Queensbridge, is the cousin of Marley Marl and got a record deal with Cold Chillin’ Records in 1983. His album, Down By Law, came out in 1987. But he became popular all over the world for his part in what would later be termed ‘‘The Bridge Wars,’’ a rivalry between the Juice Crew and Boogie Down Productions, headed by Bronx-born KRS-One (born Lawrence Krisna Parker on

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August 20, 1965) and DJ Scott La Rock (born Scott Sterling on March 2, 1962 and died August 27, 1987 in an unrelated incident). Scott La Rock, a social worker, met KRS-One in a homeless shelter in the Bronx where he was living. The feud started with the Marley Marl and MC Shan produced track, ‘‘The Bridge,’’ in 1985. Boogie Down Productions felt that the song implied that Queens created hip hop. KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions released ‘‘South Bronx’’: ‘‘So you think that hip hop had its start out in Queensbridge, If you popped that junk up in the Bronx, you might not live.’’ MC Shan and Marley Marl, denied that they were implying that hip hop started in Queens, and they were just talking about where they came from. Still, the singles kept coming. The Juice Crew came back with ‘‘Kill That Noise,’’ and KRS came back with ‘‘The Bridge is Over.’’ Other Queensbridge rappers joined in the fracas. Now, it is remembered as one of the classic hip hop rivalries that spawned many future MC battles. In the 1990s they appeared together in a commercial for Sprite soft drink where they exchanged battle rhymes inside a boxing ring. Kool G. Rap and DJ Polo are two of the less celebrated members of the Juice Crew, but influential and well-known to true rap connoisseurs. Kool G Rap (born Nathaniel Wilson on July 20, 1968) grew up in the Corona section of Queens. His multisyllabic rhyme patterns have proven to be influential to many rappers that came after him, including one of Queensbridge’s finest MCs, Nas. In the midst of the feud, Red Alert, a Bronx native, refused to play any Juice Crew records on his show. Meanwhile Marley Marl, a deejay for Mr. Magic’s show gave the Bronx no light on his show. Some blame Mr. Magic for igniting the rivalry when KRS and Scott La Rock approached him with a 12’’ single entitled ‘‘Success Is the Word,’’ which Magic dismissed. After they formed BDP, they decided to take out their ire on the entire Juice Crew. Thus began the commercialization of the art of the rap battle. Roxanne Shante had started the art of the answer record, and many artists now found that putting out rhymes where you are battling some of the biggest talents in hip hop was a surefire way to make a name for yourself. The beef itself was not a violent one and continued on with rappers like Poet, Roxanne Shante, Butchy B, Cool C, and MC Shan. Now, this battle is often shouted out on verses as one of the classic hip hop rivalries. In the mid-1990s KRS-One and Marley Marl appeared together in a Sprite commercial, exchanging battle rhymes inside a boxing ring. Since then, KRS-One and Marley Marl have officially retired the feud and in 2007 released a collaborative hip hop album entitled Hip Hop Lives.

LL COOL J Another artist on the Def Jam label was a young b-boy with a baby face and a body that looked like it was cut from stone. The man known as Ladies Love Cool James,

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LL Cool J on ‘‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’’ in 2004. (ABC/Photofest)

or LL Cool J (born James Todd Smith on January 14, 1968 in New York City, before his family moved to St. Albans, Queens) was almost a talent that the world may never have heard. In the winter of 1983, Rick Rubin, in his cramped dorm room produced what would be Def Jam’s first single, ‘‘It’s Yours,’’ by T La Rock and DJ Jazzy Jay. It caught the attention of other aspiring rappers around the city who started sending their demos to Rick’s dorm address listed on the back of the album. LL was one of those rappers that sent in his demo. The only problem was that Rubin let LL’s tape sit in a box, surrounded by papers and records and tapes in his notoriously junky dorm room. LL called him everyday asking him if he had received it and everyday he said that he didn’t. One day Adam ‘‘Ad-Rock’’ Horovitz from the Beastie Boys went rummaging through Rick’s box of tapes, fished out LL’s and popped it in the boom box for a listen. In her book, Def Jam, Inc.: Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, and the Extraordinary Story of the World’s Most Influential Hip-Hop Label, Stacy Gueraseva reports that the music on LL’s demo caught Rick’s attention; though he says he didn’t think the quality of the music was that high, he thought the content was sort of funny and he felt compelled to listen to it over and over again. LL, at age 16, would become the first artist signed to Def Jam. He began a hip hop career that would span over 20 years and over a dozen albums, and a career as a Hollywood actor (38). By the age of 13, LL was furiously writing rhymes and making tapes in the basement where his bedroom was. Jay Philpot, a well-known deejay in the area, was like a big brother to LL and gave him his first opportunity to get on the mic

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at a block party on 113th Ave. where he surprised himself by rocking the crowd. He started hanging out in underground clubs in Queens, like the Brown Door, by age 14, and at house parties, block parties, and anywhere where he stood the chance of getting on the mic. By the age of 14, James Todd Smith was hanging on Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, studying other rappers, and deciding what would be his name when he stepped onto the scene. Playboy Mikey D, who used to write rhymes with Smith, said he liked the idea of ‘‘Cool James,’’ but pondered what would work right in front of that. ‘‘How about Ladies Love?’’ he asked and in 1982, the name LL Cool J was born. LL and his mother moved to St. Albans, Queens in 1972, into LL’s grandparent’s home on Ilion Ave. in a lower-middle class enclave of African American families. His mother, Ondrea Smith, had moved back home to escape her husband and Todd’s father, James Smith, who was physically abusive towards her and her son. This was the house where he would change his life; where he found the unconditional love of his grandparents and where he began writing rhymes and found his own identity. It was here that his grandfather bought him his first set of turntables when he was 11 years old, and his grandmother, Ellen Griffith, would help him with his rhymes, urging to him to ‘‘put a little more bass’’ in some of his songs. But within a few months of living in the house, after futile attempts to win his wife back, James Smith decided to seek revenge. He followed her home with a 12-gauge shotgun. As she turned the key in the door of her parent’s home, he shot her in her lower back. Her father, Eugene Griffith, was sitting in the front room and was shot in the stomach. LL’s mother and grandfather survived, and believing in forgiveness, they did not press charges against his father. LL started sending demo tapes to labels like, CBS, Sugar Hill, Tommy Boy, and Enjoy and getting rejection letters as fast as he was sending them out. He copied down the address and phone number of a producer that was making a name for himself, Rick Rubin, a student at New York University. Rubin had produced ‘‘It’s Yours,’’ by T-La Rock and Jazzy J which had become a big hit. He called Rubin everyday to see if he had received his tape and had given it a listen. Finally Rick called him back and said, ‘‘I got it!’’ and told him to meet him at his office, which doubled as his dorm room. The first single they recorded together was, ‘‘I Need a Beat,’’ and Rubin let Russell Simmons listen to it. He liked it and soon after they formed Def Jam records with LL as their first artist. LL received a $50,000 advance for signing with Def Jam. He spent some of it buying his trademark Kangols at Revel Knox Hats on Jamaica Ave. (see sidebar: Jamaica Ave. Shopping Center). He also solidified his b-boy image with Sergio Valente or colored Lee jeans, shell-toe Adidas or Pumas, and Le Tigre jackets. His first album, ‘‘Radio,’’ was a hit. ‘‘Rock the Bells,’’ was put out as a single, and DC’s go-go band, Trouble Funk, put out their go-go version on the B-side

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(initial hip hop records usually put instrumentals on the B side). ‘‘Rock the Bells,’’ went platinum and debuted at number five on Billboard’s top R&B singles chart. His single, ‘‘I Need Love,’’ a rap ballad that was a risky venture for a selfdescribed b-boy, actually worked. Though he got flak from hardcore heads, he earned the title as a lady’s man from this song.

SALT-N-PEPA When Salt-n-Pepa arrived on the hip hop scene in 1985, they showed girls around the globe that sexiness with in-your-face lyrics did go hand in hand. The group featured Salt (born Cheryl James, born April 8, 1964 in Brooklyn) and Pepa (born Sandra Denton, November 9, 1964 in Kingston, Jamaica) and DJ Spinderella (Deirdre Roper, born Deidra Muriel Roper on August 3, 1971 in New York City). Salt-n-Pepa were nursing students at Queensborough Community College when they met. The concept of the all-girl group was conceived for a school project their co-worker, Hurby ‘‘Luv Bug’’ Azor, who worked with them at Sears on Fordham Road in the Bronx, had to create for a project at New York’s Center for the Media Arts. His idea, to create an answer record to Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s hit, ‘‘The Show,’’ resulted in ‘‘The Showstopper,’’ an instant hit after it got radio play with Mr. Magic. Salt-n-Pepa, who dressed in b-girl gear, basketball sweatsuits, bamboo earrings, and asymmetrical haircuts, achieved multiplatinum success and carved the way, not just for other females in hip hop, but for many other rap acts that followed them.

Salt-n-Pepa (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

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A TRIBE CALLED QUEST The Native Tongues Posse, which included A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and The Jungle Brothers, brought a social and Afrocentric consciousness to rap with their lyrics that tackled controversial topics like date rape, misogyny, and the use of the word, nigga. A Tribe Called Quest, formed in 1988, featured rapper/producer Q-Tip (born Jonathan Davis on April 10, 1970 in Harlem, NY, before converting to Islam in the 1990s and changing his name to Kamal Ibn John Fareed), rapper Phife Dawg (born Malik Taylor on November 20, 1970 in Queens, NY), and DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad (born August 11, 1970 in Brooklyn, NY), and was the most commercially successful group to come out of the posse. The posse was later joined by Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Black Sheep, Chi Ali, and Leaders of the New School and they influenced rappers like Mos Def and Pharrell who would often stop by the studio. A Tribe Called Quest was honored at VH1’s Hip Hop Honors award show in October 2007. Their Afrocentric consciousness in their lyrics added an eclectic mix to the storytelling aspect of hip hop. Dubbed, ‘‘the flower children of hip hop’’ alongside De La Soul, they blossomed alongside a burgeoning gangster rap scene in L.A., showing the diversity of hip hop’s sound, style, and social consciousness. They were the first rap group to sample jazz which had a lasting impact on hip hop, and they also used a lot of 1970s rock. Their socially conscious, yet playful lyrics enticed a whole new audience to rap, particularly college students. They tackled such controversial subjects such as date rape and the use of the word ‘‘nigger.’’ Ironically they cited their inspiration as the West Coast hip hop that was dominating the airwaves at the time. They felt like they needed to top N.W.A.’s groundbreaking album, Straight Outta Compton.

JAMAICA AVE. SHOPPING CENTER On Jamaica Ave. and 165th St., a shopping area called the Coliseum by hip hop heads is akin to what used to be called Albee Square Mall in Brooklyn (now Fulton Street Mall) where Biz Markie hung out in the 1980s. Hip hop artists that come to Queens would be remiss if they didn’t stop at the Coliseum. It’s the place where the beef between Ja Rule and 50 Cent popped off and where Wu-Tang Clan filmed their classic video, ‘‘Ice Cream.’’ It’s where a young and unknown LL Cool J would shop to find hip hop records. The center is still home to hip hop specialty stores. Just a bus ride away is Andrew Jackson High school, where some of the finest in the game honed their lyrical skills: 50 Cent, Jam Master Jay, Salt-n-Pepa, LL Cool J, DMC, and Mikey D, to name a few.

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It was DJ Red Alert that introduced Q-Tip to the Jungle Brothers. In 1989, A Tribe Called Quest signed a demo deal with Geffen Records. The demo contained classics like, ‘‘Can I Kick It?’’ which used Lou Reed’s classic, ‘‘Walk on the Wild Side,’’ and made it work in a hip hop context. But after their demo Geffen refused to offer them a full recording contract. They were offered many deals by other labels, but opted for a modest deal by then independent rap label, Jive Records, which had a reputation for building longevity of the artist with grassroots fan bases, rather than with expensive marketing techniques that built a lot of hype which eventually fizzled out to hip hop’s fickle audience. Their debut album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, was not received well critically, but would later be heralded as a classic. But they were allowed to grow at a natural pace as artists on Jive Records, unlike their cousins in music, The Jungle Brothers, who signed to Warner Brothers with a hefty contract and were dropped when they failed to live up to expectations that were set forth by the record company. Their second album, The Low End Theory, has been called one of the best hip hop albums of all time. Q-Tip and Phife grew up together in St. Albans, Queens and attended school together. They met Ali Shaheed when they went to Murray Bergtraum High School in Queens. Their collaborators The Jungle Brothers consisted of Mike Gee (born Michael Small, in Harlem, NY), Afrika Baby Bam (born Nathaniel Hall, in Brooklyn, NY), and DJ Sammy B (born Sammy Burwell, in Harlem, NY). They formed the Native Tongues (The Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest), a group that bonded together with the ambition of creating an alternative to the rap that was dominating at the time; hardcore and gangster rap. Their intention was to promote socially conscious lyrics, while still putting out an entertaining product. Later groups would either join the Native Tongues or were heavily influenced by them, including groups like Black Sheep, Da Bush Babees, and Leaders of the New School, and they promoted break-out stars like Busta Rhymes and Mos Def.

NAS In 1992, the West Coast was in the spotlight when the seminal debut album, The Chronic, dropped featuring former N.W.A. member Dr. Dre and teenage prodigy Snoop Doggy Dogg. The funk-laced, slow drawled lyrics, with slow bass beats and melodic synthesizers, topped by P-Funk samples, changed the face of hip hop from the high energy in-your-face New York style to something that was laid-back, but still hardcore. Meanwhile in Queensbridge, Nas (born Nasir Jones in Bed-stuy, Brooklyn, on September 14, 1973) was bringing the focus back to the East Coast, specifically the borough of Queens, and even more specifically the Queensbridge projects. (see sidebar: Queensbridge Houses and Park). Def Jam, the premier hip hop label at the time, initially shunned him. Twenty-two-year-old Bobbito Garcia, who came to fame as a deejay on Columbia University’s radio station, WKCR FM, 89.9, and

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Nas (Photofest)

later as a writer and sneaker aficionado, joined Def Jam’s staff as a messenger in 1989. While doing his radio show at Columbia he had gotten hold of a demo tape by Nas. He met with Nas and was impressed with him. He didn’t bother bringing Nas to Russell Simmons, because he knew he would turn him down. His prediction turned out to be right when months later MC Serch of the hip hop group 3rd Bass,

QUEENSBRIDGE HOUSES AND PARK The list of rappers who came out of Queensbridge reads like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Everybody from old school artists like MC Shan, Marley Marl, Craig G, Roxanne Shante, to legends like Nas, Mobb Deep, Tragedy, and Capone, have all tested their skills in the gritty hallways and staircases of the projects and battled in the adjacent park. Queensbridge continues to birth the legends, with underground artists on the horizon, in the largest public housing complex in the nation (The 96 building complex spreads across six city blocks). The buildings have served as the landscape for many videos including Mobb Deep’s classic ‘‘Shook Ones,’’ where Prodigy and Havoc cruise past the 41st Side (41st Ave. and 12th St.). Queensbridge Park, which separates the Northside houses from the Southside houses, has been host to some of the greatest battles from the Juice Crew all stars, to Tragedy Khadafi, to Nas and Mobb Deep. By any account, Queensbridge is the most prolific hip hop producing area in the country.

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brought Nas to Russell who turned him down comparing him to a ‘‘wannabe Kool G. Rap’’ (Gueraseva 197). Nas later signed a deal with Columbia Records and released his debut album, Illmatic, often cited as one of the best hip hop albums of the 1990s. The album helped spearhead the artistic renaissance of New York hip hop in the post-Chronic era. Nas employed some of the jazz-rap producers that came out of the posse or were inspired by them, including Q-Tip, Pete Rock, DJ Premier, and Large Professor. In addition to eclectic beats that included live jazz, Nas was a storyteller with an attention to detail that was philosophical, journalistic, and prescient, and gave listeners a glimpse of the reality of life in the ghetto, while showing there are still good times to be had. For those who had the misconception that the borough of Queens was soft, Nas’ cinematic focus on the reality of life in the Queensbridge projects shattered that notion. Since then, hip hop out of Queens has donned a hardcore image.

MURDER, INC. One summer night in 1988, Irv Lorenzo managed to finagle his way onto the turntables at a park jam at 202nd St. and Jamaica Ave. He had one of the neighborhood thugs vouch for him and helped him get on the turntables and he turned it out. Buoyed by his success, he sold mix tapes as ‘‘DJ Irv’’ all over Queens. His mix tapes sold all over from Hollis to the 40 projects, to Lefrak City. He put together a group that won a talent show, hosted by Marley Marl, at a roller skating rink on Jamaica Ave. in Southeast Queens. Rhazel, beatboxer genius and Romeo, ghostwriter for Run DMC, and wordsmith and deejay Irv, eventually recorded at Marley’s Queensbridge lab, but a record deal for them was elusive. Lorenzo soon came across a young MC named Mic Geronimo at a talent show at Bayside High School, in Bayside, Queens. Lorenzo tracked Geronimo down at the Stearns department store in Long Island where he worked as a cashier and brought him into the studio to record some songs. Though Geronimo’s success was limited to the New York area, he introduced Lorenzo to a group of rappers known as the Cash Money Clique, which included Hollis native Jeffrey Atkins, who later became known as the gravelly-voiced Ja Rule. While shooting the Cash Money Clique’s ‘‘Get Tha Fortune’’ video on Guy Brewer Boulevard, Lorenzo was introduced to one of Southeast Queens premiere drug kingpins of the early 1980s, Kenneth McGriff, aka ‘‘Supreme,’’ who ran the notorious Supreme Team, known for taking over individual apartments at the Baisely Park Houses, telling the residents that their apartments were going to be the center for operations. Supreme and other members of the Supreme Team would cruise around in topof-the-line Mercedes Benzes, pointing their automatic rifles out of the windows at stunned residents. It was alleged that Supreme gave Lorenzo the seed money to start the record label Murder Inc., but Def Jam gave him a deal to start Murder, Inc.

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Def Jam hired him as an A&R executive due to his work with the Cash Money Clique. Lorenzo single-handedly turned around Def Jam’s waning popularity when he introduced the world to a gruff voiced, sometimes barking rapper named DMX. Lorenzo’s ability to have his finger on the pulse of hip hop enabled his prote´ge´ Ja Rule to secure an advantageous position in the introduction of his solo career after leaving the Cash Money Clique. Lorenzo’s contribution to Def Jam’s successful comeback earned him his own label imprint, Murder Inc. He was given a 50/50 partnership deal with Def Jam, sealed with a $3 million check. Lorenzo would find a talented competitor in 50 Cent (born Curtis James Jackson III on July 6, 1975 in South Jamaica, Queens). 50 Cent started his rap career, when a friend introduced him to Jam Master Jay of Run DMC who still worked out of his studio in Queens. Jay taught him how to structure songs, write hooks, and make a record. Jay produced 1950’s first album, but it was never released. He didn’t reach worldwide fame until 2002, when he was discovered by rapper Eminem and signed to Interscope Records. He became one of the highest selling rap artists in the world and in 2003 founded his own record label, G-Unit Records. The new millennium battle of 50 Cent (born Curtis James Jackson III on July 6, 1975 in South Jamaica, Queens) vs. Ja Rule (born Jeffrey Atkins February 29, 1976, in Hollis, 5 months after 50 Cent) rose to a war-level battle cry where at its height, 50 Cent was beaten and stabbed by Murder Inc. employees outside the Hit Factory studio on West 54th St. The resulting violence is indicative of how high the stakes in rap battles have risen. Their legendary feud infected hip hop employees everywhere; from journalists —The Source magazine (anti-50 Cent) against XXL (pro-50 Cent) which denounced each other in editor’s letters and burned copies of each other’s magazines— to a deejay in Durban, South Africa, who was threatened by a member of Ja Rule’s crew for playing 50 Cent’s song after a Ja Rule performance. The feud brought out mediators from the hip hop nation to the Nation of Islam. Ja Rule’s camp claimed that the feud was fueled by the fact the Ja Rule was stealing the spotlight from 50 Cent’s Queens fans. 50 Cent said the beef stemmed back to when a friend of his robbed Ja Rule for his jewelry. It wasn’t long after this robbery that 50 Cent was attacked outside of the Hit Factory. 50 Cent was treated for a laceration to the chest and a partially collapsed lung at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt hospital. The beef continued on wax. His 2003 album, Blood in My Eye, is filled with over the top threats against 50 Cent and other rappers. Meanwhile 50’s debut album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ sold 872,000 copies in its first week and was Billboard’s number one album for the year. It could be a sign of how big Queens has become that intra-borough beef gets heard around the world, or how far it’s fallen that hip hop beefs have gone from verbal volleys to do-or-die confrontations. Still, the most recent beef in 2007 between Kanye West’s new album, Graduation and 50 Cent’s, Curtis, was a

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nonviolent, publicity-laden beef isolated to the media and explicitly set up to increase album sales. Either way, Queens has secured its place in the lexicon of hip hop history, setting trends like the art of the battle, making hip hop all-inclusive to all genders and races, and carrying raucous rhymes and street savvy fashion out of Queens and New York to countries all over the world.

THE FUTURE OF HIP HOP IN QUEENS In the new millennium, Run DMC has officially broken up after the murder of Jam Master Jay, who was shot and killed at age 37 on October 30, 2002, at the same Queens studio where he had recorded for years and where he nurtured up and coming hip hop artists like Onyx and 50 Cent (see sidebar: 24/7 Studios). ‘‘It was easy for Jay to still live in Queens,’’ Run recalls. ‘‘As a matter of fact I was still living in Queens too. When Jay got killed I was still living in Queens in Jamaica Estates. He lived in Jamaica Estates, not too far from me. We were performing and we could have moved, but it didn’t seem like we needed to move.’’ DMC shares a similar take on his fallen bandmate: ‘‘He could have had his studio in the city, [but] he had his studio five minutes from where he grew up. He went back to the same people to say I made it out, I got away for you to be able to come up. The very thing Jay got away from and went back to deliver other people from is what killed him. I am fighting for the consciousness for what caused the shooter to pull the trigger. If the consciousness of hip hop were what it was back from the old days, he would have never pulled the trigger. Hip hop was created to eradicate this kind of consciousness. We look at Jay’s situation, but there’s a Jason Mizell dying every day in the hood.’’ Run and DMC continue to record solo records independently of each other, and to engage in many other projects as well. DMC, diagnosed with spasmodic

24/7 STUDIOS Located in Jamaica, Queens, in the belly of the always-crowded Queens city bus station, Jam Master Jay’s 24/7 studios helped to shape the talents of artists like Onyx and 50 Cent, among many of his prote´ge´s. This studio, where Jay ran his struggling label, JMJ Records, was also where he took his last breath on October 30, 2002 when assailants came into the studio and opened fire on his friend Uriel ‘‘Tony’’ Rincon, shooting him in the leg, before fatally shooting Jam Master Jay in the back of the head. For several years his studio lay shuttered as police conducted the still unsolved investigation into his murder. There have been rumors that the building that houses the former studio will possibly be turned into a hip hop museum.

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5 POINTZ If you want to witness what life was like in the 1980s on New York City subway cars, just take a walk down Jackson Avenue at Crane Street and Davis Street in Long Island City in Queens. The whole block is a living homage to the art of graffiti featuring the art of famous and novice graffiti artists. When Giuliani pushed his quality of life programs, he started locking up all of the graffiti artists. 5 Pointz was created by Jonathan Cohen to offer a legal outlet for spray paint artists. Since then, old school graffiti artist legends from the 1970s come to show their skills, and so do artists from around the globe, including graffiti writers from Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and England. They are interviewed before they put their pieces up. Every few months new artists go over old art. But one side is reserved strictly for the reverie of the old school.

dysphonia, a vocal disorder which causes involuntary spasms of the larynx muscles, released a new album in 2008 and starred in DMC: My Adoption Journey, a VH1 special documentary of his journey to find his real parents after he learned that he was adopted. Run has became Reverend Run after being ordained as a reverend priest in Zoe Ministries. ‘‘I didn’t choose it,’’ he explains, ‘‘God chose me. So this, my life, we make plans and God laughs, period. I am following what’s available for my existence to create comfort. It’s a rough statement, but it’s true. I am trying to find out what I am supposed to be doing and becoming a Reverend kind of chose me and MTV chose me and Run DMC and ‘Walk this Way’ chose me. I am living and I am trying fix whatever for my contribution to this world. What you see me doing I am enjoying it because I am in the right place, the only time we suffer is when we are out of order. Out of order creates pain. You got pain, there must be something disconnected. You did something you wasn’t supposed to be doing. You’re having a financial problem, you wasn’t somewhere you was supposed to be where they paid you. I am just trying to get in where I fit in.’’ In the new, post-Run DMC era of Queens hip hop, 50 Cent, the self-proclaimed King of New York, has kept the light shining on the borough since he marked his territory with Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in 2003. In 2007, he not only battled Kanye West to see who could sell the most records, but he also went toe-to-toe with old schoolers like Fat Joe with his track, ‘‘Piggybank’’ where he also dissed Mobb Deep, Nas, Jadakiss, Ja Rule, and Shyne: ‘‘Jada don’t fuck wit me if you wanna eat, cause I’ll do ya little ass like Jay did Mobb Deep.’’ So it came as a surprise in 2006, when Mobb Deep signed to G-Unit records. They even went as far as receiving tattoos to pledge their loyalty. Prodigy had ‘‘G-Unit’’ tattooed on his right hand and 50 Cent had Mobb Deep tattooed on his wrist. They eventually

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had a falling out, but not before Mobb Deep’s album, Blood Money, was released in 2006. Prodigy went to Koch Records and Havoc went to an independent label, Nature Sounds. Irv Lorenzo is looking to making a comeback after he was exonerated for charges that alleged that he used drug money to start his label Murder, Inc. He is coming back with his artist that helped his label to make their mark: Ja Rule. When asked for his thoughts on the new generation of Queens hip hop artists, Run replied, ‘‘I love seeing Ja Rule win. I love seeing 50 Cent win. I don’t look at it in any way besides God blesses and gives talent and it will always be that way. I don’t judge it or judge what music is going through in this time period. I’m not a hip hop scholar who says it was better back then. The same parents that are mad at rap now, their parents were mad at them for wearing dashikis. I don’t get into that it was better back then. Their parents hated rock and roll. When people get old they always get mad at the new movement, and God is not half as mad at it as the old people are. That’s my take.’’

REFERENCES Adler, Bill. Tougher than Leather: The Rise of Run DMC. Los Angeles: Consafos, 2002. Ahearn, Charlie, and Jim Fricke. Yes, Yes, Ya’ll: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip Hop’s First Decade. New York: Da Capo, 2002. Brown, Ethan. Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler. New York: Anchor, 2005. Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop. A History of the Hip Hop Nation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005. DMC. Personal Interview with the author. September 27, 2007. 50 Cent. From Pieces to Weight. New York: Pocket Books, 2005. Frere-Jones, Sasha. ‘‘Run DMC; Since Kindergarten I Acquired the Knowledge: Intro.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 61–68. Three Rivers, 1999. Gonzales, Michael A. ‘‘The Juice Crew, Beyond the Boogie Down.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 101–9. Three Rivers, 1999. Gueraseva, Stacy. Def Jam, Inc. Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, and the Extraordinary Story of the World’s Most Influential Hip-Hop Label. New York: One World, Ballantine, 2005. LL Cool J with Karen Hunter. I Make My Own Rules. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. Michel, Sia. ‘‘LL Cool J.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 81-89. Three Rivers, 1999. Reeves, Marcus. ‘‘Regional Scenes.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 217–27. Three Rivers, 1999. Reverend Run. Personal Interview with the author. October 10, 2007.

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Simmons, Danny. Personal Interview with the author. September 12, 2007. Valdes, Mimi. ‘‘Salt-n-Pepa.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 209–15. Three Rivers, 1999. Wood, Joe. ‘‘Native Tongues: A Family Affair.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 187–99. Three Rivers, 1999.

FURTHER RESOURCES Alim, H. Samy. ‘‘On Some Serious Next Millennium Rap Ishhh: Pharoahe Monch, Hip Hop Poetics, and The Internal Rhymes of Internal Affairs.’’ Journal of English Linguistics, March 2003: 60–84. Bogdanov, Vladimir, John Bush, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, and Chris Woodstra, eds. All Music Guide to Hip-Hop. The Definitive Guide to Rap and Hip-Hop. California: Backbeat Books, 2003. Cepeda, Raquel, ed. And it Don’t Stop, The Best American Hip-Hop Journalism of the Last 25 Years. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2004. Forman, Murray, and Anthony Neal, eds. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York, London: Routledge, 2004. George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.

WEB SITES http://queens.about.com/od/thingtodo/ss/lic_art_2.htm http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1576088/20071207/jam_master_jay.jhtml

FILMS DMC: My Adoption Journey, VH1, Rock Docs. Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Paramount, A Viacom Company, 2005. NY 77: The Coolest Year in Hell, VH1, Rock Docs. Tougher than Leather, New Line Cinema, 1998.

TOUR Queensbridge and Hollis Tour Hush Tours, Inc. 292 Fifth Ave. Suite 608 New York, NY 10001 1800-987-9852.

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SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY 50 Cent P.I.M.P.. Aftermath, 2003. Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Aftermath, Interscope, 2003. 21 Questions. Aftermath, 2003. The Massacre. Aftermath, 2005. Curtis. Aftermath, 2007. A Tribe Called Quest People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Avex Trax, 1990. The Low End Theory. Jive Records, 1991. Midnight Marauders. Jive Records, 1993. Beats, Rhymes, Life. Jive Records, 1996. Beatnuts Intoxicated Demons: The EP. Relativity/Violator, 1993. The Beatnuts: Street Level. Relativity/Violator, 1994. Stone Crazy. Relativity/Violator/Epic/Sony, 1997. Hydra Beats, Vol. 5. Hydra, 1997. A Musical Massacre. Loud/Sony, 1999. World Famous Classics. Sony, 1999. Take It or Squeeze It. Loud/Epic/Sony, 2001. Beatnuts Forever. Relativity, 2001. Classic Nuts, Vol. 1. Loud/Epic/Sony, 2002. The Originators. Landspeed, 2002. Milk Me. Penalty, 2004. U.F.O. Files. Pit Fight, 2008. Planet of the Crates Pit Fight, 2009. Craig G The Kingpin. Atlantic, 1989. Now, That’s More Like It. Atlantic, 1991. This is Now. D&D, 2003. Operation: Take Back Hip Hop (with Marley Marl). Traffic/Good Hands, 2008. Davy DMX ‘‘One for the Treble.’’ Tuff City, 1984. ‘‘The DMX Will Rock.’’ Tuff City, 1985. De La Soul 3 Feet High and Rising. Tommy Boy, 1989. De La Soul Is Dead. Tommy Boy, 1991. Buhloone Mind State. Tommy Boy 1993. Stakes Is High. Tommy Boy, 1996. Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump. Tommy Boy, 2000. AOI II: Bionix. Tommy Boy, 2001.

From Queens Come Kings | 71 The Grind Date. Sanctuary, 2004. The Impossible Mission: TV Series Part 1. AOI, 2006. Eric B. & Rakim Paid in Full. 4th & Broadway, 1987. Follow the Leader. Universal Records, 1988. Let the Rhythm Hit ’Em. MCA Records, 1990. ‘‘Juice (Know the Ledge)’’ (12-inch). MCA Records, 1992. Paid in Full—The Platinum Edition. Island Records, 1998. Ja Rule Venni Vetti Vecci. Def Jam, 1999. Rule. Def Jam, 2000. Pain Is Love. Def Jam, 2001. Last Temptation. Def Jam, 2002. Blood in My Eye. Def Jam, 2003. R.U.L.E. Def Jam, 2004. Mirror. Motown, 2007. Kool G Rap and DJ Polo Road to the Riches. Cold Chillin’, 1989. Wanted: Dead or Alive. Cold Chillin’, 1990. Live and Let Die. Cold Chillin’, 1992. Kool G Rap 4, 5, 6. Cold Chillin’, 1995. Roots of Evil. Illstreet/Downlow, 1998. The Giancana Story. Koch, 2002. Half a Klip. Chinga Chang/Koch, 2008. Kurtis Blow ‘‘Christmas Rappin’ ’’ Mercury, 1979. Kurtis Blow. Mercury, 1980. Deuce. Mercury, 1981. Trouble. Mercury, 1982. The Best Rapper on the Scene. Mercury, 1983. Ego Trip. Mercury, 1984. Large Professor 1st Class. Matador, 2002. LL Cool J Radio. Def Jam/Columbia, 1985. Bigger and Deffer. Def Jam/Columbia, 1987. Walking with a Panther. Def Jam/Columbia, 1989. Mama Said Knock You Out. Def Jam/Columbia, 1990. 14 Shots to the Dome. Def Jam/Columbia, 1993. Mr. Smith. Def Jam/RAL/Island, 1995.

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Lost Boyz Legal Drug Money. Uptown, 1996. Love, Peace, and Nappiness. Uptown, 1997. LB IV Life. Uptown, 1999. Main Source Breaking Atoms. Wild Pitch, 1991. Marley Marl In Control, Vol. 1. Cold Chillin’, 1988. Hip Hop Lives (with KRS-One). Koch, 2007. Operation: Take Back Hip Hop (with Craig G). Traffic/Good Hands, 2008. MC Shan Down By Law. Cold Chillin’/Warner Bros, 1987. Born to be Wild. Cold Chillin’/Warner Bros, 1988. Play it Again, Shan. Cold Chillin’/Warner Bros, 1990. Mobb Deep Juvenile Hell. Island, 1993. The Infamous. Loud, 1995. Hell on Earth. Loud, 1996. Murda Muzik. Loud, 1999. Infamy. Loud, 2001. America’s Nightmare. Jive, 2004. Blood Money. G-Unit, 2006. Mr. Cheeks John P. Kelly. Uptown, 2001. Back Again! Uptown, 2003. Ladies and Ghettomen. Legal Drug Money/Contango, 2004. Nas Illmatic. Sony, 1994. It Was Written. Sony, 1996. I Am . . . . Sony, 1999. Nastradamus. Sony, 1999. Stillmatic. Sony, 2001. God’s Son. Sony, 2002. Street’s Disciple. Sony, 2004. Hip Hop Is Dead: The N. Sony, 2007. Onyx Bacdafucup. Def Jam, 1993. All We Got Iz Us. Def Jam, 1995. Shut Em Down. Def Jam, 1998. Organized Konfusion Organized Konfusion. Hollywood Basic, 1991. Stress: The Extinction Agenda. Hollywood Basic, 1994.

From Queens Come Kings | 73 Pharoahe Monch Internal Affairs. Hollywood/Rawkus, 1999. Desire. Street Records, 2007. Prince Po The Slickness. Lex, 2004. Prettyblack. Nasty Habits, 2006. Public Enemy Yo! Bumrush the Show. Def Jam, 1987. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back. Def Jam, 1988. Fear of a Black Planet. Def Jam, 1990. Apocalypse ’91: The Enemy Strikes Black. Def Jam, 1991. Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age. Def Jam, 1994. There’s a Poison Goin’ On. Play it Again Sam, 1999. Rakim The Book of Life. Universal, 1997. Run DMC Run DMC Profile, 1984. King of Rock. Profile, 1985. Raising Hell. Profile, 1986. Tougher than Leather. Profile, 1988. Back from Hell. Profile, 1990. Together Forever: Greatest Hits 1983–1991. Profile, 1991. Down with the King. Profile, 1993. Crown Royal. Arista/Profile, 2001. Salt-n-Pepa Hot, Cool, & Vicious. Next Plateau, 1986. Salt with a Deadly Pepa. London Records, 1988. Blacks’ Magic. London Records, 1990. Very Necessary. FFRR, 1993. Brand New. London, 1997.

CHAPTER 4 Brooklyn Beats: Hip Hop’s Home to Everyone from Everywhere Jennifer R. Young Jay-Z’s song ‘‘Brooklyn’s Finest’’ (1996) may be about his and Notorious B.I.G’s lyrical prowess, but the title also speaks to their place among the pantheon of Brooklyn hip hop, the influence of which is felt in hip hop music around the world, even as Brooklyn benefits from the influence of the variety of cultures that make up its neighborhoods. Brooklyn is New York City’s largest borough and one of its most diverse, with more than two million residents representing Dutch, English, German, Italian, Asian, Orthodox Jewish, African American, and Caribbean heritage. One of the long-standing slogans for Brooklyn is ‘‘Home to Everyone from Everywhere.’’ Brooklyn is a place that many hip hop artists call home, even if they are not originally from the borough. Named after the Dutch town Breukelen, Brooklyn is New York City’s most populous borough. Brooklyn has more than a dozen neighborhoods—including Clinton Hill, Flatbush, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Fort Greene—all filled with cultural diversity that is reflected in the music and culture. Brooklyn hip hop brought us the beatboxing sounds of the Fat Boys, as well as the speed raps and rap ballads of Big Daddy Kane. Producers like Large Professor and DJ Premier have worked with several Brooklyn artists, using samples from blues, rock, and jazz genres to fuse with the lyrics. Brooklyn has the largest African American population of the New York City boroughs, and, according to statistics released from Brooklyn Borough Hall, the nation’s largest Caribbean population. Borough President Marty Markowitz said, ‘‘Brooklyn’s current renaissance would have been impossible without Caribbean Americans’’ (‘‘BP’’). Caribbean Americans include families who reared Brooklyn notables like graffiti artist Jean-Michael Basquiat (whose parents were Puerto Rican and Haitian), lyricists Biggie Smalls and Busta Rhymes (both with Jamaican heritage), and Foxy Brown (of Afro-Trinidadian descent). The Caribbean, and Jamaica in particular, continues to have a profound effect on American rap music and Hip Hop culture in general. Arguably, the most famous Hip Hop figure to 75

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emerge from the Caribbean is Kool DJ Herc, the Kingston, Jamaica-born father of Hip Hop in the Bronx. The mobile sound systems of early hip hop DJs like Kool Herc reflected those used by Jamaican DJs since the 1960s. The art of ‘‘toasting’’—or an emcee talking during a song to keep the crowd hyped—also carried over from the Caribbean. Toasting is not as prevalent in American rap music as it was in the 1970s, now that the early call-and-response routines of DJ Hollywood, Eddie Cheeba, and Kool Herc have been replaced by more complicated rhyming and storytelling, but MCs such as Mos Def still exhibit Caribbean influence in their blend of patois with hip hop slang, and the influence of reggae is also seen in the rhyme flows of MCs like Heavy D, Brooklyn’s Chubb Rock (who was born in Jamaica), or Busta Rhymes, who rap really fast. In Brooklyn, Caribbean-Americans saw their musical traditions mixed with influences from American jazz, funk, and rock and roll in the creation of an entirely new form of music: hip hop. During most of the twentieth century, ethnic groups in Brooklyn had established enclaves: Anglo Americans in Park Slope; Italians in Bensonhurst; Latinos in East Williamsburg; Jewish worshippers in West Williamsburg; Islamic worshippers in Crown Heights; African Americans in Brownsville; Caribbean descendants in East Flatbush; and Asians in Sunset Park. Today, however, Brooklynites live with less experiential, linguistic, religious, and civic restrictions. Hip Hop in this borough is a product of its diverse environment, a microcosm of the global population itself.

LEGACY OF BROOKLYN HIP HOP 1970s Brooklyn was part of Hip Hop from its inception in the 1970s. Before the 1979 singles ‘‘King Tim III (Personality Jock)’’ by The Fatback Band (Spring Records) and ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ by Sugar Hill Gang (Sugar Hill Gang Records), youth in the tri-state area (New York, Connecticut, New Jersey) were in the beginning stages of rocking, dancing, toasting, and deejaying. They demonstrated their skills wherever possible—street corners, subways, clubs, parks, recreational centers, and block parties. Brooklyn was no exception. The youth were exposed to the same 1970s musicians who were regularly played in other urban centers around the nation. James Brown, Booker T. and the MG’s, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Rick James, Sly and the Family Stone, the Fatback Band—R&B, soul, and funk groups like these proved a desirable alternative to disco music for many young people growing up in Brooklyn. In addition to the ever-evolving sounds of Detroit Motown music, the Memphisbased company Stax Records helped expose East Coast audiences to blues, funk, and soul (see sidebar: Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival). Just as young people had block parties, competitions, and battles hosted by pioneers like Kool DJ Herc,

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BROOKLYN HIP HOP FESTIVAL Support, celebrate, and represent hip hop—that is the mantra that the festival organizers have shouted out since the festival’s inception in 2004. Swiftshot Shorty, one of the organizers, activists, and artists in his own right, likens the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival to the grassroots movement that politicians like President Barack Obama and New York Congressman hopeful Kevin Powell inspire people to keep moving: ‘‘Depend on those who matter—the people. The people are why we do this. It was the people who stood in the rain in 2006 to see Lupe and Kane, the people who bailed us out when Amp’d went bankrupt last year, and it was the people who believed in this pipe dream in 2005’’ (‘‘Bodega’’). The fifth annual Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival was held in June 2009. Executive Director Wes Jackson talks about the festival reflecting the gender and demographic that he has always seen at hip hop events: young men and women who are also fathers and mothers, who almost always come with some relatives, including their children and their children’s grandparents. The festival has a philanthropic message. The organizers remind everyone that donations and volunteerism are vital elements to keeping the event accessible to people of all backgrounds and classes. By providing entertainers of yesterday and today, their goal is to entertain and educate the crowd. Whether from Brooklyn or not, the artists come and perform in peace and solidarity. Following in the tradition of Brand Nubian, Big Daddy Kane, and Ghostface, KRS-One (from the South Bronx) headlined the festival in 2008. DJ Premier, Ladybug Mecca, and Black Moon were just a few of the invited guests at the festival who claim Brooklyn as their home. Though the festival is named after the borough, the events scheduled to occur in Empire Fulton Ferry State Park will not be about territory.

REFERENCE Brooklyn Bodega. (Post by Swiftshot Shorty) ‘‘Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival.’’ April 20, 2008. www.brooklynbodega.com (accessed April 2008).

Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Melle Mel, and Grandmaster Caz (just to name a few) who spearheaded hip hop in the Bronx. Marley Marl, Run DMC, Davy DMX, and others from Queens were forming their own unique style in the late 1970s, as were pioneers like Grandmaster Flowers in Brooklyn.

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It was hardly the sounds of black soul music that sparked interest for Brooklyn youth who helped begin what is known today as hip hop. Gang life—followed by or in conjunction with ‘‘tagging’’ or graffiti—was prevalent in New York neighborhoods. Building and subway graffiti was commonplace by 1971. On July 21, 1971 the New York Times published a profile on Taki, the 17-year-old ‘‘writer’’ known for his infamous tag, ‘‘Taki 183.’’ Other writers were responding to Taki’s art by creating their own graffiti, so much in fact that Manhattan Mayor John Lindsay—who was mayor from 1966 to 1973—created a graffiti task force to abolish such illegal actions (Castleman 21). Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent cleaning the subways, thousands of teenagers were arrested, local and national plans were drawn, and local and national press coverage was abundant. Still, daring writers continued to spray paint words, symbols, and elaborate art on subway trains throughout the five boroughs. Graffiti hit the international stage when art galleries began showcasing aerosol art and when films like Wild Style (1982), Breakin (1984), and Beat Street (1984) began heralding it. Music and art were significant to hip hop’s early years in Brooklyn, but it is critical to also note the dozens of rocker crews that existed. In the first part of the decade, dancers were called rockers, a term relating to the rock and soul funk era. Rockers battled against their rivals in groups, others battled solo. Some crew members were affiliated with neighborhood gangs, others were not. Bushwick, Brooklyn was a hotbed for rockers, who, thanks to a dancer named Rubberband, would begin uprocking. Rubberband added ‘‘jerks’’ and freestyle to his rock routine. Another dancer, Apache, would later add hand movements to uprock, a style known as ‘‘burns’’ (Break Easy). A popular song for uprockers was James Brown’s ‘‘Give It Up or Turn it Loose.’’ In the six minute (nonradio) version, the song shifts from the organ and base to a conga beat and hand clap. Brown sings, ‘‘Clap your hands! Stomp your feet!’’ In his article ‘‘Breaking: The History,’’ Michael Holman describes the necessity of Brown to the beat and what media would soon call break dancers. Explains Holman, ‘‘James Brown created the ultimate dance music because it had unrelenting repetitive beats and rhythms that could make you dance forever. The James Brown sound doesn’t speak to your head, it speaks to your body, to your arms and legs, your hips and your rear end, directing, supporting, moving you like a current’’ (35). Other popular songs to rock to included James Brown’s ‘‘Sex Machine’’ and ‘‘It’s Just Begun’’ by Jimmy Castor. Native Brooklynite Crazy Rob is identified as having organized ‘‘rock’’ concerts, competitions, and battles in the Bushwick neighborhood. While rocking was originally associated with gang culture in the late 1960s, by the early 1970s, contributors who liked the dance but not the fight had honed their skills. Independent uprockers and crews like Touch of Rock and Dynasty brought a great deal of fame to Bushwick. Their stage was the Brooklyn streets. Their materials included rubber shoes and track suits, boom boxes, original jerks and burns, and the quintessential flattened cardboard boxes.

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1980s Since the 1980s, audiences have had access to hip hop culture via television. Video Music Box, which aired (c. 1984–1996) on local New York television channels, WNYE-TV then WNYC-TV, is credited as the first show to focus primarily on hip hop. While the format may have resembled previous shows like American Bandstand or Soul Train, Video Music Box had a raw appeal for the school-age crowd with studio interviews, videotaped segments from parties, and rap video releases. Created and produced by Brooklyn natives Ralph ‘‘Uncle Ralph’’ McDaniels and Lionel Martin (just one of their many projects), Video Music Box helped reflect the developing culture of hip hop, and it remains a valued

ODES TO BROOKLYN Roy Ayers’ song ‘‘We Live in Brooklyn, Baby’’ (He’s Coming, 1971) is a blend of funk, jazz, and spoken word. Samples of this song creep up in contemporary odes to Brooklyn. The pioneers of hip hop did not leave Brooklyn out since many come from or currently reside there. Cut Master D’s ‘‘Brooklyn Rocks the Best,’’ Stetsasonic’s ‘‘Go Brooklyn,’’ and Beastie Boys’ ‘‘No Sleep Til Brooklyn’’ are classics. Also hear Audio Two’s ‘‘Top Billin’ ’’ (originally 1988, rereleased featuring MC Lyte in 1998). In the song’s background, listeners hear the crowd chanting ‘‘Go Brooklyn! Go Brooklyn!’’ In ‘‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse: Hello Brooklyn’’ (1989), the Beastie Boys scream, ‘‘You know the Bronx is up, but I’m Brooklyn down!’’ The Beastie Boys (comprised of Mike D, MCA, Ad-Rock, and Mix Master Mike) make ‘‘An Open Letter to NYC’’ (2005) a dedication to all that live in the greater metropolis of New York City. From their album To the 5 Boroughs: 2002– 2006, the crew raps, ‘‘Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Staten/From the Battery to the top of Manhattan.’’ In ‘‘Hello Brooklyn 2.0’’ (2007) Jay-Z and Lil Wayne reference the city as the respected woman that she is. ‘‘Like a Mama you birth me, Brooklyn you nursed me/Schooled me with hard knocks, better than Berkeley.’’ Kel Spencer’s recent song ‘‘Dear Brooklyn (#5)’’ also uses the city as its object of affection. Spencer’s ballad starts out with these lines: ‘‘My Beloved, I wake up to you/I breathe you, I taste you, Let me hold you.’’ Also hear Spencer’s jazz/rap rendition, ‘‘This is Brooklyn (#6).’’ Other songs about Bucktown include (but are not limited to): ‘‘Brooklyn’’ by Fabolous; ‘‘BedStuy Parade and Funeral March’’ and ‘‘Brooklyn’’ by Mos Def; ‘‘Brooklyn Zoo’’ by Ol’ Dirty Bastard; ‘‘Crooklyn’’ by the Crooklyn Dodgers; ‘‘Bucktown’’ by Smif-N-Wessun; ‘‘5 Boroughs’’ by KRS-One and ensemble; ‘‘JFK to LAX’’ by Gang Starr; ‘‘Live from New York’’ by Raekwon; ‘‘New York’’ by AZ; and ‘‘New York Shit’’ by Busta Rhymes.

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predecessor for the cable television shows: Music Television (MTV)—Yo! MTY Raps (1988–1995), Total Request Live (1998 to present), Black Entertainment Television (BET)—Video Soul (1983–1997), Planet Groove (1996–1999), and 106 & Park (2000 to present). As Brooklyn came into its own as a borough known for hip hop, artists began to shout out the borough in lyrics (see sidebar: Odes to Brooklyn). For instance, on 1987’s ‘‘Top Billin’,’’ Audio Two chant, ‘‘Go Brooklyn! Go Brooklyn!’’ Audio Two’s song is such a Brooklyn anthem that its impact continues to be felt. As stated on the Priority Records Web site, Audio Two’s song continues to influence music: For over two decades ‘‘Top Billin’ ’’ remains the most-sampled (second only to James Brown) and covered song by some of music’s most popular artists including Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Wyclef, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, R. Kelly, Notorious B.I.G., All Saints and most recently 50 Cent on his smash hit ‘‘I Get Money.’’ (‘‘Artists’’) ‘‘Top Billin’ ’’ was a song that made the borough of Brooklyn shine. The group was signed to an independent music label, First Priority, which set a precedent for aspiring hip hop moguls. Nat Robinson—one of the founders of First Priority in the early 1980s—is one of the earliest executives to start an independent hip hop label. Not only was Robinson’s upstart label beneficial for his sons (Gizmo and Milk D of Audio Two) and his daughter, MC Lyte, but he also used the marketing concept that was popular with Motown Records in the 1950s and 1960s: a musical family. While hip hop artists have always collaborated, Robinson’s music label became an example for future hip hop labels—cross promotion of artists, products, and performances. First Priority artists included Audio Two, The Alliance, and MC Lyte. By 1986, Robinson made the pioneer move of partnering his label with the parent company Atlantic Records. This landmark partnership would prove profitable for hip hop labels to come. Hip hop labels who are subsidiary to multigenre music companies have certainly contributed to the American economy. The hip hop music and product industry is a multibillion dollar enterprise. First Priority continues to produce artistic work by current lyricists including June Luva, Tarsha Vega, and platinum recording artist Eamon whose hit song, ‘‘F**K It. I Don’t Want You Back’’ is ‘‘the highest charted song with an expletive in the title in recording history’’ (‘‘Artists’’). From their humble beginnings, First Priority did what many record label owners are criticized for doing today: representing family talent. Not only was First Priority one of the earliest successful family Hip Hop owned businesses, but it also showed that the employees could thrive behind and in front of the microphone (see sidebar: ‘‘Who’s Who in the County of Kings’’) In addition to production, lyricism, and showmanship, artists out of Brooklyn have elevated the overall business of hip hop. One of the biggest executives to be

WHO’S WHO IN THE COUNTY OF KINGS After legends like Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne, and Shirley Chisholm, Brooklyn seemed to make room for a different lot of public figures: those in hip hop. Big Daddy Kane and Masta Ace helped bring Brooklyn hip hop to the rest of the city, the nation, and the world. Though from Brooklyn, Kane and Ace were part of the Queens-based Juice Crew, a collaborative posse of lyricists that Marley Marl produced songs for individually and in group settings. Listen to ‘‘The Symphony’’ (Cold Chillin Records, 1988) that stars several of the Juice Crew members. See the Old Wild Western-inspired music video. The rumble happens in Brooklyn, after all. Big Daddy Kane and Masta Ace went on to have successful careers and to help launch the careers of others. For instance, a young, prerecorded Jay-Z impressed Big Daddy Kane enough to be invited to tour with him. There are many emcees that either live in Brooklyn or got their early influences there, including Dana Dane, Prince Markee D of the Fat Boys, Audio Two, MC Lyte, Nathaniel Hall of the Jungle Brothers, Gang Starr, the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Biggie Smalls, Aaliyah, Junior M.A.F.I.A., Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Red Cafe´, Mos Def, Papoose, Lil Mama, Saigon, Mos Def, and Talib Kweli. Many of these notable natives are specifically from the Bedford-Stuyvesant area. Many of Spike Lee’s films have Brooklyn neighborhoods as the backdrop, especially She’s Gotta Have It (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo’ Better Blues (1990), and Crooklyn (1994). Comedian and activist Dave Chappelle chose the Clinton Hill neighborhood as the setting for his documentary and soundtrack Dave Chapelle’s Block Party (2006). Chappelle dedicated the project to the life and memory of J Dilla, a well-known music producer, MC, and member of the Soulquarians (a hip hop/neo soul collective that represented artists from several cities including Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Chicago). Also see Nelson George’s Life Support (2007) which uses Brooklyn neighborhoods as setting for the story based on true events of a health-care counselor (his sister), performed in the film by Queen Latifah, who has a passion for spreading awareness, education, and tangible solutions for the pandemic HIV/AIDS. The underground music pulses on. Hear Jim Jones’s single ‘‘Ballin’ ’’ (2006) or ‘‘We Fly High’’ (Hustler’s P.O.M [Product of My Environment]) and its many remixes. Hear Kel Spencer’s mixtape Brooklyn Spartans (2008), a concept street album based off the Hollywood film 300 (director Zack Snyder 2007). One of his songs, ‘‘This Is Brooklyn,’’ appears on the Life Support soundtrack. Veteran groups like Black Moon (the acronym for Brothers Who Lyrically Act and Combine Kickin Music Out On Nations), Digable Planets (or associates of theirs), Boot Camp Clik, or the newer group Dinero (United States/Jamaican) are hardly out of reach. For an international twist, check out the production company Nomadic Wax. Their songs focus on lyricists from African countries, especially Senegal whose hip hop culture and marketplace is one of largest outside of the United States, Japan, and France.

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in association with Brooklyn is DJ Premier (aka Preem, Primo, born Christopher E. Martin). Representing Gang Starr, DJ Premier owns two music labels, YearRound Records and Works of Mart. He bought Manhattan’s famous D&D studios in 2003 and renamed it HeadQcourterz Studios (in honor of a fallen friend) (‘‘Premier Interview’’). Artists who recorded at D&D studios included Premier, The Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Jay-Z, KRS-One, Black Moon, and Da Beatminerz. In addition to creating the sound of jazz rap with Guru, DJ Premier all but patented the style of making ‘‘clean version’’ songs easier to listen to by replacing curse words with sound effects rather than the other version of bleeping out or silencing words that interrupt the song’s flow. He helped build the contemporary East Coast sound of rap music as he experimented with all sorts of instruments and sounds. Not all of DJ Premier’s songs sound like R&B or rap songs. That alone has opened up the subgenres of hip hop, garnering greater audience appeal. Known for his unique melodies, knowledgeable samples, and use of drums, he was one of the earliest hip hop producers to set market cost for tracks. Appearing in the film Scratch, then, is not just showing his craft. DJ Premier’s business savvy has led him to sustain the music, to extend it into global markets, and to enliven the beats for ever-evolving modern sounds. Listen to any of the Gang Starr albums, or the hundreds of singles that DJ Premier has produced for other artists of rap, jazz, rock, and R&B.

ARTIST PROFILES Many Brooklyn artists have made a significant impact on hip hop. Gang Starr (consisting of Guru—originally from Boston, and DJ Premier—originally from Texas) revolutionized the sound of rap by adding jazz and swing rhythm to it. In her poem ‘‘Writer’s Delight,’’ Tracie Morris praises such ingenuity: ‘‘Improvising on a/ Miles Trane melody/Nat Duke Turner Cole/freedom rings’’ (88). Lil’ Kim, as a group performer and solo star, redefined young urban womanhood, making third wave feminists squeal. Lil’ Kim’s graphic lyrics sparked debates on what female empowerment means to a post Civil Rights generation. Writer Joan Morgan talks about an evolution of feminism, an ideology that is somewhere shy of female gangsterism yet beyond her ‘‘foremother’s feminism’’ (280). In the underground, Boot Camp Clik (consisting of Da Beatminerz, Black Moon, the duos Smif-N-Wessun and Heltah Skeltah, and the members of O.G.C.) have represented Brooklyn since the early 1990s. While they may not have the commercial success that others attained, their underground following, as seen in the large crowds that show up to see them at the annual Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival, is undeniable. The Crooklyn Dodgers are another Brooklyn-based group that made a significant contribution. The group originally consisted of Masta Ace, Buckshot, and Special Ed. Their 1994 single, ‘‘Crooklyn,’’ recorded for the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s film Crooklyn by Spike Lee (1994), includes radio clips from a sportscaster covering a Brooklyn Dodgers game. ‘‘Brooklyn wins! Brooklyn wins!’’ the

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commentator shouts. Those who watch the music video for‘‘Crooklyn’’ will see images of the legendary baseball player, Jackie Robinson. Transitioning from Negro League Baseball to Major League Baseball, this athlete joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, a move that desegregated the Major Leagues after almost eighty years of segregation. The Crooklyn Dodgers impart Brooklyn legacy on the listener, reminding everyone of the famous people who got their start there, including Michael Jordan and Mike Tyson (and Spike Lee, the director of the project). The group’s lineup changed entirely for its second release, when Spike Lee recruited a new trio of Brooklyn luminaries—Chubb Rock, Jeru da Damaja, and O.C.—to record the single ‘‘Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers’’ for his film Clockers (1995). While hundreds of lyricists are from Brooklyn, it is worth highlighting five of them who have left indelible marks on the movement, music, and culture: MC Lyte, Busta Rhymes, Biggie Smalls, Jay Z, and Mos Def. This chapter profiles these five artists because of their national and international influence on hip hop music: they represent a cross-section of Brooklyn hip hop, far from the totality of it.

MC Lyte (Lana Moorer) MC Lyte was born and raised in Brooklyn. She shouts out her neighborhood in songs such as ‘‘Kickin’ 4 Brooklyn’’ (Lyte as a Rock, 1988) and ‘‘Brooklyn’’ (Ain’t No Other, 1993). From her debut Lyte as a Rock in 1988, she has proven to be a skilled solo female rapper (although she often gives credit to her skilled deejay who was a part of her earlier albums: DJ K-Rock). Lyte’s lyrics empower women to be women, men to be men, and the two to respectfully coexist. With songs like ‘‘I Cram to Understand You (Sam)’’ (Lyte as a Rock, 1988), ‘‘When in Love’’ (Act Like You Know, 1991), ‘‘Keep On, Keepin’ On’’ (Sunset Park Soundtrack, 1996), and ‘‘Girlfriend’s Story’’ (2004), Lyte links love to the complexities of life. In the case of ‘‘Cram to Understand,’’ she renounces drug addiction for being the antithesis to healthy relationships. When younger female emcees, such as Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, emerged in the 1990s with more lascivious lyrics, Lyte kept her style, remaining alluring in her own right with songs like ‘‘Ruffneck’’ (Aint No Other, 1993) and ‘‘I Wanna Be Down’’ (Brandy, 1994). In ‘‘Ruffneck,’’ she blasts in on the listener, demanding respect for her way of loving another person: ‘‘if he ain’t ruff, well then he’s all wrong for the Lyte.’’ Lyte asserts her femininity while at the same time never backing away from the aggression of rap battles. In ‘‘10% Dis’’ on her debut album, she engages in battling Antoinette and her crew on vinyl. Antoinette responded with her single ‘‘Lights Out, Party’s Over’’ (1988); Lyte returns with ‘‘Shut the Eff Up! (Hoe)’’ on her sophomore album (Eyes on This, 1989), where she comes back at rival Antoinette. Lyte is one of the earliest emcees to use songs as platform for discussions regarding community and personal health. She’s consistent with this activist

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strategy considering all of her albums have songs that confront serious issues. Lyte’s songs cover a range of topics from depression, suicide, alcoholism, STDs, HIV/AIDS, domestic abuse, and street terrorism. In ‘‘Poor Georgie’’ (Act Like You Know, 1991), the protagonist grapples with her lover’s self-destructive behavior. A cast of characters in ‘‘Cappuccino’’ (Eyes on This, 1989) include a cafe´ patron, a gunman, drug addicts, innocent gun victims, a drunk driver, and a dedicated social worker who gets caught up in the middle of it all. Lyte continues this trend of mixing life issues with spirituality and philosophy in other songs including ‘‘Eyes Are the Soul’’ (1992), ‘‘Druglord Superstar’’ (1997), ‘‘King of Rock’’ (1998), and ‘‘God Said Lyte’’ (2003). In addition to her lyrical prowess, MC Lyte’s marketing strategies have kept her in the spotlight for over two decades. She has collaborated with dozens of artists in hip hop and other music genres on record projects and film soundtracks. Appearing on television and in magazines, and touring internationally, Lyte cleared the path for many female solo and group acts to flourish. Lyte has received nominations from MTV Awards, Soul Train Music Awards, and the Grammy Awards. MC Lyte’s Grammy nominated song ‘‘Ruffneck’’ was the first gold single ever achieved by a female rap artist. She was the first female rapper to perform at Carnegie Hall in 1990. She was the first rapper to perform for the U.S. Organizations (USO), performing for sailors, marines, and their families in Italy, Greece, Sicily, and Sardinia in July 1997 with a second USO tour in Germany in 1998 (‘‘USO’’). In 2006 she became the first rap female solo artist to be an honoree of the VH1 Hip-Hop Honors. In 2007 she mentored Shar Jackson on the first season of ‘‘Celebrity Rap Superstar’’ (aired on MTV network). There were many other contending rap legends including Redman, Warren G, and Too $hort, but Lyte’s mentee proved victorious. Beyond her career accomplishments, MC Lyte seems to have a passion for community healing. Lyte participates in multiple philanthropic projects: nonviolent campaigns, Rock the Vote, and AIDS benefits. From her involvement with KRSOne’s Stop the Violence Movement in 1988/89, including her appearance on the song ‘‘Self Destruction’’ to her current projects with her inspirational book Just My Take (self-published, 2007), Lyte continues to prove that she is as forceful with her action outside of the music as her characters are within her intricate, yet highly entertaining narratives.

Busta Rhymes (Trevor Smith) Some rap listeners might argue that Busta Rhymes is not a Brooklyn rapper. Yet, a person’s formative years are critical to his adulthood, and Rhymes spent his wonder years in Brooklyn. Although his career began with the Long Island-based Leaders of the New School, listeners would be remiss to ignore the great effects that Brooklyn had on shaping Busta’s early musical tastes. Busta Rhymes spent part of his childhood in Flatbush, Brooklyn, but it is important to be specific here

Brooklyn Beats | 85 considering that Flatbush contains several neighborhoods and communities, with large populations of Italians, Jews, and West Indians. East Flatbush, where Busta Rhymes originated, remains predominately African American and black West Indian. It would have been hard for a young Busta Rhymes to miss the annual Labor Day Carnival (aka West Indian Carnival) that includes the West IndianAmerican Day Parade. Known as the ‘‘Caribbean Capitol of the USA,’’ Brooklyn would naturally represent some of Busta Rhymes’ heritage. Many of Busta’s songs include some reference to West Indian culture, a presence and awareness he acquired from his family and no doubt from the neighborhood in which he was raised. Such vibrancy of culture might explain his elaborate style of rapping, his taste for costume design, and his brilliant showmanship. ‘‘I was ecstatic last year [2006] when June was finally designated as National Caribbean-American Heritage Month,’’ said Brooklyn Borough President Markowitz. ‘‘Brooklyn’s current renaissance would have been impossible without Caribbean Americans’’ (‘‘BP Marty,’’ 2007). This sentiment can apply to Busta Rhymes as well. His lyrics which blend witticism with the whimsical, his business acumen with Flip Mode Squad, and his acting (in films such as Higher Learning, 1995 and Full Clip, 2004) are treasured contributions for hip hop. And in the tradition of Brooklyn hip hop appealing to global audiences, this region would not be the same without Busta. Philosophical Lyrics and Heritage Rhymes, who from an early age asserted pride in his culture and Jamaican roots, added a texture to hip hop that was both American and International. He proudly showed his locked hair. He used Jamaican patois and speed in his lyrical delivery; he called out predecessors, such as the Wailer’s reggae musician Peter Tosh (‘‘Scenario,’’ The Low End Theory, 1991). From the start, Rhymes has been consistent with his argument. His lyrics insist that people revisit their ways of thinking, to be properly informed. Years later, Rhymes still gets to his point with ‘‘Touch It’’ (The Big Bang, 2006). There are at least five versions of this song. ‘‘Touch It Remix Part 5,’’ for instance, includes Eminem, Nee-Yo, and Jae Millz. The refrain in ‘‘Touch It’’ resembles his verse in ‘‘Scenario.’’ What you think, both songs suggest, has the capacity to be rethought in a whole new way. A robotic female voice demands in the song, ‘‘Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it/turn it, leave it, stop, format it.’’ Like Busta Rhymes, this single is a veritable go-getter that remixes and remixes and remixes again. A necessary contributor in shaping and maintaining hip hop culture, Rhymes was never reticent about his influences from his fellow lyricists in Leaders of the New School, A Tribe Called Quest, and from the vast amount of members that comprise the afrocentric, culturally conscious Native Tongues Posse (Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Chi Ali, and Black Sheep, to name a few).

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Best Supporting Lyricist Busta Rhymes seems to have a golden touch for remix and collaboration songs. Perhaps this can be attributed to his respect for music in the collective. Even on his solo albums, Rhymes almost always has another lyricist present or he gives shout-outs to others, especially the Flipmode Squad, a production crew and musical family started by Busta Rhymes in the early 1990s. Spliff Star, Rampage, and Chauncey Black are among the members who are still part of the Squad. Former members include Rah Digga, Papoose, and Lord Have Mercy. In a time when many crews have gone defunct, it is a testament to Busta Rhymes’s music and spirit for collaboration that listeners are still treated to grooves from the Flipmode Squad. Rhymes works with artists of all sorts. Returning to the earlier example, watch the Arsenio Hall Show episode when Busta performs ‘‘Scenario’’ with the other rappers from Quest and Leaders. He has a kinetic effect on the others who share the stage with him, which in turn makes everyone sound and look better as a performing cast (‘‘Arsenio’’). Busta Rhymes was also collaborating with R&B artists before it became standard in the late 1990s. Listen to his ‘‘Interlude’’ on TLC’s album Crazysexycool (1994) or his duo with Mariah Carey (‘‘I Know What You Want,’’ 2003). And, his ensemble efforts are numerous. Hear how he enlivens Boyz II Men (‘‘Vibin Remix,’’ 1995) and gives the rock band Linkin Park a different sound (‘‘We Made It,’’ 2008). Perhaps these collaborations can describe his sustainability through three record company representations—Elektra in the 1990s, J/Arista/BMG for four years, and Aftermath/Interscope since 2004. Rhymes’s first solo hit ‘‘Woo-Hah! Got You All in Check!’’ (The Coming, 1996) is as raw and distinctive as his later ones. Don’t be mistaken by the simple keyboard melody. His yelling and wordplay are far from jibberish: ‘‘Just feed off dynamic flows an’ take heed.’’ He’s a multiplatinum recording artist who has been nominated for more than 35 awards, including nine Grammy nominations. Other nominations include ECHO Awards in Germany, and MTV Awards in Europe and Australia. Here are the four that he has won to date (‘‘Busta’’): • 1999 Source Award Music Video of the Year—‘‘What’s it Gonna Be’’ with Janet Jackson; • 2000 Soul Train Music Award R&B/Soul/Rap Music Video—‘‘What’s it Gonna Be’’; • 2006 BET Hip-Hop Award Best Collabo—‘‘Touch It (Reward)’’; • 2006 BET Hip-Hop Award Best Live Performer

The Notorious B.I.G. (a.ka. Biggie Smalls or Christopher Wallace) Like Jay-Z, and Mos Def, the Notorious B.I.G. (who is referred to as Biggie in this article) was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn (see sidebar ‘‘Tour

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Notorious B.I.G. (Photofest)

de Brooklyn’’). In his brief life, he went from hustling on the streets at age 17 to helping launch his career and that of at least ten other artists (Sean Combs, Mary J. Blige, Total, 112, Junior M.A.F.I.A. and their solo acts, Faith Evans, and Mase). As a lyricist, performer, collaborator, producer, Biggie definitely deserves credit for helping to build the Bad Boy Entertainment industry. Sean Combs was critical in signing Biggie to Uptown Records in 1992, and then to Combs’s new label, Bad Boy Records, in 1993. Before his solo debut, Biggie paid his dues by collaborating, remixing, and songwriting. He appears on two singles by Mary J. Blige—‘‘Real Love’’ and ‘‘What’s the 411?’’ (1992); on Super Cat’s ‘‘Dolly My Baby’’ (1993) along with Busta Rhymes, Biggie appears on Craig Mack’s 1994 remix of ‘‘Flava in Ya Ear.’’ By the time Ready to Die is released, audiences are well aware of Biggie. In Blige’s song ‘‘411’’ Biggie fantasizes about all the divas who were hot of the time: Patti Labelle, Regina Belle, Jasmine Guy, SWV, and TLC. And then, of course, since it’s Mary’s song, Biggie strategically gives all props to the new, up and coming R&B soloist: ‘‘Wait a minute, what about my honey Mary . . . I had a crush on you since Real Love.’’ In one fell swoop, Blige’s What’s the 411 album shifted the perception of R&B and rap music as separate entities. According to the Recording Industry of the Association of America, Blige’s debut album was certified gold within months of its release. By 1993, the album was certified triple platinum, a lot for a new artist blossoming in a new genre. As Blige’s audience grew, so did Biggie’s, mainly due to their close affiliation with Sean Combs who produced most of the songs on Mary’s first two albums: What’s the 411? (1992) and My Life (1994). For awhile, Mary J. Blige’s music served as

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TOUR DE BROOKLYN According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 2.4 million people reside in Brooklyn, compared to the estimated eight million living in the neighboring northern borough of Manhattan (‘‘Factsheet’’). Brooklyn can be seen by numerous methods: walk by foot through the 100 plus neighborhoods; take an 18-mile bike tour (known as Tour de Brooklyn); see a film in the one of the hip cinemas (check out the annual Brooklyn Underground Film Festival in Park Slope); patronize record shops (go to EAT, the cafe´/record spot on Meserole in Greenpoint or Somethin’ Else on Fifth Ave in Park Slope); visit street vendors; walk across the East River on the 125-year-old Brooklyn Bridge; eat from one of the multiethnic eateries (try the Cakeman Raven’s Bakery on Fulton Street or Junior’s on the corner of Flatbush and Dekalb); or marvel at the tree-lined streets in Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Once known as the place where the fictitious 1950s/1960s television characters The Honeymooners lived, Bed-Stuy is better known today for the setting of Spike Lee films and Chris Rock’s comedy Everybody Hates Chris. Read local papers or ask passersby about many weekend street festival and club celebrations at the Sputnik in Clinton Hill, Puppets Jazz Bar in Park Slope, or other spots showcasing talent (Sisario 2007). The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Prospect Zoo are places not to be missed. This, of course, is a different zoo from the one to which Ol’ Dirty Bastard refers in his song ‘‘Brooklyn Zoo.’’ The fate of the U.S. Basketball League (USBL) is unknown, but this borough and their home field at the Long Island University campus in Brooklyn will always be home for the Brooklyn Kings. Women in full costume with feather headdresses, men at the drums, children performing to the beats, and food, food, food—the West IndianAmerican Day parade is just one of the activities during the Labor Day West Indian Festival. However, the parade is the largest draw, attracting millions and millions of spectators who line the Eastern Parkway to be amazed and dazzled. Hear the Jackie Robinson Steppers Marching Band. A part of a larger initiative at the Robinson Center for Physical Culture, the 180+ band is under the direction of Tyrone Brown. Some of the members were even featured in the film Our Song (Beach Films, 2000). There are also a lot of award winning writers who live and write in Brooklyn including Colson Whitehead and Jhumpa Lahiri. (Some critics link Richard Wright with the Fort Greene neighborhood. They say he may have penned Native Son there in 1945 before moving to Harlem.) Stop by a local bookstore. Perhaps you’ll get to hear Suheir Hammad read her poetry about living in America and loving her native Palestinian land. Or, go to the annual Brooklyn Book Festival that stretches from Borough Hall into Columbia Park Plaza. You may just bump

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into Toni Blackman there. She is the first poet-activist-rapper-peacemaker to be chosen by the U.S. Department of State to serve as an American Cultural Specialist. In the past five years, she has traveled to over 20 countries running cypher workshops and other lyrical forums on the transformative power of hip hop.

REFERENCES Blackman, Toni. Inner-Course: A Plea for Real Love. New York: Villard Books, Random House, 2003. ‘‘Factsheet for Brooklyn borough.’’ U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000. http:// factfinder.census.gov/ (accessed April 2008). Ol’ Dirty Bastard. ‘‘Brooklyn Zoo.’’ Return to the 36 Chambers. Elektra, 1995. Our Song (film). Dir by Jim McKay. Beach Hill Films, 2000. Patel, Joseph. ‘‘Brooklyn Kids Earn Trophies, Scholarships, Fans like Jay-Z.’’ Mtv.com, May 30, 2004. Sisario, Ben. ‘‘Brooklyn Next.’’ New York Times, February 16, 2007. http:// nytimes.com (accessed April 2008).

the flagship for hip hop soul; Biggie Smalls’ music was the pace car for the transformative East Coast hip hop sound. Conspiracy, the 1995 debut album by Junior Masters at Finding Intelligent Attitudes (Junior M.A.F.I.A), was not produced under the Bad Boy label, but Biggie appears on several of the tracks. Two of the tracks that feature Biggie, ‘‘Get Money’’ and ‘‘Player’s Anthem,’’ were Junior M.A.F.I.A’s two hottest charttopping singles. Lil’ Kim (former member of Junior M.A.F.I.A) was also mentored by Biggie. Her first two albums enjoyed large success. Hardcore (1996) shows Biggie’s influence on Kim. The beats, lyrical delivery, and gangsta subject matter resemble his style. He appears on two songs ‘‘Crush on You’’ and ‘‘Drugs.’’ The Notorious K.I.M (2000) continues to hail Biggie. On that album Kim credits herself, Sean Combs, and Christopher ‘‘Biggie’’ Wallace as the executive producers. The R&B quartet, 112, had three albums with Bad Boy Records. Biggie had multiple roles in cultivating their success as well. Hear him on two versions of ‘‘Only You’’ (1996), the song that continues to be one of 112’s most well known singles. Elegies Biggie sings the hook, ‘‘You’re Nobody ‘til Somebody Kills You’’ on his Life After Death album. Sadly, he was murdered on March 9, 1997, and his album was released sixteen days after his murder. His musical family responded with an elegy of their own: ‘‘I’ll Be Missing You’’ (No Way Out, 1997). The song continues to be one of the most famous rap elegies to date. An ensemble piece, the elegy is harmonized by 112, rapped by Sean Combs (known as Puff Daddy at the time),

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and sung by Faith Evans, Biggie’s widow. Also a singer and songwriter, Evans has credits on Usher’s debut Usher (1994) and Mary J. Blige’s My Life (1994). She also has six solo albums of her own. The hook of ‘‘I’ll Be Missing You’’ comes from The Police’s ‘‘Every Breath You Take’’ (1983). Combs reminisces, ‘‘Seems like yesterday . . . I laced the track, you locked the flow.’’ Evans croons, ‘‘What a life to take, what a bond to break, I’ll be missing you.’’ The single and album soared to multiplatinum status in the United States, and several other countries including Australia, Austria, and France. Song writing credit goes to Brooklyn rapper Sauce Money, who at one point was in a trio with Jay-Z and Jaz-O. Thanks to Sauce Money’s ghostwriting, the song won the Grammy for ‘‘Best Rap Performance for a Duo or Group’’ in 1997. Other elegiac songs with similar titles exist. Diana Ross’s song ‘‘Missing You’’ (1984) was written by Lionel Richie as a tribute to Marvin Gaye who was murdered earlier that year. Aaliyah’s song ‘‘Miss You’’ (2002) is also an elegy. It was originally sung by Aaliyah as a ballad about a lovesick partner. Unfortunately, due to Aaliyah’s untimely death in a fatal plane crash, her friends convert the meaning of the song into a musical tribute. Other elegiac songs were dedicated to Biggie, such as Junior M.A.F.I.A’s ‘‘Biggie’’ (Born Again, 1999; Best of Junior M.A.F.I.A., 2004): ‘‘Like BIG said, we do the real things . . . Still ride, still die for BIG’s name.’’ Most of the song focuses on the role Biggie played in their lives as artists, as thinkers, as businessmen. Lil’ Kim—who never denied her romantic links to Biggie in her songs—has a verse where she mourns, ‘‘Keep my man name out your mouth/Or get this shit right, check it, it’s the B-I, double G-I, E.’’ Biggie died within months after Tupac Shakur was killed on September 13, 1996. It is worth noting here that Tupac had numerous elegies, many of which were posthumous releases. With heavy samples from the rock music genre, Tupac’s song ‘‘Changes’’ (Greatest Hits 2Pac, 1998) has samples from ‘‘The Way It Is’’ by Bruce Hornsby and the Range. ‘‘Changes,’’ which appears shortly on the heels of ‘‘I’ll Be Missing You’’ (which won a Grammy barely two years earlier), was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance at the Grammy Awards in 2000. Two songs released so close to the deaths of two prominent lyricists had a sobering effect on millions of listeners. The elegiac song ‘‘Runnin’ (Dying to Live)’’ was recorded by Tupac featuring Biggie in 1994 though it is not released until the Resurrection soundtrack (2003), a film about Tupac’s life. The sample from Edgar Winter’s song ‘‘Dying to Live’’ haunts the listener: ‘‘Why am I dying to live if I’m just living to die?’’ (Edgar Winter’s White Trash, 1971). Tupac’s ‘‘God Bless the Dead’’ is similarly haunting because it was released after he and Biggie were killed. More Money Biggie Smalls’ legacy helped revive East Coast hip hop during a time when rappers from other regions were gaining in popularity. For instance, Master P (aka Percy Miller) was doing more than gaining record sales in New

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Orleans in the mid-1990s. By 1998 this University of Houston graduate—turned National Basketball Association (NBA) player—turned CEO of No Limit Records ‘‘ranked 10th on Forbes Magazines 1998 list of America’s forty highest paid entertainers with an estimated income of $56.5 million’’ (Miller 1999). Fortune Magazine’s issue ‘‘Forty Richest Under Forty’’ featured Master P on the October 1999 cover. Debuting at number 28 (at age 29) Master P was listed as having a net worth of $361 million. Retired Chicago Bulls basketball player Michael Jordan was the only other African American on the list, coming in at number 29 with a net worth of $357 million (Johnson 1999; ‘‘List’’ by Borden 1999). It was not just the records that got this net worth; it was Master P’s company expanding into films, toys, shoes, and sports management that solidified his fiscal success. In his book Hip Hop Matters S. Craig Watkins writes about 1998 being a banner year for hip hop overall. ‘‘That year rap’s certified numbers,’’ Watkins writes, ‘‘units sold, multiplatinum status, and chart-topping performances—confirmed that the genre, long considered a cultural force, had become a major economic force, too’’ (62). Almost 10 years after Sean Combs started his Bad Boy Records label, Forbes Magazine estimated that in 2006, the CEO made estimated personal earnings of $28 million (Goldman 2007). Figures on the net worth of his companies were not noted. Some of these earnings can be attributed to his lucrative partnership with Biggie Smalls.

Jay-Z (aka Shawn Carter) Industry Influence Jay-Z, who was mentored by Jaz-O in the early 1990s, is credited for the sustainability and success of his independent record label RocA-Fella Records. Reasonable Doubt (1996) was certainly a grassroots effort considering the lyricist had difficulty getting a record company to endorse him. Reasonable Doubt shows the wide range of support that he gets from fellow Brooklyn and New York artists. DJ Premier, Clark Kent (Dana Dane’s former DJ), and Biggie contributed to songs on the album. Rappers Memphis Bleek and Sauce Money also appear on tracks. Premier produced ‘‘D’evils,’’ ‘‘Friend or Foe,’’ and ‘‘Bring It on’’; Kent also produced three songs—‘‘Brooklyn’s Finest,’’ ‘‘Cashmere Thoughts,’’ and ‘‘Coming of Age.’’ ‘‘Brooklyn’s Finest’’ features Biggie, a helpful collaboration considering the artist was pretty well known from his bestselling singles with Mary J. Blige, Craig Mack, and his critically acclaimed album Ready to Die. It is as if Jay-Z set out to prove with Reasonable Doubt that he deserved an admirable position in the rap game. His bravado certainly contributes to his rap prowess and success. In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Tricia Rose discusses the necessity of power play in music, which seems to bode well for hip hop. Rose writes, ‘‘These wars of position are not staged debate team dialogues; they are crucial battles in the retention, establishment, or

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Jay-Z (Photofest)

legitimation of real social power’’ (102). In ‘‘Brooklyn’s Finest’’ Jay-Z announces himself, separating ‘‘the Platinum from the Bronze,’’ loving the slums but not being confined to them. To Jay-Z and many more, the finest are from the housing districts Marcy, Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Brownsville, Bushwick, Fort Greene, Flatbush, Red Hook, East New York, Clinton Hill, and on. The hook shouts, ‘‘Brooklyn going out to all! You don’t stop. You won’t stop!’’ Jay-Z’s influence in the industry can be attributed to his hard work. For one thing, he becomes one of the most consistent rappers to produce albums, annually (In My Lifetime, Vol 1, 1997; Hard Knock Life, Vol 2, 1998; Life and Times of S. Carter, 1999, etc.). His business partnership with Damon Dash helped bring more clients and artists into the Roc-A-Fella family, and it also helped expand the company into other entrepreneurial areas. Between 1996 and 2008, Roc-A-Fella went from an independent record label to a record company to multienterprise companies to negotiating deals with other million dollar companies. His business acumen is duly noted. His signature style is a mix of street experience with a self-learned/ self-taught corporate swagger. Listeners can count on Jay-Z’s ‘‘rag to riches’’ stories that star him as the heroic protagonist, the self-made man. While some may see him as arrogant, Jay-Z’s tone and message reveal the larger point: He is defensive when directing his lyrics at certain professional foes, but his range is not limited to a vendetta motif. In ‘‘30 Something’’ (Kingdom Come, 2006) he describes his maturation process, ‘‘I’m young enough to know the right car to buy/yet grown enough not to put rims on it.’’ He imparts his wisdom, having gone through the range of poverty and wealth.

Brooklyn Beats | 93 In rapping about having good credit, carrying no guns, and balling with professional basketball players, Jay-Z directs the point to the lessons he’s learned. Economic stability leads to the riches, he suggests. His lesson suggests that chasing the spoils will continue to lead people to economic ruin. ‘‘Baby boy, now I’m all grown up!’’ the hook says. Hear other songs with similar themes—‘‘Takeover’’ (2001); ‘‘Numb/Encore’’ with Linkin Park (2004); ‘‘99 Problems’’ (2004); or his tribute to his mother, ‘‘I Made It’’ (2006). For Jay-Z’s version of ballads, hear ‘‘Ain’t No Nigga’’ featuring Foxy Brown (1996); ‘‘Song Cry,’’ some versions feature Mary J. Blige (2001); ‘‘Girls, Girls, Girls’’ (2001); ‘‘I Know’’ (2007); or ‘‘Hello Brooklyn’’ (2007) featuring New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne with beats from Beastie Boys’s ‘‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’’ (Paul’s Boutique, 1989). Last, notice his major influence on contemporary vernacular. For instance he has several variations of his name, which become universal words of their own. Words such as ‘‘jigga,’’ ‘‘izzo,’’ ‘‘izza,’’ and ‘‘H.O.V.A.’’ create a set of vocabulary and references that audiences get to figure out. Fiscal Legacy In addition to his lyrics and award winning albums (he has earned seven Grammy awards to date), Jay-Z qualifies as a mogul, because most of his multimillion dollar business deals effect audiences beyond hip hop. While he was making business moves from the start of his career, since 2005 he has expanded things even further. In 2007 he sold his Rocawear apparel label for $204 million. Since 2004, he has co-owned upscale sports bar lounges called 40/ 40 Club in New York, Atlantic City, and Las Vegas, with two more soon to open in Tokyo (Japan) and Macau (China). And in 2008 his corporate team linked with the concert giant Live Nation, a $150 million package deal that will increase JayZ’s overall revenue as it pertains to recordings, concert tickets, and market merchandise (Goldman 2007; Leeds 2008). Jay-Z is one of the few to go from independent lyricist to multibillion dollar executive. Here are some of his other profitable ventures: • He was the CEO of Def Jam Recordings (c. 2005–2007) and CEO of Roc-AFella Records (with many executive roles, including cofounder from 1996 to 2008); • He has ownership in a number of brand companies: Rocawear, Roc Films, Armadale Vodka, and Roc La Familia; • He co-owns the New Jersey Nets NBA team; • And for his philanthropy, he has been recognized by the United Nations for helping to improve water and sanitation around the world. Jay-Z also appeared in Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine for his acumen to make million-dollar deals (Nizza 2007). Forbes Magazine has an annual list of the

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top grossing people in the entertainment industry. Jay-Z finished at the top of the list with an estimated $34 million grossed in 2006.

Mos Def Lyrics ‘‘B-Boy Apostle’’—that’s what Black Star calls themselves on their 1998 single ‘‘Definition,’’ part of their album Most Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star. Black Star is part of the new generation of the Native Tongues Posse. In ‘‘Definition’’ the refrain, after explicitly calling attention to the danger of being an emcee, goes on to exclaim, ‘‘They shot Tupac and Biggie/Hold your head when the beat drop, Y-O!’’ Actually, there are several editions of this song, as with other songs by Mos Def and Talib Kweli. What makes them unique is that the music, sung live on television, rapped in the studio, or improvised on concert stage, Black Star’s music lends itself to organically changing lyrics. For instance, the last line of the previously quoted song is also heard as this: ‘‘They shot Tupac and Biggie/Too much violence in Hip Hop, Y-O!’’ ‘‘Definition’’ serves as homage to hip hop and especially Brooklyn. They have several references to areas in Brooklyn, and the lyrics are accompanied by samples from ‘‘The P is Free’’ by Boogie Down Productions (BDP). BDP is universally associated with the KRS-One, a well-known lyricist, teacher, writer, and preacher of the boom bap. ‘‘Definition’’ might remind listeners of the song ‘‘Stop the Violence’’ (1988), the ensemble antigun single that was spearheaded by BDP. Black Star educates right from the start with the title of their group, which is the name of a shipping line founded by the 1920s leader Marcus Garvey who inspired a global movement to focus on uplifting and reempowering life on the African continent. Black Star made only one album together, but fans have come to expect Mos Def and Talib Kweli to sustain hip hop through integrity, intelligence, and profound rhymes. There are multiple actions that distinguish Mos Def. Education is a huge focus in his lyrics, and he delivers such messages by marrying types of music that are often not seen in rap. Black on Both Sides (Rawkus 1999) has several songs that are both contemporary and classic. The single ‘‘Umi Says’’ has a 1970s groove of electric piano and organ making the words shine as they would during a poetry or spoken word reading. Chosen as the first track on this album is ‘‘Fear Not of Man,’’ a fiesta mix of congas, percussion, and beats by Fela Kuti, the famous Nigerian musician and human rights activist. DJ Premier produced ‘‘Mathematics,’’ a song that cries out for listeners to see the ignorance in illiteracy, murder, underachievement, and other sorts of selfimposed oppression. ‘‘Mathematics’’ gives statistics about inadequate jail sentences for low amounts of drug possession, inadequate compensation to rap artists (15%) considering the multibillion dollar industry, underserved black populations in major U.S. cities like New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago, and over 60 billion dollars spent on national defense. The song reads like a census report,

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telling listeners the cold, hard incomprehensible conditions under which people live. And, the lyrics even target the individual, asking what people will do for themselves. ‘‘Young bloods can’t spell but they can rock you in Playstation’’— lines like these are meant to arrest the listener. Such themes resurface on his four solo albums and dozens of collaborations (i.e. Lyricist Lounge and Ghostface Meets MF). He also has guest appearances on film soundtracks (especially Brown Sugar, Lackawanna Blues, and Bamboozled, films in which he also had roles). His four-disc CD set, We Are Hip Hop. Me. You. Everybody (2006) is teeming with veterans and new school lyricists who tout the same messages of self-empowerment, self-actuality, and community art for self-love to endure. Politics and World Issues It seems that most if not all of Mos Def’s music is political, but he doesn’t just focus on larger issues. He keeps his finger on the pulse of national atrocities that affect people locally. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans and other areas along the Gulf of Mexico, many rappers served with their voices, their dollars, and their foundations. Mos was one of the many to speak out against the lag in relief efforts for families evacuating the more than 80 percent of New Orleans that flooded due to the levees giving way to Lake Pontchartrain. In ‘‘Katrina Clap (Dollar Day)’’ released in September 2005 shortly after the Katrina devastation which started the week of August 23, Mos Def addresses the institutional racism that denied Katrina survivors the prompt rescue, shelter, healthcare, and money they needed, all while the world witnessed such negligence. He roars in the song. Listeners are supposed to be bothered, if not agitated to action. ‘‘Don’t talk about it. Be about it,’’ he says at the end of the ‘‘Katrina Clap’’ video, which has contrasting images of government officials and news headlines with scenes of the displaced, distressed survivors in the hours and days after the flood. His sings the opening lines as if it is a lullaby. Then the words sink in: ‘‘water, water everywhere and people dead in the street, and Mr. President, he ‘bout that cash.’’ For other political issues, listen to ‘‘The Rape Over’’ (2004). The song samples the same beats from The Doors that Jay-Z’s ‘‘The Take Over’’ (2001) does. Jay-Z’s ‘‘Take Over’’ is about the influence, power, and wealth of the Roc-A-Fella family. Considered a parody of ‘‘The Take Over,’’ the ‘‘The Rape Over’’ addresses the inequities of the rap industry. Mos Def sheds light on those who make money off the billion dollar rap industry and the writers, performers, and producers who do not. Both songs are charged with violent militaristic images, though Mos Def’s version takes things one step further by adding sexual denigration and emasculation to the mix. His graphic language describes the way rap has been violated and dispossessed by corporations, drugs, and money-hungry schemes. The multiple versions of ‘‘Bin Laden’’ (2004) accuse the Bush administration of being responsible for 9/11. The song rapped by Immortal Technique, Mos Def, and later Eminem, continues to be highly controversial. Al Qaeda and Bin Laden are

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depicted as monsters created and funded by the U.S. government. Perhaps lesser known, Immortal Technique (aka Felipe Coronel) is an activist and emcee representing for the Diaspora. Raised in Harlem, New York, he is of Afro-Peruvian descent. Most of his songs resemble motivational speeches that address issues of racism, classism, and fascism. Immortal has done collaborations and three albums to date: Revolutionary Vol 1., Revolutionary Vol 2., and The 3rd World. In their poem, ‘‘Dearest Hip Hop,’’ Walidah Imarisha and Not4Prophet praise lyricists like Immortal Technique, writing, ‘‘We made ragtime and blues, jazz, be-bop, and rock-and-roll and soul and funk and ska and reggae and salsa and more, music designed to blow minds, while the Man built factories to manufacture our minds’’ (68). As Mos Def sings in ‘‘Umi Says,’’ ‘‘I ain’t no perfect man/I’m trying to do the best that I can.’’ As a rapper with much more visibility than many, Mos Def takes courageous steps in using his pen, notepad, lyrics, and microphone as his methods of activism. There is a tough balance between gaining popularity and maintaining individuality in one’s lyrical content. Eric Watts writes about the demise of hip hop in the face of American ‘‘spectacular consumption’’: ‘‘The street code gets explosively commodified and artists get juiced beyond their maddest dreams, they are compelled to maintain their celebrity status by ‘authenticating’ their selfpresentations in increasingly grittier street terms’’ (601). What fans find appealing about Mos Def is his proven and consistent habit of truth-telling. Film Mos Def gets a lot of screen time as the host of Def Poetry Jam—an HBO television show produced by Rush Communications CEO Russell Simmons. However, it is the work that Mos does on the silver screen that continues to push the boundaries of how Blacks are portrayed in entertainment storylines. Many rappers have appeared in feature-length films. Tupac Shakur had film roles in Juice (1992), Poetic Justice (1993), and Above the Rim (1994); Heavy D was in the Oscar winning film The Cider House Rules (1999); Queen Latiah (who also has her own film/music production company) earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Chicago (2002) and won the Golden Globe (Best Performance by an Actress in a mini-series or Motion Picture Made for Television) for her role in Life Support (2007); Eldris Elba (known for his deejay skills as Big Dris) starred in the Oscar nominated film American Gangster (2007). The list goes on. In addition to his developing music career, Mos Def’s acting career has soared. He has had a role in at least ten films, many of which have ranked high in box office sales and in critical acclaim. His characters have been diverse in nature. In Bamboozled (2000) and Brown Sugar (2002) he plays characters who are struggling to be understood as rap artists. In Monster’s Ball (2001) he plays a protective father who does not cower in the presence of anyone, especially people in the racially charged southern town. The film turned out to be a landmark project for his career since one of his costars, Halle Berry, won the best actress Academy Award. Berry became one of two Black actors to win best actor awards that year.

Brooklyn Beats | 97 The other was Denzel Washington who won for Training Day. No Black actor had won best actor award since Sidney Poitier won in 1963 for Lilies of the Field. Mos Def had a leading role in Something the Lord Made (2005) for which he received an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination. He plays Vivien Thomas, the African American genius who becomes a surgical assistant to the famous surgeon Alfred Blalock. Thomas eventually invents instruments, helps to pioneer surgical procedures, and instructs surgeries later in his career at Johns Hopkins University. Mos Def goes from playing a medical professional in the Jim Crow era to a fasttalking witness in the thriller 16 Blocks (2006). This is also the supporting lead role. He brings integrity to the character Eddie Bunker, a young man of the streets who is caught up in overwhelming circumstances where corrupt policemen are out to get him. The other lead actor, Bruce Willis, plays a detective who tries to protect him; although neither the audience, nor Eddie, can be sure how credible or reliable the detective really is. Mos Def does great work as character actors also. Look for him as Chuck Berry in Cadilac Records (2008), a film about the 1950s Chicago-based record company. He will also be in Toussaint (2009), a film about the Haitian revolutionary who helped establish Haiti as the first free black nation in 1804. (As a result of their independence, Haiti becomes the first country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery.) Produced by veteran actor Danny Glover, Toussaint also stars Don Cheadle (as Toussiant L’ouverture) Angela Bassett, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

THE FUTURE Not only do artists and lyricists live in Brooklyn, they also embody it in artistic mediums through song, canvas, film, or other methods (see ‘‘Brooklyn’s Treasure’’). And like other towns to which people have an affinity, the places in Brooklyn are great because the people say so. Emcees and deejays and producers out of Brooklyn are not monolithic. Some styles represent East Coast gangsta. Others are alternative; others are soul-music oriented. What is refreshing about these people and this city is how they continue to reference it and each other, so that their causes are passed on; their concerns are heard beyond any one messenger. Brooklyn’s diverse setting is reflected in its hip hop shapers and lovers of the culture. Some, like Busta Rhymes and the Notorious B.I.G., integrate their West Indian heritage into their musical performance, style, and consciousness. Other innovators like DJ Premier come as transplants, mixing their influences from other places with Brooklyn’s splendor. Others like MC Lyte and Black Star are born and raised in the city but use their education and empirical experiences to inform their artistry. Whatever the case may be, these artists do not separate themselves from one another based on ethnicity or nationality or whether people hail from which project housing in which neighborhood. A rapper hemmed up in the gangster world will sing the blues to you with violins in the background. Another who’s into beats and rhymes might blast through your speakers with contemporary heavy

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BROOKLYN’S TREASURE: JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960–1988) Arguably the most worldwide known postgraffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, was born and raised in Brooklyn. Graffiti ‘‘writing’’ in the streets as a teenager, Basquiat was discovered by a wealthy patron in his early adulthood. Basquiat’s graffiti tag, Samo, was short for Same Old Shit. He was part of a growing community of artists who used street canvases (buildings, subways, busses) for their artistic license. In 1980, Basquiat exhibited his work in a group exhibition called the ‘‘Time Square Show.’’ Between the ever present taggings on the subway lines by writers like TAKI 183 and the Fashion Moda art gallery in the South Bronx that started exhibiting graffiti in the late 1970s, cultural critics and exhibit goers had opportunities to cultivate their graffiti preferences. The art world soon took notice of Basquiat due to magazine articles that featured him as well as local art galleries in New York that garnered the attention of international art critics and journalists. Writers like Daze, Pink, Crash, and Fab Five Freddy who composed art on the streets became known as post-graffiti writers in the studio. They exhibited their work in several galleries, starting especially with the Fun Gallery (whose curator is known as one of the first to exhibit ‘‘writers’’ in June 1983), Sidney Janis Gallery, New York Society for Ethical Culture, and the Tony Shafrazi Gallery. By age 24, Basquiat began exhibiting his work internationally, making several trips for solo exhibits around North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He befriended many writers, actors, artists, and musicians in his short life time, including fellow artists Andy Warhol and Keith Herring. Unfortunately, he died prematurely of a drug overdose in August 1988. Basquiat’s paintings are a reflection of his poetic, philosophical, and spiritual interests about people of the African Diaspora from America, the Americas, and Europe. Fluent in several languages including those spoken by his Haitian father and his Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat seems to fuse jazz/rock/rap rhythm, folk dialect, and political commentary into his work. One hundred twenty pieces by Basquiat were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in summer 2005 before traveling to Los Angeles and Houston. Basquiat was greatly influenced by the burgeoning hip hop movement, and should also be credited for helping to shape the wonderful face of hip hop as it pertains to people of varying backgrounds, ethnicities, and tastes.

REFERENCES Ahearn, Charles (dir). Wild Style (film). Rhino, 1983. Basquiat, Jean-Michel, Keith Herring, and Luca Morenzi. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Charta, 1999.

Brooklyn Beats Queenan, Joe. ‘‘Koch World. It’s a Scary Place.’’ New York Times. Region section. April 3, 2005. Ricard, Rene. ‘‘The Radiant Child.’’ Artforum Magazine, 1981. Schnabel, Julian (dir). Basquiat (film). Miramax, 1996. Silver, Tony (dir). Style Wars (film). Plexifilm (orig. 1983 on PBS), DVD Revisited 2006. ‘‘Street to Studio: The Art of Jean-Michel Basquiat.’’ Brooklyn Museum Exhibit, 2004–2007. http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/ basquiat/street-to-studio/english/explore.php (accessed April 2008).

rock music. The unpredictability is what’s most consistent. Mos Def sums it up in his aptly fitted song about Bucktown: ‘‘From the tree-lined blocks to the tenements . . . ain’t a place that I know that bear resemblance/That’s why we call it The Planet’’ (‘‘Brooklyn,’’ Black on Both Sides 1999). 2008 marked the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge. Hip hop in Brooklyn has not quite reached fifty years, but the culture’s fundamentals are well built, well supported, and showing no signs of weakness. The annual summer Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival is increasing in popularity among artists who perform and families (from babies to grandparents) who attend. There are also film (including a segment of the Hip Hop Festival), book (Brooklyn literary festival in downtown Brooklyn), and photography (Powerhouse Books in DUMBO) festivals that draw attendees and participants from all over the world. And, since hip hop has had a global audience for decades now, it is not unusual for organizers in Brooklyn to get sponsors and participants who are favored in the hip hop industry for their events. For instance, The Freestyle Union (FSU) is an artist development organization that is now based in Brooklyn, originally started in Washington, D.C. FSU has many initiatives, including the Cipher Workshop that helps participants improve their spontaneous writing, speaking, and performance skills. Founding director Toni Blackman is known to attend neighborhood festivals as a invited participant—to help emphasize art as self and community empowerment. As the first hip hop artist to work as an American Cultural Specialist for the U.S. Department of State, Blackman continues to do work in this capacity; to date, she has traveled to over 50 countries performing poetry, conducting workshops, and educating others on the rich history of hip hop culture (‘‘Blackman’’). Blackman’s poem, ‘‘The Feminine Voice in Hip Hop,’’ speaks to her beliefs in art as transformative. Her interests in maintaining the essence of hip hop is an initiative to which other Brooklyn artists subscribe. Blackman writes (and performs) these lines: ‘‘I am an invisible woman/They know I am here, because I was there’’ (100). The future of Brooklyn hip hop is bright. Even when record-label artists from the borough are not en vogue, the music and culture will continue to exist and

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flourish, off the radar. Too many well-intentioned lovers of the music are inhabiting clubs, bars, parks, lecture spaces, basements, classrooms, recreation rooms, subway stations, and everywhere in between. And, it is these lovers who push the music in new directions, and insist on revering pioneers like ‘‘Uncle’’ Ralph McDaniels, not simply for posterity sake, but for the eternal integrity of the music from Kings County.

REFERENCES ‘‘About Toni Blackman.’’ 2008. http://www.toniblackman.com/ (accessed October 2008). ‘‘Arsenio Hall Show (1989, TV Show).’’ A Tribe Called Quest and Leaders of the New School perform in 1992. TV Guide, April 27, 2008. ‘‘Artists.’’ First Priority New Music Group official Web site. 2007. www .firstprioritymusic.com (accessed April 2008). Blackman, Toni. Inner-Course: A Plea for Real Love. New York: Villard, 2003. Borden, Mark et al. ‘‘America’s Forty Richest Under Forty.’’ Fortune Magazine. CNNmoney.com, September 27, 1999. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/09/27/266173/index.htm (accessed April 2008). ‘‘BP Marty Markowitz and Deputy BP Yvonne Graham Host Historic Day-Long Celebration of Caribbean Heritage.’’ Press Release President of the Borough of Brooklyn Marty Markowitz. June 28, 2007. http://www.brooklyn-usa.org/ Press/2007/june28.htm (accessed April 2008). Break Easy. ‘‘United Brooklyn Uprocks’’ 2005. Rocking and Breaking History. http://hometown.aol.com/WEPAMAN/uprock.html (accessed May 2008). ‘‘Busta Rhymes Awards’’ AceShowBiz. 2005–2008. http://www.aceshowbiz.com/ celebrity/busta_rhymes/awards.html (accessed April 2008). Castleman, Craig. ‘‘The Politics of Graffiti.’’ In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 21–30. New York: Routledge Press, 2004. ‘‘DJ Premier Interview.’’ Interviewed by Theformula.com. Tribe Magazine, April 6, 2003. http://www.tribemagazine.com/board/showthread.php?t=36255 (accessed April 2008). Goldman, Lea (with Jake Paine). ‘‘Hip-Hop Cash Kings.’’ Forbes Magazine Special Report. Forbes.com, August 16, 2007. http://www.forbes.com/2007/08/15/ hip-hop-millionaires-biz-cx_lg_0816hiphop.html (accessed April 2008). Holman, Michael. ‘‘Breaking: The History.’’ In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 31–39. New York: Routledge Press, 2004. Imarisha, Walidah, and Not4Prophet. ‘‘Dearest Hip Hop.’’ In Letters from Young Activists, edited by Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin, and Kenyon Farrow, 65–69. New York: Nation Books, 2005.

Brooklyn Beats | 101 Johnson, Roy S. ‘‘Diamond in the Rough. What Sets Master P Apart?’’ Fortune Magazine. CNNmoney.com, September 27, 1999. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/09/27/266176/index.htm (accessed April 2008). Leeds, Jeff. ‘‘In Rapper’s Deal, a New Model for Music Business.’’ New York Times (Music Section), April 3, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/ arts/music/03jayz.html?_r=1&oref=slogin (accessed April 2008). Miller, Robert G. ‘‘We’ve Got the ‘Hook-Up’ With Master P.’’ Black Collegian, February 1999. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3628/is_199902/ ai_n8836948 (accessed April 2008). Morgan, Joan. ‘‘Hip-Hop Feminist.’’ In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 277–81. New York: Routledge Press, 2004. Morris, Tracie. ‘‘Writer’s Delight.’’ In Listen Up! Spoken Word Poetry, edited by Z. Anglesey, 87–89. New York: One World, 1999. Nizza, Mike. ‘‘In One Fell Swoop, Jay-Z Impresses Critics, Fans, the U.N. and Wall Street.’’ The Lede Section. New York Times Online, November 19, 2007. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/ (accessed April 2008). Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. ‘‘USO to Bring MC Lyte to Troops in Germany.’’ USO Media Room, April 15, 2006. http://uso.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=55&print=1 (accessed April 2008). Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. Watts, Eric. K. ‘‘An Exploration of Spectacular Consumption: Gangsta Rap as Cultural Commodity.’’ In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 593–610. New York: Routledge Press, 2004.

FURTHER RESOURCES Cobb, William Jelani. To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Forman, Murray. ‘‘ ‘Represent’: Race, Space, and Place in Rap Music.’’ In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 201–22. New York: Routledge Press, 2004. Good, Karen. ‘‘Ill Na Nas, Goddesses, and Drama Mamas.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 373–85. New York: Vibe, 1999. Lee, Spike (dir). Crooklyn (motion picture). California: Universal Studios, 1999 (original release 1994). Morgan, Joan. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks it Down. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

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Nelson, George (dir). Life Support (motion picture). New York: HBO Home Video, 2007. Perkins, William, ed. Droppin’ Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Perry, Imani. ‘‘Stinging Like Tabasco: Structure and Format in Hip Hop Compositions.’’ In Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (by the author), 58–101. Duke University Press, 2005. Peterson, James Braxton. ‘‘The Hate U Give (T.H.U.G.): Reflections on the Bigger Figures in Present Day Hip Hop Culture.’’ In Dialogue 2: Richard Wright’s Native Son, edited by Anna M. Fraile Marcos, 203–24. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2007. Pray, Doug (dir). Scratch (documentary). California: Palm Pictures, 2002. Rampersad, Arnold. Jackie Robinson: An Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1998. Toop, David. The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip-Hop. Boston: South End Press, 1984. Wood, Joe. ‘‘Native Tongues: A Family Affair.’’ The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 187–201. New York: Vibe, 1999.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Aaliyah Hits and Unreleased: The Ultimate Collection. Polydor Records, 2002. Angie Martinez Up Close and Personal. Elektra/Wea, 2001. Audio Two What More Can I Say? First Priority, 1988. Big Daddy Kane Long Live the Kane. Cold Chillin’/Warner Bros. Records, 1988. It’s a Big Daddy Thing. Cold Chillin’/Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, 1989. Black Moon Enta Da Stage. Nervous, 1993. Diggin’ in Dah Vaults. Nervous, 1996. War Zone. Duck Down, 1998. Total Eclipse. Duck Down, 2003. Boot Camp Clik The Last Stand. Duck Down Records, 2006. Buckshot and 9th Wonder Chemistry. Duck Down Records, 2005. The Formula. Duck Down Records, 2008. Busta Rhymes (with Leaders of the New School) A Future without a Past. Elektra, 1991.

Brooklyn Beats Busta Rhymes The Coming. Flipmode/Elektra, 1996. When Disaster Strikes. Flipmode/Elektra, 1997. E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event). Flipmode/Elektra, 1998. Genesis. Flipmode, 2001. The Big Bang. Flipmode/Aftermath/Interscope, 2007. Back on my B.S. Flipmode/Universal Motown, 2009. Chubb Rock Chubb Rock. Select, 1988. And the Winner Is . . . . Select, 1989. The One. Select, 1991. I Gotta Get Mine Yo. Select/Elektra, 1992. The Mind. Select, 1997. Chubb Rock and Wordsmith Bridging the Gap. Unruly, 2009. Cocoa Brovas (see Smif-N-Wessun) Da Beatminerz Brace 4 Impak. Rawkus, 2001. Fully Loaded w/Statik. Copter, 2004. Unmarked Music Vol. 1. Raw Deal, 2007. Dana Dane Dana Dane with Fame. Profile, 1987. Dana Dane 4 Ever. Profile, 1990. Digable Planets Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space). Pendulum Records/Elektra Records, 1993. Blowout Comb. Capitol Records, 1994. EMC The Show. M3 Records, 2008. Fat Boys Fat Boys. Sutra, 1984. Fat Boys Are Back. Sutra, 1985. All Meat, No Filler: The Best of Fat Boys. Rhino Records, 1997. Foxy Brown Ill Na Na. Def Jam/Violater, 1996. Broken Silence. Def Jam, 2001. Brooklyn’s Don Diva. Black Rose Entertainment/Koch, 2008. Gang Starr No More Mr. Nice Guy. Wild Pitch/EMI Records, 1989. Full Clip: A Decade of Gang Starr. Noo Trybe/Vibe/EMI Records, 1999. Gang Starr Foundation Ahead of the Game. Gambit Entertainment, 2005.

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Guru Jazzmatazz, Vol 4: The Hip Hop Jazz Messenger: Back to the Future. 7 Grand Records, 2007. Heltah Skeltah Nocturnal. Duck Down, Priority, EMI, 1996. Magnum Force. Duck Down, Priority, 1998. D.I.R.T. Duck Down, 2008. Ill Bill Ill Bill Is the Future. Uncle Howie, 2003. What’s Wrong with Bill? Psycho+Logical, 2004. Ill Bill Is the Future, Vol. 2: I’m a Goon! Uncle Howie, 2006. The Hour of Reprisal. Uncle Howie, 2008. Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt (1996). EMI America Records, 1999. MTV Unplugged. Roc-A-Fella, 2001. Collision Course (with Linkin Park). Warner Brothers/WEA, 2004. American Gangster. Roc-A-Fella, 2007. Jaz-O and the Immobilarie Kingz Kounty. D&D Records, 2002. Jean Grae Attack of the Attacking Things. Third Eart, 2002. Jeanius. Blacksmith, 2008. Jeru the Damaja The Sun Rises in the East. Payday/FFRR/PolyGram, 1994. Wrath of the Math. Payday/FFRR/PolyGram, 1996. Still Rising. Ashenafi Records, 2007. Junior M.A.F.I.A. Conspiracy. Undeas/Big Beat Records, 1995. Just-Ice Back to the Old School. Fresh/Sleeping Bags, 1986. Kool & Deadly. Fresh/Sleeping Bag, 1987. Kel Spencer Who Is Kel Spencer, the Mixtape. L. Bennett, 2005. Ladybug Mecca Trip the Light Fantastic. Nu-Paradigm Entertainment, 2003. Lee, Spike (producer) Crooklyn Soundtrack. MCA Records, 1995. Lil’ Kim Hard Core. Undeas/Big Beat Records, 1996. The Naked Truth. Atlantic Records, 2005. Ms. G.O.A.T. Money Maker Company, 2008.

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Lil Mama VYP (Voice of the Young People). Jive Records, 2008. Masta Ace Take a Look Around. Cold Chillin’, 1990. Disposable Arts. JCor, 2001. A Long Hot Summer. M3, 2004. Masta Ace Incorporated Slaughtahouse. Delicious Vinyl, 1993. Sittin’ on Chrome. Delicious Vinyl, 1995. MC Lyte Lyte as a Rock. First Priority Records, 1988. Act Like You Know. First Priority Records, 1991. The Very Best of MC Lyte. Elektra Entertainment and Rhino Entertainment, 2001. The Shit I Never Dropped. Unda Ground Kings, 2003. Memphis Bleek Coming of Age. Roc-A-Fella, 1999. The Understanding. Roc-A-Fella, 2000. M.A.D.E. Get Low Records/Rock-A-Fella Records/Def Jam, 2003. Milk Never Dated EP. American, 1994. M.O.P. (Mash Out Posse) To the Death. Select, 1994. Firing Squad. Relativity, 1996. First Family 4 Life. Relativity, 1998. Ghetto Warfare. Coppertop Records, 2006. Mos Def (with Talib Kweli) BlackStar. RAWKUS/UMGD, 1998. Black on Both Sides. RAWKUS/UMGD, 1999. True Magic. Geffen Records, 2006. We Are Hip Hop* Me* You* Everybody (4 CD box set), 2006. Mos Def The Ecstatic. Downtown, 2009. Life After Death. Bad Boy, 1997. Duets: The Final Chapter. Bad Boy, 2005. Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die. Bad Boy, 1994. O.C. Word . . . Life. Wild Pitch, 1994. Jewelz. Payday, 1997. Ol’ Dirty Bastard Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. Elektra Records, 1995.

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Nigga Please. Elektra, 1999. The Definitive Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Elektra Records, 2005. Queen Pen My Melody. Interscope, 1997. Sauce Money Middle Finger U. Priority Records, 2000. Sean Price Jesus Price Supastar. Duck Down, 2007. Smif-N-Wessun (aka Cocoa Brovas) Dah Shinin’. Wreck, 1994. The Rude Awakening (as Cocoa Brovaz). Duck Down, 1998. Smif-N-Wessun: Reloaded. Duck Down., 2005. Smif-N-Wessun: The Album. Duck Down, 2007. Talib Kweli Quality. Rawkus/UMVD Records, 2002. The Beautiful Struggle. Rawkus/Geffen, 2004. Eardrum. Blacksmith Music/Warner Bros. Records, 2007. UTFO UTFO. Select, 1985. Skeezer Pleezer. Select, 1986. Lethal. Select, 1987. Doin’ It! Select, 1989. Bag It & Bone It. Jive, 1991. Various Artists ‘‘The Real Hip Hop: Best of D&D Studios, Vol 1.’’ K-Tel/D&D Records, 1999. Brown Sugar (film) Soundtrack. MCA Records, 2002. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (film soundtrack). Geffen Records, 2006. Whodini Whodini. Jive/Arista, 1983. Escape. Jive/Arista, 1984. Back in Black. Jive/Arista, 1986. Open Sesame. Jive/Arista, 1987. Bag-A-Trix. MCA, 1991. Six. So So Def, 1996.

CHAPTER 5

“Brooklyn Keeps on Takin’ It!“: A Conversation with Bushwick, Brooklyn’s Da Beatminerz Mickey Hess When I met brothers Mr. Walt and DJ Evil Dee at their home overlooking Irving Square Park in Bushwick, Brooklyn, I was standing in the middle of hip hop history. Walt greeted me at the front door, and called down the stairs to his brother. ‘‘We’ll do the interview in here in the kitchen,’’ Walt said, leading me down the hall past a living room decorated with gold records and family photographs. One floor beneath this kitchen was the recording studio where Da Beatminerz first created the grimy beats that came to be known as the Brooklyn Sound. The world first heard Da Beatminerz’ dark, bass-heavy production on the 1992 single, ‘‘Who Got Da Props?,’’ from Evil Dee’s group Black Moon. The single was an underground sensation in New York City before it was included on Black Moon’s 1993 debut Enta da Stage, where each track was produced by Da Beatminerz. Walt and Evil Dee also produced the majority of Smif-N-Wessun’s 1995 album Dah Shinin’, several tracks from the collective Boot Camp Clik—which includes Black Moon and Smif-N-Wessun, along with Heltah Skeltah and O.G.C —and have recorded three Beatminerz albums, which include vocals from MCs ranging from Naughty by Nature to Dilated Peoples. DJ Evil Dee and Mr. Walt have become one of the most sought-after production teams in hip hop, and have produced songs for artists such as Bahamadia, Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s Black Star, and Eminem. As I set up my recorder, Evil Dee emerged from the basement studio and joined Walt and me in the kitchen. ‘‘One of these chairs is broken,’’ he warned me. ‘‘Here, you sit in this one. Let me take the broken chair. You want something to drink? We got Vitamin Water. It’s our sister’s, but I’ll leave her two dollars.’’ Their house felt so much like a home that I could almost forget that so many classic hip hop albums were made here, one floor beneath this kitchen, but Da Beatminerz told me that home is where they do their best work.

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DJ Evil Dee of Da Beatminerz (Getty Images)

Mr. Walt: We never strayed from home base, from day one. We tracked all of Enta Da Stage in this house. We did all of Dah Shinin’ in this house. The music was done here. Every beat we made, except for one or two, was made in this house. We was always at home base. Evil Dee: This is our house. I book all my shows here. My kitchen is my office. I’ll stand in my kitchen, and at the same time I’m baking a cake, I’m booking a show. Walt walks around with his headset on. I walk around with my Bluetooth headset on. We both got studios in this house—it’s a three-floor house. And except for this floor where we’re doing this interview, it’s three floors full of records. Mr. Walt: We got a studio downstairs that Evil Dee works in. We record all the vocals down there. Then this middle floor is our family floor. The only hip hop on this floor is the plaques on the wall. Evil Dee: Even this floor I call the hip hop floor, because this is the waiting room. If one of us is in session downstairs, you’ll be waiting on this floor for us to get finished. Mr. Walt: And you got the third floor where I work at, I made that into an office, and I got all my records up there. That’s how we keep it going. It’s running a business. I put my son through school with hip hop. Evil Dee: Same with me. All their expenses and everything, all that money comes from hip hop. And what better way to pay the bills than with your hobby?

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Mickey Hess: Tell me about the first time you heard hip hop. DJ Evil Dee: I first heard hip hop coming from his room. Mr. Walt: I’m the oldest brother. When I first heard my god-brother Charles Gaskin—he was a DJ in ’77—and when I saw him DJ, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And when I first heard Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ in ’79, I was in the fourth grade, and I was like, Whoa—this is something new. This is something different from the Jackson Five and James Brown. And I got hooked from Day One. I studied every second of that record, and I knew it by heart. We used to sit in school at lunchtime and recite the lyrics to ‘‘Rapper’s Delight.’’ Ev il Dee: I would see different DJs at block parties, but when I heard ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ I started to pay attention. What really made me get into it was being jealous of Walt. Cause I seen him DJ and I was like, I could do that too. The first exposure I got to it was from Walt. Mr. Walt: For junior high we both went to Brooklyn’s I.S. 383 Intermediate School. In my graduating class was Gizmo from Audio Two. My brother here is three years younger than me, so he graduated with Milk Dee from Audio Two. And in the class underneath him, it was DJ Spinna and Mos Def. Evil Dee: I think 383 is where I really said to myself, yo, it’s about to happen. That’s where I really got into DJing. I used to make my tape of me cutting up a break, and take it to school and sit in the yard and play it. Walt was already rocking parties, so I had to prove myself as the little brother, you know, keep the legacy going. Mr. Walt: We had our local crews in Brooklyn back then. But we were young, so we didn’t get to travel around Brooklyn. We stayed in our one part of Brooklyn: Bushwick. Around here there was an MC named Ice Cream, who is the rapper O.C.’s uncle. We also had Monzie D. Monzie D was our LL. He was Bushwick’s LL Cool J. He was the first one to make a record, the first big MC out here. We had other crew in different areas. We had a crew called Grand Slam. We had a dude named Steve whose crew was Park Sounds. Evil Dee: Who had the loudest system. Mr. Walt: His equipment was incredible. Every couple blocks had one DJ who was their core DJ. When the DJs played outside they used to take a rope and wrap it around the speakers. It was like a police line: Do Not Cross. So when the DJ let you come underneath the rope, that was the big thing right there. That was like going backstage at a show. Mr. Walt: Uptown had its crews, Bronx and Manhattan, but we couldn’t go up there, so we had our own crews to simulate them. So when I couldn’t go see Cold Crush live in the Bronx, I’d go down the block, see Grand Slam perform in front of their house! If I couldn’t go see Spoonie Gee, I’d see Monzie D. They were like the same guy. Grandmaster Flowers was Brooklyn’s equivalent to Grandmaster Flash.

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We had a guy named Jazzy Jeff who used to say the same line at every block party, how some Puerto Rican guys beat him up with a baseball bat. That’s what his rhymes consisted of—just getting beat up with a baseball bat. But people loved it. People waited for those lines. Evil Dee: So it was like their records—their shows were their records. These dudes wasn’t on records we could buy, so we said, ‘‘I wanna hear that rhyme about you getting beat up.’’ Mr. Walt: Bushwick had its neighborhood stars. We had Kid Jordache. We had a crew called QPSL. Over on Bushwick Avenue there was another crew called Universal Sounds. These were real hip hop names: Universal Sounds, Grand Slam, these were hardcore names. When you hear Universal Sounds, you just know it’s going to be something. Evil Dee: It just sounds like I gotta be there, yo! Mr. Walt: The Disco Stompers—those were great names. Mr. Walt: Uptown and the Bronx is the home of hip hop—this is where hip hop started. And Queens was rockin’ MCs. They had the best MCs: Run DMC—that’s the greatest group of all time—they’re from Hollis; LL is the king—he’s from Farmer’s Boulevard; you got A Tribe Called Quest—Tribe is from 192nd and Linden. Then if you incorporate Long Island with Queens, you got Rakim, and De La Soul, and EPMD. So Brooklyn, we needed a niche. For years we were still going around claiming Rakim was from Fort Greene, when Rakim was really from Wyandanche, Long Island. But listen, we said, fuck it, let’s take it—we’ll say Rakim’s from Fort Greene. Evil Dee: Brooklyn keeps on takin’ it! Mickey Hess: But KRS-One used that line as a dis against Brooklyn [on ‘‘The Bridge is Over’’]: ‘‘Manhattan keeps on makin’ it, Brooklyn keeps on takin’ it.’’ How did that line become a Brooklyn slogan? Evil Dee: Funny thing, when I went out on tour last month, one of the promoters was telling me a story: ‘‘I came out to Brooklyn last month, and yo, they robbed me! Cause Brooklyn keeps on takin’ it.’’ He was on tour with us for like five shows, and it became like a joke between us. He kept saying ‘‘Brooklyn keeps on takin’ it, because every time I go out to Brooklyn I get robbed.’’ Mr. Walt: But we had our stars. Before Black Moon and Boot Camp Clik, Brooklyn had Chubb Rock, Special Ed, Big Daddy Kane. We knew Biggie, but he came a little bit later. Masta Ace, Izzy Ice, Freddy B and the Mighty Mic Masters, Divine Sounds (R.I.P. Mike Music), UTFO, Whodini, and the Fat Boys—they were the biggest stars out of Brooklyn. Evil Dee: Audio Two, MC Lyte, The Alliance . . . no disrespect to anybody we forgot. There’s a lot of unknown cats that deserve their credit too. They did their thing.

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Mickey Hess: What artists from Brooklyn deserve more credit? Evil Dee: Da Beatminerz! I’m just kidding. Mr. Walt: I’m not kidding. Da Beatminerz deserve more credit. A lot of people credit Nas and Biggie with bringing music back to the East Coast, but it wasn’t them. It was Black Moon’s Enta da Stage and Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘‘Protect Ya Neck.’’ Evil Dee: I remember going to Cali with Black Moon. I took Wu-Tang’s record with me and gave it to [radio show hosts] Sway and Tech. And it’s ill because it was a local record and it was hot. Next thing you know, it’s Wu-Tang and Black Moon in L.A. I’ve had Kanye West, who’s the most arrogant person in the world, be like ‘‘Oh my God, you made Enta da Stage and Dah Shinin’!’’ But who else out of Brooklyn? Mister Cee should be bigger than what he is today. Mr. Walt: He brought Biggie to the game. And when he was with Kane, they didn’t give him no kind of respect. He was known as ‘‘the Nasty African.’’ Evil Dee: DJ Johnny T was the guy who taught me how to sell. He said forget about selling your mixtapes on the corner. You need to sell them in stores. I went to Johnny T’s house and it was the first time I ever saw a 24-cassette duplicator. This guy was really doing it big. He taught me how to run it like a business. Johnny T was taking our tapes and selling them—our mixtapes blew up from that. He showed me how to go into stores and put my tapes on consignment. And I started doing that, so I had stores on lock. Then one day I go downtown to the record store, and I see a sign in the window: ‘‘Mister Cee, 120-Minute Tape,’’ and I was like No! Whoa, 120 minutes? Cause I was doing 60 minutes. Mister Cee was dropping 120minute mixtapes, and was winning. I give him credit, because Mister Cee made me step my game up. When I seen his sign, I was heated. I was like, ‘‘This guy, he DJs for Big Daddy Kane. He don’t need to be making tapes!’’ But he changed the game. He was the first one to drop a 120-minute mixtape, so then I was the first one to drop a mixtape box set. The first mixtape box set, and I’m glad to tell you this, was Evil Dee One. It was three 90minute tapes: Evil Dee One. Mr. Walt: You can’t leave out PF Cuttin. A lot of DJs out in Brooklyn didn’t get the love. Mister Cee should be bigger than he is. PF Cuttin is another dude that no one talks about. Production-wise, Easy Mo Bee doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Easy Mo Bee was the Bad Boy Sound. Easy Mo Bee is the only producer who officially worked with both Biggie and Pac. Evil Dee: And he was the last to work with Miles Davis before he died. I think he’s a genius on the SP-1200. He’s a genius. Evil Dee: Kane was ahead of his time. Mr. Walt: All this pimp shit that people talk about now, Kane was talking about it back then.

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Mickey Hess: What about all the rappers from Brooklyn who became part of other crews, like Big Daddy Kane and Masta Ace in the Juice Crew from Queens, or GZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard in Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan? Mr. Walt: Well, GZA and Ol’ Dirty were RZA’s cousins. Kane knew Biz Markie, who knew Marley Marl, the man who started the Juice Crew. And Ace won a contest to record a verse with Marley. Evil Dee: I used to go pick up Buckshot [one of Black Moon’s MCs] from the mosque on Bushwick and Hart, and when I used to come by to pick him up, these were the people who were outside also: RZA, GZA, Ol’ Dirty, Onyx, Jay-Z, and Jazz. These are the people that I would see every time I went to the mosque. And that was the crew right there. Mr. Walt: Mace from De La Soul is from Bushwick. Mace used to live like six blocks away from us, on Madison Avenue. Evil Dee: Same thing with Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest. Ali Shaheed lived on Madison: [sings a line from Tribe’s ‘‘I Left My Wallet in El Segundo’’] ‘‘490 Madison, we here, Shah.’’ We would see each other, and it wasn’t like an industry What’s up, it’s a ‘‘Hey, what’s going on?’’ It’s funny, because I saw Jay-Z up at D&D Studios when he came out with his first joint, and he said, ‘‘I ain’t seen you since I used to go pick up Jazz at the mosque.’’ That was our conversation. Mickey Hess: Tell me about D&D Studios. Evil Dee: Oh, man, D&D was our home. Monday and Friday, you’d find Beatminerz in the A Room, you’d find DJ Premier in the B Room. Walt: Occasionally you’d see a naked crackhead in the elevator. Evil Dee: But that was the element. But let me start from the beginning: we went to D&D after we were recording at Calliope and we had a disagreement with the owner. Mr. Walt: Havoc tripped the alarm. The owner came to the studio, we had like twenty-five percent of Enta Da Stage done, and he said, ‘‘You guys cannot record here anymore.’’ Evil Dee: He thought we were working on a demo. But then when he found out we were working on an album, he called us back. I remember I scheduled some time, but we never went back. I ran into DJ Premier, and he said, ‘‘I’m in this studio right now, and I’m the only hip hop producer there. Everybody else is making dance music.’’ So I went to go see D&D. I walked in and Doug of D&D showed me the A room, then showed me the B room. And I walked straight back to the A room and said ‘‘Yo, this is it right here.’’ And we stayed in that A room for 12 years. We did so many records in that room. 95 percent of all the records we ever did.

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D&D was our home. Doug and Dave [studio owners Douglas Grama and David Lotwin] gave us the keys. We recorded so much stuff there. I would take a box of records, go to the studio, and bang something out. Walt likes to work at home where he can breathe, but I work better under pressure. D&D was home. They had graffiti on the walls. They had Philly Blunts in the candy machine. Whenever somebody came to D&D, they’d be amazed. Mr. Walt: I met the weirdest people in D&D. I met Shaquille O’Neal in D&D. I met Sheena Arnold, Kevin Garnett. So many people who didn’t even belong in there. Evil Dee: If D&D hadn’t closed, we would still be there. Mr. Walt: No, we wouldn’t, because Doug was cheap. I love D&D, but Doug would never spend money. I was telling Doug, you gotta get ProTools. Everyone else has ProTools and it’s killing your studio. He didn’t get it until two years after I said it, but by then it was too late. We found out they didn’t even own the studio. They rented it. I love D&D. I love Doug and Dave. But Doug was always cheap. Evil Dee: Premier bought it [in 2004] and turned it into HeadQcourterz Studios. Mickey Hess: Da Beatminerz, and DJ Premier, are credited with developing the Brooklyn Sound. Evil Dee: Thank you. A lot of people say that, yeah. Mickey Hess: So what is the Brooklyn Sound? Mr. Walt: The Brooklyn Sound is the real grimy, throw your hood on, type of records. There are records that have the Brooklyn sound that were not even made in Brooklyn. Like Brand Nubian’s ‘‘Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down’’—that’s a Brooklyn anthem, and they’re not even from Brooklyn! Sadat lives in Brooklyn now, but Sadat wasn’t from Brooklyn. Diamond D made the beat, but he’s not from Brooklyn. Lord Jamar’s not from Brooklyn. But it became a Brooklyn record. Certain records, if it has that grime to it and that old . . . I just feel like pumpin’ weights to it, that’s a Brooklyn record. Evil Dee: We came in the game straight off of Black Moon’s ‘‘Who Got Da Props?’’ and ‘‘How Many MCs,’’ and we come into ‘‘I Got Cha Opin’’ and SmifN-Wessun’s ‘‘Bucktown.’’ Our sound on the first album, Enta Da Stage, how it was so bass-heavy, the way that came about was we were in my man’s Jeep, and Diamond D’s Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop had just came out, and when we heard ‘‘Sally Got a One-Track Mind’’ and how it sounded in the Jeep, we said, ‘‘This is it! This is hip hop. This is how we got to make our record.’’ To me, when you think of Brooklyn, you think of crews. Brooklyn always rolls deep. Me, my man, and everybody on my block is comin’ to the party. Even when Black Moon first came out, we’d have situations where it would be a 100 of us going to a club. And it looks scary from the outside, but from the inside, that’s Brooklyn.

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If you look at cats from Brooklyn, everybody had a crew. Biggie had Junior Mafia. And Junior Mafia wasn’t only the dudes that rhymed. Junior Mafia was a crew. Same with M.O.P. It’s not just Billy and Fame—it’s all kinds of people in M.O.P. Brooklyn is the biggest borough. We have the most people. And this is a reason why people fear Brooklyn. Queens is spread out. Queens—you might as well think of Queens as the country. You have a house here, a house here, and a house here. The Bronx is packed and spread out. Manhattan is for tourists, except Uptown, which is small. But Brooklyn is bigger than all the boroughs, and we’re all thrown in next to each other. We got the most projects, and the most hoods. There’s so many people in Brooklyn. Now Brooklyn’s changed. My neighborhood used to be crazy. Now my neighborhood, we have everybody here. Everybody’s buying property, everybody’s living here, and anybody can walk down the block. Back in the day, you could walk down the block and it’d be like You ain’t from around here. Me and Walt, we could be archenemies, but if you come along, you’re not from around here, so we’re gonna beat you up, then we’re going to start fighting again. But until we beat you up, we’re teamed up. And that’s a Brooklyn thing. Mickey Hess: So what are Brooklyn’s hip hop landmarks? Evil Dee: Albee Square Mall, but that’s not there anymore. Mr. Walt: Empire Roller Rink. That’s not there anymore either. I first saw Funky 4 + 1 More there. I saw Dr. Rock and the Force MCs—not the Force MDs. Before they were the Force MDs, they were the Force MCs. It was a battle with one of the neighborhood crews out here, the Wiz Kids. At the Empire Roller Rink. Funky 4 + 1 More were just performing, but Dr. Rock and them was in the battle, and I was like ‘‘you guys [The Wiz Kids] do not have a chance.’’ It’s different now. A lot of white people move in the hood and it’s different. They’re buying property out here. Used to be, back in the days, the white people would only go to Park Slope, and Williamsburg—not even Williamsburg—Greenpoint. Areas like that. Everything else was predominantly black. Now I look at Bed-Stuy and white people are walking around and they’re talking to everybody and everybody’s cool. The money is coming in. We’re getting an NBA team. The Nets are moving to Brooklyn. Flatbush Avenue, they’re putting a stadium in. The Nets are leaving Jersey. And once they come to Brooklyn, a lot of people aren’t going to be going to Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks anymore, because you know what—The Knicks could be the worst team in basketball, but that Garden is always packed. People don’t want to go all the way out to Continental Arena to see the Knicks. Because if you don’t have a car, you’re assed out. You see, on Flatbush where they’re building the stadium, you have Long Island Railroad, you have all kinds of trains.

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Evil Dee: It’s a terminal out there. They’re about to have a New Jersey Transit extension come down there. You go regular subway service. You got crazy buses, so many different buses out there. It’s a hub. I sit on my step, and there’s cats skateboarding by. Now it’s more diverse here, and it’s cool because you don’t want to get old and still be fighting old wars. The neighborhoods are getting better. So I’m not mad at that, but back in the day it wasn’t like that. Mickey Hess: How do you think all this gentrification will affect the future of hip hop in Brooklyn? Mr. Walt: If the guys want to keep making good music, you got to keep that Brooklyn mentality, because that’s what we did. We had that Brooklyn mentality. You keep that Brooklyn mentality, and hopefully the music won’t change. Hopefully the music will reflect your community. Evil Dee: No matter what, we’re all doing the same thing. New York had its shine. L.A. had its shine. The South is having its shine right now. Canada’s going to have its shine, and London. All we have to do is just come better.

CHAPTER 6 A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People: Staten Island Steps Up Matthew Brian Cohen When listeners consider the importance of New York City to hip hop, Staten Island is often hip hop’s forgotten borough. During hip hop’s early years, Staten Island was ignored, underplayed, or, at worst, derided. In my interview with him for Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide, Stevie D, of the Staten Island group The Force MDs, recalled that rappers and hip hop fans alike looked at Staten Island as ‘‘an island of all white people’’ (Lundy). To its critics, Staten Island was the odd borough out in an otherwise thriving New York hip hop community. Staten’s lack of status in the 1980s is evident on Boogie Down Productions’ 1987 track ‘‘The Bridge Is Over,’’ where KRS-One and Scott La Rock don’t even mention Staten Island in their shout out to New York City’s boroughs. Yet the forgotten fifth borough of Staten Island deserves to go down in hip hop history as the birthplace of some of the most important, most influential hip hop acts of all time. Staten Island is inevitably linked to its premier group, Wu-Tang Clan. This supergroup, founded in Staten Island but composed of the finest MCs from across New York, changed the face of not only East Coast hip hop, but hip hop across the globe. But before the Wu-Tang Clan asserted its dominance in the 1990s, the 1980s saw Staten Island fight for its right to be recognized as a true player in New York City hip hop. Groups like the Force MDs, the UMCs, and Wu-Tang precursors the All In Together Now Crew began to make noise throughout the island, attempting to get themselves heard and put Staten Island on the hip hop map. The history of Staten Island hip hop can be divided into three eras: Pre WuTang, Wu-Tang, and Post-Wu Tang. Pre Wu-Tang sees Staten Island attempt to assert itself in hip hop by merging Rhythm and Blues vocal stylings with straight-up hip hop beats, as well as taking hip hop elements and fusing them into pop hits. The Wu-Tang Era sees Staten Island become the mecca of East Coast hip hop, with the formation of Wu-Tang Clan in 1993. With their fresh, edgy lyrics, strong, unique personalities, and drastic, daring business model, Wu-Tang made Staten Island home to a supergroup mega-power never before seen in hip hop. 117

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The Post Wu-Tang era sees the Wu-Tang Clan diversifying, taking on prote´ge´s, and revitalizing old Staten Island acts that came before them.

PRE WU-TANG In the 1970s, when hip hop was born and Kool Herc was spinning records at block parties all throughout the Bronx, Staten Island was silent. All eyes and ears on Staten Island were focused on this new developing genre coming out of their fellow borough. Who from Staten Island would be the first to take this new genre and make a name for themselves? The question remained unanswered until 1981, when the Force MDs unleashed themselves upon the world. Their unique mixture of doo-wop and a capella vocals over hip hop beats caught the attention of not only Staten Island, but the entire country. Their singles ‘‘Tender Love’’ and ‘‘Love Is a House’’ had huge commercial success, the former appearing in the movie Krush Groove and the latter reaching #1 on the R&B charts in 1987. Though in the 1990s they would be usurped as the dominant Staten Island hip hop group by the Wu-Tang Clan, they had unquestionably left their mark on hip hop. The group breathed new life into R&B, while also expanding hip hop’s horizons to include ideas and elements from other forms of music. Biz Markie, a hip hop DJ and MC who got his start in the 1980s with the Queens-based Juice Crew, says of The Force MDs that ‘‘they put that funk from the 70’s and blended it with that hip hop element from the 80’s’’ (Force MD’s Relived). The Force MDs single-handedly pioneered the R&B/hip hop fusion; as famed hip hop artist Doug E. Fresh states, ‘‘Any group that has merged hip hop and R&B are children of the Force MDs’’ Force MD’s Relived. It took years, however, for the Force MDs to reach that level of success and influence. Before they were even the Force MDs, they were the L.D.s, and long before that, they were a family—brothers Stevie D and Antoine ‘‘TCD’’ Lundy, and their uncle, Jessie Lee Daniels. Growing up in Staten Island, they saw the Jackson 5 on television and felt inspired to make pop music. The Lundys fell in love with the Jacksons’ infectious pop grooves and could personally relate to a family of musicians. Daniels and his nephews realized they wanted to sing and perform just like the Jackson 5 and write songs that drew from all their favorite genres—funk, soul, doo-wop, R&B, and rock and roll. They wanted to have the voices of James Brown, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and Little Anthony and The Imperials. They immediately started singing and practicing all over New York—Staten Island, Harlem, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island ferry (see sidebar: Staten Island Ferry). As they developed as singers and performers, they named themselves the Fantastic L.D.’s, and they sang everywhere they could, honing their skills and piecing together a crowd-pleasing, eye-catching live act. They would sing in the styles of their heroes—Elvis and Michael Jackson being two of their most popular imitations. They created routines from melodies and rhymes that formed a musical skit. They would often base their routines off popular television theme songs, like

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STATEN ISLAND FERRY Since its inception in 1905, the Staten Island ferry has been the easiest and most reliable way for Staten Islanders to travel to Manhattan. It travels between stations in St. George, Staten Island, and Whitehall Terminal in Manhattan—right next to Battery Park. It originally cost riders five cents per trip, which was raised to 25 cents for a round trip in 1975, which was raised again to 50 cents round trip in 1990, before becoming free of charge in 1997. Ferries run every 15 minutes during rush hour, every half hour during off-peak hours, and every hour on late nights. In hip hop, the ferry is known as a place to hone skills by performing for money. The Force MDs would perform on the ferry like troubadours, performing renditions of popular songs for spare change. Since a one-way ride is roughly 25 minutes, this gave the Force MDs a sense of stage presence and timing, and taught them how to engage the audience and hone their act into a tight, accessible show. It also gave them a public venue, allowing them to freely showcase their talent. Their ferry performances got them noticed by Mr Magic’s daughter, which got them a meeting with Tommy Boy Records and launched their career.

Happy Days, The Brady Bunch, and The Addams Family. This act connected with the crowd and gave them a sizeable fanbase, as they won over people who were previously quick to dismiss the Staten Islanders. Stevie D recalls, ‘‘when we first went uptown to Manhattan . . . everybody started laughing . . . haha, Staten Island, go back on the Staten Island Ferry! . . . then we did The Addams Family [routine], and that had them going crazy.’’ (‘‘Force MDs Memories’’) From the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to Harlem’s Harlem World to Zulu Nation shows in the Bronx, the L.D.s were catching on. However, the group saw they needed to expand themselves musically to stand out from the other doo-wop acts. Stevie D, who was also rapping up and down New York City on the side with his own group, sought to diversify the L.D.’s sound, and invited his rap partners Charles ‘‘Mercury’’ Nelson and DJ Dr. Rock to join the Fantastic L.D.’s. The two brought a strong hip hop element to the L.D. ’s, and rebranded the group as ‘‘doo-wop hip hop.’’ And with that came the birth of a new genre, and a rechristening to reflect the change in sound. The Fantastic L.D.’s became the Force MCs, and they took their doo-wop hip hop all over New York. The crowds loved them—the combination of Dr. Rock’s beats and scratches, tight vocal harmonies, and the ‘‘silky smooth, Smokey Robinson voice of TCD’’ (Lundy) was exactly what people wanted to hear. As Kool G. Rap of the Juice Crew puts it, ‘‘Mercury, Stevie D and all them niggas was rappers man and they was nice. They wasn’t just average, they was bananas. Them niggas battled Cold Crush Four and all that’’ (JButters and Marcus).

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Force MDs (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Mr. Walt, of the Brooklyn production team Da Beatminerz, provides a similar account of the Force M.C.s: ‘‘I saw Dr. Rock and the Force MCs—not the Force MDs. Before they were the Force MDs, they were the Force MCs. It was a battle with one of the neighborhood crews out here [in Bushwick, Brooklyn], the Wiz Kids. At the Empire Roller Rink. Funky 4 + 1 More were just performing, but Dr. Rock and them was in the battle, and I was like ‘you guys [The Wiz Kids] do not have a chance’ ’’ (Da Beatminerz). Performing live and going up against some of New York City’s finest rap crews was the catalyst the Force MCs needed to truly break out and make a name for themselves. Now all they needed was the opportunity to take it to the next level. Then, magic happened. Mr. Magic, a wildly popular DJ for 107.5 WRLX (see sidebar: Mr. Magic), happened upon the Force MCs by way of his daughter, who had heard them perform on the Staten Island Ferry. Mr. Magic went out to see them and loved what he heard—‘‘they were hip hop . . . and they just knew how to sing’’ (Force MD’s Relived). He immediately introduced himself and wanted to bring the group to Tom Silverman, CEO of the upstart label Tommy Boy Records. Literally, on that same boat ride to Tom Silverman’s apartment, The Force MCs recruited a new member-rapper Trisco Pearson from the recently disbanded rap group Cook Corporation, who was also on the ferry to Manhattan. Trisco, who was close friends with TCD, was a baritone singer, and the group felt he would round out their harmonies.

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MR. MAGIC Mr. Magic was the first man to play hip hop on the radio, and the first man to have an all-hip hop show (Rap Attack, with DJ Marley Marl) on the radio. Debuting in 1983 on WBLS-FM, Mr. Magic monopolized the airwaves, making his show the best (and for a while, the only) place to listen to hip hop. He was one of the founding members of the Juice Crew, along with DJ Marley Marl, Big Daddy Kane, Roxane Shante´, Kool G Rap, and Masta Ace, amongst others. He was rivaled by DJ Red Alert, who had his own hip hop show on WKRS-FM, which jockeyed with Rap Attack for ratings for most of the 1980s. Mr. Magic and DJ Red Alert competed as part of the Bridge Wars—the rap feud over where hip hop truly got started between Queensbridge’s Juice Crew and the Bronx’s Boogie Down Productions, of which DJ Red Alert was a member. In the 1990s, after discovering and introducing the Force MDs to Tom Silverman of Tommy Boy Records, he had a brief stint as a producer on their tracks ‘‘Let Me Love You’’ and ‘‘Forgive Me, Girl.’’ Recently, he was featured as a DJ of the hip hop radio station in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He has been referenced in lyrics by noted artists such as Nas and Biggie Smalls, who praise Mr. Magic as a pioneer who exposed hip hop to a mainstream audience. Mr. Magic died of a heart attack on October 2, 2009.

At Silverman’s apartment, The Force MCs didn’t have any demo tapes to play. Instead, they went through their entire live act, and as Stevie D puts it, ‘‘we blew him away’’ (Lundy). Silverman recalls that ‘‘they had all of the appeal of the R&B singing groups of the day, but they were really inspired by hip hop. They had their own DJ, MCs, and vocalists, and the vocals were really good’’ (Force MD’s Relived). Silverman immediately offered them a deal. It had taken three years, but the Force MCs, now officially the Force MDs, (which stood for Musical Diversity) had a record deal. Immediately after The Force MDs signed to Tommy Boy Records, they started recording. That same year, they released their first album, Love Letters (1984). Their biggest single off the record, ‘‘Tears,’’ went to #5 on the R&B charts. ‘‘Tears’’ is a very soulful, R&B track, yet it has little of the hip hop influence that gave the Force MDs their big break. Their next record, 1985’s Chillin, continued to emphasize the Force MDs a capella, doo-wop roots. Silverman brought in famed writer/producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who had penned many R&B hits for artists such as Gladys Knight and Janet Jackson. They worked with the Force MDs to produce ‘‘Tender Love,’’ a soft, piano-driven ballad, which hit #10 on the Hot 100 charts, and went to #4 on the R&B charts. The song was also featured in the major motion picture Krush Groove. ‘‘ ‘Tender Love’ blew up so big,’’ Stevie D recalls.

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This newfound mainstream success gave Tom Silverman the idea to repackage the Force MDs as an R&B singing group. The hip hop factor of the Force MDs was pushed to the background, away from their singles. Gone were the rhymes and the beats that made The Force MDs such a unique and entertaining act. Out came the sweater vests, the fried out hair—the preppy collegiate look that Tom Silverman wanted to promote. The Force MDs went along with this new image, overwhelmed by promises of national exposure and hit records, yet internally, there was discord. Stevie D, looking back on the shift in image, remembers, ‘‘I wish we could have kept that [original] style, people might remember us more . . . it was a marketing thing’’ (Lundy). The group also wanted to record more songs they had written, instead of doing other people’s songs. However, Tom Silverman wanted to push songs he felt would be hits. Because of this, The Force MDs saw very little money from their own records, for which they did not own the publishing rights. Stevie D recalls, ‘‘we didn’t know much about publishing and all that so they got us. We got a little publishing [money], but we should have gotten more than what we got’’ (Quan). There were also creative differences. Jesse wanted a percussion track on ‘‘Tender Love,’’ in an attempt to get at least a small amount of hip hop on the single. When he was ultimately overruled by Jimmy Jam, he realized just how much influence he had lost to Tommy Boy. Though the song was a hit without drums, Jesse left the group soon after to pursue a solo career. Perhaps the biggest problem the Force MDs had was Silverman’s willingness to cut the budget, even when it was at the expense of the group’s popularity and commercial success. Even though ‘‘Tender Love’’ was the Force MDs’ biggest hit, Silverman refused to pay Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to write another song. ‘‘He tried to go the easy way out and not pay the money,’’ Stevie D recalls, ‘‘We had a good chemistry with Jimmy and Terry, and could have made more hits, but Tom didn’t wanna pay.’’ (Quan) Though the Force MDs continued to perform on the road and ‘‘light up the stage pretty hard’’ (Lundy) with their doo-wop hip hop, their records were dominated by R&B. The shift continued to bring success—the 1987 record Touch and Go gave the Force MDs their biggest achievement to date—a #1 hit single. ‘‘Love Is a House’’ shot all the way to the top of charts. The Force MDs also won the New York Music award for Best Vocal Group. This award would be the peak of the Force MDs’ career. Their next album, 1990’s Step to Me, failed to make much of an impact, despite joint efforts with Brooklyn R&B group Full Force and hip hop legend and Juice Crew member Marley Marl. Two singles—‘‘Are You Really Real?’’ and ‘‘Somebody’s Crying’’— topped off at #23 and #34 on the R&B charts. Besides being the indicative point of decline for the Force MDs, Step to Me also marks the group’s deterioration. The same year, Mercury and Trisco parted ways with the Force MDs, citing creative differences. After Rodney ‘‘Khalil’’ Lundy and Shawn Waters replaced the two ex-members, the new, reimagined Force MDs went to work in the studio,

A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People | 123 releasing the full-length Moments in Time in 1994. The album was not as well received as previous efforts, failing to make a significant impact on the charts. The rest of the 1990s remained unkind to the Force MDs. Beyond their slumping popularity, the end of the 1990s would see a series of personal tragedies for the Force MDs. Antoine ‘‘TCD’’ Lundy was diagnosed with Lou Gherig’s Disease and died January 21, 1998. Mercury suffered a heart attack and died soon after, as did DJ Dr. Rock, who passed away due to unknown circumstances. Despite their sad and unfortunate downfall, the fact remains that the Force MDs set the tone for all Staten Island hip hop to come. Thanks to them, the borough would be known as the place to look to for freshness and originality in hip hop. Future R&B singing groups like Boyz II Men, Blackstreet, and even N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys are clearly heavily inspired by the Force MDs. The Force MDs set the tone for Staten Island, getting the borough noticed as a potential breeding ground for hip hop. ‘‘We are the forefathers of Staten Island,’’ says Stevie D. ‘‘There were no other groups out of Staten Island . . . we were the first to put Staten Island on the map.’’

THE UMCS The UMCs were Staten Island’s first pure hip hop group. They were composed of rappers Kim ‘‘Kool Kim’’ Sharpton and Hassan, or Hass G as he was sometimes referred to. Kool Kim first met Hassan when they both worked summer jobs in the Statue of Liberty gift shop. Interestingly, they were not the only rappers on staff—future Wu-Tang Clan members U-God and Method Man worked at the same gift shop. Kim and Hassan hit it off, and Hassan introduced Kim to his rap group Universal Stepping Strong. Kim and Hassan were more seriously into hip hop than the other members of Hassan’s group, and broke off to form a duo called the Universal MC’s—or UMCs, for short. They quickly wrote and recorded two tracks, ‘‘Fruit Basket’’ and ‘‘Party Stylin’,’’ and promoted them around Staten Island. Though they failed to get any major label attention, they were noticed by DJ Premier, of the Brooklyn-based hip hop group Gang Starr. Premier introduced the UMCs to Stu Fine, owner of Wild Pitch records. They signed to the label and released their debut album, Fruits of Nature, in 1991. Originally meant to be titled Fruits Uv Nature (to create the acronym F.U.N), Fruits of Nature was a record that celebrated fun and the joys of hip hop. It had a very jazzy, soul influence, with many samples of several jazz artists from the legendary Blue Note record label—artists such as Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk. It had clever and verbose lyrics, and was poppy without being mundane. The first single, the high energy, spunky ‘‘Blue Cheese’’ was the #1 rap single on the Billboard charts, and the second single, ‘‘One to Grow on’’ reached the #2 slot. The two songs emphasized the quirky, intellectual movement in hip hop, popularized by the Native Tongues collective of Queen Latifah, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers.

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The UMCs’ second album, Unleashed (Wild Pitch, 1992) was much less commercially successful, and was critically panned for being more of the same. In disputes over payment, the UMCs physically assaulted Stu Fine, and left Wild Pitch on poor terms. The UMCs split up soon after. History would not be kind The UMCs. They were in the unfortunate position of coming out right before the Wu-Tang Clan’s insurgence. While the Force MDs found their niche as a doo-wop/hip hop fusion group, it was impossible for a straight hip hop act like the UMCs to assert themselves with the giant of WuTang looming over their shoulders. Stevie D recalls that the UMCs were ‘‘his boys . . . they had high potential, but it was hard to overshadow Wu-Tang’’ (Lundy). Kool Kim claims that the industry worked against him, failing to allow him to showcase his true creative vision. He writes, ‘‘I feel like the UMCs were faced with the trial of Job’’ (Kool). The UMCs remain the last of a dying breed, the last of the laid-back, fun-loving hip hop acts before artists like Nas, Biggie Smalls, and of course, Wu-Tang Clan, redefined hip hop’s thematic structure. The UMCs had little chance to survive as hip hop hardened and celebrated crime over frivolity and violence over friendship, and remain forgotten relics of an antique era of hip hop. The Pre Wu-Tang era comes to a close with the immediate predecessor to the Wu-Tang Clan—the All In Together Now crew. The crew was composed of Robert F. Diggs, aka Prince Rakeem (later the RZA), Gary Grice, aka the Genius (later the GZA), and Russell Jones, aka Ason Unique, or the Professor (later Ol’ Dirty Bastard). The three were cousins and shared similar interests growing up—hip hop, kung fu movies, and Islam. They quickly got together and formed a crew. Though originally entitled Force of the Imperial Master, the trio changed their name to All In Together Now after a song of theirs of the same title became a huge hit around Staten Island and parts of the rest of New York, even getting the attention of Biz Markie. Even with the strength of this single, All In Together Now were unable to get a record deal. Frustrated, the trio split up, and Rakeem and the Genius pursued solo careers, while remaining close friends. Prince Rakeem went to Tommy Boy Records, and in 1991, recorded the single ‘‘Ooh, We Love You Rakeem.’’ The song was moderately popular as a novelty song, but failed to further Prince Rakeem’s career. He attempted to pitch an early idea of Wu-Tang to Tommy Boy Records, but they chose to sign the group House of Pain instead, and dropped Rakeem from the label. Also in 1991, the Genius signed to Cold Chillin’ Records, and released the full-length Words from the Genius. The Genius faced creative differences with label executives, and he left Cold Chillin’ after his debut album flopped. Frustrated with the music industry as a whole, Prince Rakeem and the Genius decided to team back up together with Ason Unique, but no longer would they be All In Together Now. They would form a new identity, recruit the best MCs in New York City, and make the kind of records they wanted to make. They would become a super crew. They would become the Wu-Tang Clan.

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WU-TANG ERA To complete their transformation from All in Together Now Crew to Wu-Tang Clan, the trio needed new names and a distinctive style. Around Staten Island, Prince Rakeem had picked up the nickname ‘‘Rza Rza Rakeem’’—a combination of the neighborhood hit of his called ‘‘Pza Pza Pumpin’’ and his graffiti tag, Razor. The name RZA (pronounced ‘‘Rizz-uh’’) appealed to him, but as he learned more and more about Islam, he understood that the letter Z held a special significance— it meant the highest level of human consciousness, Zig-Zag-Zig, which means Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding. Prince Rakeem officially became the RZA—Ruler, Knowledge-Wisdom-Understanding, Allah. The Genius, also a student of Islam, changed his name to Allah Justice, but quickly began shortening it to JIZZA, or GZA (pronounced Jizz-uh)—which also happens to be the sound the word ‘‘genius’’ makes when scratched on a record by a DJ. He began to become extremely assertive with his vocal presence, evoking a sense of power, even fear. As RZA writes, ‘‘You caught real drama off his rhymes and his style . . . it’s slow, deliberate, and fierce’’ (9). Ason Unique became Ol’ Dirty Bastard. He took the name from the 1980 kung fu film, Ol’ Dirty & the Bastard. He perfected his unorthodox delivery—an erratic half-rapped, half-sung, mumble. ‘‘ODB, you can’t tell where his rapping stops and his singing begins,’’ (208) RZA writes. ODB’s unique syncopated phrasings and extreme vocal range, led to a second meaning of his stage name, as many critics and fans insisted there was no father to his style. The trio then sought out the best MCs New York had to offer. However, the three found it difficult to recruit members. GZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard were living in Brooklyn and could not drum up interest, and RZA only had one MC who was willing to commit to the group—Ghostface Killah (real name Dennis Coles), who lived with RZA in the Stapleton Projects (see sidebar: Stapleton). Ghostface named himself after the villain in the 1979 kung fu movie The Mystery of Chess Boxing. In the film, the Ghostface Killer would leave a mask near every one of his victims. As an homage, Ghostface Killah wore a mask for most of his early performances. ‘‘[Ghostface is] known for his ferocious mic techniques, emotional dramatics, and some of the most bizarre, impenetrable language of all Wu-Tang MCs,’’ writes RZA (22). Together, the two recorded the first official Wu-Tang song by themselves, entitled ‘‘After the Laughter.’’ The song made its way around the neighborhood, and RZA found two more MCs willing to join the new group—Method Man (real name Clifford Smith), who earned his nickname by smoking more Methtical (slang for marijuana) than anyone else, and Inspectah Deck (real name Jason Hunter), who received the nickname ‘‘Inspector’’ from Inspector Clouseau from the film The Pink Panther. Method Man was young, but extremely talented and highly versatile, proving himself more than able to hold his own with the rest of the group. RZA writes, ‘‘he has more flows than any other MC I’ve ever met. He has more styles, more ways of

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STAPLETON The largest projects in Staten Island (or Shaolin, as nicknamed by the Clan), Stapleton was home to RZA and Ghostface Killah before Wu-Tang got started. The two roomed together in 1991, and their place became the spot where all the future Wu-Tang members would hang out, watch kung fu movies, play chess, write rhymes, and make beats. It was here that RZA and Ghostface came up with the idea of a supercrew comprised of the best MCs that they knew. The idea of making the crew into a tight, familial bond came when watching the kung fu movie ‘‘Eight Diagram Pole Fighter.’’ The story of eight brothers banding together to save their family from a treacherous general resonated with them, and convinced them to stay loyal to each other, in both life and in music. ‘‘Ghost was the first one to say, ‘that’s WuTang, I’m Wu-Tang,’ ’’ RZA remembers. (63). Like Park Hill, Stapleton was a tough neighborhood, known for violence and crime. RZA writes, ‘‘Stapleton niggas will rob you and beat the shit out of you . . . a Stapleton nigga will walk up to you with a fucking tank top and a doorag on and beat the shit out of you’’ (59–60). The hard times the Clan survived in Stapleton are explicitly recreated in their lyrics, and give the group their patented ultra-aggressive style.

REFERENCE RZA, and Chris Norris. The Wu-Tang Manual. 1st ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2005.

flowing over the beat than just about anyone. He’s just got mad grace . . . when he’s on the mic, it still sounds like dancing’’ (17). Deck was known around the block as ‘‘the eyes of the streets’’ (17) who knew everything that was going on in Staten Island. He lived in the 160 Park Hill apartment building (see sidebar: Park Hill), which gave him access to the goings on of Staten Island’s criminal underbelly. Inspectah Deck used this knowledge in his lyrics, often rapping about the harshness of the streets from a distant, observational perspective. ‘‘He was saying things that only a news reporter would have said. You could see and feel the reality in his verse,’’ RZA writes in the Wu-Tang Manual, ‘‘I like to call him the set-off man because he always sets it off right. He lights the wick that leads to the bomb and once that wick is lit there’s no turning back’’ (29). The joining of Method Man and Inspectah Deck brought two more into the WuTang fold—Raekwon the Chef (real name Corey Woods) and U-God (real name Lamont Hawkins). Raekwon, who was named after the Chef character in old kung

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PARK HILL Park Hill Apartments was home to Inspectah Deck, Method Man, and Raekwon when Wu-Tang got started. Park Hill was known for being at the epicenter of violence and crime in Staten Island, along with its neighbor to the north, Stapleton. It was known as ‘‘Crack Hill’’ or ‘‘Killer Hill’’ for all the drug deals and shootings that went down from its foundation in the 1960s to the present day. Over 80 percent of Park Hill residents have no health insurance, and as a result, the death rate for Park Hill residents is over 25 percent higher than the rest of New York City. Inspectah Deck lived in the 160 building—a building infamously known as the place to go to buy drugs, not just on Staten Island, but all across New York. RZA writes, ‘‘if you smoked weed, you went to 160. We hung out in front of 160, a lot of people did business there, a lot of people got shot there. But Deck—he lived there’’ (28–29).

REFERENCE RZA, and Chris Norris. The Wu-Tang Manual. 1st ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2005.

fu movies, not only literally cooked very well (‘‘He was known for cooking up some really good fish,’’ writes RZA [20]), but he also had ‘‘flavor,’’ as RZA writes—‘‘He had the Gumby haircut, the Gucci shoes, and he had the freshest slang of anybody’’ (21). Raekwon was a lyrical innovator, coming up with slang terms and metaphors never before heard in hip hop. ‘‘To me, Raekwon was the ultimate abstract poet,’’ RZA writes (21). U-God was nicknamed after an abbreviation of his Muslim name, which stands for Universal God Allah. It was also derived from all of his personal possessions—cars, clothes, drugs, etc. RZA writes, ‘‘When there was a drought on something—he got it. So part of his name, to me, is from asking him, ‘You got that? U got it? U-got?’ ’’ (33). U-God brought a deep, bass voice to the Clan, richening and rounding out their sound. ‘‘He’s just got that dope-ass low voice . . . he can kill it in four bars,’’ writes RZA. Now six strong, the Clan recorded their first song as a group—‘‘Protect Ya Neck.’’ They packaged ‘‘Protect Ya Neck’’ with ‘‘After the Laughter’’ as a single, pressing, marketing, and selling it by themselves. It was widely successful, netting the group a record deal with Loud Records, a subsidiary of RCA, as well as a ninth member—Masta Killa (real name Elgin Turner). His nickname is derived from Gordon Liu’s character in the 1979 kung fu movie ‘‘The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.’’ In the film, the Master Killer studies with Shaolin monks to ascend to the 36th chamber—the highest rank in martial arts. Masta Killa paralleled his

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namesake’s journey—having never rapped before joining Wu-Tang, Masta Killa went under the wing of the GZA to learn and grow as an MC. ‘‘In a lot of ways Masta Killa really is like that character because he’s like the ultimate Shaolin student,’’ RZA writes, ‘‘He came, he studied, he hung out with us all . . . he was the original disciple who was brought into the fold’’ (36). Together, Wu-Tang was one of the biggest collections of MCs in New York City. They were the Wu-Tang Clan—named after the 1981 kung fu movie ‘‘Shaolin and Wu Tang,’’ in which a sole monk breaks off from the Shaolin tradition and uses the invincible Wu-Tang sword style to defeat the Shaolin monks. By naming themselves Wu-Tang, the group was effectively saying that ‘‘our lyrics are the best— we’re invincible,’’ as RZA writes (64). They were an amalgamation of all of their influences—Islam, martial arts and Asian philosophy, comic book superheroes, chess, and their Staten Island neighborhood—yet they were more than that. They were a clan and a family, bound to protect each other and look after each other’s careers and well beings. They had one goal—to take over hip hop, and they were going to do it in five years. RZA concocted a revolutionary business model for the Wu-Tang Clan known as the Five Year Plan. This plan, according to RZA, would take Wu-Tang to the top of the music industry. It involved a then unheardof record deal, in which the Wu-Tang Clan as a group would be signed to one label, but each individual member could sign to another label of his own choosing. This, RZA thought, would allow the Wu-Tang brand to diversify and flourish, and ultimately, make money from solo projects as well as Wu-Tang collective efforts. ‘‘I wanted the industry to work for me . . . to have friendly competition with my product . . . to have artists placed in different locations and get those different labels to work together for my brand,’’ RZA writes (76). To do this, RZA needed absolute control over the Wu-Tang Clan. For five years, each member would need to relent to RZA’s strategy, and when they finally reached their zenith, he promised he would concede power. With each member’s approval, RZA assumed the helm of all creative and financial elements of Wu-Tang and set the group to record a proper full-length album. Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) was released on November 9, 1993, on Loud Records, and swiftly cemented the Wu-Tang Clan as hip hop’s most dominant group. The debut album sounded like nothing else before it, and is easily the most important album for Staten Island hip hop, and arguably for the hip hop genre as a whole. It set the tone for the 1990s, marking the artistic shift from jazzy, light hearted hip hop to full-blown ‘‘gangsta’’ rap. Its dark, heavily reverbed beats and scary-yet-true stories about life in the streets stood out from the rest of the West Coast style sounds saturating the airwaves—synthesizers, upbeat rhythms, and more melodic song structures. With one album, Wu-Tang changed the face of the hip hop game, bringing their own, East Coast style of hyper-aggression and realism to the forefront. As Stevie D said in my interview with him, ‘‘Wu-Tang had that new sound, rhyming about other things, talking about real street life, that

A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People | 129 raw sound . . . [they] stamped Staten Island on the map with a Timberland boot’’ (Lundy). Perhaps the most unique and ground breaking aspect of 36 Chambers is the production. It was recorded entirely at Firehouse Studios on 28th Street in Manhattan, and was produced, mixed, and arranged entirely by the RZA, as per the Five Year Plan. The sound of the record was dark and sparse—the drums were dingy and heavily muffled, in stark contrast to the clean and layered percussion typically found in hip hop at that time. The minimalism was partially due to the limited budget, but RZA intentionally wanted dirty acoustics to establish the atmosphere of the Staten Island projects. He writes, ‘‘the sparseness leaves more ideas for the mind . . . you hear the aggression and the violence of the hood in the music itself’’ (RZA 201, 204). RZA’s use of sampling was revolutionary as well—he would chop up and mix many different samples together inside of one phrase, instead of using one whole sample for a phrase. RZA describes this synthesis of sound as ‘‘bugged-out . . . there’s no rules to it’’ (190, 191), breaking the notion that a sampler needs to be used just to provide a quick, identifiable hook. ‘‘I’ve always been into using the sampler more like a painter’s palette than a Xerox,’’ (192) RZA writes. Just as unique as the way he sampled was what he sampled. RZA refused to restrict himself to the old funk records of James Brown and ilk, reaching out instead to obscure, diverse sounds that sometimes weren’t even music. ‘‘You can take anything with a sampler—cartoons, children’s records, French lessons—and make it musical’’ (RZA 190). But most notable of his samples are the dialogues from classic kung fu movies such as Shaolin and Wu Tang and Five Deadly Venoms. These samples distinguished Wu-Tang from every other artist, introducing an Asian aesthetic to hip hop that had never been heard before. Lyrically, both the content and delivery on Enter the Wu-Tang were nothing like any other record. Few were rhyming about stealing, doing drugs, or the hard, seemingly inescapable life of the ghetto, and none managed to do so as succinctly, or as poetically as Wu-Tang. The group mixed abstract slang with clever metaphor, while also delivering an ‘‘explosive, straight-out-the-box style’’ (RZA) previously only seen in battle raps (competitions where MCs ‘‘fight’’ to see whose rhymes are better) on the street. Witty darts such as GZA’s shot at the career-killing tactics of his former Cold Chillin’ label off ‘‘Protect Ya Neck’’ (‘‘The Wu is too slammin’ for these Cold Killin’ labels’’) and Raekwon’s description of his neighborhood on ‘‘C.R.E.A.M’’ (‘‘I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side’’) targeting everyone and everything while painting a vast, verbal landscape of their lifestyle. The Wu-Tang Clan’s competitive nature didn’t stop there—RZA would have Wu-Tang members battle each other in the studio to win the ‘‘right’’ to appear on each song. This kill-or-be-killed attitude pushed each member to write the best lyrics possible, so they could have the most time to show off their skills and win over critics and fans. The Wu-Tang Clan had more MCs than any other crew before it, and each one had an unmistakable flair that RZA expertly captured and

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accentuated in production. ‘‘They [members of Wu-Tang] were instruments I used to compose . . . in my studio, each Wu-Tang MC had their own compressor set to a certain setting . . . everybody sounds like themselves’’ (RZA 206, 208). The WuTang Clan had unique style, but they were also heavily influenced by their Staten Island predecessors, the Force MDs—they had their tapes and listened to them religiously, trying to emulate Stevie D and Mercury’s rhythm and flow. ‘‘Method Man, Raekwon, all of them looked up to us,’’ Stevie D recalls (Quan). But perhaps the most amazing thing about Enter the Wu-Tang was its universal appeal. Fans loved it—it reached #41 on the Billboard 200 list, #8 on the R&B/hip hop charts, and was certified platinum in 1995. Critics loved it—Blender Magazine put it on their list of ‘‘500 Albums You Must Own Before You Die,’’ Pitchfork Media rated it number 36 on their list of favorite records of the 1990s, Spin put it at number 20 for their ‘‘Top 100 Albums of the Last 20 Years’’ list, and The Source put it on their list of their 100 best rap albums. Even nonfans loved the Wu-Tang Clan—as critic Wasim Muklashy writes, ‘‘[they were] embraced by everyone from computer geeks to Australian pop-rock bands to every hood this side of the prime meridian . . . [they] managed to build not only a hip-hop supergroup composed of nine of the most talented MC’s on the planet but also a multifaceted crossgenerational superpersona that has spawned an entire industry’’ (Muklashy). With their nine members, there seemed to be something for everybody to like, no matter what you preferred in an MC. Spin magazine writer Chris Norris comments, ‘‘Raekwon and Ghostface Killah appeal to the thugs, RZA to the intellectuals, and Method Man to everyone’’ (Norris 142). It was Method Man that stood out among the rest as the clan’s first breakout solo star. Fans, especially girls, loved his personality, dubbing him the ‘‘heartthrob’’ of Wu-Tang. Incredibly, instead of feeling jealous and sabotaging Method’s popularity (as many other artists have done to the most popular member of their group), the Wu-Tang clan encouraged Method Man to achieve solo success. They knew that if one member branched off and succeeded, the Wu-Tang clan would succeed as a whole along with him. The group gave him his own track on Enter the WuTang—‘‘Method Man.’’ This track saw Method Man introduce himself and his style to the world, and made him a bona fide superstar. Every verse had Method switching his flow, showcasing his versatility and highlighting his undeniable charisma. The final stroke to capitalize on Method Man came when Wu-Tang packaged ‘‘Method Man’’ as a b-side to the already successful ‘‘Protect Ya Neck.’’ The single sold over 10,000 copies—huge numbers, especially considering they had already released ‘‘Protect Ya Neck’’ as a single previously. To no one’s surprise, Method Man signed to Def Jam records to record the first solo Wu-Tang album,Tical (1994). RZA produced and arranged the entire album, offering Method Man hooks and sounds he did not feel went with the theme of 36 Chambers. Despite near catastrophe when a freak flood wiped out all of their work, the album saw massive sales, debuting at #4 on the Billboard 200. RZA’s remix of

A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People | 131 Tical’s ‘‘All I Need’’ and Mary J. Blige’s version of ‘‘I’ll Be There for You’’ went on to win a Grammy in 1995 for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Tical’s sound was more relaxed than Enter the Wu-Tang, having more of a hazy, party vibe, emphasizing getting high, hanging out with friends, and falling in love. Though it was not the first Wu-Tang side project (RZA joined the horror-core rap group Gravediggaz, whose record Six Feet Deep [Gee Street/Island/PolyGram Records] came out several months prior), Tical was the catalyst to an inundation of Wu-Tang solo albums in 1995. In March, ODB, arguably the second most popular MC (and easily the most eclectic), signed to Elektra Records to release his solo debut Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. Singles ‘‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’’ and ‘‘Brooklyn Zoo’’ were big hits, replicating the minimalist, hyperaggressive style of Enter the Wu-Tang. In August, Raekwon released his solo album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (Loud/RCA) and single-handedly married the worlds of hip hop and the Italian mob in a way that is still prevalent in hip hop today. RZA recalls—‘‘when Raewkown came with Cuban Linx, he started everyone in hip hop fiending for that mafia shit. It was an explosion . . . the way it mixed parables with real-life stories from Rae and Ghost [face Killah]’s time in the street game’’ (RZA 101). With Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Raekwon developed a mafioso fantasy akin to popular movies like The Godfather, Scarface, and Goodfellas—a highly emotional, epic, semiautobiographical narrative of rags to riches, with orchestral-esque acoustics and RZA’s signature grimy beats, peppered with fresh, inventive slang that instantly ingrained itself in hip hop’s consciousness. For the record, Raekwon asked the Wu-Tang Clan to assume new aliases, in line with the mobster concept. Raekwon the Chef became Lex Diamonds (a reference to Lex Luther, Superman’s arch-nemesis), and Ghostface Killah (who appeared the most on the album) became Tony Starks (a reference to the real life identity of comic book superhero Iron Man). Only Built 4 Cuban Linx boasted about the Wu-Gambino family—a criminal partnership between the Wu-Tang Clan and Staten Island’s own Gambino crime family. Brought to fame and power by Carlo Gambino in 1957, the Gambino family is one of the richest and most influential criminal empires in the United States. Growing up, the Wu-Tang clan admired and respected the Gambinos and their then-boss Paul Castellano’s mansion sitting on top of nearby Todt Hill (which they nicknamed the White House), and were influenced by the family to dabble in the drug trade and organized crime. With Cuban Linx, Raekwon mirrored the conflict and drama of the drug wars beautifully, detailing the struggles of trying to succeed in life by any means necessary, and the complex relationship between good and evil. GZA signed to Geffen and released Liquid Swords in November 1995. The record is hailed as one of the finest hip hop records of all time, and is mentioned, along with Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, as the best Wu-Tang solo album ever. Called ‘‘the story of the Clan’s Exodus-like wanderings through the burnt-out patches of all five boroughs during the crack-ravaged Reagan years,’’ by critic Jeff Weiss (Weiss), it serves as an almost prequel to Enter the Wu-Tang, following the Clan

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as they attempt to make something of themselves. Liquid Swords features sharp, intense rhymes, and chilling, stark beats—a definite, wintery vibe. ‘‘I want people to be in their cars, just shivering,’’ writes RZA (RZA). GZA dominates the mic, verbally decimating his foes with calculated precision. ‘‘Labels’’ sees GZA target the music industry, taking shots at all the labels that mishandled Wu-Tang members, including one particularly blunt insult to RZA’s former label, Tommy Boy —‘‘Tommy ain’t my motherfucking boy.’’ The titular opener ‘‘Liquid Swords’’ has one of the most memorable hooks in Wu-Tang history, with GZA and RZA elongating each line’s final syllable. Liquid Swords is perhaps the epitome of the Wu-Tang style—sharp and unrelenting, ferocious and succinct in approach, and ultimately, irresistibly compelling. In 1996, Ghostface Killah entered the fold with a proper solo album, Ironman (Razor Sharp/Epic). This was the first album released on RZA’s new subsidiary label, Razor Sharp Records, and it made Ghostface into a true personality. The album fleshes out Ghostface and makes him more than a character, but a human being. Behind his invincible thug persona (the Ironman) is a vulnerable, sweet man who cares about his loved ones. ‘‘Wildflower’’ is a hard, viscerally misogynistic track, where Ghostface tears apart a woman who cheated on him. ‘‘All That I Got Is You’’ (featuring Wu-collaborator Mary J. Blige) is a loving ballad about Ghostface’s life growing up, and the heartbreaking strength of his family through hard times. Ironman shows multiple sides to Ghostface Killah, showcasing him not merely a sidekick to Raekwon, but a star in his own right. Though the Wu-Tang clan did not tour extensively to promote their records (‘‘We were always more of a recording group, like the Beatles,’’ [RZA 219]), when they did, they did hard, bringing their intensity with them to the stage. Early in their careers, Wu-Tang shows would usually involve huge brawls in the crowd and severe damage to the building. Oftentimes, Wu-Tang themselves got in the mix, fighting off rowdy fans and destroying property. ‘‘Most Wu-Tang shows had at least two or three fights in them . . . we eventually got banned from New York . . . as a group and as individuals, we weren’t even allowed in these New York nightclubs,’’ RZA remembers (223). One particular show at the Culture Club in Manhattan saw Ol’ Dirty Bastard using a unique method of crowd control when fans started to riot before the show even began. ‘‘[The fans] broke all the windows, busted the whole bar down . . . ODB pulled out a gun and started firing, hitting the ceiling. Then we jumped into the crowd and broke out’’ (RZA 220). What Wu-Tang did do extensively, however, is merchandising. Wu-Tang extended their brand beyond hip hop in an unprecedented fashion, putting the Wu-Tang name in all sorts of different markets. First came Wu-Wear, the official Wu-Tang clothing line, in 1995. Wu-Tang wanted a company to make the kind of clothes that they wear, clothes that were popular on the street but difficult to find in stores. They hired Mitchell ‘‘Divine’’ Diggs (RZA’s brother) and Oli ‘‘Power’’ Grant (a childhood friend) to head all Wu-Tang business ventures, and the two hired tailors and quickly put the Wu insignia on shirts, jackets, hats, and more.

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Wu-Tang Clan (Getty Images)

When those sold in major outlets, they opened up four official Wu-Wear stores around the country, starting with one in their home of Staten Island. With the clothing line a success, Wu-Tang stamped their logo on a variety of products. There was Wu-Tang cologne. There was the Wu-Nails store, a nail salon run by RZA’s sister, located right next door to the New York Wu-Wear store. There was the Wu-Tang comic book and the Wu-Tang video game, ‘‘Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style.’’ ‘‘All this was brand diversifying,’’ RZA writes, ‘‘So instead of just Nestle Quik, you’ve got Nestle Quik, Nestle Strawberry Quik, Diet Nestle Quik’’ (83). These products were huge money makers for the Wu-Tang Clan, but internally there was some debate about the loss of integrity for the Wu-Tang label. Method Man claimed the Wu-Wear clothes were ‘‘shoddy’’ and that he ‘‘never rocked that shit’’ (Weiner). RZA writes that he was ‘‘moving more toward looking at the integrity of the brand,’’ but admits that ‘‘Every little gadget they put that W on, it sold’’ (82, 81). To handle their growing empire, Wu-Tang needed to bring in more associates. Divine and Power helped keep the business end of Wu-Tang running and profitable, while Cappadonna (real name Darryl Hill) was brought in as a heavily featured and unofficial tenth member. Other groups, such as Killarmy and Sunz of

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Man, were brought under the Wu-Tang umbrella, along with many other fledging groups from all over New York. These splinter groups allowed Wu-Tang to have their eggs in many different baskets, controlling a sizeable portion of the hip hop industry. ‘‘Divide and conquer . . . what about unite and conquer? What happens if we unite different people to conquer another?’’ RZA writes (83). All of the merchandising, associates, and solo albums created a perfect storm of Wu-Tang, culminating in 1997, when the group’s second LP, Wu-Tang Forever (Loud/RCA Records). The two disc album sold over 600,000 copies in only its first week, entering the Billboard charts at #1. This kind of success was unheard of for a ‘‘hardcore’’ hip hop group, deemed too extreme to be played on radio and television. RZA recalls, ‘‘when Wu-Tang Forever came out, we were the number one group—in sales, influence, everything’’ (78). Everything about the record was bigger than Enter the Wu-Tang. The production, the size, the scope- everything was grandiose. Lyrics were less about street life and more metaphorical, with descriptions of the apocalypse and other religious (both Eastern and Western) iconography, as well as musings about nihilism and the future of humanity. The single, ‘‘Triumph’’ saw Inspectah Deck deliver one of the best, most visceral verses in hip hop history. The verse rapidly chains together a narrative of a robbery, Wu-Tang’s rise to power, and the surreal yet all too real mayhem that ensues at a Wu-Tang show. Writes GZA, ‘‘[it’s] a classic example of straight-out-the-box devastation . . . after I heard that, I didn’t even want to get on the song . . . you need to go searchin’ to find somebody that’s sayin’ something so visual’’ (RZA 212). Beyond Deck’s unbelievably poetic verse, Wu-Tang Forever innovates lyrically by having Wu-affiliate Cappadonna appear in several verses, marking the first time a non-Clan member had a verse on a Wu-Tang ensemble album. The album broke ground musically as well, featuring lush keyboards, strings, even a fiddle line on ‘‘Reunited.’’ Wu-Tang Forever had made it clear that the battle for hip hop supremacy was over. Wu-Tang was the best—lyrically, musically, and financially. They had conquered the industry, all according to RZA’s Five Year Plan.

POST WU-TANG By 1997, it was obvious to the entire world that Wu-Tang was the most powerful force in hip hop. So what was left to do? By this time, RZA’s five year plan had expired, and RZA, true to his word, relinquished his power. Wu-Tang became more democratic—RZA no longer oversaw production on every Wu-Tang-related album. He handed the mantle over to his students—Mathematics (real name Ronald M. Bean), 4th Disciple (real name Selwyn Bougard), and True Master (real name Derek Harris). The move allowed RZA to focus on other projects, such as his own solo records, recorded under his superhero persona Bobby Digital, and scoring films such as 1999’s ‘‘Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai.’’ However, RZA’s absence had a notable effect on the group’s solo albums. Post-Forever projects

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were universally panned, labeled lackluster, and average at best by critics and fans, who missed RZA’s uncanny ability to capture the essence of each clan member. The exception to this was Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele (Razor Sharp/Epic 2000), a record detailing the life and times of Ghostface’s ‘‘true identity’’ Tony Starks. It featured numerous renowned producers, including ex-UMCs member Hassan, and was hailed as the one Wu-Tang solo record that found life after RZA’s passing of the torch. The new century seemed to usher in the end of Wu-Tang, but the group silenced its critics with the release of a new ensemble album—The W (Loud/Columbia 2000). The album was snapped up by hip hop fans, eventually going platinum. The W was a tighter, more accessible record than Wu-Tang Forever, and showed sparks of that fire and raw passion of Enter the Wu-Tang. The W saw RZA return as head producer, with only a select few tracks produced by his prote´ge´s. RZA’s presence ignites the Clan—tracks like ‘‘Gravel Pit’’ and ‘‘Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)’’ radiate familiar Wu-Tang sounds, but richer and cleaner, utilizing the more eclectic sampling and instrumentation RZA had been experimenting with in his Bobby Digital work. It seemed that after a sophomore slump of sorts, Wu-Tang was back to old form. The illusion would be shattered, however, with 2001’s Iron Flag (Loud/Columbia), a resounding disappointment amongst the Wu faithful. The record received lukewarm reviews, chiding it for sounding tired and overdone, with surprisingly weak lyrics and overly simplistic rhythms. Where The W and Wu-Tang Forever pushed Wu-Tang forward with strange, daring beats and lyrical content, Iron Flag took steps back, stripping the sound to its bare minimum bass and drums, and the lyrics to the same old stories about street life heard on Enter the Wu-Tang. Though the experimentation of Forever and The W didn’t always work, it was always interesting to listen to—by reducing the complexity and sonic innovation, Iron Flag loses artistic merit. Though some tracks, like ‘‘Uzi (Pinky Ring),’’ are full of Wu-Tang’s signature vitriol and accented horn hits, the majority of the songs don’t offer anything beneath the surface. Another disappointment on Iron Flag is the absence of Cappadonna and Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Cappadonna, who was now credited with the rest of the Clan and no longer distinguished as a guest appearance, took a strange and sudden sabbatical from the group to drive taxis in Baltimore. The reasons for his departure are unknown—however, it is speculated his manager was an FBI informant sent to keep tabs on the Clan’s connection to the Gambino crime family. Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s presence was also sorely missed—he was serving jail time and could not record. Sadly, unlike Cappadonna, ODB would not return to the Wu-Tang family, as he passed away in 2004 (see sidebar: Ol’ Dirty Bastard). Post-Iron Flag saw another decline in Wu-Tang, and RZA pulling back even further from the group, returning only to produce 2007’s 8 Diagrams (SRC/Universal Motown Records). Though it was an overall improvement from Iron Flag, with a diverse and experimental sound (single ‘‘The Heart Gently Weeps’’ features a sample of a cover of the Beatles’ ‘‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps,’’ with added

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OL’ DIRTY BASTARD The tale of ODB is tragic, laced with crime, excessive drug use, mental instability, and erratic, self-destructive tendencies. Though his career was lined with signs of genius and potential, such as his collaboration with Mariah Carey to produce the sleeper hit ‘‘Fantasy’’ and his clothing line ‘‘My Dirty Wear,’’ his artistic talent was ultimately inhibited by a long arrest sheet and a series of bizarre stunts. In 1996, while being filmed for an MTV biography, he picked up a welfare check in a stretch limousine. In 1997, he was arrested for failing to pay child support. In 1998, he rushed the stage at the Grammy Awards, interrupting artist’s Shawn Colvin’s acceptance speech for Song of the Year with claims that Wu-Tang should have won because they were ‘‘for the children.’’ Later in the year, he pled guilty to charges of assaulting his wife and missed several court appearances concerning missed child support payments and had a bench warrant issued for his arrest. The same year, he was charged with shoplifting a pair of 50 dollar sneakers in Virginia (despite having over 500 dollars of cash on him at the time) and was arrested in Los Angeles for making terroristic threats on two separate occasions (once after being kicked out of a concert for disorderly conduct, he returned and threatened to shoot security, the other after threatening to shoot an ex-girlfriend). The rap sheet continued in 1999 with multiple charges of marijuana possession, crack/cocaine possession, driving without a license, and failing to appear in court. In the midst of all of this, ODB found time to record a new album, Nigga Please (Elektra 1999). In January of 2000, during a hearing for his numerous possession charges, Ol’ Dirty Bastard cited unfair persecution by the authorities, referred to a female District Attorney as a ‘‘sperm donor,’’ and then took a nap in the courtroom. Miraculously, he avoided jail time, but was sentenced to rehab for six months. Yet with only two months left on his sentence, ODB broke out of rehab and became a fugitive, hiding out with fellow Wu-Tang members (presumably, since he is featured on The W track ‘‘Conditioner’’). He resurfaced on stage at a record release party for The W at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, oddly managing to enter and leave the premises without being arrested. Yet months later, he met a strange and anticlimatic end to his days as a fugitive when he was caught signing autographs at a McDonald’s in Philadelphia. This time, he was sent to state prison, where he served his time until he was released in 2003. He signed to Roc-A-Fella records, and was working on a new solo record when he collapsed and died in Wu-Tang’s New York recording studios on November 13, 2004. The cause of death was an accidental overdose—a sad end to the life of one of hip hop’s oddest and most memorable performers.

A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People | 137 guitar by the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante), fans and critics thought it was too incohesive and alien. Even Raekwon, Ghostface, and U-God agreed, citing problems with RZA’s new direction. However, there are a few bright spots in this modern era. Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale (Def Jam 2006) was well received, with its up tempo beats and Ghostface’s classic melodic flow. Masta Killa showed himself to have fully developed as a rapper on par with any other Wu-Tang member with his long-awaited solo debut, No Said Date (Nature Sounds 2004). Though Method Man’s later solo records have been uninspired (by his own admission), he has found success in Hollywood, teaming with Redman to star in a sitcom, Method and Red, and a feature length film, How High, with a sequel on the horizon. On his own, he has been featured in the hit HBO original drama, The Wire, and the film Garden State, among others. RZA has also gone Hollywood, scoring films such as Quentin Tarantino’s kung fu homage Kill Bill and appearing with GZA opposite Bill Murray in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. Though they have faltered slightly in later years, the importance and influence of the Wu-Tang Clan cannot be overstated. The Wu-Tang Clan set the mark for how all other hip hop crews operate. Present day collectives like G-Unit model themselves after the Wu-Tang Clan, both artistically, with hard, edgy production, and financially, with extensive merchandising and brand diversification. Artists from all over the hip hop spectrum have cited Wu-Tang as enormously influential to their careers—Busta Rhymes, Kanye West, Notorious B.I.G., and many more pay tribute to Wu-Tang’s groundbreaking style. Never before had anyone heard the sounds Wu-Tang was making, or the ideas they were expressing. Their uncompromising attitude, lo-fi production, and gritty, complex rhymes made them household names, not just among hip hop fans, but mainstream America. Their use of Asian and Mafia culture fostered hip hop’s love affair with both Eastern and Mafioso imagery, which to this day still continue to appear over and over again. There has been no other group in hip hop who has made more of an impact than the Wu-Tang Clan. They helped push hip hop into the mainstream, and wrote the blueprint for success in the music industry. There is no one else like them. They are the Wu-Tang Clan from Staten Island—the only group that didn’t just change the industry, or become the industry, but transcended the industry. Staten Island has come a long way from struggling to find an identity in the 1980s. In the past 20 years, it has lifted itself from obscurity, proving itself to be artistically on par with the rest of New York’s boroughs. But Staten Island is not content. It has proven itself to be an equal, but it wants to be the best. The Force MDs are still on the road, playing shows around the country, and almost ready to release a documentary of their story. They are also looking to manage a new version of the Force MDs with their younger relatives, called the Force L.D.’s. Though the UMCs have gone their separate ways, they remain important figures in hip hop. Hassan has become a respected producer, overseeing hits like ‘‘Magic Stick’’ for 50 Cent. Kool Kim has reinvented himself as NYOIL—a mysterious, edgy rapper with the mission statement to violently eliminate subpar artists. The

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video for his song ‘‘Y’all Should Get Lynched,’’ which featured still images of 50 Cent and Young Joc, among others, was banned from Youtube within 48 hours of posting for being too graphic. On the Wu-Tang front, Raekwon is poised to release his follow up to Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, appropriately named Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II. A new, RZA-less Wu-Tang album, fronted by Raekwon and Ghostface, titled Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, is also rumored to be nearing the final stages of production. GZA has plans to release a tell-all documentary entitled ‘‘Wu-Tang Revealed,’’ and has collaborated with DJ Muggs with to make Grandmasters (Angeles Records 2005), hip hop’s first (and most likely only) chess-themed album. In the same vein, Wu-Chess, an online chess program, recently went live, giving hip hop fans a place to play chess with each other (and even Clan members) around the world. Wu affiliates from Staten Island, like Streetlife and Ghostface’s spinoff group Theodore Unit, continue to make records and tour across the country. But despite Wu-Tang’s mighty grip on Staten Island’s hip hop scene, some artists, such as up-and-comer Crucial Tactics, act independently of Wu-Tang, playing shows and recording demos all around the island, as well as the larger New York area. Staten Island is through clawing at the heels of the other boroughs. It stands on its own, stepping up as a true hip hop pioneer in its own right.

REFERENCES Da Beatminerz. Personal Interview with Mickey Hess. October 15, 2008. ‘‘Force MDs Memories.’’ Youtube, July 7, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=2qM88zwOcoc&feature=related. Force MD’s Relived. Wisemen Productions, 2007. JButters and Marcus. ‘‘Kool G Rap Interview.’’ Urban Smarts Hip Hop Iconz Series, September 7, 2008. http://www.urbansmarts.com/interviews/koolgrap .htm. Kool Kim. ‘‘UMCs—Hip Hop Sucks Because of You.’’ Unkut, September 3, 2006. http://www.unkut.com/2006/09/umcs-hip-hop-sucks-because-you/. Lundy, Steve. Personal Interview with Matthew Brian Cohen. June 6, 2008. Muklashy, Wasim. ‘‘Wu-Tang Clan: Shaolin Secrets.’’ Remix Magazine, November 1, 2007. Norris, Chris. ‘‘Ghetto Superstar.’’ In Spin: 20 Years of Alternative Music, edited by Will Hermes with Sia Michel. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2005. Prince, Frazier, Steve Lundy, and Rodney Lundy. ‘‘The Force MDs Relived.’’ Youtube, October 25, 2006. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X43kuR3Oqg8. Quan, Jay. ‘‘Stevie D of the Force MDs.’’ http://www.jayquan.com/stevied.htm. RZA, and Chris Norris. The Wu-Tang Manual. 1st ed. New York: Penguin Group, 2005. Weiner, Jonah. ‘‘Dear Superstar: Method Man.’’ Blender, November 2003. http:// www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=512.

A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People | 139 Weiss, Jeff. ‘‘GZA’s Liquid Swords of Truth.’’LA Weekly, March 26, 2008. http:// www.laweekly.com/music/music/gzas-liquid-swords-of-truth/18592/.

FURTHER RESOURCES ‘‘A Trip Down Memory Lane with Kool Kim of the UMCs.’’ Platform 8470, February 2006. http://www.platform8470.com/artists/ai_koolkim.asp. ‘‘A Wu-Tang Guide to Staten Island.’’ Gridskipper, December 2006. http:// gridskipper.com/59258/a-wutang-guide-to-staten-island. Breihan, Tom. ‘‘Return of the Ruckus.’’ Village Voice, January 31, 2006. http:// www.villagevoice.com/2006-01-31/music/return-of-the-ruckus/. Concepcion, Mariel, and Jonathan Cohen. ‘‘Return of the Wu.’’ Billboard 119 (2007): 26–29. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, and Steve Huey. ‘‘Wu-Tang Clan Biography.’’ All Music Guide. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11: dxfyxqwgldse~T1. ‘‘Force MC’s Biography.’’ Old School Hip Hop. http://www.oldschoolhiphop.com/ artists/emcees/forcemcs.htm. Horowitz, Steven J. ‘‘Last No Longer: An Interview with Wu-Tang Clan’s Masta Killa.’’ September 2006. http://www.popmatters.com/music/interviews/mastakilla-060908.shtml. Kurutz, Steve. ‘‘Mr. Magic Biography.’’ All Music Guide. http://www.allmusic .com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:73820r1ay48p~T1. Leckart, Steven. ‘‘Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA Breaks Down His Kung Fu Samples by Film and Song.’’ Wired, October 23, 2007. http://www.wired.com/ entertainment/music/magazine/15-11/pl_music. Mueller, Gavin. ‘‘The Wu-Tang Story.’’ Stylus Magazine, November 15, 2004. http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/the-wu-tang-storyreprint.htm. Sharpton, Kim. ‘‘Kool Kim.’’ [Weblog Myspace] http://www.myspace.com/ koolkimumc. Smooth, Jay. ‘‘Mr. Magic and Mister Cee: Hip Hop History 101.’’ HipHopMusic.com, 1995. Staten Island Ferry. www.siferry.com. ‘‘Staten Island Ferry Information.’’ MYCDOT. NYC Department of Transit. http:// www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/ferrybus/statfery.shtml#facts. Wallenrod, Werner Von. ‘‘(Werner Necro’d) Shadow Government (UMCs Interview).’’ November 30, 2007. http://journals.aol.com/wvwalenrod/werners/ entries/2007/11/30/werner-necrod-shadow-government-umcs-interview/1327. Wolf, Mike. ‘‘Lynch Pin.’’ Time Out New York, January 4, 2007. http:// www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/music/3063/lynch-pin (accessed July 28, 2008).

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SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY The Force MDs Love Letters. Tommy Boy, 1984. Chillin’. Tommy Boy/Warner Bros., 1985. Touch & Go. Tommy Boy/Warner Bros., 1987. Step to Me. Tommy Boy/Warner Bros., 1990. Moments in Time. Tommy Boy/Warner Bros., 1994. Ghostface Killah Ironman. Razor Sharp/Epic Records, 1996. Supreme Clientele. Razor Sharp/Epic/SME Records, 2000. The Pretty Toney Album. Def Jam, 2004. Fishscale. Def Jam, 2006. More Fish. Def Jam, 2006. The Big Doe Rehab. Def Jam, 2007. GZA Words from the Genius. Cold Chillin’/Warner Bros., 1990. Liquid Swords. Geffen/MCA, 1995. Beneath the Surface. MCA, 1999. Legend of the Liquid Sword. MCA, 2002. Grandmasters. Angeles, 2005. Pro Tools. Think Differently Music/Babygrande Records, 2008. Inspectah Deck Uncontrolled Substance. Relativity Records, 1999. The Movement. Koch Records, 2003. The Resident Patient. Urban Icon Records, 2006. Masta Killa No Said Date. Nature Sounds, 2004. Made in Brooklyn. Nature Sounds, 2006. Method Man Tical. Def Jam, 1994. Tical 2000: Judgment Day. Def Jam, 1998. Tical 0: The Prequel. Def Jam, 2004. 4:21 . . . The Day After. Def Jam, 2006. Ol’ Dirty Bastard Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. Elektra, 1995. Nigga Please. Elektra, 1999. Raekwon The Chef Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. Loud Records/RCA, 1995. The Lex Diamond Story. Universal Music Group, 2003. RZA Bobby Digital in Stereo. Gee Street/V2/BMG Records, 1998.

A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People Digital Bullet. Koch Records, 2001. The World According to RZA. Virgin, 2003. Birth of a Prince. Wu/Sanctuary/BMG Records, 2003. Digi Snacks. Koch Records, 2008. U God Golden Arms Redemption. Priority Records, 1999. Mr. Xcitement. Free Agency Recordings, 2005. The UMCs Fruits of Nature. Wild Pitch Records, 1991. Unleashed. Wild Pitch Records, 1994. Wu Tang Clan Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Loud/RCA/BMG Records, 1993. Wu-Tang Forever. Loud/RCA/BMG Records, 1997. The W. Loud/Columbia/SME Records, 2000. Iron Flag. Loud/Columbia/SME Records, 2001. 8 Diagrams. SRC/Universal Motown Records, 2007.

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CHAPTER 7 The Sound of Philadelphia: Hip Hop History in the City of Brotherly Love Mickey Hess On January 8, 2008, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter celebrated his inauguration by performing Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ backed by Questlove from the Roots on drums. When the new mayor kicked off his first term by performing a classic hip hop track with one of the icons of Philadelphia hip hop, he exemplified the importance of hip hop to Philadelphia’s culture, and underscored the importance of Philadelphia to the culture of hip hop. Philly made more contributions than any city outside New York to the development of hip hop culture in the 1970s and early 1980s, and remains a hotbed of hip hop in 2009. The Roots are currently one of the most iconic rap groups to represent Philadelphia, along with DJ Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes, born January 22, 1965) and The Fresh Prince (Will Smith, born September 25, 1968), who were the first group to bring Philly’s hip hop culture fully into the mainstream, propelled by Jeff’s talents on the turntables and the humor and charm that would lead to roles in the NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990–1996) and later launch Will Smith’s career in Hollywood films like I am Legend and Men in Black. Before the group hit the airwaves, though, Jazzy Jeff was a local legend and turntable virtuoso who performed with Southwest Philly’s Network Crew, comprised of DJ Jazzy Jeff, Rockwell, JT, Mo Roc, and Rally Rap. As a DJ, Jeff worked with local MCs Spicy T and Ice-C before he picked up The Fresh Prince from another Philly crew, The Hypnotic MCs. In a 1997 interview, DJ Jazzy Jeff explained that in the 1980s, Philadelphia’s focus on the DJ distinguished its rap scene from New York’s: ‘‘New York was a town predominantly made up of rappers. Not that Philadelphia didn’t have rappers, but Philadelphia was a DJ-based town. We put emphasis on DJing. The rappers here kinda catered to the DJs, you know’’ (Spady). In a 2008 issue of Philadelphia’s Two One Five Magazine devoted to local hip hop culture, Angela Carter wrote that as early as 1985, ‘‘every ’hood throughout Philly had a DJ crew—most notably, Cosmic Kev and MC Perry P from Germantown; DJ Cash Money and Marvelous from Yaden; Grandmaster Nell and MC 143

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Robby B from South Philly; the Hypnotic MCs from Wynnfield; and two crews from the southwest—the Network Crew, and DJ Master Vik and the Super MCs’’ (15). Philadelphia’s wealth of local DJ talent garnered national attention in 1986, when DJ Jazzy Jeff won the New Music Seminar DJ Battle for World Supremacy, bringing attention to the vibrant DJ scene in his hometown. Philly’s DJ scene is still thriving today, with a mix of turntablists and club DJs ranging from the Illvibe Collective, the Skratch Makanics, King Britt, Rich Medina, Hollertronix, DJ Ultraviolet, to Questlove, who performs DJ sets at the nightclub Fluid when he isn’t on tour with the Roots. Even as Philadelphia hip hop has spread worldwide, artists tend to be staunchly local-minded in the ways they choose to represent their hometowns and connect themselves to a legacy of talent in the city they call home. For Jazzy Jeff, Philadelphia is so central to his music that he left Hollywood and moved back to his hometown. When Jeff was asked in a 1997 interview why he returned to Philadelphia rather than staying in Hollywood to work in film and television like his partner Will Smith, he replied: Philly’s my home. I honestly believe the reason for who I am today and a lot of the accomplishments—and I honestly believe that the sound that I have and that Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince as a group had—is based on our location. I never wanted to change my location because if I change my location, I’m going to change my sound. I don’t know if that’s superstitious, but that’s something that I firmly believe. (Spady) Hip hop artists who hail from the City of Brotherly Love often express a local pride in Philly’s hip hop milestones. Although hip hop culture was born one hundred miles north in New York City’s Bronx borough, Philadelphia is home to several hip hop firsts: the style of spray-paint graffiti art that has come to be associated with hip hop was born in Philly in the 1960s, Philly’s DJ Cash Money invented the transform scratch, Jazzy Jeff invented the chirp scratch, Schoolly D recorded the first gangsta rap records, and in 1979 two of hip hop’s earliest records were recorded by Philadelphians: Jocko Henderson’s ‘‘Rhythm Talk’’ and Lady B’s ‘‘To the Beat, Ya’ll,’’ which was the first hip hop single by a woman emcee. In further milestones, 1985 MC Breeze recorded ‘‘Discombobulatorlator,’’ the first rap song to be banned from radio airplay, and in 1998 DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince won rap’s first Grammy for He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, which was also hip hop’s first double-LP. Yet even with these milestones, Philadelphia tends to remain in the shadow of New York, and Philly’s artists often express resentment toward the lack of recognition of Philadelphia as a unique and thriving hip hop scene of its own. MC Breeze reminded his listener that ‘‘It Ain’t New York,’’ on his 1986 song of that name, and Reef the Lost Cauze complains on 2007’s ‘‘Sound of Philadelphia’’ that ‘‘the shadow of New York we’re still under,’’ and argues that the chip on

The Sound of Philadelphia | 145 Philadelphians’ shoulders makes them ‘‘kill them every summer’’ and ‘‘walk a little tougher.’’ Philadelphia’s reputation as a dangerous, crime-ridden city has earned it the nickname Killadelphia. The city’s murder rate consistently places it in the top 10 major American cities for per-capita murder rate, and local newspapers and Web sites print ‘‘murder maps’’ that pinpoint the locations of each slaying. Along with a high murder rate and violence associated with the drug trade, Philadelphia is further known for police brutality against black citizens, and for the murder of police officers by black citizens, both of which were prevalent in 2007–2008 (see Sidebar: Murder Rap). This social context created a vibrant and varied hip hop scene in Philadelphia. Philly hip hop is not defined by any one sound. From the early days of rap music, Philadelphia produced standout artists ranging from the proto-gangsta rhymes of Schoolly D to the radio-friendly pop rap of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Schoolly D and the Fresh Prince were contemporaries, but their styles and content are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Schoolly D rhymed about gun violence and drugs while the Fresh Prince rhymed about more radio-friendly topics such as shopping for back-to-school clothes with his mom on hit singles like ‘‘Parents Just Don’t Understand.’’ These two artists, different as they were, helped usher in the era of the MC in Philadelphia. Schoolly D and DJ Code Money developed a production style centered on high-hat cymbals and lots of bells that would influence Rick Rubin’s production on the Beastie Boys’ 1986 debut Licensed to Ill, and the Fresh Prince was backed by Philly’s legendary DJ Jazzy Jeff and a beatboxer named Ready Rock C, but the two MCs stepped into the spotlight to personify the different directions hip hop was heading in the mid-1980s. Schoolly D invented gangsta rap and the Fresh Prince pioneered rap’s crossover to the pop charts. That diversity has carried throughout the eras in Philadelphia. Philly has brought us the smoothed-out sounds of Boys II Men and The Roots, as well as the hardcore rhymes of Cassidy and Beanie Sigel. At one end of the current spectrum, Philly rap artists form a strong contingent on Roc-A-Fella Records: Beanie Sigel, State Property, Young Gunz, and Freeway all are signed to the Roc. At the other end, the underground hip hop contingent includes acts ranging from Last Emperor, Reef the Lost Cauze, Hezekiah, Jedi Mind Tricks, Writtenhouse, and Chief Kamachi. Philly has also been a haven for women artists. Lady B, after recording hip hop’s first single by a female MC, went on to produce a longrunning radio show. Monie Love, an old-school MC, member of the Native Tongues, and a Philly transplant by way of London, had a radio show as well. Eve, first lady of the Rough Riders crew, hails from Philly, as do Jill Scott, Ethel Cee, Ice Cream Tee, DJ Ultraviolet, and Princess Superstar. Philly’s connections with other cities is important as well. Boston transplant Mr. Lif now represents Philadelphia. The Myspace page of the group Shape of Broad Minds lists its hometown as Housta-delphia, recognizing the fact that the group is comprised of Philly’s Dr. Who Dat and Houston’s Jneiro Jariel. Gillie da Kid began his career with New Orleans’ Cash Money Records, and has more recently

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MURDER RAP Philadelphia’s rap stars have been notoriously tied to the social problems of the city, from the 1987 murder of Sean G, the first Philadelphia rap star to sign a deal with a major record label, to the more recent charges of assault and attempted murder against rap artists Beanie Sigel and Cassidy, and Alton ‘‘Ace Capone’’ Coles, a Philadelphia hip hop movie producer and alleged cocaine kingpin who is accused of using his films to tell the story of his life in the drug trade. In 2007, Coles was arrested after a lengthy investigation by the Philadelphia office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Along with the ATF wiretaps and videotaped surveillance footage, authorities included the film New Jack City: The Next Generation (2003) as part of their investigation. Capone had produced and starred in the film, playing a character who shared his nickname, ‘‘Ace Capone,’’ and ran a Southwest Philadelphia drug ring that thrived because of its ruthlessness toward anyone who posed a threat to the operation. Prosecutors charged that Ace Capone was writing his autobiography into the film, and he was sentenced to life plus 55 years in April 2009. Most shocking, however, are the 1996 convictions of Philly old-school legends Cool C and Steady B, who remain in prison for their involvement in a 1996 bank robbery and the murder of Philadelphia police officer Lauretha Vaird. Major-label recording artists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Steady B and Cool C were members of the Hilltop Hustlers, a Philadelphia rap crew. Cool C released a pair of albums on Atlantic Records in 1989 and 1990, and Steady B released five full-length albums on Jive Records between 1986 and 1991. Steady B and Cool C united, along with Ultimate Eaze, in 1993 to produce an album as C.E.B. (Countin Endless Bank). However, the comeback of these icons of Philadelphia hip hop was short-lived, and their hip hop careers are now overshadowed by their convictions for bank robbery and the shooting of Lauretha Vaird, the first female Philadelphia police officer to be murdered in the line of duty. For his role in the robbery, Steady B was sentenced to life in prison. In October 1996, Cool C, who allegedly was the triggerman, was sentenced to the death penalty, and in 2008 was still awaiting execution. In a music culture where rappers boast about their criminal activity and their time behind bars, Cool C remains the only major rapper on death row.

waged a war of words with Cash Money artist Lil Wayne, for whom he claims to have ghostwritten several albums. King Britt and Doodlebug, two members of the jazz-influenced NYC hip hop group Digable Planets, hail from Philly, and King Britt has returned home to forge a successful solo career as a club DJ. Philadelphia’s Eve began her recording career as a member of DMX’s New York-based

The Sound of Philadelphia | 147 Ruff Riders collective, and Bahamadia’s work flourished through her connections with DJ Premier and Guru of the Brooklyn group Gang Starr. Monie Love, a member of the Native Tongues posse who hails from London, England, moved to Philly and hosted a radio show on WPHI-FM (see sidebar: Monie Love). DJ Jazzy Jeff’s production work, and his studio, A Touch of Jazz, have drawn hip hop artists to the city as well. The list of Philadelphia’s contributions to hip hop history also includes several stars who grew up in Philly but left town to find stardom with a group. Money B, a native of North Philadelphia, moved to California in 1987 and joined the group Digital Underground, best known for their classic party single ‘‘The Humpty Dance,’’ and for launching the career of Tupac Shakur. Money B also recorded with the group Raw Rusion and has released a solo album. Kurupt left Philadelphia in 1986 to form Tha Dogg Pound with his partner Daz Dillinger and sign to Dr. Dre and Suge Knight’s Death Row Records. Tha Dogg Pound was featured on ‘‘What’s My Name,’’ Snoop Doggy Dogg’s debut single as a solo artist, and their own debut album was one of the most anticipated rap albums of 1995. Lisa ‘‘Left Eye’’ Lopes, a singer and emcee from the R&B group TLC, also signed to Death Row Records as a solo artist before her death in a car crash in Honduras in 2002. The production team The Aphilliates, although based in Atlanta, was formed by three

MONIE LOVE Monie Love, a transplant from London to Philadelphia, originally made connections with U.S. hip hop groups in her teens when she wrote a fan letter to Public Enemy, and PE member Professor Griff responded. Monie Love was an original member of the Native Tongues Posse, which consisted of Afrika Bambaataa, De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, Black Sheep, and Queen Latifah. Monie’s best-known verse remains her guest appearance on Latifah’s ‘‘Ladies First’’ (1988), but she is also known for her own singles, such as ‘‘Monie in the Middle.’’ In Philadelphia, Monie continued to record sporadic releases, such as 2000’s Slice of da Pie EP, but she was better known for her radio show on Philadelphia’s WPHI-FM. The show ran from 2004 to 2006, and was canceled only a few months after Monie’s much-publicized on-air confrontation with southern rapper Young Jeezy. On December 7, 2006, Monie and Jeezy got into an argument stemming from their opposite reactions to Nas’s 2006 album Hip Hop Is Dead: The N. Jeezy argued that hip hop has evolved rather than died, but Monie sided with Nas, and took Jeezy to task for his lyrical content. She complained that in 2006 MCs rhymed only about ‘‘struggles, street hustling, and coming up.’’ Monie Love now hosts ‘‘Ladies First Radio with Monie Love,’’ on XM Satellite Radio.

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Philadelphia natives: DJ Drama, Don Cannon, and DJ Sense. DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz mixtape series has featured Lil Wayne, T.I., and a host of other southern rap stars. More recently, in 2008, Don Cannon and DJ Drama returned to their Philadelphia roots to record The Greenhouse Effect with Asher Roth, a white rapper from the Philly suburb of Morrisville, Pennsylvania.

A CITY OF HISTORY Philadelphia’s contributions to the global movement of hip hop are as varied as the artists who hail from the city. Hip hop music and culture are born out of a revolutionary spirit, and Philadelphia is a city of revolution. Beyond the tourist destinations of American Revolution sites such as Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin’s grave, and the Liberty Bell, Philadelphia has a long and complex history of struggle for racial equality. In the late 1890s, the University of Pennsylvania sponsored W.E.B. Du Bois’s pioneering sociological study The Philadelphia Negro, first published in 1899. In his study, Du Bois interviewed members of black families living in Philadelphia’s seventh ward, which at the time held the city’s highest concentration of black citizens (today this area contains Rittenhouse Square and Washington Square West, two of Philadelphia’s more expensive neighborhoods). Du Bois’s study traced the history of black Philadelphians from slavery, emancipation, and the rise to freedom, and covered family size, income, poverty, religion, education and illiteracy, and alcoholism, and attended to the problem of crime among black citizens of Philadelphia, attributing crime to a problem of adjustment on the Negro from life in Africa, to slavery, to emancipation, to an exodus from southern farms to northern industrial cities. Du Bois found at the root of black crime a ‘‘lack of harmony with the social surroundings’’ (64). During the Great Migration of the early twentieth century, Philadelphia saw an influx of southern-born African Americans who moved north. From the 1940s through the 1960s, Philadelphia became home to civil rights protests, boycotts, and walkouts in protest of unfair labor practices. The motto ‘‘don’t shop where you can’t work’’ was promoted among the black citizens of the city. Matthew J. Countryman’s Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, presents a history of Philadelphia’s key involvement in the civil rights movement. This history has tended to be overshadowed by the civil rights histories of southern cities like Birmingham, Montgomery, and Atlanta, but black activism in Philadelphia made significant contributions, particularly in the realm of labor rights and community control of the schools. Philadelphia’s African American community also fostered a social scene that included lodges, saloons, social clubs, and house parties where people came together and danced. John W. Roberts has traced Philadelphia’s dance culture from its roots in African society through the heyday of American Bandstand in the 1950s and on to hip hop today. For his book From Hucklebuck to Hip-Hop: Social

The Sound of Philadelphia | 149 Dance in the African American Community in Philadelphia, Roberts conducted a series of interviews with Philadelphians who remember the Philadelphia-based dance show American Bandstand more for its discriminatory policies than its influence on American popular culture. The show, which was filmed in a predominantly black West Philly neighborhood, initially excluded black teens from dancing on the show, although many of the dances showcased on American Bandstand had been created by African Americans (Roberts 36–37). Although Bandstand changed its policy in 1955 in response to community protest, many black teens moved on to The Mitch Thomas Show, another locally produced dance program that showcased African American dancers and was a precursor to the long-running dance show Soul Train, which began filming in Chicago in 1970. The same Philadelphia communities that supported local dancers fostered a musical heritage as well. Philly was home to the opera singer Marian Anderson, who broke racial barriers in 1939 when she sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and again in 1955 when she became the first black singer to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera. Philadelphia also contributed to jazz music, in the years following World War II, when musicians like John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and the Heath Brothers moved from the south to Philadelphia, creating a vibrant jazz scene in the city. Outside of hip hop, though, Philly is best known for its contributions to soul music. In 1971, Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff founded Philadelphia International Records, which released records from The O’Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, as well as one of the first rap records—Douglas ‘‘Jocko’’ Henderson’s 1979 single ‘‘Rhythm Talk.’’ Henderson was a rhyming radio DJ who began broadcasting in Philadelphia in 1950. Although he was not the first radio DJ to make rhyming a part of his on-air personality, he was known in the 1950s for rhymes like ‘‘Hello, Daddy-O and Mommy-O, This is Jocko,’’ and ‘‘Oo-poppa-doo, how do you do,’’ leading some hip hop fans to refer to him as the original rapper. In 1957 Henderson began commuting between Philadelphia and New York, producing a show that aired from 6–9 AM on WLIB New York, and a second show that aired 4–7 PM on WDAS Philadelphia. Henderson’s flair and rhyming boasts influenced hip hop, although he is best remembered, along with Alan Freed, as a rock and roll pioneer who promoted the music on his radio shows as well as frequent rock n roll showcases at venues like Harlem’s Apollo Theater. He ended his New York show after seven years, but maintained his show in Philadelphia through the 1970s. In 1970, he founded a magazine, Philly Talk, dedicated to promoting local music and culture. This history laid the foundation for hip hop to take hold in Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s, when graffiti took hold in the city and was soon followed by rap music. Hip hop in Philly emerged into a social context of government corruption, police brutality, and black protest that had disconnected black citizens in West Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, and North Philadelphia from the downtown’s governmental and commercial heartbeat, the area known to locals as Center City. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mayor James Tate (1962–1972) and his police

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commissioner and successor as mayor, Frank Rizzo (1972–1980), further alienated black Philadelphians from Center City. As police commissioner, Rizzo was criticized for his force’s rough treatment of black Philadelphians (Feffer 795), and as mayor, he continued Tate’s efforts to revitalize Center City. The American Bicentennial Celebration of 1976 charged these mayors with revitalizing Center City and in particular its Society Hill neighborhood, which was home to many historical sites important to the American Revolution. Plans for Society Hill called for new construction, and rejuvenating the area as a tourist destination, in the hopes of bringing white, middle-class residents back to the area (Feffer 795), which meant pushing out black residents as the city demolished low-income housing in Society Hill, which would become the historical center of Philadelphia. While focused on preserving the city’s history, however, The Society Hill Civic Association blocked the African American museum proposed for the neighborhood. Neighborhood groups objected to the museum on the grounds that placing the museum in Society Hill would take away from the neighborhood’s residential feel, and that the museum’s size violated zoning laws, but black groups sensed racism at the heart of these objections that would once again distance black Philadelphians from the city’s push for tourism and commerce in Center City (Feffer 802). The museum’s project manager, Gerard Williams, claimed that, ‘‘They would be against it even if it were the size of a matchbox’’ (Gould 1B). Because of the objections to the original proposal, Philadelphia’s African American museum was instead built several blocks north of Society Hill, near Chinatown. Along with the tensions between Center City government and areas of Philadelphia with higher black populations come tensions between black Philadelphians and the police. As police commissioner and mayor, Frank Rizzo targeted black citizens and was criticized for racial profiling and police brutality. The violence enacted by Philadelphia police officers was soon met by violence against these same officers. Most famously, Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed on December 9, 1981. Journalist and black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal was charged with and sentenced to die for the crime, sparking an international ‘‘Free Mumia’’ movement that has lasted for nearly thirty years as Abu-Jamal awaits execution. Abu-Jamal’s supporters cite evidence that suggests that Abu-Jamal did not commit the crime and should be freed, but government officials stand firm. Currently, both Abu-Jamal and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have appeals under review in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Racial tensions in Philadelphia rose even further on May 13, 1985, when Philadelphia police bombed a house in a standoff with members of MOVE, a largely black organization devoted to bringing a back-to-nature lifestyle to their life in the city. The movement was founded by John Africa, and according to some reports had been active since as early as 1968. MOVE rejected government law in favor the natural law of man. They were especially opposed to the law enforcement tactics of the Philadelphia police department and Mayors Frank Rizzo and Wilson Goode. MOVE was centered in West Philadelphia’s Powelton Village, near

The Sound of Philadelphia | 151 the campuses of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. Problems began when neighbors complained about the smells coming from the MOVE house. John Africa and his followers were animal lovers and vegetarians. They kept several dogs in the house, and dumped vegetables in their back yard, which created a rat problem in the neighborhood. The problems escalated when Philadelphia police responded to complaints from MOVE’s neighbors. In March 1976, police officers were involved in an altercation at the MOVE headquarters. MOVE members claimed that police had trampled and killed an infant in the struggle. Later that same year, police barricaded the MOVE headquarters and refused to let any food through to its members. A Philadelphia newspaper ran the headline ‘‘Rizzo: Get out or die.’’ In 1978, MOVE members killed a Philadelphia police officer in a shootout. In 1985, police bombarded the MOVE house, firing 10,000 rounds from automatic weapons and dropping a bomb from a helicopter, killing five MOVE members, including its founder, John Africa, and six children. The fire started by the bomb destroyed 61 houses and damaged about 110, leaving 250 Philadelphians homeless. These conflicts between black Philadelphians and the police coincided with the releases of some of Philadelphia’s contributions to hip hop music and culture, in particular graffiti art and the development of gangsta rap.

1967–1985: EARLY HIP HOP HISTORY Philadelphia’s earliest contribution to hip hop came in the form of graffiti art. Graffiti is one of the four central elements of hip hop culture—along with MCing, DJing, and b-boying (breakdancing)—and the element that came into existence first (although some graffiti writers, such as Lady Pink, insist that graffiti was a movement of its own, and should not be considered part of hip hop culture). By many accounts, it originated in Philadelphia. Although New York City became known for the train-bombing style of writing graffiti on subway cars that was featured in 1980s hip hop films such as Wild Style and Style Wars, the graffiti style that came to be associated with hip hop was born in Philadelphia. Graffiti, in the form of inscriptions and paintings on public walls and monuments date back to Ancient Rome, when graffiti was used to spread political messages, as well as literary quotations, curses, and spells. Widespread urban American graffiti originated in North Philadelphia, where street gangs in the 1960s used graffiti to mark territory. The materials were spray-paint and paint markers, and the effect was artistic vandalism. Graffiti’s detractors saw its vandalistic nature more than they saw its aesthetic sensibilities, but graffiti writers prided themselves both on their art and their crime. As Philadelphia’s Darryl ‘‘Cornbread’’ McCray put it in a 2001 interview with Philadelphia Weekly, ‘‘I was mad at the world. [Graffiti] was my way of getting even. This was my payback to the world’’ (Haegele). Cornbread and other early Philadelphia graffiti writers, such as Sub and Cool Earl, trace their artistic origins back to the mid-1960s, when they developed what became known as the Philadelphia style, marked by its tall, skinny letters, large,

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one-color wall tags, and Cornbread’s signature use of the arrow. The Vibe History of Hip Hop credits another Philly writer, TOP CAT, with introducing the Philly-style skinny letters to New York City graffitists when he moved to NYC in the early 1970s (Reeves 219). By the 1970s, graffiti art had evolved from basic tagging to more complex designs and murals. It had spread from North Philly to Center City, and was no longer limited to gang territorialism. Rather than mark walls to designate their turf, graffiti writers like Cornbread made the city their canvas. In a July 25, 1971 issue, the New York Times referred to Philadelphia as the ‘‘Graffiti Capital of The World’’ (31:3). In 1972, the Camden Courier-Post reported that it cost $1,000 a day to remove graffiti from Philadelphia’s City Hall complex. A graffiti writer called KAP the Bicentennial Kid even tagged the Liberty Bell in the weeks preceding the Fourth of July Bicentennial celebration in 1976. In response to what many citizens saw as a growing urban problem, the Philadelphia Museum of Art launched an initiative to commission murals to cover up graffitied walls around the city. Following the disbanding of the Art Museum outreach program in 1983, the City of Philadelphia, under the leadership of Mayor Wilson Goode, formed the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network (PAGN) in 1984. In 1986, the Mural Arts Project extended the work of PAGN and created a more sustainable version of the Art Museum’s earlier effort to beautify Philadelphia. Both PAGN and the Mural Arts Program remain in existence in 2007, and have produced over 2,700 murals throughout Philadelphia, which the Mural Arts Program Web site boasts is ‘‘more murals than any other city in the world.’’ While the Mural Arts Program was designed not only to counter vandalistic graffiti but to provide graffiti artists with a sanctioned space for their work and apprenticeships with established artists, the program’s murals preserve neither the Philadelphia style of graffiti nor graffiti’s original criminal element. Oldschool Philly graffiti is still preserved in murals in North Philly, tags in the Spring-Garden El station, and in the Philadelphia Folklore Project’s 1995 ‘‘Keep it Real’’ exhibition, which featured work from Philly graffiti luminaries like Enem, Dan One, Nope, and Kraz. Also, Philly is represented in film documentaries such as Doug Pray’s Infamy (2005), which features interviews with Enem, a graffiti writer from North Philly’s Germantown neighborhood and the curator of the Center City art gallery Union 237, a space devoted to urban art, including graffiti. Still, Enem shares a perspective with many other graffiti purists and critics of programs that seek to provide city-sanctioned spaces for creating art. As he says in Infamy, ‘‘If you are truly a graffiti writer, you cannot deny the fact that you are committing crimes,’’ and ‘‘Graffiti to me was war with the establishment, bombing corporate and government, big money stuff. I sure as hell got a big kick out of painting the City Hall annex building.’’ As graffiti kept Philadelphia officials busy repainting city walls and creating new regulations, hip hop’s other elements were heating up in Philly as well, and were no less controversial. During the 1980s, Philadelphia hip hop accomplished

The Sound of Philadelphia | 153 several firsts. In 1980, Lady B, one of the most influential radio DJs in hip hop, released ‘‘To the Beat Y’all,’’ making her the first solo female artist to release a rap single. Lady B’s greatest contribution to hip hop, though, is her work in bringing rap music to the radio. In fact, DJ Bobbito Garcia calls Lady B ‘‘arguably the most prominent female voice ever in hip hop radio’’ (73). Lady B began her radio career on Philadelphia’s WUSL, but is best known for her show ‘‘Street Beat’’ on Philly’s Power 99 FM, where she fought for the right to play controversial groups like Public Enemy. Her radio career spans three decades, and has earned her the Douglas ‘‘Jocko’’ Henderson Award. Currently, she broadcasts a show on Sirius Satellite Radio, and frequently hosts local hip hop events in Philly. Along with being home to the first woman to produce a hip hop record, and one of the first hip hop radio shows, Philadelphia is also the birthplace of gangsta rap, in that many rap artists, scholars, and music journalists agree that Schoolly D’s ‘‘Gangster Boogie’’ (1984) and ‘‘P.S.K. (What does it mean?)’’ (1986) were the first gangsta records ever released. These songs predated the use of the term ‘‘gangsta’’ to designate a subgenre of rap music, but Schoolly D (born Jesse B. Weaver, Jr, June 22, 1966) was the first MC to record lyrics devoted to guns and gang violence, two markers that would go on to distinguish the gangsta rap of artists like N.W.A. and Ice-T from other forms of rap music.

Schoolly D (Getty Images)

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In 1984, Schoolly D released the 12-inch single, ‘‘Maniac b/w Gangster Boogie’’ on his own Schoolly D Records. This single was a precursor to gangsta rap, but it was Schoolly’s 1985 single ‘‘P.S.K. (What does it mean?),’’ an ode to a street gang called the Park Side Killers, that inspired a new movement of West Coast rappers. Ice-T is often credited with initiating the hip hop subgenre of gangsta rap with his 1986 single ‘‘Six in the Morning,’’ but in an interview published in Canada’s Props Magazine, Ice-T spoke of Schoolly-D’s influence on his song: The first record that came out along those lines was Schoolly D’s ‘‘P.S.K.’’ Then the syncopation of that rap was used by me when I made ‘‘Six In The Morning.’’ The vocal delivery was the same: ‘‘ . . . P.S.K. is makin’ that green,’’ ‘‘ . . . six in the morning, police at my door.’’ When I heard that record I was like ‘‘Oh shit!’’ and call it a bite or what you will but I dug that record. (qtd in Davey D) Schoolly-D’s rhythm on ‘‘P.S.K.’’ became a hallmark of early gangsta rap. In the same interview, Ice-T traces Schoolly-D’s lineage forward to N.W.A’s ‘‘Boyz-NThe Hood,’’ where Eazy-E uses a similar syncopation to the one Ice-T borrowed from Schoolly-D. The influence of Schoolly D and DJ Code Money can also be heard on The Beastie Boys’ seminal rap album Licensed to Ill. The Beastie Boys sample Schoolly’s ‘‘Gucci Time’’ on their ‘‘Time to Get Ill,’’ and use the beat from ‘‘P.S.K. (What Does it Mean?)’’ when they play their song ‘‘The New Style’’ live. Initially, Schoolly D’s records were independent releases. Schoolly handled every aspect of his first two records, 1985’s Schoolly D and 1986’s Saturday Night, including production, distribution, and cover art design. These first two albums were reissued by Jive Records when Schoolly D signed with that label in 1986. Schoolly recorded four more albums for Jive, from 1987’s The Adventures of Schoolly D to 1991’s How a Black Man Feels. More recently, Schoolly has gone on to record the theme song for Cartoon Network’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force, a show for which he also provides narration and voices characters. While Schoolly D was developing the rhyme style that would become a hallmark of gangsta rap, his fellow Philadelphian MC Breeze (Joseph Ellis) earned the distinction of having the first rap song banned from the radio. Like Schoolly D, MC Breeze started his own record label, Breeze Records, and released the Discombobulatorlator EP in 1985, with money he had saved from a job delivering pizzas. With a nasal delivery that lay somewhere between Schoolly D and fellow old-schoolers Slick Rick and Dana Dane, Breeze opened ‘‘Discombobulatorlator’’ with the classic line ‘‘Every day I wake up and eat Cap’n Crunch . . . .’’ A controversial line in the song suggested that Chinese restaurants used dogs and cats in their food, and with tensions running high surrounding the issue of Asian businesses moving into black neighborhoods, Philadelphia’s mayor demanded the song be removed from radio playlists. Before it was banned, ‘‘Discombobulatorlator’’ was receiving over 500 requests per day at Philly’s Power 99 FM (MC

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Breeze Bio). MC Breeze, who went on to sign with MC Hammer’s Bust It Records in 1991, changed his recording name to Joey B. Ellis after Atlantic Records signed another artist named Breeze. On the strength of his Philadelphia roots, Joey B. Ellis recorded three songs for the soundtrack for Rocky V, an installment in the long-running film series about a Philadelphia boxer. One of these songs, ‘‘Go for It,’’ became the number 2 single in Germany. Before he became an international star, though, Breeze extended his fame beyond Philly when he beat New York rapper Just-Ice at the 1987 New Music Seminar, where Philadelphia DJs Cash Money and DJ Jazzy Jeff won the DJ competitions in a three-peat years from 1986 through 1988. At this point in hip hop history, no other city outside of New York was making the contributions that Philly was making to hip hop music.

1986–1990: THE GOLDEN ERA: PHILLY MAKES A NAME FOR ITSELF During the 1980s, Philly MCs and DJs were making a name for themselves at home and in New York City, the birthplace of hip hop music. Philadelphia’s proximity to New York City gave these new artists easy access to clubs in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, and thus kept Philly connected to the heartbeat of hip hop as an emerging industry. Yet Philadelphia had its own style, slang, and swagger that distinguished it from hip hop in the five boroughs. At the same time Schoolly D was writing the gangsta stories that would influence Ice-T and N.W.A, Philly’s DJs were innovating new techniques that expanded on the groundwork laid by Grandwizzard Theodore and Grandmaster Flash in NYC. Most importantly, Philadelphian DJs and MCs were winning battles against New York’s elite, and nowhere was this more evident than at the hip hop industry’s premier event for up-andcoming artists, the annual New Music Seminar Battle for World Supremacy. In his memoir, Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm, underground rap star MF Grimm relates the story of performing onstage at the 1989 New Music Seminar Battle for World Supremacy: If there was such a thing as the Super Bowl for emcees, it was the annual BATTLE FOR WORLD SUPREMACY. I remember seeing everyone from Treach to the GZA to Master Ace pay their dues at the battle. I knew if I wanted to be considered not only a REAL emcee, but one of the BEST, THIS was where I had to prove it. (51) Early victories in the Battle for World Supremacy by several Philadelphia artists certify the strength of Philly hip hop in the 1980s. Philadelphia DJs had a particularly strong showing, winning the New Music Seminar DJ Battle for World Supremacy three years in a row from 1986 to 1988. In 1986 DJ Jazzy Jeff won the DJ Battle, and he was succeeded in 1987 by his fellow Philadelphian DJ Cash Money, who was succeeded in 1988 by Philly’s DJ Miz. In other Philly showings at

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the 1987 Battle for World Supremacy, MC Breeze defeated Just Ice, and Disco C defeated Kool Keith of the Bronx group Ultramagnetic MCs. DJ Cash Money went on to win the DMC World Championship, another important battle, in 1988. Philadelphia’s DJs repeatedly defeated New York DJs to take home top honors at DMC and the New Music Seminar. DJs had long been at the center of neighborhood crews across Philly. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the DJ was the focus of attention at block parties and live hip hop events, but in the late 1980s, as hip hop took on a larger market share on commercial radio, and with the advent, in 1988, of the popular video program Yo! MTV Raps, the DJ was taking a back seat to the MC, who was becoming the face of rap music on radio and television. Will Smith, the Fresh Prince, had the charm and humor it took to succeed on MTV. Yo! MTV Raps brought hip hop into suburban homes across the country, and the teenage themes of the 1988 hit single ‘‘Parents Just Don’t Understand,’’ by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, made for a poppy, accessible hit song. So did their hit ‘‘Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble,’’ which sampled the theme song from the television sitcom ‘‘I Dream of Jeanie.’’ When DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince won rap’s first Grammy in 1989, they joined in a boycott of the ceremony along with LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and Salt-N-Pepa. These rappers were upset because the 1989 Grammys was the first to include rap and heavy metal—the metal awards were to be included in the televised portion of the ceremony while the rap awards were not. Although DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince were taking their music nationwide, and worldwide, they remained close to their Philly roots and represented Philadelphia in their songs and music videos. The video for ‘‘I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson’’ featured Will Smith running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (Photofest)

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Art, an homage to the film Rocky, which was set in Philly and featured a training montage that popularized running up the art museum steps for generations of tourists to come. Further, they collaborated with fellow Philadelphian Ice Cream Tee on ‘‘Guys Ain’t Nothing but Trouble,’’ an answer record to ‘‘Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble.’’ Today, The Fresh Prince (Will Smith) is best known as an actor. In launching his career as a television sitcom actor and then a major motion picture star, Will Smith took hip hop further into the mainstream and brought Philadelphia with him. ‘‘In West Philadelphia, born and raised’’ begins the theme song to the television sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the series that helped Will Smith make the transition from one half of the Philadelphia rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince to one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars. West Philadelphia is home to University City and the main campuses of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, yet West Philadelphia’s two districts are also the most dangerous in the city, with 51 murders in 2006. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air addressed the dangerous nature of West Philadelphia in the pilot episode, in which Smith’s character, at the insistence of his protective mother, moves from West Philly to his wealthy uncle’s home in a posh Bel-Air neighborhood. Although the series acknowledged Philadelphia’s problems, especially as they faced young black men, it made clear Smith’s devotion to and love of the city that he had called home. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ran from 1990 to 1996, and was a fish-out-of-water story that followed Will Smith’s character, Will, as he was sent away from the rough West Philly neighborhood where he grew up to live in safer environs of his rich uncle’s house in L.A. Will Smith was the sitcom’s star, but Jazzy Jeff played a recurring role as Jazz, Will’s friend who was continually ejected from the mansion by Uncle Phil. Throughout its six-year run, the show maintained a focus on Will’s nostalgia for the Philly he left behind. The show launched Will Smith’s career as a Hollywood actor, while DJ Jazzy Jeff turned away from opportunities in L.A.’s music scene to return to Philly and concentrate on production work and his studio, A Touch of Jazz. In 2006, DJ Jazzy Jeff released a comeback album, featuring vocals from Method Man, De La Soul’s Posdnous, and many other rap luminaries. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince have become synonymous with Philadelphia hip hop in the 1980s and early 1990s, often to the exclusion of their contemporaries who did not see such nationwide success. One recent release, however, is dedicated to preserving the history of those forgotten groups. In 2008, the British group Aroe & The Soundmakers collaborated with DJ Too Tuff and L.A. Kid from the 1980s Philly rap group the Tuff Crew to create a mixtape called The Wreckshop Philly Golden Era Vol. 1. The mixtape is a retrospective collection of songs from 31 different Philadelphia hip hop artists from the 1980s and early 1990s. From the more familiar sounds of The Roots, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and Schoolly D, to the more obscure songs from groups like the Dominating MCs

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and Intellectuals of Rhyme, The Wreckshop provides a comprehensive crosssection of the various sounds to come out of Philly during this golden era. Late 1980s contemporaries of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince include Steady B, Cool C, Three Times Dope, Larry Larr, Too Brown, Plush Brothers, Prelitique & MC Sweet, Von Love, 3rd Dynasty, Hip City Swingers, Mac Money, Bizzy B, Mobb Sqwad, Baritone Tip Love, Phill Most Chill, Another 1 4 U 2 N V, Rock Hard Delegation, Todd 1, Lightnin’ Lee & Poppy P, Jewel T, Ice Cream Tee, and Tuff Crew—a group made up of DJ Too Tuff, Tone Love, Monty G, Ice Dog, and L.A. Kid. Tuff Crew’s 1987 debut, Phanjam, a collaboration with Camden, New Jersey’s Krown Rulers, featured production work by Ced Gee and Kool Keith, members of the legendary New York group Ultramagnetic MCs. Listeners familiar with Ultramagnetic will hear the similarities in Tuff Crew’s production and rhyme styles, although Tuff Crew brought distinct Philadelphia themes to their music with songs like ‘‘My Part of Town.’’ Just as DJ crews dominated Philadelphia in the early 1980s, MC crews carried forward this tradition of the collective, whether in formal groups such as Tuff Crew or in looser collectives such as The Hilltop Hustlers, which consisted of solo artists like Cool C and Steady B, who recorded for Hilltop Hustlers Records. The Wreckshop includes Cool C’s ‘‘Juice Crew Dis,’’ with which the Philly artist weighed in on the Bronx vs. Queens dis records such as Boogie Down Productions’ ‘‘South Bronx’’ and MC Shan’s ‘‘The Bridge.’’ Bronx artists challenged Queens’s Juice Crew over which New York borough was the true home of hip hop, and Cool C entered the fray from the Philadelphia hotbed of hip hop 100 miles south of New York. Aside from Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, most of the artists included on The Wreckshop stopped releasing music by 1992. Will Smith was concentrating more on his career in television and film, and The Roots—avatars of the next wave of Philly hip hop—had not yet released their debut album, 1993’s Organix. The early 1990s saw Philadelphia hip hop briefly move out of the limelight it had enjoyed in the 1980s. The hip hop market was changing across the United States: the unprecedented sales achieved by MC Hammer in 1990, and Vanilla Ice in 1991, met with a backlash when a Dallas journalist revealed that Rob ‘‘Vanilla Ice’’ Van Winkle had fabricated his official artist bio to make himself look like he came from a rougher background than he actually did. The reaction against the polished, flashy pop rap of artists like Hammer and Vanilla Ice caused many listeners to turn toward more street-oriented sounds that they associated with hip hop’s origins in impoverished neighborhoods. This shift in sound and style left behind Philly artists like MC Breeze, Ice Cream Tee, and even DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, who were becoming more known for their sitcom than for being musical innovators. The Fresh Prince’s brand of pop rap was being pushed aside in favor of the grittier sounds of New York groups like Das EFX, and the burgeoning g-funk sound that L.A.’s Dr. Dre had begun to develop on N.W.A’s 1991 album Efil4zaggin and the 1992 single, ‘‘Deep Cover,’’ which

The Sound of Philadelphia | 159 debuted Snoop Dogg and the laid-back Cali-bama rhyme flow that would make him famous. Two Philly groups that did hit the airwaves between 1990 and 1992 were loosely connected with hip hop. The first group, Boyz II Men, was a singing group with hip hop production. In their own words on their song ‘‘Motownphilly,’’ the group describes its sound as ‘‘hip hop smoothed out on the R&B tip, with a pop feel, appeal, to it.’’ They were managed by Michael Bivins (Biv of Bell Biv Devoe), and part of the East Coast Family, along with Bell Biv Devoe and the child rappers Another Bad Creation. The second group, The Goats, were a precursor to the rap-rock styles of Limp Bizkit, who would dominate the airwaves later in the decade. They were a multiethnic group. They were very political. Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar credits their 1992 album Tricks of the Shade as ‘‘one of the most feministoriented hip-hop CDs to date’’ (100). The Goats broke up after their second album, 1994’s No Goats, No Glory. One Goats MC, Maxx Stoyanoff-Williams, moved to Berlin, Germany and released an album under the name Hack Tao, before returning to Philly to record with the group Black Landlord.

1993–1998: THE GREAT ROOTS MOVEMENT 1993 was a turning point for hip hop in Philadelphia; it marked the end of the old school and the emergence of The Roots. Although the lineup of the group has changed over time, the two consistent and most iconic members of the Roots are drummer and producer Questlove (Ahmir Khalib Thompson, born January 20, 1971), and MC Black Thought (Tariq Luqmaan Trotter, born October 3, 1972).

The Roots (Getty Images)

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Both raised in Philadelphia, Questlove and Black Thought met while attending the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where Questlove received some formal musical training to add to his years of practice at home. Questlove’s father was a member of the doo-wop band Lee Andrews and the Hearts, and Questlove had gotten an early musical education playing percussion with this band. Black Thought became involved in music at an early age as well; he attended the same elementary school as Beanie Sigel, and the two MCs performed together in their first rap group as youngsters. Before releasing an album in 1993, The Roots began performing on Philadelphia’s South Street (see sidebar: South Street), near the intersection of South and Broad. The Roots are best known for breaking hip hop tradition and its rules of production to create albums, such as their 1993 debut, Organix, without the use of digital sampling technologies. Rather than using the samplers and drum machines that had formed the basis of hip hop production since the 1970s, The Roots featured an MC, Black Thought, backed by a band of live musicians on drums, upright bass, and guitar. In their early days, most of The Roots musicians played acoustic instruments, but they later added keyboards, an electric bass, and various other instruments. Since the late 1990s, the group has increasingly employed the hip hop sampling that they originally eschewed. The Roots debuted in the era of jazz-rap, following the release of Guru’s Jazzmatazz and A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, an album which featured jazz musician Ron Carter on bass. Along with other hip hop musicians such as Nashville’s Count Bass D, the Roots were both criticized and applauded for incorporating traditional instrumentation with hip hop. The very approach to making music that drew the critics to their work also alienated hip hop purists who felt that The Roots were moving away from hip hop’s original aesthetic. Since The Roots debuted, however, many other rap artists such as Wyclef Jean, Andre 3000, and Lil Wayne have picked up guitars. Although their organic approach to making music is what first drew the critics’ attention to The Roots, Black Thought’s MC skills cannot be ignored. Veteran MC Masta Ace includes Black Thought in his list of The 24 Most Overlooked MCs in Hip Hop in Greenwood Press’s Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture. Ace writes that, ‘‘Thought’s lyrical ability sometimes gets overshadowed and often drowned out by the great Roots movement’’ (605). Black Thought’s skill is perhaps lost in the attention given to the group’s live instrumentation, and the revolving cast of Roots members and collaborators, including Rahzel—a beatboxer who brought back this element of hip hop culture that had been neglected or considered outdated since the mid-1980s—and keyboardist Scott Storch, who went on to become a producer in his own right. The Roots are also notable for their inclusion of women. Bahamadia guest starred on ‘‘Put Your Lighters Up’’ and ‘‘Da Jawn.’’ On the Grammy-winning ‘‘You Got Me,’’ Erykah Badu sang a chorus written by Philadelphian Jill Scott.

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SOUTH STREET Long known as a stronghold of African American businesses, Philadelphia’s South Street is the border between Center City and South Philadelphia. This border plays a key role in neighborhood identity and the history of race relations in Philadelphia, where Center City is a safe enclave from the high rates of violent crime in West Philly, North Philly, and South Philly. The historically Italian South Philadelphia neighborhoods such as Bella Vista, Southwark, and the Italian Market have opened up to more black, Latino, and Asian populations, making the area very ethnically diverse, as is evidenced by the plethora of different food choices around South Street and South Philadelphia. The Italian Market, a few blocks from South Street, now houses Italian cheese shops and bakeries along with Mexican grocery stores, Asian fish markets, and competing cheesesteak spots, including Pat’s and Geno’s. The tension between groups in the area is evidenced by the recent controversy over a sign at Geno’s Cheeseteaks, which reads, ‘‘This is America: When Ordering Please ‘Speak English.’ ’’ South Street is also a musical landmark. Black Thought and Questlove of the Roots played on South Street regularly throughout the 1990s. South Street housed Philadelphia’s now-defunct Tower Records, as well as local record stores Repo Records, and now-defunct Cue Records (one block from South Street on Fourth). Hip hop groups often perform at the Fillmore at the TLA (Theater of Living Arts), a small venue which hosted an exclusive, intimate show from Jay-Z in 2008. Beginning in the 1990s, South Street has emerged as a popular nightlife spot, with new bars, clubs, and restaurants opening among the African hair-braiding shops, occult shops, and reggae record stores. The diversity of businesses along South Street testifies to the power South Street has in bringing groups of people together. In a late 2007 issue of Philadelphia Weekly, Jim Sutcliffe reminisced about his favorite moment in Philadelphia music history: the Roots’ Saturday afternoon shows on South Street in the early 1990s. ‘‘It’s hard to remember that in 1990 hip hop was not ubiquitous like it is today,’’ Sutcliffe wrote. ‘‘It was marginalized, and the Roots just did it so well and then insisted on taking it to the people. All the people: the hip-hop heads, the skate punks, the old hippies, Goths. I can’t remember how long that went on. But that was a moment where you felt like something new, different, and real could happen on the streets of Philadelphia’’ (McManus 21).

REFERENCE McManus, Brian. ‘‘Of Sound Mind: Philly Music Insiders Remember Their Favorite Moments.’’ Philadelphia Weekly, December 26, 2007–January 1, 2008, 20–26.

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Jill Scott grew up in North Philadelphia and began her career as a spoken word artist. Philadelphian and Live Nation Director of Marketing Jim Sutcliffe calls Jill Scott the ‘‘Greatest Philadelphia performer of my generation, hands down.’’ In a late 2007 issue of Philadelphia Weekly, Sutcliffe described Scott’s 2001 twonight hometown shows at the Tower as ‘‘something beyond a normal concert experience, where the relationship between performer and audience is changed. All of a sudden, you’re not in a concert hall or theater—you’re part of something greater. A mini-community is formed for the night, and we’re all going on this poetic, inspiring, soulful, boundary-pushing journey together’’ (McManus, ‘‘Of Sound Mind’’ 24). The Roots continue to be a force in hip hop. 2008’s Rising Down was one of the most anticipated albums of the year.

1999–2008: PHILLY MEETS THE RUFF RYDERS AND ROC-A-FELLA The wealth of rap artists to come out of Philadelphia in the past decade includes a strong contingent from New York’s Roc-a-Fella label, which signed Philadelphians Beanie Sigel, Freeway, Young Gunz, State Property, and O & Sparks. Outside these Roc-A-Fella artists, MCs like Eve, Cassidy, Major Figgas, and Gillie da Kid have risen to the top of Philadelphia’s hip hop scene. Lady B brought hip hop to Philadelphia’s airwaves in the 1980s, and the city’s hip hop scene has supported women MCs and DJs ever since. Eve Jihan Jeffers’ (born November 10, 1978) music career started like so many Philadelphia artists, in high school. Her career started with the all-girl group, Dope Girl Posse, or D.G.P. Shortly after, she joined the all-girl rap group, EDGP (Egypt). Eve’s success as a female MC is paralleled by few . . . Foxy Brown, Lil Kim, and Missy Elliott. Eve has sold more than seven million records. Initially a member of The Ruff Ryders, Eve’s first album, Let There Be Eve . . . Ruff Ryders’ First Lady (1999), entered the charts at #1. Her second album, Scorpion (2001), scored her a # 2 single and a Grammy with ‘‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’’ featuring Gwen Stefani. Eve’s third ablum, Eve-Olution (2002), peaked at #6 on the Billboard charts, but was considered an overall commercial flop. She has since released two singles, including the hit ‘‘Tambourine’’ (2006), off her highly anticipated album, Here I Am. Jay-Z provided a guest verse for a remix of ‘‘Tambourine’’ that same year. Like Will Smith before her, Eve has had several successful forays into other commercial realms outside music. Her clothing line, ‘‘Fetish,’’ has done well, and she did voice over work for the Spiderman cartoon (2003), and the video game XIII. However, it is her acting career that has garnered her the most attention, outside of music. Eve has appeared in the successful films: XXX (2002), Barbershop (2002), Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004), The Cookout (2004), and The Woodsman (2005). Further, she starred in her own sitcom, Eve (2003–2006).

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Eve (Lucas Jackson/Reuters/Corbis)

Along with Eve, Philadelphia’s major contingent in mainstream hip hop since 2000 has been the several artists and groups signed to Roc-A-Fella Records, the influential label founded by Damon Dash and Jay-Z that brought new Philadelphia artists into the mainstream. Beanie Sigel (Dwight Grant, born March 6, 1974), aka ‘‘Beans’’ and the ‘‘Broad Street Bully,’’ took his stage name from Sigel Street, the South Philadelphia street where he grew up. Sigel’s consistent legal troubles and frequent incarcerations notwithstanding, he has released four albums in his 10-year career: The Truth (2000), The Reason (2001), The B. Coming (2005), and The Solution (2007). While Roc-A-Fella’s Web site describes the The B. Coming as Sigel’s ‘‘most pondering and lyrically gripping opus,’’ Sigel prefers his most recent album, The Solution, because, ‘‘I give you both sides. In order to find the solution you have to find what the problem is first’’ (DeLuca). Most of the tracks from The Solution were recorded with live musicians, and cover topics such as teen pregnancy, poverty, and crime. With the release of The Solution in 2007, Sigel, one of Philadelphia’s most recognized artists, became the city’s most conflicted and contradictory figure in regards to hip hop’s relationship to crime. Sigel recorded a public service announcement and launched a television campaign to urge Philly’s black youth to stop killing each other. Sigel himself, however, has served jail time and been

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charged with attempted murder (in 2003). Plus, his lyrics call attention to his criminal history, a feature of his music that Sigel links to the fictional stories told in action films and mafia pictures. Sigel claimed that although his own lyrics would seem to promote violence, that his songs are fictional in nature, and should not be heard as his advocating violent crime. Comments from Sigel on BET’s Hip Hop vs. America blog drew the ire of Philadelphia Weekly Music Editor Brian McManus, who pointed out the contradictions between Sigel’s statements that his violent lyrics are fictional in the same vein as films that depict the Italian mafia, and his comments on VH1.com’s Hip Hop vs. America blog, where Sigel wrote that rappers must live out the stories told in their lyrics because fans will investigate their backgrounds and discredit them for telling stories about a violent culture if they didn’t grow up in one. McManus further criticizes Sigel for his hypocrisy in issuing an anti-violence PSA while opening his 2007 album The Solution with the song ‘‘All the Above,’’ in which Sigel boasts, ‘‘Mr. Beat the Case is back!’’ McManus asserts that although Sigel claims that his lyrics are as fictional as a Hollywood screenplay, this line is ‘‘made much more effective when you consider Sigel has, in fact, beaten a real-life case (for attempted murder, no less)’’ (McManus, ‘‘Full Metal Racket’’ 29). During Philadelphia’s Peace Week in 2007, Sigel teamed up with comedian and Philly native Bill Cosby to lead an anti-violence march through the streets of Philadelphia. Visiting North Philadelphia’s Bartram High School with his prote´ge´ Freeway in December 2007, Sigel told the students, ‘‘You know why I call myself gangsta? Cause I go home and do homework with my children.’’ The apparent contradiction between this message and the stories Sigel tells on his albums made the speech a tough sell to the 9th and 10th graders at the assembly (Gregory 9). Sigel’s claim to have turned over a new leaf was further complicated when he violated his parole in traveling to Atlantic City. Although he was sentenced to only one day in prison for the parole violation, it was ironic that Sigel’s crusade against crime ended with his return to prison. Since signing to Roc-A-Fella in 2000, Sigel has promoted State Property, a hip hop group, label, and clothing company he founded. As a group, State Property includes Beanie Sigel, Freeway, the Young Guns (Young Chris and Neef), Peedi Crakk, Oschino, and Omillio Sparks. State Property’s first official release was the 2002, Roc-A-Fella soundtrack to the movie, State Property, starring Sigel, Sparks, Memphis Bleek, and Damon Dash. The album’s gritty nature represents Philadelphia’s rough streets, with the song ‘‘Bitch Niggas’’ following the city’s strong anti-snitching stance. The Chain Gang Vol 2 (Def Jam 2003) is the second, and final State Property album. Beanie Sigel is noticeably absent from the album, as he was incarcerated on a federal weapons charge. There was discord within the band when Sigel planned to move the group to the Damon Dash Music Group following Dash’s split from Roc-A-Fella. The decision went against the other member’s desire to stay on Roc-A-Fella with Jay-Z. Sigel officially disbanded the group in 2005 after the group’s failure to visit him while

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he was in jail. Recently, members of the group have reunited, and are working on a new album, State Property III. Aside from Beanie Sigel, the most visible member of State Property is arguably Freeway (Dexter Collins, born July 8, 1979), who, like Miami’s Rick Ross, took his name from the notorious drug trafficker ‘‘Freeway’’ Ricky Ross. Freeway is known for his long beard, which is in keeping with his Muslim faith. Freeway became a member of the Roc-A-Fella crew in 2000, and made his debut on ‘‘1-900-Hustler’’ from Jay-Z’s album, The Dynasty: Roc La Famillia. Freeway’s discography consists of two albums: Philadelphia Freeway (2003), and Free at Last (2007). He has collaborated with Kanye West, Jay-Z, The Diplomats, Paul Wall, DJ Khaled, and Nelly. Another member of State Property and a group in its own right, Young Gunz is comprised of Young Chris (Christopher F. Ries) and Young Neef (Haneef Muhammad). The rap duo grew up in the northern Philadelphia neighborhood of Nicetown, Chris & Neef sold drugs in an attempt to get their families out of the ghetto. After they decided to become rappers, though they continued to sell drugs on the side. They had garnered the interest of several rap labels by high school, eventually signing to Roc-A-fella records. After several guest appearances on tracks by Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel, Freeway and more, they released their debut album, Tough Luv (2003). The album features the top 20 single, ‘‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop,’’ while the album peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Young Gunz followed Tough Luv with the less successful album, Brothers from Another (2005). In 2007, Young Chris released a flurry of mixtapes, including Killadelphia: More Bodies than Days and Young Chris-mas. Young Gunz have also created their on label, Young Gunz Media, which released their latest album, Rapid Fire (January 2008). The final members of State Property were Peedi Peedi and O & Sparks (Oschino Vasquez and Omillion Sparks). O& Sparks signed to Roc-A-Fella in 1999, but have since broken up and left Roc-A-Fella. Vasquez has collaborated with Jay-Z, Jadakiss, Kanye West, Just Blaze, and Timbaland, and is currently unsigned. Omillion Sparks is CEO of Colossal Entertainment under the Koch Records imprint. He released his solo debut album, The Payback, on August 28, 2007. Peedi Peedi (Pedro Zayas, born September 25, 1978), formerly known as Peedi Crakk, was another member of State Property. Peedi’s debut single, ‘‘One for Peedi,’’ was featured on the 2002 Paid in Full soundtrack. Peedi’s career has been limited by legal trouble, including a weapons charge in 2002. Recently, he has completed his debut album, and is due out mid-2008. However, Peedi was recently dropped from RocA-Fella, which may delay the album’s release. Outside of the Roc-A-Fella and State Property contingents, one of Philly’s most visible stars is Cassidy (born Barry Adrian Reese on July 7, 1982), who started rapping in Philadelphia at the age of 13. Known for his 2006 hit ‘‘I’m a Hustla,’’ in which he sampled Jay-Z’s voice and mimicked Jay’s line ‘‘you made it a hot line, I made it a hot song.’’ Jay originally used this line to dis his then-rival Nas,

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but Cassidy effectively redirected Jay’s own dis back at himself. In 2004, Cassidy released his first album, Split Personality, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200. The lead single, ‘‘Hotel,’’ featured R Kelly. The song was a top 10 hit, and Cassidy went on to be nominated for ‘‘Lyricist of the Year’’ at the Source Awards. Cassidy’s second album, I’m a Hustla, reached #5 on the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks. The ringtone, ‘‘I’m a Hustla,’’ was one of the first to be certified platinum. The second single, ‘‘The Message,’’ was released as charity to support the Millions More Movement, a coalition lead by Minister Louis Farrakhan. Cassidy’s third album, B.A.R.S. The Barry Adrian Reese Story, featured the hit single ‘‘My Drink N’ My 2 Step.’’ The album reached #10 on the Billboard 200. Cassidy’s personal life has been filled with strife. He was arrested on June 8, 2005 for a murder that occurred in the Philadelphia neighborhood, West Oak Lane. Cassidy was eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of aggravated assault. He served 15 months in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. Cassidy was also seriously injured on October 5, 2006, when a large truck collided with his SUV. He suffered a fractured skull, and several broken bones. Although he has not reached Cassidy’s level of mainstream success, fellow Philadelphian Gillie da Kid’s career has also been overshadowed by his personal struggles. Gillie (Sar’d Nasir) has been arrested multiple times, one instance involving almost one million dollars in seized marijuana. He was also shot three times (twice in the arms, once in the leg) while exiting his vehicle on June 12, 2007. Gillie is perhaps best known not for his music, but for his claim to have ghostwritten lyrics for the rap superstar Lil Wayne. Gillie was originally signed to Cash Money Records, but he left the label due to alleged publishing and payment issues. His claim has been vehemently denied by Wayne and Cash Money, most famously on 2007’s Da Drought 3 (on ‘‘I Can’t Feel My Face,’’ Wayne refers to a ‘‘shirt softer than Gillie’’), and in a BET Rap City Basement freestyle in which Lil Wayne rhymed, ‘‘I don’t have time to deal with Willie the Squid.’’ Along with his solo releases, Gillie also records as a member of the North Philadelphia group, Major Figgas, which originally consisted of Gillie da Kid and Bumpy Johnson rapping together while enrolled at Cabrini College. Members slowly started joining the group, first Dutch and Spade, followed by Ab Liva, The 1st Lady Bianca, and Lil Ruckie. The group released a series of mix tapes, which brought them major label attention. However, Major Figgas chose to release their debut album, Figgas 4 Life (1999), independently. Shortly afterward, the album was remixed and re-released by RuffNation Records. In 2000, the group had their first and only hit, ‘‘Yeah That’s Us.’’ In 2008, Gillie Da Kid released King of Philly on his own label, Figga 4 Life Entertainment, and released the single and music video ‘‘Get Down on da Ground.’’ The song samples dialogue from the 1987 Coen brothers film Raising Arizona, creating a memorable hook that Gillie blends into his verses, letting the sampled dialogue finish his lines and creating multiple contexts for the sampled line ‘‘Get down on the ground.’’ The song was produced by Philly’s Barry ‘‘Slim’’

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THE UNDERGROUND SOUND OF PHILADELPHIA Although Cassidy, Eve, Beanie Sigel, Young Gunz, and the other Roc-A-Fella groups from Philadelphia have achieved more mainstream attention, Philly is also home to a thriving underground hip hop scene. Hip hop lives in Philadelphia, in small venues such as Silk City, Fluid, the M-Room, Johnny Brenda’s, and the Kyber. Philadelphia’s underground scene includes Last Emperor, the selfproclaimed ‘‘underground rapper who lives in a Hobbit hole’’ (on Pack FM’s ‘‘Complex Simplicity’’). Last Emperor has recorded tracks with rap luminaries such as RZA, Cocoa Brovaz, and Da Beatminerz, and appears with KRS-One and Zach De La Rocha of Rage Against the Machine on ‘‘C.I.A (Criminals in

URBAN X-PRESSIONS The long-running hip hop television show Urban X-pressions deserves credit for exposing Philadelphians to new hip hop artists, both local and national, over the past 15 years. Hosted by comedian Keith from up da Block, the show features a mix of exclusive live performances, open mic competitions, profiles of area artists, and interviews with hip hop stars, athletes, politicians, and film actors. Broadcast across the Delaware Valley, Urban X-Pressions is a vital part of the broader hip hop community surrounding Philadelphia. Although the show travels to cover events such as The Million Women March, it maintains rooted in the local music scene, and provides exposure to hip hop artists in Philly and Delaware, as well as Trenton and Camden, New Jersey, and other suburbs. The show is also known for its dedication to youth outreach. Producer Shelly Williams founded X-pressions, Inc., a mentoring program that brings local teens into the Urban X-Pressions studio to experience working in TV production. The show also sponsors a ‘‘Teen Talk’’ segment, educational public service announcements, and tours of area high schools and middle schools. In 2007, Urban X-pressions developed and produced a spin-off show, Club UX, a dance show with teenage hosts. Urban X-pressions began broadcasting in April 1993 on WGTW TV 48, and held the same 11:30–1:00 AM time slot for 11 years, until the show moved to WYBE TV 35, where it currently airs twice a week: Wednesday nights from 12:30 AM to 1:30 AM and Saturday afternoons from 2 to 3 PM.

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Action)’’ on the Rawkus Records Compilation Soundbombing. Other new artists include Hezekiah, 84, Joey Jihad, Dave Ghetto (from across the river in Camden, New Jersey), Writtenhouse, and Reef the Lost Cauze. Reef’s 2005 album Feast or Famine runs the gamut from a dis against the nerdrap of white artists like MC Paul Barman and Deuce Leader, to ‘‘How to Lose Your Mind,’’ a humorous story of what happens when Reef’s character drops out of college and is forced to move back in with his mother. Although Kanye West’s College Dropout was a bigger hit, Reef’s ‘‘How You Lose Your Mind’’ also addresses the repercussions of dropping out of college. ‘‘Eyes of my Father’’ revises the typical hip hop ‘‘cliche´, Daddy, I miss you songs’’ as recorded by rap luminaries from Tupac to Jay-Z. Reef is at the center of the current hip hop scene in Philly. Aside from his solo releases, he has recorded with the group Army of the Pharaohs and belongs to the collective Juju Mob, along with Chief Kamachi. Philly has been home to hip hop collectives since the 1980s and the reign of neighborhood DJ crews, such as the Network Crew and DJ Master Vik and the Super MCs. Groups like the Hilltop Hustlers and Tuff Crew ruled Philly in the 1980s, and more recent groups like State Property extend this tradition. In 2008, underground crews like Juju Mob, Skratch Makanics, Illvibe Collective, and the supergroup Army of the Pharoahs provide a support system to MCs and DJs trying to forge a career in rap music. Such crews and collectives are central to hip hop, from Brooklyn’s Boot Camp Clik to Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan to the Twin Cities’ Headshots collective. On ‘‘Rock Co. Kane Flow,’’ De La Soul calls out the ‘‘camps and cliques, units, squads, crews, and clans’’ that imbue hip hop with a team mentality. In the current underground scene in Philly, the mega-collective Army of the Pharaohs includes the group Jedi Mind Tricks, along with Chief Kamachi, Reef the Lost Cauze, Doap Nixon, Outerspace, Celph Titled, and former member Virtuoso. Philly’s DJ scene remains vital as well. In 2008, for the inaugural issue of Two One Five Magazine, contributor Adam Garcia conducted a roundtable discussion with several of Philly’s most recognized DJs. Hollertronix is a combination of Diplo and Low Budget, who made their name by combining several unlikely genres of music, including a wide range of international music, into their Hollertronix mixtapes and parties. The wealth of underground artists in the current Philadelphia scene indicates that hip hop is far from dead in the City of Brotherly Love. In hip hop, ‘‘underground’’ is more of a stylistic designation, and is not synonymous with local and unheard-of outside of Philly. In 2007, Hezekiah debuted a video on MTV, and in 2008, Philly’s hip hop scene received international attention on at least three albums. Along with London’s Aero and the Soundmen, who released The Wreckshop Philly Golden Era Vol. 1, the Brooklyn-to-Philly transplant Traum Diggs released The Essential Traum Diggs Mixtape, produced by DJ Knew Rulz in London. And in what may be the greatest testament to the future of Philadelphia hip hop, the German production team The Snow Goons traveled to Philadelphia to record with local MCs Reef the Lost Cauze, Chief Kamachi, Equinox, and Maylay

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BACK2BASICS Back2Basics is a popular and long-standing event in the Philadelphia club scene. Founded by DJs King Britt and Dozia, Back2Basics began in 1990, running two nights a week: Monday featured a DJ and live band, and Saturday featured DJs. King Britt founded Back2Basics at Silk City, a club on Spring Garden Street, in 1990, while he was working at Tower Records, playing at another event called Vagabond, and taking classes at Temple University. Back2Basics became so successful that Britt dropped out of Temple, quit his day job, and turned down rapper Butterfly’s (Ishmael Butler) request to join his group Digable Planets, which included the Philadelphia rapper Craig ‘‘Doodlebug’’ Irving, as well as Ladybug Mecca (Mary Ann Vieria), from Washington D.C. Butterfly himself hailed from Seattle, making Digable Planets one of the first rap groups made up of musicians from multiple cities. Butler was persistent in his pursuit of King Britt. Digable Planets was signed to a major label and he wanted King Britt in the group. Britt relented and joined Digable Planets, taking on the name Silkworm to fit with the insect-themed stage names of his new bandmates. Digable Planets went on to tour internationally, win a Grammy award for their 1993 debut album Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), and reach number 15 on the Billboard singles chart with their song ‘‘Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat).’’ The group broke up shortly after the release of its 1994 sophomore album, Blowout Comb. King Britt returned to Philadelphia and kept his Back2Basics party running until 2000. In 2007, after a long hiatus, Back2Basics started back up on Monday nights at Silk City.

Sparks. Much of the album was recorded by the Philly-area producer Stress at Chop Shop Studio in the suburb of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, and at Found Sound Recording in Philly. With this international attention to the past, present, and future of Philadelphia hip hop, Philly’s legacy is ensured.

REFERENCES Anastasia, George. ‘‘The Takedown of Ace Capone.’’ Philadelphia Inquirer. November 10, 2007. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/special/20071110_The _Takedown_of_Ace_Capone.html (accessed August 11, 2008). Assefa, Hizkias, and Paul Wahrhaftig. The MOVE Crisis in Philadelphia: Extremist Groups and Conflict Resolution. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. Carey, Percy, and Ronald Wimberly. Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm. New York: DC Comics, 2007.

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Carter, Angela. ‘‘Touch and Go: How DJ Jazzy Jeff’s Studio Spawned a Musical Legacy.’’ Two One Five Magazine 1, no. 2 (2008): 15–20. Countryman, Matthew J. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Davey D. ‘‘Ice T Speaks.’’ Davey D’s Ultimate Interview Directory. Davey D with eLine Productions. http://www.daveyd.com/iceprops.html (accessed June 7, 2008). DeLuca, Dan. ‘‘Beanie Sigel Says He Has ‘The Solution’ for Hip-Hop.’’ Pop Matters, December 13, 2007. http://www.popmatters.com/pm/news/article/52043/ beanie-sigel-says-he-has-the-solution-for-hip-hop/ (accessed August 2, 2008). Devereaux, Andrew. ‘‘ ‘What Chew Know About Down the Hill?’: Baltimore Club Music, Subgenre Crossover, and the New Subcultural Capital of Race and Space.’’ Journal of Popular Music Studies 19, no. 4 (2007): 311–41. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899. Feffer, Andrew. ‘‘Show Down in Center City: Staging Redevelopment and Citizenship in Bicentennial Philadelphia, 1974–1977.’’ Journal of Urban History 30, no. 6 (September 2004): 791–825. Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and HipHop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Garcia, Adam. ‘‘Top Spin: The DJ Roundtable Raw Interview.’’ Two One Five Magazine 1, no. 2: 32–39. Garcia, Bobbito. ‘‘Hip Hop Radio.’’ Vibe History of Hip-hop, edited by Alan Light, 72–73. New York: Vibe, 1999. Gould, Harry. ‘‘Black Museum Assailed; Racism Charged.’’ Philadelphia Inquirer, February 14, 1975, 1B. Gregory, Kia. ‘‘Peace Out: Rapper’s Antiviolence Message Gets Lost at Bartram.’’ Philadelphia Weekly, January 2–8, 2008, 9. Haegele, Katie. ‘‘No Rooftop Was Safe.’’ Philadelphia Weekly, October 24, 2001. http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=730 (accessed April 7, 2008). King Britt. ‘‘A Brief Personal History: King Britt.’’ Two One Five Magazine 1, no. 2 (2008): 40–41. Marshall, Wayne. ‘‘Giving up Hip-Hop’s Firstborn: A Quest for the Real after the Death of Sampling.’’ Callaloo 29, no. 3 (2006): 868–92. Masta Ace. ‘‘Afterword: The Twenty-Four Most Overlooked MCs in Hip Hop.’’ In Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, edited by Mickey Hess, 603–7. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007. MC Breeze Bio. http://www.mcbreeze.com/breezebio.html (accessed April 7, 2008). McManus, Brian. ‘‘Full Metal Racket: Beanie Sigel, Actor for the Ages.’’ Philadelphia Weekly, December 19–25, 2007, 29.

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———. ‘‘Of Sound Mind: Philly Music Insiders Remember Their Favorite Moments.’’ Philadelphia Weekly, December 26, 2007–January 1, 2008, 20–26. Mural Arts Program. http://www.muralarts.org/. (accessed September 7, 2008). Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. ‘‘Philadelphia, Graffiti Capital of the World.’’ New York Times, July 25, 1971, 31:3. Pray, Doug, Dir. Infamy. Perf. Enem, Claw, Joe Connolly. 1171 Production Company, 2005. Reeves, Marcus. ‘‘Regional Scenes.’’ In Vibe History of Hip-hop, edited by Alan Light, 217–27. New York: Vibe, 1999. Roberts, John W. From Hucklebuck to Hip-Hop: Social Dance in the African American Community in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Odunde, 1995. Spady. ‘‘Interview with DJ Jazzy Jeff.’’ http://www.jazzyjefffreshprince.com/interviews/dj-jazzy-jeff/spady-interview.htm (accessed April 7, 2008).

FURTHER RESOURCES Abrahams, Roger D. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Adline Publishing Company, 1973. Spady, James, Stefan Dupres, and Charles Lee. Twisted Tales in the Hip Hop Streets of Philly. Philadelphia: Black History Museum Umum/Loh, 1995.

WEB SITES http://www.215hiphop.com http://www.215hiphop.com http://www.illvibe.net http://www.mcbreeze.com http://www.okayplayer.com http://www.phillyhiphop.com http://www.readyrockc.moonfruit.com http://www.thelastemp.com

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Army of the Pharaohs The Torture Papers. Babygrande, 2006. Ritual of Battle. Babygrande, 2007. Aroe & The Soundmakers The Wreckshop Philly Golden Era Vol. 1. Sleeping Giants, 2008.

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Bahamadia Kollage. Chrysalis, 1996. BB Queen. Good Vibe, 2000. Good Rap Music. REECE, 2007. Beanie Sigel The Truth. Roc-A-Fella, 2000. The Reason. Roc-A-Fella, 2001. The B. Coming. Def Jam, 2005. The Solution. Def Jam, 2007. Black Landlord Munf ta Munf Lease. Black Landlord, 2008. Cash Money and Marvelous Where’s the Party At? Traffic/Sleeping Bag, 1988. Cassidy Split Personality. J-Records, 2004. I’m a Hustla. Full Surface, 2005. B.A.R.S. The Barry Adrian Reese Story. RCA, 2007. C.E.B (Steady B, Cool C, and Ultimate Eaze) Countin’ Endless Bank. Ruffouse, 1993. Chief Kamachi Cult Status. Eastern Conference, 2004. Black Candles. Eastern Conference, 2005. Concrete Gospel. Babygrande, 2006. Cool C I Gotta Habit. Atlantic, 1989. Life in the Ghetto. Atlantic, 1990. DJ Jazzy Jeff The Magnificent. Rapster, 2002. The Return of the Magnificent. Rapster, 2007. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince Rock the House. Word-Up/Jive/Zomba, 1987. He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper. Jive/Zomba, 1988. And in this Corner . . . . Jive/Zomba, 1989. Homebase. Jive/Zomba, 1991. Code Red. Jive/Zomba, 1993. Before the Willennium. BMG, 2000. Don Juan ‘‘The Prime Minister.’’ Concrete, 1987. Eve Let There be Eve . . . Ruff Ryders First Lady. Ruff Ryders/Interscope, 1999. Scorpion. Ruff Ryders/Interscope, 2001.

The Sound of Philadelphia Eve-Olution. Ruff Ryders/Interscope/Aftermath, 2002. Here I am. Geffen, 2008. Freeway Philadelphia Freeway. Roc-A-Fella, 2003. Free at Last. G-Unit/Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam, 2007. The Goats Tricks of the Shade. Sony, 1992. No Goats, No Glory. Sony, 1994. Ice Cream Tee Can’t Hold Back. Strong City, 1989. Jedi Mind Tricks The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness. Superegular, 1998. Violent by Design. Superegular, 2000. Visions of Gandhi. Babygrande, 2003. Legacy of Blood. Babygrande, 2004. Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell. Babygrande, 2006. Jill Scott Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1. Neo Soul, 2000. Experience: Jill Scott 826+. Hidden Beach, 2001. Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds Vol. 2. Hidden Beach, 2004. The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3. Hidden Beach, 2007. Jocko Henderson ‘‘Rhythm Talk.’’ Philadelphia International Records, 1979. Krown Rulers (from Camden, NJ) Paper Chase. Warlock, 1988. Lady B ‘‘To the Beat, Ya’ll.’’ Tec Records, 1979. Larry Larr Da Wizzard of Odds. Ruff House, 1991. Last Emperor Music, Magic, Myth. Raptivism, 2003. Palace of the Pretender. Penalty, 2004. MC Breeze aka Joey B. Ellis MC Breeze. Discombobulatorbubalator (EP). Breeze Records, 1985. Joey B. Ellis. ‘‘All You Gotta Do Is Sing.’’ Rocky V Soundtrack. Universal, 1990. Joey B. Ellis. ‘‘Go for It! (Heart and Fire!)’’ Rocky V Soundtrack. Universal, 1990. Monie Love Down to Earth. 1990.

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In a Word or 2. 1993. Slice of da Pie EP. 2000. Omillion Sparks The Payback. Colossal, 2007. Reef the Lost Cauze The High Life. 2001. Invisible Empire. Gladiator Films, 2003. Feast or Famine. Good Hands/Eastern Conference, 2005. The Roots Organix. Remedy, 1993. Do You Want More?!!!??!. DGC, 1994. Illadelph Half Life. DCG, 1996. Things Fall Apart. MCA, 1999. The Roots Come Alive. MCA, 1999. Phrenology. MCA, 2002 Game Theory. Def Jam, 2006. Rising Down. Def Jam, 2008. Schoolly D Schoolly D. Schoolly D Records, 1985. Saturday Night! The Album. Schoolly D Records/Jive, 1986. The Adventures of Schoolly D. Jive, 1987. Smoke Some Kill. Jive, 1988. Am I Black Enough for You? Jive, 1989. How a Black Man Feels. Jive, 1991. Shape of Broad Minds Craft of the Lost Art. Lex, 2007. Snow Goons Black Snow. Babygrande, 2008. Steady B Bring the Beat Back. Jive, 1986. What’s My Name? Jive, 1987. Let the Hustlers Play. Jive, 1988. Going Steady. Jive, 1989. Steady B V. Jive, 1991. Three Times Dope Original Stylin’. Arista, 1988. Too Brown Takin’ No Shorts. Vibe, 1989. Traum Diggs The Essential Traum Diggs Mixtape. 623 Entertainment, 2008. Tuff Crew Phanjam. Soo Def, 1987.

The Sound of Philadelphia Danger Zone. Warlock, 1988. Back to Wreck Shop. Warlock, 1989. Still Dangerous. Warlock, 1991. Will Smith Big Willie Style. Columbia, 1997. Men in Black Soundtrack. Columbia, 1997. Willennium. Columbia, 1999. Born to Reign. Columbia, 2002. Lost and Found. Interscope, 2005.

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CHAPTER 8 The Bricks and Beyond: Hip Hop in Newark and Northern New Jersey Andrea Roberts ‘‘Represent . . . Represent,’’ proclaimed Nas on his debut album, Illmatic (1994). It is impossible to be a hip hop artist without representing the place you call home, and being from the small state of New Jersey means you had better represent big. Newark, New Jersey has long held its own stable of hip hop talent, but being so close to New York City, the Mecca of Hip Hop, Newark has been overshadowed. Newark, the state of New Jersey’s largest city, has a story to tell that oozes crime, poverty, struggle, gangs, political corruption, murder, and the desire to overcome these conditions, which permeate the lyrics of many rap artists from Newark and its surrounding cities. Whether you are representing Newark (aka Brick City), Irvington (aka Hooterville), or East Orange (aka Illtown), you still represent Newark. The spotlight on the city of Newark has not always been a pleasant one, from the near destruction of the city during the riots of 1967, to Newark’s title of stolen car capital of the world, to surviving a corrupt city hall, with the former mayor Sharpe James being convicted of fraud, to the 2007 shooting of four college students in Newark. With these social conditions, any artist from Newark has plenty of material for their work. Newark has a swagger and a style that separates it from any city out there, including its neighbors in New York. Newark has experienced many changes, positive and negative, that are a part of this city’s rich history. Newark’s ongoing metamorphosis has not been an easy one. Several decades ago, as Newark continued to evolve and attracted more African Americans, the racial composition of Brick City changed drastically (see sidebar: Brick City). Kevin Mumford, in his book, Newark. A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America, addresses this change, stating that ‘‘in every major city undergoing renewal particularly in the transitional areas of racial diversity, many whites had already fled to the all-white suburbs’’ (55). Much of Newark’s white population (specifically a large Jewish and Italian segment) fled from the city of Newark to the neighboring suburbs of West Orange, South Orange, and Livingston; these cities remain predominately white in 2009. 177

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BRICK CITY Most cities boast a nickname. Anyone from Illinois, for example, knows that ‘‘Chi-town’’ could only be Chicago. Philadelphia, previously known as the ‘‘City of Brotherly Love,’’or simply Philly, has now been renamed ‘‘Killadelphia’’ due to the increasing murder rate. Atlanta, Georgia has several nicknames, but is most commonly identified as A-town or ATL. Newark has always been known as ‘‘Brick City’’; however, the meaning behind the name depends on which Newark native you talk to. Older historians indicate that Brick City refers to a large segment of the downtown business area that was formed by towering buildings made of bricks (Cummings). Other historians imply the name is due to the original streets of Newark that were paved with actual bricks. Younger Newark residents on the other hand, like Newark DJ DATKID, insist that Brick City refers to Newark’s style. ‘‘It’s brick, hard, gritty, grimy,’’ DATKID told me during an interview for Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide. ‘‘It’s represented in the walk, the talk, and the we don’t give a fuck attitude about anything.’’ Others believe Brick City could also refer to the toughness and hardness that encompasses the city represented by several brick housing projects (i.e., Prince Street Projects) which have now been replaced by affordable townhomes in an effort to change the image of Newark (Jones).

REFERENCES Cummings, Charles F. ‘‘Gateway? Renaissance? A Reviving City Earns Its Nicknames.’’ Starledger.com, December 8, 2005 (accessed September 2008). Jones, Charisse. ‘‘Years Later, Lessons from Newark Riots to Be Learned.’’ USA TODAY, November 19, 2006.

By 1967, the white population in Newark had plummeted to approximately 158,000 from 363,000 in 1950 and 266,000 in 1960 (Herman). As quickly as the whites left the city, the African American population skyrocketed. Between 1940 and 1970 the black population increased from 45,760 to 207,458, from less than 20 percent to more than 50 percent (Mumford 3). The new residents of Newark had become fed up with police brutality, political exclusion, urban renewal, inadequate housing, unemployment, poverty, and rapid change in the racial composition of neighborhoods (Herman). The Newark Riots of 1967 were sparked by the police arrest and beating of a black cab driver, stoking the anger of many African Americans (Jones). Linda Caldwell Epps, president of the New Jersey Historical Society, believes that ‘‘all American cities have had to struggle to regain their

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footing after that time, and people don’t want to revisit that; it’s an unhappy part of our history’’ (qtd in Jones). Even after the riots, the city of Newark was determined to rebound, especially under the guidance, decades later, of Mayor Sharpe James. Sharpe James took office in 1986 and sought to revamp the city’s reputation. During his 20 years in office he can be credited with the creation of new homes throughout the city, the culmination of the NJ Performing Arts Center, and prior to his departure from office (and his 2008 incarceration) he laid the ground work for the Prudential Center. James was as controversial as he was politically astute. While the world watched in disbelief as Newark gained notoriety as the stolen car capital of the world, Sharpe James was determined to protect the image of Newark, by barring director Nick Gomez from filming 1995’s New Jersey Drive in the city of Newark. Gomez’s film highlighted the troubled city and placed emphasis on a problem that plagued the city and tragically ended many innocent lives. Chief spokeswoman Pamela E. Goldstein echoed James’ sentiment as she told Clifford Levy of the New York Times, ‘‘Over my dead body will they film this in Newark.’’ Perhaps the reason for rejecting the filming, ‘‘despite the money it might have pumped into the limping local economy,’’ could have been because the storyline was based loosely on a real life case. According to Levy, Newark teenager Howard Caesar was shot and seriously wounded in a confrontation with officers in 1992 after parking a stolen car. One officer was convicted of aggravated assault. Surprisingly, Sharpe James chose not to run again for mayor in 2006, and the residents of Newark spoke out loud and clear that they wanted and needed a change. In a voting landslide the city residents elected Cory A. Booker (whom James had defeated in the previous election). As Booker took the reigns of the city projecting his new ideas to turn the city around, Newark was rocked by the senseless shootings of four college students. Tragically, three died, and one survived with serious injuries. In the wake of this tragedy Mayor Booker announced that, ‘‘the victims were Newark success stories; this breaks the heart of our city and we must all come together’’ (qtd in Collins). Hip hop artists from Newark and surrounding cities draw from the area’s rich history, as well as the social problems that continue to plague this section of New Jersey. The following artist profiles, while far from comprehensive, provide a cross-section of the mainstream and underground icons of hip hop in Newark, East Orange, and Irvington, New Jersey.

ARTIST PROFILES Redman During the 1990s, as the beef between the East and West Coasts exploded, Newark’s Redman (born Reggie Noble 4/17/1970) claimed his spot in the rap game and fed us with his comedic, raw lyrics over banging beats. He didn’t join in the

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Redman (Carl Posey/Corbis)

attack on the West, but he made the East proud. He is private and keeps a low profile—Redman explains to The Source, ‘‘I don’t need a lot and I don’t expect a lot.’’ This formula works. Despite the content of his lyrics, which often highlight drug use and running with a crew that can cause damage (‘‘the PPP keep they fingers on the trigger’’), Vibe magazine notes that he hasn’t made news for run-ins with the law or spats with other rappers. Redman, aka Funk Doctor Spock, was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He has never achieved mainstream success equal to that of some of his Jersey peers such as Queen Latifah and Naughty by Nature, but he doesn’t care. In fact, he devotes a song, 1998’s ‘‘I Don’t Kare,’’ to saying just that in response to the material wealth shown off by other rappers: ‘‘You got a Benz and a Range? I don’t care.’’ ‘‘He doesn’t judge his worth by his heavy rotation on MTV or his commercial success’’ (Sanchez). In a Vibe interview Redman claims that he ‘‘only seeks the approval of the streets . . . the streets will always let you know.’’ Redman started from humble beginnings but always credited ‘‘Da Bricks’’ for his character. Redman was discovered by the now defunct New York group EPMD, who showcased the Newark MC on their songs ‘‘Hardcore’’ and ‘‘Brothers on my Jock’’ in 1991. Seven years later, Redman, Eric Sermon, and Keith Murray would form the short-lived group Def Squad, releasing an album, El Nin˜o, in 1998.

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DATKID remembers Redman ‘‘starting out as a DJ around 1989–1990, but later moving to New York briefly after being discovered by EPMD. At that time Redman was looking for his own DJ.’’ The intensity and creativity with which he flows has always remained constant. From his debut Whut? Thee Album to his present releases you can count on Redman for that same energy. DATKID refers to ‘‘the background sounds . . . the screaming and laughing, giving that same Jersey energy.’’ Redman credits a college creative writing teacher for encouraging him to develop his own style (Sanchez). Even though he did not earn a college degree before dropping out of Montclair State College (now Montclair University) he pokes fun at himself in ‘‘Green Island’’ a song from his sophomore release, Dare Iz a Darkside, announcing that he has ‘‘a degree in physics on how high I can get.’’ Redman further celebrates marijuana on the songs ‘‘How to Roll a Blunt’’ and ‘‘Jersey, Yo!’’ His marijuana use caused a rift at home and subsequently caused his mother to kick him out of the house (Sanchez). The only other thing that appears as consistently as weed in Redman’s lyrics is his beloved city of Newark; he makes references throughout several songs, such as ‘‘Welcome to the Bricks’’ and ‘‘Brick City Mashin’.’’ His lyrics create a vivid and accurate account of his hometown; from the weed spots on Hawthorne Ave. to the stolen cars riding up and down Avon Ave. He captures you with lines like ‘‘I’m from N to the E W-A-R-K, Newark NJ . . . got the AK . . . .’’ Nothing is off limits to Redman, not even the train service out of Newark. On ‘‘Green Island’’ (Dare Iz a Darkside) he brags that ‘‘my style flows local like NJ Transit.’’ Over the years Redman has continued to expand his loyal fan base. He continues to tour locally and abroad with Method Man (Clifford Sparks) of Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan. These two have remained close since their early collaborations which include the album Blackout (1999.) They went on to the big screen and Redman costarred with Meth in a modern day Cheech and Chong marijuana comedy, How High. For someone who keeps a low profile, Redman is not only featured on a variety of songs with many other artists including Wyclef Jean, Snoop Dogg, Scarface, Gorillaz, 2Pac, Jodeci, De La Soul, and KRS-One, he has expanded to television along with Method Man and had a short-lived show, Method and Red on Fox during the 2004–2005 season. He also can be seen and heard on the video games Def Jam Vendetta and True Crime: New York City. He continues to blaze (with weed and rhymes) on mix tapes and shows no signs of slowing down on the latest Method Man and Redman album, Blackout 2 (2009).

Queen Latifah Queen Latifah (born Dana Owens March 18, 1970) is Newark’s first lady, exhibiting that Brick City hustle mentality. She had a vision and allowed nothing to get in her way. Of course her road to fame had a few more obstacles to clear than her male peers, but that did not stop her. Latifah, which is Arabic for ‘‘delicate’’ and ‘‘sensitive,’’ was a name given to her by a Muslim cousin. She added ‘‘Queen’’

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Queen Latifah (Michael Ochs Archives/ Getty Images)

as a reflection of who she is. In her earlier days Latifah was just as musically diverse then as she is now. She was actually singing before she began rapping. Latifah began singing at Shiloh Baptist Church in Bloomfield, New Jersey before being captivated by rap music in high school. At Irvington High, Latifah and her two best friends, Tangy B and Landy B, formed a group called Ladies Fresh. The group eventually changed their name to Flavor Unit. DJ Mark the 45 King (Mark James) heard about the group and shopped their demo to Tommy Boy, who were only interested in signing Latifah. By the time her single ‘‘Wrath of My Madness’’ was released she was attending Manhattan Community College. The song was extremely successful and the release of her 1988 debut album All Hail the Queen led to a European tour. ‘‘Wrath of My Madness’’ and ‘‘Princess of the Posse,’’ with their hypnotic basslines, focused on the strong, no nonsense image Latifah portrayed in her appearance and her lyrics. Latifah did not allow herself to be pigeonholed. She took control of everything from her appearance to her rhymes. For years she sported her trade mark queen’s crown. As an artist she was one of the few female emcees of that period whose rhymes were not laced with foul language and sexually explicit lyrics. In Wrath of My Madness she summed up the fact that she was what the rap game needed: you’ve been beggin’ ‘n’ dyin’ For somebody’s rhymin’

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Other rappers, out of respect, have used Latifah’s rhymes in songs of their own. Yo-Yo, a West Coast female rapper, used a line from ‘‘Wrath of my Madness,’’ ‘‘don’t try to play me out,’’ as the hook on her 1990 debut single ‘‘You Can’t Play wit’ my Yo-Yo.’’ The album’s second single, ‘‘Ladies First,’’ introduced a virtually unknown British rapper, Monie Love, who would later join Latifah along with other artists such as the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest as part of a conscious clique called the Native Tongues. All Hail the Queen has been described as ‘‘a diverse collection combing hiphop, reggae and jazz. The album espoused a number of socio-cultural themes including apartheid, women’s rights, and poverty’’ (Cooksey and Elyse). Despite her rising popularity and success of her debut album she never forgot about home. DATKID remembers ‘‘doing a party for the football team of East Orange High Varsity [jocks], a cool little gathering [at] a small block off of Central Ave off of Halsted Street (between where Dunkin’ Donuts and Rite Aid now sits . . . ) I’m in the kitchen playing music and someone comes in the party and yells out ‘Hey y’all, the Queen is here.’ ‘Wrath of my Madness’ was killing the airwaves back then so I put it on out of respect . . . and that touched [her] to come to where I was at just to say thanks!’’ The song would become a rap classic, eventually named by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 songs ‘‘That Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll.’’ By the time Latifah’s third album was released she had separated from Tommy Boy due to contract conflicts, and Nature of a Sista was released by Motown Records, in 1993. This would prove to be an extremely trying time for Queen Latifah as her brother Lance was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident the previous year. In his memory she not only dedicated the album to Lance (aka Winky), but for years she wore the key to his motorcycle around her neck as a testament of her undying love for her brother. Latifah continued to explore other options, because she realized she couldn’t rap forever. She created Flavor Unit Records and Management (along with long time friend Shakim Compere) which handled Naughty by Nature. Latifah also experimented with acting beginning with television and her highly successful sitcom, Living Single. Many roles came her way but the most memorable and dramatic was her portrayal of Cleo, a lesbian bank robber in the film Set it Off (1996). Unfortunately, controversy overshadowed her exceptional performance, ‘‘the nature of the role of Cleo Simms . . . left the public at large to speculate impertinently about Latifah’s real life sexuality’’ (Cooksey and Elyse). Unbeknownst to her, the harsh criticisms had been foreshadowed in a song she had written years prior, ‘‘Latifah’s had it up to here’’ this song was for the ‘‘haters’’ who had issues with her sexuality and popularity back then as well: ‘‘some of these commercial entertainers . . . Tryin’ to dis Dana.’’ Latifah began acting more and rapping less. After receiving a slew of awards and starring in several movies, The Bricks and the world took note of her Oscar nominated performance of Chicago (2002). The albums that followed now showed

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a softer side of Dana, the albums displayed more of her singing ability and focused on jazz and R&B, showcasing her beautiful vocals. She would go on to produce movies including Bringing Down the House with Steve Martin (produced by her production company, Flavor Unit Entertainment). She also starred in My Wife Is a Gangsta, Beauty Shop, Bad Girls, Last Holiday and the animated smash hit, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. Her genuine beauty and magnetic personality has also expanded her resume to now include spokeswoman for both CoverGirl and Jenny Craig. While she hasn’t put out a rap album in quite some time, she continues to sing, and occasionally makes a guest appearance on a rap record.

Artifacts The Artifacts, one of Newark’s most versatile groups, show love by representing three of the four elements of hip hop: Deejaying, Emceeing, and Graffiti (the fourth is breaking). Both Tame One and El da Sensei are proficient at all three. The original group members El da Sensai (William Elliot Williams) and Tame One (Rahem Brown) developed reputations as ‘‘outstanding graffiti artists in the 1980’s by ‘bombing’ which is replacing blighted walls with smooth graffiti murals’’ (Taylor). As students at Arts High School, in Newark, they continued their love of bombing throughout Essex County (which includes Newark, East Orange, and Irvington). As graffiti artists they called themselves the ‘‘Boom Skward’’ and later became the ‘‘Da Bomb Squad’’ (Taylor). Those who don’t share an affinity for hip hop will never understand the depth, beauty, and story that graffiti can express. Tame One explained to the Newark Star Ledger, that his neighbors consider them to be artists . . . wall art [graffiti] is frequently the only . . . art that inner city children see’’ (Walker). Tame confesses that is first love, graffiti will never die. He admits that he has too many priors [convictions] to be as active in the artform. ‘‘I’m still piecing; I’m not bombing.’’ It is probably long gone by now, but Tame admits his work could be seen down in Bedrock (on Avon and Clinton Ave, in Newark) ‘‘but the city paint over it so quickly . . . If we paint . . . Tuesday, by Friday it’s gone. Graffiti is like roaches . . . it ain’t going nowhere’’ (Tame One). As the city of Newark focuses on fighting graffiti, Tame and El focused on their second love, emceeing. Originally the Artifacts were called ‘‘That’s Them’’ (which would later be the title of their sophomore album). The name was derived from the fact that ‘‘kids used to shout ‘That’s Them!’ when they saw the duo on the street’’ (Taylor). DATKID recalls attending school with El da Sensei ‘‘back in ’88 . . . and one of my NNS [No Name Society] brothers was cool with Tame One, so I knew of those guys, when they were called That’s Them. We all had affiliates from one another’s crews . . . I still talk to them today . . . .’’ Even though Redman is Tame’s cousin, the Artifacts pressed hard to make it independently, turning to Lord Jamar of the Brand Nubians, who helped the group record the original demo for ‘‘Wrong Side of Da Tracks’’ (Taylor). The Artifacts

The Bricks and Beyond | 185 were never considered mainstream and as El da Sensei explained to The Source magazine, the band was content being labeled ‘‘underground.’’ There was a time when you could turn on the radio and hear artists like the Artifacts, but not anymore. Tame laments that ‘‘Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito Show [went off the air] and there’s no more fuckin’ Pete Rock and Marley Marl in control. This forces fans to look elsewhere for their music. If that’s what you’re into [underground hip hop] you’ll know where to find it’’ (Taylor). Radio has since been reserved for the mainstream, yet he credits other Jersey rappers Redman, Naughty, and Latifah with representing Jersey to the best of their ability, even though some listeners have mistakenly assumed they were NY artists. He attributes that to the close proximity of Newark and New York. ‘‘We’re always overshadowed by New York . . . it’s nothing that can be done about it . . . ’cause that’s the home of Hip Hop’’ (Tame One). As the group continued to make a name for themselves riding on the success of their first album, they toured the country and spent a year to complete their second album, 1997’s That’s Them. At this time the groups third member, DJ Kaos (Virgshawn Perry) was added. Even with production from Mr. Walt from Da Beatminerz and VIC of the Beatnuts, That’s Them was not nearly as successful (Di Bella). The Artifacts split in 1997 after failing to resolve a dispute. DATKID explains that he was happy to see them reunite (briefly): ‘‘I got footage of their reunion (1st onstage appearance together since ’97 at the Rock Steady 31st Anniversary).’’ Tame and El da Sensei haven’t let their split slow them down. They both continue to release music as solo artists. Tame specifically joined an underground group, The Weathermen, who released the highly criticized The Waterworld album in 2004. Despite their differences, and solo paths, the Artifacts will always be one of NJ’s finest.

Rah Digga Born in Newark, Rah Digga (Rashiya Fisher) was raised in a two-parent home (her parents remain married today). She attended a private boarding school in Maryland before returning home after graduation to attend the New Jersey Institute of Technology majoring in electrical engineering. Yet even with these opportunities in her education and career, Digga’s love of the streets and hip hop continued to grow. In the early 1990s, she formed a group with her best friend, called Twice the Flava. DATKID recalls DAS EFX as the first crew to attempt to sign the duo. Even though Newark hails as Jersey’s largest city, the circles are small and everybody knows everybody. Rah Digga later gained entrance into the all-male Outsidaz clique. It wasn’t long before she was discovered, by Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, during her performance at the NYC-based Lyricist Lounge. Digga was eight months pregnant at the time. Tip introduced her to Busta Rhymes, who asked her to join his Flipmode Squad for their debut album, Flipmode Imperial, which went gold. In an industry where many female artists flaunt their sexuality,

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Rah Digga remains steadfast on doing the opposite, delivering hard rhymes that are closer to the style of 1980’s women MCs like MC Lyte than Digga’s contemporaries Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown. Rah Digga has continued to deliver time and time again, collaborating with crews outside Flipmode. She has a verse on the Fugees’ ‘‘Cowboys,’’ and her guest verse on Bahamadia’s ‘‘Be Ok’’ appeared on the Lyricist Lounge: Vol 1. Considered a trailblazer in her own right, she set the stage with her debut solo release Dirty Harriet, in 1999. According to Rah Digga, her album is as multifaceted as she is, and she makes that clear on one track in particular, the highly personal ‘‘Brother, Brother’’ (Rah Digga). This song emphasizes the fate of black men. She says, ‘‘It’s the story of me being a little sister and having 3 brothers. One is good . . . but gets locked up . . . one gets killed . . . the third is just one bad brother who nothing happens to.’’ She explains the first verse was inspired ‘‘by a friend [of hers] who snapped on the job and killed his co-workers . . . 2nd verse is about [the late MC] Slang Ton . . . the third . . . is inspired by the people who really do lead bad lives and get away with it’’ (Rah Digga). As a new school leader, she gives credit where credit is due thanking rappers of the ‘‘golden age’’ such as Kool G Rap, Rakim, and Queen Latifah for their inspiration. Perhaps her affiliation with all male cliques has led to her crusade to ‘‘take gender out of the game and put skills back in’’ (Rah Digga).

Naughty by Nature Naughty by Nature jumped on the scene with their attention grabbing debut single ‘‘O.P.P’’ (other people’s ‘‘pussy’’ or ‘‘penis.’’). Seventeen years later you can still play that song at any club or party and set some shit off. NBN emerged from the concrete jungles of E.O. (East Orange, an inner city town outside of Newark) as three friends hungry (determined) to make it. Treach (Anthony Criss, 1971) and Vinnie (Vincent Brown, 1971) grew up a few blocks away from each other, and were both products of poor single parent homes (Le Blanc). Most kids in the inner city don’t have faith in the school system and assume sports or music is their way out of the ghetto. It wasn’t any different for Treach and Vinnie. Treach knew he wanted to be a weaver of words—a rapper—since he was in the seventh grade. In our interview, DATKID recalled the persistence Treach displayed growing up for the art form that took him off the streets. ‘‘Tiny, or Anthony, they call him Treach now. I saw his drive for [hip hop] as a young one watching him and his first crew practice every weekend faithfully for various talent shows . . . two emcees—Tiny and Ace, and a human beat box named AQBOX [pronounced OC-BOX] and a DJ, Big Lip Kareem, who used to turn off the radio and perform . . . a commercial free master mix without error cuts. [He] would supply me the breakbeats and send me off to practice bringing back that certain part of the record consistently . . . that was our routine, every weekend like clockwork.’’

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Naughty by Nature (Photofest)

Treach and Vinnie would perform whenever the opportunity presented itself; Treach rhyming and Vinnie doing the beat. It wasn’t until the senior talent show that Kay Gee (Kier Gist, 1970) an aspiring DJ asked them to perform with him (Le Blanc). At that time they were known as The New Style and their focus was on making a name for themselves locally. Graduating from East Orange High (now combined with Scott High on the old Upsala College Campus) offered no promises except the odd job here or there and short stays in jail. Running with a local gang, the 118th St. Posse ‘‘offered some income, largely from the drug trade or other illegal sources, and plenty of risk: fights, shootings and jail time’’ (Le Blanc). Fed up with her son’s choices, Treach’s mom simultaneously bailed him out and kicked him out of the house, ‘‘leaving him to sleep wherever . . . including a park bench’’ (Le Blanc). 1988 saw a small window of opportunity for the group as they were signed by the Bon Ami label, but were dropped from the label just as quickly as they were signed. The trio, determined to put together a hot demo tape, resorted to selling drugs to make it happen. Treach explained to Spin magazine, ‘‘I did what I had to do on the street . . . we didn’t put our money into jewelry or cars . . . we put it into studio time. And once we got signed, we cut [drug dealing] out completely.’’ As their notoriety gathered, the accounts of how NBN connected with Queen Latifah vary. According to Tommy Boy, they claim the group was discovered when Latifah and Shakim Compare were invited to a party. However, Vinnie informed Vibe magazine that ‘‘Kay Gee called Latifah’s producer, DJ Mark the 45 King, and he camcorded us performing in his basement,’’ and the tape was circulated and landed in Latifah’s hands.

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After being signed by Latifah and changing their name from New Style to Naughty by Nature, it was time to get their [new] name out there. Many journalists recall those now famous lines Treach spit in 1990 during an appearance with Queen Latifah at the Apollo Theatre. Rolling Stone recounts him [Treach] bringing the place to its feet when he wraps up his rhyme with ‘‘my pants always sag ‘cause I rap my ass off.’’ With the success of ‘‘O.P.P,’’ Naughty by Nature still kept it hood. While many new artists run to the dealership or to Jacob the Jeweler, NBN saw the importance of reinvesting their profits from the album in various business ventures, especially reinvesting in their neighborhood; one that offered nothing promising to the youth. NBN felt it was important to reserve ‘‘positions in their businesses for friends from the neighborhood . . . especially those finishing prison sentences . . . since they know first hand the scarcity of legitimate, decent paying jobs [especially] in the ghetto.’’ In addition, to remain close to the streets they didn’t run from the streets of East Orange to a gated community in the suburbs. Treach explains ‘‘we still live in Illtown . . . hang with the same people . . . see things that go on every day in the ‘hood, so we can’t lose touch . . . we still see things like drugs, murders, and police harassment’’ (Le Blanc). As a recent honoree at VH1’s Hip Hop Honors awards, Vinnie remembers NBN as trendsetters. For one, he says the group was the first to introduce a clothing line. Not Wu-Wear, not Roc-A-Fella, or Sean Jean; it was Naughty. Many Newarkers will remember the ‘‘Naughty’’ store that used to be located in downtown Newark on Halsey Street. Many critics thought NBN would never duplicate the success of ‘‘O.P.P.’’ but Naughty by Nature silenced their critics with another anthem, ‘‘Hip Hop Hooray.’’ Six albums, and a host of awards and accolades later, the Naughty Boys have learned many lessons; allowing the boys from the streets of Illtown to leave a definite mark in hip hop and established themselves as true veterans. VH1 honored NBN along with De La Soul, Cypress Hill, Slick Rick, KRS-One, and Too $hort. The trio agreed that it ‘‘felt good’’ to receive the reward for all their effort. Hip hop is not only where all their energies lay— Kay Gee set up his own production company, 118th productions, and is responsible for several successful R&B artists like Jahiem, Next, and the female duo Zhane (pronounced Zah Nay). Treach has appeared in several films, and directed videos for other artists, including Apache’s popular ‘‘Gangsta Bitch.’’ Naughty by Nature has a fan base that has appreciated their truth in lyrics and consistency in their albums. NBN remains true to the game; they still run in the same circles and stay connected to the streets.

Fugees The Fugees were a much needed breath of ‘‘eclectic’’ fresh air to the stale rap game of the 1990s. The Fugees, whose name is a derivative of ‘‘refugee’’ a stereotypical (derogatory) name reserved for Haitian immigrants, are an unmistakable

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multitalented trio. L-Boogie, (Lauryn Hill, 1976) with her angelic, R&B sultry voice can flip it on you in a minute and rip you a new asshole with her sharp rhymes. Pras (Prakazrel Michel, 1973) is the cousin of front man ‘‘Clef’’ (Wyclef Jean, 1971) and together this group took the game to another level with violent and sexually explicit lyrics. Most MCs ride high on their debut album and attempt to match its success on the sophomore attempt. The Fugees were just the opposite. They enjoyed moderate attention from their debut album ‘‘Blunted on Reality’’ (recorded under their original name Translator Crew . . . that was later changed due to legal issues from an 1980’s band called The Translators) but it wasn’t until producer ‘‘Salaam Remi remixed two cuts . . . ’Nappy Heads and ‘Vocab’ . . . the album [Blunted on Reality] picked up speed on the charts’’ (Brennan). Three years later their sophomore release The Score was void of gangsta rap, and was produced entirely in their own studio, The Booga Basement, located in East Orange, NJ. Their sophomore effort was the culmination of years of hard work. The group explains that they put everything they had into making it work. Back in the day Lauryn and Pras were a duo in high school (in South Orange, NJ), and competed in local MC battles. Wyclef, the cousin of Pras, joined the group later. Prior to moving to New Jersey he had emigrated from Haiti at the age of nine to a rough housing project in Brooklyn. Both Pras and Wyclef have fathers in the ministry. Wyclef is the son of a preacher and Pras is the son of a deacon. Lauryn, who was attending Columbia University, during the early days of the group, had a small part in Sister Act II with Whoopi Goldberg. This also helped the notoriety of the group. She also played a part on a soap opera and sang in caberas. She remembers ‘‘how determined Wyclef was . . . I used to hit him off with whatever I could every now and then, and he would buy another piece of equipment . . . overtime, he accumulated a complete studio’’ now known as the ‘‘Booga Basement.’’ The Score topped the charts at #1 selling over five million copies. Remakes of Roberta Flack’s ‘‘Killing Me Softly’’ and Bob Marley’s ‘‘No Woman No Cry’’ helped catapult the album’s success. The streets loved it because they included underground rappers. Most notably on the track ‘‘Cowboys’’ we were introduced to a woman with a swift tongue and a rough voice that made you sit up and pay attention, her name was Rah Digga. Her crew members Pace Won and Young Zee also appeared on that track. The album was also sprinkled with little shout-outs to other fellow Newark MCs. Lauryn mentioned how she was ‘‘Tame like the rapper . . . ’’ (name of song), an obvious shout-out to Tame from the Artifacts, another group from Newark. The Score was special to the Fugees because it was written and produced they way they wanted it, not manufactured and dictated like their first attempt. However, with their success, the naysayers began to talk. Addressing criticisms from their first album, the group confronted the nonbelievers on The Score. The most infamous attack on the group was the claim that Lauryn was too talented for the group and should consider a solo career. The group, with their long history, attacked this head on in ‘‘Zealots’’: ‘‘you can try, but you can’t divide the tribe.’’

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However, the group did eventually disband, but not before Wyclef and Lauryn both produced successful solo albums. Lauryn’s multi-grammy winning The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a classic that has yet to be duplicated. Wyclef had a few successful albums including his debut album Carnival (1997) along with a host of collaborations and production efforts; including bringing a little unknown group called Destiny’s Child to the scene. An official reconciliation of one of the best rap groups is highly unlikely amid rumors of an extramarital affair between Lauryn and Wyclef; along with Lauryn’s lawsuit from songwriters claiming credit for writing portions of her debut album. This caused an irreversible wedge in the group. They did however briefly reunite in 2004 for Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, where they joined other performers including Common, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Talib Kweli, and The Roots. No matter what their [creative] differences, the Fugees made their mark and let the world know that, as they proclaim on ‘‘Fugee-La,’’ ‘‘you have to respect Jersey.’’

Lords of the Underground The Lords of the Underground had a smash hit with ‘‘Chief Rocka’’ in the early 1990s. This threesome of Doitall (Dupre Kelly), Mr. Funky (Al’terik Wardrick), and DJ Lord Jazz (Bruce Colston) met as undergraduate students at Shaw University in North Carolina. They gained popularity thanks to touring with established rap groups such as Cypress Hill and Funkdoobiest. The group received negative criticism when it was implied in their 1995 single ‘‘Burn Rubber’’ that they condoned car-jacking. The group claims the song was created specifically for the car-jacking movie New Jersey Drive. The group will always be affiliated with other artists from back in the day, yet they didn’t jump on the ‘‘gansta rap’’ bandwagon and were subsequently forgotten about. Recently Nas, resurrected their name and mentioned them in his song ‘‘Where Are They Now,’’ a tribute to many forgotten old school rappers.

Outsidaz A duo that began as rivals became a respected underground group. The primary members Pace Won and Young Zee first connected in 1991. Zee was a member of Skitz and Pace was a member of PNS; they met on stage during a battle which both of them thought was a tie. They formed a single group after that meeting and the extended members include Eminem, Bizarre (of D12 fame) Az-Izz, Axe, D.U., Denz, Loon One, Nawshis, Rah Digga, Slang Ton (deceased) Bskills, and Yah-Yah. The Outsidaz, much like any MCs emerging from Newark, worked hard to establish themselves as something different, but tension among members and egos eventually caused this group to split with many members going their own way— most notably Eminem, who later added Young Zee to his Shady Records label, which angered Pace Won. A blog on ‘‘The Art of Rhyme’’ mentions a pact that promised if any of them blew up they’d open the door for the rest, but Eminem

The Bricks and Beyond | 191 never followed through. Pace Won expressed his anger to Eminem on his most recent release ‘‘The Only Color That Matters Is Green.’’ Prior to the drama, back in the good ol’ days, DATKID remembers his encounters with The Outsidaz: ‘‘I used to hang at this house on Melmore Gardens in E.O. (East Orange, NJ) [around] 1992, just wasting time, when this young boy who wanted to be down so bad . . . he used to hang around us every single day. One day he came in and popped this tape in (wasn’t no CDs) and [I] heard this form of hip hop that seemed like what I needed to hear in my life . . . this young boy’s name was Denton and the demo he was playing was the Outsidaz . . . my brother DATSHIM (NNS) [No Name Society] knew who they were and told Denton to tell Pace or Young Zee to come see him and to let them know he has the tape. The next day they [Pace Won and Young Zee] were there. Now about this time I was hooked on NY clubs thanks to DATSHIM . . . so when he told the Outsidaz he could blow them up, I already knew his potential, he took them to this spot in New York called the Hyperbolic Lounge . . . which seemed to be the after work hang out spot for The Source [Magazine] staff . . . I read later that they [The Outsidaz] ran through so many MCs that nobody wanted to even look in their direction when it was time to battle . . . .’’ The Outsidaz remain an underground favorite. Pace Won has recently teamed up with Mr. Green on their recent release ‘‘The Only Color that Matters is Green.’’ Young Zee continues to keep a low profile but still remains an influence and a source of guidance in the game, especially to his wife, Rah Digga.

NJ’S NEW SCHOOL While New Jersey hasn’t had its Biggie, Jay-Z, or Nas—who became icons of their respective New York City boroughs—many MCs and DJs have proudly represented Jersey, including Queen Latifah, Redman, and Naughty by Nature. There is, however, a new class ready to step up and represent. DJ DATKID told me that he hears a variety of new artists from Newark, Irvington, and East Orange, but is most impressed with those who display originality, creativity, clarity, and the ability to network in the music industry. He highlighted a few names of up-andcoming MCs who understand what it takes to make a great song that’s catchy and fun but still raw and conscious: Billy Roadz is a Newark native who embraces his life struggles in his music. This is evident in the title of his album Mind of a City Slicker, Heart of a Country Nigga. He feels he represents both aspects. Roadz passion for rap was ignited by ‘‘Represent,’’ a song on the classic Nas album, Illmatic. Roadz created 4-Mil Productions inspired by the birth of his son Jamil, so everything Roadz does . . . is ‘‘4-Mil!’’ Representing for the ladies, Mooka Jerz has become Jersey’s new ‘‘femcee,’’ the heir apparent to Latiah and Rah Digga. She’s a big voice in a little package, but just as raw as the next and represents Newark hard. O-Solo, another rising star from Newark, caught the eye of rap star Busta Rhymes at a battle. O-Solo prides himself on sounding like no one out there and

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NEWARK’S HIP HOP HOT SPOTS Local spots in Newark that booked big name rappers from back in the day, in the mid-to-late 1980s, included the Civic Center, Rally Raquet Club, and Our Lady Help of Christian Church. Many rappers also performed at Martens Stadium, including rap veteran Kurtis Blow. As far as night clubs, Sensations was another regular venue for rap stars. The rivalry between Newark and New York was strong, and DATKID remember how Brick City natives used to beat up all the NY MCs. Napoleon’s (1987–89) was located on Walnut and Main Street and was known for its house DJ, Godfather D, who was a local DJ for Napoleon’s by night, and mechanic by day, and distant relative of Harlem rap star Biz Markie. Through his connection to Biz, Godfather D brought the Biz’s supergroup the Juice Crew through Newark on several occasions. Moving into the 1990s, the Pipeline was an arena for underground artists in Jersey. ‘‘During the early 90s Pack Pistol Posse damned near owned that spot,’’ DATKID told me during our interview. As a DJ, DATKID was mainstream-minded and didn’t truly realize the beauty of the Pipeline until it was long gone.

writes about stuff his listeners can relate to. Currently O is signed to TVT Records. While these three luminaries topped the list of Jersey MCs on the rise, DATKID added his list of honorable mentions: Big Snuff aka U Neva Know, Hustle Starr, Duttch Mastah, and Abyss.

THE FUTURE OF THE BRICKS Newark’s future in politics, community activism, and music is promising as well. Jah Jah Shakur, cofounder of Shadesradio.com, explains the direction of the city and the conscious movement that is taking place in 2008. Hip hop is a generation of Americans rejected by the mainstream. Jah Jah’s quest is to preserve the culture. The Shades Family organization (consisting of Jah Jah Shakur, Kurt Nice, G-Hop, DATKID, DJ Subtraction, and 1st lady Mecca) has connected with hip hop veteran and respected teacher KRS-One. As a disciple of KRS-One, Jah-Jah and the Shades Organization are proud of their affiliation with the ‘‘Self Construction’’ movement/tour. Nearly 20 years after the release of the antiviolence anthem, ‘‘Self Destruction,’’ KRS has enlisted the help of conscious, compassionate, and knowledgeable individuals who share the same vision and will work tirelessly to see it come to fruition. On the day I interviewed him for this collection, Jah Jah, Mecca and DATKID were setting up shop at the Armory Tavern, in Newark for a showcase of MCs auditioning for KRS-One’s 29-city Self Construction tour. During our interview,

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Jah Jah compared rappers of today to rappers of yesterday, stating that today’s rapper is just trying to make a hot single or make money off ringtones, while old school rappers aspired to put out a quality album. Despite mainstream rappers’ emphasis on their conspicuous wealth via showcasing their cars, clothes, and jewelry in their music and videos, artists affiliated with shades and or the movement are taking in back to the good old days, where peace, prosperity, and selfawareness are key. Jah Jah explains that there is a large underground movement in Newark, and certain staples are and always will be essential to hip hop, such as the local radio stations, record stores, and clubs (see Sidebar: Newark’s Hip Hop Hot Spots) that keep hip hop alive in Brick City.

REFERENCES Brennan, Carol. ‘‘Fugees Biography,’’ October 2008. http://www.musicianguide .com/biographies/1608000564/Fugees.html. Collins, Dan. ‘‘3 Youths Dead in Execution-Style Shooting.’’ CBSNews.com, August 6, 2007. Cooksey, Gloria, and Nicole Elyse. ‘‘Queen Latifah.’’ Enotes. http://www .enotes.com/contemporary-musicians/queen-latifah-biography (accessed December 13, 2008). Cummings, Charles F. ‘‘Gateway? Renaissance? A Reviving City Earns Its Nicknames.’’ http://www.starledger.com, December 8, 2005 (accessed September 2008). Di Bella, Michael. ‘‘Artifacts Biography.’’ Starpulse.com, November 2008. Gomez, Nick, Dir. New Jersey Drive. 40 Acres & a Mule/Gramercy, 1995. Herman, Max. ‘‘Newark Riots, 1967.’’ The Newark and Detroit ‘‘Riots’’ of 1967. http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/n_index.htm (accessed December 13, 2008). Jones, Charisse. ‘‘Years Later, Lessons from Newark Riots to Be Learned.’’ USA TODAY, November 19, 2006. Le Blanc, Ondine E. ‘‘Naughty by Nature Biography,’’ September 2008. http:// www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608001143/Naughty-by-Nature.html. Levy, Clifford J. New York Times, April 18, 1994. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/ 04/18/nyregion/guarding-image-newark-city-bars-local-filming-movie-aboutteen-age-car-bandits.html?pagewanted=all. Mumford, Kevin. Newark. A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Rah Digga. http://www.hiponline.com/music/music-artists/rah-digga/ (accessed December 13, 2008). Sanchez, Brenna. ‘‘Redman Biography,’’ November 2008. http://www.musician guide.com/biographies/1608003147/Redman.html. Tame One. Interview at RiotSound.com, March 8, 2005. http://www.riotsound .com/hip-hop/rap/interviews/Tame-one-Artifacts/index.php (accessed December 13, 2008).

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Taylor, Kimberly. ‘‘Artifacts Biography,’’ October 2008. http://www.musician guide.com/biographies/1608002140/Artifacts.html. Walker, Steven T. Newark Star Ledger, June 12, 1997.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Artifacts Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Big Beat/Atlantic, 1994. That’s Them. Big Beat/Atlantic, 1997. The Fugees Blunted on Reality. Ruff House/Columbia, 1993. The Score. Ruff House/Columbia, 1996. Lords of the Underground Here Come the Lords. Capitol, 1993. Keepers of the Funk, 1994. Resurrection. 1999. House of Lords. 2007. Naughty by Nature Naughty by Nature. Tommy Boy, 1991. 19 Naughty III. Amalgam, 1993. Poverty’s Paradise. Tommy Boy, 1995. Nineteen Naughty Nine: Nature’s Fury. Arista, 1999. Iicons. 2002. Queen Latifah All Hail the Queen. Tommy Boy, 1989. Nature of a Sista. Tommy Boy, 1991. Black Reign. Motown, 1993. She’s a Queen: A Collection of Hits. Motown, 2002. The Dana Owens Album. 2004. Rah Digga Dirty Harriet. Elektra/Asylum, 1999. Everything Is a Story. J-Records, 2004. Redman Whut? Thee Album. Def Jam, 1992. Dare Iz a Darkside. Def Jam, 1994. Muddy Waters. Def Jam, 1996. Doc’s Da Name 2000. Def Jam, 1998. Malpractice. Def Jam, 2001. Red Gone Wild: Thee Album. Def Jam, 2007. Redman and Method Man Blackout! Def Jam, 1999. Blackout! 2. Def Jam, 2009.

CHAPTER 9 Hip Hop in the Hub: How Boston Rap Remained Underground Pacey C. Foster When asked to name a famous rapper who came from Boston, most people draw a blank. Some certainly remember Edward ‘‘Edo G’’ Anderson’s (born 1971) breakout record Life of a Kid in the Ghetto (1991) and his golden age classic ‘‘I Got to Have It,’’ the music video for which made it onto MTV and into Vibe magazine in the early 1990s. Others might mention that Keith ‘‘Guru’’ Elam (born July 17, 1966) was originally from Boston before taking up residence in Brooklyn, helping to define the sound of mid-1990s East Coast rap with DJ Premier in Gang Starr, and then achieving mainstream popularity with his Jazzmatazz releases. Fans of Boston’s harder beats may recall that The Almighty RSO got into a battle with Tommy Boy Records over their mid-1990s song ‘‘One in the Chamba’’ and eventually reformed as the equally controversial group Made Men. Those with slightly deeper knowledge will trace Boston’s RSO connection through Raymond ‘‘Benzino’’ Scott’s (born July 18, 1965) relationship with The Source magazine and its Harvard educated cofounder David Mays. People familiar with the history of break dancing will certainly mention the foundational Boston b-boy crew The Floorlords. Fans who tracked the late 1990s explosion of underground and alternative hip hop will be quick to remind you that Boston artists like Mr. Lif, Akrobatik, and 7L and Esoteric have built reputations and careers on a foundation of gritty beats and East Coast tongue trickery. Despite the success of many Boston artists, there remains a sense in the media and among fans that hip hop never quite took off in Boston the way it did in other cities. Examining the record, there are good reasons for this perception. Every other city of its size in the United States has had a larger impact on hip hop than Boston. The influence of New York in defining and promulgating the culture goes without saying. Los Angeles was the home of the gangsta rap explosion and just one group, the seminal N.W.A., spawned artists as influential as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Eazy E. In the late 1980s, Miami had its 2-Live Crew and Skyywalker Productions that paved the way for the reign of the Dirty South. Detroit 195

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had its Eminem and well before the Roots put Pennsylvania back on the map with Illadelph Half Life, Philly beat Boston out of the box with nationally recognized artists like Schoolly D. Despite the success of the Boston artists described above, it seems reasonable to ask why the city has not been more of a hip hop hub over the years. To tell the story of Boston hip hop without addressing its underdog status would be to ignore an important identity within the community. At the same time, to focus only on this familiar angle would obscure the fact that Boston has had a vibrant (albeit underground) hip hop scene from almost as soon as one emerged in New York. Given the proximity of the two cities, it should come as no surprise that Boston was an early recipient of the revolutionary music, dance, and style that would come to be called hip hop as it radiated out from its epicenter in New York. To tell the peculiar story of Boston hip hop requires an exploration of the social and structural forces that it encountered in a city famous for its Irish bars, rock bands, college students, and deep racial divisions. By tracing connections among Boston’s music industry, colleges, neighborhoods, nightclubs, and artists, we can begin to understand how hip hop remained underground in Boston all these years.

THE BIRTH OF HIP HOP IN BOSTON: 1979–1988 The 1979 release of ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ by the Sugarhill Gang was a watershed moment for young people in Boston as it was for kids across the country. While the origins of rap remain hidden in the tributaries that obscure all musical foundation stories, ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ with its infectious party rhymes and familiar ‘‘Good Times’’ backing track, was the first rap song to reach large audiences. Skippy White, the owner of Boston’s urban record store chain of the same name, remembers his encounter with this new art form vividly (White). On a Saturday afternoon in 1979, Skippy received a call from Joe Robinson of Sugarhill Records in New York. Joe was promoting the recently released single and encouraged Skippy to buy this indescribable new kind of music that was selling like crazy in New York. On the strength of Joe’s recommendation, Skippy agreed to take 50 of the records without even hearing them. This was just a week after the record had been released and in New York demand was already high. Given that the call arrived Saturday, Skippy estimates that he got the records no later than Tuesday. Whatever day they arrived, by the end of the week, they had sold out and he called Joe to get more copies of this strange new hit. By then, mere weeks after the release of ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ Joe was already 10,000 pressings behind and was struggling to keep up with demand. Given the immediate appetite for ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ at Skippy White’s Records, it is clear that as early as 1979 there was a hungry market for rap records in Boston. Unfortunately, documentation of rap music and hip hop culture in the city is rare before 1982. Perhaps the earliest Boston rap release is Kevin Fleetwood

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and the Cadillacs’ 1983 record ‘‘Sweat It Off.’’ This funk infused party jam would have easily fit into the rapidly expanding Sugarhill catalog and was followed in 1984 by ‘‘Hood Rock.’’ At the time of these releases, Kevin had been an active club and party DJ in Boston for a number of years and had a radio show on Northeastern University’s radio station WRBB (104.9 FM). While Fleetwood represented the college side of the nascent hip hop scene, another crew with closer connections to the street were also making their rounds at the time. Chain Reaction was a crew that included DJs Michael K and Crystal C, Robbie Rob and Oogie. In addition to featuring a female DJ (Crystal C) long before Spindarella made the female DJ famous with Salt N’ Pepa, DJ Michael K’s version of Grandmaster Flash’s ‘‘Adventures on the Wheels of Steel’’ routine was also the first time many people had seen turntablism performed by a Boston artist (Delgado). Kevin Fleetwood, Chain Reaction, and a young DJ named Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ were certainly the first people to expose rap music to large audiences in Boston. However, it would not be until the 1985 appearance of Magnus Johnstone’s Lecco’s Lemma show on MIT’s radio station WMBR (88.1 FM) that the fledgling hip hop community would have a real home on Boston’s airwaves. It would be even longer before Boston rap artists would have regular national exposure. In the very early 1980s, Boston’s urban music was dominated by the electroinfluenced funk of the Johnson Brothers and groups like Planet Patrol, Dwayne Omarr, and Prince Charles and the City Beat Band.

Maurice Starr, Michael Jonzun, and the Hollywood Talent Nights Maurice Starr (Lawrence Curtis Johnson, b. 1953) is widely recognized as the producer behind New Edition and New Kids on the Block. However, his role as an accidental mentor to Boston’s earliest hip hopers is less well known. His brother Michael Jonzun (Michael Johnson) is more closely associated with the origins of rap music for his 1982 electro 12’’ release ‘‘Pack Jam (Look out for the OVC)’’ on Tommy Boy records. Although the song contains no rapping, it was a national hit among urban audiences and rapidly became a break dancing classic. Jonzun’s place in the hip hop pantheon was solidified when ‘‘Pack Jam’’ was included along with ‘‘Space Cowboy’’ on Tommy Boy’s 1985 double LP The Greatest Beats. With the inclusion of two tracks by Boston’s own Planet Patrol and the Afrika Bambaataa/Arthur Baker classic ‘‘Planet Rock,’’ five out of the fifteen songs on the album had a Boston connection. In the early 1980s, Boston was a hotbed of electro-infused R&B production and the Johnson brothers were in the middle of it (Morse, ‘‘Boston funk,’’ ‘‘Sky’s the limit’’). By the time they began receiving national acclaim in the early 1980s for this work, both Johnson brothers had already been making a splash in Boston’s urban music scene for quite some time. Having recently moved to Boston from Florida with their family, they began performing in Boston as the Johnson Brothers Band

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in the 1970s. Their 1978 single ‘‘Bout Time I Funk You’’ received heavy rotation on the urban-oriented AM radio station WILD (1090 AM) and became a local hit among nightclub audiences. In 1979, the record was picked up by RCA Victor and eventually sold 150,000 copies (Morse, ‘‘Sky’s the limit’’). Around this time, Starr began making a name for himself as a producer with Prince Charles and the City Beat Band. By the mid-1970s, Starr had started to throw his production expertise and industry contacts into a series of local talent shows he dubbed the Hollywood Talent Night. The impact of these shows on urban culture in Boston is hard to overstate. In addition to being the venue through which Starr developed and exposed acts like New Edition and New Kids on the Block, his Hollywood Talent Nights were galvanizing events for the community and provided an important incubator and outlet for emerging hip hop talent. One of the regular performers was a young DJ who scratched with his feet. Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ Pendleton made a name for himself as a teenage DJ with his unique ability of scratching records with his feet. His friend and production partner Skeeter worked with Maurice Starr and by the early 1980s Rusty had become the first call for all of Starr’s DJ needs. Prominent among these were the Hollywood Talent Nights where Rusty would whip the crowd into a fever in anticipation of the announcement of the winners. Rusty was already a polished and beloved showman even in his early teens. With frequent college radio spots and an appearance on Peter Wolf’s post J. Geils solo album, Lights Out (1984) leading to a performance on Saturday Night Live, Rusty was likely Boston’s first local rap music star. His teenage role in Starr’s Hollywood Talent Nights was a critical early exposure of hip hop music and style to a general audience. Press reports described one of the events as a three-day affair including 37 acts and as many as 3,000 attendees (Bourne). The dance crew Funk Effects (which included the popping and locking twins Billy and Bobby McLaine, David Clemens, Tony Lopes, and Andy Thomas) was a regular attendee. By that time, Funk Effects was already a professional outfit managed and instructed by Boston dance pioneer David Vaughn who would go on to work with New Edition. With its elaborate space suit costumes and stage show, Funk Effects was a sight to behold. The Unikue Dominoes, another of Boston’s premier dance groups, were also regular attendees. While Funk Effects represented the most professional and polished of Boston’s dancers, their younger farm team, Boston Poppers and Lockers represented the younger generation. As popping and locking gave way to breakdance routines, shows began to include younger groups like the Boston Poppers and Lockers, The New York Puppeteers (which included future Floorlords member Lino ‘‘Leanski’’ Delgado), Cosmic Reaction, and Mass Break Team (which included future Floorlords member Megatron). Other early local b-boy crews included HBO (Homeboys Only) Crew, Boston City Breakers, Spin City Rockers, and TMC from Providence, Rhode Island. In Starr’s showcases, emerging hip hop styles found a home beside the polished R&B and electro-funk sounds for which the Johnson Brothers had become famous.

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A picture from the mid-1980s documents the intersection of these two sides of urban youth culture. The picture depicts a young Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ Pendleton with his mixer on a pile of milk crates and his turntable on the floor. As he cradles his knee with his toe scratching the record below, four even younger white teenagers look on from backstage apparently waiting for their chance to perform. The members of New Kids on the Block were still a year away from releasing their self-titled 1986 debut but were clearly soaking up emerging hip hop styles.

New York Networks Like all family relations, the one between Boston and New York is a complex blend of brotherly love and blood feuds. Certainly, it is true that many artists found it necessary to leave Boston to pursue their careers. Guru, of Gang Starr, left Boston for Brooklyn in the late 1980s, starting a trend of local rap artists leaving Boston in search of better access to Manhattan and the center of the music industry. At the same time, the popular narrative about the loss of talent to New York overlooks an equally powerful story about how hip hop flowed up from New York to Boston through family and friendship networks. Given Boston’s proximity to New York, it should come as no surprise that early Boston hip hop bore a close resemblance to the practices that had emerged a few years earlier down the coast. Movements of people, ideas, music, dance, and fashion all helped launch a vibrant (albeit smaller) hip hop community in Boston almost as soon as one had appeared in New York. Flyers for shows from the early 1980s include such New York inspired titles as ‘‘The Def Jam Party,’’ ‘‘Wild Style,’’ and ‘‘Breakdown New York Style.’’ In the early days, people who got into hip hop were all going to New York to get closer to the source and some already had deep New York roots. Lino Delgado, a founding member of the Boston b-boy crew The Floorlords, moved to Boston with his family in the mid-1970s, leaving a large group of cousins and relatives behind in the Bronx (Delgado). In the late 1970s, these cousins formed a break dancing crew called High Performance and occasionally visited their Boston kin. Meanwhile, Lino’s family moved from a shared apartment on Dudley St. to their own place on Westville St. in Dorchester. Still stinging from the bussing crisis of the mid-1970s, Dorchester was at that time a city sharply divided along racial lines. As the only Hispanic family living on the border that separated black and white Dorchester, Lino describes fighting the white kids at school and the black kids back in the neighborhood. As a result, he and his brother spent countless hours avoiding the dangerous streets by practicing choreographed routines set to Jackson 5 songs and other popular R&B hits of the time. During visits from his New York family, Lino and his brother would be asked to perform their routines to the delight of the assembled family. More importantly for the spread of hip hop to Boston, it was on these visits that Lino and his brother began to absorb the new break dancing styles demonstrated by their older New York cousins. Later, in the early 1980s, these same cousins would provide a place to stay

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as members of the young Floorlords made frequent trips to New York City to check out the latest styles and battle other crews. Other early innovators also had strong New York ties. DJ Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ Pendleton, had family in New York which facilitated his frequent record buying trips to the city (Pendleton). Another New York transplant, MC Spice (aka Amir Shakir), began his music career at an early age promoting parties for Rick Rubin in Brooklyn (MC Spice). After moving to Boston in the late 1980s, he continued to promote for the budding Def Jam records and maintained strong ties to his NY home (MC Spice). As a kid from Brooklyn, the hip hop scene in Boston in the late 1980s seemed small and inexperienced to Spice. Demonstrating their lack of basic block party production knowledge, a group of kids in his neighborhood had negotiated with a neighbor to run an extension cord out of her house for a party. In exchange, they had agreed to keep the volume down. Spice found this compromise as silly as it was unnecessary given that light poles sprouted everywhere and could be accessed for free power if you knew how (which he did). With missionary zeal, he began showing his friends the tricks of the hip hop trade he had learned from his elders in New York. At least early on, New York gave much more than it got back from Boston.

Boston Hip Hop Comes of Age By the mid-1980s hip hop was the rage in Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, and the South End. Show flyers and press reports make it clear that The Floorlords were at almost every show dancing and demonstrating their growing talents. The Four Corners neighborhood in Dorchester was an important location in the community as it was home to the young Raymond ‘‘Ray Dog’’ Scott and the Body Rock Crew made up of Big Chuck and Antonio (Emo E) Ennis. The nearby Roxbury neighborhood around Castlegate Rd. was also an important hub that produced the PC Crew featuring Def Jeff, Tony Rhome, Kevin Means, and Orangeman. These two groups would eventually coalesce to form the Boston rap group and street clique Almighty RSO (aka Rock Shit On) Crew. Back then, the frequent summer block parties on Capin St., Humboldt Ave., and Castlegate Rd. and shows at the Chez Vous roller skating rink, local middle schools, and community centers, were largely peaceful affairs that served as a unifying force for the community. Certainly, scuffles occasionally broke out, but those that did were rare and relatively benign. As it had in New York, hip hop in Boston emerged organically out of community block parties that had featured DJs playing funk, disco, and R&B only a few years before. At the very beginning, adults in Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods did not know what to make of this new art form. Lino Delgado remembers an older dancer named Popeye showing up at these early parties and demonstrating a strange jerky dance that drew laughter from a crowd still unfamiliar with hip hop style (Delgado). Already an accomplished breaker, Lino reserved his talents for a more receptive

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audience. Among the kids, hip hop was exploding and Lino would soon have a receptive audience of peers. Between 1983 and 1985, Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ Pendleton alone performed 16 documented shows. Many were self-produced parties like the 1983 ‘‘Atomic Dog Night’’ at the Chez Vous roller skating rink that included Dwayne Omarr and the dance crew the New York Puppeteers. Other shows took place at recreation centers at the Orchard Park and Bromley Heath housing complexes. In addition to numerous community shows, Rusty and his crew also played at larger clubs in the city opening for major acts. In 1985, he and the dance crew The Unikue Dominoes opened for Doug E. Fresh at the Kenmore Square nightclub 9 Landsdowne. By 1987 he was opening for MC Shan at the Lee School in Dorchester along with the young R.S.O and Body Rock crews. A short time later, Emo E would break up The Body Rock crew to join R.S.O. after Orangeman’s departure from the group due to legal troubles. In another of Boston’s critical early talent migrations, Big Chuck would eventually leave the city to pursue a career with Dr. Dre at Aftermath records. Like other members of the Boston rap diaspora who went on to bigger and better things, Big Chuck’s subsequent influence on the rap music industry is rarely associated with his Boston roots.

Hip Hop Reaches the Suburbs By 1985, hip hop culture had spread across Boston’s black and Hispanic neighborhoods and was beginning to reach white kids in the suburbs. Though the converts were smaller in number, they were no less committed than youth in Boston’s inner cities. In Malden, a suburb southwest of Boston, DJ Koo Koo was preaching the hip hop lifestyle to young Matt Rayes. He and Matt would go on to form White Magic (Boston’s first white rap group) which was followed almost immediately by The White Boy Crew (a Boston and Cambridge duo made up of MC Popeye and the beat boxing Spinach). Young John Pressiano (aka Jawn P) formed the Double Def crew which would eventually become Top Choice Clique (Rayes). Even suburbs as distant as Lowell, MA were spawning vibrant scenes. Donny Maker (aka DJ Def Rock) was schooled early on in the hip hop lifestyle having grown up near Lowell’s Julian D. Steele Housing Development (aka The Shaugnessy Projects). He first encountered rap in 1979 when he heard ‘‘Rappers Delight’’ on the radio (Maker). By the early 1980s he was already an accomplished graffiti artist and was honing his growing MC and DJ skills in local battles and parties at the Shaughnessy projects. Several encounters with Dr. Fresh helped him learn the ‘‘human metronome’’ technique and by the mid-1980s Donny was performing regularly as an MC in a group called the Fresh Beat Force that featured a white female beat boxer named Bizzy Bee. By 1985, Donny had formed the EMC3 Crew that (at various times) included himself, Bizzy Bee, Frost Bee, Cool Will, Steve Nyce, and DJs Jerry Jay and Active. Until 1990, the group battled and performed in the Boston area at shows like the summer Kite Festival and

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eventually opened for national artists like Run DMC and Intelligent Hoodlum at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. During these early years, Boston’s art world also became aware of the cultural phenomenon that was sweeping the country. In December 1983, two of Boston’s premier art movie houses (The Coolidge Corner Theater and Orson Wells Cinemas) screened the recently released hip hop documentary Wild Style. Two of its graffiti writing stars, Pink (Sandra Fabara) and Heart (Gloria Williams) came to town to promote the film and were featured in an article in the Boston Globe that week (Temin). The Institute of Contemporary Art also participated by hosting a famously informal hip hop cultural event that included an MC battle between regular attendees of the Lecco’s Lemma radio show. As it had in New York, some segments of the art world in Boston embraced hip hop style as the newest trend in pop art.

Boston’s Early Rap Releases By any measure, 1986 was a huge year for Boston rap music. Before that time, Kevin Fleetwood’s records and Rusty the ‘‘Toe Jammer’’ ’s 1985 ‘‘Breakdown New York Style’’ (which he released with his group The Sure Shot 4) represented the bulk of local rap releases. Between 1986 and 1987 there were suddenly several new singles released by local artists. Leveraging a relationship with Maurice Starr’s cousin, Lawrence ‘‘Woo’’ Wedgeworth, MC Spice negotiated a contract with Atlantic records and in 1986 released his first single ‘‘Don’t Treat Your Girl Like a Dog.’’ Although a full record never came out, Spice was the first rapper signed to Atlantic (to be followed closely by MC Lyte) and his was the first release on a major label for a Boston rapper. In the same year, the RSO Crew released ‘‘The Greatest Show on Earth’’ on Boston’s Boot Records which they followed in 1987 with ‘‘We’ll Remember You.’’ Not to be outdone, Dwayne Omarr, another Boston pioneer, released the single ‘‘Holy Rock’’ on the Reading label Critique. Amid all this local activity, perhaps the most important of the 1986 releases was the Boston Goes Def compilation. Produced by Steve ‘‘Mr. Beautiful’’ Barry, this collection presented a veritable who’s who of Boston’s earliest rap artists including Disco P and the Fresh MC, FTI (Fresh to Impress) Crew (which included rapper Ed Anderson), the White Boy Crew, MC Capers, Rusty the ‘‘Toe Jammer’’ and Larry D, and The Body Rock Crew among others. While it was a watershed moment for the community, the music represents an awkward compromise between the do-ityourself rap aesthetic of the artists and the professional rock production sensibilities of the producers. At the same time, the national airwaves were awash with Run DMC’s pioneering rock-rap remake of Aerosmith’s classic rock anthem ‘‘Walk this Way’’ (see sidebar: Aerosmith). Given Boston’s legacy as a rock and roll town, it seems oddly appropriate that the song that paved the way for rockrap was co-written by its toxic twins Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry. These releases dramatically increased the availability of locally recorded rap music. However, they only represented a fraction of the recording activity that

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was going on at the time in Boston. Because most young crews lacked the financial resources to press a 12’’ record, they relied on whatever technology was at hand to document their creativity. Aspiring artists all over the city made pause tapes (i.e., mixtapes recorded using the pause button on a tape deck) and simple live recordings of beat boxing, rhyming and DJing on rudimentary home recording systems. Early demo tapes from such accomplished artists as The Almighty RSO and Guru are clearly recorded live with minimal engineering (MC Keithy E). As technology improved and local producers began to accumulate more gear and engineering skills, the sound of local productions improved as well. Dense four track turntable compositions were being created as early as 1986 by Carver’s DJ Prime, and as soon as drum machines became available at local music stores they began to appear on recordings in Boston. A 1986 Kiethy E demo tape includes tracks featuring the young Guru rhyming and flexing his singing voice over a bare drum machine track. As samplers became widely available and began gracing Marly Marl productions, kids in Boston were busy trying to replicate and advance the sounds they were hearing on major releases. Although local hip hop proliferated during the late 1980s, several factors made it hard for Boston artists to translate local talent into recording contracts and national recognition. Boston’s reputation as a rock and roll town that had spawned bands like the Cars, Boston, Aerosmith, and The J. Geils Band meant that the local music industry was less oriented toward urban audiences and tastes. Because rock music dominated the nightclubs in greater Boston, rap performances usually occurred at community events like the annual Kite Festival and privately organized concerts like Maurice Starr’s Hollywood Talent Nights. Later, the perceived (and often realized) potential for violence at rap concerts would make it even harder to get shows at Boston nightclubs. However, among all of the factors that limited exposure for local artists, the absence of a commercial radio station devoted to local rap music is one of the most important. Strangely, as rap crossed over and achieved mainstream popularity across the country in the mid-1980s, commercial radio in Boston sat on the sidelines.

The College Radio Nexus: Preserving the Underground Unlike in other cities where commercial radio stations began to include rap music programming in the late 1980s, commercial radio stations in Boston maintained an ambivalent (if not mildly hostile) relationship with rap music well into the 1990s. As late as 1993, the Boston Globe was reporting about how little rap music had penetrated commercial radio in Boston (Bickelhaupt). At that time, only WJMN (94.5 FM), WILD (1090 AM), and WXKS (107.9 FM) included rap programming regularly. Even these stations had fairly strict limitations on what they would play. WJMN (94.5 FM) played a wider variety of rap music than either of the other two other stations (which tended toward Top 40 hits at WXKS and popular R&B with occasional rap hits at WILD). Given the commercial success of Boston artists like

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AEROSMITH Aerosmith’s collaboration with Run DMC represented a tectonic shift in rap music and helped to rescue the careers of Boston’s rock icons Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry. By 1986, Joe Perry and Stephen Tyler were beginning to grapple with the heroin addictions that had helped fuel the band’s decline. Aerosmith’s 1985 comeback album Done with Mirrors had not done well and the band was foundering when they received a call from Run DMC producer Rick Rubin about working on a rap remake of their 1975 classic, ‘‘Walk This Way.’’ Having sampled Joey Kramer’s drum introduction to the song, Rubin asked Tyler and Perry to come to New York to record new bass, guitar, and vocal tracks and record a video. During the session, Perry borrowed a bass guitar from one of the Beastie Boys to recreate the bass track for the song. With new vocals, bass, and guitar tracks to go over the sample-based drum production, a legendary song was born. The resulting remake has widely been credited with exposing rap music to mainstream white audiences and breaking down the boundary separating the two genres. Eventually reaching #5 on the Billboard 100, the song not only broke barriers between musical genres, it also provided critical energy and cultural cache (not to mention income) to the flagging Aerosmith organization. The video for the song represents the genre-bending nature of the collaboration and opens with the two bands in adjacent rehearsal rooms engaged in a war of volume and style. Trying to sing along with the Run DMC version of the song coming through the walls, Tyler is annoyed when rap vocals come in on the first verse. Eventually breaking down the wall between the rehearsal spaces to sing over the second chorus through a hole in the wall, Tyler dramatically enacts the racial and musical boundary spanning represented by the song itself. The video ends with Tyler and Perry performing with Joseph ‘‘DJ Run’’ Simmons and Darryl ‘‘D.M.C.’’ McDaniels in front of a largely white audience (an irony which was perhaps missed by the producers). As one of the first rap videos to receive heavy rotation on MTV, the video exposed rap music and style to a new audience of suburban white youth. At the same time, as the first mass market merger of rap and rock idioms, the song established a sound that would propel contemporary artists like Linkin Park, Korn and Kid Rock among others.

New Edition, New Kids on the Block, Marky Mark, Bell Biv Devoe, and Bobby Brown, perhaps it is no accident that Boston’s urban stations tended to emphasize top 40 R&B and New Jack Swing over harder rap. From very early on, college and community radio stations provided the harder urban and underground material that was not being played on Boston’s commercial stations. Among the earliest and

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most important of these college radio rap shows was Magnus Johnstone’s Lecco’s Lemma show on MIT’s WMBR (88.1 FM) (Foster). Magnus Johnstone (a local painter and college radio DJ) encountered rap music almost as soon as it began to be released. A musical omnivore with tastes leaning strongly toward Caribbean and African music, he had also been a long time fan of German electronic bands like Kraftwerk and had a weekly reggae show on MIT’s radio station WMBR (88.1 FM). Never a fan of the slick production of early 1980s R&B and club music, the raw aesthetic and hard electronic beats of rap music appealed to his do-it-yourself, groove-loving sensibilities. By 1984 he was occasionally getting to play his growing collection of rap and electronic records on guest spots on WMBR’s urban music show ‘‘The Ghetto.’’ In the spring of 1985, Magnus was growing tired of his reggae show and increasingly unsatisfied with the rare opportunity to play rap and electronic music on ‘‘The Ghetto.’’ He planned to leave the station that summer. In an effort to keep Magnus at the station, his friend and fellow WMBR DJ Thomas Uebel convinced him to pitch the station director on a new rap and electronic music show called Lecco’s Lemma. In the fall of 1985, Magnus was given the 4–6 PM slot on Saturdays and began the show which was to become a central force in catalyzing the hip hop community in Boston. It was not until the appearance of Magnus’s Lecco’s Lemma show that the local rap music community had a true home on the airwaves. Fans credit the show with exposing people to this new music and providing an outlet and meeting place for fledgling artists (Foster). For young people who were hungry for this emerging art form, the Lecco’s Lemma was both an education in the newest releases and an inspiration for their own creations because Magnus solicited and regularly played tapes from local groups. In his hypnotizing and strangely accented hipster drawl, Magnus would introduce his favorite new rap releases, announce shows, and most importantly, play almost any local artist at least once. Magnus had often invited MCs to toast live on the air over reggae versions on his weekly reggae show and in December 1985 he began inviting local rap artists come into the station to perform live on the air. While it seemed a natural evolution to Magnus, this decision marked a turning point in the show and after several glorious months, would lead to its death and eventual rebirth on the Boston College station WZBC (90.3 FM). From this point on, the show became a lively physical as well as a virtual meeting place for the community. One of Magnus’s most famous early guests was MC Keithy E (aka Keith Elam) who appeared with DJ Mikey D to discuss a recently completed demo tape containing rough versions of ‘‘Cold Cold World’’ and ‘‘The Lesson.’’ Other early regulars included Disco P & The Fresh MC, Bodyrock (Chuck & Emo E), MC Capers, The Almighty RSO and FTI crews, Rusty the ‘‘Toe Jammer,’’ The Tuff Crew, MC Fantasy, MC Spice, and RCC. Magnus was fulfilling his mission of exposing the world to the incredible music being made by inner-city youth.

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As early as 1986, teens in white working class suburbs like Malden and Carver had been bitten by the hip hop bug and began sending their tapes to Magnus and appearing on the show. For young artists like Carver’s DJ Prime, Malden’s Double Def Crew, and the Boston/Cambridge duo the White Boy Crew (whose version of ‘‘La Di Da Di’’ became a minor hit on the show), having your tape played on Lecco’s Lemma translated into immediate schoolyard credibility. Although the radio shows generally went off without incident, there were occasional scuffles and it was not unusual for profanities to slip out during exuberant on air performances. When the latter generated calls from local parents and teachers concerned about the negative influence the show might be having on young people, station management began taking note of this controversial new development on Saturday afternoons. Finally, in the spring of 1986, a crew that was scheduled to appear on the show handed out flyers announcing an MC battle at the station. Magnus arrived that afternoon to find over 100 unsupervised youngsters bustling around basement halls of MIT. Whether it was the unsupervised youth roaming the halls, the occasional profanity that slipped out over the air, the calls from parents or some combination of these factors, the show was soon discontinued by station management. With help from a friend, Magnus was able to move the show to Boston College’s WZBC-FM (90.3) in Newton where it continued until the late 1980s. During Magnus’s unlikely reign as Boston’s rap radio pioneer, he watched as artists that had once sent him homemade tapes went on to sign record deals with major labels. He also watched as a new generation of artists emerged—more and more of whom seemed to be coming from Boston’s largely white suburbs. Now receiving a regular supply of new (and increasingly professional sounding) tapes from groups like COD, Top Choice Clique, Out of Town Posse, DJ Spin, MCDJ Force, and Paris Toon, Magnus’s original goal of exposing the world to music being made at home by inner-city youth was fading (Rayes). In the meantime, other college stations had also developed rap shows (most of which were more professional sounding than Magnus’s notoriously charming informality). Harvard’s WHRB (95.3 FM) had ‘‘Street Beat’’ which was run by Harvard students David Mays and Jon Schecter (the eventual founders of The Source) with DJ Def Jeff from The RSO Crew. An even more professional sounding effort could be heard on Emerson College’s WERS (88.9 FM) ‘‘Rap Explosion.’’ This show featured short-lived DJ wunderkind Jesse McKie and his mixmaster successor Mark Morrow. By the late 1980s a second generation of Boston rap groups had released influential golden age records and were regularly appearing at Boston’s music industry showcase, The Boston Music Awards. In 1988, TDS Mob released their golden age gem ‘‘Dope for the Folks’’ which was built around a sample from the similarly titled Soul Searchers track ‘‘Funk for the Folks’’ and would go on to become a one of the most sought after of Boston’s rare rap releases. The racially integrated

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Malden group Top Choice Clique had released ‘‘The Powers in the Words’’ (1988) on Waltz Records. Edo G was regularly performing as Edo Rock with the FTI (Fresh to Impress Crew). The Almighty RSO was also rapidly becoming a major force in Boston’s rap scene. Despite all this activity, hip hop in Boston remained a youth and art world phenomena well into the 1990s. It may be true that hip hop reached mainstream popularity later in Boston than it had in New York, but press reports from the time also overlooked the vibrant underground scene that had existed from very early on. For example, Steve Morse’s 1990 Globe article, ‘‘Rap Invasion Tapping on Boston’s Door,’’ makes it seem as if rap music was virtually unknown in Boston. In fact, as Boston’s mainstream papers began to announce the arrival of rap music in 1990, hip hop in Boston was already entering its adolescence. Maurice Starr’s wildly popular Hollywood Talent Nights were a thing of the past. Boston pioneer MC Spice had already left his career in Boston and been summoned back to help produce Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s debut album in 1990. After his early career as a teen DJ phenomenon who scratched with his feet, Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ became the regular DJ at the popular Hollywood Talent Night series, recorded with Peter Wolf, dropped his youthful name and went on to found Spin City Records/Funky Fresh Records. The early princes of Boston Dance, Funk Effects, and their farm team Boston Poppers and Lockers, had disbanded and gone their separate ways while younger upstarts, The New York Puppeteers, had joined members of the Mass Break Team to become the legendary b-boy crew, The Floorlords, who ruled regional battles throughout the 1980s. As Boston hip hop began to be recognized by mainstream local media, it entered a new and violent period as growing commercial interests met the tidal wave of gang violence that swept through Boston’s inner city in the early 1990s. Back in the early days, before the money got into it, hip hop in Boston began just like it had in New York—as a style, art form, and way of life for a small group of youth that expressed itself musically, socially, artistically, and only later professionally.

THE GOLDEN AGE AND THE DARKEST DAYS: 1988–1995 By the late 1980s, hip hop in Boston had entered a new phase. The early days of community shows at the Lee School, open mics at the 4 Corners hot spots Ben’s Lounge and Cortees’s, and countless undocumented (and largely peaceful) block parties gave way to a new era of growing competition (Staton). As the commercial potential of hip hop became obvious, more and more artists saw it as a ticket to fame and fortune (or at least out of the hardscrabble life of the inner city). Crews began to hustle for scarce industry resources like access to recording studios, paid gigs, and elusive recording contracts with national labels. The halcyon days of impromptu on air battles at Lecco’s Lemma were long gone. Hip hop had

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Ed O.G. (Getty Images)

entered its adolescence, which brought with it a new level of braggadocio, energy, and violence. Movies like the 1988 film Colors heralded this new era. Hollywood images glorifying the gangster lifestyle arrived along with a real world crack and gang epidemic that swept through Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods (Pendleton). To young people in the inner city, this early media depiction of the gangster lifestyle provided a model for their own growing real world turf battles. As inner-city neighborhoods became engulfed in a rising tide of youth violence in the early 1990s, young people began to distinguish themselves and their powerful neighborhood affiliations using sports team caps and jerseys. The Humboldt Avenue neighborhood in Roxbury where Edo G grew up was represented by Oakland Raiders gear. Castlegate Street in Dorchester (and its most notorious group RSO) was represented by Boston’s hockey team The Bruins. Inner-city youth took these geographic and brand identifications more and more seriously as they were deeply connected to powerful neighborhood (and sometimes gang) identities. In Dorchester’s 4 Corners neighborhood, Adidas sneakers reigned supreme as evidenced by the Adidas Tree (a tree festooned with dozens of pairs of sneakers) that served as public notice of the local brand identity (see sidebar: Adidas). The complex intersection of neighborhood turf wars, drugs, and gang activity generated an explosion of violence in the early 1990s which would take many lives in Boston’s young hip hop community. For most of the 1980s, the murder rate in Boston had fluctuated between 82 and 105 people per year. It had been a relatively peaceful decade in a city still recovering from the racial violence of the bussing crisis in the 1970s. In a shocking end to this relative tranquility, 143 people (most of them inner-city youth) were murdered in Boston in 1990. This violence had a profound and lasting impact on the hip hop

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ADIDAS In Boston, Adidas sneakers were so popular they seemed to grow on the trees. Although Adidas has been a staple in the fashion diet of hip hoppers everywhere, Boston clung to its identification with the brand longer and more tightly than other towns. Local rappers Almighty RSO provide an illustration of the power of the Adidas brand on the cover of their 1988 ‘‘Notorious’’ single. Appearing decked out in matching Adidas track suits and sneakers, this cover pays homage to the brand as a gangster icon as members of the band reach for the pistols tucked into their shiny waistbands. Long before they appeared in matching Bruins gear, RSO were rocking their Adidas. There was no more prominent (and controversial) demonstration of the power of the Addidas brand than the Adidas Tree in the Grove Hall neighborhood of Dorchester. Adorned with dozens of pairs of sneakers, the Adidas tree sat in a wooded lot on Intervale road that had been taken over by the notorious Intervale Road Posse who ran the local crack trade and were known for their brutality (as well as their love of Addidas). The group had outfitted the park with couches, a barbeque, and even televisions powered from local homes that had been abandoned. This neighborhood was both a hotbed of gang activity as well as hip hop talent. Illustrating the multilayered nature of hip hop icons, the Adidas tree held many meanings for local residents. To those inside the community, the tree symbolized acceptance as young MCs who were deemed good enough were allowed to throw their sneakers into the branches. For rivals and outsiders, it served as a reminder that anyone caught wearing any other brand could expect trouble. For local adults and authority figures, it represented youth and gang culture gone wild. The presence of frequent gunfire and rampant gang activity served to reinforce this latter image. Eventually, the Adidas tree was cut down by the authorities who came in to clean up the lot after 23 members of the Intervale Road gang were arrested in a raid by the Boston Police.

community as beefs that began in the neighborhood often showed up at events and vice versa. Increasingly, fights (and sometimes deaths) became common at rap shows. In the summer of 1992, a free concert at City Hall Plaza, featuring A Tribe Called Quest and Arrested Development, drew 20,000 young people. The show was cancelled after only three acts when the crowd surged forward, knocking over several police barricades. 15 people were hurt and 24 arrested in what was described as a ‘‘rampage’’ by the Boston Globe, as frustrated young fans threw bottles at police, engaged in fights, and trashed several local businesses (Murphy). Despite the mixed color of the crowd at the event, in the eyes of a wary public, hip

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hop in Boston seemed to be increasingly associated with violence, gangs, and problems with inner-city youth. Violence at shows made nightclub owners and promoters reluctant to book rap music which reduced the already limited number of outlets for shows in Boston during the early 1990s. Just as the music was demonstrating its massive commercial potential across the country, outlets were drying up in Boston. Rap shows occasionally appeared at Boston rock venues like the Channel Nightclub and Kenmore Square’s famous Rathskeller, but during this period, regular hip hop events were rare and usually short-lived due to fights (or the fear of them). Despite the lack of outlets for local talent and the long shadows cast by Boston R&B groups like New Edition, New Kids on the Block, Bobby Brown, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, and Bell Biv Devoe, in the late 1980s local Boston rap groups slowly began to get more media attention. In 1987, the first Boston Music Awards included a category for ‘‘Outstanding Rap Act’’ and the first several years of the awards included a veritable who’s who of late 1980s Boston groups. This local exposure notwithstanding, in the early 1990s, Boston rap groups still struggled to get national recording contracts and some began to leave Boston to pursue careers in New York. MC Keithy E of the Gang Starr Crew’s departure for Brooklyn, NY (along with Gang Starr name) was a formative story for the Boston hip hop community. His subsequent success with DJ Premier is the stuff of hip hop legend. However, because Guru did not regularly refer to his Boston roots in those early days, some folks back home felt the city had lost an opportunity for national recognition that it deserved. Perhaps contradicting this popular narrative, on a 1986 radio appearance on WZBC (90.9 FM) in Newton, Guru talks about a recent move to Brooklyn where he hoped to get his own record on the market and then ‘‘reach out to all the fly rappers, and beatboxers and DJs in Boston’’ (MC Keithy E). While he clearly had the intention of using his success to pave the way for local artists, in the end Guru made New York his permanent home and most early fans associated his success with Brooklyn rather than Boston. The harder hitting Boston group The Almighty RSO had translated their two independent Boot releases into a deal with Tommy Boy records in 1992. Their goal seemed to be to leverage their local street credibility to build national exposure Table 1

Outstanding Rap Act Category: Boston Music Awards (1987–1990)

1987

1988

1989

1990

FTI Crew

A Train

Disco P. & Orangeman

Gang Starr

Oreo Crew

Disco P. & Fresh MC

Gang Starr

MC Spider

RSO Crew

Fat Girls

RSO Crew

RSO Crew

Wack Attack

Gang Starr

T.D.S. Mob

T.D.S. Mob

White Boy Crew

Rusty the ‘‘Toe Jammer’’ Top Choice Clique

Top Choice Clique

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and a name for themselves as Boston’s bad boys of rap. Their release on Tommy Boy, ‘‘One in the Chamba’’ (1992), was an angry, hard hitting track describing the police harassment and brutality members had witnessed growing up in Roxbury. According to Raymond ‘‘Ray Dog’’ Scott, the leader of the group, the song ‘‘vented frustration with police’’ and described the police shooting of two friends, Christopher Rogers and Nethanial Lackland (Grant). Echoing the feeling shared by many gangsta rappers of the time, RSO felt they had the right to report about the violence they were witnessing in America’s inner cities. ‘‘One in the Chamba’’ pulled no punches in advocating armed resistance to violent police tactics and was swept up—along with Ice T’s recently released ‘‘Cop Killer’’ (1992)—in a national controversy about the messages in gangsta rap songs. To the Boston Police Patrolman’s Association, the song apparently seemed like a taunt from a group that had a long history of encounters with the law. With the backing of Oliver North and Jack Thompson (the Florida attorney who sued 2 Live Crew for profanity), The Boston Police Patrolman Association announced their intention to sue Tommy Boy records. Shortly thereafter, RSO was dropped from the label which claimed the decision was due to low sales. Members of the group felt the label had succumbed to public pressure (Grant). By the late 1980s, another Boston rap creation with ties to The Almighty RSO, The Source magazine, was appearing as a photocopied sheet in local record stores like Skippy Whites, Nubian Notions, and Spin City. Founded by Harvard rap fans David Mays and John Schecter (and with a little early advertising support from Skippy White), the publication rapidly grew in popularity and seemed destined to become a vehicle for exposing Boston artists to a national audience. In 1990, when the young Source relocated to New York, Boston lost its second rising star in just a few years. The sense of playing second fiddle to the larger city down the coast was gradually rising among Boston fans. The controversial relationship between The Source and RSO’s Raymond ‘‘Ray Dog’’ Scott (later known as Benzino), is widely known and well reported elsewhere (Chang). In a now famous event in hip hop journalism, Mays’ battle with the editorial staff over a review of a RSO record led to a staff walkout in 1994. However, this did not end the struggles at the magazine. After a decade filled with charges of sexual harassment, staff intimidation, and financial mismanagement, The Source finally removed Mays and Benzino in 2006. Perhaps because The Source story included so many controversies and public battles, its more positive elements (and their Boston roots) are not as salient in the public memory. Putting all the controversies aside, the seminal role that The Source has played in providing a voice for the hip hop nation can not be denied. The fact that it emerged out of the vibrant underground hip hop scene in Boston in the late 1980s should not be forgotten. Other late 1980s Boston rap pioneers also fared well in the early 1990s. Chief among them was Edward Anderson from the Fresh to Impress Crew. Now calling himself Ed O. G. and appearing as Ed O. G. & Da Bulldogs, his Boston bona fides

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were reinforced with the commercial success of his 1991 single ‘‘I Got to Have It’’/Life of a Kid in the Ghetto on PWL records. In 1991 the single reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles charts and the video was receiving heavy rotation on Yo! MTV Raps and Vibe. For folks in Boston, seeing scenes of Dudley Square rolling by on TV proved that fame was indeed possible for Boston artists (Boston Beats and Rhymes). Boston hip hop seemed just about to get its day on the national stage. Unfortunately, several factors stymied the careers of Boston’s rap artists during this period. Despite having several sources for rap music on the commercial airwaves, the format still leaned heavily toward top 40 rap and R&B hits on WXKS (KISS 108 FM) and WILD (1090 AM). The rap airwaves in Boston took on a slightly harder edge in 1993, when after a decade long battle with WXKS, WZOU (94.5 FM) changed its call letters to WJMN and as ‘‘Jam’n 94.5’’ billed itself as ‘‘Boston’s home for blazing hip hop and the hottest R&B’’ and began to play edgier fare. Although this change increased the amount of harder rap being played in Boston (and provided a launching pad for local DJs like Geespin), none of the commercial stations featured local artists regularly. In addition, the exposure that Boston artists did receive was often curtailed by clashes between performers and members of the local music industry. At a mid1990s concert sponsored by Jam’n 94.5, Edo G was having trouble with an engineer who seemed unable to get a good vocal sound on stage. In the language he was accustomed to using at the time, Edo boastfully threatened the soundman. Whether merely youthful braggadocio or actual threat, this interaction did not help him win friends with station management and illustrated the tensions that sometimes flared as teenage musicians with street corner attitudes confronted the local music industry. It also remained difficult to get rap music nights started and sustaining themselves in Boston nightclubs in the early 1990s. Because the community was plagued by infighting, violence at shows became more common, which in turn made nightclub owners reluctant to book rap acts (Diggs). From inside the community, this exclusion took on a racial overtone as most of the same clubs seemed willing to book occasionally violent (and predominantly white) punk and heavy metal shows. Throughout the early 1990s, Boston still lacked a rap music industry to help artists navigate their careers and interact effectively with the local and national music industry. In the 1970s and 1980s, Boston had a strong rock and roll scene and its music industry continued to reflect that bias. Although the Boston Music Awards included an ‘‘Outstanding Rap Act’’ category (Table 2), these nominations reflected a small slice of the local scene. Boston veterans like Edo G, Gang Starr, The Almighty RSO and Top Choice Clique remained regular recipients, and in the early 1990s Marky Mark (Mark Robert Michael Wahlberg, b. June 5, 1971) began to appear regularly. With the 1994 inclusion of G. Love & Special

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Nominations for Outstanding Rap Act Category: Boston Music Awards (1991–1995)

Table 2

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Gang Starr

Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs

The Almighty RSO Crew

Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs

The Almighty RSO

Marky Mark

Gang Starr

Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs

Gang Starr

Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs

RSO Crew

Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch

Gang Starr

Guru

Gang Starr

T.D.S. Mob

Posse NFX

Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch

Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch

G. Love & Special Sauce

Top Choice Clique

Tam Tam

Top Choice Clique

Top Choice Clique

Top Choice Clique

Young Nation

Top Choice Clique

Sauce the nominations increasingly started to reflect top 40 radio and college tastes. Stylistic differences did not help bridge the significant cultural divides between urban artists and the local music industry. Even those artists that had achieved national success were still having trouble with bad luck and industry politics. After being dropped by Tommy Boy, RSO was picked up by Ruthless Records but their progress was again curtailed when their mentor and producer, Eazy E was diagnosed with AIDS and later died in 1995. With a few notable exceptions (Edo G, RSO/Made Men/Benzino, Guru), it would take the explosion of underground rap in the late 1990s before Boston artists began to reach national audiences on a regular basis.

REGIONAL SCENES AND THE (RE)BIRTH OF THE UNDERGROUND: 1995–2008 As a long time hip hop fan and community activist, Cindy Diggs had been observing the challenges faced by Boston’s hip hop community for many years. In 1995, she decided something needed to be done. Cindy formed a hip hop advocacy group called Us Making Moves Forever (UMMF) to help unify the hip hop community while building connections with members of the national music industry. Under this banner, Cindy rallied the community and eventually built a 500-person membership organization that published a newsletter, arranged industry networking

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events for local artists, and most importantly, began to organize successful local shows. Given the difficulty (and dangers) of booking nighttime shows at places that served alcohol, Cindy scheduled shows in the evening, on off nights, or at places with no alcohol. This strategy proved successful and one of her most influential regular events was a weekly open mic at a soul food restaurant on Columbus Ave named Bob the Chef’s. This event became an incubator for mid-1990s rappers and groups like Mr. Lif, Akrobatik, K.T., Concrete Clique, Lo-Kee, S.N.I.P.E.R., Domestik Soulgerz, Mikst Nutz, Rip Shop, M-Slash, Imperial G. Smooth, Punch Spiked Wit Poison, T. Max, God Complex (aka. 7L and Esoteric), and many others who would go on to have successful careers as performers and recording artists. In addition to helping forge allegiances among a new generation of underground artists, these open mics also served as a training ground for the larger industry networking events hosted by UMMF. Their Can We Talk 2 U? Entertainment Convention was held annually between 1995 and 1998 and exposed young Boston artists to industry professionals (and vice versa). The inclusion of nationally recognized speakers like Wendy Day of the Rap Coalition and Jam Master Jay drew national attention for Boston’s rap scene through write-ups in The Source, Rap Pages, and Blaze magazines (Diggs). UMMF played a critical role in unifying Boston’s hip hop community, opening nightclubs to the idea of doing shows and helping artists connect with industry professionals. However, in the late 1990s, Cindy was spending more and more of her own money and time on the organization and needed to find a way to make it selfsustaining. When an attempt to collect a small yearly membership was not successful, she returned to doing paid community work and spent less and less time on the organization. In recognition of her many years of service to Boston’s hip hop community, in 2006 Cindy received a lifetime achievement award from the Mass Industry Commission (M.I.C.) at its second annual Boston hip hop awards ceremony. Her Akrobatik coined moniker, ‘‘Mother Hip Hop’’ succinctly summarizes her place in the community. Partly due to Cindy’s efforts with UMMF, the freeze on rap in nightclubs started to thaw in the late 1990s and Boston was well poised to ride the wave of underground hip hop that was about to sweep college campuses. By the late 1990s a new generation of Boston artists was turning underground credibility and intelligent rhymes into regular gigs and recording deals. Late in the 1990s, members of UMMF began their own night under the moniker Main Ingredient Productions (aka. Metro Concepts) at the Cambridge reggae club, The Western Front. This weekly open mic became a regular stop for Boston’s growing community of underground MCs and allowed emerging artists to hone their skills in front of (largely) supportive audiences (Boston Beats and Rhymes). During the mid-1990s, Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ Pendleton had dropped his youthful name and was focusing more on his record store business than on DJ gigs. While he still occasionally played out, most of his time was spent managing the

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store, promoting events, holding in-store appearances and serving as a vinyl oasis for the urban hip hop community. Illustrating the geographic and racial lines that have historically divided the city, few of the legions of ‘‘backpacker’’ rap fans (e.g., white college students) who began turning out in droves at local rap shows ventured over to Funky Fresh Records (which sat in the heart of the very nonwhite Dudley Square neighborhood) to get schooled on the latest urban beats. This community was more likely to find its vinyl at Boston’s many used record stores or at one of several Newbury Comics stores, none of which were located in Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods (see sidebar: Record Stores). By the mid-1990s, Boston had its first store catering specifically to the growing market for underground hip hop. Located on Massachusetts Avenue right near the top of Newbury Street, Biscuithead was a nexus for the underground rap scene. Its location within blocks of many other record stores (e.g., Spin City/Nuggets, Tower Records, Newbury Comics, Boston Beat, etc.) made it a regular stop for eclectic diggers on their rounds and hip hop heads alike. Back in those days, Biscuithead was the downtown outlet for underground hip hop while Rusty’s Funky Fresh Records catered to inner-city tastes. This cultural and geographic division would persist in the local hip hop community well into the new millennium (and continues to rear its head occasionally to this day). During this period, rap music production was booming in Boston. Two Berklee College of music graduates, Dow Brain and Brad Young, formed Underground Productions and were getting regular production work by the mid-1990s. A veteran of Newbury Studios, Brad had already made a name for himself working with artists like RSO. In the mid-1990s, Dow and Brad met MC Casey ‘‘Polecat’’ Staton through Brad’s contacts at Newbury Studios. In 1995, this team would produce the Punch/Polecat split 12’’ LP on DBK Records featuring the classic Boston underground tracks ‘‘Mindless’’ and ‘‘Out Ta Flip.’’ Brad and Dow would also work with Dorchester rapper Todd ‘‘T-Max’’ Keith Maxwell, on the blunted urban classic 12’’ single ‘‘Relax Your Mind/Execution Style’’ (1996). The more popular track, ‘‘Execution Style’’ sold 11,000 units and reached the top 10 on the CMJ charts. ‘‘Relax Your Mind’’ was also a popular Boston rap track (eventually selling 6,000 units) and received play on local college radio stations. Perhaps most interesting is Dow and Brad’s collaboration with local dancehall producer Junior Rodigan as it reflects the extent to which Boston hip hop had absorbed Jamaican influences by the mid-1990s (see sidebar: Jamaican influences). Meanwhile, local scenes in some of Boston’s surrounding suburbs had been developing for 10 years and were beginning to bear fruit. Lawrence MA had produced the gritty beats and blunted rhymes of MC Scientifik. His 1994 Joe Mansfield and Edo G produced single ‘‘Jungles of Da East’’ remains one of the classic underground tracks of the mid-1990s. Having moved to southern New Hampshire from Lowell, MA, Donny ‘‘Def Rock’’ Maker founded Monstamind Records and released a 12’’ under the name Magabug that received favorable reactions and local radio play from college DJs like Brian Coleman. Def Rock also began

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RECORD STORES Rap was the first musical form to use LP records as an instrument. While records had been used in musical performances by modern classical innovators like John Cage, in the late 1970s, old funk and soul records found new life under the hands of young innovators who used their contents as a palate for the construction of new dance grooves. In the now familiar origin story, New York DJs like Kool Herc used duplicate copies of records to extend the breakdown sections of hard funk tracks. Because they provide raw materials for DJs, an outlet for artists, and a meeting place for fans, record stores play a critical role as anchors in hip hop communities. In Boston, the role of record stores as hubs in local music networks has been no less important. Among the earliest and longest lasting nodes in Boston’s urban music network is Skippy Whites Records. Skippy opened his store in 1961 on Washington St. in Boston and from early on specialized in music favored by urban audiences. While he always preferred R&B, blues, gospel and jazz to the repetitive beats and harsh language of rap, he was nevertheless a participant in the birth of the rap music scene in Boston. Because of his massive collection of soul, funk and R&B records, Skippy’s has long been an oasis for DJs and producers seeking breaks and samples in addition the new rap releases he carried. Skippy White’s was also among the first stores to feature copies of The Source magazine when it was still a photocopied fanzine being produced out of a Harvard dorm room. By supporting David Mays and John Schecter with advertising revenue when they were still Harvard undergraduates, Skippy played an important role in launching The Source. Skippy even dabbled briefly in rap music production releasing Top Choice Clique’s ‘‘Peace of Mind’’ (1994) on his own Sample Records. While Skippy White’s contained rap as part of a much larger collection of R&B, soul, funk and jazz, other stores have focused even more specifically on rap music. Among them, Rusty ‘‘the Toe Jammer’’ Pendleton’s Funky Fresh records is the oldest and most familiar to folks in Boston’s inner city. The store, located in Boston’s Dudley Square, has been an important outlet for Boston’s urban artists and DJs for more than a decade. In 2007, Rusty consolidated his store, selling an entire basement full of back stock to a single buyer after local DJs had a chance to pick through the stacks for a dollar a record. Now operating a smaller shop with a Tattoo parlor downstairs, Rusty continues his role as a local tastemaker on his Friday and Saturday night radio show, Funky Fresh Radio on Touch 106.1 FM. In the spring of 2008 his 10 PM–3 AM show shifted to an ‘‘All Boston’’ format. To this day, Rusty remains an active promoter of local talent. More recent arrivals on Boston’s record store scene included the Massachusetts Avenue underground hip hop oasis Buiscuithead Records. Located

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in a third floor office, the store was never easy to access, but its tasteful selection of the latest underground hip hop singles lined the walls next to descriptive tags like ‘‘illest beats!!.’’ While its reign was short, during the late 1990s, it was a critical stop on record circuit in Boston. Even more recently, Underground Hip Hop opened its doors and launched an equally strong online retail outlet. Founded by Northeastern students, this has become the new oasis for independent rap releases in Boston.

working with younger artists like Lowell’s Peter ‘‘Lyrical Lord Plourde’’ Plourde who began appearing in (and often winning) Boston MC battles in the mid-tolate 1990s. Eventually forming the group X-Caliber with his partner Fee, their 1998 ‘‘Butta Messenga’’ was a college radio hit and launched Lyrical’s career.

JAMAICAN INFLUENCES Jamaican influences in rap music have become the subject of scholarly study of late (Marshall). In Boston, these influences run long and deep. As early as 1986, The Almighty RSO was featuring reggae melodies and Jamaican turns of phrase like ‘‘we come fi nice up de show’’ on demo tapes sent to the Lecco’s Lemma ratio show. Their 1993 classic ‘‘Bad Boyz’’ (Epic) includes a strong Jamaican influence with Junior Rodigan’s uniquely accented patois introduction and second verse. Bobby Brown was also obviously influenced by Jamaican vocal style as he included four raggamuffin hip hop tracks on his 1993 B-Brown Posse record. The most prolific of Boston’s mid-1990s hip hop/dancehall producers were certainly Dow Brain and Brad Young. Having played in Reggae bands like the I-Tones and worked on tracks with Junior Rodigan, Brain and Young served as an important conduit connecting the hip hop and Reggae communities in Boston. One of their most popular crossover productions was the 1996 ‘‘Gangsta’’ by the band Motion which featured Ruffa toasting about ghetto lifestyle over a version of the classic Craig Mack track ‘‘Flava in Your Ear.’’ Their collaborations with Jr. Rodigan were usually released on the Mastermind label and sometimes refer to them using aliases (perhaps due to legal questions over sample clearances). While ragamuffin vocals began appearing in Boston hip hop as early as the 1986 RSO demo tape, it was not until Dow and Brad teamed up with local dancehall producer Jr. Rodigan that Jamaican vocals became a regular sound in Boston hip hop productions. These efforts hold up very well next to the more widely known releases on Bobby Konders’s Massive B label and represent an relatively unknown reservoir for fans of the mid-1990s Raggamuffin hip hop sound.

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By the late 1990s, violence prevention initiatives had created a dramatic drop in violence among inner-city youth. Between 1995 and 1997, no one under the age of 18 had been killed by a gun in Boston. Even legendary Boston gangsta rapper Raymond Scott of RSO, had gotten in on the peace game. Working at the Canton studio he shared with RSO publisher and long time collaborator David Mays, Ray began releasing tracks with a collection of former rival gang members called the Wiseguys. Made up of Anthony ‘‘Cool Gzus’’ Grant (formerly of TDS mob), Demaine ‘‘the Master Criminal’’ Thomas, James Marsh, Cordell Jones, Antonio ‘‘Tangg the Juice’’ Altamarino, Orvell ‘‘Big Man the Terror’’ Hairston, and Kevin ‘‘1-MP’’ Thurston, the group used their street credibility to spread a message of peace and unity among Boston’s inner-city youth (Morse). Despite these positive initiatives, controversy would haunt former members of RSO well into the new millennium. As underground hip hop began to take off in the late 1990s, Boston was well positioned to catch the wave. In the late 1990s, rock nightclubs like the Middle East in Cambridge and Bill’s Bar in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood began hosting semiregular rap nights featuring national acts (see sidebar: Rock Clubs). Often local acts would open for larger national acts, thereby increasing their exposure. The location of these clubs near Harvard University, MIT, Boston University, and Northeastern meant that college students could easily access the shows (Boston Beats and Rhymes). As the grimy, sample-heavy beats and clever lyricism of underground hip hop gained popularity across college campuses nationwide, Boston’s new generation of artists had been honing the formula for years. While the increasing popularity of local artists among college students helped fuel local careers, it also paradoxically reinforced a subtle racial cleavage that had existed in the community for many years. Increasingly, African American artists like Akrobatik, Mr. Lif, T-Max and Insight found themselves performing to largely white college audiences (Boston Beats and Rhymes). Adding to the complexity, since white artists like 7L and Esoteric, Edan and the Porn Theater Ushers were also regularly appearing before these audiences, there was often more racial diversity on stage than in the audience. Performances like Edan and Insight rocking doubles together on one set of turntables certainly represented a degree of integration among artists that was not as widely shared among audiences (Boston Beats and Rhymes). If local underground artists were not very well known in Boston’s inner city, Boston’s urban rap artists were totally unknown to the college crowds that attended shows at the Middle East and Bill’s Bar. As Boston’s underground hip hop scene grew throughout the late 1990s and turn of the century it was largely disconnected from inner-city fans that favored grittier material and Top 40 fare. Nonetheless, artists who had honed their talents at UMMF shows in the mid-1990s now had full-fledged careers. The arrival of two new local labels in the late 1990s and early 2000s helped many of these local artists reach national audiences.

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ROCK CLUBS In Boston, rap music found an unlikely home in nightclubs catering to rock and roll bands. Perhaps the sheer number and dominance of such clubs in Boston’s entertainment industry made it unlikely that rap would find any other home. Whatever the cause, rap music in Boston was paradoxically presented in the very same rooms that spawned bands like Morphine and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. In the 1980s, rap acts occasionally played at the Kenmore Square nightclubs 9 Landsdowne and The Rat as well as Boston’s Fort Point nightclub The Channel. Certainly, shows were also taking place at inner-city venues like Dorchester’s Strand Theater and Roxbury’s Chez Vous roller skating rink. However, rock clubs played an important role in presenting rap music to local audiences as early as the mid-1980s in Boston. In the late 1990s, rock nightclubs played a critical role in helping fuel an explosion of underground artists who appealed to young white college artists. Cambridge rock clubs like the Middle East and T.T. The Bears began to present underground artists like Mr. Lif, 7L and Esoteric, Insight, D-Tension paired with nationally touring headlining acts. At Kenmore Square’s Bill’s Bar, the Macka Monday’s night became a regular spot for Boston’s emerging rap artists and small national acts alike. The relative dearth of nightclubs in Boston’s black and Hispanic neighborhoods and the proximity of Boston’s nightclubs to large populations of young (primarily white) suburban college students reinforced racial divides which had long separated the city. Rock clubs played a critical role in ensuring that the die hard fans in Boston had somewhere to go to see live rap music and helped launch the careers of many internationally known underground artists.

In 1995, Emmerson DJ Papa D (aka Adam Defalco) and his friend Truth Elemental (aka Josh Gagne) founded Brick Records with the express purpose of promoting Boston’s new generation of underground and independent hip hop artists (Boston Beats and Rhymes). Their 1995 Rebel Alliance compilation gained critical acclaim and spawned a successful 10-year run which has helped catapult artists like Mr. Lif, Insight, D-Tension, Akrobatic, 7L and Esoteric, and many others into the national spotlight. Adding fuel to an already burning local underground hip hop scene, Boston production veteran Joe Mansfield founded Traffic Entertainment in 2002 to satisfy the growing hunger for rare rap reissues and golden age classics. Their 2006 rerelease of material from Scientifik’s mid1990’s classic Criminal is just one of many local releases that helped to resurrect interest in Boston’s golden age artists. As the late 1990s gave way to the new millennium, Boston veterans RSO (now calling themselves Made Men) and Edo G had achieved legendary status in the

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community. Benzino achieved notoriety through his association with The Source magazine, widely publicized beef with Eminem, and his active career as a solo artist. Edo G was once again a regular nominee in the Boston Music Awards along with new favorites Mr. Lif, Akrobatik, 7L and Esoteric, the Porn Theater Ushers, The Skitzophreniks, D-Tension, Virtuoso, Insight, Krumb Snatcha, and Smoke Bulga. Meanwhile, two local DJs began to translate their mixtapes and frequent club appearances into regular spots on Boston’s commercial rap stations. Clinton Sparks emerged on the Boston music scene in 1998 as a writer for the popular morning radio show on WJMN (94.5 FM) with Baltazar and Pebbles. In the early years of the new millennium, he began appearing on Boston’s new urban station 97.7 FM (WILD) and began to make a regional name as a prolific mixtape producer. By 2006, Sparks had leveraged his growing reputation into a position as P Diddy’s DJ. During the same period, DJ Geespin became a regular feature in Boston’s nightclubs and was eventually recognized by Jam’n 94.5 DJ Roy Barboza and offered a late night spot on the show. His Launch Pad show was so popular that he was eventually offered a prime time slot on the station and has gone on to become one of its regular DJs. This period also found Boston veterans making new names for themselves and shedding old allegiances. Big Chuck, formerly a member of the Body Rock Crew with Antonio Ennis, had been frustrated by his dealings with Dr. Dre at Aftermath and resigned in 2003 to start his own label, the Drama Entertainment Family. His roster included Punch who received local acclaim in Boston for his work with the Street Poets in 1995. Like Big Chuck, former members of RSO had by this time become established business men. However, some were still dogged by their youthful images. In 2000, members of Made Men received unwelcome local press coverage for their alleged involvement in a backstage brawl at a Rough Ryders/Cash Money show at the Fleet Center and the September stabbing of Celtics star Paul Pierce at Boston’s Buzz nightclub (Graham). Meanwhile, the Antonio Ansaldi clothing company received local publicity for its ‘‘Stop Snitching’’ T-shirts, which were designed in 1999 by former RSO member Antonio Ennis as a novelty item but were widely criticized by police and city officials. In 2005, Boston experienced a new wave of youth violence and recorded its highest murder rate in a decade with 75 killings in the city. Several high profile murders, including the murder of four young musicians in a home studio in Dorchester, once again directed public attention to the violence that persisted in Boston’s inner city. In response to this escalating violence and the ‘‘Stop Snitching’’ controversy, local veterans Cindy Diggs and Antonio Ennis formed the ‘‘Start Peace’’ movement. Their first effort was a T-shirt that used the old ‘‘Stop Snitching’’ logo but replaced the old phrase with their new ‘‘Start Peace’’ message. As part of the campaign, Ennis also formed a group called 4Peace made up of local legends Edo G, Wyatt Jackson (formerly of the Unikue Dominoes), and Deric Quest. Their summer 2007 release ‘‘Start Peace’’ included a video of the same

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name and an appearance with Boston’s Mayor Menino at the third annual hip hop Unity Festival at City Hall Plaza. The fact that this was the same outdoor location of the 1992 concert that was described by the Boston Globe as a ‘‘rampage’’ was not lost on older members of the peaceful and diverse crowd. While Boston rap veterans 4Peace engaged the audience in a peace-promoting call and response, a group of kids decked out in ‘‘Boston Got Next’’ T-shirts represented the undying belief that Boston’s banner year is just around the corner. Indeed, evidence of a rap renaissance in Boston seems to be growing. In addition to the socially motivated group 4 Peace, in 2005 Edo G began working with another Boston supergroup called Special Teamz that includes Jaysaun (formerly of the Kreators) and Slaine (of La Coka Nostra). Boston veteran MC Lyrical also reemerged in the local press in 2005 with the release of his full-length CD iNFiNiTi which included the popular college single ‘‘The Focus is Back.’’ With members of the M.I.C., Lyrical began organizing an annual hop hop award show in 2006. A cross section of 2007 winners includes both Boston veterans (Floorlords, Akrobatik, The Almighty RSO) and local up-and-comers (e.g., DJs On & On and Jayceoh, MC Frankie Wrainwright, and the Foundation Movement). Meanwhile, local veterans MC Spice, Cindy Diggs, and Rusty ‘‘Mr. Funky Fresh’’ Pendleton have joined forces to gain local control of the urban airwaves and raise the consciousness of inner-city residents at Touch 106.1 FM (WTCH), a small community station located in the Grove Hall neighborhood of Dorchester. Representing their commitment to building a hip hop industry with deep roots in the inner city, the station recently shifted its format to feature Boston artists exclusively from 10 PM to 3 AM on Friday and Saturday nights. Perhaps it took the widely publicized ‘‘death of hip hop’’ in 2006 for it to be finally (re)born in Boston.

REFERENCES Bickelhaupt, Susan. ‘‘Boston Stations Accept the Rap.’’ Boston Globe, December 10, 1993, 72. Boston Beats and Rhymes. Dir. Scott Limanek, 2004. Bourne, K. ‘‘Local Talent Night Final Showcases Stage Acts.’’ Bay State Banner, February 13, 1986, 16. Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, 407–35. New York: St. Martins Press, 2005. Delgado, Lino. Personal Interview. June 24, 2007 and May 6, 2008. Diggs, Cindy. Personal Interview. August 10, 2007. Foster, Pacey. Boston Hip-hop History: Magnus Carta. Weblog entry. Library of Vinyl. July 6, 2005. http://libraryofvinyl.blogspot.com/2005/07/boston-hiphop-history-magnus-carta.html (accessed April 20, 2008). Graham, Renee. ‘‘Life in the Pop Lane: Hip-Hop Doesn’t Deserve the Rap for Violence.’’ Boston Globe, April 5, 2000, C1.

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Grant, Traci. ‘‘Police Plan to Sue Boston Rappers.’’ Boston Globe, August 5, 1992, 43. Johnstone, Magnus. Personal Interview. July 11, 2007. Kennedy, David, Anthony Braga, and Anne Piehl. ‘‘The (Un)known Universe: Mapping Gangs and Gang Violence in Boston.’’ In Crime Mapping and Crime Prevention, edited by D. Weisburd, J. T. McEwen, 219–62. New York: Criminal Justice Press, 1997. Kindleberger, R. S. ‘‘Painting Boston: Surge in N.Y.-Style Graffiti Prompts City, T Officials to Say Enough is Enough.’’ Boston Globe, April 24, 1985, Metro 1. Maker, Donny. Personal Interview. May 10, 2008. Marshall, Wayne. ‘‘Kool Herc.’’ In Icons of Hip-hop, edited by Mickey Hess, 1–25. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. MC Keithy E. Interview on Lecco’s Lemma Radio Show. Ca. 1986. MC Spice. Personal Interview. September 9, 2007. Morse, Steve. ‘‘Boston Funk Finally Comes of Age.’’ Boston Globe, November 13, 1983. Arts & Film 1. ———. ‘‘Rap Invasion Tapping on Boston’s Door.’’ Boston Globe, February 9, 1990, 74. ———. ‘‘Rappers Wise Up.’’ Boston Globe, January 9, 1998. Arts & Film 15. ———. ‘‘Sky’s the Limit for Maurice Starr.’’ Boston Globe, April 15, 1980. Arts & Film 1. Murphy, Sean. ‘‘15 Hurt, 24 Arrested in Rampage.’’ Boston Globe, June 19, 1992. Metro/Region 1. Pendleton, Rusty. Personal Interview. August 10, 2007. Rayes, Matt. Personal Correspondence. July 28, 2007. Staton, Casey. Personal Interview. June 20, 2007. Temin, Christine. ‘‘Graffiti Is Her Business.’’ Boston Globe, December 24, 1983. Living 1. White, Skippy. Personal Interview. April 18, 2008.

FURTHER RESOURCES Brick records. http://brickrecords.com/ Chang, J. ‘‘The Source, the Industry and the Big Crossover.’’ Chap. 18 in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: St. Martins Press, 2005. Jost, M. The Almighty RSO. http://www.rapreviews.com/archive/BTTL _rsoforever.html (October 30, 2007). Mass Industry Committee. http://www.massindustrycommittee.com/.

Hip Hop in the Hub Rep Da Bean. http://www.bostonhiphoponline.com/. Traffic Entertainment Group. http://www.trafficent.com/.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY 7L and Esoteric The Soul Purpose. Direct Records, 2001. Dangerous Connection. Landspeed Records, 2002. Akrobatik ‘‘Say Yes, Say Word’’ (12’’ LP). Detonator Records, 1999. AOI/God Complex ‘‘Verbal Gymnastics/Strontium 90’’ (12’’ LP). Brick Records, 1996. Edan Primitive Plus. Lewis Recordings, 2002. Beauty and the Beat. Lewis Recordings, 2005. Edo G and Da Bulldogs Life of a Kid in the Ghetto. PWL (LP). America/Mercury Records, 1991. Roxbury 02119. Mercury Records, 1993. Insight Insight Presents. Brick records, 2001. Lyrical iNFiNiTi. Blaze the World Records, 2005. Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch Music for the People. Interscope Records, 1991. MC Spice ‘‘Don’t Treat Your Girl Like Dog, Dog, Dog’’ (12’’ LP). Atlantic, 1986. Mr. Lif Enters the Colossus EP. Definitive Jux, 2000. Emergency Rations EP. Definitive Jux, 2002. I Phantom. Definitive Jux, 2002. Mo’ Mega. Definitive Jux, 2006. Polecat ‘‘R.I.P./Make the Paper’’ (12’’ LP). Ruckus, 1996. Punch/Polecat ‘‘Mindless/Out Ta Flip’’ (12’’ LP). DBK Records, 1995. Scientifik Criminal. Traffic Entertainment Group, 2006. T.D.S. MOB ‘‘Dope for the Folks/Crushin ’em’’ (12’’ LP). Race Records, 1988. ‘‘What’s This World Coming To/T.D.S. Scratch Reaction’’ (12’’ LP). Race Records, 1989.

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Tha Almighty R.S.O. Revenge of da Badd Boyz. RCA, 1994. Doomsday: Forever RSO. Rap-a-Lot Records, 1996. T-Max ‘‘Relax Your Mind/Execution Style’’ (12’’ LP). Damage Records, 1996. Top Choice Clique ‘‘Peace of Mind/You Can’t Deal’’ (12’’ LP). Sample Records, 1990. Various Artists The Greatest Beats. Tommy Boy, 1985. B-Brown Posse. MCA Records, 1993. Rebel Alliance. Brick Records, 1995. Building with Bricks. Brick Records, 2003. A Decade of Independence. Brick Records, 2007. X-Caliber ‘‘Butta Messenga/Les Miserables’’ (12’’ LP). Fat Sam Records, 1997.

CHAPTER 10 From Electro-Rap to GFunk: A Social History of Rap Music in Los Angeles and Compton, California David Diallo PROLOGUE: COLONIZING THE “WILD WILD WEST“ The city of New York, most particularly the Bronx, is generally regarded, as it has already been shown in this volume, as the sociocultural matrix of the hip hop movement. Musicians such as DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash, well before the large-scale commercial commodification of hip hop, had long established, in the mid-1970s, reference norms which determined the conventional way to make rap. These architects of the structural normalization of hip hop practices paved the way for many New York DJs, who, capitalizing on their symbolic capital and geographical legitimacy, began to leave a highly competitive local scene to musically colonize cities with virtually nonexisting hip hop scenes. As a consequence, the cultural shockwave that DJ music generated in the mid1970s, with its epicenter in the South Bronx, rapidly spread out to neighboring boroughs, cities, and states. It reached California through Tony Joseph, a DJ from East Elmhurst, New York. In a recent interview recorded on October 2006 by German reporters from the West Coast Pioneers Webzine, Joseph recounts how ‘‘dull’’ the Los Angeles DJ scene was when he moved there in 1979 (Joseph). He especially reports that, at that time, DJs used to perform with one turntable only and points out that music would sometimes go off between records, which made, in his opinion, Los Angeles ‘‘a very easy town to conquer.’’ Except for a few local DJs, like Michael ‘‘Mixxing’’ Moore for example, who had learned his concepts from visiting New York, local DJs were not really familiar with the mix technique which consisted in blending records. Early on, taking advantage of his DJing skills and profiting from the relative amateurishness of the Los Angeles rap scene, Tony Joseph started to mix at house parties, New York-style, and to organize mobile parties in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In next to no time, he had landed slots on local FM stations KJLH and 225

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KACE on which he launched shows that would play a significant, though frequently overlooked, role in the development of the embryonic Los Angeles rap scene. Indeed, from 1981 to 1986, Joseph, also known as DJ T, and local DJ Michael Moore hosted ‘‘The Saturday Night Jams,’’ ‘‘Traffic Jams,’’ and ‘‘L.A. Sunday,’’ the highest rated radio shows on KJLH and KACE, two FM stations with an eclectic format. Having started out as a DJ in New York, Joseph imported his skills and know-how and claims to have been the first DJ to mix on the Los Angeles radio. With ‘‘Traffic Jams’’ and ‘‘Saturday Night Jams,’’ the listenership of which was considerable, Michael Moore and Tony Joseph significantly promoted the blossoming local hip hop scene throughout the early 1980s. In addition, Joseph regularly shared his expertise behind the wheels of steel with motivated local up-andcomers. For example, he notably taught the technique for mixing to Chris ‘‘The Glove’’ Taylor, an iconic member of the Los Angeles groundbreaking DJ community who would greatly contribute to its expansion.

WEST COAST PIONEERS AND LANDMARKS Chris ‘‘The Glove’’ Taylor, who was the turntable wizard of the legendary club Radio/Radiotron (see sidebar: Radiotron), started DJing in 1983, at a time when the electro-rap scene was on the rise. Heavily influenced by The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash and the Wheels of Steel, whose cuts and scratches he had been trying to figure out and copy in his garage, Taylor was reportedly one of the first Los Angeles DJs to use scratching techniques. He performed at local venues such as the Radio, The Sports Arena, and The Convention Center for ever-growing crowds of enthused dancers coming from all over the metropolitan area. He was notably featured in Breakin’ and Enterin’, a seminal documentary on the early Los Angeles electro rap movement in which he explained in detail his cutting and scratching techniques. The first official Angelino member of Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation, with which he shared a similar interest in the electronic music of Kraftwerk, Taylor played in different prominent groups such as Roger Clayton’s Uncle Jamms Army or the Radio Crew. He is particularly famous for producing ‘‘Reckless,’’ a song that had a remarkable influence on next generations of rappers. For instance, Eminem, while working in Los Angeles on his first LP with Dr. Dre, confessed to Taylor that he would not be rapping if it had not been for this song. Moreover, as the resident DJ of the Radio, Taylor was in regular contact with high-status musicians from the East Coast like Run D.M.C or Grandmaster D.S.T., who generally performed there while on tour, and took advantage of this opportunity to emulate their techniques. At a time when rap scenes were still compartmentalized, and when rap music was reaching Los Angeles’s still amateurish scene mostly through Greg Mack’s shows on KDAY or Joseph’s on KJLH, the vanguard Radio, thanks to such concerts, was definitely, as Taylor explained to the

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RADIOTRON Generally considered the epicenter of the early Los Angeles hip hop scene, the Radiotron (formerly known as the Radio Club) was, in the early 1980s, an important showcase for West Coast rappers. As early as 1983, local musicians like Ice-T, Egyptian Lover, or dancers like Pop N’ Taco or the Blue City Crew (who would later change their name to Boo-Ya Tribe) were reportedly performing at this emblematic club. Created in Los Angeles in 1980, The Radio Club was initially a night club hosting the popular weekend parties of which attracted up-and-coming DJs, MCs, and dancers from the Los Angeles metropolitan area. As the Los Angeles headquarters of the Zulu Nation and with influential experienced DJs like Afrika Islam, the club, located in the MacArthur Park area of Los Angeles, was definitely an avant-garde venue insofar as it featured exiled musicians and dancers from New York who, as early as 1982, brought out a lot of flavor from the seminal hip hop scene to Los Angeles and helped local dancers and DJs to step up their styles and footwork. In 1983, the Radio Club became the Radiotron and widened its nightly activities to educational hip hop classes. David Guzman, a Bronx choreographer who had been hired by owner Carmelo Alvarez to run the legendary location, turned it into a structured setting for future hip hop artists where local kids, amongst which Cuba Gooding Jr. came to learn break dancing, rap, graffiti, and other satellite practices. According to Guzman, even though events and contests were still organized on the weekends, the daytime community center was a haven of cultural creativity for inner city youths in an area plagued by gang-related violence. Radiotron, whose legendary status had been greatly consolidated by the mainstream Breakin’ movies, remained one of the main spots of the local electro-rap scene and was featured in several music videos of local acts. It was closed down in 1985 due to legal problems that inspired the second Breakin’ movie, Electric Boogaloo, but lives on in the minds of hip hop aficionados as the place that wrote the first chapter of the history of the Los Angeles rap scene and which gave breaks to many local musicians and dancers.

REFERENCE An interview with Dave Guzman 09/2007: http://www.westcoastpioneers .com/clubs-discos/radiotron.html.

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German journalists of westcoastpionneers.com: ‘‘like a piece of New York City and of the East Coast right in the middle of Los Angeles.’’ Conscious that this club was the epicenter of the blossoming Los Angeles hip hop scene and that some of its most renowned representatives, such as Pop N’ Taco (a dancer presented as one of the top two poppers of all time in the forthcoming hip hop dance documentary ‘‘The Suns of James Brown’’) or DJ Chris ‘‘The Glove’’ Taylor were performing there, film producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, set their Breakin’ movies in this club. These somewhat formulaic films sketchily portrayed a flamboyant ‘‘poppin’ and lockin’ ’’ scene and followed the eventful lives of dancers Turbo and Ozone. Adolfo ‘‘Shabba Doo’’ Quinones, the dancer who starred as Ozone in the movies was, along with his sister Fawn, one of the original members of The Campellockers. This group, also known as The Lockers had been, throughout the 1970s, the most influential street dance group of the Los Angeles area. Started in 1969 by Don Campbell, a local street dancer, the ‘‘Campbellock’’ consisted in executing quick improvisational steps called the ‘‘locks’’ and in pointing movements with hand slaps and splits. This dance rapidly developed into a nightclub subculture whose members would meet in popular venues such as The Citadel in Hollywood, The Summit on the Hill, and Mavericks Flats, to trade steps and moves. Don Campbell’s Campbellockers are often considered as one of the most influential groups in the history of the Los Angeles hip hop movement, insofar as they set off a phenomenon that spread from the inner city (Watts) to the whole Los Angeles area and that evolved through the 1970s to fashion many styles and techniques of today’s hip hop dance world. Despite their one-dimensional characterizations and their watered-down representation of the Los Angeles inner-city life, Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo nonetheless constitute a significant landmark in hip hop culture. Rapper Redman, for example, humorously refers to their protagonists in the hit single ‘‘Da Rockwilder’’ (1999) in which he mentions ‘‘suckers’’ breaking like Turbo and Ozone. In addition to a young Jean Claude Van Damme swaying his hips in a skin-tight black spandex, the movies featured, most notably, a young local rapper with a reputation: Ice-T. As rap critic Brian Cross remarks, Ice-T (Tracy Morrow) was, at the time the Breakin’ movies were released, still an amateur MC mimicking what New York rappers were doing on the East Coast (182). Nonetheless, on his first releases, especially on ‘‘The Coldest Rap’’ (the B-side of ‘‘Cold Wind Madness’’), he was already developing the gangsta/pimp persona which would make him famous. This proto-gangsta anthem, which recounted how Ice-T was the best player in town and how he preferred easy money to a ‘‘9 to 5,’’ presented a regional version of the soon to be generic criminal imagery which was being institutionalized on the East Coast. The pimp discourse exposed in Ice-T’s rhymes was patently influenced by the writings of pimp-turned-pulp-novelist Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck). Not only had Ice-T chosen his rap moniker as an homage to this author, he had also created

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a similar reality-based fantastical pimp persona whose great charm was hard to match and who was breaking the hearts and blowing the minds of women competing to buy him things. Slim’s work undeniably had a profound effect on a young Morrow who, like his favorite author, was keen on documenting eloquently some of his hustler experiences. Such a pimp persona, in spite of its criminal and misogynist connotations, evoked a hustler culture the members of which held a considerable symbolic capital in black ghettoes. Numerous scholarly works have shown how street hustlers have been praised as cultural heroes by many ghetto dwellers. Wepman, Newman, and Binderman in The Life, the Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler (1976), Roger D. Abrahams in Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia (1973), Alan Dundes in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of African-American Folklore (1991), and more recently, Cecil Brown in Stagolee Shot Billy (2003) and Jerry H. Bryant in Born in a Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction (2003) have shown the important place of hyperbolic outlaw characters in a vernacular heroic narratives. The oral narratives compiled in these volumes and with which ghetto residents were seemingly familiar had a considerable impact on the young Tracy Morrow, who, like a great number of Los Angeles ghetto youths, was fascinated by the appeal of an oppositional and fairly lucrative street life. Morrow had become involved in the street life at a young age when, while attending Crenshaw High School, he joined in with the Hoover Crips, one of the largest and most notorious L.A. street gangs whose members, identified by the blue color that they wore, were given a lot of media coverage in the mid-1980s because of the ruthless war that they waged against their Bloods rivals (identified by the color red). After a brief passage in the army, he came back to the ghetto where he found a legitimate job in an administration for $180 a week. Aware that this amount could be made in less than a day hustling on the corners with his gangbanging friends, Morrow, in keeping with a pattern of inevitability (effet de destin) identified by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (La Mise`re 85), ultimately fell back into the street life, first as a jewel thief, then as a pimp. He eventually gave it up in 1985 after a car accident to focus on portraying ghetto life and gangsters through rap music instead. Tracy Morrow had the intentions of being in the music business as a dance promoter for quite some time. When he returned to the L.A. streets in 1981, he became increasingly convinced that music could be an easy way to make money. He performed as a DJ at a couple of jams then decided to focus on being an MC. He soon started to perform with pioneers of the Los Angeles electronic-funk scene such as The Unknown DJ (aka DJ Unknown), Egyptian Lover, and DJ Flash. In 1982, at the age of 23, he released ‘‘The Coldest Rap’’ and ‘‘Cold Wind Madness’’ on Saturn Records. These two tracks rapidly became club-circuit favorite electrofunk classics. They were later compiled on ‘‘The Classic Collection’’ (Excello

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Records 1993) and also featured on disc 2 of ‘‘Legends of Hip Hop’’ (Blue Dolphin 2000). At that time, Ice-T regularly teamed up with a rapper of Mexican origins, Arturo ‘‘Kid Frost’’ Molina Jr. (a Los Angeles MC who would, in 1990, blaze a trail for latino rappers with his Hispanic Causing Panic album) to perform at backyard parties and lowrider car shows throughout Los Angeles. He was also one of the resident MCs of the Radio, along with Henry G and with DJs Chris ‘‘The Glove’’ Taylor and Egyptian Lover. In 1984, Taylor hired Ice-T to rap on ‘‘Reckless.’’ This track, when it hit the streets, firmly established Ice-T as a major MC on the developing Los Angeles electro-rap scene. He was, for example, the first rapper to perform as a guest MC at the extremely popular Uncle Jamms Army’s parties. Founded in 1978 under the name Unique Dream Entertainment and renamed Uncle Jamms Army in 1983, Uncle Jamms Army was a group of DJs which, by all accounts, organized the most popular parties in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Founded by Roger Clayton and high-school friend Gid Martin, this army of around 20 DJs filled stadiums as big as the Los Angeles Sports Arena and the Convention Center on a regular basis. Roger Clayton, who also performed as a DJ, was the mastermind behind the success of Uncle Jamms Army. His promotion work was definitely ahead of that of other local crews. Early on, Clayton had developed ties with Russell Simmons and Run DMC and was the first manager to invite them to perform in front of more than 6,000 dancers at the Sports Arena. He was also the first DJ to bring early East Coast groups to Los Angeles. In 1984, for example, he brought rappers such as Whodini, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kurtis Blow, Real Roxanne, or LL Cool J to local rap fans. Clayton’s Uncle Jamms Army was so popular that it managed to pack large venues, mostly, as Clayton recognizes, thanks to its impressive equipment (the DJs sometimes performed with 64 speakers, 12 amps, 4 turntables, drum machines, and synthesizers) and to its knowledge of the streets. In addition, the members of Uncle Jamms Army were the first Los Angeles street promoters to use posters and flyers on a big scale. In a recent interview, Clayton, who describes his group of DJs as the ghetto Kraftwerk, explained that, like East Coast hip hop pioneers, Uncle Jamms Army first became popular by playing at a lot of high school parties. Clayton’s DJs were on the streets all the time and had a radio show, ‘‘Saturday Night Fresh’’ on KDAY, a local radio that they would leave in 1983 for KJFJ when the latter offered them a well-paid $35,000 a year deal. Clayton was also the first DJ to use multitracks on radio commercials. Uncle Jamms Army reportedly had so many parties and requests that it needed scores of DJs in its ranks. Around 20 of them would branch out to play at different parties in different parts of the Los Angeles area. For example, Dwayne ‘‘Muffla’’ Simon from L.A. Posse Records (which later produced tracks for LL Cool J) used to perform for Uncle Jamms Army in Lancaster, Palmdale, and Bakersfield. As Muffla recounts in a recent interview, Uncle Jamms Army, in the early years of the Los Angeles rap scene, was throwing the most popular parties and was certainly instrumental in establishing Los Angeles as a

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk | 231 major rap scene insofar as its DJs laid its structural foundations and institutionalized street promotion and business models that would later be emulated successfully by other local labels like Ruthless or Death Row. Ice-T, as I pointed out, was one of the only rappers that Uncle Jamms Army’s DJs let rap at their parties. Roger Clayton had developed a good relationship with this promising up-and-comer while mixing his first record ‘‘Cold Wind Madness’’ with Egyptian Lover. This record clearly launched Ice-T’s career. In 1984, he featured in Hollywood’s portrayals of the early Los Angeles hip hop scene Breakin’, and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo as well as in Breakdance Gang, a movie in which he performed early raps such as ‘‘Coldest Rap,’’ ‘‘Reckless,’’ and ‘‘Killers.’’ In 1986, he recorded the 12’’ records ‘‘Ya Don’t Quit’’ and ‘‘Dog’n the Wax’’ which where released on Techno Hop, a label founded by DJ Unknown, a producer of electro-funk who had worked alongside Dr. Dre and the World Class Wreckin’ Cru before producing records for Compton’s Most Wanted. These releases and Ice-T’s noticeable media profile drew the attention of Sire Records, a subsidiary company to parent Time Warner, which offered him a recording contract. Cashing in on a criminal imagery whose glamor and oppositional style appealed to many young gang members and ghetto youths, he founded a production company: Rhyme Syndicate. Rhyme Syndicate brought together a group of Los Angeles underground DJs and MCs such as DJ Unknown, DJ Aladdin, Afrika Islam, Evil E, underground sensation Toddy Tee, who had become something of a local cult figure with his very popular ‘‘Batterman’’ song, and Everlast (who would later rise to fame with his group House of Pain and their hit single ‘‘Jump Around’’). Afrika Islam was, alongside Ice-T, undeniably the most prominent member of Rhyme Syndicate Productions. He notably produced, with DJ Unknown, Ice-T’s celebrated landmark ‘‘6 N the Morning.’’ This track, even though he was originally from New Jersey, would nonetheless establish him firmly as a West Coast icon. Heavily influenced by Schoolly D’s Philadelphia gangsta anthem ‘‘P.S.K. (What Does it Mean?),’’ Ice-T’s ‘‘6 N The Morning’’ quickly became a celebrated gangsta anthem whose first lines (‘‘6 N the Morning, police at my door’’) have been used or revised by countless rappers. ‘‘6 N the Morning,’’ which was the b-side of ‘‘Dog N the Wax’’ (Techno-Hop, 1986) was highly reminiscent, as Pierre Evil remarks, of Lightnin’ Rod’s Hustlers Convention. In an interview for the British magazine The Wire, Ice-T praised this influential (proto-rap) album as the first gangsta rap record (qtd in Evil 77). IceT’s ‘‘6 N the Morning’’ recaptured the same kind of hustler rhymes and narrative voice and adapted them to Los Angeles parochial gangbanging culture. Considered by many to be the milestone for what would later be labelled reality-rap or gangsta rap, this song also opened his debut album Rhyme Pays, a gritty rap record on which Ice-T delivered his skilled rhymes on Afrika Islam’s and DJ Aladdin’s productions. Released in 1987, Rhyme Pays went gold within a year. In 1988, before many of its members evolved into solo artists with flourishing careers within the industry, the Rhyme Syndicate released Rhyme Syndicate

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Comin’ Through, an album produced by Ice-T and Benny Medina and mixed by Afrika Islam. Later that same year, Ice-T recorded the title track for Colors, a landmark film directed by Dennis Hopper that depicted gang-life in inner-city Los Angeles. This song, with its realistic portrayal of crime-ridden Los Angeles ghettoes and its defiant exaltation of a criminal lifestyle rapidly became the new South Central gang-anthem. It undeniably earned its author a strong street credibility at a time where the electro-rap scene was being slowly replaced by a tougher and more street-oriented rap. ‘‘6 N the Morning’’ definitely marked a pivotal moment for the Los Angeles hip hop scene. It signalled a formal and thematic evolution towards sparser beats and street-oriented lyrics with a sharper edge. Pioneers of the Los Angeles rap scene, as it has been underlined, were predominantly DJs and helped establish a DJ culture which was chiefly directed at dancers and where MCs were of secondary importance. For example, Roger Clayton’s DJ army was throwing huge block parties across town and the scene was incontestably dominated by star DJs like Egyptian Lover or Chris ‘‘The Glove’’ Taylor. In the mid-1980s, while the paradigmatic East Coast scene was gradually veering to new production and rhyming styles, Los Angeles’ nightclubs, for the most part, still made people dance to up-tempo electronic beats with synthesizers and vocoders. This was true for Los Angeles as well as for cities within its direct influence. Indeed, electro-rap had equally contaminated numerous cities of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. By all accounts, if Roger Clayton’s Uncle Jamms Army ‘‘owned’’ the Los Angeles streets from Long Beach to the Valley, Lonzo Williams’ World Class Wreckin’ Cru, another prominent DJ crew against which Uncle Jamms Army was waging a passive poster and club war, had Compton and the Watts area locked down. In 1984, Alonzo Williams, also known as Grandmaster Lonzo, founded a DJ crew called the World Class Wreckin’ Cru. This crew consisted of three DJs: Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, and himself. Lonzo had started off as a DJ doing disco at small local gigs around 1974–75 with a company called Disco Construction. In July 1979, he took over The Eve After Dark, a nightclub located a quarter mile out of Compton which, in spite of its relative remoteness, attracted crowds of dancers. In fact, The Eve After Dark owed its great popularity to its location. Because it was technically located in the County of Los Angeles, this club did not fall under the rules of the cities of Los Angeles or Compton and Williams and his DJs had the privilege of playing much later than in the other clubs of the Los Angeles area. The County, having no laws against DJing or after hours, made The Eve After Dark a popular spot for after parties. According to Williams, many dancers would come to this spot to hang out and party until six o’clock in the morning, when all the other places had closed (unlike the L.A. County, the city of Los Angeles had an ordinance which prevented clubs from playing music after two o’ clock, so did Compton). Williams’ World Class Wreckin’ Cru started as a kind of infrastructure inside The Eve After Dark. It was, initially, a social group composed of people who

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk | 233 worked there and who, following a hip hop fashion popularized by the first New York DJs and b-boys, all identified by wearing the same jackets. Otherwise, the club was like a radio station. It opened at 10 o’clock at night and its DJs rotated shifts depending on the crowd. Everybody had an hour and a half to spin. The greener DJs, like Dr. Dre and Yella, would play to the light attending crowds while more experienced Grandmaster Lonzo and Unknown DJ would handle the ‘‘heavyweight’’ crowds. In this respect, the preslot or the closing slots often went to Dr. Dre and Yella. As MCs began to play a less peripheral role in the music, the group soon incorporated one to their lineup. They recruited ClienNtelle after a rap contest that he had won and started releasing their own records. Lonzo wanted every member of the group to have their own song. The first track that they produced was ‘‘Slice.’’ Consistently with the amateurish character of the regional hip hop scene at that time, this song about Yella was recorded in a small studio in the backroom of the club and sold out by Williams of the back of his truck and through local record dealer Steve Yano. The next release was Dr. Dre’s ‘‘Surgery.’’ Recorded as unprofessionally as ‘‘Slice’’ in about eight hours on an Akaı¨ MG1212 mixing console/ recorder at Audio Achievements, a studio located in Torrance where Dr. Dre and Yella recorded their sessions, ‘‘Surgery,’’ like ‘‘Slice,’’ emulated the electro sound of Planet Rock, the vocoders and heavy drums of which were extremely popular at the time and were inspiring many. To promote his records, Lonzo Williams used the same resourcefulness that other competing DJ crews and employed marketing tactics which were fairly ordinary at the time in underground hip hop. He contracted Daryl Davis (aka Lyrad, Daryl spelled backwards), a local artist from Compton who had done flyers and artwork for the Eve After Dark, to design in vogue graffiti style covers for their 12’’ records. He also took advantage of the establishment by using Don McMillan of the first large urban independent record manufacturer and distributor, Macola Records, to create Kru Cut Records in 1984 (a Macola sublabel) and produce electro-rap releases with the World Class Wreckin’ Cru through the mid-1980s. In 1985, the World Class Wreckin’ Cru released World Class, its first album. The reasonable success of this album stirred the interest of major record companies. Thanks to the versatility of the group and to its radio potential, the World Class Wreckin’ Cru was soon signed on CBS/Epic. In 1987, it released First Round Knock-Out, the first Angelino rap album to be released on a major label. This release officially put the Los Angeles rap scene on the map. The group even travelled to the United Kingdom for the Fresh Fest with musicians like Sir Mix a Lot and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5. Unfortunately, money disagreements rapidly plagued the crew and many of its original members left. Williams nevertheless enjoyed great revenue from the group’s last single, ‘‘Turn off the Lights,’’ which did relatively well on the pop and urban charts. Unlike Lonzo’s World Class Wreckin’ Cru, which was not willing to change its image even though a hard-hitting street-oriented style was progressively replacing

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a party-oriented electro-rap with DJs wearing Rick James and Cameo-style extravagant outfits, Dr. Dre and Yella chose to follow the way paved by Ice-T with his hit ‘‘6 N the Morning.’’ They joined forces with Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and MC Ren to form Niggaz With Attitude. Even though Eazy-E’s entrepreneurial skills, Dr. Dre’s production, or Ice Cube’s lyrics have frequently been emphasized to explain the group’s success, fewer works have examined in detail the significant contribution of another pioneer of the Los Angeles rap scene to this success: KDAY’s radio host Greg Mack. It is important to point out one more time the key role that radio stations have played for the promotion of rap music. Very few works on the Los Angeles rap scene have laid the stress on the noteworthy role that radio DJs Greg Mack, Tony Joseph, or Michael Moore have played in promoting rap music in the Los Angeles area. Yet, KDAY is mentioned on a regular basis by rappers from the Los Angeles area who, in their lyrics or in interviews, unanimously acknowledge its importance in the development of the movement. For example, in his song ‘‘Dreamchaser’’ MURS indicates that, at age nine, he was already ‘‘bumpin’ ’’ KDAY. Similarly, in a track entitled ‘‘Lesson 4: The Radio’’ released in 1994, DJ Cut Chemist paid homage to Los Angeles key radio players, with a particular nod in the direction of KDAY through a sample of Greg Mack’s catchphrase ‘‘Mack Attack.’’ Originally from Texas where he had previous experiences in radio (at Magic 102 in Houston and KEWF in Corpus Christi), Greg Mack came, in his own words, from ‘‘old school.’’ In other terms, his favorites ranged from the Isley Brothers to Led Zeppelin. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1983, Mack lived in the heart of South Central, where most of the people who made hip hop music started. As he indicates in an interview given to West Coast Pioneers, rap music was, at the time, the only music that you could hear for miles around. As he nostalgically points out: ‘‘You opened your window and someone was playing hip hop’’ (Greg Mack). Looking to be in tune with what was happening on the streets, KDAY started to play rap music during daytime at a time when many people thought that it was merely a fad and when major record stores would not even carry it. Even though the Los Angeles-based station was more of a mainstream R&B station without any particular format, Mack, thanks to a supportive management team, was able to have a CHR format that was a reflection of what was going on the streets. He went out to clubs and parties, listened to what was fresh and played it. He especially aired, for the sake of economy as he explained to Brian Cross in 1992 (Cross 156), selections of records and tapes of local up and coming musicians during his Mixmasters show. When he launched this show, Mack had initially considered inviting DJs of the Uncle Jamms Army to mix live, since, at the time, as we have already seen, Clayton’s DJs were the most powerful crew in Los Angeles and ‘‘controlled the streets.’’ Clayton’s crew, which was well-established and willing to cash in on its growing popularity declined his offer and signed with KGLJ instead. His offer turned down, Mack decided to start his own crew of DJs instead. The group, most probably to compete with Uncle Jamms Army, was originally

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dubbed the ‘‘Mars Attacks Marines,’’ but rapidly changed to Mixmasters. The very first Mixmaster was up-and-comer Dr. Dre. Before long, he was followed by DJ Yella and, for the first year and a half of the show, both were its official DJs and provided weekly mixes recorded on a four-track recorder in Lonzo Williams’ garage in Compton. Greg Mack did not only promote the local scene. Thanks to landmark initiatives and valuable social capital, he managed to stay one step ahead of the competition. For example, he invited high-profile Eastern rappers such as Run DMC to perform live at his Friday Night Live sessions. Also, Mack was in direct contact with rap entrepreneur Russell Simmons, who shipped him every new release of his East Coast Def Jam artists. For that reason, Mack was reportedly one of the first radio DJs of Los Angeles to play LL Cool J. He had a similar privileged relationship with Don Mc Millan who frequently sent him all the new records of his Macola label before any other radio station. On top of that, Mack had friends who owned record-pressing plants and sometimes received new releases before the record company artists themselves. This occurred, for example, with Egyptian Lover’s hit ‘‘Egypt, Egypt’’ which got overwhelming feedback from KDAY listeners even before it was officially released. Greg Mack was most notably instrumental in the success of Eazy-E’s underground hit ‘‘Boyz N the Hood.’’ As he recently explained, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E had come to him after they had recorded a first version of this landmark song. At that time, as Mack pointed out, most of the rap musicians would bring their records or tapes to the station for him to play them. He listened to the song and requested a cleaner radio friendly version. Dr. Dre and Eazy-E came back two days later with a toned-down version that became the station’s most requested song right away. From that point out, anything that N.W.A. or Eazy-E put out would be played first on KDAY. This station, as the frequent dropping of its name by Los Angeles rappers indicates, definitely held a semicult status in this city’s hip hop scene from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, when FM stations started to play hip hop and when people switched from AM to FM. KDAY’s format change spurred by Mack had turned the small local radio into one of the first hip hop stations nationwide and the chief vehicle for the musical revolution taking place in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. This early reorientation constitutes a pivotal moment in the structuring of the Los Angeles rap scene insofar as it considerably contributed to its development. KDAY was undeniably instrumental in popularizing rap music and local crews and in launching the careers of renowned musicians who established Los Angeles and Compton as two major landmarks in the history of the hip hop movement.

BECOMING AN INDUSTRY The first label to emerge significantly from the Los Angeles area was Ruthless Records. In his book Ruthless: A Memoir (2006), Jerry Heller explains in detail

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N.W.A. (Corbis)

how Eazy-E (Eric Wright) approached him to launch this pioneering rap label in Compton, in 1987. Wright was certainly a young man with great vision and had a lot of ambition but he desperately needed the expertise and network of Heller, who had made his teeth in the music business a long while ago and still had a lot of good connections in the recording industry. In 1986, Wright, attracted to the promising development of the simmering local rap scene, had already headhunted Dr. Dre (Andre Young), the up-and-coming DJ of the World Class Wreckin’ Cru. In addition to his musical abilities, Dre’s experience and valuable social capital in the Los Angeles rap scene were definitely meant to offset Wright’s lack of connections in the music business. For example, the promising DJ had useful relations at Macola Records and easy access to Audio Achievements, where the two of them recorded ‘‘Boyz N the Hood.’’ This proto gangsta anthem, produced by Dr. Dre and on which an inexperienced Eazy-E, because of inopportune circumstances, ended up rapping a text written by 19year-old O’Shea Jackson (Ice Cube), paved the way for their impending successful collaboration. Despite the impromptu recording and relatively small-scale release

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of ‘‘Boyz N the Hood’’ on Macola Records, Wright, thanks to the key business skills that he claimed to have developed selling drugs on the streets, sold more than 200,000 copies of the record. In the wake of this outstanding achievement, novice Eric Wright, whose personality and entrepreneurial skills had impressed a long-established music executive like Jerry Heller, cocreated Ruthless Records and Niggaz With Attitude, a rap group which suddenly grew to be, with both the local and translocal appeal of its glorification of inner-city criminal lifestyle, a national musical sensation that would give its leading members an iconic status in rap history. In the course of his partnership with Heller, Wright gradually exchanged his doit-yourself method, thanks to which he had nonetheless managed to sell a copious number of copies of ‘‘Boyz N the Hood’’ from the truck of his car and through local record dealers, for more conventional businesslike strategies. With the intention of cashing in on the buzz created by this track, all the key members of the newly set up label; Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella, Arabian Prince, and The D.O.C worked on Eazy Duz It (Ruthless 1988), its founder’s egotistical solo album (which comprised no less than four self-referential tracks). This record notably featured ‘‘Radio,’’ a song on which MC Ren, following the example of KDAY, called Greg Mack on K-EAZY-E to hear Eazy’s newest track. This album, on which Eazy-E’s gangsta persona outrageously celebrated Compton’s street life and its hedonistic attributes, went double-platinum. The following year, Eazy Duz It was followed by Straight Outta Compton (Ruthless 1988), N.W.A.’s first official release. This controversial record, which displayed a somewhat tougher edge than Eazy-E’s debut album, is generally considered as one of the most important records in hip hop history. Indeed, its commercial success paved the way for much of what would be termed ‘‘gangsta rap’’ in the 1990s. On this landmark record, the members of the ‘‘most dangerous group in America’’ resumed the larger-than-life exaltation of street gang sociocultural practices introduced on Eazy-Duz It and definitely put Compton on the map. N.W.A.’s iterative in-text references to their home turf, Dr. Dre’s recurrent use of a sample of Ronnie Hudson and the Street People’s ‘‘West Coast Poplock’’ which deferentially referred to the ‘‘City of Compton,’’ and unequivocal tracks such as ‘‘Straight Outta Compton’’ and ‘‘Compton’s N Da House’’ established N.W.A. as the flagship representatives of the Los Angeles rap scene. After 1989, countless rap groups, with highly evocative names and street wear attires similar to those popularized by Run DMC as the new rap uniform appeared in the wake of N.W.A.’s success: Above The Law; Boo-Yaa Tribe, a group of former gang bangers; CPO (Capital Punishment Organization) whose LP was produced by MC Ren; WC & The Maad Circle, formerly known as Low Profile and whose front man, WC (Dub C) would join, a few years later, Ice Cube’s Westside Connection; MC Eiht’s Compton’s Most Wanted; DJ Quik; Coolio and, finally, South Central Cartel.

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In 1991, N.W.A.—minus Ice Cube, who had decided to pursue a solo career over some rumored financial disagreements—released Efil4zaggin (Niggaz4Life spelled backwards). This album, which contained N.W.A.’s soon-to-be-generic hyperbolic gangsta narratives and over-the-top violence, entered directly the charts at number one. Pierre Evil interprets the outrageousness of Efil4zaggin as N.W.A.’s reaction to a growing rivalry in a highly competitive scene, in Los Angeles and nationwide. Indeed following N.W.A.’s example set with Straight Outta Compton, every hood wanted to have their gangsta rap group as a flagship representative of a label and of a specific place. For example, Cypress Hill, a group of Latino rappers hailing from South Gate, a city located in the southeast of Los Angeles County, released ‘‘How I Could Just Kill a Man’’ that same year. This song, which caught the attention of urban and college radio, became an instant classic and launched the career of the group, which went on to become one of the most important rap groups to claim Los Angeles as their point of origin (see sidebar: Latino Rap in Los Angeles). From 1989, Ruthless released an impressive series of gold, platinum, and even diamond records. Its most notable released were The DOC’s first LP No One Can Do It Better (1989), on which Dr. Dre displayed the range of his then experienced production and provided The DOC, Eazy-E’s ghostwriter, with an assemblage of slow and fast rhythms on which he could deliver his resourceful rhymes; Michel’le (Ruthless 1989) an R&B album by Michel’le, whose single ‘‘No More Lies’’ became the best hit single in the label’s history (seventh place on the Billboard chart); and Living Like Hustlers by Above the Law, a group from Pomona, in East Los Angeles, whose producer Cold 187um became the label’s foremost producer when Dr. Dre controversially left Ruthless Records in 1991, at the peak of its popularity. Wright and Heller’s maximizing business tactics were, allegedly, the cause of financial disagreements with their musicians. Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s bitter departures stirred up a well-known feud with Ruthless’ co-owners illustrated by ‘‘No Vaseline’’ and ‘‘Dre Day,’’ two very bitter dissing songs recorded respectively by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre that were meant to get back at their former employers. Although Ruthless and N.W.A.’s principal creative forces had left with the walking-outs of Cube and Dre, Eazy-E’s entrepreneurial skills and good ear helped him to maintain healthy record sales, mostly through remaining artists like MC Ren (Kizz My Black Azz 1992), Above The Law, and newcomers Bone Thugs-NHarmony, whose multiplatinum sales Creepin’ On Ah Come Up (1994), E.1999 Eternal (1995), The Art of War (1997), BTNHResurrection (2000), or Greatest Hits (2004) ensured substantial incomes to the still active label, even after the early death of Wright on March 26, 1995, 10 days after he had been diagnosed with AIDS.

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk

LATINO RAP IN LOS ANGELES According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau (2006), the population of the Los Angeles County comprises 47.3 percent of Latinos. People falling into that category, whose heterogeneity was humorously emphasized by filmmaker Larry Clark in Wassup Rockers (2005), a movie on a group of young Latino skateboarders from South Central, are Los Angeles residents who classified themselves as Mexican, Mexican Americans, Chicano, Puerto Rican, or Cuban—as well as those whose origins are from Spain, the Spanishspeaking countries of Central or South America. Historically, Latinos of the Los Angeles area have played a significant role in its cultural life. They notably popularized Zoot Suits and Pachucos in the 1940s and, more recently, Lowriders, modified cars which play an important part in West Coast hip hop. Insofar as about 500 Latino gangs have been listed in Los Angeles County (mostly in the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley, the Beach communities, Long Beach, Compton, and South Los Angeles), representing over 50 percent of the gang membership, and given the established link between street gang culture and the hip hop movement, it is not surprising at all that some Hispanic youths of the region embraced rap music in the early days of its development. The first prominent Latino MC to emerge significantly and to bring a Latin flavor to the music was Kid Frost (Arturo Raymond Molina Jr.) when he broke new ground on the West Coast electrorap scene in incorporating Spanish in rap lyrics and in mixing Hispanic culture with hip hop. A regular of The Radio Club where he used to perform with Ice-T, this Mexican rapper began his career during the early days of the electro-rap (or electro-funk) scene as an MC for Roger Clayton’s Uncle Jamms Army. In 1990, he released ‘‘La Raza,’’ and recorded his major label debut album Hispanic Causing Panic. Following this album, he founded Latin Alliance, a group of Latino rappers whose eponymous album, released in 1991, included the popular ‘‘Low Rider,’’ a tribute to Los Angeles parochial car culture. The group also comprised, Mellow Man Ace, a Cuban rapper from South Gate whose bilingual hit single ‘‘Mentirosa,’’ released in 1989, has earned him the title of ‘‘Godfather of Latin rap.’’ Latino rap exploded into the mainstream with Cypress Hill (B-Real, Sen Dog, and DJ Muggs) another group hailing from South Gate and whose multiplatinum albums Black Sunday, Temple of Boom, IV, and numerous hit singles turned its members into high-profile flagship representatives of West Coast rap. The considerable success of their self-titled debut album, which went two times platinum on the strength of popular tracks like ‘‘How Can I Just Kill a Man,’’ or like bilingual songs ‘‘Latin Lingo’’ and ‘‘Tres Equis,’’ definitely established them as a dominating force in hip hop. Even though they weren’t pioneers, Cypress Hill openly engaged Spanish lingo and slang in

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Hip Hop in America a much more overt fashion than their predecessors. In 1999, for example, they released Los grandes e´xitos en espanol, a greatest hits album recorded in Spanish which, while breaking the language barriers, further validated the group’s importance in the hip hop milieu.

REFERENCES http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html http://www.streetgangs.com

DEATH ROW RECORDS AND G-FUNK Even though Ruthless and Death Row records waged a highly publicized war in the early 1990s, one can draw an interesting parallel between these two labels. To begin with, both labels were founded by young men from the streets, Eazy-E for Ruthless and Marion ‘‘Suge’’ Knight for Death Row, who were quite foreign to the rap milieu and who seemed chiefly attracted to its business side. The release, prior to any rap recordings, of a remixed R&B single by Ruthless (JJ Fad’s ‘‘Supersonic’’) and Eazy-E’s refusal to produce the first album of The Atban Klann (who later changed their name to The Black Eyed Peas) on the pretense that it was discordant with the musical and thematic zeitgeist, as well as Death Row’s deliberate choice to favor extremely profitable soundtracks over costly studio albums seem to confirm this assumption. Wright and Knight’s past experiences and social trajectories, respectively, as drug dealer and gang member (the latter was from a Compton neighborhood controlled by the Tree Top Piru, a subgroup of the Bloods) are particularly interesting to the extent that they illustrate a specific disjuncture between the social position opened to them in the recording industry and the dispositions that they imported into it. Indeed, the divisive tactics of both labels owners, especially Death Row’s stories and allegations of extortion, coercion, and bullying, well-documented by rap journalist Ronin Ro, consisted mostly in business strategies which continued to be driven by what Berkeley sociologist Loı¨c Wacquant calls a street habitus, even as their objective possibilities had expanded beyond those usually afforded by the streets of Compton. Also, both Wright and Knight sought advice from experts of the music business. Like Wright, who had cofounded Ruthless with old timer Jerry Heller, whose know-how and contacts in the industry greatly contributed to the label’s success, Knight knew how to surround himself with experienced advisors. In addition to the musical expertise of Dr. Dre, whose contract, along with those of The DOC and Michel’le, he had controversially collected, Knight also benefited from the well-advised assistance of Dick Griffey. Griffey, who was then the head of

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Snoop Dogg at the 32nd Annual American Music Awards on November 14, 2004. (ABC/Photofest)

S.O.L.A.R. Records was one of the most influential people in the California recording industry and had the business skills and social capital necessary to launch Death Row as successfully as its local rival. It was thanks to Griffey’s connections, for example, that Dr. Dre was able to release his milestone track ‘‘Deep Cover’’ on Sony and S.O.L.A.R. Records. Knight also benefited from the connections of his legal expert, David Kenner, thanks to whom Michael Harris, also known as ‘‘Harry O’’—an incarcerated drug lord affiliated to the Bloods—invested money that helped to start off the label which would, within a few years, popularize G-funk and establish artists whose albums and sound would dominate the rap industry nationwide in the early 1990s. The Chronic, Dr. Dre’s debut album released on Death Row in 1992, established, especially with ‘‘Nuthin’ but a G Thang,’’ a rap subgenre known as Gangsta-funk or G-funk. On this influential album, Dre popularized a signature sound which consisted in multilayered leisurely loops characterized by deep bass, prominent keyboards, and samples of George Clinton’s P-funk classics. This very successful album, with Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle, Death Row’s next sensational release, institutionalized a trademark combination of hedonistic lyrics including gang-related violence, sex, automobiles, and marijuana sung on laidback funky melodies. This controversial cocktail would skyrocket Death Row to the top of the rap industry for nearly five years and turn it into the most profitable blackowned business in America. Indeed, Dr. Dre’s signature sound combined with

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Snoop Dogg’s languid flow, gangsta hedonism, as well as the notorious events surrounding the release of Doggystyle or Tupac Shakur’s All Eyez on Me, shot the label into the lead and helped it earn $125 million in only four years. Subsequently to these influential albums, Death Row, chiefly thanks to the considerable sales of its rap superstar Tupac Shakur (who is still America’s best selling rapper with over 50 million albums sold in the United States), reigned undisputed on the West Coast and beyond from 1992 to the gradual collapse of the genre and of the countless rap musicians that had opportunistically embraced it, in 1997. Indeed, in the wake of the unprecedented success of The Chronic and of Doggystyle, several significant G-funk albums were produced by Los Angeles rappers. For example, Warren G, a relative of Dr. Dre who had worked on The Chronic, named his debut album Regulate . . . G-funk Era (Def Jam 1994) after this popular subgenre, and topped the charts with his hit single ‘‘Regulate,’’ which featured fellow 213 member Nate Dogg. Disinclined to be outdone in a form that it had initiated, Death Row unsurprisingly contributed to the genre with Dogg Food, Tha Dogg Pound’s (Dat Nigga Daz and Kurupt) successful album which debuted at the first place in the charts at its release in 1995, or with The Dead Has Arisen and the RBX Files, the somewhat disappointing (by Death Row standards) albums of, respectively, Lil’ Half Dead and RBX. Ruthless’s musicians rode on the same G-funk wave with Above the Law’s second and third LPs Black Mafia Life (1993) and Uncle Sam’s Curse (1994). These albums enabled Eazy-E’s label to put up a solid resistance to Death Row’s extreme domination. Still, Death Row, whose high-profile producer had initiated the forms of G-funk, was definitely the spear head label of this genre. Dre’s instantly recognizable sound significantly contributed to the unparalleled success of Death Row latest recruit: Tupac Shakur. Though he was originally from New York, this rapper became one of the most famous representatives of the rap scene of the West Coast. In 1995, Tupac, freshly out of the Dannemora Jail, had decided to sign on Death Row Records, and, through the Los Angeles highly influential rap label, to embrace the symbolic power of this newly canonized region. The considerable appeal of the Los Angeles area, detailed remarkably by MURS in his recent track ‘‘L.A.,’’ or by The Game throughout his album The Documentary, resided mostly in the hedonistic and criminal lifestyle of local ‘‘sets’’ (a vernacular expression for gangs) popularized by local rappers in ghetto anthems praising Los Angeles, the city of Compton, or Long Beach. Songs by Los Angeles rappers are invariably replete with iterative visual or lyrical references to local gangs and regularly emphasize the danger of wearing the wrong colors. In addition, rappers like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Xzibit, Tha Alkaholiks, Nate Dogg, and many others consistently glorified highly evocative motives like Impala six fo’s, 20 inch rims, Hennessy, hydroponically grown marijuana, 8-ball, black Chuck Taylors, Carhartt jeans, and countless other idiosyncrasies that became instantly recognizable signifiers of the Los Angeles rap culture (see

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Tupac Shakur on the set of Gridlock’d (1997). (Photofest)

sidebar: Allomotives in Los Angeles Rap). Tupac Shakur immediately and unambiguously pledged allegiance to Los Angeles, its distinctive motives and its parochial ‘‘thug life’’ in the opening rhymes of ‘‘California Love,’’ the first of a series of hit singles from his diamond album (10 times platinum) All Eyez on Me and a track that summarizes remarkably the distinctiveness of the West Coast rap scene. Compton, the emblematic matrix of the genre and home of the two influential labels, predictably spawned musicians who equally contributed to the nationwide popularity of G-funk. DJ Quik, a rapper, who, like Suge Knight, had been formerly affiliated to the Tree Top Piru Bloods, conspicuously laid the emphasis on his gangsta affiliation on his album Safe and Sound (1995). His Crip rival MC Eiht, with whom he had a long-standing feud that had started in the late 1980s with his album with Compton’s Most Wanted, equally contributed to the shifting of the epicenter of rap music towards the West Coast. Indeed, Los Angeles was then at the forefront and the originator of a nationwide transformation of the hip hop scene. In spite of sharp criticisms emanating from various censorship groups or purists opposed to this new sound, its leading artists with significant releases such as Tha Alkaholiks’ 21 and Over (1993) or Tupac’s The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996) ruled supreme in the rap industry in the mid-1990s.

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ALLOMOTIVES IN LOS ANGELES RAP In his book on outlaw folk hero Stagolee, folklorist Cecil Brown notes that even though the Stagolee oral narrative has more or less preserved the same archetypal structure over time, several allomotives, details which may fluctuate depending on the place or time the tale is told in order to have a story consistent with the cultural grammar of its audience, have somewhat transformed the original story through time. For example, in a 1927 variant a pimp takes out his bamboo and smokes his opium, in a 1903 version, the drug of choice is cocaine. The same comment could be made about rap archetypical narratives, the content of which only varies according to the regional origins of a rapper or group. Indeed, if the sociocultural practices of ghetto residents are regularly evoked or glorified in the representations of rappers, the latter commonly use idiosyncratic aesthetic elements and soundscapes that unmistakably point at their regional origins. For example, Los Angeles rappers sip on ‘‘Gin and Juice’’ while Dirty South rappers drink ‘‘syrup,’’ codeine-based prescription cough syrup mixed with soda or fruit juice (Hess 261). Similarly, southern rappers drive Cadillac (like in Outkast’s Southernplayalisticcadillacmuzik or Ludacris’ ‘‘Southern Hospitality’’) whereas Los Angeles rappers ride in chevy ‘‘six fo’.’’ Other idiosyncratic motives or references, on top of the constant shout-outs to Los Angeles neighborhoods, streets and emblematic musicians that local rappers give, have become specifically and uniquely identified with Los Angeles rap. For instance, red and blue bandanas, Crip walkin’, black Chuck Taylors, Chevy Lowriders, chrome hydraulics, and chronic weed undeniably help to identify Los Angeles as the specific space of reference of rappers who mention them in their lyrics.

REFERENCES Brown, Cecil. Stagolee Shot Billy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Hess, Mickey, ed. Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music and Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2007.

As one could expect, this transformation of the geography of rap music unsurprisingly entailed hostile reactions from some New York rappers who, in accordance with rap music’s emphasis on the agon, started to question the sudden legitimacy of their West Coast rivals. True to form, Tim Dog, an MC from the South Bronx released, as early as 1992, ‘‘Fuck Compton,’’ the first installment of

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk | 245 a series of diatribes (followed by ‘‘Step to Me’’) against Eazy-E, N.W.A., DJ Quik, and all the Los Angeles gang banging culture and its rap chroniclers. Also, in response to what they perceived as a falsified commodification of their culture by alleged ‘‘real muthafuckin’ Gs,’’ to quote Eazy-E, actual gang members of the Los Angeles area released records on which they meant to put fake Compton representatives in their proper place. For example, Tweedy Bird Loc, a member of the Kelly Park Compton Crips, released 187 Ride By, an album in which he openly directed his shaft against ‘‘studio gangstas’’ like N.W.A., Above The Law, and CPO. In addition, Tweedy Bird Loc challenged the symbolic supremacy of the South Bronx and of its representatives in ‘‘Fuck the South Bronx/This Is Compton’’ in which he questioned KRS-One and Tim Dog’s legitimacy and sung the praise of the new paradigmatic place of reference of rap music. In 1994, Tweedy Bird Loc and Ronnie Ron Phillips, another Compton representative, produced Bangin’ on Wax, an album which featured contributions of actual Crips and Bloods. Pierre Evil interestingly points out that the most striking elements in this album and in its follow-ups are the blatant similarities between their lyrics and those of allegedly phoney gangsta rappers (Evil 146). Indeed, apart from diss songs aimed at a rival gang, a somewhat risky topic generally avoided with care by, say, conventional rappers, these records featured strictly identical ghetto anthems characterized by institutionalized misogyny, obscenity and exaggerated violence. In the mid-1990s, Death Row was a multimillion dollar business ranging from platinum records (Doggystyle had gone six times platinum and All Eyez on Me nine times) to big-budget music videos (‘‘California Love’’) and movies (‘‘Murder Was the Case’’), and Los Angeles G-funk ruled undisputed from 1994 to 1996 over the rap music business. Under its impulsion, as well as Ruthless’s, the local rap scene had developed from an amateurish endeavor to a full-blown and lucrative business organized around professional label owners, concert promoters, managers, and advertising executives. Suge Knight’s controversial connections with infamous gang members, out of place marketing strategies, and dangerous aura (fuelled by a series of rumors and theatrical public appearances) owed him to be labelled ‘‘The Most Feared Man in Hip Hop’’ (XXL Magazine, October 2005) and helped selling numerous issues of the budding hip hop press. On the musical level, the G-funk sound has undeniably had an enduring influence on rap that can still be detected on a number of recent albums with a Gfunk distinctive flavor such as those freshly released by The Dogg Pound (Dogg Chit 2007), or on older albums like those of DJ Quik or Warren G. It clearly reinforced the rivalry between the two coasts that had started with Tim Dog and early L.A. gangsta rappers, a rivalry which culminated in the highly-publicized feud between the West Coast hip hop scene led by Death Row and an East Coast renaissance movement led by Bad Boy Records.

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LOS ANGELES “ALTERNATIVE“ RAP SCENE In spite of the gangsta personae that predominated in rap music in the wake of the success of Ruthless and Death Row artists and their likes, the Los Angeles rap scene, like any other rap scene nationwide, was far from being homogeneous. Prior to the success of West Coast rappers glamorizing the gang-violence plaguing Los Angeles neighborhoods, several hip hop performers were challenging the prominence of such a discourse which, they felt, was somewhat tarnishing rap as an art form. It is extremely important to bear in mind that, in rap music, antagonistic logics are in direct opposition and that individuals take up a career for many different reasons. If the vast majority of contemporary rappers and labels (G[orilla]-Unit, Grand Hustle, Re-Up Gang, Murder Inc, Konvict Muzik . . . ) strategically cash in on a criminal imagery bond to secure, in the rap practice, considerable symbolic and economic status, others adopt alternative strategies in the face of a market dominated by the glorification of street activities, criminal lifestyle, and differentiate themselves from it. It was notably the case, in the early 1990s, with rap acts such as The Freestyle Fellowship and The Pharcyde, whose rhyming styles, lyrics, and productions differed from those prevailing in mainstream standardized rap. Commonly referred to as the rebirth of hip hop (primarily by their supporters), this wave of musicians, whose vast majority started to rap at the Good Life Cafe´, sought to explore, through an alternative rap scene, original themes which slightly differed from those generically presented in the facsimile ghetto anthems of mainstream rappers. For a number of rappers, commercial success, supported by enticing themes and imagery, somewhat damaged the ethics of independence which supposedly prevailed in the early days of the ‘‘underground/subcultural’’ hip hop movement. ‘‘Rappers’ Delight’’ particularly illustrates, in its commercial logic, this dual tension between the integrity of an ‘‘artistic’’ approach and the widening of the audience. Criticism towards commercial rap and disapproval of the extensive airplay granted to trivially sexist songs brought together musicians who advocated a return to hip hop’s alleged original message: Peace and Unity. If, as it has been shown, hip hop started in the early 1970s as a collective action spurred by DJs like Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Hollywood, and many others, it consolidated as a cultural movement with the founding of the Zulu Nation and other structured crews. This shaping period was followed by a thematic diversification entailed by ideological contradictions within the movement which resulted in the appearance of different trends and of different forms (each presented as legitimate, ‘‘true’’ or ‘‘real’’) of the hip hop practices. A similar arborization of the movement came to characterize the Los Angeles rap scene when some hip hop ‘‘purists’’ like B. Hall and her son R. Kain Blaze, somewhat disillusioned with the underground-turnedmainstream gangsta rap of N.W.A. and Ruthless’ artists, decided to explore the same themes from a more creative and artistic angle.

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk | 247 While Ruthless and Death Row were popularizing gangsta rap and G-funk in Los Angeles and nationwide, The Freestyle Fellowship, a group of alternative MCs, was planning to revive the tradition of the Watts Prophets and the Last Poets. Its members (rappers Aceyalone, Mikah 9, P.E.A.C.E., Self Jupiter, and producer J Sumbi) used to meet at the Good Life Cafe´, a Los Angeles version of The Lyricist Lounge where a different guard of MCs gathered for a weekly open mic night to explore different rhyming styles and themes (see sidebar: The Good Life). They released To Whom in My Concern . . . (Beats & Rhymes 1991) and Inner City Griots (4th & B’Way 1993) on which they developed a signature rhyming pattern which clearly differed from the current paradigmatic G-funk flow. This diversification, like that which characterized The Pharcyde, corresponds to a common strategy of differentiation and expresses a search of originality which can be found in every field. This group, commonly presented as a representative of the alternative scene of the West Coast and who became famous with highly acclaimed albums like Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1992) and Labcabincalifornia (1995), had chosen to follow a musical direction that somewhat differed from the zeitgeist. These albums, which featured productions by J-Swift and newcomers like Jay Dee and Diamond D, were rather discordant—musically and lyrically— from what the Los Angeles rap scene was offering at the time. This strategy to present, in the case of The Pharcyde, a contrasting light-hearted playfulness is summarized quite prosaically by rapper/producer El-P, who, in NYC Rules, a series of interviews with representatives of avant-garde New York rappers, accounts for different genres and artistic choices in rap by the fact that, although different musicians and labels work in the same field, they do so with distinctive logics (163). Accordingly, other alternative groups hailing from Los Angeles like Jurassic 5 or Dilated Peoples, with releases such as Jurassic 5 LP, Quality Control, Power in Numbers, or Feedback for J5 and The Platform, Expansion Team, or 20/ 20 for Dilated Peoples frequently expressed a nostalgia of a supposedly golden-era of Los Angeles rap which, intrinsically, participated to an ongoing dispute between, on the one hand, commercial rappers and, on the other, those who find fulfilment in innovation (or in the respect of some immutable forms of rap music). Like other rappers from other regional rap scenes with whom they were regularly associated, on stage or on records (like De La Soul, a Tribe called Quest or MC Supernatural) these alternative groups expressed, through their lyrics and distinct production styles, a certain weariness caused by what they considered a lack of diversity. They frequently introduced themselves as a social force generating novelty and willing to take part in realignments or changes in guards in the field of production of rap music. This phenomenon was examined in detail by Pierre Bourdieu who explains that, in any field of symbolic production, newcomers have strategies of subversion aimed at reversing its scale of values, through a redefinition of the principles of production (the musical form, the lyrical content, the dress

THE GOOD LIFE The highly evocative expression ‘‘The Good Life’’ may owe some of its popularity to Kanye West’s recent hit single and music video, but it has been famous amongst Los Angeles rappers long before its release. The Good Life Health Food Centre, located on the corner of Crenshaw and Exposition had been, for a long time, one of the emblematic venues of Los Angeles alternative rap scene. Like other prestigious hip hop settings nationwide, The Good Life reportedly started as a community event meant to move Los Angeles inner-city youths from ambient gang-related violence through hip hop creativity. In 1989, at a point in time when rap music was ripening on the West Coast and when the recording industry was turning ‘‘reality rap’’ and ‘‘gangsta rap’’ into commodities, a group of aspiring MCs set up a weekly hip hop open mic night on Thursdays (from 8 to 10 PM) in this small cafe´. The Good Life, with its no-curse policy and its demanding audience rapidly became a testing ground for local lyricists willing to develop an alternative to the dominating rap discourse glorifying inner-city street life popularized by N.W.A. by exploring more socially acceptable themes and reciting abstract rhymes. As Ava Du Vernay, one of founders, explained in a recent interview, The Good Life was a place where one could apply the art form into a different set of experiences and were local talents could showcase in front of a crowd and get immediate feedback. These weekly open mic nights, which had become a pilgrimage for many hip hop heads of the Los Angeles area, lasted for nearly eight years. As Mikah 9, a member of the distinguished Freestyle Fellowship recounts, the event, which had started rather confidentially, rapidly attracted hundreds of people. Since the premises could only fit around 75 people, the ever growing number of performers who could not get in or who could not afford the three dollar entrance fee soon gathered on the parking lot to take part to highly competitive ciphers. Numerous Good Life regulars, amongst which several members of the group Freestyle Fellowship, who became famous for their distinctive choppy rhyme style, or MCs like Skee-lo, Kurupt, or Ahmad, ended up getting record deals. Similar weekly events were later established by local alternative rappers, like, for instance, the Project Blowed started by Aceyalone and Abstract Rude that included a crew of avant-garde hip hop performers like Busdriver, Mikah 9, Medusa, and many others ‘‘blowedians.’’

REFERENCES Balin, Nicole. ‘‘Livin’ the Good Life.’’ The Source. http://img59.image shack.us/my.php?image=gl1cg8.jpg. Jon, B. ‘‘Ava Du Vernay: This Is the Life. Interview.’’ http://ugsmag.com/ interviews/ava-duvernay.

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk | 249 code . . . ) and of valuation of the products, and, at the same time, through a devaluation of the capital held by the dominating trend (Questions de Sociologie 197). This thematic and lyrical hiving off, nevertheless, did not alter the conventional attachment of rappers to their home turf. Numerous texts advocating a return to a mythic golden-era and greater respect for the reference norms established by early rappers entailed, to a certain extent, a more pronounced ghettocentrism of the movement. The discursive and thematic diversification of the Los Angeles rap scene did not undermine in any way the permanent identification to the street culture of the music. Whatever the ideological variations of the texts, the streets, as rapper Dub C emphasizes it in his single ‘‘The Streets,’’ are invariably put forward as the point of origin and the space of reference.

THE FUTURE OF LOS ANGELES HIP HOP Even though many different scenes have appeared on the U.S. map of rap music within the last few years, and despite the emergence of the South as a dominating force in hip hop, the Los Angeles rap scene continues to play a significant part in the movement. In spite of the dual (local and translocal) characteristic of rap music, illustrated by the iterative shout-outs of rappers both to their home neighborhoods and to ghetto youths from all across the country, and in spite of the blurring of any regional distinctiveness through the multiple collaborations between musicians from different regions, Los Angeles and Compton have nonetheless preserved their high-ranking status and distinctiveness in the geography of hip hop. Although things had not turned out as well as they might have during his Death Row years, Dr. Dre has nonetheless managed to consolidate the emblematic status of Los Angeles with his Chronic 2001 album and through trademark productions for Detroit’s freestyle champion Eminem (Slim Shady LP and Marshall Mathers LP), Queens sensation 50 Cent (with his hit single ‘‘In Da Club’’), and L.A. freestyle phenomenon Xzibit (Restless). In 1996, shortly after his departure from Death Row, he founded his own label Aftermath Entertainment and, in 2004, notably introduced The Game (Jayceon Terrell Taylor) a rapper from Compton who, with alternative rapper MURS, is currently the most important flagship representative of the Los Angeles/Compton rap scene. The Game rose to fame in 2005 with the success of his major label debut album The Documentary, which debuted at number one in the wake of a well-orchestrated buzz crafted by his label and his G-Unit affiliates. He has released multiplatinum albums and mixtapes ever since (West Coast Resurrection [2005], Stop Snitchin Stop Lyin [2006], and Doctor’s Advocate [2006]). Among the generic gangsta themes developed in his songs, a few recurring leitmotivs especially stand out. The Game’s lyrics are markedly abounding with shout-outs to local gangs (on ‘‘Westside Story’’), with multiple references to the California chronic popularized by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and to idiosyncratic street attires and fashion items. His songs are also characterized by a strong emphasis on the Los Angeles

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parochial car culture through regular references to lowriders and stylish car ornaments (on ‘‘Let’s Ride’’) and by rap’s ritual glorification of the place of residence, expressed through countless references to the city Compton, the West Coast, and to their emblematic musicians (most notably Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac) and labels (on ‘‘Compton’’ and ‘‘California Vacation’’). Alternative rapper MURS (an acronym for Making Underground Raw Shit) is another major driving force in bringing Los Angeles back to the forefront. His song ‘‘L.A.,’’ from his Murray’s Revenge album, is particularly representative, like The Game’s lyrics for that matter, of the importance, in rap music, to ensure the radiance of one’s place of residence. Indeed, this rapper, like N.W.A. did in their ‘‘Straight Outta Compton’’ video, gives an extensive list of local neighborhoods (Lynnwood, Long Beach, Hawthorne), geographical landmarks, (Slausson supermall, Earl’s Hot Dogs, The Watts Towers) and of idiosyncrasies that characterize his hometown and grant it such a high-ranking status in rap music (gang culture, six fo’, white t-shirts, Chuck Taylors and K-Swiss, Poplockin’, Crip walkin’, chronic blunts, and G-Funk). If the nationwide success of Ruthless and Death Row artists, rap superstars like Snoop Dogg and Xzibit, as well as alternative rappers like Project Blowed, The Pharcyde, Jurassic 5, did a lot to popularize Los Angeles, musicians like The Game, MURS, Busdriver or Dilated Peoples, through songs abounding with signifiers (hip hop icons, area codes, landmark albums) help to continue the national interest in Los Angeles or Compton, and, by extension, in West Coast rap.

REFERENCES Abrahams, Roger D. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Adline Publishing Company, 1973. Alonso, Alejandro A. Urban Graffiti on the City Landscape. Unpublished paper presented at Western Geography Graduate Conference, San Diego State University, February 14, 1998. Bourdieu, Pierre, e´d. La Mise`re du Monde. Paris: Seuil, 1993. ———. Questions de Sociologie. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 2002. Brown, Cecil. Stagolee Shot Billy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Bryant, Jerry H. Born in a Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Cross, Brian. It’s Not About a Salary . . . Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles. London: Verso, 1993. Dundes, Alan, ed. Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of African-American Folklore. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1973.

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Greg Mack. Interview with Stefan Schuetze. West Coast Pioneers, October 2006. http://www.westcoastpioneers.com/interviews.html (accessed October 11, 2008). Evil, Pierre. Gangsta Rap. Paris: Flammarion, 2005. Heller, Jerry. Ruthless: A Memoir. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2006. Joseph, Tony ‘‘DJ T.’’ Interview with Sandro de Geatani. West Coast Pioneers, June 2007. http://www.westcoastpioneers.com/interviews.html (accessed October 11, 2008). NYC Rules. Paris: L’e´dition populaire/Structure, 2003. Ro, Ronin. Gangsta: Merchandizing the Rhymes of Violence. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Ro, Ronin. Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Death Row Records. New York: Main Street Books, 1999. Slim, Iceberg. Pimp: The Story of My Life. Los Angeles: Holloway Press, 1970. Wacquant, Loı¨c. ‘‘Scrutinizing the Street: Poverty, Morality, and the Pitfalls of Urban Ethnography.’’ American Journal of Sociology 107, no. 6 (May 2002): 1468–1532. Wepman, Dennis, Ronald B. Newman, and Murray B. Binderman. The Life, the Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976. http://www.westcoastpioneers.com.

FURTHER RESOURCES Ice T, and Heidi Siegmund. The Ice Opinion: Who Gives a Fuck? New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. http://www.oldschoolsports.itcstore.com/ (on Locking). http://www.streetgangs.com.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY 2Pac 2Pacalypse Now. Jive, 1991. Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.. Atlantic/Interscope, 1993. Me Against the World. Atlantic/Interscope, 1995. All Eyez on Me. Death Row/Polygram, 1996. The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (as Makaveli). Death Row/Interscope, 1998. Above the Law Living Like Hustlers. Ruthless/Sony, 1990. Busdriver Fear of a Black Tangent. Big Dada/Mush, 2005.

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Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band Express Yourself. Warner Bros/Wea, 1993. Compton’s Most Wanted It’s a Compton Thang. Orpheus, 1990. Straight Checkn ’Em. Orpheus, 1991. Music to Driveby. Orpheus/Epic, 1992. Represent. Half Ounce, 2000. Music to Gang Bang. B-Dub, 2006. Cypress Hill Cypress Hill. Sony, 1991. Black Sunday. Sony, 1993. Defari Focused Daily. Tommy Boy, 1999. Odds & Evens. High Times, 2003. Street Music. ABD, 2006. Dilated Peoples Expansion Team. Capitol, 2001. 20/20. Capitol, 2006. DJ Quik Quik is the Name. Profile, 1991. Way 2 Fonky. Profile, 1992. Safe + Sound. Profile, 1995. Rhythm-al-ism. Profile, 1998. Balance & Options. Artista, 2000. Under tha Influence. Ark 21, 2002. Trauma. Mad Science, 2005. D.O.C. No One Can do It Better. Ruthless/East West, 1989. Dr. Dre The Chronic. Death Row, 1992. 2001. Aftermath, 1999. Eazy-E Eazy Duz It. Ruthless/Priority, 1988. It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa. Ruthless, 1993. Str8 off the Streetz of Muthaphukkin’ Compton. Ruthless, 1995. Egyptian Lover On the Nile. Egyptian Empire, 1984. Freestyle Fellowship To Whom it May Concern . . . . Beats & Rhymes, 1991. Inner City Griots. 4th and B’Way, 1993. Frost Hispanic Causing Panic (as Kid Frost). Virgin, 1990.

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk East Side Story (as Kid Frost). Virgin, 1992. Smile Now, Die Later. Relativity, 1995. When Hell.A. Freezes Over. Ruthless/Relativity, 1997. That was Then, This is Now Vol. 1. Celeb, 1999. That was Then, This is Now Vol. 2. Celeb, 2000. Still Up in this Shit. Koch, 2002. Somethin’ 4 the Riderz. 40 Ounce, 2003. Welcome to Frost Angeles. Thump, 2005. Funkdoobiest Which Doobie U B? Immortal/Epic/SME, 1993. Brothas Doobie. Immortal/Epic/SME, 1995. The Troubleshooters. Buzztone/RCA/BMG, 1998. Game (The) The Documentary. Aftermath, 2005. Ice-T Rhyme Pays, Sire, 1987. The Classic Collection. Rhino, 1993. Jurassic 5 Quality Control. Interscope, 2000. Power in Numbers. Interscope, 2002. King Tee Act a Fool. Capitol, 1988. At Your Own Risk. Capitol, 1990. Tha Triflin’ Album. Capitol, 1993. IV Life. MCA, 1995. The Kingdom Come. Greedy Green, 2002. Lightnin’ Rod Hustlers Convention. Celluloid Records, 1973. Liikwit Junkies The L.J.s. ABD, 2005. Lootpack Soundpieces: Da Antidote. Stones Throw, 1999. MC Eiht We Come Strapped. Epic Street, 1994. Death Threatz. Epic Street, 1996. Last Man Standing. Epic Street, 1997. Section 8. Hoo Bangin’/Priority, 1998. N’ My Neighborhood. Hoo Bangin’/Priority, 2000. Tha8t’z Gangsta. Half Ounce, 2001. Underground Hero. D3, 2002. Hood Arrest. Lookin Up, 2003.

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Smoke in Tha City (as Tony Smallz). Factor House, 2004. Affiliated. Paid in Full, 2006. MURS F’Real. Veritech, 1997. Good Music. Veritech, 1999. Murs Rules the World. LLCrew, 2000. Murs is my Best Friend. LLCrew, 2001. The End of the Beginning. Definitive Jux, 2003. Murray’s Revenge. Record Collection, 2006. Murs for President. Warner, 2008. N.W.A. N.W.A. and the Posse. Macola, 1987. Straight Outta Compton. Ruthless, 1988. 100 Miles & Runnin’. Ruthless/Priority, 1990. EFIL4ZAGGIN. Ruthless/Priority, 1991. Pharcyde (The) Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. Delicious Vinyl, 1992. Labcabincalifornia. Delicious Vinyl, 1995. Project Blowed Project Blowed. Project Blowed, 1995. Project Blowed 10th Anniversary. Project Blowed, 2005. Snoop Dogg Doggystyle. Death Row, 1993. Tha Doggfather. Death Row/Priority, 1995. Da Game is to be Sold, Not to be Told. No Limit/Priority, 1998. No Limit Top Dogg. Doggystyle/No Limit/Priority, 1999. The Last Meal. Doggystyle/No Limit/Priority, 2000. Paid tha Cost to be da Bo$$. Priority, 2002. R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece. Doggystyle/Star Trak/Geffen, 2004. Tha Blue Carpet Treatment. Doggystyle/Geffen, 2006. Ego Trippin’. Doggystyle/Geffen, 2008. Malice in Wonderland. Doggystyle/MTV, 2009. Tha Dogg Pound Dogg Food. Death Row/Priority, 1995. Tweedy Bird Loc 187 Ride By. Independent Nat’l Di, 1992. Various artists Bangin’ on Wax. Quality Records, 1993. Warren G Regulate . . . G-funk Era. Def Jam, 1994.

From Electro-Rap to G-Funk Watts Prophets (The) The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts. Full Frequency/Pgd, 1969. Westside Connection Bow Down. Priority, 1996. Xzibit At the Speed of Life. RCA, 1996. 40 Dayz and 40 Nightz. RCA, 1998. Restless. Loud, 2000. Man vs. Machine. Loud/Columbia, 2002. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Sony, 2004. Full Circle. Koch, 2006.

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CHAPTER 11 Between Macks and Panthers: Hip Hop in Oakland and San Francisco George Ciccariello-Maher and Jeff St. Andrews Oakland, Oaktown, The Town, the East Bay, the Five-and-Dime (510): no matter what you call it, Oakland has had a fundamental impact on rap nationwide. But this impact has rarely been recognized, and as a result Oakland hip hop tends to have a defensive flavor. Postwar Oakland is an underdog city, obscured by the long shadow of the wealthier and more renowned San Francisco across the Bay. The history of Oakland rap also reflects this underdog status. Oakland is ‘‘the soil where these rappers be gettin’ they lingo from,’’ the ‘‘Ambassador of the Bay,’’ E-40 reminds us, but Oakland is rarely recognized as the source of that lingo. As we will see, Oakland’s fundamental sociopolitical markers were The Mack and the Black Panthers, and Oakland rap has for years woven a complex tapestry of these two elements, all over a sonic foundation of heavy funk. Having profoundly influenced the L.A.-based G-Funk sound that dominated the 1990s, Oakland rap has only recently—with the Hyphy phenomenon—crossed over into widespread mainstream popularity.

THE MACK AND THE PANTHERS The history of Oakland rap sets out from two central cultural and political parameters that irrevocably altered the city’s history beginning in the late 1960s: the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the epic 1973 pimp film, The Mack. Each epitomizes two different ways for a heavily Black and economically depressed city to confront the realities of postindustrial U.S. society, to make one’s way in a world of poverty and violence: either macking and pimping or organizing for revolutionary transformation. While never mutually exclusive, these two same alternatives would later be posed in the form of hip hop, and so we shouldn’t be surprised to find that these two fundamental currents—the revolutionary political orientation of the Panthers and the macking mentality—inform the history of Oakland rap. 257

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Founded in 1966, the Black Panthers would soon come to represent Black rebellion nationwide, but the Panthers were rooted in the specific local conditions that marked postwar North Oakland. While a series of economic booms had converted much of postwar Oakland into white and middle-class suburbs, these same booms had brought an influx of black workers from the South. As Self has observed, Oakland’s black population tripled during the course of the war, and this immigration didn’t stop immediately thereafter: ‘‘while the city as a whole lost 4 percent of its population between 1950 and 1960, the black residential population nearly doubled, from 55,778 to 100,000 (and to 125,000 by 1970)’’ (160). Due to Jim Crow housing practices, this burgeoning population was largely limited to the industrial areas of West Oakland: ‘‘in 1950 nearly 90 percent of the city’s black population resided in 22 percent of its census tracts concentrated in West and North Oakland,’’ and they were so packed-in that one resident recalls that ‘‘they were sleeping on top of each other’’ (51). West Oakland had effectively become the key to grasping the city’s development: ‘‘At once the heart of Oakland’s expanding African American community and a liminal space . . . West Oakland came to represent dramatic imbalances in postwar metropolitan development and the massive redistributions shaping the region’’ (137). Such liminal spaces—border regions between the economically ‘‘blighted’’ and the wealthy—would play a central role in the development of Oakland rap. But the booms didn’t last, and the postwar downturn devastated Oakland’s economy, as entire industries closed their doors. While blacks continued to arrive in Oakland, ‘‘white flight’’ brought the city’s prior residents to San Francisco or the suburbs, impoverishing the city even more while it paradoxically opened up previously segregated census tracts to black residents. Some 160,000—nearly half the city’s population, mostly white—left in the decade prior to the foundation of the Black Panthers, while the black population continued to grow (166). As whites left—thereby lifting the racist ‘‘red lines’’ previously delimiting residential areas —blacks would move first into North Oakland, and later into what has more recently been dubbed ‘‘Deep East Oakland’’ (see sidebar: Deep East Oakland). It was from the first of these territories that the Panthers emerged, while the latter would come to represent the geographical base for much contemporary Oakland rap. In their respective eras, both would represent simultaneously—in Self’s words—the heart of the expanding Black community and a ‘‘liminal space’’ bordering on other communities. Confronted by the perennially heavy-handed Oakland Police Department, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale began to organize militant local self-defense within the North and West Oakland Black community. In the face of the no-win situation of postwar Oakland, the Black Panthers responded defiantly: change the situation by forcing a radical transformation of the existing political structure. Inspired by Mao Tse-Tung’s notion of ‘‘serving the people’’ and Frantz Fanon’s emphasis on blackness and the role of the urban lumpenproletariat, not to mention the revolutionary black unity and self-defense promoted by Robert F. Williams and

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DEEP EAST OAKLAND Oakland only has three regions: North, East, and West. Mistah F.A.B.’s recent track ‘‘N.E.W. Oakland’’—which, not coincidentally, cites both the Black Panthers and The Mack—reminds us of this, bringing together three rappers to represent the city as a whole: F.A.B. himself from the North, Bavgate from Ghost Town in the West, and G-Stack (formerly of The Delinquents) from The Ville in the East. Each of these areas in its own way is often used to mean ‘‘the bad part of town,’’ thereby removing the possibility of there being a ‘‘good’’ part of Oakland. But ‘‘Deep East Oakland’’—floating somewhere between 60th and 109th avenues—denotes something more. During the immediate postwar period, when the burgeoning black population was largely concentrated in the ‘‘blighted’’ West Oakland, it was there that white anxiety centered. But this image of ‘‘three Oaklands’’ is rooted in the dispersion of this anxiety, as white flight opened up nearly the entire city—North, East, and West—to the black population. But now, at a time when middle-class whites are paying top dollar for apartments in increasingly gentrified North Oakland (due to proximity to the University of California and Emeryville), and when blocks of condominiums are springing up in West Oakland (due to proximity to San Francisco), much of Deep East Oakland remains relatively untouched, and this is no accident. It is there that most of the city’s abject poverty is concentrated, a fact already clear in the late 1970s, when Felix Mitchell’s ‘‘69 Mob’’ emerged from San Antonio Village, better known as the 69th Avenue Projects. This is the same ‘‘Ville’’ that G-Stack represents, and his verse mentions both Mitchell and later Ville kingpin Darryl ‘‘Lil D’’ Reed by name: ‘‘I’m from the V-I-double-L-A-G-E . . . rollin’ through the North and the West but I reps that East.’’ Other rappers repping the East include Dru Down, Keak da Sneak, Too $hort, and The Luniz.

Malcolm X, the Panthers created an organization that was both politically antagonistic and socially benevolent. Hence they both created ‘‘survival programs’’ which provided education and free meals, and organized confrontational actions like a 1967 march on the California State Capitol wielding their arms openly to protest proposed firearms restrictions that were aimed at disarming the black community. This tension between charity and revolutionary struggle would finally contribute to a rupture in the Panthers, with Newton and others focusing on the former and the Party’s Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver splitting off to form the militant guerrilla organization known as the Black Liberation Army. Operating in the midst of a heroin craze that would in the end contribute to the Panthers’ downfall, the organization was keenly aware of the importance of the drug question. ‘‘Capitalism plus dope equals genocide,’’ read the cover of a 1970

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pamphlet produced by the Panthers. It was this question above all others that created tension in Oakland between the political revolutionaries and the macks. This was because there was another way to respond to Oakland’s no-win situation: make the best of it, and do what it takes to survive. It was this perspective that led to the development of Oakland’s legendary mack and pimp culture. It was no accident that The Mack (1973) took place in Oakland: the film was based directly on the life of Frank Ward, who along with his brothers had dominated the Oakland underground throughout the 1960s and 1970s (Ward and his brothers made cameo appearances in the film). The film follows the career of Goldie, recently released from prison and trying to find a way to survive the Oakland streets. Goldie—whose character was directly based on Frank Ward himself—turns to pimping, and learns that the best way to control a woman’s body is to control her mind. The tension between the Panther and the pimp vision appears both within the storyline of The Mack and behind the scenes. In the film, Goldie’s brother Olinga represents the quintessential political revolutionary, to whom it falls to convince Goldie to change his ways (the film’s director recalls basing the character directly on Huey Newton). Their confrontation embodies the conflict between these two responses to the situation of postwar Oakland. Olinga argues that political revolutionaries need to ‘‘get rid of the pimps and pushers,’’ and while Goldie is willing to eliminate the drug trade, he is insistent that, ‘‘nobody is pushing me anywhere.’’ Goldie continues: Goldie: Being rich and black means something, man! Don’t you know that? Being poor and black don’t mean shit! We’re living in different times. When you and I were young kids, there were no heroes, there are all sorts of heroes now! There are kids who even look up to me. Olinga: Man, can’t you see you’re just teachin’ black kids to exploit their own kind? And that’s sick! Goldie: Well, it’s not sick man. It’s sick when you got a chance to get out of a rat-infested ghetto and you don’t! Moreover, while depicting this conflict on the screen, the producers of The Mack were simultaneously forced to walk a tightrope between the Panthers and the pimps, relying directly on the permission (and funding) granted by the Ward Brothers for the film to be made at all (providing, of course, they were allowed to appear as themselves in the film). In the end, an FBI policy of targeted assassination would combine with the widening heroin epidemic to eliminate the threat the Panthers had posed to the U.S. government. Perhaps the Panthers’ overt hostility to dealers and pimps was justified, given the credible claims that the FBI facilitated access to heroin in an attempt to undermine the Panthers, and that they did so precisely through the existing distribution networks controlled by the Ward Brothers. But the Panthers’ influence would never be fully blunted, and a variety of smaller organizations in

Between Macks and Panthers | 261 Oakland and elsewhere would draw from the inspiration they provided. The Ward Brothers themselves wouldn’t last much longer: Frank Ward would be ambushed and killed in Berkeley shortly after production on The Mack was finished. But their legacy, too, would live on in the equally legendary Felix Mitchell, the inspiration for the character of Nino Brown in New Jack City. Raised in deep East Oakland in the 1960s, Mitchell started a gang known as 69 Mob (named after 69th street), and soon came to dominate the Oakland drug trade throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. Except now it was crack instead of heroin: one epidemic was traded for another. In both cases, the disappearance of specific groups wouldn’t eliminate their influence and legacy, mostly because the underlying conditions hadn’t been changed. People still had to find a way in an inhospitable atmosphere, and so the same choices would keep confronting those growing up on the rugged Oakland streets. But these seemingly opposed currents are never completely separate in an Oakland where few reject the need for political change and the simultaneous need to eat. Oakland rappers would never go in for abstract preaching, and even the most diehard macks would realize that it’s the system that’s the problem. The question was how best to confront the violence of the system, a violence which in Oakland often reaches epidemic proportions: to distribute it horizontally onto one’s own community, or to reformulate, redefine, and redirect that violence in a revolutionary direction. Put slightly differently, the particular socioeconomic conditions of postwar Oakland would give rise to hip hoppers who relentlessly fused, perhaps more than in any other region, the need for both the material element of macking and the political antagonism of the Panthers.

TOO $HORT’S “MACK RAP“ It’s the mack of all macks—Sir Too $hort—who is most often credited with creating the trademark Oakland rap sound. Born in L.A. in 1966, $hort can be credited with popularizing ‘‘mack’’ and ‘‘pimp’’ culture not just in the Bay but nationwide, through his status as the most widely popular Oakland rapper to date. But $hort was far from a commercial creation, and at least at first, pimpin’ wasn’t easy. $hort initially made his name by producing his own homemade ‘‘freaky tales’’ tapes with friend Freddy B as early as 1981 and selling them himself all over Oakland, especially in the parking lot of the Oakland Coliseum during Raiders games (see sidebar: Too $hort’s Hustlin’). $hort quickly became the prototype of the selfmade rapper, allegedly selling more than 100,000 copies of his first albums out of the trunk of his car. In the oft-overlooked underdog city of Oakland, this grassroots entrepreneurialism would prove central to the rap game. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Too $hort’s primary motivation when it came to rap was financial: I had like serious tunnel vision when it came to Too $hort, I saw the end of the tunnel which was money. And I was like, from the age of fifteen I was

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Too $hort (Photofest)

trying to sell my tapes. All I ever really cared about was that rap was a hustle, and I always said that if I’m not making money on rap then I’m not rapping . . . If you didn’t pay me, I would never rap. (Rolls and Winning) Since money was the prime objective, it’s not surprising that Too $hort would eventually develop a full-blown mack persona in his raps (he even recalls toying with the idea of becoming a full-time pimp). But this persona, like $hort’s sound, would take some time to develop. Too $hort’s first albums—1983’s Don’t Stop Rappin’, 1985’s Players, and 1986’s Raw, Uncut, and X-Rated (all released on Dean Hodges’ 75 Girls Records)—notably lack both the funk-inflected sound and the raw sexual content that would later come to be his trademark, but these early self-produced albums would nevertheless foreground a number of elements that would persist throughout much of Oakland’s rap history. $hort’s early albums are characterized by a minimalist sound that puts the drum machine at center stage, first the LinnDrum and later the epic TR-808 (a favorite of $hort up to the present). But on tracks like ‘‘Short Rap’’ and the appropriately named ‘‘Female Funk,’’ Too $hort’s drum programming would begin to show a clear funk influence of the sort that would become more apparent on later albums. $hort would later recall the depth of his funk influences: ‘‘that’s the foundation, just knowin’ and lovin’ the funk’’ (Rolls and Winning). As for the content, $hort would later argue that he was told that to sell raps he had to keep it clean, but his street raps were notoriously dirty from the outset,

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TOO $HORT’S HUSTLIN’ Too $hort himself has admitted that he was only into rap for the money, but while chasing the cash, Short would lay the foundations for decades of selfsustainable music production in the Bay Area. Starting in 1981, Short created the blueprint for self-made rappers in the Bay and beyond by hawking thousands of homemade tapes all over the city, especially in the parking lot of the Oakland Coliseum during Raiders games. In a perennial underdog city like Oakland this sort of from-the-ground-up business model would be crucial. While the mainstream would consistently bite elements of Oakland rap, from the sound to the slang, the industry has historically paid little attention to the Bay Area as a whole, leaving rappers to fend for themselves. As a result, this model has been expanded to all genres of Bay Area rap. Specifically, underground rappers like Hieroglyphics and their Hiero Imperium label have been forced to develop innovative marketing strategies, stretching Too $hort’s original logic to fit new realities: first from cassettes to CDs, and then on to the Internet. To this day, mixtapes and selfproduced albums can be found popping out of trunks on the street all over Oakland, and even outside Amoeba Music on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where a new generation of rappers seeks financial sustenance and a chance for a break. Moreover, this hustlin’ mentality has led rappers to sustain themselves through other sorts of economic activity. E-40, for example, has had investments ranging from Fatburger and Wingstop franchises to his own line of liquor and energy drinks, and revolutionary rapper Paris entered the belly of the beast, working for years as a stock trader to fund his independent Guerrilla Funk label.

and the tapes he had been grinding since 1981 were largely composed of ‘‘freaky tales’’ of sexual conquest. We have no reason to doubt this, especially since Don’t Stop Rappin’ is graced with such metaphorical gems as ‘‘she got butter on my candy bar’’ (‘‘Short Rap’’). In this aspect, too, we see a progression: when we reach Raw, Uncut, and X-Rated, $hort had already incorporated ‘‘bitch’’ into the title of several songs (a word which would later become his trademark), and explicit lyrics were more predominant throughout. It is on this album as well that $hort’s trademark misogyny appears clearly, especially on ‘‘She’s a B,’’ nearly 10 minutes of verbal misogyny in which $hort celebrates ‘‘smackin’ that bitch, fuckin’ her up,’’ and boasts that ‘‘I’ma kill that bitch or my name ain’t Todd.’’ But while Too $hort is far from a Black Panther, there are also moments where he sounds positively conscious: on ‘‘Girl (That’s Your Life),’’ for example, $hort deals with the seedy underside of life in Oakland, ‘‘the city of dope’’ which ‘‘couldn’t be saved by John the Pope.’’ But given his pimp persona and emphasis

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on hustling, this picture is never without ambiguity, and while smoking crack is derided and criticized, the entrepreneurial orientation associated with selling crack is quite often held in esteem (e.g., ‘‘Coke Dealers’’). Too $hort’s 1987 album Born to Mack, would be the breakthrough he was looking for. In 1986, $hort had founded his own label—Dangerous Music—and Born to Mack was released in 1987. After he had already sold 50,000 copies out of the trunk of his car, Jive Records took notice and picked him up, and the 1988 Jive rerelease would eventually go gold with little to no publicity. Born to Mack was a breakthrough in other ways as well. Firstly, $hort showcased the epic, booming bass of the TR-808 drum machine: ‘‘They would say, if you turn that bass up any louder, the record is not gonna play in the groove, and I’m like . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about, everybody’s gonna be bumpin’ cassettes, do it . . . push the bass a little louder.’’ Despite the fact that $hort recalls recording the album in its entirety in three night sessions (and with less than $2,000), his production had come a long way since 1983, and was now approaching the fuller, funk-laden sound that would make Oakland famous. Too $hort’s image also changed: while the covers of his three 75 Girls albums featured close-up images of the skinny, young rapper, Born to Mack explicitly sought to depersonalize his mack identity. ‘‘Too $hort was like this super mack pimp dude,’’ who ‘‘saw The Mack and got oh so sprung’’ (‘‘Mack Attack’’). He became almost a fictional character sitting on a convertible, wearing chains he had borrowed from everyone on the photo shoot, and was so small that he couldn’t be identified. By the time Jive released Too $hort’s 1989 album Life Is . . . Too Short, he was still trying to be anonymous, but being a major-label artist in the age of the music video made underground anonymity impossible. Again, before Jive began to push the album and before the promo tour with Eazy-E, Life Is . . . Too Short had sold 300,000 copies. After the tour it was at 800,000, and after a short-lived rumor of his death it hit 1.3 million without significant radio play. And all this was in an era in which, according to $hort, ‘‘positive rap was winning’’ (Rolls and Winning). Life Is . . . Too Short represented, in a manner of speaking, Too $hort’s funk turn. This was no accident: the album featured funk fanatic Al ‘‘Baby Jesus’’ Eaton, a key player in the Oakland sound who plays the blues guitar on ‘‘City of Dope.’’ This track, moreover, is another chapter in the saga that began with the opening lines of ‘‘Girl,’’ which tracks the ultimately destructive nature of the crack epidemic as seen from the Oakland streets. This ‘‘Baby Jesus’’-driven funk would persist in subsequent albums: 1990’s Short Dog’s in the House was Oakland funk-rap at its best, especially on Eaton-arranged and Donnie Hathaway-inspired crossover hit ‘‘The Ghetto.’’ While Al Eaton brought a heavier funk influence into $hort’s work, conflicts over content led $hort to turn to Mobb Music originator Ant Banks (as well as Digital Underground rapper and Parliament roadie Shorty B) for production on his 1992 Shorty the Pimp. ‘‘If you listen to those albums,’’ recalls $hort, ‘‘there’s a formula going on in there . . . everybody’s in sync.’’ It was still funk, but the lazier, more laid-back funk that would prove so influential for the

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L.A. G-Funk sound. Despite the album’s title, Shorty the Pimp would feature one of Too $hort’s most explicitly political tracks, the Rodney King-inspired ‘‘I Want to Be Free’’ with its desperate closing line: ‘‘But I ain’t mad, I’m just Black.’’ In 1994, Too $hort relocated to Atlanta, where he has lived ever since (although he is currently planning his return to The Town). While this might seem like an extreme transition for someone who identifies so clearly with East Oakland, he recalls that there were a crowd of folks from the Bay Area in Atlanta at the time (the Oakland-Atlanta axis, moreover, is more common than often supposed, as we will see below). Shortly after moving to the A, $hort retired, but it didn’t last long, and after only three years, he returned. But $hort recalls that while he had decided that his life lay in hip hop, the magic of the ‘‘classic Too $hort’’ was gone. On ‘‘These Are the Tales’’ from the 2001 album Chase the Cat, Too $hort assesses his legacy: ‘‘Six platinums in a row, Ice Cube and Cool J, who else did that shit?’’ But this was several years ago by now, and as it stands, Too $hort is about to release his 17th album, tentatively entitled Bible of a Pimp. When asked about his own legacy, $hort replies with trademark modesty: ‘‘There’s been a lot of guys that been around a long time, but they all grew up listening to Too $hort.’’ But he immediately adds the qualifier that, ‘‘I was a little dude makin’ those records . . . So when somebody says to me, ‘I grew up on Too $hort,’ I say, ‘I did too’ ’’ (de Leon, ‘‘Too $hort’’). But more surprising than albums and sales is the fact that he did it without much mainstream attention, a story which is all too common in the perennially overlooked city of Oakland. While Oakland rap would soon find itself eclipsed by the sounds emerging from Los Angeles—first in the form of early ‘‘gangsta’’ rap like N.W.A., and later with the spin-off genre of G-Funk—it is worth emphasizing the unrecognized influence of the Oakland sound on the latter. The G-Funk sound would draw directly and consciously on the Oakland sound, specifically the 808-driven Mobb Music genre which was built on the foundation of what Too $hort himself would deem ‘‘dope fiend beats.’’ The laid-back bass-heavy funk with an equally laid-back, drawling delivery would mark $hort’s legacy to the G-Funk—despite the fact that the latter was distinguished by its heavy use of portamento synthesizers and relative lack of live instrumentation—and if we need any proof that G-Funk drew its inspiration from Oakland, we need look no further than the cover of Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle, which draws its style directly from Too $hort’s Short Dog’s in the House. Snoop’s appropriation of the Oakland style—which Too $hort charitably interprets as paying homage (some might call it biting)—continues to this day with his popularization of terms like ‘‘fo’ shizzle’’ which were coined by E-40. Too $hort, moreover, would extend his legacy in Oakland through his musical prote´ge´s. The first, Dru Down, would exemplify the pimp and mack identity, most clearly on his ‘‘Pimp of the Year,’’ off the 1994 album Explicit Game. Drawing directly from the pimp of the year contest featured in The Mack, this track would set the tone for what would become his trademark explicit lyrics and misogynistic content. Less pimps and more G-Funk, The Luniz—composed of Too $hort

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disciples Yukmouth and Numskull—would emerge the next year with their platinum-selling Operation Stackola. Their epic tribute to the dime bag set to an equally epic and oft-sampled beat—‘‘I Got 5 on It’’—would become an Oakland landmark. $hort would also discover the one East Bay artist to successfully stay afloat during the high tide of L.A. gangsta dominance: Spice 1. A Texas native raised in the East Bay suburb of Hayward, Spice 1 would hone a hardcore gangsta sound that had more in common with Compton’s Most Wanted than the Oakland funk sound. And it would pay off: despite a few jail stints that undercut his efforts at publicity, Spice 1 would release six albums under Jive between 1991 and 1999 —while other Oakland rappers were being dropped like hot potatoes—three of which went gold. But there are clearly unfortunate elements of Too $hort’s legacy, specifically the fact that he essentially invented the genre of misogynistic rap, a genre which has flourished up to the present day. In a review of Shorty the Pimp, Danyel Smith argues that $hort’s ‘‘freaky tales’’ genre had taken a turn away from its playful origins. With this 1992 album, ‘‘Too $hort drops another bomb in the gender war. The album is a female-hating string of songs pulsing with $hort’s usual blend of nonchalance, heavy bass lines and disdainful lyrics.’’ In contrast to $hort’s earlier work, Smith argues that ‘‘his misogyny, which used to be bewildering, more taunting than challenging, has gone from insulting to scary.’’ But in some ways, she is mistaken: Shorty the Pimp wasn’t qualitatively different from prior albums (hardly worse than ‘‘She’s a B’’), and $hort’s misogyny would get even worse later (e.g. ‘‘All My Bitches Are Gone,’’ from Get in Where You Fit in). The issue is much deeper than merely at what point a ‘‘fun’’ freak turns into a violent pimp, and derives—as we discussed above—from the deepest recesses of Oakland culture. Too $hort always wanted to control his surroundings by becoming a pimp—in real life, not merely in music—but like his music, this hypothetical pimping was just another hustle, another way to scrape out a living in postindustrial Oakland. The degree to which this solution was unacceptable would be the argument of female (and some male) revolutionaries, from the Panthers to the present.

SHOCK G BRINGS THE FUNK But we need to take a step back: where did the funk come from? While Rickey Vincent credits Too $hort with pioneering rap-funk, it’s worth noting that the funk bass in $hort’s 1992 ‘‘I Wanna Be Free’’ was played by Shorty B, a rapper off Digital Underground’s ‘‘Tales of the Funky.’’ Before Life Is . . . Too $hort, before even EPMD’s ‘‘You Gots to Chill’’ and Public Enemy’s ‘‘Bring the Noise,’’ Shock G and Digital Underground had already begun to fuse Oakland’s funk heritage with the newly developing hip hop genre. Maybe it’s a bit ironic, then, that Shock G (aka Greg Jacobs) wasn’t even born in the Bay. He spent most of his younger years in New York, where what he recalls more than anything was a lack of funk. It wasn’t until Shock moved to live with his father in Florida that he caught the funk

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bug. Working as a DJ, he realized that New York-style rap just didn’t get people on the floor to dance, but George Clinton and his Parliament Funkadelic did. Despite the fact that Shock had already fused funk and hip hop while in Florida, he wasn’t the one to bring funk to Oakland. In fact, it was the opposite: the heavy funk influence that permeated the Bay would be what attracted Shock in the first place. As he recalls, ‘‘One of the reasons I decided to move to Oakland was because Oakland was putting P-Funk on way back . . . and the vibe was strong. Plus it was the only place in the country where they had a radio show dedicated to the funk’’ (Davey D, ‘‘Hip Hop and Funk’’). Shock refers here to the ‘‘History of Funk’’ show on KALX in the 1980s hosted by Rickey Vincent, aka ‘‘Uhuru Maggot,’’ who recently penned a history of funk. Later, it would be through both Vincent’s show, as well as Davey D’s own hip hop show on KALX that Digital Underground would begin to carve out an audience for funk-infused hip hop. There are a few factors that might explain the prevalence of funk in the Bay, and in Oakland in particular. Al Eaton—producer for such Oakland rappers as Too $hort, The Click, San Francisco’s Rappin’ 4 Tay, and Dangerous Dame—highlights the fact that Sly and the Family Stone came out of the small North Bay city and later Hyphy haven of Vallejo. Stone—drawing as well on the proximity to San Francisco hippiedom—would directly influence George Clinton, and the Parliament Mothership would first land in 1977 at the Oakland Coliseum. To this we could add a number of other funk acts associated with Oakland: Graham Central Station, Cold Blood, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, and Tower of Power, just to mention a few of the better-known examples. ‘‘There’s always been a funk thing going on in the Bay Area,’’ Eaton recalls, ‘‘It’s always been funk base central . . . Funk is here because it’s always been here’’ (Davey D, ‘‘Hip Hop and Funk’’). Among other reasons, Eaton links the popularity of funk directly to The Mack, a film that through its broad cultural influence, brought funk to would-be hip hoppers. While Too $hort and Dru Down—as well as the various ‘‘Macs’’ (i.e., The Mac, Mac Dre, Mac Mall, etc.) later emerging from Vallejo—would draw their funk more clearly from The Mack, Shock G would be more attracted to George Clinton’s appeal to spirituality and pro-black unity. In 1987, Digital Underground—at that time a duo composed of Shock G and Chopmaster J—released ‘‘Underwater Rimes,’’ with samples drawn from P-Funk’s ‘‘Aquaboogie.’’ Strangely enough, ‘‘Underwater Rimes’’ hit #1 in the Netherlands, and the duo was signed to Tommy Boy in 1989, shortly before releasing their second single, ‘‘Doowhutchyalike’’ (now as a seven-piece). DU’s debut album, Sex Packets—released in early 1990 —would sample Clinton and P-Funk no fewer than a dozen times, and Rickey Vincent argues that ‘‘Digital Underground went literally overboard with their allegiance to P-Funk’’ (252). These P-Funk samples, moreover, were arranged alongside a variety of other foundational funk acts (Sly and the Family Stone, Prince, The Meters, The Ohio Players, etc.). And it wasn’t just the samples: DU’s entire being seemed to be designed according to the P-Funk prototype, right

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down to the flashy outfits and cartoonish characters. Their smash single ‘‘The Humpty Dance’’—featuring Shock G’s comical alter ego, Humpty Hump—would reach #11 on pop and #7 on R&B charts, and Sex Packets would hit platinum by the end of the year, selling more than a million copies. DU’s 1991 This Is an EP Release went gold, as did their aptly named sophomore effort Sons of the P, which George Clinton himself helped to produce. On the latter, P-Funk remained the sample of choice, and Vincent observes that ‘‘(Not Just) Knee Deep’’ was looped on no fewer than three tracks on Sons of the P (10). Shock G describes the experience of working directly with Clinton in the following way: George blew our minds wide open when we was working with him . . . He led me onto a theory that we’re just conveyors . . . the people that are directing the energy in the funk, but he seems to feel like it’s a collective spirit that comes from the whole rhythm of the world, the rhythm of the people. Brothers seem to have rhythm with everything they do. (Vincent 252) At least in the East Bay, this ‘‘collective spirit’’ would soon come to be palpable in almost all hip hop. After Shock G started to bring the funk, the Oakland sound began to develop in earnest. But with the dominance of Los Angeles G-Funk—a sound which ironically owed more to both Oakland and P-Funk than would often be admitted—DU’s third full-length album, 1993’s Body Hat Syndrome, fell flat. But while G-Funk overshadowed Mobb Music, it is undeniable that DU and Shock G’s production left a lasting imprint on Oakland rap. Moreover, Digital Underground’s rap legacy would not be limited to the development of a characteristically funk-inspired Oakland sound. Shortly after the release of Sex Packets, Shock G discovered a young aspiring MC languishing in Marin City, a poor suburb in a rich area across the bay and to the north. Tupac Shakur would later recall that ‘‘I caught the ‘D-Flow Shuttle’ while I was in Marin City. It was the way out of here. Shock G was the conductor’’ (Davey D, ‘‘2Pac’’). Appearing first as a backup dancer and then as a rapper in his own right on DU’s 1991 EP, Tupac would later hit the studio to record his solo debut, 2Pacalypse Now, under the direction of Shock himself. While Tupac himself wasn’t from Oakland, the city would leave its mark on the young rapper, especially through his arrest by and eventual lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department, an event that only reinforced the young rapper’s image as a rebel and a revolutionary. In a prophetic interview, the late Shakur—who considered himself ‘‘the rebel of the (Digital) Underground’’—compared Oakland circa 1991 to the Bronx a decade earlier. This wasn’t a diss: according to Shakur, the Bay was primed for a rap ‘‘renaissance,’’ and Shock G and Digital Underground were at the forefront. ‘‘I feel that the Bay Area sound hasn’t even finished coming out,’’ Shakur observed, ‘‘it’s starting to get respected more and more everyday’’ (Davey D, ‘‘2Pac’’). When we consider both the profound influence of Shock G’s funk infusion on the creation of

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an ‘‘Oakland sound,’’ and when we think of the importance of the upbeat version of that sound as the basis for the recent Hyphy explosion nationwide, it becomes clear that Tupac was dropping some serious insights about the future of the East Bay.

HIERO’S 3RD EYE VISION What Digable Planets were to Brooklyn, Hieroglyphics are to Oakland. Formed by Del tha Funke´e (or Funky) Homosapien—a cousin of legendary L.A. rapper Ice Cube with a notably less gangsta name—Hiero has built a devoted fan base on the foundation of intelligent, well-crafted lyrics and jazz-infused production. Maybe it’s not surprising, given the track record of Oakland rap, that Hieroglyphics grew out of a group of major label rejects. As for Del himself, his career got off to an auspicious start: few young rappers can boast that their debut album was produced by Ice Cube and DJ Pooh. But being Cube’s cousin didn’t hurt things, and album sales were no doubt bolstered by this family relation. While Del would later regret the production style of his Elektra debut I Wish My Brother George Was Here, it reflected in many ways the deep funk influence prevalent in Oakland rap (this despite the fact that it was produced by non-Oaklanders Ice Cube and DJ Pooh, also serious funkophiles). It was no mere coincidence that Del’s name included the adjective ‘‘funky.’’ The album’s title— while directly a reference to an obscure Bugs Bunny cartoon—is more subtly a reference to George Clinton, and Del would later claim that ‘‘George Clinton is

Del tha Funkee Homosapien (Tim Mosenfelder/Corbis)

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probably my biggest influence’’ (Ma). Indeed, My Brother George could be described as a cleaner and more straightforward version of the upbeat, funkdriven Digital Underground blueprint. And like DU, Del’s first album drew heavily on Parliament and Funkadelic, sampling them no less than eight times. In fact, the track ‘‘Dr. Bombay’’ is an homage to the art of sampling the P-Funk, in which Del even adopts his own funkadelic moniker: ‘‘The Motorbooty.’’ To the question, ‘‘Where’d you get your funk from?’’ Del replies: ‘‘From a brother named George and some 151’s.’’ But like Shock G, Del’s appreciation for the P-Funk is closely associated with his appreciation for blackness, and the second subject of the song is black women, a subject to which he devotes an entire track (‘‘Dark Skin Girls’’). From the first bar, Del’s 1993 sophomore effort No Need for Alarm was a clear departure from the funky sound of My Brother George. Dark, jazzy, and noticeably slower in tempo (in some ways suggestive of DJ Shadow’s later groundbreaking work), the album reflected some clear changes to Del’s production team. Del’s disappointment with cousin Cube’s production on My Brother George had led the two to part ways (although Cube’s voice is sampled into the first track of No Need), and many of the tracks on the later album would be produced by Del himself. Working with his own tracks, Del’s trademark unstable, jittery, up-and-down flow—foreshadowed on ‘‘Dark Skin Girls’’—finally let loose. This stark sonic transformation—in which the P-Funk was largely replaced by jazz samples drawn from Herbie Hancock among others—would be paralleled by Del’s content: the mild Afrocentrism of ‘‘Dark Skin Girls’’ was replaced by smashing ‘‘Wack MCs.’’ In retrospect, Del sees the album as having been a series of ‘‘really foul’’ battle raps (Keast). After No Need for Alarm saw poor sales, Elektra had had enough of this quirky and creative (but evidently not entirely marketable) rapper, and Del was dropped from the label only a month before the release of his 1998 Future Development (to add insult to injury, Elektra would later release Del’s greatest hits without the rapper’s permission). Del’s trademark sound has been described as a ‘‘marketing director’s nightmare . . . ‘‘Too many piercings to be labeled hardcore, too many drug references to fit the conscious rap gimmick, too much Northern Cali slang for New York or LA listeners’’ (Keast). It was between Del’s first two albums that Hiero crew Souls of Mischief dropped their first album 93 ’til Infinity, on a major label deal with Jive. Made up of Tajai, Opio, A-Plus, and Phesto, Souls of Mischief were—alongside Del— stretching Oakland’s funk-laced rap sound to accommodate their stylistic creativity. That the Souls’ transition paralleled Del’s own is no coincidence: Del produced three of the album’s tracks, with fellow Hieroglyphics crew members Domino and Casual contributing others. Hence the ‘‘Hiero sound’’ was born: centered on a live bass line, 93 ’til Infinity privileged jazz samples and rapid lyrics over a laid-back track. Despite the commercial success of 93 ’til Infinity, and despite the significant sales notched by their 1995 follow-up No Man’s Land, the Souls were also dropped by Jive. This forcible exodus from the mainstream—from Souls to Del to Casual and other Hiero members—was no doubt caused by broader developments in

Between Macks and Panthers | 271 rap: the dominance of L.A. gangsta rap left little room for alternative and competing sounds, whether they be from Digital Underground, Too $hort, or Hiero. Del and company decided to regroup and move forward, founding Hieroglyphics Imperium Recordings in 1995. Many of those involved in Hiero had known each other since childhood. As Casual, who had also been dropped by Jive Records after his 1994 debut, would put it later: It came about from us getting dropped from major labels, and instead of folding and succumbing to defeat, we hit the ground running. We took what we had and we ran with it, we landscaped and we built something. We had to be resourceful, creative, and clever to gain our niche but now . . . it’s been ten years since we’ve busted out independent. (Rodrı´guez) The collective enterprise dropped their first album in 1998, and it was an instant classic. Or at least that’s how it seemed from a distance: up close, Hieroglyphics were grinding like Too $hort, but 10 years later and with a different medium. A major part of Hiero’s ‘‘niche’’ was the Internet, as Casual explains: ‘‘We were one of the first groups to gain venue from the Internet. Period . . . we had to find creative ways to help build our company. We found our niche and now we got a catalogue of like 30, 31 albums strong’’ (Rodrı´guez). 3rd Eye Vision is a journey which begins from a Primo-esque intro put together by Domino (later Hiero CEO). Despite a soul-infused first single—‘‘You Never Knew,’’ produced by Souls’ A-Plus—and some bass-driven Casual beats, the Hiero sound remains prevalent. For all their talk of breaking the mold, however, in some ways Hieroglyphics was straightforwardly traditional. Specifically, the crew’s early tendency toward showcasing their skills and battling was the anchor which kept their occasionally cartoonish lyrics down to earth: it was still about crushing the whack MCs. While showcasing his skills, Casual emphasizes both the similarity and the difference between Hiero and what had come before: ‘‘I’ll blast a nigga as quick as you, but that’s not what I’m about’’ (‘‘Casual’’). As though to further distance himself from his cousin, Del’s track ‘‘At the Helm’’ is an epic battle track aimed at the gangsta genre: ‘‘Rap ain’t about bustin’ caps and fuckin’ bitches. It’s about fluency with rhymin’ ingenuity.’’ The development of skill is Hiero’s trademark, and under this rubric this diverse crew—perhaps partly through their large size—has managed to push forward both their styles and sales without getting stale and without becoming predictable. Since these early years, Hiero Imperium has become a haven for Oakland’s self-styled conscious and independent rappers and singers: SupremeEx, Beeda Weeda, Encore, Z-Man, and R&B songstress Goapele have all joined the ranks, and Hiero even signed their first East Coast rapper, O.C., in 2005. But as we have seen above, neither independence nor consciousness were exclusive to Hieroglyphics, and it’s arguably the case that some of those involved in Hiero exaggerate both their consciousness and independence vis-a`-vis other Oakland rappers. Oakland rap has from the very

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beginning been marked by independent production and label neglect: just as the city of Oakland has been systematically shafted (San Francisco’s poor neighbor), so too have its rappers been made to feel inferior (especially to the L.A. scene which drew so directly on the Oakland style). But label neglect isn’t all bad, and the history of Oakland rap wouldn’t be the same without it. In terms of consciousness, moreover, it’s an error not to recognize the subtle influence that the Panther legacy has exerted on most Oakland rap. If we are talking about independent rappers making real, down-to-earth political statements which speak to issues in the Oakland community, then these can be found directly in Paris and The Coup, and in smaller doses in E-40, Mistah F.A.B., and even Too $hort himself. In fact, upon listening to My Brother George, one is struck by the similarity—in the beats, the flow, the meter—to early albums by The Coup. This reflects the fact that The Coup and Boots Riley were heavily influenced by both local friend Del and legend Ice Cube (Boots often refers to the latter as his biggest influence). What is ‘‘Cars and Shoes’’ but an updated version of ‘‘The Wacky World of Public Transit,’’ and ‘‘Piss on Your Grave’’ but a sequel to ‘‘Pissin’ on Your Steps’’? When we add to this the fact that Del would appear on The Coup’s ‘‘The Repo Man Sings for You’’ as well as Digital Underground’s Future Rhythm (also featuring the Luniz), we get a picture of a much more tightly intertwined Oakland rap music scene than might otherwise appear. This seems to have dawned on Del himself at some point, since in a 2000 interview he comes across a lot like Sir Too $hort himself: ‘‘when I got older I realized you have to make money somehow, you ain’t giving your art away for free. When I figured that out, I realized I couldn’t trip off what the other guy’s doing, and it ain’t my business what he’s doing, anyway. He ain’t keeping me from selling’’ (Keast). Perhaps the best proof of this recent rapprochement between Hiero and the Oakland rap tradition lies in the fact that Casual’s most recent album Smash Rockwell is a clear effort to build bridges rather than burn them, and features both a classic Hiero sound on some tracks and Oakland trunk-funk on others, as well as collaborations with E-40 and Too $hort.

FROM THE PANTHERS TO THE COUP While Too $hort wasn’t overtly political, in a city like Oakland the legacy of the Panthers always lies just below the surface, and in a sea of misogyny we occasionally get a glimpse of something like ‘‘I Want to Be Free.’’ Shock G and Digital Underground—most well-known for a track as silly as ‘‘The Humpty Dance’’— also clearly reflect this influence: Shock and other DU members originally appeared under the name Spice Regime, an explicitly Panther-inspired political act. According to Davey D, it was only the explosive appearance of Public Enemy and the equally explosive popularity of ‘‘The Humpty Dance’’ that led them to reformulate their political image. As Shock G puts it, ‘‘you can’t talk about funk without talking about the Black Revolution’’ (Vincent 47). And finally, lest we

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forget what Tupac’s media image seeks to hide, 2Pacalypse was a clearly Pantherinspired album, drawing upon the influence of mother Afeni and aunt Assata to lash American society with lyrical barbs and social criticism. Other Oakland acts would continue to draw inspiration more directly from the Panthers and the radical heritage of Oakland, putting them at the forefront of revolutionary hip hop nationwide. Any discussion of revolutionary Oakland rap must begin from a man who— despite not being directly associated with The Town—has nevertheless left an indelible mark on the Oakland style and revolutionary rap nationwide: Paris. Raised in the Haight district of San Francisco and more recently residing in Danville in the suburban East Bay, P-Dog would inject the funk into his production and the revolutionary message of the Panthers into his lyrics. Originally, Paris identified more strongly with the Nation of Islam, but the desire for a more radical and active political orientation led him to fuse the NOI self-help message with the Panthers’ transformative strategy (Byrne). It was this relentless political orientation that would lead Paris to produce some of the most hard-hitting and controversial rap tracks of the era. Specifically, tracks like ‘‘Bush Killa’’—a revenge fantasy that speaks of sending then-president George Bush Sr. ‘‘home belly-up’’—resulted in Paris being dropped from Tommy Boy and receiving a visit from the FBI. Sonically, Paris argues that ‘‘here in the Bay Area it’s all about the funk’’ (Davey D, ‘‘Funk’’), and this influence appears at its clearest on tracks like ‘‘Guerrilla Funk,’’ which includes samples of both George Duke’s ‘‘Dukey Stick’’ and Parliament’s ‘‘Knee Deep’’ (also mobilized on DU’s Sons of the P). In fact, DU had been Paris’ original link to Tommy Boy, with whom he made contact at a DU video shoot (Byrne). It was this sonic affinity with The Town Sound that led him to produce classic Oakland tracks like ‘‘Somethin’ to Ride to (Fonky Expedition)’’ by the Conscious Daughters, a track which paid tribute to Oakland’s car culture while simultaneously highlighting the revolutionary reversal of traditional gender roles as well as an open resistance to the police and reclamation of public space for street parties. As the Daughters put it: ‘‘Comin’ straight from out the O, so you know that we got the funky track, it’s fat.’’ If we didn’t know better, we’d think Paris’s beat for the track was straight out of the G-Funk (especially given the generous dose of portamento he employs). As we will see below, this celebration of Oakland’s sideshow culture—in which ‘‘homies steady clownin’ on the gas, brake, dip’’—is a constant presence (the first rapper to reference sideshows is Richie Rich) but one which would later come to a peak in the Hyphy era (see sidebar: Sideshows). Moreover, while ‘‘Somethin’ to Ride To’’ has a noticeably laidback, G-Funk feel, many of Paris’s own tracks take the Bay sound and make it faster (here showing a clear influence of Public Enemy), pointing in some ways toward the later rise of Hyphy. Indeed, the name of Paris’s label—Guerrilla Funk —reflects a fusion of Oakland’s funk heritage and revolutionary political tradition. In recent years, this label has gathered together these strands of Oakland rap, producing classic Mobb Music like the Conscious Daughters and C-Funk as well as

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SIDESHOWS The spontaneous street party is the center of Oakland’s recently developing Hyphy culture, but has a long history in Oakland car culture and hip hop. A sideshow is essentially a spontaneous street party in which one might ‘‘ghostride the whip’’ (get out while driving), ‘‘gas brake dip,’’ or even ‘‘scrape’’ (spin donuts in the middle of the street). As early as 1991, Richie Rich (of the 415) was rapping about sideshows as the center of Oakland street culture and the police repression they faced, and in 1993 The Conscious Daughters dropped their Paris-produced ‘‘Somethin’ to Ride to,’’ an ode to Oakland sideshows at which ‘‘homies steady clownin’ on the gas, brake, dip.’’ But while sideshows have a long history in Oakland rap, Mistah F.A.B. insists nevertheless that: ‘‘the sideshow 2006, ain’t nothing like it was with Richie Rich.’’ Given the importance of sideshows for black reclamation of public space in a city like Oakland, which makes a conscious effort to criminalize all expressions of black collectivity, it is not surprising that the sideshow has become the new threat, the new focus of the media and the police. But while police repression is harsh, the decentralized structure of sideshows—which are organized informally through text messages—proves impossible for the police to stop altogether: when the police arrive at one location, participants merely disperse and regroup elsewhere. Media representations reinforce the false claim of sideshows as a locus of criminality and violence, thereby creating public support for disproportionally harsh policing measures. ‘‘Sideshow’’ has become a new racist code-word, a fact which only further legitimizes the subtle political challenge inherent in Hyphy and sideshows.

revolutionary Oakland acts like former Coup collaborator T-K.A.S.H., Boston’s Uno the Prophet, New Orleans’ Truth Universal, and L.A.’s Kam. Much to his pleasure, Paris was even invited to produce the latest album by his heroes Public Enemy, released by Guerrilla Funk as Rebirth of a Nation in 2006. But perhaps the most innovative and overtly revolutionary political act to come out of Oakland is The Coup. Composed of MC Raymond ‘‘Boots’’ Riley and DJ Pam the Funkstress (and previously E-Roc, who has since left the group to become a longshoreman), The Coup has maintained a constant presence in the underground rap scene, a revolutionary gadfly gnawing on an often apolitical mainstream. Riley, whose political orientation derives in part from his parents’ activism in the NAACP, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Progressive Labor Party, has long identified as a communist (allegedly since the age of 14). Boots’ first foray into political hip hop took the form of the Mau Mau Rhythm Collective, founded in 1991—a year before The Coup came together—to use music to

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raise awareness about radical political projects. The next year, Boots met Pam—a disciple of DJ Prince of Charm—at a release party for 2Pacalypse, and The Coup was born (Ashlock). The Coup’s sound has always lived up to their Oakland heritage by foregrounding funk influences, sampling the P-Funk among others. Moreover, like much of the Mobb Music tradition, The Coup also make heavy use of live instrumentation both in the studio and on tour. Since their first album—1993’s seminal Kill My Landlord—The Coup’s political method has been a typically revolutionary Marxist one, in which local issues are situated within a broader socioeconomic structure. Rather than merely attempting to get by within these structures—as is the case with much of Oakland’s macking and pimping culture—for The Coup this structural understanding then allows the MCs to mount a lyrical and political attack. On Kill My Landlord, The Coup starts out with a survey of revolutionary thought: the track ‘‘Dig It’’ begins from the assertion that, ‘‘Presto, read The Communist Manifesto,’’ and seeks to ‘‘rip through ‘em from the tip of my Mao Tse-Tongue.’’ Besides Marx and Mao, the track also cites Kwame Nkrumah, H. Rap Brown, Frantz Fanon, and Geronimo Pratt, takes the time to indict the media, the police (5-0), Christopher Columbus, and the Bush administration, and brings it all back to the local level: ‘‘And you still wanna know the origin of our flow? Oakland, California 94610.’’ This same method is deployed repeatedly on this and other albums. Kill My Landlord addresses nearly all aspects of contemporary black politics: from colonial selfhatred on ‘‘Fuck a Perm,’’ to the ever-present decision of whether to give up weed on ‘‘My Last Blunt,’’ and even the raging debate over the n-word in ‘‘I Ain’t the Nigga,’’ in which Pam the Funkstress splices—Primo-style—Big Daddy Kane, Ice Cube, and the Last Poets. On ‘‘Not Yet Free,’’ the violence faced by young, Black males in Oakland—where ‘‘I got a mirror in my pocket and I practice looking hard’’—serves as an occasion to critique the failures of the Civil Rights generation’s emphasis on formal solutions to racism. And all this, again, over an Ice Cube sample (Boots would claim Del’s big cousin as his favorite rapper). While Kill My Landlord, as the title suggests, is not lacking in revenge fantasies and celebration of assassination, the real focus is on mass political mobilization and structural transformation. Kill My Landlord would be followed in 1994 by Genocide and Juice, a tighter and more funk-laden album, but one which similarly deals with the totality of capitalist relations in Oakland. This structural view, and this grasp of the totality, emerges most clearly on the track ‘‘Fat Cats, Bigga Fish,’’ which tells the story of a successful hustler who’s ‘‘got game like I read the directions,’’ but who eventually realizes that his perspective is limited and that the real hustlers are the politicians: ‘‘ain’t no one player that could beat this lunancy . . . I’m gettin’ hustled only knowing half the game.’’ ‘‘Only knowing half the game’’ is insufficient: to challenge the system, we need to understand all aspects of game. The real pimps and macks—as we discover in hilarious freestyles by David Rockefeller, JeanPaul Getty, and Donald Trump—are the capitalists.

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Despite a marketable sound, label takeovers essentially resulted in forcing Genocide and Juice out of production. The next Coup release would take four years, largely due to their disappointment with prior efforts. But after creating a new organization known as Young Comrades and engaging a series of community issues, Boots realized that his raps could once again be effective. Now a duo, The Coup’s 1998 Steal This Album wouldn’t disappoint. ‘‘The Shipment’’ takes aim directly at the drug industry, but seeks to show who the real pushers are. Pam cuts in a sample from Prince’s ‘‘Darling Nikki’’—‘‘thank you for the funky time’’— while Boots admits slanging rocks, but ‘‘Palestinian style.’’ But the highlight of Steal This Album is ‘‘Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ‘79 Granada Last Night,’’ a track which is noteworthy above all for its settling of accounts with The Mack and Oakland pimp culture. As in The Coup’s other work, the richness of the track comes from its complexity, its refusal to fall into a simplistic or abstract political rejection of pimping, and its insistence on grasping the totality. On the track, Boots is the son of an Oakland prostitute and her violent, one-handed pimp Jesus, who would ‘‘slap a ho to pieces with his plastic prosthesis.’’ Here, we cannot but recall Too $hort, who on ‘‘All My Bitches Are Gone’’ boasts that when one of his ‘‘bitches’’ got out of line, ‘‘I took one step back and went straight to her jaw.’’ In poetic terms, Boots describes his mother’s death at Jesus’s hands, and how he had begun to exchange letters with Jesus while the pimp was serving a prison term, always with a plan to kill him in revenge. But Boots inadvertently grows attached to Jesus, his only friend in the world. In the end, however, the Panther in him wins out over the pimp: ‘‘I don’t think that it’s gon’ end ‘til we make revolution?’’ Boots drives Jesus down to the Oakland docks and shoots him, and all this over the backdrop of a sampled chorus: George Clinton yelling ‘‘Oakland do you wanna ride?’’ from Parliament’s live Earth Tour album. While widely respected, the duo’s 2001 Party Music would sell poorly, and this combined with the political difficulties of the day: the original cover art depicted Boots and Pam simulating the destruction of the World Trade Center, and while it had been designed months prior to the September 11 attacks, the cover art had to be withdrawn and redesigned before the album could finally be released. Moreover, recent years have seen increased difficulties for the duo: in 2005 a hype man for the group was killed in a robbery of his home in Oakland, and the next year The Coup’s tour bus crashed and burned, destroying all of their equipment (and forcing the cancellation of their tour). Their 2006 release, Pick a Bigger Weapon, was their first on a major label (Epitaph), but the album continues to foreground the group’s Oakland heritage: described by one commentator as ‘‘more Funkadelic than Parliament, more Dirty Mind than Purple Rain,’’ Pick a Bigger Weapon even features instrumentation by several members of Sly and the Family Stone (Ashlock). Oakland’s revolutionary, Panther-inspired tradition reaches its musical apex in the still-underappreciated work of Boots and Pam. But again, too many would overstate the gulf separating the mack from the revolutionary: Boots himself has consistently emphasized the limitations of most so-called ‘‘conscious’’ rap as

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having no basis in the material world, no organic link with revolutionary social movements. According to Riley, Political rap groups offered solutions only through listening. They weren’t part of a movement, so they died out when people saw their lives were not changing. On the other hand, gangsta groups and rappers who talk about selling drugs are part of a movement . . . In order for political rap to be around, there has to be a movement around that will make people’s lives better in a material sense. (Forman and Neal 317) As if to prove his materialism, Riley would always maintain links with gangsta and mack rappers, appearing for example in the video for E-40’s 1993 track ‘‘I Practice Looking Hard,’’ which also features Tupac and samples The Coup’s ‘‘Not Yet Free’’ (although Boots recalls being surprised by E-40’s request to use the sample). The Coup would later collaborate with both 40 and Spice 1 on the Genocide and Juice track ‘‘Santa Rita Weekend.’’ While The Coup are explicitly critical of both the misogynistic and excessively materialistic elements of the pimp lifestyle, they are far from anti-materialistic: they’re ‘‘spittin’ dialectical analysis.’’ Rather than a simplistic materialism or an abstract, idealistic, anti-mack politics, The Coup’s ‘‘dialectical materialism’’ recognizes both the reasons that black people in America and Oakland turn to materialist solutions as well as the errors this turn can involve. They recognize that getting paid is necessary, but that the rules of the economic game are stacked so that Blacks can’t win. All that remains is to alter the rules of the game, but through revolutionary political intervention, not preaching. It would be difficult to ignore how the context of Oakland helped to contribute to The Coup’s complex position: growing up in an economic wasteland in which people need to make money, one might be tempted to justify any and all attempts to do so, but revolutionary dialectics must push beyond this basic materialism to its revolutionary supercession. As Boots explains: ‘‘My political view is not that things aren’t fucked up because you’re not doing the right thing . . . Things are fucked up because there is this evil ruling class doing this stuff to us—so let’s go get ‘em’’ (Ashlock).

SAN FRANCISCO RAP Oakland has long existed in the shadow of its famous neighbor across the Bay Bridge (see sidebar: The Bay Bridge). But given the history of rap, itself a subaltern form that emerged from the shadows of poverty and racism, we might expect this relationship to be reversed when it comes to hip hop music in the Bay Area, and indeed, this has been the case: Bay Area hip hop has been historically centered in Oakland, and to a lesser degree in the North Bay city of Vallejo. But this hasn’t prevented a small group of excellent and influential rappers from emerging from ‘‘The City’’ as opposed to ‘‘The Town.’’ Early on, in an effort to step out of the

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THE BAY BRIDGE Perhaps more than any other landmark, the Bay Bridge represents Oakland’s ‘‘underdog’’ status, standing in the long shadow of the celebrated Golden Gate Bridge just as Oakland (‘‘The Town’’) stands in the equally long shadow of San Francisco (‘‘The City’’). Desperate individuals have even been known to pay a toll to drive across the Bay Bridge, only to hurl themselves from the more fashionable Golden Gate. This underdog status is even visible between the two spans of the Bay Bridge: while the western span (from Treasure Island to San Francisco) boasts tall, elegant suspension pylons, the eastern span (from Treasure Island east to Oakland) is more plain and drab. As a result, in recent years this underdog symbolism that the Bay Bridge represents has even become a banner for collective protest, as the longstanding controversy over design disparity was rekindled in debates over the need for earthquake-safety retrofitting of the eastern span. Newly elected Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a fancier ‘‘signature’’ design for the retrofit as unnecessarily expensive, and refused state financing for anything but a bland and lifeless design, sparking protest by local residents. This symbolic value of the Bay Bridge never seems to escape Oakland rappers, for whom it stands as an architectural testament to inequality and poverty. For lyricists ranging from Spice 1—in his ‘‘Jealous Got Me Strapped’’ (featuring Tupac)—to Boots Riley of The Coup, the Bay Bridge stands for desperation. In The Coup’s ‘‘Cars and Shoes,’’ an ode to the individual automobile as a necessary antidote to poor public transport (‘‘the AC Transit blues’’), Boots tells of his adventures with cheap automobiles, one of which ‘‘broke down on the Bay Bridge, lemme tell you that motherfucker’s dangerous.’’ Given Oakland’s weight in the Bay rap game, even SF rappers can’t avoid the Bridge’s significance, with Andre Nickatina dedicating an entire track to the subject and Young Cellski rapping about the bodies that wash up under it.

shadow of East Bay rappers, those from San Francisco dubbed the SFC ‘‘Sucka Free City’’ (later to become a Spike Lee film featuring SF rapper J.T. the Bigga Figga) and the city’s hip hop life was concentrated primarily in two areas: the Fillmore and Hunter’s Point. By far the largest concentration of well-known San Francisco rappers has emerged from the vaguely defined Fillmore (‘‘Fillmoe’’) district, a sector of the city’s Western Addition and the center of the city’s black culture in recent decades. As black residents replaced interned Japanese-Americans during World War II, the Fillmore experienced a unique dynamic by which a largely black neighborhood

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sprang up in a nonmarginalized area. But economic difficulties and racist public redevelopment efforts led to the construction of poor-quality project housing which—especially in the face of recent gentrification—stands alongside homes for the wealthy. It was from this context of urban decline and ethnic and class conflict—one strikingly similar to postwar Oakland—that San Francisco rap emerged. The forerunner was Hugh-EMC, from the ‘‘Outta Control’’ (O.C.) Projects in the Fillmore, where he represented a part of the ‘‘Outta Control Fillmoe’’ gang. Teaming up with Scratchmaster T (as DJ Rock), Hugh-E began to craft what would be known as the SF sound. But this sound was, from the very beginning, closely intertwined with the rap colossus across the bay: Hugh-E and DJ Rock’s ‘‘Pimp Style’’ EP was recorded under the watchful eye of none other than Al Eaton, and moved more than 4,000 units. Their 1988 single ‘‘It’s Da Game’’ and 1989’s ‘‘I Don’t Stop’’ would share the basic elements of the early Bay Area sound: minimalistic, with an 808, a high-hat, and a few electronic adornments, and a simplistic Too-Short-esque flow. And Hugh-EMC’s content seems to have been Short-inspired as well: 1989’s ‘‘H-Nigga Groove (Keep a Bitch Broke)’’ is straight pimp, albeit with a flow reminiscent of Eazy-E. While there would be a direct line connecting Hugh-EMC to the Fillmoe rappers of today, it would be Hunter’s Point that would break through to mainstream attention. Hunter’s Point (the HP) houses the city’s largest black population, one whose development shares more with the wartime expansion of West Oakland than the later concentration in the Fillmore. Employment centered, as in Oakland, on the shipyard, but Naval activity in the area has left a legacy of toxic pollution alongside the high unemployment and lack of services the zone suffers. In 1991, the HP gave rise to RBL (Ruthless By Law) Posse, whose self-produced ode to bad marijuana—‘‘Don’t Give Me No Bammer’’— would be an unexpected hit, leading the group to a major label deal a few years later. Notable in ‘‘Bammer’’ was its uncharacteristic sound: jazzier than much of the Bay Area rap at the time, RBL’s sound prefigured in some ways the later Hieroglyphics sound. But later RBL production, especially on 1994’s Ruthless By Law, would fall into line with the G-Funk sound, portamento and all. Back to the Fillmore, where Hugh-EMC prote´ge´, producer and rapper J.T. the Bigga Figga founded Get Low Recordz in 1991. J.T.’s 1993 Playaz ‘N the Game included the Bay Anthem ‘‘Game Recognize Game,’’ featuring Vallejo rapper (and E-40’s cousin) Mac Mall, who was discovered by Mac Dre and signed to Thizz Entertainment. The album also featured a host of up-and-coming Fillmore rappers like Rappin’ 4-Tay, San Quinn, and D-Moe. San Quinn and D-Moe would, alongside J.T. and Seff tha Gaffla, be known as the Get Low Playaz, releasing several group albums and providing the backbone of Fillmore rap for years to come. In more recent years, San Quinn has become a particularly central force, beginning at the ripe old age of 12 as an opening act for Tupac and Digital Underground. Quinn’s first album Don’t Cross Me was released when the rapper was only 15, and he has gone on to release a dozen more albums and mixtapes in the years since.

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And it was Quinn himself that would introduce the world to one of the SFC’s most promising rappers: his cousin Messy Marv. The two released the classic joint album Explosive Mode in 1998, but despite his newfound fame, Messy Marv was still involved in the drug trade. This led to his hospitalization in 2001 with two broken legs, after jumping from a window, and a string of arrests. Nevertheless, 2004 saw Messy release the equally legendary DisoBAYish, and recent years have seen him team up with Guce and Killa Tay as Bullys wit Fullys, releasing the classic track ‘‘So Hood.’’ And Messy Marv wouldn’t be Quinn’s only cousin to blow up: in 2002, younger cousin Ya Boy—also from the Fillmore—blew up with the track ‘‘16s Wit Me.’’ After releasing his debut album Rookie of the Year in 2005, Ya Boy signed with The Game’s Black Wall Street label.

FROM VALLEJO TO HYPHY: THE FUTURE OF OAKLAND HIP HOP Contemporary Oakland rap cannot be understood without also mentioning a small North Bay city with a peculiarly powerful musical heritage: Vallejo. This heritage, moreover, reinforces the importance of funk for the Oakland hip hop scene, since it was from Vallejo that Sly and the Family Stone spread their musical tentacles, influencing George Clinton, among others. By the 1990s, Vallejo’s musical claim to fame had passed to the next generation, and specifically the small but significant group of rappers concentrated in the city’s Crestside neighborhood. It was from there that the father of the Hyphy sound emerged: the Oakland-born but Vallejoraised Andre Hicks, aka Mac Dre. Mac Dre exploded onto the Vallejo and Bay Area scene with hits like ‘‘2 Hard 4 the Fuckin’ Radio,’’ which boasts a minimalistic but undeniably funky bass line. Certainly upbeat for the G-Funk era, producer Khayree’s beat is only adorned during the chorus by a sped up sample from Chaka Khan’s ‘‘Tell Me Something Good.’’ The verses are all Dre, who with a simplistic but infectious flow and meter, draws an interesting distinction between pimping and macking: ‘‘Not a pimp daddy, don’t drive a caddy, I just mack and get all that babby.’’ Here, macking is divorced from pimping, and becomes synonymous with more benign hustling. Unfortunately for Dre, he also refers clearly on this track to ‘‘Romper Room,’’ a group he was involved with which would later be allegedly associated with a series of bank robberies. In 1992, Dre was sentenced to five years imprisonment, but continued to record over the phone. Upon his release in 1996, Mac Dre continued to expand his fame in the Bay and beyond, founding a new record label—Thizz Entertainment (named after the late Hicks’ penchant for ecstasy)—and giving birth to the uptempo but uniquely Bay Area style known as Hyphy. While Mac Dre would not survive to see it—he was killed in a 2004 shooting after a performance in Kansas City, Missouri—Hyphy would finally promise the mainstream attention that Oakland and the East Bay had never previously achieved.

Between Macks and Panthers | 281 Despite the undeniable importance of Vallejo, however, Hyphy would soon be adopted by Oakland (and the rest of the Bay). It was Oakland rapper Keak Da Sneak who claims to have invented the term: upon being told by his mother that he was ‘‘hyperactive,’’ Keak repeated the term as ‘‘hyphy.’’ Since then, hyphy has come to refer to a complex group of cultural activities synonymous with Oakland: it is at once a sound, a behavior, a choice in recreational drugs. It refers to cars, to funk, to resisting the police and reclaiming public space: in short, to everything that makes Oakland rap tick. The transition from Vallejo to Oakland was made most explicitly by the self-professed ‘‘Ambassador of the Bay’’: E-40. Through a vast network of associates and even family members, E-40 has built a prominent rap empire: 40 himself first emerged alongside brother D-Shot, sister Suga T, and cousin B-Legit in The Click; rapper Turf Talk is a cousin; and upand-coming producer Droop-E is none other than E-40’s son. While E-40 had already boasted a long rap career by the time Hyphy emerged as a force in the hip hop mainstream, it was his own 2006 album My Ghetto Report Card and its Hyphy anthem ‘‘Tell Me When to Go (Dumb)’’ that announced Hyphy’s crossover to nationwide popularity. But what, precisely, is Hyphy? There seems to be no clear consensus on the question. Too $hort, for example, claims that ‘‘it’s a musical movement, first and foremost. When you look at it and analyze it, what stands out is the music—the artists, the music [that] makes you dance. The number one thing about Hyphy isn’t the sideshow or doing donuts. It’s the music’’ (de Leon, ‘‘Too $hort’’). And the blossoming popularity of this musical genre doesn’t surprise him at all: despite founding Mobb Music and its lazy ‘‘dope fiend beats,’’ $hort claims that he’s been telling people to speed it up for years. But it’s not just about speed: it’s about a new form for Oakland’s funk heritage. Hyphy—at least in its Vallejo origins—is what happens when funk is taken over the top into the realm of the absurd: it takes Sly and the Family Stone and makes it Bootsy’s Rubber Band. The spirit of upbeat funk—from Digital Underground to Mac Dre—is something that is beyond the music. As a result, some would disagree with $hort that Hyphy is primarily musical. As E-40 puts it, ‘‘Hyphy is more than just our music. It’s something that started in Oakland that’s a lifestyle and a culture’’ (de Leon, ‘‘E-40’’). And while its origins lie in the Bay, Hyphy has also reinforced the traditional closeness between Oakland and Atlanta. The commonly heard claim that Hyphy is ‘‘Oakland’s crunk’’ is an exaggeration, but like Too $hort himself and in the words of Keak, Hyphy has made the transition ‘‘from the Bay to the A,’’ as E-40’s latest album was largely produced by Lil’ Jon (thereby reversing the economic migrations that created Oakland’s Black community in the first place). But what do the different elements of Hyphy culture have in common? What links—in E-40’s ‘‘Tell Me When to Go’’—ghostriding the whip and stunna shades, dreads and scrapers, and thizz faces and gas-brake-dipping (see sidebar: Thizzin’)? In short, what explains this peculiar constellation of cars, music, drugs, fashion, and politics that has been named ‘‘Hyphy’’? One writer argues that ‘‘the great

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thing about Hyphy is how lightly it wears its street cred, especially compared with the self-righteousness of so much ‘alternative’ hip-hop’’ (Rosen). Whereas a number of too-cool-for-school rappers in recent years have boasted that they don’t dance, Hyphy celebrates going ‘‘stupid doo-doo dumb’’ a la Mac Dre’s ‘‘Thizzle Dance.’’ While we could agree with Rosen that the ‘‘unpretentiousness’’ of getting ‘‘stuey’’ and ‘‘super-mainy’’ is certainly part of Hyphy’s charm, the latter can’t be reduced to a purely nonserious party genre. This is because, even in the most seemingly apolitical elements of Hyphy, we can find political issues particular to the Black community in postindustrial America (and Oakland specifically). Celebrating old cars (scrapers) when that’s all you’ve got, donning your grandma’s old sunglasses (stunna shades), and finding a recreational drug worth celebrating (ecstasy) amidst the crack (and malt liquor) epidemic: these are all eminently political gestures. More importantly, sideshows—the spontaneous street parties for which Oakland has recently become infamous—are far more political than many would admit. In a country which systematically seeks to constrain and ghettoize the black populations, sideshows are a powerful form of resistance and expression of community. They represent a reclamation of public space on par with such recognized movements as Europe’s ‘‘Reclaim the Streets,’’ but rarely is the latter dismissed and criminalized like Oakland’s sideshows. Therein lies the contradiction of the perennially criminalized population that is Black America, of which Oakland is merely a microcosm. This brings us back to our parallel starting points: The Mack and the Panthers. As Mistah F.A.B.—‘‘the spokesperson of this Hyphy shit’’—puts it, Hyphy is intimately linked to Oakland’s revolutionary history: ‘‘We have always been activist, revolutionaries in the Bay. People who rebel against the powers that be.’’ But Hyphy isn’t straightforwardly revolutionary, it’s caught in-between these two responses to Oakland’s socioeconomic situation, just like F.A.B. himself, who describes his recent independent release The Baydestrian as party music that still carries a political message. I try to do [party songs] like Afrika Bambaataa or Rob Base and still say something with some substance. It comes naturally for me. My aunt and uncle were Black Panthers. My daddy was a pimp. I’m stuck in the middle. I’m able to do the Hyphy music, but I’m also able to talk about a lot of political things that’s going on. (Johnson) Like his mentor Mac Dre, however, F.A.B. distinguishes macking from pimping, arguing that ‘‘pimpin’, that’s what it’s not about, it’s about getting’ paper.’’ While The Coup are revolutionaries who accept the importance of macking, Mistah F.A.B. takes the inverse path: his macking is tempered by political consciousness so as to exclude pimping. In the end, these two routes to political consciousness are more similar than one might think. F.A.B., who was recently picked up by major label Atlantic, but who has run into some legal difficulties that have delayed his album—specifically, the

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THIZZIN’ Anyone who traditionally associates ecstasy pills with hippies or ravers will be surprised to find that dropping E, or ‘‘thizzin’,’’ has come to be closely associated with the Oakland sideshow scene. While one could argue that the drug’s popularity in Oakland has its roots in the laid-back West Coast lifestyle, what is certain is that it plays a central part in contemporary Hyphy culture. Thizzin’ was popularized by early hyphy rapper Mac Dre, who would later even christen his record label Thizz Entertainment. Mac Dre even developed an entire vocabulary associated with thizzin: from the ‘‘thizz face’’ that one makes after dropping E due to the taste (‘‘I put a look on my face like I smell some piss’’) to his very own (possibly Humpty Dance-inspired) ‘‘thizzle dance’’ (‘‘you can’t do the thizz unless you pillin it’’). With Hyphy’s tendency to celebrate getting ‘‘stupid doo-doo dumb,’’ thizzin’ has come to contribute to the notably unpretentious nature of the genre.

controversy that has marred ghostridin’ nationwide—argues appreciatively that ‘‘E-40 capitalized’’ and popularized the movement, but adds that ‘‘the Bay Area will always be [Mac] Dre area’’ (Johnson). But when asked about the older players in the Bay Area scene, F.A.B. is less generous: ‘‘My generation and my fans don’t give a fuck about Del. I pay the older dudes their respect, but I feel like time gotta move on’’ (Mistah F. A. B.). And in moving on, we see one thing that people seem to agree on: you can’t reduce the Bay Area or even the East Bay to Hyphy. As E-40 puts it, ‘‘Every rapper in the Bay don’t do Hyphy music. I don’t just do Hyphy music. I got two Hyphy songs on my album. I don’t call myself the King of Hyphy’’ (de Leon, ‘‘E-40’’). Mistah F.A.B. echoes this sentiment, and looks toward the future of Bay Area rap: ‘‘On Da Baydestrian, there’s only like three or four actual Hyphy tracks. The rest is something else . . . . it’s like hip-Hyphy, a mixture of the traditional hip hop sound and Hyphy’’ (Mistah F. A. B.). As styles change, the macking mentality innate to many Oakland rappers will lead them to constantly modify their hustle—giving the audience what they want, like Too $hort—while the potential for revolutionary consciousness lies just below the surface. In 2008, Oakland remains an absent presence in the hip hop mainstream. Its influence is ubiquitous, and yet it is almost never recognized, and as Oakland rappers like to point out, they are rarely credited for their widespread respect and stylistic innovations. The particularities of Oakland’s rap history are closely related to the particularities of The Town itself. The political responses represented by the Black Panthers and pimp culture intersect and cross-fertilize throughout much of Oakland’s hip hop production, and these in turn intertwine with the central sonic

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parameter of The Funk. These parameters help us to see the fundamental commonalities that hold Oakland rap together, shaping its history and setting a course for its future.

REFERENCES Ashlock, Jesse. ‘‘The Coup’s Funky Revolution.’’ RES Magazine, April 10, 2004. http://www.res.com/magazine/articles/underdogsthecoupsfunky revolution_2004-08-10.html. Bernard, Harvey (Producer) and Michael Campus (Director). The Mack. New Line Cinema, 1973. Byrne, Peter. ‘‘Capital Rap.’’ SF Weekly, December 3, 2003. http://www .sfweekly.com/2003-12-03/news/capital-rap/. Davey, D. ‘‘Hip Hop and Funk . . . Bay Area Style.’’ http://www.daveyd.com/ ffunk.html. ———. ‘‘On the Line with . . . 2Pac Shakur: The Lost Interview,’’ 1991. http:// www.daveyd.com/interview2pacrare.html. de Leon, Krishtine. ‘‘E-40: Respect Mine.’’ XXLmag.com, July 20, 2006. http:// www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=3139. ———. ‘‘Too $hort: Born N Raised.’’ XXLmag.com, May 11, 2006. http://www .xxlmag.com/online/?p=1595. Forman, Murray, and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. Johnson, Will. ‘‘Mistah F.A.B.: Stuntin’ to Death.’’ XXLmag.com, May 3, 2007. http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=9744. Keast, Darren. ‘‘Having It Both Ways.’’ SFWeekly, March 1, 2000. http:// www.sfweekly.com/2000-03-01/music/having-it-both-ways/. Ma, David. ‘‘Endurance: A Talk with Del.’’ Mesh Magazine, 2005, Issue 9. http://meshsf.com//newpage/meshsf/article.php?id=124&vol_id=009§ion _id=6&option=archive/. Mistah F. A. B., ‘‘Mistah F.A.B. Presents . . . the Balance.’’ XXLmag.com, September 26, 2006. http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=4970. Rodrı´guez, Kenny. ‘‘Casual: Been Around the World.’’ Nobodysmiling.com, 2005. http://www.nobodysmiling.com/hiphop/interview/85341.php. Rolls, Chris, and Brolin Winning. ‘‘Great Albums with Too $hort,’’ April 18, 2006. http://www.mp3.com/news/stories/4165.html. Rosen, Jody. ‘‘Go Dumb: Why Hyphy Is the Best Hip-Hop Right Now.’’ Slate.com, February 13, 2007. http://www.slate.com/id/2159745/. Smith, Danyel. ‘‘Too $hort, Shorty the Pimp.’’ Rolling Stone 639 (September 1992): 17.

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Vincent, Ricky. Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

FURTHER RESOURCE Self, Robert O. America Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY 2Pac 2Pacalypse Now. Jive, 1991. Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. Atlantic/Interscope, 1993. Me Against the World. Atlantic/Interscope, 1995. All Eyez on Me. Death Row/Polygram, 1996. The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (as Makaveli). Death Row/Interscope, 1998. The Conscious Daughters Ear to the Street. Scarface/Priority, 1993. The Coup Kill My Landlord. Wild Pitch, 1993. Genocide and Juice. Wild Pitch, 1994. Steal This Album. Dogday, 1998. Party Music. 75 Ark, 2001. Del tha Funky Homosapien I Wish My Brother George Was Here. Elektra, 1991. No Need for Alarm. Elektra, 1993. Digital Underground Sex Packets. Tommy Boy, 1990. This Is an EP Release. Tommy Boy, 1991. Sons of the P. Tommy Boy, 1991. DJ Whoo Kid and DJ E-Rock Bay Bidness, Volume 1. 2006. Dru Down Explicit Game. Relativity, 1994. E-40 Mail Man. Jive, 1994. In a Major Way. Jive, 1995. My Ghetto Report Card 2006. Hieroglyphics 3rd Eye Vision. Heiro Imperium, 1998.

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Keak da Sneak Copium (Counting Other People’s Money). SMC, 2003. The Luniz Operation Stackola. Virgin/Noo Trybe, 1995. Mac Dre Young Black Brotha. Strictly Business, 1993. Ronald Dregan: Dreganomics. Thizz, 2004. Mistah F. A. B. Son of a Pimp. Thizz/City Hall, 2005. Da Baydestrian. Thizz/SMC, 2007. Souls of Mischief 93 ’til Infinity. Jive, 1993. Spice 1 187 He Wrote. Jive, 1993. Too $hort Don’t Stop Rappin. 75 Girls, 1983. Raw, Uncut, and X-Rated. 75 Girls, 1986. Born to Mack. Dangerous/Jive, 1987. Life Is . . . Too Short. Jive, 1988. Short Dog’s in the House. Jive, 1990. Shorty the Pimp. Jive, 1992. Turf Talk West Coast Vaccine: The Cure. Sick Wid It, 2007.

CHAPTER 12 From the SEA to the PDX: Northwest Hip Hop in the I-5 Corridor Rachel Key Before the 1990s, The Pacific Northwest was not particularly well-known for any one type of music. Of course, cities like Seattle had produced major musicians and groups, such as Jimi Hendrix and Heart, and the region contributed ‘‘The Northwest Sound’’ to rock and roll in the 1960s, but there was no particular genre widely associated with this area of the country. Today, however, the region is, and forever will be, known as the birthplace of Grunge. In the early 1990s when such bands as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana hit the music scene, the pop culture perception of Seattle and the Northwest was changed forever. However, though the grunge era will perpetually overshadow any of the region’s other contributions to the music world, as early as the 1980s, the Northwest was making contributions to another music scene—the world of rap and hip hop. Unlike Los Angeles, New York, Houston, and Miami, the Northwest is not a region that immediately invokes visions of hip-hop; yet, it cannot be overlooked when considering the role of place in the emergence and growth of hip hop and rap. The Northwest, specifically the cities of Seattle and Portland, provides an interesting background upon which to frame hip-hop. Though there is more diversity than in some regions of the country, such as the upper Midwest, the region’s demographic is largely Caucasian and Asian, with a growing Hispanic population. Thus, at the inception of Hip Hop, the Northwest was lacking one of the key elements for making successful Hip Hop music—traditional target audience members. Hip hop came into being as party music, specifically at block parties in the neighborhoods of New York. Though Seattle and Portland are considered large cities by today’s standards, much of the region’s population is made up of suburban dwellers. Cities in the Northwest do not have the urban population density of neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles; therefore, Northwest hip hop artists faced a greater challenge when working to have their music heard.

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In the 1990 U.S. Census, the population of Seattle, Washington was reported as 516,259 (‘‘General Population and Housing Characteristics’’). The majority of this population, 128,618, was living in single unit, detached structures, with only 73,869 people living in buildings with 10 or more units. When compared to cities like New York where apartment and condominium living is the norm, the residents of the Northwest seem detached and isolated. Additionally, the concept of urban living is different in the Pacific Northwest. In the boroughs of New York, one can find every thing that he or she might need within walking distance. Grocery stores, corner markets, pizzerias, and barber shops line the streets of the city, while in cities like Seattle and Portland such necessary services are clumped together in areas usually reached by automobile. Rather than walking through neighborhoods, interacting with friends and neighbors, residents of the Northwest are more likely to drive alone in the car to a local supermarket, where they are less likely to have a personal relationship with the shopkeepers and other merchants. Additionally, through many months of the year, the weather in the Northwest is rainy or cold, discouraging walking to places or lingering outside to talk to neighbors. The idea of ‘‘urban’’ has a different meaning in cities like Seattle and Portland. Thus, the ‘‘block party’’ roots of hip hop could not transfer well to the Northwest region.

THE NORTHWEST’S MUSICAL HISTORY Though the Northwest has never claimed an extremely diverse population, it did experience demographic changes beginning in the early 1900s, as African Americans migrated to the Northwest in search of job opportunities and an escape from the racism of the southern states. As the population of cities like Seattle changed, so did the musical landscape. Seattle has an interesting history in jazz music, thanks mainly to World War II defense contracts and soldiers stationed at the many military bases in the area. The soldiers and others looking for a good time as a way to escape the realities of war provided a backdrop for aspiring musicians and the Seattle area clubs boomed with music and bootleg liquor. Even after prohibition, the state of Washington continued to prohibit the sale of liquor by the drink until 1949, so the speakeasy culture persevered. According to Paul de Barros, author of Jackson Street after Hours: The Roots of Jazz, Seattle’s jazz scene was a ‘‘culture of legalized corruption’’ (21), due to payoffs from nightclub owners to police and lawmakers. Throughout the height of the jazz scene, from 1937 to 1951, Seattle’s Jackson Street boasted more than 30 jazz clubs where aspiring musicians stopped on their way to bigger careers elsewhere. Ray Charles, looking to move as far away from Florida as he could, chose Seattle as a place to kick-start his career, recording his first album there. Charles, along with his friends Quincy Jones and Ernestine Anderson, benefited from this flourishing Seattle jazz scene, before moving away to further their careers. Unfortunately, though Seattle

From the SEA to the PDX | 289 provided a lot of jazz players for famous orchestras and combos like Count Basie and others, the Northwest really made no mark on the jazz scene as a whole. However, jazz made an impact on the Northwest and artists to come out of the area after its heyday. The attractiveness of jazz in the Northwest provides a precedent for the popularity of a traditionally African American art form in an area of low ethnic diversity. Rhythm and Blues also had a large effect on the rock and roll music scene of the Northwest in the early 1950s and 1960s. Arguably, the most well-known African American artist to come out of the Northwest region is James Marshall ‘‘Jimi’’ Hendrix (born 1942), who began his career playing R&B music at high school dances. His reign of musical popularity predates the birth of hip hop by 10 years, but his success as a Northwest artist putting his own spin and style on an established musical genre may have influenced and paved the way for Northwestbased rappers. Before Hendrix’s impact on the world of rock and roll, the Northwest’s greatest contribution musically was the emergence of ‘‘The Northwest Sound.’’ According to many accounts, an important part of the Northwest music scene, at least in Seattle, was what was referred to as ‘‘race music’’—black artists playing for a predominantly black audience. However, this music had farther-reaching implications, as the early members of the groups that made up ‘‘The Northwest Sound’’ were mainly white kids that had grown up listening to music made by African Americans. The beats and horns that drove ‘‘Louie, Louie,’’ arguably the anthem of the Northwest Sound, are heavily influenced by the jazz and R&B that black musicians played in the 1940s and 1950s in Jackson Street clubs. In the early 1960s, the song ‘‘Louie, Louie’’ was recorded by The Wailers of Tacoma, Washington, and The Kingsmen and Paul Revere and the Raiders, both of Portland. The song served as a bridge to both the R&B of the past and the rap scene of the future because like many rap songs to come, ‘‘Louie, Louie’’ came under major heat in 1964 when it was reported that the Governor of Indiana had banned the song due to supposed dirty lyrics. After an exhaustive FBI investigation, the song was not deemed ‘‘pornographic’’ because officials really could not understand most of the song’s lyrics. After all of the attention, though, the song’s naughty reputation made it even more popular and it has grossed over 12 million dollars to date. After the success of ‘‘Louie, Louie’’ and the Northwest Sound, the area suffered through a period of mediocrity with no prominent artists on the national music scene and no real underground movements catching attention throughout the Northwest. However, in the late 1970s, some Seattle musicians caught on to what was happening in the London punk scene and began staging underground shows in basements and backyards. Because these punk musicians often had no real financial backing and endured harassment by officials who saw them as ‘‘troublemakers,’’ most of the punk ventures had little longevity. Yet, there was still a movement afoot. Young musicians and fans in Olympia, Washington, students at

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the progressive Evergreen State College, formed a similar punk movement with the help of the college radio station KAOS, which devoted the majority of its programming to music from independent labels. Magazines and fanzines like Subterranean Pop (SUBPOP) chronicled the movement and helped to spread the word about impromptu teen dances. Unfortunately, much of the movement’s momentum stalled in 1985 when, in response to all-ages shows that cropped up in Seattle, the city passed the Teen Dance Ordinance. Written mainly in response to parental complaints about a local disco called ‘‘The Monastery,’’ where parents feared that adults were providing drugs and alcohol to minors, the ordinance effectively stopped gatherings that were held at reasonably sized venues like clubs and dance halls. Basement gatherings and large arenas were not affected, but the majority of the music movement of the time was taking place in clubs like The Monastery, The Showbox, and the Gorilla Room. The Teen Dance Ordinance made it financially impossible for most club owners or private sponsors to hold an all-ages show. In early 1981, despite restrictions on venues, punk and heavy metal began to grow together in the emergence of what was to culminate in ‘‘Grunge’’ music. Heavy metal bands like Metal Church, Queensryche, and pop bands like The Posies and The Presidents of the United States of America grew in popularity, some on the national level, while bands like The U-Men found a way to fuse the two styles of music. By the mid-1980s, some front-runners of the Grunge era such as Soundgarden had a fledgling sound. By 1987, the owner of the Olympia-based fanzine SUBPOP had a record label by the same name with a client list including Soundgarden and the newly formed Mudhoney. During the same period of time, while musicians were experimenting with various styles and ways to get music out to the young people of the Northwest, rappers also began to garner local attention thanks mainly to military personnel from the East Coast stationed in the Seattle/Tacoma area. These soldiers were early Seattle rap’s main fan base, as they began attending public dances starring Sir Mix-a-Lot and pioneer rappers The Emerald Street Boys and the Emerald Street Girls that were held in the recreation centers of area housing projects before the finalizing of the Teen Dance Ordinance. An integral part of the emerging Northwest rap scene was the West Coast’s first all-rap radio show Fresh Tracks, produced by DJ Nestor ‘‘Nasty Nes’’ Rodriguez, which began in 1980 on KFOX 1250 in Seattle. The show predated Los Angeles’s KDAY and KPOO from San Francisco, introducing Seattle to fresh new rap on a weekly basis. Though Nasty Nes eventually moved from his home on KFOX, he continued to host a radio show in the Northwest until the early 1990s. Nasty Nes, along with fellow DJ and record store owner Glen Boyd, was an important part of putting Northwest hip hop on the map, working closely to develop artists like Sir Mix-a-Lot, who eventually reached national recording fame. Though rap music in the Northwest found an instant home with the displaced soldiers of Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma and the African

From the SEA to the PDX | 291 American population of Seattle’s Central District, rap’s popularity in the region really exploded when the music made its way to the suburbs. Seattle’s history as an area accustomed to a Caucasian population enjoying African American music provided the perfect environment for artists like Sir Mix-A-Lot whose rap celebrates and discusses issues of the middle class. More importantly though, Mix-A-Lot’s rap focused quite a bit on place. One might argue that the hip hop of the Northwest is more accessible to people of different races, ethnicities, and backgrounds because the places discussed in the music were accessible to all groups. Unlike some artists who dedicate place mentions to locations in the inner city or specifically ethnic neighborhoods, artists like Mix-A-Lot used localities that all Seattleites claimed as ‘‘theirs’’ (see sidebar: Dick’s Drive-In). Seattle rap, then, appealed to various groups of people living in Seattle, not just African Americans. When white suburban teenagers found a way to identify with Mix-A-Lot’s rap, they were more interested in the genre as a whole. Coinciding with the launch of the MTV program Yo! MTV Raps, Mix-A-Lot’s music reached a new audience in the suburban areas of the Pacific Northwest, changing the face of Northwest music as well as the national rap scene, forever.

NORTHWEST RAP ARTISTS Seattle Funkdaddy Born and raised in West Seattle, Gregory ‘‘Funkdaddy’’ Buren (born 1969) is a fixture in the Seattle rap scene. His father exposed him to music at an early age, and he was rapping and break dancing in high school, in the early days of rap in Seattle. Funkdaddy credits Sir Mix-A-Lot as his main influence during that time, as he tried to copy Mix’s scratching on his family’s record player. When he was 17 years old, Funkdaddy had saved up enough money from his after-school job to buy his own drum machine. Through a friend, he managed to buy Sir Mix-A-Lot’s old keyboard and drum machine and he worked hard to try to create the same sounds as Mix had made with the equipment. Funkdaddy admits that he was frustrated because he was never able to imitate what Mix-A-Lot had been able to do. He says, ‘‘People don’t know that, but Mix was a computer genius back when nobody had computers. To this day, I still don’t know how he did it’’ (Chaumont). However, Funkdaddy did manage to create his own sound and was hired just after high school to DJ for Kid Sensation, who opened for and collaborated with Mix-A-Lot. Funkdaddy eventually deejayed for both artists and wound up scratching on Sir Mix-A-Lot’s second record, Seminar. In 1987, after stints with bands like M.I.C. (Masters In Control) and Crooked Path, Funkdaddy started his own group called Ready and Willin’ and began calling himself DJ Ready. With Ready and Willin’, Funkdaddy had a decent following, mainly through local radio play and playing shows across Washington state and Vancouver B.C. He entered several DJing competitions, taking first in The Battle

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DICK’S DRIVE-IN Dick’s Drive-In, the vision of H. Warren Ghormley, Dr. B.O.A. Thomas, and Dick Spady, first opened its doors on January 28, 1954, on N.E. 45th Street in Seattle’s Wallingford District. The partners had a vision for a restaurant where people on the move could get good food quickly and park easily, rather than having to visit roadside diners, which were often expensive and time-consuming. The trio focused on serving burgers, fries, and shakes for a reasonable price in a speedy amount of time. This formula proved to be extremely successful, as the first Dick’s location became an instant hit. In 1955, the partners were able to expand to their Capitol Hill location at 115 Broadway Avenue, the Dick’s immortalized in the Sir Mix-A-Lot song ‘‘Posse on Broadway.’’ In 1960, the restaurant was able to expand again, to Holman Road, and again in 1963 to Lake City. By 1974, Dick’s had an additional Queen Anne Hill location, effectively serving the greater Seattle area at all five restaurants. Though Dick Spady is the only original owner still involved, the original Dick’s formula has changed very little since its origination. The menu did not change for almost 20 years until in 1971, Dick’s added two new burgers—the Dick’s Special (which featured chopped up pickles) and the Dick’s Deluxe. The restaurants also used to feature separate lines for burgers, fries, and ice cream, so that those just wanting a cone wouldn’t have to wait in line. Over time, however, that system changed so that customers could order anything from any window. The burgers cost a bit more now than their original nineteen cents, but the recipe for the regular cheeseburger hasn’t changed—beef, cheese, ketchup, and mustard. Dick’s also still hand cuts its French Fries from bags of Russet potatoes and individually mixes each shake. Dick’s attention to old-fashioned flavor and taste, as well as its 1950s drive-up style, keeps customers coming back for more. The drivein’s extended hours make it a perfect place for young people to gather late at night, and going to Dick’s is like a rite of passage for some local teenagers. Dick’s is so popular in the Seattle area that it has hardly ever advertised in all of its years in business. Word of mouth has been enough to keep Dick’s busy from 10:30 AM to 2:00 AM, seven days a week.

for Seattle Supremacy in 1989 and the CITR DJ&MC Battle in Vancouver, B.C. in 1990. When he returned to CITR in 1991, he entered the MC competition and took first, proving that his MCing skills matched his DJing. He proudly states that he won every competition he entered. Having proven himself in both DJing and MCing, Funkdaddy went on to try his hand at producing. After his band Ready and Willin’ broke up, he changed his name to Funkdaddy and entered the American Ethnic Studies program at the

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University of Washington in 1993. His big break came when a friend took a tape of his beats to the Gavin Convention in San Francisco. There, Funkdaddy’s tape made it into the hands of E-40, who quickly hired him to produce three tracks on his 1995 release In a Major Way, which went platinum. Funkdaddy’s experience with E-40 inspired him to release his own solo album Funk U Right on Up in 1994. He followed with Funk Daddy Is Tha Source in 1995. In 1996, Sir Mix-A-Lot called upon his talents once again to produce on Return of the Bumpasaurus. He worked again with E-40 on his 1998 album The Element of Surprise, which featured artists like Busta Rhymes, Too $hort, and Master P. While establishing himself as a producer, Funkdaddy also deejayed at local clubs, quickly becoming a front-runner among Seattle DJs. He was awarded the 1999 Best Club and Mix Tape DJ Award at The Northwest Music Awards and he continues to have gigs at the hottest Northwest clubs, in addition to hosting a weekly radio show on Seattle’s X104 with local singer Mr. Rossi. Most recently, he has worked with Portland artist Cool Nutz and up-and-coming Seattle rapper Livio. His last solo release came in 2001 with I Want All That, but he continues to produce and distribute mix tapes, usually entitled Ear Candy, featuring hot new music. His music has also appeared on the now-defunct weekly ABC series Dangerous Minds, the soundtrack 3 Strikes, as well as in the documentaries Rhyme and Reason and Street Racing. Funkdaddy has worked with a myriad of artists, such as Daz, D12, Mac Dre, 2Pac, Money B, Noreaga, and N2Deep. He is called a Seattle rap icon by many and was nominated in 2005 for the Seattle Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Hip Hop, losing out to Sir Mix-A-Lot. Jake One Jake ‘‘Jake One’’ Dutton (born 1976) began his love affair with rap music in the early 1990s, when he had to move from his Capitol Hill home to the North End area of Seattle. He and a friend had figured out that most rap songs were cut over old music and because he had nothing to do, he says, he began playing around trying to make beats. He was also encouraged when a friend made a recording with another long-time friend, Vitamin D, proving that it was possible for rappers in Seattle to put out quality music. Jake One worked on his music alone, without even telling anyone he was producing, until he decided to give a tape to a friend who worked in a record store. An employee of the same store happened to be Mr. Supreme, a local DJ, who was just starting his own record label, Conception. Mr. Supreme showed Jake One some more tricks and put him to work producing beats for the label. In 1996, he got his first track on Mr. Supreme’s Sharpshooter. Conception Records began to die out in 1998, though, so Jake began to shop his records around. He attended the Gavin Convention and sold his first beat to someone outside of Seattle—Walt Liquor, manager for San Francisco’s MC Planet Asia. After that, Liquor began passing Jake’s beats around and he was able to continue to sell to a larger and larger audience. By 2003, Jake One was producing on a national level and has worked with most of the leaders in the rap industry today, including

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De La Soul, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Gift of Gab, Busta Rhymes, Mos Def, and many others. Though Jake One credits Vitamin D as his main influence as a producer, Vitamin D is quick to turn around and say that Jake One is the best talent to come out of Seattle. Jonathon Moore A Renaissance Man of Seattle hip hop, pioneer Jonathon Moore was born and raised in Seattle before attending Atlanta’s Morehouse College. Using the moniker ‘‘Wordsayer,’’ in 1989 he formed the group Source of Labor with its original members DJ Kamikaze and Negus One. Moore moved back to Seattle in 1992 and found that there were not many places that hip hop groups could play outside of the Central District (see sidebar: Central District). Moore remembers hearing about a promoter that booked acts at the popular club RKCNDY, one of the few live music spots still thriving. He talked her into taking a chance on a hip hop group, assuring her that they were not all about being gangsters, and she let them hold a show on an off night. After the first few successful shows, without the violence that typically surrounded hip hop acts, word got around and Source of Labor was able to book more shows. However, just booking the show was half of the battle. Moore and Source of Labor next had to work to promote the show, perform, and settle the accounts at the end of the night. By default, Moore became Source of Labor’s manager. In 1992, along with soul/hip hop duo Beyond Reality, Source of Labor formed the Jasiri Media Group. Jasiri, which means ‘‘courage’’ in Swahili, was created in order to be a record label and promotion company, but also as sort of a way of life. Moore and the other artists in the Jasiri group wanted to break away from the vision of gangsta rap, which was the main focus of the rap industry at the time, and promote a positive energy and medium for education in the community. The artists in Jasiri forced the Seattle hip hop scene to move from the grandiose, selfaggrandizing rap of Sir Mix-A-Lot to a more educated, meaningful form of musical expression. Along with promoting its musicians, Jasiri and its artists worked to give back to the community of Seattle, holding performances at the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center, and hosting weekly open mic nights. Source of Labor, along with Beyond Reality and another Jasiri artist, Felicia Loud, appeared on a compilation album entitled Word, Sound, and Power in the late 1990s. By 1998, Source of Labor included Vitamin D (replacing Kamikaze) and musicians Darrius Willrich, Kevin Hudson, and Dvonne Lewis. Source of Labor released its only album, Stolen Lives in 2001, though the group continued to perform in local clubs and venues. Throughout the mid-1990s, Moore worked to promote local hip hop shows and even bring nationally recognized names to the Seattle area. His first national rap act was Roots performing in 1995 at RKCNDY, followed shortly thereafter by Blackalicious. Moore began focusing more on promoting and managing by the late 1990s—he is the manager for two local hip hop production phenomenons, Vitamin D and Jake One. In 2004, Moore’s focus went entirely to managing and

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THE CENTRAL DISTRICT Seattle’s Central District (C.D.) is a residential neighborhood east of the downtown area, bordered by the neighborhoods of Madrona, First Hill, and Capitol Hill. Its major streets include Martin Luther King Way (formerly Empire Way before 1983), Yesler Street, 23rd Avenue, E. Union, E. Cherry, and E. Jefferson. Though the population is changing, the Central District contains the highest population of African Americans in the State of Washington. Throughout the late 1990s and into the current century, the area has undergone a slow process of gentrification, pushing many African American families further south into more affordable, but lower quality homes. As home prices in the Seattle area have skyrocketed, buyers have moved into the Central District area, forcing out lower income residents. The area also has had a number of condemned structures demolished to make way for high-end condominiums and apartment buildings for young professionals. Before the demographic change, though, the Central District was an area of cultural and political leadership for the African American community. In the early 1960s many civil rights protests were organized in the C.D. and the Black Panthers used the area to organize their movement throughout the 1960s. The Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center is located in the area and has been a life-changing institution for many young African American artists in the area. The Central District was also, of course, home to the roots of rap music in the Seattle area, as one of the only areas of the city that rappers could hold shows in the 1980s. The Central District has been home to several famous Seattleites. Quincy Jones and Jimi Hendrix hailed from the Central District, as did Sir Mix-A-Lot, Vitamin D, and other rap artists. Unfortunately, crime statistics rose in the Central District at the same time as rap music, possibly making Seattle officials conclude that one had much to do with the other as gangs from Los Angeles began making their way to the area in the mid-to-late 1980s. The Central District has been immortalized in rap music, however, most notably in Sir Mix-A-Lot’s ‘‘Posse on Broadway,’’ as he describes his cruise through the area streets.

promoting and feeling that he didn’t have enough time to dedicate to creating art himself, Moore disbanded Source of Labor. Moore continues to tirelessly promote Northwest hip hop. He cohosts a Sunday night radio show on Seattle’s KUBE 93 FM, as well as managing local acts. He has held numerous leadership positions within city organizations, such as Creative Consultant and Advisor to the Seattle Young Peoples Project, Educational Advisor to The Langston Hughes Center for Performing and Cultural Arts, Active

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Governor for the Pacific Northwest chapter of The National Recording Academy of Arts and Science, Mayors Office for Film and Music Advisory Board, and KEXP radio’s Advisory Board. Moore also received the prestigious City of Seattle Mayor’s Hip-Hop Award for Entrepreneurial Achievement & Business Acumen in 2005. Mr. Supreme Daniel ‘‘DJ Mr. Supreme’’ Clavessilla (born 1970) is well known as a Seattle Rap ‘‘Pioneer.’’ After a trip to New York City in 1983, Supreme began b-boying and buying records to break-dance to. His early collection included the likes of Bob James, Jimmy Huey, The Bongo Band, and Baby Castor. After a stint as Danny Dee Rock of the group The Seattle Circuit Breakers, Supreme realized his real interest was in music. In 1988, he received his first production deal from Enigma/Capitol. Mr. Supreme might be best known for his bountiful record collection, however. His infamous collection of records led him to meet Shane ‘‘DJ Sureshot’’ Hunt, who was looking for a particular record at the time and in 1993, the duo formed the group Sharpshooters. Sharpshooters decided that rather than record a demo and shop it to other labels, they would start their own label in order to get their music out. To fund the project, the two dug deep into their LP collections and sold rare albums at record conventions. They did all the work to record, produce, and promote their album, releasing Buck the Saw in 1994 on their own Conception Records. Later in 1997, Conception signed a packaging and distribution deal with Sub Pop records and began to sign other artists to Conception. Supreme also worked to help other young artists emerge, such as Jake One, arguably one of Seattle’s top producers. Supreme continued to work with local artists on the label and other artists like Toronto-based Da Grassroots, with whom he accidentally hooked up during a visit to a record store. Sharpshooters released several other albums throughout the late 1990s, and then in 2003 released Light in the Attic, which featured a mix of music and styles based on the different types of music each DJ had in his collection. Supreme’s most critically acclaimed work to date came in 2004 when he released Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest in Funk and Soul 1965–1975, showcasing his vast musical knowledge and collection. A movie based on Wheedle’s Groove is slated for a 2007 release. Supreme has worked with national artists such as A Tribe Called Quest, Blackalicious, DJ Shadow, DJ Scribble, and Biz Markie. He has produced tracks for ESPN, MTV, and shows like The Sopranos. In addition to hosting a hip hop radio show on Seattle’s KEXP 90.3 FM titled ‘‘Street Sounds,’’ Supreme still does almost nightly DJ gigs at clubs in Seattle and nationwide. He was also the recipient of the Seattle Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Hip Hop for being an industry pioneer and music historian.

From the SEA to the PDX | 297 Sir Mix-A-Lot Anthony ‘‘Sir Mix-A-Lot’’ Ray (born 1963) is arguably the most well-known rapper from the Northwest region. Though many label him a ‘‘one-hit wonder,’’ Mix-A-Lot’s contributions helped solidify rap as a legitimate genre in the mainstream, paving the way for younger artists both in Seattle and nationally. Mix-A-Lot’s career is a shining example of the American attitude of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. Though he had help from friends in the early Northwest rap scene, Mix-A-Lot is one of the rare self-produced, self-promoted artists who achieve worldwide fame. Though early artists such as The Emerald Street Boys, Powercore, Funky Fresh Jazz, and others were performing in the Seattle area in the early 1980s, Mix-A-Lot was responsible for bringing rap to the center of the African American community in Seattle’s Central District (see sidebar: Central District). Beginning around 1984, he held dances at the Boys and Girls club there every Friday night in order to give the kids something to do. He would play records and scratch each week and eventually came to the attention of DJ Nasty Nes, who had the first all-rap radio show on the West Coast. Nasty Nes became interested in Mix’s ability and started playing him heavily on his show Fresh Tracks. Mix’s early singles, particularly ‘‘Square Dance Rap’’ caught on quickly and he soon became the most requested artist on Fresh Tracks. Nasty Nes and Mix-A-Lot eventually formed their own label, NastyMix records in 1985, and in 1986 things started to happen for the duo after a copy of ‘‘Square Dance Rap’’ found its way to the United Kingdom and began getting radio play

Sir Mix-A-Lot (Tim Mosenfelder/Corbis)

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in Britain. ‘‘Square Dance Rap,’’ with the strange, Alvin and the Chipmunks-like sound of Kid Sensation and heavy beats became extremely popular in the United Kingdom and was released as a single by the label Streetwave. Mix-A-Lot was then invited to perform with other groundbreaking hip hop artists in Wembley Arena at the UK Fresh concert that year. The concert put Sir Mix-A-Lot on the map outside of just the Northwest, but the turning point in his career came with the 1987 release of the single ‘‘Posse on Broadway.’’ Though people outside of Seattle often mistakenly thought the song was referring to New York City, the song became an anthem of place to fans in the Northwest. Doing for Seattle what songs like ‘‘South Bronx’’ and LL Cool J singing about Queens did for New York, ‘‘Posse on Broadway’’ brought Seattleites together over common landmarks, streets, and restaurants. ‘‘Posse on Broadway’’ became so popular locally that it led the way for Mix-A-Lot’s first album Swass, released in 1988. Swass was extremely innovative and set Mix-A-Lot apart from many of his peers in rap music at the time. His rap in this album focused more on middleclass issues, using humor as an outlet, rather than depending on rage at a system or descriptions of life in the projects. Seattle had its share of issues with police harassment in the African American community, and Mix-A-Lot does address them in songs like ‘‘Hip Hop Soldier,’’ where he says ‘‘For you gotta fight back, cause the pigs ain’t black,’’ but for the most part Swass is about having the most money and gold, getting the best women, and being the best rapper in the game. Swass, like other rap albums of its time, included a lot of sampling—‘‘Posse on Broadway’’ samples David Bowie’s ‘‘Fame,’’ for example—but Mix-A-Lot was among the first to sample from other artists’ recent releases. He samples from Eazy-E’s song ‘‘8 Ball,’’ which appeared on N.W.A.’s N.W.A. and the Posse, released in 1987, and released again as a remix on the 1988 album Straight Outta Compton. Mix-A-Lot credits N.W.A. in the liner notes of Swass and obviously had a good professional relationship with the group at the time. Mix-A-Lot also involved another up-and-coming group on the album, recording a remake of the 1970 Black Sabbath song ‘‘Iron Man’’ with Metal Church. Though Aerosmith and Run DMC had already established that rock and rap could collaborate, ‘‘Iron Man’’ is indicative of the Seattle music scene at the time. Rock artists and rappers were all working under the same confines of a city unwilling to support concerts at local clubs, and faced many of the same struggles with getting their music out to the public. Songs like ‘‘Iron Man’’ and ‘‘Bremelo,’’ a spoof on the women living across Puget Sound from Seattle in the city of Bremerton, capture the flavor of Seattle and are very indicative of place. Though Mix-A-Lot could not have completely foreseen the explosion of grunge, he was attuned to the city’s history of rock and integrated it into his own style. With ‘‘Bremelo,’’ Mix-A-Lot brings listeners together over a regionalism, as only those living in the Pacific Northwest would

From the SEA to the PDX | 299 understand that specific term. ‘‘Bremelo,’’ then, is written for an audience of place, rather than race, allowing people of all races to identify with Mix-A-Lot’s music. Because it could appeal to such a large audience, Swass had massive appeal in Seattle and became a national seller as well. In 1988, thanks to some airplay of the video for the song on MTV, ‘‘Posse on Broadway’’ became a national chart single and the album went into the Top 20 of the R&B album chart and eventually went platinum. Just a short year later, Mix-A-Lot released Seminar, which had three singles make it onto the Rap charts—‘‘I Got Game,’’ ‘‘My Hooptie,’’ and ‘‘Beepers.’’ After the success of Swass and Seminar, legal and financial problems with NastyMix forced Mix-A-Lot to end his business dealings with the label, but he was quickly scooped up by Def Jam cofounder Rick Rubin. Mix signed to the Def American label, and under Rubin’s tutelage underwent a sort of ‘‘image makeover.’’ Mix-A-Lot’s new look was an outrageous characterization of the traditional ‘‘pimp,’’ and his next album release, entitled Mack Daddy, featured Mix on the cover stepping out of a high-end sports car in a ‘‘pimp’’ hat and shades, holding a wad of cash. Fans seemed to embrace this image and enjoyed the fun, mocking side of Sir Mix-A-Lot, rather than his more serious side, as the album’s lead single ‘‘One Time’s Got No Case,’’ a biting critique of racial profiling, went virtually unnoticed. The album’s next release, however, was the song that pushed Mix-ALot to the national forefront with both praise and criticism—‘‘Baby Got Back.’’ On ‘‘Baby Got Back,’’ Mix-A-Lot mixed his signature humorous style with the Miami Bass sound made famous by artists like 2 Live Crew and DJ Magic Mike, with whom Mix-A-Lot collaborated. Though obviously meant as a parody, the song also raised some awareness about the pressures of society on females with regard to body image. Lines like ‘‘So Cosmo says you’re fat? Well, I ain’t down with that’’ asked listeners to take another look (literally) at the ideals created by a white majority. The song was an instant success and was accompanied by an over-the-top video showcasing a gigantic backside, which was eventually relegated to only late night exposure on MTV. Feminists and parental watch groups labeled the video as exploitative and pornographic, boycotting and speaking out against Mix-A-Lot throughout the summer of 1992. However, despite the controversy surrounding the song, Mix-A-Lot was awarded a Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance, after the song spent five weeks at number one on the pop charts. Unfortunately, Mix-A-Lot, like many other artists who achieve notoriety with a ‘‘gimmicky’’ song, has thus far failed to ever again achieve such musical success. He tried to follow up with the release of Chief Boot Knocka in 1994, with several upbeat dance songs like ‘‘Put ‘Em on the Glass’’ and ‘‘Brown Sugar,’’ but the album only enjoyed moderate success in the R&B chart, without reaching the crossover success of Mack Daddy. Two years later, Mix-A-Lot released Return of the Bumpasaurus, but issues with his label, American Records, resulted in very little promotion of the album and disappointing sales.

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1996’s Return of the Bumpasaurus was Mix-A-Lot’s last release for quite some time. He became disillusioned with the business and the direction in which rap was headed. During this period, he hooked up with another Seattle act, The Presidents of the United States of America, and began to collaborate with the group, a relationship resulting in the formation of the rock-rap group Subset. Subset, in many ways, was a true representation of the history and culture of the Seattle music scene, yet the group never really caught on. Subset spent some time in the studio, though nothing was ever officially released. After a short tour of small venues and outdoor festivals, Subset disbanded. Mix-A-Lot stayed off of the rap radar for a couple of years, only touring here and there at small venues, but he reemerged in 2003 with the album Daddy’s Home, produced by his own label Rhyme Cartel in partnership with the independent Artist Direct. At first, retail stores passed on the record, assuming Mix-ALot’s popularity was well over, but after an old fashioned, door to door public relations push, Seattle sold out of the record in two days and the album was wellreceived by music critics. To date, Mix-A-Lot has not released another studio album, but his songs have found new homes as hooks in many other of today’s popular rap songs. ‘‘Jump on It’’ has been sampled by Missy Elliot and is one of the most popular tunes for college marching bands today, ‘‘Posse on Broadway’’ provides the skeleton for Juvenile’s ‘‘Way I Be Leanin’,’’ and the most famous revival of Mix-A-Lot’s music occurs as the hook for the Pussycat Dolls’ ‘‘Dontcha.’’ Mix-A-Lot continues to have a hand in the Seattle music scene, encouraging younger artists like his current prote´ge´ Outtasite. Vitamin D Derrick ‘‘Vitamin D’’ Brown (born 1976) was born into a family with serious musical roots. His father, Herman Brown, was a studio musician and played in a group called Ozone on Motown records. Derrick’s maternal grandfather, Clarence Oliphant, was a jazz vibe musician, and Derrick’s cousin, Eddie ‘‘Sugar Bear’’ Wells, was a member of Seattle’s pioneer rap group The Emerald Street Boys. With all of this musical talent in the family and early exposure to such musicians as Lionel Richie and the Commodores, it would seem that Vitamin D was trained to play music from birth. Though early in his childhood Vitamin D lived in Los Angeles, his family moved to Seattle to escape the gang violence that permeated his neighborhood of Inglewood. Vitamin D credits his addiction to hip hop and dope beats to his father, who had bought a DMX drum machine, but didn’t yet know how to use it. Vitamin D from then on would do whatever it took to get his hands on equipment. He was also interested in b-boying for a short time, but mentions seeing Jazzy Jeff perform as one of the moments that made him sure he would have a musical life in hip hop. Heavily influenced by original hip hop by artists like Grandmaster Flash, Vitamin D did whatever he could to work with beat-making equipment, traveling

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by bicycle to friends’ houses, even through the rougher areas of Seattle’s Central District (see sidebar: Central District). His first set of turntables was handed down by his cousin, Sugar Bear, and Vitamin D worked at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center to save up money for his own drum machine. Soon, he had enough equipment to play school talent shows and dances and he began to seriously create music in 1988, just as Seattle rap began to make a name for itself. He started his own groups, as one half of The Ghetto Children and Suns of Infinite Thought. Though he worked in the Pharmacy Studio in the OK Hotel, his basement studio in his mom’s house is where Vitamin D became one of the most important hip hop producers on the Seattle scene. Along with Jake One, whom he met in high school, Vitamin D produced records for many of Seattle’s artists. In 1997, Vitamin D joined the group Source of Labor, replacing DJ Kamikaze, and the group appeared on a compilation album entitled Word, Sound, Power. The group released only one full-length album, Stolen Lives, in 2000 before breaking up in 2001. Vitamin D, along with Jake One, began to be nationally recognized when they coproduced 2004’s Fourth Dimensional Rocket Going Up, which was recorded entirely in Seattle, for Blackalicious MC Gift of Gab. He has also produced for De La Soul, Chali 2na (of Jurassic 5), and Planet Asia. Vitamin D also has two solo albums, Table Manners and Table Manners 2. Continuing to stay relevant in the Seattle music scene, Vitamin D argues that the Seattle hip hop community needs to ‘‘stay tighter’’ (Mizell) and works to promote such dialogue by organizing a monthly night at the Seattle Club the War Room where MCs and beat mixers can ‘‘battle.’’ Vitamin D’s vision is to bring new talent and producers into the same venue and let the relationships flourish, effectively breathing life back into a faltering Seattle hip hop scene. Most recently, along with friend and fellow producer Jonathon Moore, Vitamin D started the Big Tune Beat Battle, which pits producers against one another to prove who has the best beatmaking skills. Moore and Vitamin D received sponsorship from Red Bull in the Summer of 2007 and took the battle on the road to cities across the United States. Vitamin D has another of his own albums in the works, but he continues to work to do what he loves—promote hip hop. Xola Malik (Kid Sensation) Steve ‘‘Kid Sensation’’ Spence is one of the pioneers of Seattle hip hop music. He worked with Sir Mix-A-Lot, contributing to Mix-A-Lot’s albums Swass and Seminar, providing the funny, Alvin and the Chipmunks-sounding voice on hits like ‘‘Square Dance Rap’’ and ‘‘Buttermilk Biscuits.’’ An MC in his own right, Kid Sensation began opening shows for MixA-Lot, with Funkdaddy as his DJ. His first single, 1989’s ‘‘Back to Boom,’’ became an immediate Seattle club hit and sold well as a cassette single. He followed up in 1990 with the single ‘‘SeaTown Ballers’’ and then released the fulllength LP Rollin with Number One on NastyMix records. He followed up with The Power of Rhyme in 1992, and found a new label, Ichiban, for the release of Seatown Funk in 1995 and AKA Mr. K-Sen in 1996, produced by Funkdaddy. His

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THE ROCKET First published in 1979, The Rocket was a bi-weekly newspaper published in Seattle with the goal of providing information about local music. Though it was strictly a Seattle publication for the majority of its lifespan, a Portland, Oregon edition came about in 1991. The same edition basically worked for both cities, except that the editors varied the concert calendar for each city and sometimes ran different cover story material for the two versions. The Rocket was started as a companion paper to the Seattle Sun, an alternative newspaper produced weekly. The Rocket’s founder had been a salesperson for the Sun and worked with the art director and art editor from the Sun to produce The Rocket. By 1980, the trio had enough money to publish The Rocket without connection to the Seattle Sun, and by January of 1982, the paper’s circulation was up to 50,000 copies a month. Though the publisher wanted national mainstream artists to be given time in the magazine, most of the authors focused on local alternative bands. By the mid-1980s, the paper was mostly focusing on the metal movement that precluded Grunge in Seattle. However, writer Glen Boyd was writing about hip hop artists, mainly Sir Mix-A-Lot, which helped him gain popularity in the Seattle area. In the 1980s, the paper turned its attention almost solely on the developing Grunge scene, covering artists like Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. The Rocket was doing cover stories on these artists years before they broke into the national spotlight and The Rocket became the place to turn for the latest news on the Seattle scene. A San Francisco based company, BAM Media, bought the paper out in 1995 and used the cash cow Rocket as a way to support other small papers for a number of years. These ventures, though, slowly bled The Rocket until it was no longer able to operate. BAM then sold the nearly defunct Rocket to publisher Dave Roberts, who seemed to be attempting to revive the publication. However, in just a few weeks the magazine was shut down without warning, printing its final issue on October 18, 2000. It is reported that another alternative weekly paper from Portland, WW wanted to purchase the Portland side of The Rocket, but the deal became impossible due to a rumored asking price of one million dollars.

last full-length LP under the moniker Kid Sensation came in 2000 when he released From the Cradle on Orchard Records, mainly consisting of his older songs. In 2001, Kid Sensation reemerged on the Seattle scene as Xola Malik, creating a buzz with ‘‘Ichiro,’’ a song he wrote for Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki. He had previously written a song as Kid Sensation for then-Mariner Ken Griffey Jr. entitled ‘‘The Way I Swing,’’ but Xola has now made a name for himself writing songs for sports figures, with ‘‘Ichiro’’ and a song for the Seahawks’ Shawn

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Alexander. He has recently been performing as Xola and has a new album in the works.

Portland Cool Nutz and Bosko Terrance ‘‘Cool Nutz’’ Scott (born 1972) was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in Northeast Portland, called Portland’s ‘‘inner city.’’ As gangs migrated to Portland to escape police pressure in Los Angeles, by the late 1980s, Northeast Portland was experiencing drug trafficking, gang shootings, and a rash of murders. It was with this environment as a backdrop that Cool Nutz and his partner Bosco ‘‘Bosko’’ Kante began break-dancing and experimenting on the turntables. Once they realized they had some talent, they began putting together demos and decided to get serious about making music. It was at this point that Jus Family Records was born in 1992. After working 15-hour days in a bakery for three years in order to get the money to fund the label, Cool Nutz released his first album Dis Nigga’s Nutz, followed by a Cool Nutz single, which led to a record deal with Big Beat/Atlantic. He and Bosko released albums independently with Kenny Mack & G-Ism, new members of Jus Family. The deal with Big Beat/Atlantic never really got off the ground and the relationship was disbanded. In 1997, Cool Nutz put out the first really well recognized album Harsh Game for the People, which included many other Jus Family artists like Yukmouth, Poppa LQ, and others. From there, Jus Family became a production machine, releasing a compilation album and then two albums on the same day for Izay and G-Ism. They followed up with another for Cool Nutz, 1998’s Speakin upon a Million and continued to produce for the other artists signed on Jus Family records. For a short period of time Cool Nutz and Bosko recreated themselves as the group D.B.A. (Doin Business As) and were signed to Universal records. The group released one album Doin Business As in 2000, which featured E-40, Luniz, Baby Bash, and Jay-T of N2Deep, but D.B.A. never recorded a follow-up. Cool Nutz returned to the scene in 2002 with a new album Verbal Porn and continued to produce and collaborate with Bosko and the other Jus Family artists. Cool Nutz didn’t release another album until 2007’s King Cool Nutz. Cool Nutz and Bosko continue to work to develop and promote artists from Portland and the Pacific Northwest. They have worked with and opened for a huge range of artists, some on the national level, such as E-40, B.G., Wu-Tang Clan, Luni Coleone, Mobb Deep, Bleek, C-Bo, DJ Felli Fel, and many more. Lifesavas Marlon ‘‘Vursatyl’’ Irving (artist did not want birthdate released) and Solomon ‘‘Jumbo the Garbageman’’ David (artist did not want birthdate released) first met in Portland, Oregon neighborhood parks, playing basketball and hanging around freestyle rap sessions. They later worked on projects in the same recording studio and came to have a mutual respect for each other’s work. They had always promised to work on a project together, but had not made it happen until Jumbo’s

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THE AVE Formally known as University Way N.E., ‘‘The Ave’’ is located in Seattle’s University District (U-District) near the University of Washington. The Ave is considered the ‘‘heart’’ of the U-District and for years has been a unique mixture of cultures and lifestyles. Originally named 14th Avenue, the ‘‘Ave’’ was renamed in a university contest in 1919. Because the street had been an avenue for some time before the original name, however, the nickname ‘‘The Ave’’ stuck. In its more than 100-year history, The Ave has been home to all types of businesses and people. Known as an unofficial ‘‘annex’’ to the University of Washington, the area boasts many bookstores and coffee shops catering to the academic crowd. At the same time, the area is home to restaurants from diverse nationalities. On the weekends, one can usually find Farmer’s Markets or festivals. While The Ave showcases Seattle at its cultural best, it also is home to some of the city’s most pressing problems such as drug use and homelessness. Transient teens and adults, known as ‘‘Ave Rats,’’ have been known to be aggressive in panhandling and are often victims of alcohol and drug abuse. The Ave is particularly notorious for drug sales, and gang activity is on the rise in the area, as evidenced by increased graffiti ‘‘tagging,’’ leading to more organized sales of drugs like methamphetamines and cocaine. Though The Ave has its share of problems, the city of Seattle has worked to try to improve the area, increasing police patrols and adding cosmetic improvements like lighting and bus benches. In spite of criminal activity and evidence of other urban problems, The Ave remains a thriving cultural area, and in fact may exist as a microcosm of Seattle itself. The Ave has been celebrated in the rap songs of many area artists, the most obvious of which is the song entitled ‘‘The Ave,’’ by Blue Scholars, who advise students to forget about class and ‘‘get your education on the Ave.’’

best friend, who was also an MC that Vursatyl often worked with, was murdered. The incident brought the two together and they began creating and playing local gigs, often being called at the last minute as a fill-in group. Their last minute saving of a show happened so often that they were constantly hearing the phrase ‘‘Man, you guys are lifesavers!’’ Joined by DJ Ryan ‘‘Rev Shines’’ Shortell, the group Lifesavas was born. Jumbo and Vursatyl collaborated on a single called ‘‘Stop the Madness,’’ inspired by the death of their friend, which wound up along with their other early work on cassette demos in local record stores. The group found a patron when Chief Xcel of Blackalicious heard their track while looking for vinyl in a Portland record store. Xcel then tracked down Lifesavas and invited

From the SEA to the PDX | 305 them to perform with Blackalicious in San Francisco. Vursatyl eventually went on world tour with Blackalicious, as well, adding vocals and sharing MCing duty. In 2003, Blackalicious-owned label Quannum records offered Lifesavas a deal and they released their debut album Spirit in the Stone. The album had great success as an underground hit, with singles like ‘‘What if It’s True’’ and ‘‘Hellohihey’’ topping the CMJ chart. The group plays about 100 shows a year and its members have made interesting individual contributions to hip hop. Jumbo has produced for the likes of KRS-One and had production credits for a song on the The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift. Vursatyl has collaborated with other artists, such as Gift of Gab. The latest Lifesavas album might be their most interesting project to date. 2007’s Gutterfly: The Original Soundtrack is a nod to the 1980s film of the same name, a fictional soundtrack for a nonexistent movie. On the album, the trio plays fictional ghetto characters living out a creative plot in The Razorblade City (Portland). Pete Miser Pete Miser (born 1971), born Pete Ho in Portland, Oregon, understood counter-culture from the day he was born. Half-Asian and half-white, Miser embraced b-boy culture at an early age. He won his first b-boy contest in 1984, taking home a .38 Special record as his prize. From there, he moved to experimenting with hip hop, writing his first rap song in 1985 and forming the group 3 B-Boys in 1987, the same year he began recording. In 1988 Miser had his first performance at Portland’s now-defunct E-Street Icehouse and in 1989 was able to purchase a TR-808 that allowed him to use his own beats as a backdrop for his raps. That same year, he formed the group Quadralyrical and went on to release his first solo work Science of Synonym. In 1991, Miser formed The Coalition, which released an EP entitled Say It to Me. Continually creating and trying for new sounds, Miser met drummer Talbot Guthrie in 1992 and the two forged a new group Five Fingers of Funk, which was a nine-piece group that used instruments to make hip hop sounds, over which Miser would rap. In 1994, the group released its first full-length LP, Slap Me 5, on Miser’s Ho-Made records, and began to win over local audiences in Portland. Five Fingers of Funk went on the road in 1997, touring steadily on the West Coast in cities like Vancouver, B.C., San Francisco, and Denver. The next year, the group went on a national tour with Fishbone and Maceo Parker, after which Miser decided to leave the group to pursue his own interests. Miser wanted to try his luck on the opposite coast and moved to New York City in late 1998. Miser has gone on to work on tour with national artist Dido as her DJ and to release solo work like the single ‘‘For You/Just One Rhyme,’’ 2002’s Radio Free Brooklyn and his latest album, 2004’s Camouflage is Relative. U-Krew Often dismissed as a one-hit wonder, Portland’s U-Krew was formed by producer Larry ‘‘D.L.B.’’ Bell and lead vocalist Kevin Morse in 1984. The two asked Lavell Alexander, James McClendo, and Hakim Muhammad to join them and they became known as ‘‘The Untouchable Krew,’’ later shortened to U-Krew.

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The group worked around Portland and the Northwest for several years before signing with Enigma Records. They were first released on a promo album from Enigma in 1989 called Sound and Vision: Volume One, along with Devo, The Untouchables, Red Flag, Bardeaux, and others. The promo included U-Krew’s first single, ‘‘If You Were Mine,’’ which paved the way for their first, and only, album The U-Krew, which was released in October of 1989. ‘‘If You Were Mine’’ received early radio play in January of 1990 and by March of the same year was in heavy rotation at stations across the country. The single peaked at #24 on the Billboard chart. The U-Krew next released the singles ‘‘Let Me Be Your Lover’’ and ‘‘Ugly’’ in June and August, respectively, but neither track ever cracked the Top 30. U-Krew toured throughout 1990 and steadily over the next two years, opening for acts like Public Enemy and Vanessa Williams. By the time the group came off tour and returned to Portland in 1992, Enigma was going through bankruptcy. The group tried to negotiate a new deal with Capitol records, but the label wanted to assert more artistic control than U-Krew was willing to sacrifice. The inability to settle on a new record deal eventually led to the disbanding of the group in 1993. Though U-Krew only made one record, the group was important to the Portland and Northwest hip hop scene. Called ‘‘Portland’s version of Run DMC’’ by some other local artists, U-Krew proved to aspiring rappers that a group could make it out of a nontraditional hip hop area like Portland. The first group out of Portland to appear on video channels like MTV or BET, U-Krew showed America that hip hop did exist in Portland and the Pacific Northwest.

NORTHWEST DJS AND RADIO SHOWS DJ B-Mello A prote´ge´ of DJ Nasty Nes, DJ B-Mello got his start at the age of 12, b-boying before turning to mixing. However, B-Mello is more than just the average DJ. He’s been a journalist and editor, club and artist promoter, as well as promoted for movies and other products. B-Mello has also appeared in videos and given demonstrations on the art and history of DJing at venues like The Experience Music Project, Seattle Art Museum, and the University of Washington. B-Mello got his first break DJing in Seattle on KCMU’s Rap Attack. From there he has moved to mixing for several different radio shows, like KEXP’s Streetsounds, The Mix Tape at 8, and The Traffic Jam on KUBE. He currently mixes six days a week and has been heard all over the West Coast, from Canada to Portland and even on Power 106 in Los Angeles. B-Mello has opened for numerous national acts, including 50 Cent, Nas, T.I., Ludacris, De La Soul, Common, and others. An official MySpace DJ, he has won various DJ battles, like Canada’s The DJ Soundwar, and in 2006 was voted West Coast DJ of the Year. B-Mello is also affiliated with several prestigious DJ organizations like The Core DJs (made

From the SEA to the PDX | 307 up of DJs across the country), Shadyville DJs (started by G-Unit’s DJ Whoo Kid), and NRC a national turntablist organization.

DJ Gigahurtz Easily Portland’s hottest and most innovative DJ, DJ Gigahurtz is one of the growing number of DJs that call themselves MP3Js. Though he began learning how to spin and mix from a friend in his college dorm room at La Sierra University in California, Gigahurtz quickly realized that integrating technology was the path for the DJ of the future. His love of computers and technology allowed Gigahurtz to set himself apart and he was one of the first to mix live from a computer, earning him his moniker. His ability to market and create a buzz has led to opportunities with corporations like Nike, promoting Nike Soccer and Nike Women. Raised and based out of Portland, Gigahurtz has made a name for himself nationally, DJing P. Diddy’s 2007 Superbowl party, as well as spinning at hot clubs in the Northwest and Las Vegas. He founded the digital record pool Vinylbreakers.com, which allows DJs access to more music without vinyl records. Gigahurtz also serves on the Board of Directors of Bumsquad DJs, a national DJ coalition, and is an official MySpace DJ.

DJ Nasty Nes Nestor ‘‘Nasty Nes’’ Rodriguez (born 1961) began DJing straight out of high school. Inspired by friends of friends who worked in radio, he began to spin and quickly landed a job as the DJ for one of Seattle’s first hip hop groups The Emerald Street Boys, who played local parties and dances in the early 1980s, even opening for The Gap Band when they played Seattle in 1982 and 1983. Nes would play 12’’ records for the Emerald Street Boys to rap over, and the mixture became a local success. While his sister attended New York University, she had a friend working at the station WKTU, the most popular station for rap at the time, and Nes would get a hold of tapes from the shows to listen to. He would spend his summers visiting New York and picking up the hottest new records to bring back to Seattle. Through imitating the style and mixes of the New York City DJs, Nes was able to launch his own radio show Fresh Tracks in 1980 on KFOX 1250 in Seattle. Fresh Tracks was the first hip hop show on the West Coast, allowing Seattle to scoop even Los Angeles and San Francisco. The show began as a 30-minute segment on Sunday nights where Nes would play songs and scratch. The twoturntable sound was so new and fresh for Seattle, it was instantly a hit and people all over Puget Sound were tuning in to hear this new style of music. The show received such huge ratings that the program director quickly took advantage and let Nes expand his show to a three-hour segment, 9 PM to midnight, Monday through Friday nights. Nes worked at KFOX until 1988 when he was accused of taking payola in the form of Troop outfits to play MC Hammer records. Though

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Nes denies the incident, he was fired by KFOX, but was not out of a job for long. He joined Glen ‘‘Shockmaster’’ Boyd at KCMU FM for the radio show Rap Attack, which aired on Sunday nights from 6 to 8 PM, and aired his show Hotmix on KUBE FM. In 1997, Nes left Seattle after HITS Magazine offered him the opportunity to become their Rap Editor. After five years with HITS magazine, Nes left to begin his own rap promotion business, running CrazyPinoy.com, a street promotional business out of Seattle. He also is the creator of RapAttackLives.com, a rap radio promotional site. Nes also appears in two films, 1994’s Purgatory House and Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, which was released in 2002. DJ Nasty Nes has worked with numerous artists on a national level, been a part of major exhibits at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, and received a number of prestigious awards, the latest of which is the 2007 Core Legendary DJ Award.

THE FUTURE OF NORTHWEST HIP HOP Though many promptly forgot the Northwest after the furor of Mix-A-Lot’s ‘‘Baby Got Back’’ died down, Mix-A-Lot’s career was really just the start of things for Northwest rappers. Though it seemed for a time that the rap scene in Seattle might be dead, thanks mainly to the almost personal vendettas of public officials against rap and hip hop shows, the adoption in 2002 of the All-Ages Dance Ordinance, a measure that repealed the 1985 Teen Dance Ordinance, is helping to ensure that smaller venues can host hip hop shows. Thus, the Northwest’s almost dead hip hop scene has undergone a resurgence, allowing newer, underground artists to redefine the Seattle hip hop scene. Rappers like D. Black, whose parents were of the members of founding hip hop groups The Emerald Street Boys and Emerald Street Girls, uses his music to present his version of Seattle—one filled with guns and violence like he witnessed growing up in South Seattle. On the flip side are groups like The Blue Scholars, who say that ‘‘the sound of Seattle is . . . softer, musically’’ (Matson). Called ‘‘sociopolitical,’’ the Scholars are more likely to rap about social issues than the stereotypical topics of today’s Top 40 rap. Similarly, Common Market and Gabriel Teodros focus on more political issues in their music, becoming known as ‘‘backpack rap.’’ Though Portland rappers did not have the same struggle to find venues under the Teen Dance Ordinance, like those in Seattle, the area’s rap artists have faced their own struggles. They have been equally troubled with violence surrounding their shows and the rap movement in Portland has been an essentially underground one to date. Though only U-Krew has reached national chart fame, artists like Cool Nutz and Lifesavas are collaborating with national artists, which will eventually give Portland its own name on the rap scene. Artists on the Jus Family records like DJ Chill, Maniac Lok, and Luni Coleone are well known in the Pacific Northwest and will work hard to help the hip hop scene thrive in the region. Though Seattle and Portland do not have a rap scene as well developed as Los Angeles or New

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THE 206 When the North American Numbering Plan proposal was adopted in 1947, the area code 206 was assigned to Washington State. In 1957, though, the eastern half of the state was split off and assigned the area code 509, leaving 206 to the Puget Sound region. In the early days of rap music in the Northwest, 206 stood for all of the Seattle area, while Portland rappers shouted out the 503. Sir Mix-A-Lot often used the area code in songs like ‘‘Brown Sugar,’’ where he sings, ‘‘Welcome to the 206’’ and ‘‘Jump on It’’ which features a lot of different area codes before he states, ‘‘Back to the 206.’’ However, due to an increase of mobile phones and pagers, each requiring a new phone number, in the Seattle area, in 1995, the area codes went through a redivision. 206 remained assigned to Seattle proper and most of the Puget Sound region, while other parts of western Washington, such as the northernmost and southernmost areas like Bellingham and Vancouver, Washington were assigned the area code 360. This designation lasted only two years, as the cellular phone explosion and expanding population created the need for so many new numbers. In 1997, area code 206 was split again, moving to the Eastside area with its cities like Bellevue and Redmond, along with the suburbs north of Seattle to area code 425. The suburbs to the south and the city of Tacoma were assigned the code 253, leaving in effect, only Seattle with the original 206. 206 still remains the area code at the heart of the Seattle area, however. Seattle’s Central District, for years the only home to rap in the region, remains within the original 206 area code. The majority of clubs and hip hop venues are still in the 206 area code as well. Additionally, the Seattle Chapter of the Zulu Nation is Web hosted on 206Zulu.com. When Ludacris had ‘‘Hoes in different area codes’’ in 2001, he included the 206 in his list of area codes, so it seems clear that 206 is synonymous with Seattle in the world of hip hop.

York, the region does have a history of hard working rappers who want to get rap music out to their cities. As government officials from largely Caucasian backgrounds become more educated about and tolerant of rap music, the more the genre will be able to flourish in the region.

REFERENCES Chaumont, Kriss. ‘‘Seattle-Born Funkdaddy Is Spinning Success in the Northwest.’’ SeattleTimes.com, August 18, 2005. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ html/entertainment/2002443787_funkdaddy18.html (accessed July 17, 2007).

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De Barros, Paul. Jackson Street after Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle. Seattle: Sasquatch, 1993. Matson, Andrew. ‘‘Seattle’s Hip-Hop Scene Comes into Its Own.’’ SeattleTimes .com, April 27, 2007. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/ 2003682695_hiphop27.html (accessed June 30, 2007). Mizell, Larry, Jr. ‘‘Pharmacy Direct: Vitamin D Has 206 HipHop Dialed.’’ The Stranger.com, October 20, 2005. http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content? oid=23766 (accessed July 17, 2007).

FURTHER RESOURCES CoolNutz.net. http://www.coolnutz.net. Experience Music Project. http://www.empsfm.org/. Funkdaddy.com. http://www.funkdaddy.com. JusFamilyRecords.com. http://www.jusfamilyrecords.com. The Portland Mercury. http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Music. RapAttackLives.com. http://www.rapattacklives.com. Seattle Music Office Homepage. http://www.seattle.gov/music/. 206 Zulu. http://www.206zulu.com/.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Cool Nutz Harsh Game for the People. Jus Family Records, 1997. Speakin Upon a Million. Jus Family Records, 1998. Verbal Porn. Jus Family Records, 2001. King Cool Nutz. Jus Family Records, 2007. Da Grassroots Passage Through Time. Nu Gruv Alliance, 1999. (DJ Mr. Supreme production credit). Body Language. Conception, 2000 (DJ Mr. Supreme production credit). E-40 Presents That Fire. Jus Family Records, 2004 (Bosko production credit). 50 Cent f/Lloyd Banks, Prodigy, Spider Loc, & Mase ‘‘I Don’t Know Officer.’’ Get Rich or Die Tryin’ Soundtrack. G-Unit/Interscope, 2005 (Jake One production credit). Five Fingers of Funk Slap Me 5. LVP Group, 1995. About Time. Ho Made Media, 1998. Twisted & Lifted. Platinum, 2000.

From the SEA to the PDX FunkdaddyFunk U Right on Up. Shot, 1994. Funkdaddy Is Tha Source. Explicit, 1995. Funkmix 2000. Tight, 1999. I Want All That. M-2K Music, 2003. In Tha Mix. Funkdaddy Records, 2004. Gift of Gab 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up. Quannum Projects, 2004. G-Unit ‘‘Betta Ask Somebody’’ Beg for Mercy. Interscope, 2003 (Jake One production credit). Jake One The Tale of the Tape. Liquor Barrel, 2004. Jake One Feat/Kutfather ‘‘No Introduction’’/‘‘No Introdeezy’’ b/w ‘‘One Man Band.’’ Conception, 1998. ‘‘No Introduction/No Introdeezy’’ Walkman Rotation Compilation. Conception, 1999. Kid Sensation Rollin with Number One. NastyMix, 1990. The Power of Rhyme. NastyMix, 1992. Seatown Funk. Ichiban, 1995. AKA Mista K-Sen. Ichiban, 1996. From the Cradle. Orchard, 2000. Lifesavas Head Exercise. Quannum Projects, 2001. What If It’s True. Quannum Projects, 2002. Spirit in Stone. Quannum Projects, 2003. Fa Show. Quannum Projects, 2005. Gutterfly. Quannum Projects, 2007. Pete Miser Radio Free Brooklyn. Ho Made Media, 2003. Sharpshooters Buck the Saw. Conception, 1997. Choked Up. Shadow Records, 1997. Viva Los Guerrillos. Fast Music, 2002. Danger in Your Eyes. Light in the Attic, 2003. Twice As Nice. Light in the Attic, 2003. Sir Mix-A-Lot Swass. NastyMix/American Recordings, 1988. Seminar. NastyMix/American Recordings, 1989. Mack Daddy. NastyMix/American Recordings, 1992.

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Chief Boot Knocka. Sony, 1994. Return of the Bumpasaurus. Warner, 1996. Source of Labor Stolen Lives. Sub Verse, 2001. U-Krew The U-Krew. Capitiol, 1989. Various Artists Wheedle’s Groove: Seattle’s Finest in Funk and Soul 1965–1975. Light in the Attic, 2004 (DJ Mr. Supreme production credit). Vitamin D Table Manners. Tribal Music. Table Manners 2. Tribal Music, 1999.

Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide

Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide

VOLUME 2: THE MIDWEST, THE SOUTH, AND BEYOND

Mickey Hess, Editor

GREENWOOD PRESS

An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2010 by Mickey Hess All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hip hop in America : a regional guide / Mickey Hess, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-34321-6 (set: paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34322-3 (set: ebook) — ISBN 978-0-313-34323-0 (vol. 1: paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34324-7 (vol. 1: ebook) — ISBN 978-0-313-34325-4 (vol. 2: paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-34326-1 (vol. 2: ebook) 1. Rap (Music)—History and criticism. I. Hess, Mickey, 1975– ML3531.H573 2010 782.4216490973—dc22 2009034923 ISBN: 978-0-313-34321-6 (set) ISBN: 978-0-313-34323-0 (vol. 1) ISBN: 978-0-313-34325-4 (vol. 2) EISBN: 978-0-313-34322-3 (set) EISBN: 978-0-313-34324-7 (vol. 1) EISBN: 978-0-313-34326-1 (vol. 2) 14 13 12 11 10

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Greenwood Press An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction: ‘‘It’s Only Right to Represent Where I’m From’’: Local and Regional Hip Hop Scenes in the United States, Mickey Hess Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop, Mickey Hess

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VOLUME 1: EAST COAST AND WEST COAST 1. Hip Cats in the Cradle of Rap: Hip Hop in the Bronx, David Diallo 2. Uptown, Baby!: Hip Hop in Harlem and Upper Manhattan, David Shanks 3. From Queens Come Kings: Run DMC Stomps Hard out of a ‘‘Soft’’ Borough, Ericka Blount Danois 4. Brooklyn Beats: Hip Hop’s Home to Everyone from Everywhere, Jennifer R. Young

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5. ‘‘Brooklyn Keeps on Takin’ It!’’: A Conversation with Bushwick, 107 Brooklyn’s Da Beatminerz, Mickey Hess 6. A Black Sheep Borough, an Island of All White People: Staten Island Steps Up, Matthew Brian Cohen 7. The Sound of Philadelphia: Hip Hop History in the City of Brotherly Love, Mickey Hess 8. The Bricks and Beyond: Hip Hop in Newark and Northern New Jersey, Andrea Roberts 9. Hip Hop in the Hub: How Boston Rap Remained Underground, Pacey C. Foster

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Contents 10. From Electro-Rap to G-Funk: A Social History of Rap Music in Los Angeles and Compton, California, David Diallo

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11. Between Macks and Panthers: Hip Hop in Oakland and San Francisco, George Ciccariello-Maher and Jeff St. Andrews

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12. From the SEA to the PDX: Northwest Hip Hop in the I-5 Corridor, Rachel Key

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VOLUME 2: THE MIDWEST, THE SOUTH, AND BEYOND Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

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13. The Evolution of the Second City Lyric: Hip Hop in Chicago and Gary, Indiana, Warren Scott Cheney

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14. Heartland Hip Hop: Nelly, St. Louis, and Country Grammar, Amanda Lawson 15. From St. Paul to Minneapolis, All the Hands Clap for This: Hip Hop in the Twin Cities, Justin Schell 16. Welcome to tha D: Making and Remaking Hip Hop Culture in Post-Motown Detroit, Carleton S. Gholz

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17. The Long, Hot Grind: How Houston Engineered an Industry of Independence, Jamie Lynch

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18. ‘‘The Sound of Money’’: Atlanta, Crossroads of the Dirty South, Matt Miller

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19. Virginia Is for Lovers and Rappers: Hampton Roads Rappers, Changing the Game, Laurie Cannady 20. Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty: Community and Dance in New Orleans Rap, Rich Paul Cooper

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21. Soul Legacies: Hip Hop and Historicity in Memphis, Zandria F. Robinson 22. Tropic of Bass: Culture, Commerce, and Controversy in Miami Rap, Matt Miller

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23. Paradise Lost and Found: Hip Hop in Hawai’i, Rohan Kalyan

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Appendix: Regional Hip Hop Playlist, Danielle Hess Selected Bibliography Index Acknowledgments About the Editor and Contributors

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

1958

Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler) is born in Barbados and soon moves with his family to the Bronx.

1959

Brooklyn’s Big John Ashby becomes a mobile DJ who plays records at basement parties.

1964

Cassius Clay, ‘‘The Louisville Lip,’’ fights Sonny Liston. The day before the fight, he taunts his opponent with the rhyming boast, ‘‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,’’ which DMC (of Run DMC) later calls ‘‘the most famous rap lyrics ever’’ (Szwed 10). After Clay defeats Liston, he announces that he is a member of the Nation of Islam and has changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

1965

Malcolm X is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan.

1966

Black Panther Party is founded in Oakland, California. Doug E. Fresh is born in Barbados.

1967

Clive ‘‘Kool Herc’’ Campbell moves from Kingston, Jamaica, to New York City. Philadelphia graffiti artists Cornbread and Cool Earl begin spray-painting their names on public structures in a tall, exaggerated script that is a hallmark of the graffiti style that comes to be associated with hip hop.

1968

The Last Poets form in Marcus Garvey Park in East Harlem, New York City. Their mix of jazz, funk, and poetry has been a major influence on vii

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop hip hop, and they are featured vocalists on Common’s 2005 single ‘‘The Corner,’’ produced by Kanye West. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1969

Brooklyn’s Grandmaster Flowers opens for James Brown at Yankee Stadium.

1970

Gil Scott-Heron releases Small Talk at 125th & Lenox, featuring the poem ‘‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.’’ Scott-Heron’s poetry has influenced hip hop, and he appears on the 2002 Blackalicious album Blazing Arrow. Don Campbell invents a new style of dance called ‘‘locking’’ or ‘‘The Campbellock’’ in Los Angeles. Rudy Ray Moore releases the comedy album Eat Out More Often, which features the ‘‘Dolemite Toast.’’ Moore’s combination of X-rated humor with traditional African toasts influenced hip hop’s storytelling. Moore is featured on Big Daddy Kane’s 1990 album Taste of Chocolate and on 2 Live Crew’s Back at Your Ass for the Nine-4. Taki 183, a Greek teenager from Washington Heights, begins spraypainting his nickname and street number as the tag ‘‘Taki 183’’ in subway stations during his train rides to high school in Midtown Manhattan.

1971

The New York Times profiles Uptown Manhattan’s Taki 183 as the man who spawned a New York City graffiti phenomenon. Brooklyn DJ Ras Maboya is invited to perform in London. The New York Times refers to Philadelphia as the ‘‘Graffiti Capital of The World.’’ Los Angeles poet-musicians Watts Prophets release Rappin’ Black in a White World. With their political topics and spoken word performances over jazz music, the group was a forerunner to hip hop.

1973

DJ Kool Herc spins records at his sister’s block party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, Bronx, New York. Last Poets member Jalal Nuriddin (AKA Lightnin’ Rod) records the solo album Hustler’s Convention, a major influence on hip hop music. Afrika Bambaataa founds the Universal Zulu Nation on November 12, 1973. Don ‘‘Campbellock’’ Campbell forms The Campbellock Dancers (later shortened to The Lockers), featuring Slim the Robot, Fluky Luke, Greg ‘‘Campbellock Jr.’’ Pope, and Penguin (aka Fred Barry, who would go on to play Rerun on the sitcom What’s Happening).

Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop 1975

10-year-old Ricky Walters, who goes on to record as Slick Rick, moves with his family from South Wimbledon, London, England to the Bronx.

1977

The Rocksteady Crew forms in the Bronx. At the urging of his manager, Russell Simmons, Kurtis Blow moves from Harlem to Simmons’s home borough of Queens, where Simmons begins billing him as ‘‘The Number One Rapper in Queens.’’ Crash Crew forms in Harlem. Grand Wizzard DJ Johnny O begins DJing in Cleveland, Ohio. The Bronx’s DJ Disco Wiz, hip hop’s first Latino DJ (his father was Puerto Rican and his mother Cuban), teams up with Grandmaster Caz to create hip hop’s first mixed plate or dub record.

1978

Lovebug Starski becomes the house DJ at Club Disco Fever in the Bronx. Graffiti writer Angel moves to Chicago from New York and tags in the northwest Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square. He and local tagger Berto (or B-Boy-B) form the Angel Berto Crew (ABC). Roger Clayton and Gid Martin form the DJ crew Unique Dream Entertainment in Los Angeles.

1979

The first rap records are released: • Philadelphia’s rhyming radio DJ Jocko Henderson releases ‘‘Rhythm Talk’’ on Philadelphia International Records. • New York City’s Fatback Band releases ‘‘King Tim III (Personality Jock).’’ • Englewood, New Jersey’s Sylvia Robinson puts together a group called Sugarhill Gang, that records ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ hip hop’s first international hit. • Bronx’s Funky Four Plus One More releases ‘‘Rapping and Rocking the House.’’ • Harlem-born Queens rapper Kurtis Blow releases ‘‘Christmas Rappin’.’’ • Philadelphia’s Lady B releases ‘‘To The Beat, Ya’ll,’’ the first hip hop record by a female artist. • Harlem’s Paulette and Tanya Winley release ‘‘Rhymin’ and Rappin’.’’ • Connecticut native Mr. Magic releases ‘‘Rappin’ with Mr. Magic.’’ St. Louis radio DJ Gentleman Jim Gates is the first DJ to play Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ on the radio.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Lonzo Williams opens Eve’s After Dark club in Compton, California, and forms The World Class Wreckin’ Cru with future N.W.A. members DJ Yella and Dr. Dre. Tony Joseph, a DJ from East Elmhurst, New York, relocates to Los Angeles and introduces New York’s turntable innovations to L.A. DJs. West Coast dance crew the Electric Boogaloos perform on Soul Train, introducing the nation and the world to the West Coast dance style known as popping.

1980

Chicago’s DJ Casper releases ‘‘Casper’s Groovy Ghost Show,’’ the first hip hop record from a Chicago artist. During a campaign rally, Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan says that the landscape of the Bronx reminds him of the destruction he saw in Dresden, Germany, during World War II. The Harlem group The Treacherous Three releases ‘‘The New Rap Language,’’ which debuts a new rhyme style that would become known as speed rap. Harlem’s Crash Crew releases its first single, ‘‘High Power Rap.’’ Seattle’s KFOX 1250 begins airing the West Coast all-rap radio show, Fresh Tracks, produced by DJ Nestor ‘‘Nasty Nes’’ Rodriguez. Spyder D (Duane Hughes) records the song ‘‘Big Apple Rappin’ ’’ with Motown bass player Billy ‘‘Motley’’ Wilson while attending college in the Detroit area. The Atlanta label Shurfine releases ‘‘Space Rap’’ by Danny Renee and the Charisma Crew. This is the first rap record issued by an Atlanta label. Dr. Donda West moves from Atlanta with her three-year-old son Kanye to take a faculty position at Chicago State University. Samoan-American dancer SugaPop brings the East Coast b-boy dance styles of the Rocksteady Crew back to his home in California, introducing West Coast dancers to breaking.

1981

Kool Moe Dee battles Busy Bee at Harlem World in New York City. The Bronx’s Lovebug Starski releases his first single, ‘‘Positive Life.’’ Too $hort sells homemade tapes in the Oakland Coliseum during Oakland Raiders games. Force MCs (later changed to the Force MDs) form in Staten Island.

Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Bronx native Afrika Bambaataa releases his first record, ‘‘Zulu Nation Throwdown,’’ produced by Harlem’s Paul Winley. Travis ‘‘Travitron’’ Lee, the godfather of Twin Cities hip hop, moves from Brooklyn to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota. Bond Hill Crew forms in Cincinnati, Ohio. Common, a Chicago MC, cites Bond Hill as a major influence. Common’s cousin was a member of Bond Hill and he used to visit Cincinnati during summers. New York City’s Mean Machine records ‘‘Disco Dreams,’’ one of the first rap records to feature lyrics in Spanish. 1982

Boston’s Michael Jonzun (Michael Johnson) releases the electro 12’’ single ‘‘Pack Jam (Look out for the OVC),’’ a classic hip hop breakbeat record that would become particularly influential on the Miami Bass Sound. Afrika Islam’s ‘‘Zulu Beats,’’ an all-hip hop mix show, debuts on New Jersey’s WHBI. Bronx’s Kool DJ AJ releases the single ‘‘Ah, That’s the Joint.’’ Mexican-American Kid Frost (Arturo Molina Jr.) begins his rap career in Los Angeles.

1983

Queens group Run DMC signs to Profile Records. DJ Kut begins playing house parties in and around the Peabody Projects in St. Louis. Boston’s Kevin Fleetwood and the Cadillacs release ‘‘Sweat it Off,’’ the first hip hop single from a Boston artist. The hip hop film Wild Style premiers in Boston. Two of the film’s stars, Pink (Sandra Fabara) and Heart (Gloria Williams) come to town to promote the film. Ice-T, who had moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, records ‘‘The Coldest Rap’’ b/w ‘‘Cold Wind Madness’’ with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. This is the first hip hop record produced in Minnesota. Connecticut transplant Mr. Magic launches his Friday and Saturday night radio show, Rap Attack, in New York City. The PBS documentary Style Wars chronicles subway graffiti in New York City.

1984

Philadelphia’s Schoolly D releases his first record, ‘‘Maniac’’ b/w ‘‘Gangster Boogie’’ on his own Schoolly D Records. Queens rap pioneer Davy DMX releases ‘‘One for the Treble.’’

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Atlanta’s Mo-Jo releases ‘‘Jump, Stomp, and Twist.’’ Miami’s first independent rap label, 4-Sight Records, releases its first record, ‘‘Beef Box’’ by Ervin ‘‘M.C. Chief’’ German (featuring Sexy Lady). Members of the Bronx and Harlem’s Rock Steady Crew perform at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons form Def Jam Records, initially selling records out of Rubin’s dorm room at New York University. Def Jam Records releases its first single, ‘‘It’s Yours’’ by the Bronx’s T La Rock, featuring the South Carolina-born Jazzy Jay. Brooklyn native Uncle Ralph McDaniels launches Video Music Box, the first television show to focus primarily on hip hop, on New York’s WNYC-TV. Travitron begins hosting KMOJ’s ‘‘The Hip Hop Shop,’’ the Twin Cities’ first hip hop radio show. Kevvy Kev debuts the first Bay Area hip hop show on Stanford’s KZSU. Sir Mix-A-Lot begins hosting Friday night dances at the Boys and Girls Club in Seattle’s Central District. California-based 2 Live Crew releases a single, ‘‘Revelation,’’ which sells well in Florida and leads to the group’s relocation to Miami in 1986.

1985

Chicago’s MC Sugar Rae Dinky releases ‘‘Cabrini Green Rap,’’ which chronicles life in one of the city’s most dangerous housing projects. Queens rapper LL Cool J releases his debut album, Radio. Elizabeth and Plainfield, New Jersey’s Word of Mouth releases ‘‘King Kut,’’ featuring the turntablism of DJ Cheese. MC Shy D, from Atlanta by way of the Bronx, releases ‘‘Rapp will Never Die’’ on Miami’s 4-Sight Records. Philadelphia’s MC Breeze releases ‘‘Discombobulatorlator,’’ the first rap song to be banned from the radio. The hip hop phenomenon of answer records begins with 14-year-old Queensbridge rapper Roxanne Shante’s ‘‘Roxanne’s Revenge,’’ a response to the Brooklyn group U.T.F.O’s song, ‘‘Roxanne, Roxanne.’’ The exchange between these two artists would spawn, by some estimates, over 100 answer records.

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Miami’s Gigolo Tony and Lacey Lace enter the Roxanne Wars with their record, ‘‘The Parents of Roxanne.’’ 1986

The Bronx’s Jazzy Joyce, one of the earliest female turntablists, releases her debut single, ‘‘It’s My Beat,’’ a collaboration with Sweet T. MC Shan releases ‘‘The Bridge,’’ which ignites the Bridge Wars, conducted via a series of dis records between the Bronx’s Boogie Down Productions and Queens’s Juice Crew. Harlem’s Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew release their debut album Oh, My God! Philadelphia’s DJ Jazzy Jeff wins New Music Seminar DJ Battle for World Supremacy. Fort Greene, Brooklyn’s Just-Ice releases Back to the Old School. Seattle’s Sir Mix-A-Lot releases ‘‘Square Dance Rap,’’ which sees radio play in Great Britain. Geto Boys form in Houston. J. Prince founds Rap-A-Lot Records in Houston. Houston’s Real Chill releases the single, ‘‘Rockin It.’’ Luther Campbell (aka Luke Skyywalker, Luke, and Uncle Luke) founds Skyywalker Records in Miami. 2 Live Crew relocates from Riverside, California, to Miami and adds new members Luther Campbell (from Miami) and Brother Marquis (born in Rochester, New York) to their roster of Californian Mr. Mixx and Fresh Kid Ice, born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Brooklyn. Detroit’s Most Wanted begin performing in Michigan. Kurupt leaves Philadelphia, relocates to Los Angeles, and meets Snoop Dogg. Newark, New Jersey’s MC Hassan and DJ 7-11 release ‘‘Livin’ in the City,’’ an ode to the music scene of their hometown. Run DMC collaborates with rock group Aerosmith in a remake of its 1975 hit ‘‘Walk this Way.’’ New York group The Show Boys releases ‘‘Drag Rap,’’ which would go on to form the backbone of the New Orleans rap subgenre called bounce, which heavily samples the Show Boys’ ‘‘triggaman beat.’’

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Afeni Shakur moves her family from Brooklyn to Baltimore, Maryland, where her son Tupac attends the Baltimore School for Performing Arts and meets classmate Jada Pinkett.

1987

Long Island’s Public Enemy releases Yo! Bum Rush the Show. Ice T’s ‘‘Six N The Morning,’’ launches Los Angeles gangsta rap. Boogie Down Productions releases its debut album, Criminal Minded. Founding member DJ Scott La Rock is killed in the Bronx. Guru founds Gang Starr in Boston. Brooklyn’s Audio Two releases ‘‘Top Billin’,’’ which would become one of hip hop’s most sampled songs. Artists ranging from Queens’s 50 Cent to Mobile, Alabama’s Rich Boy, to Berlin, Germany’s Harris have sampled or reworked portions of this song in their music. Newark, New Jersey’s Queen Latifah releases her first single, ‘‘Princess of the Posse.’’ Philadelphia’s Tuff Crew collaborates with Camden, New Jersey’s Krown Rulers to make the album PH.A.N.J.A.M. (PHiladelphia And New Jersey All-star MCs), which features production work by Ced Gee and Kool Keith, members of the Bronx group Ultramagnetic MCs. Oakland group Digital Underground’s ‘‘Underwater Rimes’’ hits #1 in the Netherlands. Philadelphia’s Money B moves to Oakland and joins Digital Underground. Long Island’s Eric B. & Rakim release Paid in Full. Samoan-American brothers Paul, Ted, Donald, Roscoe, Danny, and David Devoux (later known as Boo-Yaa Tribe) leave South Bay, Los Angeles to perform rap music in front of audiences in Japan.

1988

Long Island’s Public Enemy releases It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back. Philadelphia’s DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince win the first Grammy award presented to a rap artist. N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton is released. Bronx group Ultramagnetic MCs releases Critical Beatdown. Das EFX forms at Virginia State University when Skoob (from Brooklyn) and Krazy Drayzy (from Teaneck, New Jersey) meet at college.

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Orlando, Florida’s DJ Magic Mike collaborates with Miami’s Beat Master Clay D on ‘‘Rock the House,’’ a single that features beatboxing by Queens native Prince Raheim, who had moved to Miami in the early 1980s. Detroit’s Prince Vince releases ‘‘Gangster Funk’’ on Mercury Records. Detroit’s Awesome Dre & the Hardcore Committee release a debut album on Priority Records. Camden, New Jersey’s Krown Rulers release their debut album, Paper Chase. Tupac Shakur moves with his family from Baltimore to Marin City, California. Brooklyn’s MC Lyte releases her debut album Lyte as a Rock. Two Harvard students, Dave Mays and John Schecter, begin printing The Source. MC Shy D releases ‘‘Atlanta, That’s Where I Stay,’’ the first rap single to celebrate living in Atlanta. Harlem’s Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock release ‘‘It Takes Two.’’ The Samoan-American Devoux brothers take on the name Boo-Yaa Tribe and return from Japan to Los Angeles. 1989

Bronx duo Nice & Smooth release their self-titled debut album. Long Island’s De La Soul releases its debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising. Brooklyn’s Big Daddy Kane includes a live version of ‘‘The Wrath of Kane,’’ performed at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, on his album, It’s a Big Daddy Thing. Guru moves from Boston to New York. Houston-born DJ Premier joins Gang Starr. Brand Nubian forms in New Rochelle, New York. Dutch group Urban Dance Squad sees airplay on MTV and on U.S. radio with its debut album Mental Floss for the Globe and the single ‘‘A Deeper Shade of Soul.’’ Urban Dance Squad’s music is a fusion of rap and rock. Houston’s Geto Boys release Grip It! On That Other Level, which is later picked up and reissued by Rick Rubin’s Def American label.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Newark, New Jersey’s Queen Latifah releases ‘‘Ladies First,’’ featuring British rapper Monie Love. Atlanta group Success-N-Effect’s debut album, In the Hood, sells more than half a million copies. Cleveland’s Bango the B-Boy Outlaw releases a single, ‘‘Big Bango Theory,’’ on Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate Records. Cleveland’s Brothers 4 the Struggle release the single, ‘‘Ready Rocks,’’ which sees nationwide airplay. Cuban-American Mellow Man Ace releases ‘‘Mentirosa,’’ a landmark single in Latin rap.

1990

Bronx’s Lord Finesse and DJ Mike Smooth release Funky Technician. Master P founds No Limit Records in New Orleans. Queens group A Tribe Called Quest releases its debut album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. Professor Griff, having left the Long Island group Public Enemy in the wake of controversy over his anti-Semitic comments, signs to Luther Campbell’s Miami-based Skyywalker Records. Ice Cube works with New York’s Bomb Squad to produce his first solo album, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Long Island’s Public Enemy release Fear of a Black Planet. Detroit’s Kid Rock releases his debut album, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast, on Jive Records. Atlanta’s Kilo releases ‘‘America Has a Problem . . . Cocaine,’’ which sells around 40,000 copies nationwide. Cincinnati’s Ronnie Ron scores a regional hit with his single ‘‘When Da Hum Plays.’’ Trenton, New Jersey’s Poor Righteous Teachers release ‘‘Rock Dis Funky Joint.’’ The music video features the group rhyming underneath the ‘‘Trenton Makes’’ bridge. 2 Live Crew’s 1989 album, As Nasty as They Wanna Be, is declared legally obscene by Judge Mel Grossman in Broward County, Florida. San Jose’s Peanut Butter Wolf and Charizma meet and begin recording together.

1991

Brian ‘‘Baby’’ Williams founds Cash Money Records in New Orleans. Queens group Organized Konfusion releases a self-titled debut album.

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Miami’s 2 Live Crew releases Live In Concert, the first live rap album in history. Chicago’s Tung Twista (now Twista) releases his first album Runnin’ Off at Da Mouth. Boston’s Ed O.G. and Da Bulldogs release their debut album Life of a Kid in the Ghetto, and the national hit single ‘‘I Got to Have It.’’ The Micranots form in Minneapolis. Jibri Wise One becomes Cincinnati’s first rap artist to reach Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart, with his first single, ‘‘The House the Dog Built.’’ Flint, Michigan’s MC Breed’s ‘‘Ain’t No Future in Your Frontin’ ’’ becomes a national hit. Memphis’s Gangsta Pat releases his debut album, #1 Suspect. Dr. Dre and Suge Knight found Death Row Records in Los Angeles. Bronx artist Tim Dog releases ‘‘Fuck Compton,’’ which initiates a series of East Coast/West Coast dis records. Staten Island’s UMCs release their debut album, Fruits of Nature. 1992

The Bronx’s Diamond and the Pyschotic Neurotics release Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop. Compton’s Tweedy Bird Loc releases ‘‘Fuck the South Bronx/This Is Compton.’’ Atlanta’s Arrested Development releases the countrified single ‘‘Tennessee.’’ The group is led by Todd ‘‘Speech’’ Thomas, a Milwaukee native who spent summers with his grandmother in rural Tennessee. Atlanta’s Success-N-Effect releases the single ‘‘The Ultimate DriveBy,’’ in which the song’s narrator fantasizes about killing President George Bush. Virginia’s The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) produce SWV’s single, ‘‘Love Will Be Right Here.’’ Port Arthur, Texas’s UGK releases its debut album, The Southern Way, on Big Tyme Records. Ice Cube concert ends in a riot at downtown Minneapolis’s First Avenue club. Newark’s Redman releases his debut album, Whut? Thee Album. Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Litefoot releases The Money E.P. Litefoot claims to be the first Native American to perform rap music.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop

1993

Minneapolis’s Rhymesayers releases Headshots, Volume One. Queens group Onyx releases a debut album, Bacdafucup, featuring production from Run DMC’s Jam Master Jay. Memphis’s Eightball and MJG release Comin’ Out Hard on Houston’s Suave label. Atlanta’s Outkast releases its first single, ‘‘Player’s Ball,’’ a tribute to Atlanta’s black youth culture. The song spends six weeks at the top of the Billboard rap charts. Japanese MCs Scha Dara Parr and Takagi Kan are featured on De La Soul’s ‘‘Long Island Wildin’,’’ marking the first appearance of Japanese rap on a song by a U.S. group. Newark’s Lords of the Underground release their debut album Here Come the Lords. Tha Alkaholiks release the group’s debut album 21 and Over. This L.A. -based group consists of E-Swift (from Toledo, Ohio), Tash (from Columbus, Ohio), and J-Ro (from Pacoima, California). Philadelphia’s The Roots releases its debut album Organix. Brooklyn’s Black Moon releases its debut album Enta Da Stage. Staten Island’s Wu-Tang Clan releases Enter the 36 Chambers, bringing mainstream attention to NYC’s forgotten borough. Detroit’s The Boss releases Born Gangstaz. Dr. Dre’s The Chronic goes platinum. On songs from the album, Dre disses his former N.W.A. bandmate Eazy-E, as well as Bronx artist Tim Dog and Miami’s Luke. Miami’s Luke releases ‘‘Cowards in Compton,’’ a response to Dr. Dre’s ‘‘Dre Day.’’ Brooklyn’s Masta Ace records Slaughtahouse for the L.A. label Delicious Vinyl. Digable Planets debuts as one of the first rap groups since 2 Live Crew to be made up of musicians from multiple cities. Although the group is based in Brooklyn, it is made up of Seattle’s Butterly, Philadelphia’s Doodlebug and King Britt, and Ladybug Mecca, from Washington, D.C. Sudden Rush, originator of Hawaiian hip hop, begins performing as a group.

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Philadelphia-based hip hop music video show, Urban X-pressions, first airs on WGTW TV 48. Bronx rapper Fat Joe releases his debut album Represent. Charizma, from the San Jose suburb of Milpitas, is shot and killed in a mugging. Los Angeles’s Funkdoobiest releases its debut album Which Doobie U B? The three members are Son Doobie (a Puerto Rican MC), DJ Ralph M (a Chicano DJ), and Tomahawk Funk (a Lakota Nation MC). 1994

Chicago’s Common Sense (now Common) releases his breakout sophomore album Resurrection and the single ‘‘I Used to Love H.E.R.,’’ which laments that hip hop has strayed from its roots. Brooklyn MCs Masta Ace, Buckshot, and Special Ed form the supergroup Crooklyn Dodgers for the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s film Crooklyn. Cleveland’s Bone Thugs-N-Harmony releases Creepin on ah Come Up on Eazy-E’s L.A.-based Ruthless Records. Phoenix’s WithOut Rezervation, a Native American group, releases Are You Ready for W.O.R.? Bronx-born Raul ‘‘DJ Raw’’ Medina, Jr., who had moved to Miami at the age of 11, stages the first Hoodstock, a free, all-day hip hop festival in Miami’s Roberto Clemente Park. Ted Lucas founds Slip-N-Slide Records in Miami. The Atlanta rap duo Outkast releases its debut album Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. The Source’s November issue devotes a large section to the Atlanta hip hop scene, with articles on Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin, OutKast, and the Organized Noize production team. Too $hort relocates from East Oakland to Atlanta. Micranots relocate from Minneapolis to Atlanta.

1995

L.A.’s Snoop Dogg and Atlanta’s Outkast are booed at the Source Awards in New York City. Outkast wins best new artist, and states, ‘‘The South got somethin’ to say.’’ L.A. rappers Tha Dogg Pound are fired upon as they record a video for ‘‘New York, New York’’ in NYC. Bronx rapper Nine releases his debut album Nine Livez.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop The Bronx’s Camp Lo releases its debut album, Uptown Saturday Night. Harlem’s Big L releases his debut album LifestylE-Z ov da Poor and Dangerous. Memphis’s Three 6 Mafia releases Mystic Stylez. Atlanta’s Goodie Mob releases its debut album, Soul Food, which sells 500,000 copies. Bay Area rap artists Del the Funky Homosapien, Souls of Mischief, and Casual found Hieroglyphics Imperium Recordings, which would become one of hip hop’s strongest independent labels.

1996

San Jose’s Peanut Butter Wolf founds Stones Throw Records in Los Angeles. Six Western Kentucky University students form the group Nappy Roots in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The group consists of Fishscales from Milledgeville, Georgia, R. Prophet from Oakland, California, and Skinny DeVille, Ron Clutch, Big V, and B. Stille from Kentucky. Willie D, formerly of the Geto Boys, begins hosting a radio show, Reality Check, in Houston. Tupac Shakur is shot several times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. He dies seven days later. Many fans still attribute his murder to the East Coast vs. West Coast wars. Cincinnati’s Kenny P releases the Unfadeable mixtape. Washington, D.C.’s Nonchalant reaches #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 with her single, ‘‘5 O’Clock.’’ Detroit’s Eminem releases his first full-length record, Infinite. Virginians Timbaland and Missy Elliot write and produce ‘‘If Your Girl Only Knew,’’ a top 10 hit for Aaliyah.

1997

Virginia’s Missy Elliott releases her first solo album, Supa Dupa Fly. Miami’s Trick Daddy Dollars (he would later drop ‘‘Dollars’’ from his name) releases his debut album, Based on a True Story. Six months after his rival Tupac was murdered in Las Vegas, the Notorious B.I.G. is shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in California. DJ Charlie Chan and Luq begin hosting freestyle battle nights at the Hi Pointe Cafe´ in Saint Louis. Michael ‘‘5000’’ Watts, a Northside Houston native, founds the Swisha House record label.

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San Diego’s Lil Rob releases his debut album Crazy Life. 1998

Cash Money Records CEO Brian ‘‘Baby’’ Williams signs a $30 million pressing and distribution contract with Universal. Cash Money artist Juvenile releases the albums Solja Rags and 400 Degreez. Dr. Dre signs Detroit’s Eminem to his Aftermath label. Phonte, Big Pooh, and 9th Wonder form the group Little Brother at North Carolina Central University in Durham. Fat Pat is shot to death in Houston. South Bronx’s Big Pun, a Puerto Rican rapper, releases his debut album Capital Punishment.

1999

Providence, Rhode Island’s Sage Francis releases the mixtape Sick of Waiting . . . . Pontiac, Michigan’s Binary Star releases Waterworld. B.G. releases the hit song ‘‘Bling-Bling,’’ which brings a piece of New Orleans slang into the mainstream. Big L is shot to death in Harlem. East Orange, New Jersey’s Lauryn Hill is nominated for 10 Grammy awards for her debut solo album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Too $hort collaborates with several Southern rappers on his eleventh album, Can’t Stay Away. France’s MC Solaar guest stars on Missy Elliot’s ‘‘All N My Grill.’’ Kansas City, Missouri’s Tech N9ne releases his debut album The Calm Before the Storm.

2000

Jay-Z collaborates with Texas rappers UGK and Virginia producer Timbaland on his single ‘‘Big Pimpin’.’’ Nelly puts St. Louis on the hip hop map when his debut album, Country Grammar, hits # 1 on the Billboard chart. Outkast’s album Stankonia sells five million copies and is the first allrap record nominated for the ‘‘Album of the Year’’ award at the Grammys. Houston’s DJ Screw, who pioneered the Screwed production style, dies of a heart attack attributed to his abuse of promethazine, a drug closely associated with Screwed music.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Jackson, Mississippi’s David Banner releases his debut album Them Firewater Boyz Vol. 1. South Bronx’s Big Pun dies of respiratory failure in New York at the age of 28.

2001

Kahokule’a ‘‘Hoku’’ Haiku founds Ill Valley Productions in Hawaii. The group mixes pidgin with local dialects in songs like ‘‘Old School Toyota.’’ Lexington, Kentucky’s CunninLynguists release their debut album Will Rap for Food. Nas releases ‘‘Da Bridge 2001,’’ featuring Queens all-stars Marley Marl, MC Shan, Tragedy, Cormega, Millenium Thug, Nature, and Mobb Deep. The song is a tribute to the original Queens anthem, MC Shan’s 1986 single, ‘‘The Bridge.’’ Kanye West moves from Chicago to Hoboken, New Jersey, in order to be close to the production scene in New York City. Milwaukee’s Stricklin guest stars on Masta Ace’s Disposable Arts.

2002

Kentucky’s Nappy Roots release their debut album Watermelon, Chicken, and Gritz. Kentucky Governor Paul Patton declares September 16, 2002 ‘‘Nappy Roots Day.’’ Philadelphia DJs Diplo and Low Budget form the group Hollertronix and begin playing parties at a Ukrainian social club in North Philadelphia. Chicago’s Kanye West is severely injured in a car crash in L.A. Louisville’s Code Red releases a debut album featuring Brooklyn’s Masta Ace and Bronx MCs Whipper Whip, Grandmaster Caz, and C-Rayz Walz. Houston’s Color Changin’ Click wins The Source’s award for best independent album for Get Ya Mind Correct. Prophetix releases the debut album High Risk. The group consists of Eddie Meeks from Decatur, Georgia, Mello Melanin from Memphis, Tennessee, and Jon Doe from Glasgow, Kentucky. Run DMC’s Jam Master Jay is shot and killed in Queens.

2003

Bronx rapper C-Rayz Walz releases Ravipops (The Substance). Queens rapper 50 Cent releases Get Rich or Die Tryin’.

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RZA, mastermind behind the Staten Island supergroup Wu-Tang Clan, releases The World According to RZA, an album that features rappers from France, Germany, Sweden, and other countries around the world. Harlem’s The Diplomats releases its first group album, Diplomatic Immunity. Brooklyn’s Jay-Z releases The Black Album, which features producers from around the country: Durham, North Carolina’s 9th Wonder; Chicago’s Kanye West; Paterson, New Jersey’s Just Blaze, Virginia’s The Neptunes and Timbaland; Detroit’s Eminem; Compton, California’s DJ Quik; and Long Island’s Rick Rubin. Kansas City, Missouri’s Mac Lethal releases his debut album Men Are from Mars. Pornstars Are from Earth. 2004

Danger Mouse, a DJ originally from White Plains, New York, who had spent years working in Athens, Georgia, before living in England in 2004, releases The Grey Album, a mashup of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ The White Album. Durham, North Carolina’s Phonte collaborates with Dutch producer Nicolay to form the group Foreign Exchange, whose first album, Connected, was made by sending beats and vocals back and forth via email and instant messenger. Chicago’s Kanye West releases The College Dropout. L.A.’s Snoop Dogg recruits Virginia’s The Neptunes to produce several tracks for his album R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece. Virginia’s Pharrell and L.A.’s Snoop Dogg collaborate on ‘‘Drop It Like It’s Hot.’’ Norfolk, Virginia’s Clipse forms the group Re-Up Gang, joining forces with Philadelphia MCs Ab-Liva and Sandman. Boston DJ Clinton Sparks records Re-Up’s first mixtape, We Got it 4 Cheap: Volume 1. RA Scion and Sabzi begin recording together in Seattle. They go on to form the group Common Market. RA Scion (Ryan Abeo) was born in Louisville in 1974, and lived abroad in Greece and Zambia before moving to Seattle. Brooklyn’s Masta Ace and Boston’s Edo G team up to make an album, Make Some Noise. Dutch producer Nicolay and Houston rapper Kay meet on the Web site www.okayplayer.com and begin collaborating on songs via the Internet.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop Bay Area rapper Mac Dre is killed in a drive-by shooting in Kansas City, Missouri. Stones Throw Records releases The Third Unheard: Connecticut Hip Hop, 1979–1983, a compilation of fourteen tracks from old-school Connecticut rappers. Omaha, Nebraska’s Mars Black releases his debut album Folks Music. Nashville’s Young Buck releases his debut album Straight Outta Cashville.

2005

Hurricane Katrina displaces New Orleans rappers to other cities across the country, spreading New Orleans influence. Memphis’s Three 6 Mafia beats fellow Tennessean Dolly Parton to win a Grammy for their song ‘‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’’ from the Hustle and Flow soundtrack. Brooklyn’s Buckshot and Raleigh-Durham’s 9th Wonder release their debut collaboration, Chemistry. London-born Sri Lankan artist M.I.A. is denied entry to the United States to work with Virginian producer Timbaland on her second album, Kala. Tallahassee, Florida’s T-Pain releases his debut abum Rappa Ternt Sanga.

2005– 2006

New Orleans rappers respond to Katrina: Lil Wayne releases ‘‘Georgia (Bush),’’ a song that criticizes President George W. Bush for his lack of action to help the city of New Orleans. Juvenile, who lost his home in the hurricane, releases the video for ‘‘What’s Happenin.’’ The video depicts the destruction of New Orleans neighborhoods and the lack of reaction from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who are portrayed in the video as uncaring politicians.

2006

Miami’s Rick Ross releases his debut album, Port of Miami. Queens rapper Nas angers some Southern rappers with his album title Hip Hop Is Dead. Atlanta’s Ludacris appears on stage wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘‘Hip Hop Ain’t Dead. It Lives in the South.’’ Houston’s Big HAWK is shot to death in his hometown, eight years after his brother Fat Pat was murdered. Atlanta rapper T.I. and his entourage are involved in an altercation after a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio. T.I.’s assistant and childhood friend Philant Johnson is shot and killed.

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Washington, D.C.’s Tabi Bonney, born in West Africa, releases his first hit single, ‘‘The Pocket.’’ Dutch MC Jerome XL records ‘‘The Power of Speech’’ with Queens MC Craig G. Ann Arbor, Michigan’s Tadd ‘‘Dabrye’’ Mullinix releases his debut album Two/Three. Princeton University hosts a hip hop symposium, featuring Princeton professor Cornel West, rapper Talib Kweli, and U.S. Representative Maxine Waters. Dutch hip hop producer Nicolay moves from Utrecht, The Netherlands, to Wilmington, North Carolina. Mac Lethal founds Black Clover Records in Kansas City, Missouri. 2007

New York state officials declare 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx as ‘‘The Birthplace of Hip Hop.’’ The Bronx’s KRS-One and Queens’s Marley Marl bury the Bridge Wars hatchet and join forces to make Hip Hop Lives. DJ Khaled releases ‘‘We Takin Over,’’ a nationwide posse cut featuring DJ Khaled and Rick Ross from Miami, Akon from New Jersey, T.I. from Atlanta, and Lil Wayne and Birdman from New Orleans. Mobile, Alabama’s Rich Boy releases his self-titled debut album. Chicago artists Kid Sister and The Cool Kids launch a new wave of Chicago hip hop. Houston’s Pimp C, of UGK, dies of sleep apnea complications attributed to his abuse of promethazine. Trenton, New Jersey’s Wise Intelligent, of the 1990s group Poor Righteous Teachers, releases The Talented Timothy Taylor, the first of a series of new solo albums. Wise Intelligent founds Intelligent Kidz, an after-school tutoring program for children in the Trenton school system.

2008

Brooklyn’s Killah Priest and Philadelphia’s Chief Kamachi team up to make an album, Beautiful Minds. Columbus, Ohio’s Camu Tao dies of lung cancer at 30 years of age. The Snow Goons (German producers) release Black Snow, featuring American rap artists from Philadelphia, North Carolina, Brooklyn, and Boston.

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Timeline of American Regional Hip Hop New York Governor David Paterson pardons Bronx rapper Slick Rick, who had been facing deportation to his native United Kingdom since 2002. Flint, Michigan’s MC Breed dies of kidney failure in Michigan, having recorded his last song, ‘‘Everyday I Wait,’’ two days before his death. Morrisville, Pennsylvania’s Asher Roth releases The Greenhouse Effect, Volume 1, a mixtape produced by Don Cannon and DJ Drama, who moved from Philadelphia to Atlanta to form the production team The Aphilliates. Louisville’s Static Major dies during a surgical procedure in his hometown. Lil Wayne’s ‘‘Lollipop,’’ the last song on which Static Major performed, reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Cleveland, Ohio’s Kid Cudi releases the acclaimed mixtape A Kid Named Cudi.

2009

Washington D.C.’s Wale—a second-generation Nigerian-American, releases Back to the Feature, a mixtape with production from North Carolina’s 9th Wonder. Tanya Morgan, a group with members from Brooklyn and Cincinnati, releases Brooklynati, and develops a Web site touting the virtual city of Brooklynati. Bronx organizations The Point CDC and City Lore present ‘‘Bring Out the Sound System: The West Indian Roots of Hip Hop,’’ featuring Kool Herc, Kool DJ Red Alert, and Ralph McDaniels. East St. Louis’ Scripts and Screwz see MTVU airplay for their video, ‘‘Brick.’’

—Mickey Hess

CHAPTER 13 The Evolution of the Second City Lyric: Hip Hop in Chicago and Gary, Indiana Warren Scott Cheney Chicago, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana, are situated on the southwestern edge of Lake Michigan, and in many ways the stretch of land that includes these two cities is the most musically diverse and culturally rich in all of America. Musically, Chicago is home to history-making scenes of jazz, blues, and house music. Gospel, soul, rock and roll, alt-country, and Chicano punk also have roots in Chicago. Additionally, the city lays claim to over 150 clubs devoted to what seems like an unlimited assortment of music. Culturally speaking, Chicago’s Cook County boasts the highest concentration of African Americans nationwide, and the overall minority population percentage in Cook County—which includes a booming Latino population —is only rivaled by Los Angeles County (Little). This musical and cultural variety adds energy and authenticity to the way art and music are created and consumed. Even so, Chicago is not easy to define. Figuratively speaking, it is known as the Second City (to New York). In terms of population, it is the third largest city in the United States. And when discussions of hip hop arise, Chicago is often lost between the two coasts. Even worse, Chicago has come into the national spotlight for negative reasons. Chicago is infamous for the failed Cabrini Green housing project, and Gary, Indiana was most recently the national murder capital in 2005 (Jones). Yet hip hop thrives in greater Chicagoland, as each of the four elements of hip hop are not only actively enjoyed today but also take on a very unique flavor and history. Graffiti writing and break dancing appeared in Chicago long before MCs and DJs were recognizable on the local stage. The first Chicago graffiti crews can be traced at least as far back as 1978, while break crews began to appear in the early 1980s. Times have changed since these first crews started to appear, but MCs and DJs still define what it means to not only have a ‘‘Midwest sense’’ in their music but also to address the issues that affect their neighborhoods and lives as part of the greater urban frontier. Though the hip hop style in Chicago and Gary may not be immediately recognizable nationwide, artists have something to prove,

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and it comes in the flavor of an unexpected and unique hybrid between gangsta rap and social consciousness. On his 2004 single ‘‘Jesus Walks,’’ Kanye West said the Midwest is ‘‘young and restless,’’ and these two terms explain much about Chicago hip hop. The Midwest obviously falls between the West and East Coasts, but what is not so clear is how Chicago hip hop thrives in an imaginative middle ground, a kind of creative liminality. Where either coast has a specific history and is known for a specific type of music, Midwest hip hop artists don’t have a well-trodden musical path to follow. In Chicagoland, there is a range of musical styles to choose from and respond to, and what results is a feeling of daring and freedom. A quotation in the Chicago Reader from Donald ‘‘Vakill’’ Mason sums up the ethos of the Chicago rap scene. He says, ‘‘The thing about Chicago MCs, the reason why we’re being embraced right now, is that we ain’t selling crack rock and aiming nines at your head for sixteen songs straight. We giving people real hip-hop: straight conversation, introspection, battle shit, political shit. You getting it all’’ (Mehr). Chicago MCs are willing to venture out beyond the status quo, addressing real issues that affect their listeners. Whether rappers adopt gangsta rap sensibilities (like Twista or Do or Die), conscious rap (like Common or Iomos Marad), or a combination thereof (like Kanye West or Rhymefest), each artist exhibits a distinct connection to their hometown, which comes through in their distinct styles (see sidebar: ‘‘Chicago Royalty: Who Wears the Crown?’’). Even though MCs currently draw the most attention, Graffiti was perhaps the earliest manifestation of hip hop in Chicago. As is the same with the other elements, graffiti was imported from New York. A writer named Angel came to Chicago from New York in 1978 and painted his first few pieces in the northwest Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square. He inspired a tagger named Berto (or B-Boy-B), and together they formed the Angel Berto Crew (ABC). Over the next five or six years, such artists as Skye, Flash, Gizmo, Drip, Rosy, Repo, Peppermint, Nikke, Imari, Stormy, Scorpio, Catch 22, Take 2, Pepo, Rip 66, Trixter, Pilot, and Dice joined the crew. With all the new additions, the name was changed to the Artistic Bombing Crew. Later, Take 2, Trixter, Risk, and Hate made the biggest names for themselves, being featured in newspaper articles, magazines, and books. Other crews emerged over the years, including the GGC (Graffiti Groove Crew), UAC (United Artists Crew), TCK (Till Chicago’s Killed), and CMW (Chicago’s Most Wanted). Even today, writers are still starting crews, literally trying to make and leave a name for themselves (Artistic). Naturally, much of Chicago graffiti centered around the trains; if the graffiti wasn’t on or in the trains it was painted on the most visible walls of buildings along the lines. The trains provided a canvas for their work but also a cheap means of locomotion and freedom, allowing the crews to be connected throughout the city. As a result, Chicago’s graffiti scene also has a history of all-city hip hop meetings. The writer Warp organized the first meeting in the mid-1980s, and even though they ended up being more for crews to show their skills, the meetings still offered

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CHICAGO ROYALTY: WHO WEARS THE CROWN? Whether it’s a rivalry between parts of the city (Southside, Northside, or Westside), over El train lines (the north/south Redline and the east/west blue line), over baseball teams (White Sox in the south and Cubs in the north), or even area codes (312 in the downtown loop and 773 elsewhere in the city), each Chicago MC negotiates their position in the imagined Chicago hierarchy of MCs, and they nominate themselves with varying degrees of egotism. Common’s 2005 video for ‘‘The Corner,’’ depicts typical Southside street corners, with CTA busses and El trains moving grimly through the neighborhoods. In the first verse for this song, Common mentions the Southside avenues, Stony Island and Cottage Grove, in an effort to localize his roots and show where his influence began. On the 2008 Grammy Award winning song ‘‘Southside,’’ Common raps about how critics in 1994 called Common Chicago’s Nas, and he follows up with, ‘‘Now them niggas know I’m one of Chi-town’s gods.’’ Rhymefest brashly stepped forward in his 2006 song ‘‘Chicago-Rillaz’’ saying, ‘‘Twista, Common and Kanye look real comfortable’’ and later compares himself to a bullet in the ghetto, something that can’t be ignored. And perhaps most emotionally charged is Kanye West’s song ‘‘Homecoming,’’ off his latest album Graduation. This song personifies Chicago as a woman who wants to be represented well; therefore West raps, ‘‘Every interview I’m representing you making you proud.’’ Even though there is perhaps a feigned animosity between these rappers, it is obvious that amongst the diverse styles there is a unity that wants Chicago to be the leader in a new hip hop era. Rhymefest succinctly sums this up in his 2006 song ‘‘All I Do,’’ saying ‘‘Chi-Town stand up, we supposed to win!’’

a general cohesiveness that no other large city had. This kind of grassroots organization exemplifies hip hop in Chicago, a city where community and networks tend to be created by the people, from the bottom up. That said, there are examples of the larger Chicago community taking notice of graffiti writers. In 1998, the Mexican Fine Arts Museum hosted an exhibit of Graffiti Art that included art from Trixter, Orko, and Slang and was supposed to encourage inroads between the CTA and graff writers. Organizers hoped that young people would see the success of a few bombers in the art world and decide to paint on canvases rather than walls (Roper). It is safe to say that the event ended up being little more than a publicity pipe dream, especially since each of the writers included in the event soon continued their work on the walls of the city (see sidebar: ‘‘This Means War: Graffiti Writers and the CTA’’). Graffiti wasn’t the only underground community present early on. Just as b-boying (break dancing) hit its apex in N.Y. and L.A., break dancing in Chicago

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THIS MEANS WAR: GRAFFITI AND THE CTA The Chicago Transit Authority was established in 1947 as a unified answer to various existing public transportation offerings. CTA buses and trains move almost 24 hours a day, making them the most used transit in Chicago (with Metra and PACE largely filling out the transportation needs of suburban riders). Trains and buses have always been a target for taggers and bombers, and over the years the CTA has had to fork out millions of dollars a year to keep their lines clean, the rate reaching one million a year as far back as 1985. The same 1985 Chicago Sun Times article mentions the exploits of a number of crews including a group of ‘‘vandals’’ who entered a bus garage and hit a new bus by leaving ‘‘gang graffiti on the back, front and cushions of all fifty seats, on every window, on all the walls, inside and out, and on the length of the ceiling.’’ The Artistic Bombing Crew was also credited in this article with vandalizing 60 different train cars in two different train yards in one night. With this kind of money at stake, it is no wonder that the CTA described the writers as gang members even though the strict truth of this statement probably isn’t true. Graffiti writers were made up of crews, but their connection to street gangs and violence was rarely direct. In the summer of 1986, Chicago tried a new tactic: arresting taggers. In 1993, Mayor Richard Daley implemented his ‘‘Graffiti Blasters’’ program with a budget of 3.5 million and also banned the sale of spray paint to minors within city limits (Black). Though these programs are making headway, graffiti writers are not slowing down. The Internet has allowed writers to congregate and make plans in a nonconspicuous manner. Also, new crews are popping up all over the city as young taggers try to get in on their piece of fame.

REFERENCE Black, Tom. ‘‘The Handwriting’s on the Wall: Cities Can Win the Graffiti War.’’ American City & County 112 (March 1997): 3.

grew stronger in a different direction. The dance was already a runaway hit nationwide, with the Rock Steady Crew and NY City Breakers touring the world and appearing on TV. Alternatively, break dancing existed in Chicago, but it was not until later that dancers from the city offered up their own distinct flavor and moves. Early dance crews or cliques like House-O-Matic, U-Phi-U, and K-Phi-9 experimented with break styles and made a name for these new dances in the mid to late 1980s. The first of these new dance sensations was called jukin’—a term borrowed

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from the 1930s and the era of juke(box) dancing. This form of Chicago dance has two meanings that are variations on one basic premise: the combination of bent knees and fast body movements. The first form of jukin’ is often likened to grinding in a more vulgar sense reminiscent of a club scene (with bodies coming into close contact), whereas, the other is an organized set of steps and hand movements that is often carried out in a group setting. In fact, there are a number of jukin’ dance troupes in Chicago, an example being House Arrest 2, which has chapters across the country (Jacubiak). The other form of Chicago dance is called footworkin’. When the music starts, the dancer will start hopping and gliding in preparation for the main steps. These preliminary steps make way to a frenetic movement of the legs and feet. The upper body moves to the beat and may even incorporate moves from top rocking (a West Coast phenomenon), but the feet are the main focus. The current king of footworkin’ is Charles Parks of Chicago Heights; this title is conferred to the winner of a summertime competition each year called the ‘‘Chi-Town Get Down.’’ His ‘‘battle clique’’ is named Creation and is understood to be ‘‘at the forefront of the movement,’’ according to Kuumba Lynx (qtd. in Briggs). The other point of large-scale attention for the footworkin’ movement came when Missy Elliot included the dance clique Full Effect in her video for ‘‘Lose Control.’’ It is important to here mention that both of these Chicago dances can be performed to almost any hip hop track, but the common trend in Chicago is to use hip house or even straight house tracks. This is a point of contention for some hip hop artists and fans because the original house music that was so popular in the 1980s drew national music attention away from aspiring hip hop groups (see sidebar: ‘‘House, Hip Hop, and Hip House’’). At about the same time, the earliest hip hop DJs in Chicago responded to the music of Franky Knuckles and Ron Harper, the most influential house music DJs of the early 1980s. DJ Casper (born Terry Marshall), a radio DJ from NY, offered the first rap song in Chicago on AVI Records in 1980, ‘‘Casper’s Groovey Ghost Show.’’ Next, DJ Groove became the first homegrown Chicagoan to bring DJing and MCing together with his ‘‘Super Shock Body Rock.’’ MC Sugar Rae Dinky —who wrote the song ‘‘Cabrini Green Rap’’—worked at the beginning of an era of mixtapes and relative anonymity for MCs that only ended in the early 1990s with the well-known MCs Twista and Common. College radio stations from University of Chicago and Northwestern University also provided an outlet for aspiring artists and served as a way for people to hear the new music from around Chicagoland and the rest of the nation (see sidebar: College Radio and Hip Hop). The MCs really started to explode in the early to mid-1990s with albums from Twista (1991), Common (1992), Ten Tray (1993), Da Brat (1994), No I.D. & Dug Infinite (1997), Crucial Conflict (1996), and Do or Die (1996). These artists were the first to make Chicago hip hop recognizable, especially to a national audience. They also paved the way for artists who would appear towards the turn of the millennium. Each of these early Chicago MCs had a style all their own, but the

HOUSE, HIP HOP, AND HIP HOUSE Imagine the scene. News about house music traveled via word-of-mouth, and the new music could be heard on the radio late at night. The music was made for dancing; it was uptempo (using a steady, pounding beat), included samples from disco and funk, and catered to a minority counter culture. Groups of these young party people flocked to the nondescript, industrial, downtown neighborhood where they found a new club called the Warehouse. Robert Williams (born in New York) opened the Warehouse in 1977, offering a welcoming new establishment for a music culture that was predominantly peopled by homosexual males. DJ Frankie Knuckles, himself a transplant from New York, was the musical wizard behind the new music craze (later opening his own club, called the Power Plant). After a few years, Robert Williams also opened the Music Box, where Ron Hardy was the resident DJ. During these early years, radio station WBMX 102.7 also showcased house music by letting DJs take over the sound waves and play all night. The most famous of these DJs formed a group called the Hot Mix Five (made up of Farley ‘‘Jackmaster Funk’’ Kieth, Scott ‘‘Smokin’ ’’ Seals, Mickey ‘‘Mixin’ ’’ Oliver, Kenny ‘‘Jammin’ ’’ Jason, and Ralphie ‘‘Rockin’ ’’ Rosario). It was largely these two nightclubs and late-night radio that allowed house music to flourish. As time went on, it became obvious that the nightclub vibrancy of house music was marketable, and in 1983 Larry Sherman started the first house music label, Trax records. Larry Heard and Marshall Jefferson were among the label’s first releases. This commodification marks what many believe to be the official beginning of house music as an institution. One illustration of this—and indeed a testament to the international success of house music —is Mayor Richard M. Daley’s proclamation of the House Unity Day in Chicago on August 10, 2005. The press release cites 2005 as the 21st anniversary of House music, giving special note to deceased DJs Ron Hardy, Jesse Velez, Kool Rocksteady, and Dr. Richard Cook. The press release also mentions Trax Records, DJ International Records, Screamin’ Rachael, Larry Sherman, Rocky Jones, Lewis Pitzele, Frankie Knuckles, Esquire Jay B. Ross, Marshall Jefferson, Jesse Saunders, Chip E., Mazi, Vince Lawrence, Farley Jackmaster Funk, Ten City, Maurice Joshua, Steve Silk Hurley, Paul Johnson, Mickey Oliver, The Hot Mix 5, 3 Degrees, Bad Boy Bill, Rationation, and Brian Keigher of Chicago Cultural Affairs. While house music was catching on in Chicago, hip hop was already established in New York. At the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, house music was catching on in clubs, but at the same time in New York, hip hop music was just beginning to combine DJs and MCs on recorded tracks. The most well-known of these combination tracks were Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s ‘‘Superrapin’ ’’ and the Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight.’’ The equivalent of these groups began to show up in Chicago in the early 1980s, with artists like Terry ‘‘DJ Casper’’ Marshall, DJ Groove, and later, MC Sugar Rae Dinky. These innovators appeared at a time in Chicago when it would have been impossible to create music without making at least a subconscious comparison to house music.

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COLLEGE RADIO AND HIP HOP Two Chicago radio stations to open up their airwaves to hip hop music in the 1980s were WHPK and WNUR. WHPK is based out of South Chicago and resides on the University of Chicago campus, while WNUR is based out of Evanston, Illinois, and resides on the Nortwestern University campus. Both stations have been known for playing progressive and unknown music over the years. WHPK currently features the sounds of underground Chicago DJs and sometimes offers a sampling of music from the local label Molemen Records. During the mid-1980s, WHPK started to sample hip hop tracks from new artists and have tried to continue in the same way with their late-night hip hop programming. JP Chill was one of the first DJs to work on hip hop at WHPK, and he is well-known by rappers who heard his mixes growing up. WNUR started a show in the mid-1980s called Street Beat, which featured largely unknown house and hip hop tracks from around the world. The current programming has merged into a concentration of house and electronic/ dance music, but it still survives as an early promoter of hip hop music in the area. Also, Foster Garvin helped start the hip hop show ‘‘Time Travel’’ which stopped airing in 1995. In the 1990s larger radio stations were catching on to what college radio stations were doing. The best example of this is in San Francisco, California. During the 1980s, stations like KPOO, KZSU, KUSF, and KALX were playing hip hop (Chang). When the 1990s came around bigger stations like KMEL and KYLD tried to capitalize on the new trend by modeling their stations after the college stations. Something similar to this happened in Chicago, when college stations like WHPK and WNUR were used as inspiration for large radio stations like WGCI (owned by Clear Channel) and B96 (owned by CBS Radio).

REFERENCE Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2005.

common thread throughout their lyrics was a commitment to Chicago and its neighborhoods for better or worse. Twista popularized a harder and fast-paced lyricism that was inspired by and described street life. Common represents a jazzed up lyricism of street consciousness and social uplift. Crucial Conflict and Do or Die followed their own agenda, combining the elements of gangsta rap with their

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own creative forms. Each MC that followed these Chicago pioneers responded creatively to these established styles and in doing so came up with today’s fresh sounds.

TWISTA Carl Terrell Mitchell (born November 27, 1973) called himself Tung Twista on his first album Runnin’ Off at Da Mouth (1991), but he switched to Twista on each of his remaining albums. Twista grew up in North Lawndale on the extreme Westside of Chicago. This area is commonly called K-Town (due to the numerous streets starting with the letter) and is known to be the home to street gangs, drug dealers, and general poverty (see sidebar: ‘‘Chicagoland Ghettos: MCs and Their Violent ‘Hoods’’). This environment offered Twista a range of lifestyle options (he could have spent his life a gang banger or drug dealer), but it also made him want to become a hip hop artist so he wouldn’t be forced to ‘‘go back to the hood and have to struggle’’ (Kyles). He started rapping in 1985 at the age of 12 and secured his first record deal for Runnin’ Off at Da Mouth at the age of 18. Though this first record didn’t launch him into the annals of rap history, it did solidify his reputation as a fast-rapping MC. (The 1992 Guiness Book of World Records listed him as the fastest rapper, as he spit 598 syllables in 60 seconds.) In ‘‘Ratatattat’’—the first song on Runnin’ Off at Da Mouth—Twista advocates the use of his tongue instead

Twista at Wembley Arena on July 18, 2004. (The number on his Bears jersey, 773, is Chicago’s area code.) (Redferns/ Getty Images)

The Evolution of the Second City Lyric

CHICAGOLAND GHETTOES: MCS AND THEIR VIOLENT ‘HOODS Chicago has a long history of violence, including gang and mob activity, and much of this activity is commonly attributed to certain parts of the city. Perhaps the most famous of all is the mob-related Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, which occurred in the Chicago neighborhood of Lincoln Park. Since that time, gang and mob activity hasn’t disappeared with famous street gangs like the Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, and Black P. Stone Nation appearing mid-century and continuing to the present. Though gang activity cannot only be directly attributed and contained in certain places, there are neighborhoods and housing developments that have a reputation for this kind of activity. Each part of Chicago—the Westside, Southside, and Northside—has its own history of violent neighborhoods. Perhaps the most well-known nationally would be the Northside housing project, Cabrini-Green. The housing effort originated in the 1940s and is presently experiencing revitalization. The project doesn’t designate one building or block but is instead a grouping of 11 developments spread throughout the area directly south of the neighborhood of Lincoln Park. During its peak usage, at least 15,000 people lived in the area (CHA). The predominately low-income African American population that resided in the area during the 1980s and 1990s had to live through the hardest era, which included gang violence and deteriorating living conditions. Early rappers like MC Sugar Rae Dinky featured Cabrini-Green in their songs, and presently there is even a record label called Cabrini Mob Entertainment made up of artists who called CabriniGreen home. Nowadays, the Southside and the Westside of Chicago are perhaps even more notorious for gang activity and violent crime. The neighborhoods of East and West Garfield Park, North and South Lawndale, and Austin are often singled out as hard neighborhoods on the Westside. Violence and gang activity in the Southside is more diffuse but the neighborhoods of Englewood, Woodlawn, Roseland, and Burnside are often cited in the news. Most famously, Twista is from K-Town, which refers to the western part of the North Lawndale neighborhood where many street signs begin with the letter ‘‘K.’’ Also, members of the groups Do or Die and Crucial Conflict grew up in or near the neighborhoods of North and South Lawndale. The most well-known MC to come out of the Southside, on the other hand, is Common. Gary, Indiana is the home to some of the most treacherous streets in the nation. Gang bangers from the area refer to the initials of the city as ‘‘Gangsta Island’’ or just ‘‘GI.’’ Formerly a thriving center of the steel industry, the

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REFERENCE CHA (Chicago Housing Authority). ‘‘Cabrini-Green Homes.’’ August 30, 2007. http://www.thecha.org/housingdev/cabrini_green_homes.html.

of guns, comparing his tongue to a TEC-9, .44 Magnum, an UZI, and a .9 millimeter. This rhetorical inversion characterizes much of Twista’s early work; he uses the language of the streets but puts a more peaceful spin to them. Another example of this appears on ‘‘Mr. Tung Twista,’’ where he compares his lyrical flow to getting high on crack. He strikes a precarious balance between talking about the life he came out of and rising above it with his words. Twista’s next album, Resurrection, dropped in 1995 to little critical acclaim and few sales. However, his next album Adrenaline Rush (1997) brought Twista national recognition that had thus far eluded Chicago hip hop artists. It took two years, but this third album hit gold in December of 1999. Singles like ‘‘Get It Wet’’ and ‘‘Adrenaline Rush’’ mark a new chapter in Twista’s songwriting, documenting a sexually and violently explicit turn. Not surprisingly, ‘‘Get It Wet’’ explicitly documents the seduction of a woman at a party. (Additionally, ‘‘Emotions’’ follows the same theme, as Twista recognizes his girl to be a gold digger yet doesn’t demand she leave.) Twista teams up with Youngbuck in ‘‘Adrenaline Rush,’’ creating an anthem of violent retaliation and murder: ‘‘All you haters try to murder me so now it’s kill season.’’ If Twista is speaking figuratively here, it isn’t as obvious as his first record when he advocated killing with words. Even so, whether Twista amped up the sex and violence to sell records isn’t clear, but irrespective of intentions, this third record sold. During a productive yet less lucrative stretch between 1997 and 2004, Twista collaborated with the SpeedKnot Mobstaz on Mobstability (1998), put out the first in a series of compilation albums called Legit Ballin’ Vol. 1 (2000), released Adrenaline Rush 2000: Twista’s Greatest Hits (2000), Legit Ballin’ Vol. 2 (2001), and Respect the Game (Legit Ballin’ Vol. 3) (2002). As busy as he was, these albums rode out the reputation he had already built instead of breaking new ground. In 2004, however, that all changed. Kamikaze (2004) pushed Twista close to the level of legend when his record went gold and then platinum in the first few months after its release. The two most popular singles ‘‘Slow Jamz’’ and ‘‘Overnight Celebrity’’ were produced by local Chicago producer Kanye West and

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featured verses from West and the actor/singer Jamie Foxx. Critics suggest that Twista could not have been so successful without West (and Foxx), but fans can’t deny that each song, though slow, was created to showcase the speedy lyrics of Twista. The album seems to exemplify a confidence from Twista as a veteran in Midwest hip hop. The first track ‘‘Get Me’’ is a strong defense of Twista’s ties to the Chi as well as his promulgation of the Chicago name nationwide. On ‘‘Kill Us All’’ he returns to violence saying ‘‘I’ll murder you and come at you again in the afterlife.’’ Alternately, ‘‘Sunshine’’ advocates getting money at any cost and by any means, and ‘‘Hope’’ offers a sentimental account of all the things in the world Twista wishes didn’t exist (the song appearing on the Coach Carter soundtrack). These singles didn’t sell nearly as well as the first two collaborations with West, which made critics wonder if Twista could keep up the pace. In the fall of 2005, Twista released the much anticipated The Day After. This album was produced by Pharrell Williams and others, but Kanye West is a noticeable omission. The critics would have to eat crow, however, because The Day After went gold in just two months (though never hitting platinum). This album rode the success of the single ‘‘Girl Tonight,’’ which made it all the way to 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and featured Trey Songz. This single went gold in 2006 and repeated the same sexuality where early songs had already found success. The Day After was never the hit that Kamikaze was, but if anything it continued to illustrate Twista’s staying power in the game. The title track emphasizes this link by bragging about the success of Kamikaze and touting his identity as a successful veteran. But Twista also returns to the gangsta themes from earlier albums with ‘‘Holding Down the Game,’’ where he says he still has to represent in Chicago by ‘‘Runnin through the streets with my hands on the trigga.’’ As a result, Twista delves into both parts of the Chicago hip hop aesthetic: gangsterism and social consciousness. He wants to be a positive influence in his neighborhood, but he doesn’t think that’s possible if he loses the street grit that made him famous. To sum up Twista’s view of his own place in Chicago, Twista recently said, ‘‘I am Chicago’’ (Wade), though his latest album Adrenaline Rush 2007, which dropped in September 2007, might be evidence to the contrary (selling less than 60,000 copies in the first week).

COMMON Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr. (born March 13, 1972) started rapping in the Southside of Chicago during the mid-1980s. He originally called himself Common Sense but had to shorten the name when it came to light that there was already a band in California with the same name. Common created a hip hop group in high school, but he didn’t release his solo album until 1992 after dropping out of Florida A&M University. The cover art on Can I Borrow a Dollar (1992) depicts Common—surrounded by his crew—as a transient begging for money. The metaphor coincides with the musical plight of many Chicago rappers, and Common really didn’t leave

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Common performs at the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California, on April 29, 2006. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters/Corbis)

the category of ‘‘homeless’’ MC until his next album Resurrection (1994). The record was critically acclaimed, and the hip hop community still talks about ‘‘I Used to Love H.E.R.,’’ an emotional narrative about Common’s ambivalence towards what had become of hip hop. He was disappointed with the commercialism surrounding hip hop, and he personified hip hop as a woman who abandoned the old school just to get paid. He laments, ‘‘She used to only swing it with the inner-city circle,’’ but now she’s catering to big companies so she can make money. Common critiqued the hip hop industry, but he wasn’t giving up on it. He couldn’t give up on it. The record, itself, only sold around 100,000 copies, but was strong enough lyrically to set Common up as an up-and-coming star. Three years later, Common released One Day It Will All Make Sense (1997), and this offering added to his success, bringing home twice as many listeners as the first album. The cover art for this album depicts a young Common sitting next to his mom; depicting the theatricality of Common in the small boy. Also, the image evokes feelings of family and rightfully so, as Common became a father to Omoye Assata Lynn around the time this album dropped. The lyrics seem to be more mature, being almost five years since his first album. Common begins to become comfortable with his own personality and ‘‘Invocation’’ exemplifies that feeling as he spits lyrics about growing beyond being a kid from the street. Also, ‘‘Hungry’’ depicts Common as wanting to explore hip hop, to know as much as he can about it. Though Common didn’t take himself too seriously on every line, he definitely takes the time to address important topics, whether they address the

The Evolution of the Second City Lyric | 325 state of hip hop or more personal matters like the memorial to his friend Yusef in ‘‘Reminding Me (of ‘Sef).’’ Another three years pass before Common released Like Water for Chocolate (2000). This album quickly became his most profitable record, going gold in less than six months. Songs like ‘‘The Light’’ illustrate an even further progression in Common’s maturation as a lyricist. He isn’t afraid to step away from the explicit lyrics that are prevalent in other rap music; he especially doesn’t want to disrespect the woman in ‘‘The Light.’’ He says, ‘‘I never call you my bitch or even my boo,’’ showing an inherent respect that wasn’t present even in Common’s earlier work. The other popular single from this album was ‘‘The 6th Sense,’’ which was an even more explicit stand for Common, as he criticized the negative messages in much of hip hop music. He wanted to motivate and inspire his listeners. In 2002, Electric Circus dropped and quickly became—in terms of sales— Common’s least popular record. Some critics appreciated the eclectic vision that Common attempted, but this vision was largely lost on his audience. The only single to make it onto the national stage was ‘‘Come Close.’’ The song features Mary J. Blige and is a love song, perhaps written to his then-girlfriend, singer Erykah Badu. The disappointing sales of Electric Circus motivated Common to make a change for his next record, Be (2005). With strong singles like ‘‘Testify,’’ ‘‘The Corner,’’ and ‘‘Go!’’ Common was once again able to capture the attention of a national audience. Kanye West produced all but two tracks from the album (including all the singles). West’s skills seemed to help, as it went gold in less than two months. ‘‘Testify’’ describes a court room scene where a wife wants to testify before her drug-dealing husband is locked up. ‘‘The Corner’’ deals with similar subject matter, describing the life of a dealer on the corner. ‘‘Go!’’ was the most popular single on the record and featured Kanye West on the chorus. Common raps about his fantasy girl and the possibility of having anything that he wants. On another important track, ‘‘Chi-City,’’ Common advocates a form of rap that doesn’t tire out his listeners. The song asks where the future oh hip hop is going, and the answer is in the city, the city of Chicago. Finally, Common spent two more years with Kanye West to come out with his most recent album Finding Forever (2007). It started out at #1 on the Billboard charts, selling 250,000 copies in its first three weeks, and the album was certified as Common’s third gold record in October. The singles on this record are ‘‘The People’’ (a song for people hustlin’ on the streets), ‘‘The Game’’ (another track about the state of hip hop), and ‘‘Drivin’ Me Wild’’ (an upbeat collaboration with British singer Lily Allen). Finding Forever was nominated for three Grammy Awards, winning the Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for the song ‘‘Southside,’’ a collaboration with Kanye West. Common also follows up his musical success in cinema, most famously in 2007’s Smokin’ Aces and American Gangster. (A new album, tentatively called The Believer, is due out at the end of 2008.)

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DA BRAT Shawntae Harris (born April 14, 1974) grew up in Chicago and is probably most well-known for her loud, gritty outbursts; her baggy, militant, gansta fashion sense; and becoming the first female solo rapper to go platinum—she did it twice. She started rapping during the mid-1980s, and came in contact with the Atlanta native Jermaine Dupri via Kris Kross when the duo came to Chicago in 1992. Da Brat had just won an amateur rap battle which gave her the opportunity to meet Kris Kross, who then made the introduction to Dupri—the introduction that became Da Brat’s big break. Da Brat and Dupri immediately started working together, and Da Brat released her first completely Dupri-produced album, Funkdafied (1994). The title track ‘‘Funkdafied’’ was the most listened to single. It hit gold about two weeks after the album dropped and made platinum a month later. The album as a whole only took about six months to reach platinum and become the best-selling female rap album ever. With Dupri jumping in on the track, ‘‘Funkdafied’’ exemplified Da Brat’s unique female persona, ‘‘ain’t too many hoes that can hang with me.’’ The song was simple lyrically, but it grabbed the ears of her listeners across the nation. ‘‘Fa All Y’all’’ was a party song that illustrates Da Brat’s familiarity with thug life; she mentions her tendency to be quick with murder (in a song full of staged gun fire). ‘‘Give It 2 You’’ went gold a year after the album release, adding to her popularity. The track again portrays Da Brat’s gritty, gansta side, calling herself an O.G., glamorizing weed, and not holding back expletives, especially those directed at other women. Following her outrageously successful first-offering, Da Brat released Anuthatantrum in 1996. Perhaps riding on the success of the first album, it achieved gold status in under a year. The headlining single ‘‘Sittin’ on Top of the World’’ went gold before the album did. ‘‘Sittin’ on Top of the World’’ was the natural response to anyone who doubted her abilities, bragging she’s the Westside girl whose record went gold in a month. It’s hard to argue with her when albums are so successful, especially in light of other MCs from Chicago; it seemed like Da Brat couldn’t help but make hot records. The next single on Anuthatantrum was ‘‘Ghetto Love,’’ which went gold in April of 1997. This track speaks of love between a ghetto girl and her drug-pushing boyfriend. It shows the softer side of Da Brat, but still doesn’t lose her signature edginess. She also did a song on a Jermaine Dupri track in 1997 that went gold; it was called ‘‘The Party Continues.’’ During the early part of 2000, Da Brat was in the news for pistol-whipping a female bystander at a club in Atlanta. A month later, her Dupri, Timbaland, Kanye West, (et al) produced third album Unrestricted (2000) came out. The publicity for the album and the altercations in her personal life worked together to bring the album to gold in only a month. (It later reached platinum in September of the same year.) Featuring cameos from the likes of Lil Jon, Twista, and Ja Rule, the album achieved success, though her singles were not as popular as before. ‘‘That’s What I’m Looking for’’ describes the kind of thug she wants to be romantically involved

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with: a weed smokin’, do-rag wearing man who already has money to spend. The other single ‘‘Whatchu’ Like’’ was more popular on the charts than the former single. ‘‘Whatchu’ Like’’ documents the things Da Brat has to offer her man while at the same time taking every opportunity to say how unstoppable she is as an MC. Finally, her most recent album Limelite, Luv, & Niteclubz dropped in 2003. Songs like ‘‘Gotta Thing for You,’’ and ‘‘In Luv Wit Chu’’ were successful but not on the scale of her earlier albums. Even so, Da Brat used her popularity as an opportunity to try her skills in the movies and on television, taking parts in the movie Kazzaam (Shaquille O’Neal’s first movie) and the ABC sitcom, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

CRUCIAL CONFLICT Crucial Conflict is a rap group made up of four men from West Chicago, which they like to refer to as the ‘‘Wild, Wild Westside of the Chi.’’ Wildstyle, Coldhard, Kilo, and Never are known for their country attire, rodeo sense, ponytails, and also for a hyped-up, bouncing lyrical delivery. The group adopted a Western theme in 1996 with their first album The Final Tic, which included the hit single ‘‘Hay.’’ Both the single and the album went gold in the latter half of 1996. Their followup album, Good Side Bad Side (1998) didn’t garner the same kind of success as their first effort, but it solidified them as a major force in the Chicago hip hop scene. After production problems, Planet Crucon dropped in January 2008, featuring the single ‘‘Ride Out Dip.’’ The song that gave rise to their popularity was the influential sixth track, ‘‘Hay.’’ The basic premise of the song is the playful admiration of weed, which explains the title of the song and the reason the music video uses a barn as if it were an urban club. The Western theme is also evident when the group walks down the block in denim overalls and when they have an African American Lone Ranger dancing in the background. The group members all meet in the rural setting of the farm to smoke ‘‘hay’’ and drink Crown Royal and Bacardi. Brief references to the urban life are found in the lyrics and music video, but ‘‘Hay’’ is an overt party song while other songs reference more serious matters. For example, Crucial Conflict’s other well-known song, ‘‘Scummy,’’ was the highlight of their second album Good Side Bad Side. The video for ‘‘Scummy’’ follows the same Western theme, but here an all-black covered wagon pulled by two black stallions slowly creaks along urban streets and alleys. Women watch the wagon from the corner, front stoops, and balconies. Gang violence and group members running from police on the streets remind the viewer that partying doesn’t make the tough life in the hood disappear. Finally, the video for ‘‘Ride Out Dip,’’ from their latest album Planet Crucon, foregrounds the party scene and consists of the group performing amongst cars and scantily clad women. Here, the Western theme is relegated to their black T-shirts, which show their logo, two inverted and linked horizontal horseshoes.

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DO OR DIE Brothers Dennis ‘‘AK47’’ Round and Anthony ‘‘Nard’’ Round collaborated with childhood friend Darnell ‘‘Belo’’ Smith to create Do or Die, the other legendary Chicago male rap group of the mid-1990s. The trio is known for smooth lyrics, gansta sensibilities, as well as their religious faith. Like contemporaries Crucial Conflict, their biggest success occurred early in their career, followed by later efforts that solidified their fan base in Chicago but not far beyond. Their first album Picture This (1996) was released to an audience who had already consumed their single ‘‘Po Pimp,’’ which was a track that featured Chicago rapper Twista. The song and music video illustrate the luxurious life of a rich rap group, particularly one that is made up of experts in what they call ‘‘pimp-ology.’’ They roll up in their Cadillacs, wait for the women to arrive, drink Seagram’s gin, and smoke grass. ‘‘Po Pimp’’ went gold in October of 1996 and remains one of the most popular Do or Die songs ever, successfully pushing their first album to gold status in November of 1996. The other notable single from the album is ‘‘Playa Like Me and You,’’ which chronicles still another instance of partying in a Cadillac; the chorus asks, ‘‘Can you smoke and ride?’’ In their second effort, Headz or Tailz (1998), Do or Die returns to their already established themes with the song ‘‘Still Po Pimpin.’’ The first words in the song ask the now familiar question, ‘‘Do you wanna ride with me?’’ This song follows the same formula as its predecessors, but it also uses the act of riding in a car as a metaphor for sex. Again, Twista shows up as a guest MC, and the relative success of ‘‘Still Po Pimpin’’ pushed Headz or Tailz to a gold certification in May of 1998. The trio’s third album, Victory (2000), was a strong release, but it never sold as many copies as the earlier records. The single from this album was ‘‘Can You Make it Hot?,’’ which featured Mo Unique from Philadelphia. Since 2002, Do or Die has released five albums: Back 2 the Game (2002), Pimpin’ Ain’t Dead (2003), Do or Die: Greatest Hits (2003), D.O.D. (2005), and Get That Paper (2006). The trio worked with a number of well-known Chicago producers on these records including: The Legendary Traxter, Toxic, R. Kelly, Scott Storch, No I.D., Kanye West, and DJ Quik. Their relationship with the Legendary Traxter goes back to their first album, and the expertise he has brought to other groups like Twista, Crucial Conflict, and even Mariah Carey has indelibly marked Do or Die’s style. As they release their next album, Trunk Music, it seems that the trio is riding out their legendary status in Chicago but continue to miss out on national recognition. Unfortunately, Belo found recognition for more than his solo album (The Truth 2006) when he pled guilty to the second-degree murder of Raynard ‘‘B-Dog’’ Pinkston in October of 2007. The incident took place in November of 2002, a few blocks from Chinatown on the Southside of Chicago (Herman).

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CHICAGO’S CURRENT SCENE CCA CCA, or Concord Affiliated, is known in Gary as one of the forerunners of rap in northwest Indiana. CCA is known for having two members, ‘‘C-Mack’’ and ‘‘ E.G.’’ Even so, Aaron ‘‘Charlie-Mack’’ Davis is the most well-known MC of the group. CCA’s first album One Life 2 Live (1998) was the first of five records that they put out over the space of three years. CCA started producing their own songs in the mid-1990s and released all five albums on their own label, Laidback Records. Their music reflected the thug life that Gary is known for; in every way, their music is the definition of gangsta. In fact, their careers as rappers were eventually overshadowed by their careers as crack hustlers. The name CCA also stands for Concord Commons Affiliated, a Gary street gang that is ostensibly tied to the notorious Chicago gang, the Vice Lords (Dolan). C-Mack, Seantai Suggs, and brother Bobby Suggs were convicted of a drug-dealing conspiracy in 2002 and sentenced to jail; C-Mack is serving 33 years and 9 months, while the brothers are both serving a life sentence (Attorneys). Having been convicted, sentenced, and incarcerated, CCA hasn’t been able to release new music since their last album, For Tha Streetz Vol. 2 (2000). Authorities contend that the gang used drug money to bankroll the rap group, but CCA argues that they were only a rap group that sang about selling drugs. Whatever is true, their music is still popular among underground rap fans. Their first album, One Life 2 Live, featured songs like ‘‘Livin’ in tha Murda Cap,’’ ‘‘Street Life,’’ and ‘‘C.O.K.E.’’ In 1999, CCA released a collaboration with Tha Underbosses called Holdin’ It Down. The title track from this album personifies ‘‘Mary Jane’’ and narrates the rappers infatuation and intense relationship with her. It is perhaps CCA’s next album, Midwest Thug Niggaz (1999) that best typifies the group as a whole. One single off this album is called ‘‘If U Ain’t Affiliated,’’ citing the requirements for gangstas to hang, bang, and make crack with CCA. This song has drug-related content and is a favorite among fans. Their next album, Underground Thug Shit (1997–99) Mixes Vol. 1 (2000), was released to the underground rap scene but was superseded by their final album, For tha Streetz Vol. 2 (2000). This album had songs like ‘‘2000,’’ ‘‘Them Murdaz,’’ ‘‘Livin’ in tha Murder Cap,’’ and various remixes of successful songs from earlier albums. In a fitting homage in 2008, fans circulated a ‘‘Free C-Mack’’ image around the Internet.

MCGz This trio out of Gary has three albums out, but none of them are as acclaimed as their first album, 53 Chambers of Danger (2000). The ‘‘Great Lakes Remix’’ is one of the most popular songs in the northwest Indiana/Chicago underground rap scene. Their fast and melodic lyrical delivery and gangsta sensibilities set over

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slow background grooves are the trademark of the MCGz. Other notable songs from this first album are ‘‘Dollaz and Sense’’ (a lament about how they could live in a big house and own expensive cars if the police weren’t watching them), ‘‘Chiefin Reefa’’ (a detailed description of their need for and use of marijuana), and of course the ‘‘Great Lakes Remix’’ (where the group fronts anyone who wants to step to them, laying out all the artillery they have to defend themselves). The MCGz released an EP titled Da Slumpin EP (2002) to hold their fans over until their next album. Songs from Da Slumpin include ‘‘Slumpin’’ and ‘‘What U Workin Wit?’’ The second full-length and most recent album from the group is called Second Comin’ (2005). The first single ‘‘Now Where Ya’ll At?’’ illustrates the gansta in the MCGz by describing their arsenal of weaponry. Subsequently, ‘‘Ya’ll Don’t Wanna’’ warns anyone that wants to mess with the MCGz, and ‘‘No Way Out’’ is a slow but forceful song about how hard it is to get out of Gary. Most recently, group member Hit came out with a solo effort called Make Way Fo Da Bad Guy (2006), but any new activity for the group is limited.

Juice Terrence C. Parker grew up in Chicago and is nationally known for his freestyling skills. His most notable battle—although there are many, including one with Common—was with Eminem at the Scribble Jam freestyle battle in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1997. They met in the semifinals and battled six overtime rounds until Juice came out on top. At the time, Eminem wasn’t as well-known as Juice, but putting up a good showing helped get his name out. Juice ended up winning the competition by beating another Chicago native, Rhymefest (who also beat Eminem in the semifinals). Juice has put out four solo albums, but after his last record All Bets Off (2005), he has started using his hip hop talents in different ways. Juice’s new venture is his group Juice and the Machine, which came together almost randomly at a party in 2006. Since then, Juice departed from straight hip hop and rap sounds. His signature lyrical flow continues but is backed up by a group of five men who play all different kinds of music, from jazz to rock to soul. Russoul is the soul vocalist, Aaron Getsug plays the saxophone, Tim Lincoln plays bass, Brian Felix plays piano, and Brian Abraham plays drums. Though Juice is a freestyler, he has four solo albums and carries himself as a mature hip hop performer. On the Juice and the Machine song, ‘‘Sincerely,’’ Juice raps, ‘‘I’m not platinum or wax, but I’m platinum in the streets.’’ He thinks people know who he is, and he is going to keep doing his thing whether or not he signs a major record deal. In 2001, his freshman effort 100% J.U.I.C.E. dropped with Ground Control Records. His next two albums, Tip of the Iceberg (2003) and Listen2thaWerds (2003), were released on Moleman Records, where he also collaborated with Vakill in 2001. The single ‘‘Be on the Lookout’’ from Listen2thaWerds saw the most radio airplay. On this song Juice warns people in the hip hop world about his upcoming career and the fact that he ‘‘perfected the art of rapping.’’

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His solo album All Bets Off (2005) was released on Conglomerate Music, and the album features a song called ‘‘Conglomerate Music,’’ where Juice raps about the new work they are doing together. Finally, Juice’s new endeavor boasts a new album called, Juice and the Machine: Live at the Party (2006). This album includes live versions of ‘‘Black,’’ ‘‘A Day in the Life,’’ and ‘‘Sincerely.’’ Juice hasn’t garnered notoriety for more than his battle credentials beyond Chicago, but he continues to make innovative and original music as he waits his break.

Vakill Donald Mason (born in 1975) grew up in the Southside of Chicago in an area called the ‘‘Wild Hunneds’’ (referring to the street names in the hundreds like 119th where Vakill lived). He has been rapping since junior high and releasing albums since the mid-1980s. He has collaborated with many famous MCs in the area like MC Juice and Rhymefest and has been working with local label Molemen Records since 1997. In 2001, Vakill collaborated with Juice on the successful song ‘‘Urban Legend,’’ which was released on the Molemen compilation Chicago City Limits Vol. 1. Calling themselves the Triangle Offense, this song serves as a challenge to any other MCs who think they can step to Vakill or Juice. Artistic opportunities like this often come up for Vakill, but he doesn’t see rap as the most important thing in his life. Vakill is a family man, working blue-collar jobs to put food on the table when he’s not recording albums or touring. After making a name for himself in the Chicago underground, Vakill dropped his first studio album titled The Darkest Cloud in May of 2003 and three years later released his more mature 2006 album Worst Fears Confirmed. It may not be long until Vakill can live solely off his music, as his sophomore effort is beginning to elicit talk around the nation. His first album The Darkest Cloud was meant to be gritty and dark. Singles like ‘‘End of Days,’’ ‘‘Till the World Blows Up,’’ and ‘‘Cry You a River’’ offer a dose of reality from the streets but don’t glorify the violence they depict. In the chorus from ‘‘Till the World Blows Up’’ Vakill says that he won’t change no matter what happens, and he offers to metaphorically carry his friend who was shot. ‘‘Cry Me a River’’ follows the some of the same themes as Vakill raps (and cries) about a friend and role model who committed suicide. Vakill was true to his word, and the subject matter was bleak on this album. Even so, there was an element of victory over adversity that carried over to his next album Worst Fears Confirmed. The title track from this album acts as a segue as he frequently mentions ‘‘dark clouds’’ and the fact that he’s back. The ‘‘worst fears’’ belong to the MCs who thought Vakill wouldn’t make it; he admits he didn’t ‘‘go pop’’ but he knows he’s big in Chicago. The song ‘‘Mobstaz Ink’’ talks about how major labels think gangsta rap looks good on paper. Vakill knows his stuff is better, and he’s dreaming of making himself ‘‘Chicago’s king.’’

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The Grind Family Like CCA, The Grind Family is a well-respected group out of Gary, Indiana. Their group was first put together by a man named Will Scrilla and originally had five members: Will Scrilla, Ric Jilla, C.O.B., Soope, and Phil Mo. In 1999, Will Scrilla was sentenced to 35 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter after a fight and shooting in Hammond, Indiana (Appeal). In 2002, Ric Jilla went out on his own with his first album Free Agent. Ric Jilla has since enjoyed the success of six albums: Free Agent (2002), Mix Tape Vol. 1 (2002), The Pride of Indiana: Mixtape Vol. 2 (2003), Supernatural: Mix Tape Vol. 3 (2003), Upgrade (2004), and The Pride of Indiana Pt. 2 (2006). He also has a new album out called The Albulation Network (2007). Even with Jilla’s solo success, The Grind Family still carries on. ‘‘All I Eva Wanted’’ and ‘‘Dem Streetz’’ are ever-popular in Gary, the latter simply advocating the rapper’s love of the streets that they represent.

Daily Plannet Kevynn ‘‘Allstar the Fabulous’’ Bunkley, twin brother Keath ‘‘Spotlite the Big Idea with Status’’ Bunkley, and sometimes collaborator/childhood friend Antonio ‘‘the Strategist’’ Toppin make up this Gary, Indiana group. They are unique because they grew up in Gary, but they responded to their environment differently than other hip hop groups from the area. Daily Plannet was inspired by old-school hip hop and the Africa movement, and they produce socially conscious songs. They put out a number of singles over the years, including ‘‘Queens Get the Money,’’ ‘‘Paragon,’’ ‘‘We Like to Party,’’ and ‘‘Continuous.’’ These were followed up by their first full-length album Team Daily (2003). The group is also part of all larger collaborative group called The Family Tree (which includes the groups All Natural and Daily Plannet, along with Mr. Greenweedz, G(riot), Rita J, and Iomos Marad).

Iomos Marad Like Vakill, Iomos Marad (born Marcus Singleton, 1972) grew up in the Wild Hundreds of the Southside of Chicago. He is known for his jazz and reggae infused rap. His conscious and spiritual lyrics are delivered over the sound of a drum kit; he keeps his own beat with a snare as he raps. Even though he has seen the evils that occur in the streets, he believes that his mission is to speak truth as a rapper instead of dwelling on the themes of gangsta rap. In 1998, Iomos released a single called ‘‘Deep Rooted,’’ and his first album with the same name was released in 2003 with the Chicago record label All Natural, Inc. Later, Iomos worked with Profound & Single Minded Pros to produce the catchy single ‘‘Chicago Emcees’’ (2004). Most recently, Iomos was working on an album-length collaboration with Cap D called The Believer’s Project, and he is hoping to release his next album called Monumental in 2010.

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Shawnna Rashawnna Guy (born October 1, 1979) grew up in the Southside of Chicago. Next to Da Brat, Shawnna may be the most recognized female hip hop artist out of Chicago. Her first album Worth tha Weight was released in 2004 and was followed up by the more successful Block Music in 2006. She is well-known for being featured on the 2003 Ludacris #1 hit ‘‘Stand Up,’’ but her most successful solo single was ‘‘Gettin’ Some,’’ which was certified gold in June 2006 and platinum in December 2006. ‘‘Gettin’ Some’’ was a hit, partly for its party lyrics and partly because it allowed Shawnna the opportunity to share her motivations in the hip hop game. She says she’s all about the money and challenges anyone who tries to question that or take advantage of her because of it.

Kanye West Kanye Omari West (born June 8, 1977) officially broke onto the hip hop scene in 2004 with his hit solo album The College Dropout. This first effort went straight to platinum in two months and multiplatinum in another few months (two million sales). Two singles from this album—‘‘Jesus Walks’’ and ‘‘All Falls Down’’—also went gold within the first four months of the album dropping on February 10, 2004. West couldn’t have asked for a more successful first offering, but as it turned out, he was already a successful producer and steadily growing icon in the hip hop

Kanye West performs at ‘‘A Concert for Diana’’ on July 1, 2007. (NBC/ Photofest)

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world. Before his first record, West spent his time as both a producer (for the likes of Jay-Z, Common, and the Game) and student (at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and later at Chicago State University). West dropped out of both schools before graduating, thereby inspiring the theme for his first three albums: The College Dropout (2004), Late Registration (2005), and Graduate (2007). Even though West’s list of gold, platinum, and multiplatinum records rival the career sales of most artists, he is perhaps better known for his activism and outspoken personality. West tries to make a change in the world through the power of his words. Before his solo rap albums dropped, West created a mix tape called the High School Graduate. This album illustrates West’s focus on education, and his fund-raising efforts show he is an advocate for keeping kids in school (even though he dropped out of college). The Kanye West Foundation has the express purpose of helping high school students graduate. He often raises money for his foundation, an example being his benefit concert at the House of Blues in Chicago (August 24, 2007). More famously, and perhaps infamously, is West’s comment which occurred on the NBC special, A Concert for Hurricane Relief, in late 2005. West began the telecast by making an argument about how the media portrayed black people in New Orleans as looters, while white people were only portrayed as looking for food. After working up to his final comment over the course of an awkward sixty or so seconds, West dropped the controversial statement, ‘‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people.’’ The live broadcast allowed the American public to witness West’s opinion first hand, and for what it’s worth, the comment started a great many discussions. Since then, West’s outrageous comments keep him in the news, perhaps most notable is his ultimatum before the 2005 Grammy Awards. He said, ‘‘If I don’t win album of the year, I’m gonna have a problem’’ (Montgomery). The year after, West complained live at the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards when his ‘‘Touch the Sky’’ video didn’t win; he actually interrupted the acceptance speech for Justice and Simeon’s ‘‘We Are Your Friends’’ video. Though West is known for his outrageous comments, when it comes to his music, he often addresses serious themes. At least three singles from his first album illustrate this. First, ‘‘All Falls Down’’ narrates the life of a college-age female who can’t choose a major and doesn’t want to drop out because of what her parents might think. She ends up becoming a low-paid hairdresser but has a shopping addiction she can’t afford. West uses this as a platform to discuss the materialism of hip hop and America at large. He says ‘‘but the people highest up got the lowest self esteem,’’ implying that the richest people choose to spend so much money on material things so that they can front a positive and confident image. West doesn’t get too preachy though; he admits he dropped 25 grand on jewelry before even buying a house. ‘‘Jesus Walks’’ was the next single to address a serious and infrequently discussed topic: religion in hip hop. The purpose of the song can be summed up in this line: ‘‘But if I talk about God my record won’t get played, Huh?’’ West cites the fact that songs about sex, violence, and drugs get

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played all the time, but talking about God on a rap song is apparently off-limits. Ultimately, the hip hop world embraced this song, as it went gold and won the Grammy award for Best Rap Song in 2004. (West shared songwriting credits on this Grammy with Che ‘‘Rhymefest’’ Smith and Miri Ben Ari.) The third single from The College Dropout was entitled ‘‘Through the Wire,’’ documenting a car accident and subsequent jaw surgery. West was inspired by the experience and recorded this song even when his jaw was wired shut. In contrast to these songs, West added the party hit ‘‘Slow Jamz’’ to this first album. This track was a collaboration with Jamie Foxx and Twista, which appeared on Twista’s 2004 album, Kamikaze. The single was a runaway hit, securing a #1 spot in the United States —a first for all three artists. West is known for spending countless hours reworking, perfecting, and reperfecting his tracks before his albums drop. Late Registration is not an exception to this approach, but he only had about a year and a half to get his sophomore album out. The results were not disappointing; the album went gold, platinum, and multiplatinum in less than a month—easily making him the most successful rap artist out of Chicago. The prereleased single, ‘‘Diamonds (from Sierra Leone)’’ went gold in December, while ‘‘Heard em Say’’ went gold and ‘‘Gold Digger’’ went platinum in February of 2006. That same month, Late Registration was certified as multiplatinum for a second time (indicating that he had sold over three million copies). Beyond record sales, both The College Dropout and Late Registration won the Grammy for Best Rap Album, while ‘‘Diamonds’’ won the Grammy for best rap song, and ‘‘Gold Digger’’ won for Best Rap Solo Performance. (In the same year, West also won a Grammy for Best R&B Song on the Alicia Keys song ‘‘You Don’t Know My Name.’’) On September 11, 2007, West dropped Graduation amidst much discussion and media attention. His original release date for the album was September 18, but West decided to change the release date to coincide with 50 Cent’s (born Curtis Jackson, July 6, 1975) most recent album Curtis (2007). During the months leading up to the dual release, Jackson ostensibly said that he would stop producing solo albums if West’s album sold more records. On August 14, however, MTV reported that Jackson said he wouldn’t stop making solo albums even if Kanye sold more records (Rodriguez). Whatever was originally proclaimed, Kanye came out on top, selling almost one million records in the first week (the most since Jackson’s The Massacre [2005], which sold 1.1 million). Since the release, Graduation went double platinum in October 2007, and the single ‘‘Stronger’’ went gold and platinum in December 2007. Following this success, West played a central role at the 2008 Grammy Awards, where he performed two songs—‘‘Stronger’’ and ‘‘Hey Mama’’—and won four Grammy’s (Best Rap Solo Performance for ‘‘Stronger,’’ Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for his collaboration with Common on ‘‘Southside,’’ Best Rap Song for ‘‘Good Life,’’ and Best Rap Album for Graduation). The ‘‘Hey Mama’’ performance was especially emotional because West’s mother Donda C. West died on November 12, 2007. Donda West,

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who was once an English Professor at Chicago State University, died from heart complications after a series of plastic surgeries in Los Angeles. Four days after the fitting tribute to his mother in his acceptance speech for Best Rap Album (He said, ‘‘And Mama, all I’m gonna do is keep makin’ you proud’’), West announced the dates for his Glow in The Dark Tour, featuring Rihanna, Lupe Fiasco, and the funk/rock band N.E.R.D. Kanye’s 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak furthered the tribute to his mother and dealt with the emotions surrounding her death. West classifies the album as a pop album rather than hip hop, and most of the vocals are sung instead of rapped.

Rhymefest Che Smith (born January 1, 1977) grew up in the far Southside neighborhood of Jeffrey Manor where he was raised mostly by his grandparents (his mother was 16 when she gave birth to him) (Derogatis). Named after the South American revolutionary, Che Guevara, Rhymefest has been aware of the idea of revolution from a very young age. His first album Blue Collar (2006) examined the life of working class people, allowing him to rap about his life as a blue-collar worker. In 2007, he plans to release his second album El Che, which he sees as a revolutionary hip hop record. This idea of revolution not only comes from his childhood but also from his track record as a rapper. He was never one to back down to from a battle, and he famously beat Eminem in the 1997 Scribble Jam freestyle battle in Cincinnati (eventually losing to MC Juice in the final). Blue Collar is an opportunity for Rhymefest to speak to the working class as well as to comment on his rise from the blue-collar jobs to that of a well-known rapper. The hit single from this album, ‘‘Brand New,’’ was produced by and featured Kanye West. The lyrics mostly discuss the life of someone with money, though Rhymefest rhymes about his blue-collar days, citing his rise to stardom by pointing out whom he was rapping with on this album. ‘‘Dynomite (Going Postal)’’ was another single from his first album, and it predates the revolutionary themes of El Che. Here, Rhymefest calls himself the keg, the powder, and the fuse that will ignite an explosion to the stereotype of normalized African American masculinity. He belittles crack pushers and men who would sell out their mother for a high. Finally, the No I.D. produced single ‘‘Fever’’ describes how Rhymefest has the fever to get women, and on a grander scale, to attract the attention of the industry at large. The singles from his new album—‘‘Angry Black Man on an Elevator,’’ ‘‘I Came Home,’’ and ‘‘Get Plugged’’—will undoubtedly expand the ideas on his first album, pushing his revolutionary hip hop ideals.

Lupe Fiasco Wasalu Muhammad Jaco (born February 17, 1982) grew up on the Westside of Chicago, yet his interest in classical music, comic books, and Star Trek

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Lupe Fiasco performs at the 2008 Lollapalooza Music Festival in Grant Park in Chicago on August 2, 2008. (Jared Milgrim/Corbis)

distinguished him from his peers. Lupe entered the hip hop scene with a featured verse on Kanye West’s 2005 ‘‘Touch the Sky,’’ and while ‘‘Lu’’ found success with his first release Food & Liquor (2006), the song ‘‘Kick, Push’’ brought him fame and notoriety. This single was nominated for two Grammy Awards, while the album as a whole was nominated for best rap album of the year. Though he didn’t win, the nominations put him in the national spotlight. The song ‘‘Kick, Push’’ is a narrative about a young skateboarding rebel who is trying to find ‘‘a place to be.’’ This song illustrates Lupe Fiasco’s unique style, as he raps about and identifies with a skateboarder. Other songs of his use this same technique. ‘‘I Gotcha’’ tells listeners that he has a new flavor, a new ‘‘realness’’ that you can’t find from those rappers who rap about pimps, cars, and mobsters. Additionally, ‘‘Daydreamin’’ features Jill Scott, and satirizes gangsta rap. In a characteristically humorous move, the video focuses on the animation of Lupe Fiasco’s robot action figure instead of the powerful meaning in his overt words. These lyrical moves continue in his second album, The Cool, which dropped on December 18, 2007. Singles like ‘‘Superstar’’ (a song where Lupe evaluates his success), ‘‘Paris, Toyko’’ (professing a rapper’s love for his girlfriend in spite of touring responsibilities), and ‘‘Dumb It Down’’ (a denunciation of hip hop haters and gangsta rappers) all showcase Lupe’s lyrical ingenuity and playful (but serious) attitude. Before The Cool came out, XXL Magazine’s November issue dubbed Lupe as one of the ‘‘Leaders of the New School,’’ a list that includes the likes of Saigon, Plies, Rich Boy, Lil’ Boosie, Gorilla Zoe, Joell Ortiz, Crooked I, Papoose,

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and Young Dro. Next up for Lupe was an opening spot on Kanye West’s Glow in the Dark Tour, which began in Seattle, Washington on April 16, 2008.

THE FUTURE One of the most obvious ways to illustrate the diversity of Chicago MCs is to look at their fashion choices. The MCs who produce gangsta albums tend to espouse traditional gangster attire, with do-rags, baggy pants, sports jerseys, and flawless baseball caps. The conscious rappers are more eclectic, trying out everything from casual, to preppy, to skater, to futuristic. Twista is the best example of the former category. He almost always has on an oversized T-shirt, baseball cap, and heavy chain. His many tattoos, rings, watches, and diamond-studded grill are themselves reminiscent of a supped-up car on any gansta rap music video (like the Bently he poses in for the August 2007 issue of The Source). Twista represents the fashion style that CCA, Do or Die, Crucial Conflict, the MCGz, and Grind Family front on album covers, music videos, and in magazine articles. Common is a different story. In the same issue of The Source, Common is alternately pictured wearing a herringbone hat with a tight leather jacket, a tribal hooded sweatshirt and jeans, and a casual, fitted long-sleeve shirt. Common is also famous for his Gap ads (where he dons softer clothes and shows his softer side) and his line of stylish newsboy hats called Soji (which he launched in January of 2007). MC Juice, Daily Plannet, Iomos Marad, Kanye West, and Lupe Fiasco fall more in line with Common’s casual but stylish fashion. Lupe Fiasco raps about his Nike SBs (Nike’s skateboarding shoe line) and is more often than not dressed more like a skater than an O. G. And perhaps Kanye West is in a fashion category all his own (sporting everything from pink sweater vests and fitted tweed jackets, to a futuristic, lightup jacket and signature oversized—even glow in the dark—sunglasses). Though hip hop fashion illustrates Chicago’s different styles, each artist’s work illustrates the diverse ways that Chicago MCs want to bring truth to the larger society: truth about their neighborhoods, their thoughts, and how real life intersects with politics. As we have seen, every MC has their own views and their own methodology. Many times, the conscious rappers work with gangsta artists or even blend the two genres into one musical flow (like Twista who rides on hardcore lyrics but also believes his music can positively affect his listeners). Also, up-andcoming acts like The Cool Kids and Kid Sister are breaking out with fresh, new sounds. The duo, The Cool Kids, which includes Antoine ‘‘Mikey’’ Reed and Evan ‘‘Chuck’’ Ingersoll, revives retro synth beats and post-2000s rock, while the solo act, Melissa ‘‘Kid Sister’’ Young takes a new spin on club rap, focusing her first hit (a song which features Kanye West) on a nail salon. Chicago veterans like Twista, Common, and now Kanye West showed younger artists like these that it’s possible to make it big. New sounds and new subjects make Chicago hip hop distinctive, and it is in this way that Chicago becomes a microcosm of the greater

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state of hip hop, where meaning, representation, and style are currently being reevaluated. Where do Chicago MCs hope to lead their fans in the future? As mentioned earlier, Kanye West shows us the beginnings of an answer in ‘‘Jesus Walks’’ by saying the Midwest is ‘‘young and restless’’; he evokes the feelings of change moving through the air. Iomos Marad’s song ‘‘Chicago Emcees’’ talks about how he wants to work for hip hop’s ‘‘reconstruction’’ and ‘‘advancement.’’ And Lupe Fiasco, himself, might be the biggest symbol of where Chicago hip hop (and hip hop across the nation) is going. The song ‘‘Dumb It Down,’’ off his latest album The Cool (2007), is practically speaking, a hip hop anthem for the new age. Even though it is ostensibly Lupe’s most serious song, he references The Matrix, Star Trek, and even Scuba Steve (an action figure from the 1999 Adam Sandler film Big Daddy). This typical humorous move on Lupe’s part attracts attention and allows his message to be better received. The chorus exhibits a repeated imperative to Lupe from his critics to dumb his message down. The last line of the song sums up Lupe’s attitude and is a symbol for the larger Chicago rap scene: ‘‘they told me I should come down cousin, but I flatly refuse I ain’t dumb down nothing.’’ The message of Chicago hip hop will not be dictated by anyone but the artists, and this defiance and creativity is the reason why the winds of change are moving in the Windy City. With new energy from artists like Lupe Fiasco and national success from veterans like Common and Kanye West, it’s safe to say that Chicago can no longer be forgotten between the coasts—one might even say that Chicago is a leader in a new hip hop era.

REFERENCES ‘‘Appeal.’’ November 8, 2005. http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/ 11080503cld.pdf (accessed August 31, 2007). ‘‘Artistic Bombing Crew.’’ August 31, 2007. http://www.artisticbombingcrew.com (accessed September 6, 2007). ‘‘Attorneys, Agents Honored for their Work.’’ Northwest Indiana Times, October 29, 2005. http://www.nwitimes.com (accessed August 31, 2007). Briggs, Jonathon. ‘‘Footworkin’: A Made-in-Chicago Dance Wave.’’ Chicago Tribune, August 20, 2006. Derogatis, Jim. ‘‘Rhyme Time: Hip-hop’s Everyman Stays True to His ‘Blue Collar’ Roots.’’ Chicago Sun-Times, July 9, 2006. Dolan, Bill. ‘‘Three Gang Members Convicted of Gang Conspiracy.’’ Northwest Indiana Times, April 11, 2003. http://www.nwitimes.com (accessed August 31, 2007). Herman, Eric. ‘‘Rapper Gets 10 Years in ’02 Killing.’’ Chicago Sun-Times, October 12, 2007.

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Jacubiak, David. ‘‘Fancy Footwork Is Footworkin’, and Jukin’ Is All over the Joint.’’ Chicago Sun-Times, October 9, 2006. Jones, Pamela. January 2, 2006. http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local _story_002191128.html (accessed August 31, 2007). Kyles, Kyra. ‘‘Twista Talks.’’ Chicago Tribune Red Eye, May 11, 2007. Little, Darnell. ‘‘Census Measures Ethnic Shifts.’’ Chicago Tribune, August 9, 2007. Mehr, Bob. ‘‘Who the Hell Is Vakill?’’ Chicago Reader, January 27, 2006. http:// www.chicagoreader.com/ TheMeter/060127.html (accessed August 31, 2007). Montgomery, James. ‘‘Heard Him Say! A Timeline of Kanye West’s Public Outbursts.’’ September 12, 2007. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1569536/ 20070912/west_kanye.jhtml. Rodriguez, Jayson. ‘‘Kanye West Pounds 50 Cent in First Week of Album Showdown.’’ MTV News, September 19, 2007. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/ 1570001/20070918/west_kanye.jhtml. Roper, Richard. ‘‘Exhibit Tags Graffiti as Art.’’ Chicago Sun-Times, August 30, 1988. Wade, Carlton. ‘‘Ride with Me.’’ The Source, no. 213, August 2007. Wimsatt, William. ‘‘UPSKI.’’ Bomb the Suburbs. Chicago: The Subway and Elevated Press, 1994.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY CCA (Concord Affiliated) One Life 2 Live. Laidback Records, 1998. Midwest Thug Niggaz. Laidback, 1999. Common Resurrection. Geffen, 1994. Like Water for Chocolate. Geffen, 2000. Be. Geffen, 2005. Finding Forever. Geffen, 2007. Crucial Conflict The Final Tic. Universal, 1996. Good Side Bad Side. Universal, 1998. Planet Crucon. Buckwild, 2008. Da Brat Funkdafied. Sony, 1994. Anuthatantrum. Sony, 1996. Unrestricted. Sony, 2000. Daily Plannet Team Daily. Touch & Go, 2003.

The Evolution of the Second City Lyric Do or Die Picture This. Rap-a-Lot Records, 1996. Headz or Tailz. Rap-a-Lot Records, 1998. Grind Family So Many Problems, So Much Pain. No Guts No Glory Records, 2002. Iomos Marad Deep Rooted. All Natural, Inc., 2003. Juice 100% J.U.I.C.E. Ground Control, 2001. All Bets Off. Conglomerate Music, 2005. Juice and the Machine: Live at the Party. Conglomerate Music, 2006. Kanye West The College Drop Out. Roc-A-Fella Records, 2004. Late Registration. Roc-A-Fella Records, 2005. Graduation. Roc-A-Fella Records, 2007. 808s & Heartbreak. Roc-A-Fella Records, 2008. Lupe Fiasco Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor. 1st & 15th Entertainment, 2006. The Cool. 1st & 15th Entertainment, 2007. MCGz 53 Chambers of Danger. Skrewface Entertainment, 2000. Second Comin’. Skrewface Entertainment, 2005. Rhymefest Blue Collar. J Records, 2006. Shawnna Worth tha Weight. Def Jam, 2004. Block Music. Def Jam, 2006. Twista Runnin’ Off at Da Mouth. Loud Records, 1991. Adrenaline Rush. Atlantic Records, 1997. Kamikaze. Atlantic Records, 2004. The Day After. Atlantic Records, 2005. Adrenaline Rush 2007. Atlantic Records, 2007. Vakill The Darkest Cloud. Molemen Records, 2003. Worst Fears Confirmed. Molemen Records, 2006.

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CHAPTER 14 Heartland Hip Hop: Nelly, St. Louis, and Country Grammar Amanda Lawson In 2000, a young rapper emerged on the national hip hop scene with catchy tunes, a steady rhyme flow and a vocabulary of slang, or ‘‘country grammar,’’ the nation had never heard before. This rapper was Cornell Haynes Jr., known to the world as Nelly. On August 26, 2000, his debut album, Country Grammar, became number one in the country, something no other rapper from St. Louis, Missouri had ever achieved. Nelly was the first rapper from the city to become a pop superstar and put the spotlight on the region. With a population of 2,866,517, St. Louis is affectionately referred to as the Gateway City, STL, the Lou, and the 3-1-4. It is most famous for its skyline featuring the Gateway Arch, for its barbeque sauce, and, for hip hop fans, Nelly. Nelly’s success partially stems from the fact that being from St. Louis sets him apart from all of the prevailing rap styles that existed at the time he debuted. Anthony Bozza of Rolling Stone noted, ‘‘Nelly has turned what until now was a disadvantage—a Midwestern regional identity—into gold.’’ He didn’t just sound like he was from the South, nor did he sound as though he was from the East or West Coast. The rapper represented a region not often before heard from: the Midwest. While hip hop has been alive in St. Louis since the late 1970s, it is considered to have a relatively young history. Much of St. Louis’s hip hop history is traced back to Nelly because of his status as the city’s first star to emerge in the mainstream. ‘‘Before,’’ Nelly said, ‘‘you could basically count on both hands how many people were doing it, or how many people was really serious about it, or trying to put forth effort. Now, it’s like a full explosion, man, you know what I’m saying? It’s amazing’’ (‘‘Rappers Dream Big’’). Although Nelly was the first artist to make it big nationwide, St. Louis has roots in hip hop stretching as far back as the culture itself. Gentleman Jim Gates, a DJ for St. Louis’ WESL, was the first DJ in the country to ever play Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘‘Rappers Delight’’ on the radio (Hamilton). In 1979, Gates dropped the needle onto the vinyl and introduced St. Louisians to one of the first rap records ever 343

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Nelly (Reuters/CORBIS)

made. Although Gates was the first DJ nationwide to play this landmark song, many listeners in the STL had heard a precursor to this form in the call-andresponse routines of their own Dr. Jockenstein, a rhyming radio DJ. Roderick G. ‘‘Rod’’ King, was given the name ‘‘Dr. Jockenstein,’’ by George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic. Jockenstein captured an audience of thousands of listeners who tuned in to hear ‘‘Dr. Jockenstein, operating on your mind’’ on his Roll Call show. He emphasized how everyone would want to call in and partake in this form of call and response. Jockenstein recalled, ‘‘I had letters from Southwestern Bell to change the time I was doing the ‘Roll Call’ show because I was tying up their switchboard’’ (Manderbach). Every day there was a formal routine that hypnotized the youth of St. Louis: Dr. Jockenstein would say, ‘‘Here we go on the ra-di-o, I’m the DJ Jock in ster-e-o. We’re gonna have a good time, On the Roll Call line.’’ Then Jockenstein would ask his callers: ‘‘Hey, what’s your name? What’s your sign? Give me that No. 1 school. Your favorite teacher with the golden rule. Your favorite station in the nation’’ (Manderbach). From there the show turned into much more. Soon enough, people were calling in to the Monday through Friday show who had made up their own rhymes and transformed the show into a place for freestyle. Many of the early rap groups from St. Louis were first heard on this program: Kid Rob, Kid Smooth, King Odie and the Golden Boys, for example. Jockenstein is remembered

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as the man who introduced the city of St. Louis to rap music and is often compared to New York’s Mr. Magic. Since the days of Dr. Jockenstein, DJs and radio have had an influential impact on hip hop in the STL (see sidebar: St. Louis Radio Shows). Along with Gates and Jockenstein, two of the most respected DJs in the city were King Odie and the Godfather, who would DJ and rap, as well as sing at his shows. These two inspired and worked along other MCs in the early days such as One Man Stan, Early Dead, Suave Tre, and Black Pearl. The early years of hip hop produced many more DJs such as Northside Posse, Captain Beat, BJ the DJ, the Godfather, and DJ Charlie Chan Soprano, who currently travels the world as the touring DJ for Darryl ‘‘DMC’’ McDaniels. Still active as a DJ for the Lou’s Hot 104.1, Chan is the recent winner of the ‘‘Legend Award’’ at the Traffic Music Awards. From the Peabody Projects, DJ Kut was another universally known DJ from the Lou. Starting on the scene around 1983, he has been strong from its beginning until today. He too started with house parties, moving to famous venues such as Saints and The Palace with younger crowds. As he got older and moved to the adult clubs he brought his

ST. LOUIS RADIO SHOWS African Alert, hosted by G-Wiz, was started during and gets its name from the Black Power era of hip hop, motivated by groups such as X-Clan and Public Enemy. The show took a lot of chances and was the first to play the best of the Wu-Tang Clan, CL Smooth, Black Sheep, Gang Starr, and De La Soul. This show later changed its name to ‘‘Street Vibes.’’ G. Wiz did a lot to advance the genre and is often considered the ‘‘Marley Marl of St. Louis.’’ His label, Wizitron Records, released some of the most original stuff St. Louis had seen in the underground, said to be one of the first to capture the St. Louis beat. Instituting songs that ‘‘always had a lot of bottom,’’ his efforts impressed many including Fab Five Freddy. Da Science Hip-Hop Show was a weekly radio broadcast on KDHX 88.1 from 10 PM to midnight started by D-Ex and D. J. Alejan. Starting in 1998, the show got its roots from African Alert, later Street Vibes. The show did live broadcasts from Blueberry Hill’s Elvis Room (which was also an underground scene hotspot) (Hixson). The crowd was diverse in gender and race and often transcended territorial borders to attend the show, where it was always guaranteed to be packed. The whole night was like one big house party with D-Ex as the master of ceremonies. The show officially ended in 2006 and was replaced by two shows; The Remedy and Deep Krate Radio. The Remedy is on Monday nights at 8 PM featuring G-Wiz and Nappy DJ Needles. Deep Krate Radio is on Fridays from 10 PM to midnight and features D-Ex & Furius ‘‘Iceman’’ Stylz.

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crowd with him. The DJ got some of his best experience at his playing artists that were not commercial on his Florissant or ‘‘Flo’’ Community College radio show, giving him the ability to recognize local up-and-comers. He is known as the first DJ to play the St. Lunatics on the radio. This worked out well for him, as he had the opportunity to tour with the group. Since then no matter what he has done with music he has always stayed with radio. At this point in his career he has made it all the way to New York, heavily representing the Lou while serving as a DJ on one of the Big Apple’s top hip hop stations, Power 105.1. DJ Kut attributes his success to St. Louis, as it gave him the broadest base of music possible. Many doubted him because of his origins in St. Louis. Confident in his background, he proved himself and received acclaim for his knowledge from many, including hip hop originator and inventor of the break beat, Kool Herc. The city’s DJs have continually represented the Lou inside and outside of its perimeter. Now, they are making DJs from around the world come to their domain. Jus Bleezy made St. Louis the capital for DJs. In March of 2008 he hosted the 2008 DJ Technology Retreat & Convention at the Ball Park Hotel in St. Louis. People came from all over including New York, Miami, South Africa, and Japan, for the free, informative and entertaining summit. The event featured an open panel discussion that included Joseph L Brim (Executive Producer at Warner Music Group), DJ Kut, DJ Kayslay, DJ Scratch, Murphy Lee, and Eddie F. All involved hope this landmark event will grow into a positive tradition for St. Louis and the hip hop community.

BREAKING AND HIP HOP CLUBS With the help of Jockenstein and Gates, St. Louis felt the hip hop revolution taking place in the country. The city embraced the elements of the culture and combined it with their own. Notable early breakers in Saint Louis include the Wrecking Crew, the 24 Karat Lovers, the Cut Up Crew, and Go-Go. At River Roads Mall there were often contests including a large event called Break 84. This was huge for the city and showed how involved people were becoming with hip hop culture. ‘‘I think the whole city showed up,’’ Chan states. Breaking maintained steady popularity until around 1987 when it slowly faded away. Hip Hop clubs and events also fed the city’s hunger for the new music culture. Animal House was the biggest thing to happen in St. Louis and was instrumental in creating the hip hop atmosphere. Located in the North County on Chambers Street off of Route 367, the old theater was the only place to be in St. Louis on a Saturday night. There was a dance floor, seating, standing room, and seating with tables inside. The club which aimed at those over 21 was open until 3 AM and then started closing at 1 AM because of the young crowds. Every artist would pass through there to prove themselves to the St. Louis community, similar to The Tunnel in New York City. Local acts were given the opportunity to open for the major artists rolling through. There was no audition for this; you simply had to ask the

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management. After Animal House closed for the night, everyone would go downtown to the Garage and stay out until it closed. Animal House closed in 1992 as an effect of the death of their owner, who had a lot of pull around town over gang violence and the uncooperative nature of Northside police. Since then several different owners have tried to revive it with different a different name and different owners, but none have been able to capture the excitement, momentum, or crowd it once had. In 1997, Chan and Luq, both being highly respected in the hip hop community, were able to gain a following and do something different at the Hi Pointe Cafe. The highlight of the night was the freestyle which at the end of the night would go for a whole hour. The unique freestyle had a tradition where if an MC dissed someone that was in the crowd or had just been on the stage they were stopped and that person would be brought on stage. Hi Pointe was a show that was very instrumental in discovering talent in St. Louis. Famed female rapper Ebony Eyez got her start battling on Monday nights at Hi Pointe. It also saw artists such as the Ruff Ryders, Julez Santana, DMac, and more. Hi Pointe sustained popularity until it ended in 2006. The success of Hi Pointe led to a radio show similar to the live club show on Q95.5. Another one of the most popular venues in 2008 is Club Casino, located on St. Louis’s East Side. The State Street hot spot has been around since the beginning under a bunch of different names. The club is open until 6 AM and it is where everybody goes when the other clubs close. It is always jam packed with roughly a thousand people on a Friday and one thousand five hundred people on a Saturday. The club supports locals and is where Huey’s ‘‘Pop, Lock and Drop It’’ first saw popularity in the city. These venues, as well as local record store Vintage Vinyl (see sidebar: Vintage Vinyl) created a local subculture in St. Louis that allowed artists to test their skills, going head to head with each other. Venues like Animal House and Hi Pointe attracted crowds that were genuinely invested in the hip hop culture in their city.

“IT’S A MIDWEST THANG . . . “ Nelly might have been the first major rapper from St. Louis, but he was not the first star in the Midwest. In the mid-1990s Twista, Rico Love, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Common, and Da Brat all emerged from different parts of the Midwest. However, artists that made it big from the region have almost no similar sound. Unlike the other major regions of hip hop such as the East Coast, West Coast, and South, the artists that have reached mass appeal from this area such as Nelly, Eminem, and Kanye West have almost no unifying sound or style characteristics. In 2006, the census bureau estimated that the term ‘‘Midwest’’ represents the location of roughly 66,217,736 people. These people live in an area that forms the central body or ‘‘Heartland’’ of America. The layout is characterized as the vast and wide-open space connecting the two coasts of America, creating

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VINTAGE VINYL Music havens such as the over 4,000 square foot Vintage Vinyl record store have been very supportive and become institutions in the hip hop community. The U. City store located at the Delmar loop was an important grassroots underground store which was opened in the 1980s. The owners had an idea to sell records of all types and had albums that you couldn’t find anywhere else. Vintage Vinyl had a major advantage over other large music chains because they had an excellent sense of musical knowledge and became known as the ‘‘music encyclopedia.’’ Instrumental in the early development of St. Louis Hip Hop, the owners of the store served as executive producers to one of the first hip hop recordings in the STL by Charlie Chan and Dangerous D. Support for the community continued as they helped underground recording pioneer DJ G-Wiz and his label from the mid-1980s to 1992. The founders’ encouragement of hip hop music started because of their musical knowledge leading to a love of samples. Vintage Vinyl was locally famous for having a section of hip hop albums in their store that wasn’t mainstream and could not be found anywhere else. Workers were trained to know every single artist and album from that section. Shelves in the store would be stocked with STL underground CDs or DJ mixtapes and was a staple outlet for local musicians to promote their music. Other music stores that were heavily known throughout the community were ‘‘mom and pop’’ places such as Peaches, Danny’s Records, Hudson Embassy, ZJ’s, and the legendary Joe’s Music Shop. Record stores and venues from all over the city helped develop and influence the region’s music by bringing different artists and genres to the masses.

extremely diverse regions within itself. Chicago is the largest city in the Midwest and one of the three largest in the country, yet the region known as the Midwest groups Chicago with smaller cities such as St. Louis that are considered to have a more laid-back, even country, feel. The Midwest is no one thing; this central region of the country has a wide range of culture and communities. This Midwest variety can also be seen in hip hop, where certain cities have individual styles. Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, and Common have epitomized the city of Chicago and made it known for ‘‘conscious rap’’ or ‘‘think rap.’’ Milwaukee is known for Rico Love and as the hometown of MCs like Strickland and Speech from the Grammy-winning group Arrested Development, who were also characterized as conscious rap. Cleveland style was defined by the group Bone Thugs-NHarmony, the first Midwest rappers to go platinum. Detroit continued its Motown tradition with defining hip hop artists such as Obie Trice, Eminem, and D12. Kansas City experimented with the combination of Southern rap and the Hyphy sound

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and Minneapolis is known for its progressive underground scene. St. Louis has become famous for the music of Nelly, but has yet to define its own style. Because there is a lack of identity, the Midwest has not sustained itself as a major region yet. Artists are uneasy to define themselves as a rapper from this region because of such a major disunity. Until recently, no one defined themselves as Midwest style. Seeing a lot of Midwestern artists emerge, Twista raps, ‘‘Midwest keep going creeping on tha come up for years.’’ He appropriately titled the 2000 ode to the region ‘‘Midwest Invasion.’’ In the song, ‘‘Welcome to the Midwest,’’ Tech N9ne and Big Krizz Kaliko define themselves as from the Midwest, rather than from their native Kansas City. Nelly rapped about the Midwest in his song ‘‘Midwest Swing,’’ where he describes this culture as it pertains to St. Louis. Although rappers such as Kanye West and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have mentioned the Midwest in their songs, no one has really been able to define the area or create any sense of togetherness. As slow strides are taken to make the Midwest known in hip hop, the geographical differences that result from the land being so spread out makes areas subject to different lifestyles by city, thus, continually affecting the style of music they produce.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE Missouri is the most neighborly state in the country. Bordering eight states, it gains its culture from a wealth of different arenas. During the time of westward expansion, St. Louis was given the name, ‘‘The Gateway City’’ and is often called the ‘‘gateway to the West’’ as it is viewed as the Eastern/Western dividing mark for the United States. Ironically, its status as the ‘‘Gateway City’’ applies today with hip hop. The hip hop genre has become so specialized by location. St. Louis serves as the ‘‘gateway’’ connecting the East Coast, West Coast, and Southern styles and culture. This demand on St. Louis because of the physical location provides the city with a perpetuating identity crisis. At any time, the music will be influenced totally by what is popular at the time. Beginning with Dr. Jockenstein bringing New York’s East Coast style hip hop to the streets it has continued throughout the trends of hip hop’s history. St. Lunatics member Murphy Lee has stated, ‘‘we’ve got different sounds because we take in so much from the West Coast, East Coast and the South and North.’’ When gangster rap and West Coast style were popular, it would be the music that was played in St. Louis. When East Coast and Jay-Z were popular, that would be dominating airplay. Whatever region was dominating at the time would also affect production and content of local artists. In the beginning, the city was influenced by the East, as was the rest of the country. They were imitating these artists because they were all that was out. G-Wiz comments, ‘‘listening to and watching what New York was doing was a hip hop learning process, like going to school.’’ St. Louis artists imitated the cutting and scratching styles of the most prominent figures such as Grandmaster Flash and DJ Jazzy Jeff.

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When the gangs rolled through the city, they brought their music with them, which was the most popular at the time. The culture was heavily influenced by N.W.A., Too $hort, and E-40. As one of the first artists to get a record deal, Sylk Smoov, who Nelly claims was one of his biggest hometown influences, embraced West Coast style with singles such as ‘‘Clientele’’ and ‘‘Bitch/Trick with a Good Rap.’’ Sylk Smoov recruited his hometown friend King Odie, who has become most known for working to create the classic 1992 joints. Smoov signed on with Polygraph Records and was taken in by DJ Quik and AMG’s Los Angeles label Toll Track Productions. Right after them was JCB and the Dog Pound released A Day in the Life on DMC’s label National Southside Profile. Nelly is also showing much influence from the West Coast. The multiplatinum rapper has an album coming out where he changes styles and is said to be a ‘‘dedication’’ to the bay area. In it he raps in the styles of major St. Louis influences from the San Francisco Bay Area: Too $hort, E-40, and Spice One. Right now, there is no doubt that the South is what is most influential in St. Louis and throughout the whole country. Where there has been a decline of mainstream music from the rest of the country, the South has been dominating hip hop culture. It’s dominating the radio and clubs. Chan jokes, ‘‘You would come here and swear you were in Atlanta.’’ Yet, the style of rap made most famous by Lil John was always around in the STL—there just was no name to it. Locals such as Magic Mike had always had that same style of bass beat, there was just no label. St. Louis exchanges some of the culture with the ATL. Lil John was loved by the city and he loved them right back. The crunk king even gave St. Louis a shout out in the song ‘‘Real N***a Roll Call.’’ He was frequently around and was often called the ‘‘Mayor of the St. Louis.’’ Other aspects of hip hop lifestyle have transferred over to the car culture. This includes candy paint, low riders and there is a lot of riding around town. Their ‘‘tricked out’’ Cutlasses and Impalas blast the Southern beats. ‘‘The Southern beat sounds better coming from trunk,’’ Chan says. He also adds that the simple lyrics are easy to relate to while riding in your car. Other rappers traveling through St. Louis have also been inspired. DJ Kut says, ‘‘You can ask any performer that has traveled through St. Louis, they have some stories.’’ A few of these artists have even included them in their songs. The Lou is the subject of the song ‘‘My Summer Vacation’’ on Ice Cube’s 1991 album Death Certificate. In the song he shows himself ‘‘departing Los Angeles, final destination St. Louis.’’ Public Enemy mentions the city in ‘‘Miuzi Ways a Ton’’ and Too $hort raps about it in ‘‘Short Dog’s in the House.’’ MC Lyte has also reminisced about the city in her songs.

THE MASON-DIXON LINE In terms of region, the 260 square miles of the St. Louis metropolitan area splits itself into north, south, east, and west, as well divides St. Louis the city from St. Louis the county. Different people get introduced to hip hop in different ways

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according to where they are from. DJs, MCs, and dancers normally do not mix with people from outside their area. Luq explains, ‘‘It’s hard to define the areas, everyone just knew what neighborhoods were what.’’ Essentially, the Mississippi River divides East St. Louis from the rest of the area. East St. Louis is a part of Illinois. That leaves the North, South, and West sections. The boundaries separating the county from the city are far less complex. You officially travel into the county when you cross Skinker Avenue. The county is more territorial. While many in the city speak of simply Northside, Southside, etc., the county breaks it down even more. Rappers from the two major areas, North County and West County, often need to represent themselves by their particular part of the county. Another section that breeds rappers is the University City or ‘‘U. City’’ area where the main campus of Washington University is located. It is best described as being a mix of the county and the city. This is where Nelly and the St. Lunatics were formed. Although each area is a point of strong representation, there is no real difference between the areas shown in their music, image, or culture. In fact, it is a small city and every section is about 10 minutes from one another. All of the neighborhoods are pretty ‘‘hood.’’ There is a common perception between the different areas that each one is more dangerous than the next and that ‘‘you don’t go to another side of the city unless you know someone.’’ While it is still a bad neighborhood, the suburb right outside the city is said to give more of an opportunity to make it because parents tend to have better jobs. On Chingy’s first album Jackpot he dedicates the song ‘‘Represent’’ to these sections of the city as his chorus repeats, ‘‘Throw yo hood up if you representin, Northside, Westside, Southside, Eastside.’’ He also addresses hood pride in his collaboration with Gena and Huey entitled ‘‘St. Louis Niggaz.’’ In many of his songs and videos, notably ‘‘Air Force Ones,’’ Nelly makes it specifically clear that he is shopping for shoes in the U. City section of the city by zooming on banners that specify the area.

“WELCOME TO DA HOOD“ Characteristics of the Los Angeles gangster rap style remain in St. Louis long after the decline of the g-funk era of the 1990s. This is largely because the city was still subject to a lot of gang and drug related violence and lifestyle. There are two major opinions on how the gangs of L.A. became so influential in the 3-1-4. In their book Life in the Gang: Family, Friends and Violence, Scott H. Decker and Barrick Van Winkle concluded that: The powerful images of Los Angeles gangs, conveyed through movies, clothes, and music, provided a symbolic reference point for these antagonisms. In this way, popular culture provided the symbols and rhetoric of gang affiliation and activities that galvanized neighborhood rivalries. This helps to explain why the characteristics of gangs in Los Angeles, nearly two thousand

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The other view, held by many native St. Louisians recalls the heavy influence of the Los Angeles gangs through their culture brought to them by these gangs physically coming down Route 66 to expand their drug trade. As a result, a new meaning was given to the phrase ‘‘Wild West,’’ as the city has become what Ross Kemp calls one of ‘‘America’s most active and aggressive gang cultures.’’ Among these gangs are the Crips, the Bloods, the Gangster Disciples, Six Deuce, and 44 Bud. In 2006, USA Today reported that despite millions of dollars in urban renewal, a 20 percent rise in violent crime between 2004 and 2005 gave St. Louis the title of most dangerous city in the United States (Leonard). Kemp, who has traveled the world documenting gangs for his television show Ross Kemp on Gangs, did an extensive profile on St. Louis. The program shows everything from gang areas with houses full of bullet holes to the graffiti, used for tagging territories and representing the dead. The show depicts images of grieving families and of several trees with teddy bears on them to mourn those who have died from gang violence. He claims, ‘‘It all feels like the decline of a once great city, where the demise of traditional industries has left a massive gap, into which the gangs have stepped with their graffiti, drugs and turf wars.’’ Gangs have become increasingly apparent at the local hip hop night spots. In 2007 alone, there were ten shootings and two stabbings, making hip hop nightspots the location of five deaths. Clubs such as The 609 Lounge even began instituting policies for patrons, including a 25-year-old age minimum for men, and a dress code that forbade clothing such as tank tops, do-rags, and ‘‘tall,’’ or oversize, white T-shirts (this is common apparel within the hip hop community). The rap scene proves the saying, ‘‘you can’t spell hustler with out S-T-L,’’ as almost every performer has gang ties and connections. Artists are usually associated with the bloods or the crips. Well-known rapper Just Black aka Jus Bleezy, was always respected for having some of the most real lyrics about the street life of a hustler. This lead him to be the most known for being the victim of gang brutality. Homicide detectives outlined his body as he lay motionless in the street after he was shot with an AK-47 and nine millimeter seven times. Much of this violence is on the Northside of the city, where rapper Nelly got involved with dealing drugs and getting involved with crime after he was no longer a baseball prospect. Another member of the St. Lunatics who has seen the effects of this is Lavell Webb. Performing under the name City Spud, Nelly’s half brother, who is featured on his hit single ‘‘Ride Wit Me’’ and produced four tracks on Country Grammar, is currently incarcerated. His surroundings had shown him that dealing pot was not a big deal. Needing money right before Nelly and the St. Lunatics hit it big, he got himself involved in a drug-selling scheme. City Spud was unaware that it was going to turn into a shooting when he got involved. Charged as an accomplice, he will serve a 10-year prison sentence.

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Much of the community has embraced their surroundings and has let this way of life become extremely influential in their lyrical content. Nationally received recording artist J-Kwon has often talked about what it was like to grow up in the hood on and off his records. Hood Hop is dedicated to his upbringing. In the repetitive chorus of ‘‘Welcome to the Hood’’ he literally spells out what his surroundings were as he lists, ‘‘Now do you got a gun? Welcome to the hood. Got a pocket full of crack? Welcome to the hood. Lost your money shootin’ craps? Welcome to da hood. Have you eva been car-jacked? Welcome to da hood.’’ Drugs are the topic of many verses. Nelly had the whole country singing the infectiously catchy line in the chorus; ‘‘Light it up and take a puff, pass it to me now,’’ as well as ‘‘Smokin on dubs in clubs,’’ ‘‘Gin, tonic and chronic,’’ and ‘‘Smokin in Savannah’’ throughout the verse in his number one hit ‘‘Country Grammar.’’ On his debut album of the same name, he talked about drugs and gangs in every single one of his songs. Matt Diehl of Rolling Stone points out, ‘‘Lyrically, Nelly’s all over the map . . . On ‘Utha Side’ he preaches against gang life, but the next song, ‘Tho Dem Wrappas,’ finds him smoking blunts and getting a blow job.’’ Nelly responds, ‘‘That’s just life. You can be riding down the street, listening to a song and chillin’, but by the time the next song comes on, you could see a guy get shot’’ (Diehl). In ‘‘Glad 2 B Alive’’ Huey details his experience on the streets. He raps about finding a better way to make money than drugs, no more violence, running through from the cops or gangs and is glad he only has to wonder if he would be subject to these things if he didn’t make it out. In another song, ‘‘Nobody Loves the Hood’’ he addresses many problems in his community as he sees them. In the middle of the hook Huey tells the story and mentality of the inner city by rapping, ‘‘Kids just doing time, ain’t nothing but crime, because they don’t believe the sun can still shine.’’ The track asks parents where they’ve been because ‘‘the hood is out of control’’ and saying its time for action. Penelope, one of the Lou’s most popular female rappers, is another up-andcoming artist who has served jail time. Penelope was recruited by the St. Lunatics and even appeared in their video for ‘‘Midwest Swing.’’ This St. Louis Cardinal’s future was looking bright, but her career as a professional drug dealer put her in prison for three years after a sting involving her family. Her lyrics have since been dedicated to this time in her life and focused on telling the story of growing up on the streets of St. Louis. Her lyrics in this sense discuss women who do jail time on ‘‘My N***a.’’ She also talks to her own children and all single mothers on ‘‘Father Figure.’’ The view of St. Louis vocalized by Nelly, Huey, and Penelope inspire the stories delivered through the rhymes of the area’s artists as well as expose a variety of the problems of inner-city society. Young artists such as 16-year-old newcomer Jibbs feel growing up in an area of constant violence that most adults have never even seen has forced him to turn his experiences into maturity. Jibbs sees his hometown

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friends acting out of control and feels that his age can reach out to them and others in similar situations. He is trying to do this by reaching out to them in his songs while they are young and still have time to change. FLAME, another rapper from the streets of the Lou, took his inner city upbringing and focused it into a different type of rap. Although he was very influenced by the hip hop culture, his grandmother, who was also his best friend, shaped him. She introduced him to Christianity. Mixing his love of hip hop with his faith, he started recording gospel rap. In 2005, he became the first national hip hop artist from the Midwest. FLAME’s turned his upbringing into the desire to spread the Gospel to those influenced by the hip hop and inner-city culture.

ST. LOUIS BLUES The STL has always been known for its connection to ragtime, the blues, and jazz music. From the late twentieth century, its status as a river city and railroad center allowed several prominent musicians to pass by bringing new music and inspiring the greatest of artists. Becoming a musical hot spot, St. Louis was able to create its own brand of music. Just as hip hop often speaks to those struggling on the streets, blues hits from St. Louis touched millions of people during the Great Depression. St. Louis was also a center for ragtime music and jazz. Jazz innovator Miles Davis got his start in the Eastside of the Gateway City and took St. Louis sound all over the world. The inner-city youth passed down stories from their parents about the foundations of jazz, rock and soul music artists in East St. Louis, most notably Davis, Chuck Berry and Ike Turner and Tina Turner. The history of blues music has directly had an effect on the city. The hip hop generation is often going to blues clubs and mixing with some of the older musicians for influence. You can see this still today at the blues review shows at the Imperial Palace, formerly known as Club 54. The Lou’s influential nature in this area has promoted a strong tradition of African-Americanism and ingrained its musical legacy into the culture. This is seen today with the city’s heavy hitters. Nelly has been quoted as saying that he incorporates the soulful nature of St. Louis into his music. He claims his influence is shown in his style and delivery as he states, ‘‘Instead of getting on top of the beat, I get inside it, as if I’m adding another instrument to the groove’’ (Diehl). Even though the city may be divided by section, there is an overwhelming sense of community felt throughout the city. The familial feeling is gone in cities such as Atlanta where urban sprawl and mass migration to the city have changed the nature of living in the ATL. This is why St. Louis is said to have a ‘‘country’’ feeling to it. Nelly has stated that he likes to just chill on his porch all day long, ‘‘It just makes my style more down-home.’’ St. Louis has a very laid-back personality as a whole.

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COUNTRY GRAMMAR LESSON The Lou is a mix of Southern country and an urban environment. The ‘‘country’’ is seen in images of the laid-back style that Nelly speaks of. Many people in St. Louis don’t understand why they are called country, often saying, ‘‘there are no farms here.’’ Yet, the ‘‘country’’ is more representational of the ‘‘down-home’’ nature the city possesses. In interviews he often talks about getting inspiration from sitting on his porch. As a form of ‘‘Southern hospitality,’’ Kanecc talks of business J-Kwon and he have conducted while barbequing. Many music videos put several images together to create the ‘‘country’’ feeling. Nelly’s single ‘‘Country Grammar’’ implies the ‘‘country’’ lifestyle in the title and video. Stereotypical aspects of Southern African American culture include a large block party barbeque with someone standing behind too large bowls of fried chicken and women in hair salons. Chingy’s hit single ‘‘Right Thurr’’ starts by showing him relaxing on the porch of a house typical of Southern urban architecture and J-Kwon’s ‘‘Hood Hop’’ and Huey’s ‘‘Pop, Lock and Drop It’’ depict the rappers in a barber shop. The ‘‘country’’ is also seen in the dialect of the natives. St. Louis has become known for its unique pronunciation and accompanying vocabulary. Mainstream America was first introduced to the St. Louis accent and slang—a mix of rural Southern and Midwestern terms and pronunciation—via Nelly. Diehl quotes Nelly as saying ‘‘My whole purpose was to make people who speak country grammar not ashamed of how they talk, and turn it into the hot slang.’’ Diehl’s article, from the time Nelly was introduced in 2000, has him giving us a crash course in the language of St. Louis. He explains that in the 3-1-4 all friends are called ‘‘mo,’’ like, ‘‘That’s my mo’’; female friends are referred to as ‘‘mo-ette’’ (Diehl). Songs such as ‘‘E.I.’’ means it’s on and cracking. ‘‘Hot in Herre’’ did not only send Nelly to the top of the charts, but it emphasized the way natives of this area pronounce words differently. Most notable is the pronunciation of the ‘‘e’’ sound in many words. Instead of saying ‘‘here’’ they say ‘‘hur.’’ The words ‘‘thurr’’ (there), ‘‘wurr’’ (were), and ‘‘urr’body’’ (everybody) are also recognizable in lyrics from St. Louis. Along with these, ‘‘deerty’’ (dirty) has become the most popular word in the Lou. Aside from being the name of Nelly’s own record label, ‘‘Deerty’’ can serve as a noun, adjective, verb, or adverb and is the perfect beginning or ending to every sentence. While Nelly introduced the mainstream to this dialect, it is not unfamiliar in St. Louis. Most hip hop songs from the 3-1-4 feature this style of speech. St. Louis is known for having a quirky accent, just not the one of Nelly and other rap artists. As a whole, the dialect situation in Missouri is diverse. The accent featured in the hip hop culture is exclusive to the large African American population. This speech creates a ‘‘country’’ sound by mixing ‘‘Southern drawl and Midwest twang.’’ The rest of St. Louis has a distinctively different speech. Here the North or North Midland dialect is spoken, similar to that of areas such as Southern New Jersey, parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware as well as most of the northern Midwest.

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Excluding the two major linguistic sounds of St. Louis, Missouri as a whole is found to have mostly Southern or South Midland dialect. For hip hop artists, their distinct vernacular is a sense of pride in their hood.

GATEWAY TO UNITY St. Louis artists are very skilled in displaying their city throughout the different elements of their music. Pride for the STL is most notably shown through their lyrics, music videos, fashion, and other media outlets. Nelly paved the way for St. Louis rappers to make it big and be proud to boast about the Midwestern city. Lyrically they talk about St. Louis the way N.W.A talked about Compton or JayZ talks about New York. In his first album Country Grammar Nelly name-drops St. Louis in eight out of the fourteen songs and the Midwest a bunch of times as well. Many of the songs are a mixture of St. Louis pride with telling the stories the city gave him. ‘‘St. Louie’’ goes as far as to boast the city in its title. There are frequent references to his neighborhood, U. City and identification with the STL area code 314. His group the St. Lunatics, who dropped the name of the city in 12 of the 15 songs, also writes songs purely dedicated to St. Louis such as ‘‘S.T.L.,’’ where they brag, ‘‘St. Louis is small but we still do it all.’’ Rappers continue to be proud to tell the stories of their city. Murphy Lee, a member of Nelly’s St. Lunatics who has also had some commercial success, gets up and close with the city and asks the question ‘‘Who Said St. Louis Ain’t Hip

Chingy (Lisa O’Connor/ZUMA/Corbis)

Heartland Hip Hop | 357 Hop?’’ by making this question the title of his sophomore album and a catch phrase in the Lou. Chingy is also a St. Louis success story who specifically names his home city with songs such as ‘‘All the Way to St. Lou,’’ ‘‘St. Louis Niggaz,’’ and named his sophomore release The Soul of St. Louis. This album is said to be emotional and really goes into the culture of St. Louis. J-Kwon has titled one of his new songs ‘‘314,’’ and the list of songs with the Lou in the title goes on and on. Although a certain St. Louis style wasn’t public or accepted until Nelly, themes of the Lou would pop up in those who were strongly influenced by the East, West, or South. Just hearing early 1990s underground rapper Lil Whit you would swear he was from Compton. The smooth meshing of a psychedelic funky beat coupled with slowly drawled lyrics sounded extremely West Coast. Sporting a forward facing hat with dark shades, he looks as though he could pass for Dr. Dre. In his video for ‘‘True OG’’ beyond looking like a West Coast rapper, he proudly sports the Saint Louis Cardinals ‘‘StL’’ logo on his chest. The background of his video focuses on the landscape of life in the Lou. Images of local hot spots on the Northside are included as well as the Gateway Arch and local underground venues. In this way he is able to represent where he’s from as well as show how the streets of St. Louis paint his story. Almost every rapper from greater St. Louis has done a video with similar images for the same reasons. No matter what style the artist is most influenced by they either include the Gateway Arch, their section of the city, wear some sort of St. Louis Cardinals apparel, or all of the above. Nelly epitomizes this. Always in ‘‘StL’’ gear of some sort, he puts the 630-foot steel structure in a lot of his and the St. Lunatics’ videos, including: ‘‘Country Grammar,’’ ‘‘Summer in Da City,’’ in the background of the St. Lunatics’ ‘‘Trading Cards,’’ in ‘‘Batter Up,’’ ‘‘Gimme What You Got,’’ ‘‘Breathe In, Breathe Out,’’ ‘‘Let Me in Now,’’ and on the back of a jacket in the beginning of ‘‘Air Force Ones.’’ Other notable artists that have included what has become the tag of the Lou are J-Kwon in ‘‘Tipsy’’ and ‘‘Hood Hop,’’ Da Hol’ 9 in ‘‘Urrbody in da Club’’ and Huey’s ‘‘Pop, Lock and Drop It’’ and ‘‘Adidas’’ (see sidebar: Saint Louis Fashion).

STOP “RIGHT THURR“ Although many of hip hop’s critics argue that large record companies are making hip hop too commercial, the actions of the record companies have a different effect on St. Louis. As an urban region, it has been involved in hip hop for a long time and had not produced any nationally played artist until 2000. Many feel that after Nelly, A and R was only going to St. Louis rappers for club songs and catchy pop hits. Forcing this style from the city and not allowing room for the creation of an identity in style, lyrics, and sound is believed to be hindering St. Louis from developing its own individuality. This is not completely inaccurate. In September of 2006, The St. Louis PostDispatch published an article with the ‘‘25 songs that landed on the national

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SAINT LOUIS FASHION The Lou has some distinct characteristics when it comes to fashion. As discussed above, the wearing of athletic jerseys and symbols showed pride. Sports have always been an influence on hip hop in the region. Rams football attire and Blues hockey jerseys are often worn, but do not compare to the popularity of St. Louis Cardinal apparel. The city is extremely proud of the 10 time World Series Champions (second to only the New York Yankees). Cardinals jerseys, shirts, and hats have become the major fashion statement and the ‘‘StL’’ cap insignia has served as the symbol which has become as synonymous with the image of St. Louis hip hop as the Gateway Arch. Nelly proved to be a pioneer of fashion in addition to musical sound. His song ‘‘Air Force Ones’’ brought the sneaker back to an overwhelming mass popularity. Huey also dropped a track about his favorite shoe brand called ‘‘Adidas.’’ After getting a cut on his face from a basketball game in the summer of 2001, Nelly accidentally set the trend of wearing a band-aid on one cheek. That same summer he brought back a version of Kris Kross style by wearing backwards sports jerseys in the summer. Seeing his ability to set trends, Nelly branded his style by starting Vokal Clothing Company (which he mentions in ‘‘Midwest Swing’’). Realizing he had a large female fan base, he started the culturally chic clothing company Apple Bottoms. In 2006, Jibbs burst on the scene with his single ‘‘Chain Hang Low’’ which he claims is exactly how St. Louis likes to wear their neck jewelry. The hood also subscribed to the ‘‘grillz’’ movement and the plated teeth trend exploded in popularity during the 2000s. Other than that, St. Louis tends to take matching very seriously. Color coordinating is often done precisely between all elements of outfits and accessories. ‘‘Chain Hang Low’’ also shows that matching is no joke as Jibbs talks about color coordinating his ‘‘grillz’’ into his ensemble as well. In addition, the crisp long white tee is the classic style spotted everywhere in the city.

charts’’ (Johnson). 56 percent of the songs on the list belong to Nelly and all of the songs are the product of only seven different artists. First of all, the list spans six years, where the budding hip hop empire only had 25 hits, 14 of them belonging to one person. Secondly, in the same six years there have only been seven artists to reach commercial success, when there are hundreds upon hundreds of rappers with potential. One of those seven artists was Ebony Eyez, who was unfortunately pigeonholed as a one-hit wonder for the clubs. Considered to have the most original sound coming out of St. Louis, Ebony became known for her song, ‘‘In Ya Face’’ instead of

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her individual style. Record companies thought that because she was associated with Trackstarz, the producers of J-Kwon’s hit, she would know how to produce hits as well. Ebony Eyez is reclaiming her title of queen of STL hip hop by returning to the streets, releasing several mixtapes. She is ready to emerge with another album learning from the mistakes of her past. J-Kwon also had quite the learning experience after getting dropped from his label and now he’s taking a stand. The founder of Hood Hop Entertainment, he has announced that he is ‘‘retiring’’ from the rap game. Known for his club song ‘‘Tipsy,’’ he is turning in creating music in order to be the next music mogul. His label, Hood Hop, has big plans for the city. Calling for all to ‘‘stand up a little more for our city,’’ his goal is for the Lou to become united. He strongly urges the labels of the city to collaborate with one another. With Kanecc and the rest of Hood Hop, J-Kwon plans on accomplishing this. ‘‘We just need to be cooler with each other, man and quit hatin’,’’ J-Kwon remarks. Talking about the importance of unity he continues, ‘‘I got the most beefs in the city . . . and I’m gonna leave that alone this year.’’ Artists are not equipped to handle their own business in the same way that performers from areas like Atlanta do. Since the industry isn’t developed enough in the city and there are constant territorial wars by section, there is no unity amongst artists in the business end. Another goal of J-Kwon and his label is to help artists learn to promote themselves. Saint Louis is beginning to embrace technology by taking themselves to the Web. Myspace and YouTube are being utilized to universalize mixtapes and gain exposure. Rappers have started to band together through Web sites such as stlhiphop.com, the major online hub of all things hip hop in the STL. The site is a one-stop shop for the community containing articles, booking, profiles for those involved in the scene, and a forum to communicate with one another. Advancements in business seems to be a slow process, but small steps are being taken. The question now is whether St. Louis will ever be able to build up their business industry and give their performers a few finance and economics lessons. When is the region considered to have fully first represented their hood? Is it in 2000, the year that marked when the mainstream and majority of Americans learned to speak ‘‘country grammar’’ and was endearingly called ‘‘derrty’’? Or does representation begin with Dr. Jockenstein, Gentleman Jim Gates, and others who paved the way? Either way, the Lou has been through a lot, and there is a long legacy of tradition. Being the first to play ‘‘Rappers Delight’’ and showing innovation with the show ‘‘Roll Call’’ put the city at the pulse of hip hop for as long as it’s been beating and it has established places for the music and culture to be brought to the streets such as Animal House and Saints (see sidebar: Saints Roller Rink). DJs and MCs realized the potential of something that was new and decided to be a part of it. St. Louis’s unique position in the ‘‘heartland’’ of the country allows the Lou to see all angles of hip hop from the East Coast, West Coast, and the South. This has had multiple effects. The first is an ‘‘identity crisis,’’ not allowing one

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SAINTS ROLLER RINK Saints Roller Rink was the number one place for the younger crowd. In the West County city of Olivette, the rink was equipped with a skating rink, table hockey, arcade, and a dance room. Roller skating and hanging out at the rink was extremely popular and the host to a number of hip hop talent shows. DJs would mix while people danced and skated. Saints also formed the foundation of break dancing where people would come to pick up and learn new moves. Sunday night was the night everyone went. Many underground DJs and performers got their start at this venue. The owners of Saints opened another place, called The Palace, that paved the way for MCs and DJs.

distinctive sound to emerge from the 3-1-4. The second is that it equipped its citizens with the best overall view of hip hop. Being right in the center of the country and the buffer between the three major areas of hip hop has created a lack of a collective sound amongst Midwestern cities. As a result, the Midwest has not been able to band together under the name of their region and become a powerhouse like the other areas of the country.

THE FUTURE OF HIP HOP IN ST. LOUIS With recognized areas like Northside, Southside, Eastside, Westside, North County, South County, and U. City, the small city of St. Louis has broken itself into several classifications by area has collective and unity pride for one thing: St. Louis. This pride has not only affected the community within the city and beyond its limits, it has even inspired others in hip hop. The city that has become increasingly dangerous due to gang violence has provided stories for rappers to develop their craft. These tales are behind most of the songs of underground rappers and helped propel some to the national stage, starting with Nelly in 2000. Nelly introduced the Lou and has become the epitome of many elements of today’s distinct hip hop culture in the city. Now, their fashion, dialect, demeanor, and extreme pride are recognizable throughout the country. Part of the reason St. Louis has emerged as a recognizable city in hip hop is because it branded the ‘‘Gateway Arch’’ and ‘‘StL’’ logo as trademarks and images of them unifying the city. However, the record companies only want hits like Nelly’s from the STL, making it very hard for artists to emerge. The lack of organized business in the city has left the community uneducated and unsure of how to deal with the music industry. Its sudden explosion onto the scene has made everything a learning process where the city is still trying to find its place.

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The short history makes what will happen next with St. Louis’s representation in hip hop questionable. Since things are constantly changing it will be interesting to see what happens in the future. Will the city help the Midwest sustain itself and bring the unity of the city to the Midwest? Will the city and Midwest find an identity? Can the 3-1-4 develop a successful music industry? Though there are different perspectives on its place in the past, present, and future, the Lou’s involvement is undeniable. With such a strong link to the genre, Murphy Lee is justified in wondering, ‘‘Who Said St. Louis Ain’t Hip Hop?’’

REFERENCES Bozza, Anthony. ‘‘Hip Hop’s Heartland Hero.’’ Rolling Stone, 853, November 9, 2000. http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/nelly/articles/story/5924133/hiphops _heartland_hero. Decker, Scott H., and Barrick Van Winkle. Life in the Gang: Family, Friends and Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Diehl, Matt. ‘‘Nelly Puts St. Louis Rap on the Map: Talking Slang, St. Louis, and Baseball with Nelly.’’ September 14, 2000. http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/ nelly/articles/story/5923431/nelly_puts_st_louis_rap_on_the_map. Hamilton, Keegan. ‘‘Old School: Unearthed in a Cluttered Storeroom, a Pair of Vintage St. Louis Hip-Hop Recordings Help Tell the History of Rap.’’ Riverfront Times, October 21, 2008. http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2008-10-22/ news/old-school-unearthed-in-a-cluttered-storeroom-a-pair-of-vintage-st-louiship-hop-recordings-help-tell-the-history-of-rap. Hixson, Sean. ‘‘Diversity Reigns at the Science Hip-Hop Spin.’’ Sauce Magazine, June 8, 2003. http://www.saucemagazine.com/article/3/10 (accessed July 10, 2008). Johnson, Kevin C. ‘‘On the Rap Map: St. Louis’ Party Style Sets Scene Apart.’’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 2, 2006. Leonard, Christopher. ‘‘St. Louis Ranked Most Dangerous City.’’ USA Today, October 30, 2006. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-30-citycrime_x.htm. Manderbach, Kerry. ‘‘Dr. Jockenstein, Operating on Your Mind.’’ St. Louis Journalism Review, March 2003. ‘‘Rappers Dream Big in St. Louis: City Known for Its Blues Fast Becoming New Hip-Hop Capital.’’ September 16, 2004. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/ 6011700.

FURTHER RESOURCES Barlow, Philip, and Mark Silk, eds. Religion and Public Life in the Midwest. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.

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Sisson, Richard, Christian K. Zacher, and Andrew Robert Lee Cayton. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Chingy Jackpot. Capitol, 2003. Powerballin’. Capitol, 2004. Hoodstar. Capitol, 2006. Hate It or Love It. Disturbing tha Peace, 2007. Ebony Eyez 7 Day Cycle. Toshiba, EMI Japan, 2005. FLAME FLAME. Cross Movement, 2004. Rewind. Cross Movement, 2005. Our World: Fallen. Cross Movement, 2007. Our World: Redeemed. Cross Movement, 2008. Huey Notebook Paper. Jive, 2007. Jibbs Jibbs Featuring Jibbs. Geffen Records, 2006. J-Kwon Hood Hop. So So Def, 2004. Just Black aka Jus Bleezy Who Can Relate. The Orchard, 2001. Lil Whit For the Fellas. Flatline Records, 1994. Nelly Country Grammar. UMVD Labels, 2000. Nellyville. UMVD Labels, 2002. Da Derrty Versions: The Reinvention. UMVD Labels, 2003. Suit. UMVD Labels, 2004. Sweat. UMVD Labels, 2004. Sweatsuit. UMVD Labels, 2005. Brass Knuckles. Universal, 2008.

CHAPTER 15 From St. Paul to Minneapolis, All the Hands Clap for This: Hip Hop in the Twin Cities Justin Schell The #16 bus runs along University Avenue, one of the main corridors between the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. While riding it one day, I hear a fellow passenger freestyling rhymes in the back. ‘‘I defy any rapper on the East Coast’’ is one of the lines. This chance moment crystallizes the Twin Cities hip hop scene: hip hop is produced everywhere—from Minneapolis to St. Paul and back, eloquently captured in the lyrics from the Heiruspecs’ ‘‘Relax’’ that forms part of my title. And while the ability of my fellow bus traveler to challenge ‘‘any rapper on the East Coast’’ may be in question, there should be little doubt in the minds of listeners that the Twin Cities possess one of the most vibrant and multifaceted hip hop scenes in the country. The Twin Cities possess a degree of isolation from the larger national hip hop scene. Much writing on hip hop that focuses on the Midwest neglects the Twin Cities and many people are surprised that Minnesota has hip hop at all. According to MC Toki Wright, the scene is ‘‘too far North to be part of the Midwest, too far West to be part of the East Coast, and too far East to be part of the West Coast.’’ Artists and writers have called it everything from the ‘‘Midwest coast,’’ ‘‘the middle,’’ to ‘‘no coast,’’ as the St. Paul group the Abstract Pack rapped in 1998 on their song of the same title. Given that the Twin Cities share a border, there is considerable overlap in the scene, which makes any strict geographical division nearly impossible. There are, however, distinctions between the two cities. Minneapolis hip hop divides into three more or less distinct neighborhoods: North, South, and, to a lesser extent, Northeast, whereas St. Paul is usually considered as a single geographic unit. Most of the concert venues for hip hop are located in Minneapolis, and some artists from St. Paul even refer to themselves as being from Minneapolis to writers and fans outside of the Twin Cities. The origins of Twin Cities hip hop go back nearly three decades, as the four elements of hip hop have existed here since the early 1980s. While the Sugar Hill 363

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DUNATION.COM A virtual landmark of the Twin Cities hip hop scene, DUNation.com was begun in the summer of 2001 by Robbinsdale, Minnesota, native Lars Larson (Terhark 2004). The site originally began as a techno Web community called ‘‘Division Underground,’’ but was shortened to ‘‘DU’’ when it became more hip hop oriented. The site is the online place to go for information on the Twin Cities hip hop scene, with an updated show calendar, artist profiles, music, videos, a forum for extended writing, links, the Twin Cities Hip hop Directory, and a message board. It is this last element that gives DUNation its special place in the Twin Cities scene. It encompasses the best aspects of the Twin Cities hip hop scene, a place for artists and fans to discuss hip hop, share songs, as well as find information on upcoming concerts, but also is the place for inane internet wars on the boards, reducing people to petty name calling. DUnation has also released a compilation of Twin Cities hip hop, DUNation.com: Volume Won (2005), with otherwise unreleased songs by Brother Ali, The C.O.R.E., Unknown Prophets, Sims, Desdamona, and others. In March of 2003, however, Larson sold the site to Vital Vinyl, a Twin Cities record store that specializes in 12’’ techno, house, and hip hop music. Larson now runs the Web site of the Fifth Element and the owners of Vital Vinyl have assured users of the site that it will continue in much the same way as before.

Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight,’’ the first nationally popular rap record, could be found in record stores like Minneapolis’s Electric Fetus, and numerous DJs were rocking parties around the Twin Cities a la Afrika Bambaataa and Kool Herc in the Bronx, it is Travis Lee (1963–) who can be considered the ‘‘godfather’’ of Twin Cities hip hop. Coming to Minneapolis from Brooklyn to attend the University of Minnesota in 1981, ‘‘Travitron,’’ as he came to be known, brought not only records with him, but also the style of hip hop, the gold ropes, record-scratching, and nearly indecipherable show flyers with wildstyle lettering. Indeed, the histories of graffiti and break dancing intertwine with the history of rap in the Twin Cities, as they do throughout hip hop’s history. Travitron, as well as other DJs like Brother Jules, Delite, Verb X, Freddy Fresh, Tim Wilson, LST, Big Funk, Billy Bump, Kansas City, Farrow Black, Cowboy, Plaz, King IXL, and others began spinning records at Twin Cities clubs like Oz, the Fox Trap, Daddy’s, Club Hip hop, and Duffy’s, where both Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash performed in 1982. Blow also performed a year earlier in North Minneapolis’s Northgate Roll-Arena, which, along with other roller rinks, was a prominent early venue for hip hop in the Twin Cities. These DJs also threw parties at various parks and community centers, especially a number of Twin Cities

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YMCAs and YWCAs, as well as the University of Minnesota. Soon, the 7th Street Entry began holding ‘‘Club Wild Style,’’ a weekly, all ages hip hop afternoon named after the seminal early hip hop film Wild Style (Scholtes ‘‘Doomsday’’). There is some historical discrepancy as to the first rap record to emerge from Minnesota. Ice-T can be credited with the first hip hop record produced in Minnesota, recording ‘‘The Coldest Rap’’ b/w ‘‘Cold Wind Madness’’ for Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in 1983. Two records from Twin Cities artists were released soon afterwards: a song by Kyle Ray based on ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ and ‘‘Twin Cities Rapp,’’ by David ‘‘T.C.’’ Ellis (1959–). These and other hip hop records hit the Twin Cities’ airwaves around this time. Travitron hosted the Cities’ first hip hop show on KMOJ in 1984, ‘‘The Hip Hop Shop,’’ although radio DJs like Allen Freed, Pharaoh Black, Mike ‘‘Wax Attack’’ Mack, and MC ‘‘Kid’’ Delight had begun playing hip hop as part of the station’s regular rotation. Already at this early stage, rivalries emerged between the various geographic locales, with specific artists representing St. Paul, North Minneapolis, and South Minneapolis, oftentimes erupting in violence at shows. Beginning in the mid1980s, these differences were exacerbated by the influx of crack into the Twin Cities, as well as numerous national gangs, including the Bloods and the Crips. Some remnants of these rivalries, with less overt gang allegiances, still persist today, but for the most part there is a fluid interchange between Minneapolis and St. Paul artists. Hip hop emerging from the Twin Cities at this time received relatively limited national exposure, with a few notable exceptions. The I.R.M. Crew put out the Cities’ first nationally distributed single, ‘‘Uh Baby,’’ on K-Tel records, which was also distributing some of Gang Starr’s early records. The group went on to release a number of other 12’’ singles, as well as a short EP, before disbanding in 1987. Other groups like Soul Purpose and Style Posse were signed to Jerry Sylver’s Wide Angle records, which represented the early 1980s electro group, The Information Society. (Wide Angle previously released a hip hop EP in 1984 that did very well on Twin Cities charts and radio stations.) One of the members of Soul Purpose, Derrick Stevens, better known as Delite, was chosen by Paula Abdul to voice the character of Skat Kat, the animated feline that appears in the video for ‘‘Opposites Attract’’ at the end of 1989. Rapper DMG, short for Detrimental Gangxta, participated in an MC battle which included Scarface (of Houston rap legends The Geto Boys) as a judge; eventually, Scarface signed DMG to his Houston-based label, Rap-A-Lot. Around the same time that DMG moved to Houston, the foundational group The Micranots formed out of separate Twin Cities crews. Out of the Metro Unit came DJ Kool Akiem (Akiem Elisra, 1971–) and Self One (Chaka Mkali, 1973), who is now known as I Self Divine, while TruthMaze (William Harris, 1968–) came out of the Mixed Breed. Both Self One and DJ Kool Akiem moved to the Twin Cities from California in the late 1980s, part of a larger nationwide immigration to the Twin Cities, due in part to available jobs and social welfare programs. As

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part of the Universal Vibe Squad, the group began performing around the Twin Cities, particularly at the 7th Street Entry. TruthMaze soon left the group, and Self One and Akiem relocated to Atlanta in 1994, citing a lack of adequate infrastructure within the Twin Cities hip hop community that could support artists (Ricketts). One person who worked with the Micranots before they left was Brent Sayers (1970–), known then as Stress, and now known as Siddiq. Working mainly as a concert promoter, he organized a number of regular hip hop nights, including the Microphone Checks and the Universal Parliament of Hip hop. A large number of young hip hop artists began regularly attending and performing at these nights, and they eventually formed the Headshots crew. The origin of the name is a combination of a nickname given by the crew to St. Paul (‘‘Shots Paul’’), and the group’s desire to reach the true hip hop fans, or ‘‘heads.’’ The original members of the mixed-race crew—The Abstract Pack, Urban Atmosphere, Phull Surkle, Black Hohl, and Beyond (now known as Musab)—consisted of MCs, DJs, and producers, along with management by Siddiq. Later, artists like Extreme, Illusion, The Native Ones (later Los Nativos), and the Sixth Sense (later Eyedea and Abilities) would join, bringing the crew’s total number to over 20. The group released a series of Headshots cassettes, the first of which, WBBOY Sessions, was released in 1993 and featured a series of freestyles by the crew. Later versions (the last was released in 1999) incorporated not only more freestyles, but also four-track recordings by different Headshots members, as well as bootleg concerts of national rap acts, including the Fugees and the Roots. The difficulties of maintaining such a large crew, however, eventually led to the dissolution of Headshots. In 1995, however, before the crew dissolved, Slug (Sean Daley 1973–), Ant (Anthony Davis, 1970–) Siddiq, and Spawn (Derrek Stevens, 1969–) formed Rhymesayers Entertainment. (The name arose from a play on Siddiq’s last name. See McPherson 2006.) While the other, non-Rhymesayers members of the Headshots crew supported the early Rhymesayers records, such as Beyond’s Comparison (1996), some members, such as the Abstract Pack, struck it out on their own, while others, such as the Native Ones, joined Rhymesayers. There was other hip hop happening in the Twin Cities at this time as well, including a minor hit by Lil’ Buddy called ‘‘What’s the Haps,’’ as well as music by the Eloquent Peasants and School of Thought, but it was the success of Rhymesayers that made people take notice of the Twin Cities scene. Slug and Siddiq appeared on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered in October of 1996 to discuss not only their own work, but also the current state of hip hop, addressing much of rap’s violent lyrical imagery and its increasing corporate control. They also performed at Jesse ‘‘The Body’’ Ventura’s gubernatorial inauguration in January of 1999. Rhymesayers also made connections with many of the more established underground record labels, including Anticon, Def Jux, and Fat Beats. Numerous other groups worked with Rhymesayers acts at this time, including Kanser, Oddjobs, which has now become Kill the Vultures, and Heiruspecs. It

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THE FIFTH ELEMENT The Fifth Element is the storefront of Rhymesayers Entertainment. Located in Minneapolis’ Uptown area on Hennepin Avenue, it was opened in August 1999 and has become one of the best places to find hip hop in the Twin Cities, along with St. Paul’s Urban Lights Music. Not only does the Fifth Element stock Twin Cities, regional, and national artists, both on CD and vinyl, they also sell hard-to-find DVDs, T-shirts, DJ gear, books, and magazines, including the essential graffiti and all-around culture magazine from the Twin Cities, LifeSucksDie. The store also has a large selection of mixtapes that can only be found at select Twin Cities record stores. The Fifth Element is not only concerned with recorded music, however; they also have hosted numerous in-store performances by artists from around the country, including Rhymefest, Evidence, Alchemist, Strange Fruit Project, DJ Pam the Funkstress, and others. Album release parties for Rhymesayers artists are always packed, with lines stretching down Hennepin Avenue for blocks. Before moving in to new offices in downtown Minneapolis, the main office of Rhymesayers was located in a small room off the back of the store, yet on a given day, you’re still likely to see Slug, Ant, Siddiq, and other Rhymesayers artists floating around.

was during the late 1990s that the scene around Dinkytown’s Bon Appetit coalesced, marking the first time that all parts of the Twin Cities hip hop scene could come together peacefully in one place (see sidebar: Dinkytown). Since 2000, the scene has exploded. In any given week, there are five to six shows, usually with three or four artists or groups, at venues across the metropolitan area. This is due to a number of factors both internal and external to the Twin Cities. Internally, many artists and groups saw the success of Rhymesayers, and began attempting to emulate it in their own work, as well as take advantage of the many doors that Rhymesayers had opened. Many local bars and clubs recognized the monetary potential for hip hop and began booking hip hop shows much more regularly, giving these newer artists valuable exposure. At the same time, national trends in hip hop’s popularity affected the Twin Cities. One of the first major hip hop events after the closing of Bon Appetit was a weekly MC battle at the Loring Pasta Bar, just down the street in Dinkytown. By the time the series had run its course after about a year, the lines stretched around the block, with many of the participants inspired by Eminem’s freestyles in the film 8 Mile. New developments in music production software, as well as the ubiquity of MySpace, have allowed more people than ever to record and distribute music. In turn, more record labels have sprung up, including Interlock, which began in 1997, Hecatomb, Loonatix Productions, Doomtree Records, and others. Such an expansion

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DINKYTOWN Dinkytown is the area adjacent to the University of Minnesota’s East Bank in Minneapolis, a dense enclave of bars, restaurants, clubs, bookshops, and cafes. In previous musical generations, Dinkytown was the neighborhood of Bob Dylan. Beginning in the 1990s, however, and continuing today, Dinkytown is one of the epicenters of Twin Cities hip hop. The Varsity Theater, originally built in 1915 as the University Theater, ran into controversy with the surrounding neighbors and businesses for hosting hip hop shows, called ‘‘Peace Parties,’’ in the early 1990s. In an act of defiance after local businesses attempted to ban hip hop from Dinkytown, the owners booked 2 Live Crew in 1991. That show turned out to be the last hip hop performance in Dinkytown for nearly 15 years (Scholtes ‘‘Rhyme’’). In the late 1990s, a weekly hip hop night began at Bon Appetit, or Bon App for short, a small sandwich shop run by a Lebanese immigrant. Known as Headspin, the series served as the first time that artists and fans of hip hop from across the Twin Cities could meet and perform in a single, neutral space. Organized by Kanser’s New MC (also known as ‘‘Big Zach’’), it featured numerous artists, including Brother Ali, Atmosphere, Heiruspecs, Kanser, Unknown Prophets, and many other artists who got their first break at Headspin, as well as breakdancers and graffiti artists, all crammed into the restaurant’s small back room. It was even featured in The Source in a short profile of the Twin Cities scene (Arnold 1999). The series ran for 50 straight Sunday nights, before being shut down by the building’s owner. Soon after, however, Zach began a weekly night of MC battles at the nearby Loring Pasta Bar. By the time that series ended, the lines to participate stretched around the block. Today, the Dinkytowner (just across the street from the former Bon Appetit) has taken over the mantle of hip hop in Dinkytown. Booked for the last three years by Unicus from Kanser, it hosts at least four shows every week, including a weekly series called ‘‘The Hook Up.’’ St. Paul artist Capaciti (Dave Cupryna, 1978–) even has a hidden track on his album The Blind Cinema Sessions dedicated to the bar, giving his listeners a lyrical tour of this epicenter of Twin Cities hip hop.

of the scene, however, is not without its tension. Many of the more established MCs, while welcoming the new blood, also want newcomers to recognize and respect the history of Twin Cities hip hop, to pay their dues to the people who opened up opportunities for them. Over the course of nearly 30 years, artists have developed a number of techniques and features that help to identity hip hop from the Twin Cities for the scene’s ever-increasing national presence. These range from the unique geographic

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spaces and places of the Twin Cities to vaguer characteristics of artist identity, musical style, and verbal content. As a scene that possesses a variety of local strategies of representation, it offers artists a way to both represent their home, as well as make a larger contribution to the hip hop nation and the world. The most immediate of such strategies are incorporating geographic features of the Twin Cities themselves. MCs will often work the area codes ‘‘612’’ and ‘‘651’’ into their rhymes (Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively), as in Atmosphere’s ‘‘Sound Is Vibration,’’ where Slug drops ‘‘612, my present location.’’ There is even a clothing company which produces hats emblazoned with one of the two area codes, in addition to the ubiquity of the Minnesota Twins’ ‘‘TC’’ logo on hats, jerseys, and shirts. The Cities’ main thoroughfares are often referenced in songs, like Lyndale, Broadway, Hennepin, Nicollet, Selby, Franklin, and Snelling, University, and Lake. Minneapolis DJs and producers will often find obscure snippets of recorded text, culled from various archaic audio recordings, that contain the Cities’ names. Similarly, MCs have employed a number of nicknames for the Twin Cities over the years. For Minneapolis these include ‘‘the Minneap,’’ the ‘‘Miniapple,’’ and the more infamous ‘‘Murderapolis,’’ which even made it to the pages of the New York Times in 1996 when the murder rate in Minneapolis abruptly skyrocketed (Johnson). As I noted above, the Headshots crew coined the term ‘‘Shots Paul’’ around the same time to describe St. Paul, while another variation is ‘‘St. Peazy.’’ All of these terms are still in use today. Another element that artists mold into their material is the Twin Cities bus system, known as Metro Transit. The extensive bus line crisscrosses all parts of the Twin Cities, as well as extending into nearby suburbs; in addition, there is a light rail that runs from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis. Brother Ali (Ali Newman, 1978–) on ‘‘Five Line King’’ talks about taking the #5 bus back to North Minneapolis after a show and finding a number of his fans making the journey with him. On Atmosphere’s ‘‘The Number One,’’ Slug reminisces about riding the bus to the suburbs to meet his high school sweetheart. Some artists, however, make a more metaphorical use of the bus. Beyond (Musab Ali S’aid, 1975–), on his song ‘‘Growth,’’ uses a bus ride to downtown Minneapolis as a time for introspection on his life and goals, and how he doesn’t want to end up ‘‘like these people on the bus.’’ Many artists in the Twin Cities also incorporate, play with, and subvert various stereotypes of Minnesota and, more generally, the Midwest. The most employed trope is that of Minnesota’s legendary winters. I Self Divine, on ‘‘Ice Cold,’’ talks about different degrees of coldness, as he raps from ‘‘live from the ice-cold streets of the Minneap,’’ relating the cold winter to cold-blooded murder on the streets of Minneapolis, by both citizens and police officers. Others ironically play with the concept of ‘‘Minnesota Nice,’’ part of the supposed abnormal Midwestern kindness and generosity. The NuYorican MC Maria Isa (Maria Isabelle Perez Vega, 1987–) does this most explicitly in ‘‘MN Nice,’’ where she shows how people in

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her idea of the Twin Cities ‘‘ain’t so nice.’’ P.O.S. (Stefan Alexander, 1981) raps on ‘‘Half-Cocked Concepts’’ about ‘‘sippin’ whole milk motherfucker!’’ Likewise, Brother Ali’s ‘‘Room with a View,’’ a sonic snapshot of his former home in North Minneapolis on a warm summer day, shreds any fantasy of a supposedly pure American heartland, telling of drugs, violence, prostitution, and the shame of parents forced to raise their children in such an environment. In taking a closer look at the specific styles of hip hop within the Twin Cities, there are numerous variations. The Rhymesayers label, and Slug in particular, has often been tagged as epitomizing the ‘‘backpack’’ genre of hip hop, named after the backpacks that the mainly white college-age fans carry to shows. Harder, more gangsta-oriented hip hop can be found all over the Twin Cities, but especially in North Minneapolis and St. Paul, represented by artists such as Moochy C and the Street Kingz, respectively. Also, the Southern sounds of bounce and crunk can be heard in the music of artists like Contac (Londell Anderson, 1977–) who had Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz guest on his album Eeyeaya (2004). Doomtree, whose members emerged out of a punk and hardcore background, often achieve a punk-rap hybrid; for member P.O.S.’s Audition (2006), released on Rhymesayers, he and coproducer Emily Bloodmobile sample local hardcore band Song of Zarathustra. There are also numerous diasporic artists, such as M.anifest (Kwame Tsikata, 1982–), Maria Isa, Delicious Venom, made up of brothers Tou Saiko Lee, (1979–) and Vong Lee (1982–), who make connections to where they come from, both through different languages as well as other musical traditions, while also establishing their musical presence in the Twin Cities. Such stylistic dimensions cannot be heard outside of the musical history of the Twin Cities, with Bob Dylan, the Replacements, Hu¨sker Du¨, the Jayhawks, and, above all, Prince representing just a few of the Cities’ seminal artists. Prince himself employed a number of MCs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Tony Mosley (better known as Tony M) and David ‘‘T.C.’’ Ellis, both rapping as part of The New Power Generation. Mosely can be seen in Prince’s follow up to Purple Rain, Graffiti Bridge, as he begs Prince to let him rap, finally getting his chance as the end credits roll. Prince even tried to rap himself, with mixed results, on the so-called Black Album (1987), on the songs ‘‘Dead On It’’ and ‘‘Bob George.’’ Rap artists often reference Prince, as well as other elements of Twin Cities musical history. Purple Rain especially is a touchstone for many artists. In a song by members of the Interlock Record label called ‘‘Plastic Silverware,’’ they talk about Minnesota as the land where they write songs about ‘‘purple rain’’ and Los Nativos has a song entitled ‘‘When Jaguars Cry,’’ not far removed from Prince’s ‘‘When Doves Cry.’’ Slug makes numerous references to the Twin Cities indie rock band Lifter Puller, including naming a song after them on Atmosphere’s album Seven’s Travels (2003). Similarly, on Kanser’s ‘‘Heard It from Here,’’ Unicus (Harry Philbert, 1975–) imitates the chorus from the global mega-hit ‘‘Funkytown,’’ which was written by Minneapolitan Stephen Greenberg (as Lipps, Inc.) and sung by a former Miss Black Minnesota Cynthia Johnson. In doing so, he

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not only stylizes the Twin Cities, but also invokes its distinct contribution to musical history. Looking at the lyrical dimension of Twin Cities hip hop, while many MCs creatively write about their own rhyming ability, the so-called ‘‘rapping about rapping’’ style, a general trend within the lyrical content is an emphasis on storytelling that utilizes subject matter outside what is normally found in hip hop. The Heiruspecs’ ‘‘Meters’’ is a semiabstract tale of a taxi-cab driver, while Eyedea and Abilities’ ‘‘Powdered Water Too’’ imagines and explores life as a fish, with the aquarium serving as a metaphor for Eyedea’s own mind. Slug has become famous for his lyrical introspection and self-deprecation; such content has often earned artists like Slug and others who explore similar lyrical themes the label of ‘‘emo-rap’’ (Caramanica). While the Twin Cities are certainly home to artists who rap about more stereotypical subjects associated with hip hop (drugs, gun violence, hypermasculinity, the bashing of homosexuals, and sexually objectified women), they seem far outweighed by artists who either do not partake in such subjects, or turn these subjects around to make more subtle statements about themselves or the world around them. A key distinction for many artists is how to discuss drugs and violence, whether it is a glorification of these topics, or if it is a call to not only identify those responsible for community problems, but also to propose and advocate for solutions. Oftentimes, many lyrical and musical differences are organized around racial identity, with more gangsta-oriented lyrics coming mainly from predominantly African American neighborhoods in North Minneapolis and the Eastside of St. Paul. Yet another distinctive feature of the Twin Cities hip hop scene is the wealth of racial identities that make the music. While it may have started out mainly within African American subcultures in its beginnings, Latinos, Africans, Caucasians, Asian Americans, and Indigenous groups can all fall under the banner of ‘‘Twin Cities hip hop.’’ Further, there is much greater openness to cross-racial collaboration, with many of the artists forming multiracial groups. This is not to say, however, that there is not tension along racial lines, especially in terms of audience. The majority of most Twin Cities hip hop audiences are white, which is standard for much of the U.S. independent hip hop circuit. There is, however, less suspicion of such white participation in hip hop, be it on stage or behind it. Part of this is due to the substantial amount of multiracial artists in the Twin Cities, including Slug, who was born of a white mother and an African American father, making it much harder to make easy distinctions among artists along strict racial lines. Also, many artists believe that questions of class and infrastructure, such as opportunities for performance in one’s own area, also play a role. The Southside of Minneapolis, for example, is generally regarded as having more venues for performance than the generally more impoverished North Minneapolis community and suspicions of racism towards African Americans on the part of club owners also is present amongst many within the hip hop community.

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Regardless, that many artists still collaborate across racial lines suggests how people in these communities, both artists and listeners, might build alliances, large and small, across different races, ethnicities, and genders, in order to bring about social change. Given the wealth of talent in the Twin Cities, it is extremely difficult to narrow my selections as those most successful and/or most important to the Twin Cities hip hop scene. As the Twin Cities have so many different sounds coalescing into its own sound, it is best to see the Twin Cities as a microcosm of larger national ideas of hip hop, and how the scene both refutes and perpetuates those ideas. Understanding Twin Cities hip hop can only be accomplished by recognizing that these artists look well beyond their hometowns as they simultaneously mark themselves within their local cultures. This is not only true of artists who attempt to find success in hip hop’s more traditional stylistic categories, to make it big in other markets besides the Twin Cities, but also of groups normally considered marginal to hip hop’s usual identities within America. In this way, they both participate in their local musical culture, building the necessary musical and social infrastructure to support a scene, as well as recognize that they are part of the larger hip hop nation.

ARTIST PROFILES If you’ve heard of only one hip hop artist out of the Twin Cities, it’s probably Atmosphere. The core members of the group are MC Slug and producer Ant, although many artists from the Twin Cities have performed under the ‘‘Atmosphere’’ name. The group began as ‘‘Urban Atmosphere’’ in the early 1990s as part of the original Headshots crew, and included another MC, Spawn, who is no longer associated with Rhymesayers and now goes by the name Rek the Heavyweight. Over the years, Eyedea and Abilities have performed as part of Atmosphere, as have members of Heiruspecs and other backing musicians in recreating Ant’s beats on live instruments. Atmosphere has released five full-length albums, Overcast (1997), Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs (2001), Godlovesugly (2002), Seven’s Travels (2003), You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having (2005), as well as numerous EPs, including the 11-volume Sad Clown/Bad Dub series. There are also numerous unofficial Atmosphere compilations of rarities and bootlegs. The various incarnations of Atmosphere have toured all over the United States, as well as the world, including Japan, Sweden, Denmark and the 2001 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England. They have also brought many lesser-known Twin Cities and Rhymesayers artists as supporting acts, including Brother Ali, Los Nativos, Grayskul, and Mac Lethal. With a distinctive baritone and a lyrical flow that can run the gamut from relaxed conversation to frenetic hyperactivity, Slug is undeniably the most famous hip hop artist from Minnesota. Before becoming an MC in high school, he went

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Atmosphere: Slug and Ant (AP Photo)

through stages of break dancing, graffiti writing, and DJing and counts MCs from both coasts as well as previous artists from the Twin Cities as inspiring him to become an MC himself. Over the course of his career, Slug’s lyrics changed from a boasting, battle-focused MC who just liked hearing himself rap to one exploring stories with more introspective and especially self-deprecating themes. Slug’s name, shortened from ‘‘Little Sluggo,’’ explores this dual nature of confidence and self-loathing: not only could it mean the slug that comes from a gun, but also one of the slowest-moving forms of life on the planet (Scholtes ‘‘Rhyme’’). On songs like ‘‘WND,’’ he deflates the masculinity demonstrated by so many MCs through gun violence, as he spends the entire song vowing revenge, yet discovers that he doesn’t even have a gun. For many of the early Atmosphere records, Slug obsessively deployed a character trope of ‘‘Lucy,’’ who could embody figures from a young girl to an ex-lover; on ‘‘Fuck You Lucy,’’ he simultaneously hates his exlover and hates himself for still being in love with her. On more recent work, however, Slug has expanded beyond autobiographical lyrics to take on issues such as violence against women. This issue hits hard on ‘‘That Night,’’ as he attempts to make sense of the murder of Marissa Mathy-Zvaifler, a young woman raped and murdered in Albuquerque while cleaning up after an Atmosphere show. Slug has collaborated with numerous artists both within and beyond the Twin Cities. These include not only Rhymesayers labelmates but also some of the more gangsta-oriented MCs in the Twin Cities such as Moochy C and Muja Messiah. Slug has also established his presence on the national hip hop underground by

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working with El-P, Aesop Rock, Molemen, the Living Legends, Sage Francis, and Murs, as well as artists from outside hip hop, including Craig Finn (from Lifter Puller and the Hold Steady) and Tom Waits. Slug’s collaboration with Murs has proven to be extremely fruitful for both: as Felt, they have released two albums together and they also started their own record label, Women Records. Ant, who is originally from Oklahoma and moved to the Twin Cities at the age of 20, makes beats for a number of Rhymesayers artists besides Atmosphere, including I Self Divine and Brother Ali. His beats on the early Headshots series, as well as Beyond’s Comparison and Atmosphere’s Overcast, are sparse constructions of eerie drums and instrumental samples (see, for instance, Atmosphere’s ‘‘Aspiring Sociopath’’). Over the years he has expanded his palette to include samples of soul, funk, reggae, gospel, and rock on songs like Atmosphere’s ‘‘Get Fly’’ or Brother Ali’s ‘‘Whatcha Got.’’ Countering the trend of moving away from samples in hip hop, Ant not only foregrounds his sampled material, but inventively combines multiple sources into seamless musical textures. He only recently began performing as a DJ with Slug, overcoming his social anxiety to perform at Atmosphere’s eight-night stand of sold-out concerts at the 7th Street Entry in 2005 and continues performing live today. Atmosphere’s success, however, would not be possible without the few, but important groups that provided the foundation for hip hop in the Twin Cities. The I.R.M. Crew, which stood for ‘‘Immortal Rap Masters,’’ came out of North Minneapolis and consisted of Devastating Dee (Doug Shocklee), Kel-C (Kelly Crockett, 1966–), TLC (Curtis Washington, 1966–), and Cuttin’ Kal (Calvin Jones). It also featured the beat boxing of B-Fresh, also known as I.B.M. who would later become TruthMaze. They were managed by Charles Lockhart, who owned his own record label, Cchill Productions, based in St. Paul. The group released an EP entitled The I.R.M. Crew (1986), which featured the songs ‘‘I Dream of DJs,’’ ‘‘Diseased America,’’ ‘‘Unh Baby, and Let’s Dance.’’ ‘‘I Dream of DJs’’ incorporates the ‘‘I Dream of Jeannie’’ theme song a year before DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince sampled it for ‘‘Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble,’’ while nationally distributed record company K-Tel picked up ‘‘Uh Baby’’ as a single. They also released two 12 inches, ‘‘Baseball’’ b/w ‘‘The Cchill Cut’’ (1987); ‘‘R U Ready 2 Change the World?’’ b/w ‘‘Who Said Our Dee Jay Couldn’t Cut?’’ (1988). Due to internal burnout and the bungled distribution and management of K-Tel, the I.R.M. Crew broke up soon afterwards (Scholtes ‘‘Doomsday’’). TruthMaze, however, has continued to work in music and social activism. A poet, MC, multifaceted drummer, and social activist, he is widely considered to be one of the legends of the Twin Cities hip hop scene. It was during his time with the I.R.M. Crew that he formed the Minneapolis B-Boy Organization, a group dedicated to countering the surge of violence that crack and various national gangs brought to the Twin Cities. This act has made some refer to him as the ‘‘Afrika Bambaataa of the Twin Cities.’’ After his father’s murder in North Minneapolis in 1985, as well as his own desperate situation after the dissolution of the I.R.M.

From St. Paul to Minneapolis, All the Hands Clap for This | 375 Crew—he was living on the streets at the time—he rechristened himself ‘‘TruthMaze.’’ He formed the Micranots in 1991 with I Self Divine and DJ Kool Akiem, but broke with the group before the release of any of their widely available albums. Moving to Atlanta, he began to study other musical and belief traditions, including those of the Yoruban culture of West Africa. Returning to Minneapolis in 1996, he worked with a variety of groups, as well as performing as part of the spoken word scene. His first solo record, Expansions + Contradictions (Psoems 1:1) (2006), was released by Speakeasy Records, part of the multidisciplinary entity Tru´ Ru´ts, which encompasses spoken word, music, film, management, and other artistic endeavors. It mixes blues, jazz, and Yoruban drumming traditions, with hip hop; one song, ‘‘In This City,’’ was recorded live on the streets of Minneapolis, discussing the problems of the streets, who’s at fault, and what can be done about it. The album ends with ‘‘Universal Shout Outs,’’ a testament to all those who influenced him, including his family tree, prior hip hop artists, both in the Twin Cities and beyond, as well as victims of police brutality. Another figure that was there at the beginning of Twin Cities hip hop and is still active today is David ‘‘T.C.’’ Ellis. Ellis began playing drums in a number of local bands and, as noted above, put out one of the first rap records in Minnesota, entitled ‘‘Twin Cities Rapp.’’ He also recorded a song based on the Batman comic saga, entitled ‘‘Bat Rap.’’ Later, he joined Prince and began to rap with the New Power Generation, one of Prince’s side-projects, along with Tony Mosley and is briefly featured in Prince’s film Graffiti Bridge. In addition to appearing in Graffiti Bridge, Ellis released his own album, True Confessions, on Prince’s Paisley Park records, where he calls himself the ‘‘dope beat boy from the land of snow.’’ The album featured not only Prince but also George Clinton. In 1995, Ellis opened a recording studio in downtown St. Paul and found himself constantly bombarded by youth rapping in the building’s skyways. After a client cancelled, he opened it to the kids, and the seeds were planted for Studio 4/The High School for Recording Arts, which was founded a year later. Located in St. Paul, the school provides opportunities for at-risk youth to learn basic and advanced sound recording skills, as well as participate in its student-run record company, Another Level Records. There are also locations in New York and Los Angeles. In recognition of his efforts, Ellis was honored as an Oxford University Round Table Fellow in 2005. I Self Divine, who formed the seminal early 1990s hip hop crew The Micranots, along with TruthMaze and DJ Kool Akiem, was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles and moved to Minneapolis in the late 1980s. This group was responsible for popularizing hip hop in the Twin Cities on a wider scale than had previously been accomplished. After leaving the Twin Cities for Atlanta in 1994, the group recorded two cassette-only EPs, Hoods Pack the Jam and The Catacomb Files, after which Truth Maze left the group. I Self and Akiem went on to release three more albums, Obelisk Movements (2000), The Emperor and the Assassin (2003), and Return of the Travellahs (2003). In addition to I Self Divine’s first solo record, Self-Destruction (2005), he has performed as Semi-Official with DJ

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Abilities on The Anti-Album (2003) and with Slug, Musab, and Gene Poole on The Dynospectrum (1998). On all of these records, as well as in his life, I Self brings not only greater militancy to his rhymes, but also solutions, as he is a youth organizer at the Minneapolis nonprofit organization, Hope Community, Inc. as well as an advisor for the B-Girl Be Summit (see sidebar: B-Girl Be). On a different stylistic register, DMG, which is short for ‘‘Detrimental Ganxta’’ (H. Armstrong), is a St. Paul rapper who was discovered by Scarface during a 1991 MC battle in the Twin Cities. Soon afterwards, the Houston-based Scarface signed DMG to his Rap-A-Lot label, which promoted much harder, gangsta-oriented rap as compared to the Twin Cities. While with Rap-A-Lot, he recorded his own album, Rigormortiz (1993), which reached #40 on the Billboard hip hop chart, making it the highest-selling hip hop record from a Twin Cities artist up to that point. On Rigormortiz, DMG combines references from both his hometown, including ‘‘growing up on Selby,’’ one of St. Paul’s main thoroughfares, and referring to himself as the ‘‘St. Paul assassin’’ on ‘‘Psycho,’’ as well as the ‘‘gulf-coast flavor’’ of Houston’s Rap-A-Lot. Producer N. O. Joe samples Stevie Wonder’s ‘‘Pastime Paradise,’’ which was famously used two years later for Coolio’s ‘‘Gangsta’s Paradise.’’ Since Rigormortiz, DMG made guest appearances on albums by the Geto Boys, Facemob, and Devin the Dude, and his most recent release is Black Roulette (2003). Back in the Twin Cities, Carnage (Terrell Woods, 1975–), who originally came to Minneapolis in 1978 from Chicago, began his own career in hip hop. Growing up in a series of group homes around the Twin Cities, he formed The Overlords in 1992 with DJ X-Caliber, which then morphed into NEMNOCH and later, after the addition of two more MCs, Pagne and Concentrate, into the futuristically themed group S.W.E.E.P.S. (Sub-Terrestrial Wordsmiths Exhibiting Extraordinary Poetic Structure). Following in the footsteps of Rhymesayers, he started his own crew and record label, Hecatomb in 2004. Currently, the other artists with Carnage on Hecatomb include Concentrate, Illusion, X-Caliber, Desdamona, Fundamentalist, Capaciti, and Project 13. He sold 3,000 copies of a solo EP entitled The Carnology Vol. 0.5 (2004) single-handedly out of his backpack, and has gained much exposure by beat boxing with Desdamona (1973–) as Ill Chemistry. (His use of a live looping mechanism to record himself beat-boxing and then rhyme over his own loops sets himself apart from many other beat-boxers, both within the Twin Cities and beyond.) His first full-length album, The Sense of Sound (2007) features production by Booka B (Adam Booker, 1979–), as well as DJ and turntablist Jimmy2Times (Dan J. Marcoulis, 1981–). Possessed with an astonishingly quick and versatile vocal delivery, both in his rhymes and his beat boxing, Carnage uses hyperquick changes in vocal inflection and rhythmic syncopation in his rhymes, and his words engage subjects outside the stereotype of hip hop lyrics. These range from the African slave trade to monster narratives; if MF Doom channels The Fantastic Four’s nemesis Dr. Doom for his identity, then Carnage, with his XXXL frame, is the Incredible Hulk.

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B-GIRL BE Held annually at Minneapolis’ Intermedia Arts, the B-Girl Be Summit brings together women not only from the four elements of hip hop, but also the four corners of the world. The goal is to bring women in hip hop together and combat the limited and often degrading representations that mark women in hip hop. The Summit began as the Encyclopedia of Hip hop Evolution concert series in 1999, organized by Jamaica Del Mar, Desdamona, Toki Wight, and Larry Lucio. First there were monthly concerts that featured performers from all over the Twin Cities, as well those outside of hip hop. For one show a year, they decided to have an all-female lineup, and it became their most popular show. Soon, they had four all-female shows per year, with workshops in between. Ultimately this morphed into B-Girl Be, which was begun in 2005 by a number of women: Desdamona, hip hop scholar and filmmaker Rachel Ramist, Deanna Cummings, Leah Nelson, manager and hip hop scholar Melisa Rivie´re, and Intermedia Arts director Theresa Sweetland. In its current form, the Summit not only features performances by many of the most important female artists working in hip hop, including Lady Pink, Collective 7, Ursula Rucker, DJ Pam the Funkstress, DJ Shortee, and Asia One, it has also brought in a number of female hip hop scholars for keynote addresses, including Gwendolyn D. Pough, Roxanne Shante, and Rosa Clemente. The outside of the building is repainted with aerosol art during each festival, and there is a special art exhibit inside the gallery, entitled ‘‘The Art of T&A: Truth and Activism.’’ Women from all over the world come to Minneapolis for B-Girl Be, and it was featured in Martha Cooper’s collection of photographs and stories from b-girls around the world, We B*Girlz (Cooper 2005). A mix of activism and education, celebration and inspiration, the Summit strikes a balance between celebrating women in hip hop without validating the often patronizing labels such as ‘‘female MC.’’ While foregrounding past and present achievements of women in hip hop culture, it seeks to understand and overcome the obstacles that women face participating in hip hop.

The Abstract Pack was a St. Paul-based hip hop crew that formed around the same time as the Overlords and consisted of members Glorius L (Glorius Martin), MSP (Mark Beasley), Knowledge MC (Alfonzo Greene, 1974–), Rasta (Dean Brewington, 1975–), Eklipz (Dietrick Williams), RDM (Roosevelt Darnell Mansfield III, 1974–), and Sess (Herbert Ford Foster IV, 1975–). With the exception of Eklipz, originally from Colorado and attending college in the Twin Cities, the rest of the Pack were at Central High School when the group formed. Performing first at school talent shows, the group then formed part of the original

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Headshots collective. A pivotal point for the entire crew was when Sess, considered by everyone in the group to be its best MC, was killed by a drunk driver in 1996 (Scholtes ‘‘Doomsday’’). His death made many of the members of the Headshots crew take hip hop more seriously; the fourth Headshots cassette, entitled History, was dedicated to Sess, and the first and last songs on the Abstract Pack’s only record, Bousta Set It (For the Record) (1998) contain some of Sess’s recorded verses. The album, which has become a classic of Twin Cities hip hop, is filled with an array of eclectic, Native Tongues-style samples and lyrics which creatively deploy and transform both local and national references on songs like ‘‘For the Record,’’ ‘‘Let Me Show You,’’ and ‘‘No Coast.’’ Much like the breakup of Headshots in general, the Pack soon broke up after the release of Bousta Set It, yet many of its members are still involved in hip hop. Glorius, Rasta, and Eklipz formed the group Braille Method and relocated to Los Angeles; Knowledge MC released a Christian rap CD in 2005; and RDM has recorded and produced a number of his own songs, as well as serving as producer for other Twin Cities MCs. One of the most prolific members of Headshots alongside the Abstract Pack was Beyond, who is now known as Musab. He began writing rhymes as a young teenager, but did not get serious until after he witnessed the murder of his cousin at the age of 17. To escape the violence of his neighborhood, he had two choices, college or rap. Choosing the latter, he took his name from the all-powerful Marvel comics character the Beyonder. As a member of the original Headshots crew, it was generally agreed that Musab had the most material out of any of the crew’s members; he and Ant recorded three to four times per week, amassing upwards of 100 songs at any given point. Musab soon released the first CD by a Twin Cities hip hop artist, Comparison (1996). His next album, Be-Sides (1999), featured not only an anthem for his hometown and his own hip hop autobiography (‘‘South Side’’), but also found him leaving Beyond for his real name, Musab. He and Rhymesayers parted ways after his next album, Respect the Life (2002). After a mixtape entitled Mack Music (2006), his latest full-length album, Slicks Box (2007), was produced by Minneapolis’s King Karnov and released on Hiero Imperium, the record label of the Oakland hip hop group Hieroglyphics. With Slicks Box, Musab embraces the lifestyle of the mack, which has a long history within hip hop and beyond. Numerous references to Iceberg Slim and other elements of the past and present of the mack lifestyle dot the sonic landscape of Slicks Box. Not only has Musab changed record labels, he has also changed locales, moving to the warmer climate of Las Vegas, yet he still records all of his music in the Twin Cities. Eyedea and Abilities also came to prominence as part of Headshots and Rhymesayers. Composed of MC Eyedea (Micheal Larson, 1979–) and DJ Abilities (Gregg ‘‘Max’’ Keltgen, 1979–), they eventually became two of the best known artists in the national hip hop underground. Both grew up in St. Paul and attended Highland Park High School. Two years his senior at 16, Abilities moved in with Larson’s family after leaving home and the two soon began working together after

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acquiring turntables. They began performing as the Sixth Sense as part of Headshots before changing their name to ‘‘Eyedea and Abilities.’’ While still a teenager, Larson began winning some of the most high-profile MC battles in America. These included the Scribble Jam MC Battle in 1999, RockSteady Crew MC Battle in 2000, the 2000 Blaze-Battle in Chicago 2000, and the nationally televised, HBO Blaze-Battle World Championship in 2000. Larson took the prize money from his victories and built his own studio, E&A Studios. Not to be outdone, Abilities won the 1999 and 2001 DMC Regional Championship. Eyedea and Abilities have released two albums together, First Born (2001) and E&A (2004). In addition, Larson crafted The Many Faces of Oliver Hart or How Eye One the Write Too Think (2002). Abilities released a mixtape entitled Finally (1999), which has been reissued on CD by Rhymesayers, as well as . . . For Persons with DJ Abilities (2000). He also performed all of the scratches for El-P’s debut album Fantastic Damage (2002). On both of their records, the duo have tried to push the boundaries of what constitutes hip hop, as Eyedea crafts abstract, often cerebral lyrics, while Abilities explores sonic combinations far outside the mainstream of hip hop. Both have been pursuing outside projects for the last three years, such as Larson’s explorations in improvised jazz and rock with his groups Face Candy and Carbon Carousel. Eyedea and Abilities reunited to perform for the first time in over three years at the 6th Twin Cities Celebration of Hip hop in August of 2007 and toured together at the end of 2007. Closely associated with Headshots but not official members were the members of Kanser, one of the most established and influential crews in Twin Cities hip hop. Formed at Minneapolis’s South High School in 1992 as part of the Interlock crew, the group has changed members over the years, consisting now of New MC (Zachariah Combs, 1977–) and Unicus. Unicus is originally from Haiti, first moving to Connecticut and then to the Twin Cities in 1992. A number of producers and DJs have worked as part of Kanser, including Mesh, DJ Elusive, Big Jess from the Northeastern Minneapolis group Unknown Prophets, and, on their early records, Ant from Atmosphere. Rocking numerous house parties on 14th Avenue in South Minneapolis, they released two cassettes, Network (1997) and Now (1999). In 1998, Big Zach began the weekly Headspin series at Bon Appetit in Dinkytown, and soon afterwards the weekly MC battle at the nearby Loring Pasta Bar (see sidebar: Dinkytown). Unicus has booked hip hop for the Dinkytowner for the last three years, as part of a series called ‘‘The Hook Up,’’ which has helped build the venue into one of the most important sites of Twin Cities hip hop. The group has released four full-length CDs, Inner City Outer Space (2000), Quintessential (2001), It Wrote Itself (2002), and Self-Titled (2005). The group’s lyrics have changed over the course of their albums, from the more party-oriented themes of their first records to exploring ideas of violence, religion, and politics on Self-Titled. Big Zach’s first solo album, White Jesus, was released in November of 2007.

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The live hip hop band Heiruspecs began in 1997 while all of its members were attending St. Paul Central High School. The name is derived from ‘‘haruspex,’’ which was a Roman soothsayer who predicted the future by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals. The two original members still with the group are Felix (Christopher Wilbourn, 1979–), one of the groups MCs, and Sean ‘‘Twinkie Jiggles’’ McPherson (1981–), the group’s bassist. While playing shows at Central as well as various coffee shops and community centers, they released two albums, Live from the Studio (1998) and Antidisestablishmetabolism (2000). After the release of their third album, Small Steps (2002), on the St. Paul-based Interlock label, the group hit the road as a backing band for a variety of underground hip hop artists, including Atmosphere, Aesop Rock, and Sage Francis. Their last record, A Tiger Dancing (2004) was released on the nationally distributed Razor & Tie record label, and brought the group national attention. After a van accident in the winter of 2006, the group took a break from touring and have worked on different individual side projects. At the end of 2007, Heiruspecs celebrated their tenth anniversary with a pair of concerts on December 22, a day proclaimed ‘‘Heiruspecs Day’’ by St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman. The concert also marked the release of 10 Years Strong, a collection of B-sides, rarities, and live recordings culled from the group’s decade of making music. Since the late 1990s, a number of artists have become extremely successful both within and beyond the Twin Cities. Brother Ali (Ali Newman, 1978–) is a legally blind, white Albino Muslim MC. He was born Jason Newman in Madison, WI, yet converted to Islam in his teens after he his family moved to North Minneapolis in 1992. His first album, the cassette-only Rites of Passage (2000), was completely

Brother Ali (Getty Images)

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self-recorded and self-produced; it caught the attention of Rhymesayers, who not only rereleased the album on CD, but also added him to their roster. Around this time Ali achieved the attention of the larger underground hip hop community by upsetting Eyedea at the 2000 Scribble Jam MC battle. Ali has toured with Rakim, MF Doom, GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan and most recently as part of the Paid Dues Independent Festival, a touring festival of independent hip hop artists including Slug, Sage Francis, Murs, and others. Ali has since released two albums, Shadows on the Sun (2003), The Champion EP (2004), and The Undisputed Truth (2007). The latest album has garnered Ali national media attention and even a spot in The Source’s prestigious ‘‘Hip hop Quotable’’ section (Brother Ali 2007). On the album, Ali confronts not only his own problems, such as the breakup of his marriage and his homelessness after the release of Shadows on the Sun, but also the joy his son Faheem brings, as well as lambasting the socioeconomic inequalities in America. He engages explicitly with questions of race and hip hop on ‘‘Daylight,’’ foregrounding his own whiteness in ‘‘Daylight,’’ both in its ‘‘excess’’ as well as the privilege it conventionally brings. Further, Ali aligns himself with African Americans and other marginalized groups in an attempt to critique American racism and injustice. Overturning both Albinism’s historical associations with nineteenth-century freak shows and contemporary stereotypes of the ‘‘evil Albino,’’ Ali has become one of the most critically acclaimed figures of Twin Cities hip hop. Toki Wright (1980–) is one of the most active MCs within the Twin Cities hip hop scene, and an artist who also brings an explicit community and political orientation to his music. Born in North Minneapolis, he began like many hip hop artists, rapping and dancing at school talent shows. Eventually, he met Adonis D. Frazier in 1998, with whom Wright formed The C.O.R.E. (The Children of Righteous Elevation). Frazier’s father ran the Circle of Discipline boxing gym in Minneapolis’ Powderhorn neighborhood, one of the more economically depressed areas of South Minneapolis, and it was here in the gym that Frazier and Wright began hosting hip hop. The C.O.R.E. has released one album, Metropolis (2003), and continue to perform as part of The Chosen Few, a Twin Cities super-crew that incorporates some of the harder, more gangsta-themed MCs of the Twin Cities, as well as Scribble Jam beatbox champion DJ Snuggles. Wright has also released a number of solo EPs, in advance of his forthcoming full-length debut, A Different Mirror. In addition to his extensive touring over the last two years as Brother Ali’s hypeman, Wright’s work in hip hop has taken him to Africa. While writing for The Source on hip hop in Africa, he conducted a hip hop workshop between Tutsis and Hutus and has also performed with a number of hip hop groups in Uganda. The recorded result of these trips can be heard on his song ‘‘Kyendi Kyendi,’’ which means ‘‘I Am What I Am,’’ with Ugandan artists Sylvester and Abramz. Wright’s other hip hop activities include working at the Minneapolis-based youth nonprofit organization, Yo! The Movement. He is instrumental in organizing not

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only the group’s many community activities and projects, but also the annual Twin Cities Celebration of Hip hop. Toki Wright, then, is not just one of the most established and active Twin Cities hip hop artists, but he is also instrumental in shaping the present and future of it through his community action. Toki Wright was instrumental in giving Doomtree, a mixed gender and mixedrace hip hop crew that emerged out of South Minneapolis in the late 1990s. Past and current members include P.O.S., Dessa, Cecil Otter, Marshall Larada, Mike Mictlan, Sims, Emily Bloodmobile, Emynd, Lazerbeak, Paper Tiger, Tom Servo, and Turbo Nemesis, a mixture of MCs, DJs, and producers. While there has not been an official full-length crew album released, many of the artists have released individual albums under the False Hopes series; the first was a 2002 CD-R featuring P.O.S. and Cecil Otter, and Sims, Dessa, Paper Tiger, and Mictlan have also released future installments. The best-known member of Doomtree is P.O.S. (Stefan Alexander, 1981–) whose name can stand for a number of things, including ‘‘piece of shit’’ (see Scholtes ‘‘Doomsday’’). He has released two albums for Rhymesayers, Ipecac Neat (2004) and Audition (2006), the latter of which received critical acclaim within and beyond the Twin Cities. He has performed alongside Sims on the Vans Warped Tour and also performs with a hardcore band named Building Better Bombs. Many of the members, in fact, emerged from the Twin Cities punk and hardcore scenes, and a number of Twin Cities hardcore bands are sampled on Audition. Lazerbeak is also in the indie rock band The Plastic Constellations. While there are occasional full-crew shows, especially the yearly ‘‘Blowouts’’ that are one of the highlight of the Twin Cities musical year, individual members perform solo or in groups under the ‘‘Doomtree’’ label. Dessa (Dessa Wander, 1981) has become a substantial presence in both the hip hop and the spoken word scenes, and was given the Sound Unseen Film Festival’s ‘‘Artist of Distinction’’ award in 2007. The Minneapolis-based producer and DJ Cheap Cologne, who has worked with a number of artists both within and beyond the Twin Cities, was briefly in the national spotlight in 2004 when he created his own remix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album, combining it with Metallica’s eponymous Black Album, thus creating the Double Black Album. Standing out from the slew of remixes created after the notoriety of Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, even Metallica lead-singer James Hetfield expressed his admiration for the album (Sperounes 2004). It also attracted the attention of the Recording Industry Association of America. After receiving threatening letters from the RIAA, he went on MTV and said it was a joke and, amazingly, the RIAA relented. Since then, Cheap Cologne has released two albums, Just a Little Sample (2003) and Something Random (2005) and has performed as part of the Vans Warped Tour. Finally, Muja Messiah (Robert Hedges, 1970–) is an MC who was born in North Minneapolis and first came to prominence in the late 1990s with the group Raw Villa. The group released an EP entitled Rebellion (2000) and have finished work on another album called The Way Things Should Be that is awaiting release. Muja

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Messiah’s solo work aims at producing a harder, more gangsta-oriented sound, one that has historically been less accepted in the Cities. His first solo record, The Adventures of the B-Boy/D-Boy features collaborations with I Self Divine, Slug, and The Roots’ Black Thought. A member of the 5 Percent Nation, along with other members of the Twin Cities scene including St. Paul Slim (Meyer Warren, 1978), he does not shy away from oppositional politics in his music. On ‘‘Patriot Act,’’ he muses why he should be afraid of Al-Qaeda when he ‘‘was already afraid of America first.’’ Elsewhere, on songs like ‘‘You Betcha’’ and ‘‘Get Fresh,’’ he proudly affirms his Minnesota home, yet in a way that brings light to the violence that plagues parts of the Cities. At the same time, however, he embodies the socalled ‘‘No Coast’’ sound by drawing on musical styles emerging from all over the country; ‘‘Get Fresh,’’ for instance, draws on the synth-laden beats of the Dirty South. As discussed above, one characteristic of Twin Cities hip hop is that it is home to many artists that fall outside standard categories of hip hop. The numerous female hip hop artists that make the Twin Cities their home have attained a level of success in the Twin Cities that equals and often surpasses the recognition enjoyed by their male counterparts. There are also numerous diasporic artists that have come to the Twin Cities from places like Laos, Ghana, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Iran, Mexico, and Liberia, artists whose music makes connections between their old home and their new home. Finally, there is a strong contingent of so-called ‘‘homo hop’’ artists, queer figures in hip hop that buck the pervasive homophobia that dominates so much of hip hop. For the most part, these artists are not ghettoized into a limited subculture: some are founding members of the scene, while others collaborate with the Cities’ more established artists. The ones discussed below are only a handful of those working in the Twin Cities today. When Desdamona moved from Iowa to the Twin Cities in the summer of 1996, she found an exciting scene just starting to coalesce, though one that was overwhelmingly male. The multitalented vocalist, expertly adept at vocal styles ranging from spoken word, singing, as well as straight-up, boom-bap MC, can largely be credited with changing that. Winning the Minnesota Music Association’s ‘‘Best Spoken Word’’ award five times, she caught the attention of the wider hip hop scene in 2000 with her song ‘‘We Will Always B,’’ which Brother Ali included on Rites of Passage. Touring with Carnage as Ill Chemistry as well as on her own, she was eventually signed to the nationally distributed FS Music label. Her music often critiques the historic exclusion of women in hip hop as well as carving out her own space within that history. In ‘‘I Wanted 2 Be an MC,’’ she tells the tale of her own journey through hip hop, how she was forced to ‘‘call all her rhymes poetry’’ when people told her she couldn’t be an MC. Desdamona also actively works to foster new spaces in which women can not only participate in hip hop, but succeed. She took part in organizing the Encyclopedia of Hip hop Evolution concert series, which morphed into B-Girl Be (see sidebar: B-Girl Be). This is evident in the numerous women MCs in the Twin Cities, including Tish Jones

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(1977–), Indigo (Leah Bartizal, 1980–), Autumn Compton (1976–), and Maria Isa, to name just a few. Maria Isa actually bridges two different groups within the scene, that of women and diasporic artists, as she was born on the Westside of St. Paul to Nuyorican parents. Both her parents were involved in the Young Lords; her mother, Elsa Vega-Perez, began a number of Latino and Latina organizations and has become one of the most important and community activists in the Twin Cities. Isa has performed Puerto Rican bomba since she was five, but made her hip hop debut in 2005, opening up for Los Nativos. Work on her first album, M.I. Split Personalities (2007) began almost immediately. Traversing bomba, hip hop, and reggaeto´n on the album, Isa adopts three personae on the album to explore her diasporic identity, Moochie, Lolita, and Maria Isa. ‘‘Sabrosa’’ (roughly translated as ‘‘tasty’’) encapsulates much of the vocalist’s work. Entwining multiple strands of history, not only does it share a title with a song from the Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication (1994), but the song is based around a thundering bomba by Raices (‘‘Roots’’), an AfroPuerto Rican music and dance ensemble based at El Arco Iris (‘‘The Rainbow’’), a community organization where Isa teaches. Affirming her ‘‘Sota Rican’’ identity, as well as the importance of Puerto Ricans to the history of hip hop (Rivera 2003 and Flores 2000), Isa simultaneously affirms the inclusiveness of the hip hop scene in the Twin Cities, as well as the many cultural influences that go into the art form as a whole. Other artists use their music to make connections beyond the Twin Cities. M.anifest explicitly links his music to his home country of Ghana. M.anifest was born in Accra and moved to the Twin Cities in 2001 to attend Macalester College in St. Paul and study economics. The grandson of legendary ethnomusicologist J. H. Nketia, he grew up listening to all of his grandfather’s records. M.anifest foregrounds his Ghanaian identity through his hip hop, not only by including Ghanaian drumming patterns in the beats of his songs, but also by rapping in the Ghanaian language of Twi, as well as engaging in Twi call-and-response with his audiences, and dressing in the red, yellow, green, and black color scheme of the Ghanaian flag. He has performed with Carnage, Desdamona, and I Self Divine, among others. His first solo album, M.anifestations, was released in September of 2007. In a time where African artists are achieving much more widespread success than the standard ‘‘world music’’ record bin by moving beyond the stereotypical ‘‘world music’’ characteristics, firmly entrenched in hip hop rather than the often exoticised fantasies of diversity and hybridity. M.anifest’s breathless motto, heard throughout Manifestations is ‘‘represent Africa with a spectacular street vernacular,’’ and the MC breathes, speaks, and lives all that this statement entails. Delicious Venom is a Hmong hip hop group that consists of brothers Tou Saiko Lee (1979–) and Vong Lee (1982–), the latter going by the MC name of Knowstalgic. Tou Saiko was born in the Nongkai Refugee Camp in Thailand; after emigrating to the United States, he and his parents lived in Syracuse and Providence (where his brother Vong was born), before finally coming to the Twin Cities in

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1991. The Twin Cities, and especially the Eastside of St. Paul, have one of the largest Hmong populations outside of Laos. They have released one EP, The Injection, and helped to organize The H Project, an album composed of artists of different styles form different parts of the country, designed to raise awareness of the plight of thousands of former American-allied Hmong soldiers murdered in Laos. Tou Saiko is also involved in musical projects outside of Delicious Venom, including the rock band Outer City Project, as well as ‘‘Fresh Traditions,’’ in which Tou Saiko collaborates with his grandmother Youa Chang in the traditional Hmong art of kwv txhiaj, a form of poetic chanting. As director of Creative Development and Outreach at CHAT (Center for Hmong Arts and Talent), a St. Paul nonprofit organization that aims to nurture Hmong artists, Tou Saiko organizes a series of open mic nights, coordinates after school specials, and helps to organize the annual Hmong Arts and Music Festival. Finally, Los Nativos consists of MC and Producer Xilam Balam, MC and Drummer Felipe Cuauhtli, and DJ Tekaptl. The group originally was known as ‘‘The Native Ones’’ and were original members of the Headshots crew. Their first show, recorded at First Avenue, can be heard on the second Headshots cassette. They have released one full-length album, Dia de Los Muertos (2004), and a EP entitled Red Star First (2005). They have toured Mexico on their own, as well as touring with Atmosphere and Eyedea and Abilities, travels that have taken them as far as Japan. Their work has earned them praise from The Source, which wrote that if ‘‘Emiliano Zapata and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara were alive today, Los Nativos would probably be there rap group of choice’’ (Trivin˜o). Their lyrics and music combine the various cultures, races, and ethnicities that make up their identities (Felipe, for instance, is Chicano and Black) and incorporate traditional Mexican music and languages, especially the Nawat language, into their beats and rhymes. Unabashedly oppositional in their politics, Los Nativos attempts to unite the indigenous Indian communities from across North and South America, wherever they may be. They have organized an Anti-Columbus Day event for the past five years, and Felipe cofounded the Multicultural Indigenous Academy in St. Paul, which aims to teach students of different cultures through culture, not just about culture, as well as building understanding and alliances between groups that may not normally interact with each other. One of the key figures of the national homo-hop movement, marginalized due to the pervasive homophobia of many hip hop artists, is Tori Fixx (1974–). Raised in Minneapolis, the MC, DJ, and producer, Fixx got his start DJing with Prince at Paisley Park, before moving out to San Francisco and joining one of the first homo hop groups, Rainbow Flava. After returning to Minneapolis to work as a DJ and producer, he also founded US2 Records, which represents other national queer hip hop artists. Fixx actively works to foster a musical community beyond the Twin Cities, evidenced by an event he organized last summer. After a screening of Alex Hinton’s documentary Pick Up the Mic, which examines the past and present of American homo hop, Fixx helped organize a concert with many of the

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FIRST AVENUE Made famous by Prince’s Purple Rain in 1984, downtown Minneapolis’s First Avenue began its life as a Greyhound bus depot in the 1937, before being opened as a club under the name The Depot on April 3, 1970. It went through a number of name changes until it was christened ‘‘First Avenue’’ in 1981. Since that time, the venue has become the pinnacle of success for Twin Cities artists. The club is divided into two spaces, the Mainroom, which holds around 1,500 people, and the smaller 7th St. Entry, which holds roughly 250. Numerous hip hop groups have played First Avenue, including Run DMC and Public Enemy, who played memorable concerts. Jam Master Jay’s turntables were suspended from the ceiling, since the stage moved so much that the records skipped; when Public Enemy performed, they had to literally tiptoe on the stage to avoid making Terminator X’s records skip (Scholtes ‘‘First Love’’). Other groups to perform at First Avenue are The Roots, Wu-Tang Clan—both together and individually—Aesop Rock, and Ice Cube, whose 1992 concert ended in a riot that temporarily suspended hip hop shows at the venue. The 7th Street Entry, while also hosting smaller national acts, is often a space for less-known or new Twin Cities hip hop artists to get exposure to a wider audience. One of the most memorable events with Twin Cities hip hop occurred in January of 2005 when Atmosphere performed a sold-out eight-night stand, reminiscent of a similar series of shows performed by the Replacements in 1985. First Avenue also hosts the Twin Cities Celebration of Hip hop, a three-day festival that not only takes over the club’s two venues, but also the surrounding streets for workshops and performances.

artists from the film, including Deadlee, the Aggracyst, and Katastrophe. He has released six albums that have traversed hip hop and house music; the title song of his latest album Code Red (2007), was written in response to Tim Hardaway’s comments against homosexuality. Fixx, however, has had little collaborative contact with the rest of the Twin Cities hip hop scene, in no small part on account of the pervasive homophobia that marks nearly all hip hop, including antihomosexual feelings within the Twin Cities hip hop scene itself. Due to the work of these and other artists, the Twin Cities have become one of the top independent hip hop scenes in the nation in the eyes of the larger independent rap community. Like everything else pertaining to Twin Cities hip hop, the future of it lies both inside and outside the Cities themselves, not only how the music is viewed by the larger nation (and the world), but also how the scene itself continues to thrive.

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The Twin Cities hip hop scene, represented especially by Rhymesayers, is in a position to gain more exposure than ever before. In March of 2007, Rhymesayers signed a major distribution deal with the Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), run by Warner Brothers’ Independent Label Group. The ADA has become a leader in independent music distribution, both physical and digital, with hip hop artists such as Madlib, Sage Francis, the RZA, as well as artists and groups outside of hip hop, including Spoon, Arcade Fire, and The New Pornographers, in its ranks. Rhymesayers has never been associated with a major label before, although every one has come calling in attempt to sign Atmosphere. This deal is unique in that it allows Rhymesayers to buy the promotion and distribution services of a major label if desired, and even sign a Rhymesayers artist to a major-label contract, but they are not tied to the label on a daily basis, creatively or otherwise. Such a deal offers Rhymesayers the ability to remain as independent as they wish, yet gives them the opportunity to distribute its records to more places than ever before. While national and international visibility is a goal for many Twin Cities artists, many also recognize the necessity of building and supporting younger artists who will continue and develop the scene. Artists such as I Self Divine, Desdamona, Maria Isa, Felipe Cuauthil, Carnage Big Quarters, and others teach hip hop classes to children ranging from grade school to high school, both in schools and community centers across the Twin Cities. Such programs encourage participation and fosters greater understanding of hip hop and what it (and its practitioners) can do for the communities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Such an emphasis on building a community ties in more generally to the strength of local neighborhoods within the Twin Cities. A number of organizations use hip hop to help the communities of the Twin Cities, as well as its residents. One of the most prominent is Yo! The Movement. The organization, begun in 1995 by Dick Mammen, facilitates a number of youth-based programs in the Twin Cities, but is best known for the annual Twin Cities Celebration of Hip hop, now in its sixth year. Featuring performances by acts from the Twin Cities and across the country (past headliners have included Slick Rick, MC Lyte, Jean Grey, and Naughty By Nature) the festival also includes roundtable discussions about issues within and beyond hip hop, including the myths of street credibility, the relationship of generation hip hop to the civil rights era, and ways to end youth violence. The third hip hop festival, held in 2005, was even declared a ‘‘Hip hop Weekend’’ by Minneapolis mayor R. T. Rybak. A emphasis on the larger communities of the Twin Cities was also on display following the collapse of the I-35W bridge on August 1, 2007, as many artists and venues coordinated benefit concerts to help victims and victims’ families. Focusing on communities outside of the mainstream geographic axes of the hip hop nation such as the Twin Cities can say much about where that nation’s been and where it might be going. It not only shows the rapid spread of hip hop, as well

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as the internal tensions that such expansion brings with it, but also the ability of hip hop to affect and influence more people than ever before, as well as create the conditions for social change. All of these elements of hip hop are present within the Twin Cities, and despite all of the changes that the scene has undergone, the undeniably talented and broad scene has proven that its sounds and messages can reach hearts and ears well beyond the shores of the 10,000 lakes.

REFERENCES Arnold, Eric K. ‘‘Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: A Tale of Twin Cities.’’ The Source, June 1999, 113–14. Brother Ali. ‘‘Hip Hop Quotable.’’ The Source, August 2007, 86. Caramanica, Jon. ‘‘Emo Rap: Up from the Underground.’’ Spin, February 2004, 70–73. Cooper, Martha. We B*Girlz. New York: Powerhouse Books, 2005. Flores, Juan. From Bomba to Hip Hop. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Johnson, Dirk. ‘‘Nice City’s Nasty Distinction: Murders Soar in Minneapolis.’’ New York Times, June 30, 1996, 1. McPherson, Steve. ‘‘Inside Rhymesayers.’’ Pulse of the Twin Cities, March 5, 2006. Ricketts, Dave. ‘‘Here Comes the Sun: After a Decade Underground, The Micranots Are Ready to Shine.’’ LifeSucksDie, Winter 2000, 14–15, 52. Rivera, Raquel. New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Scholtes, Peter S. ‘‘Doomsday!’’ City Pages, March 3, 2004. ———. ‘‘First Love: The Oral History of First Avenue.’’ City Pages, September 3, 2003. ———. ‘‘One Nation, Invisible: The Untold Story of Local Hip hop.’’ City Pages, August 18, 2004. ———. ‘‘Rhyme Out of Joint.’’ City Pages, July 5, 2000. ———. ‘‘Varsity Cheer.’’ City Pages, March 9, 2005. http://www.citypages.com/ 2005-03-09/arts/varsity-cheer/. Sperounes, Sandra. ‘‘Patron Saint of the Angry Man.’’ The Edmonton Journal, March 19, 2004, E1. Terhark, Chuck. ‘‘One Nation, Under Ground.’’ City Pages, August 4, 2004. http:// www.citypages.com/2004-08-04/arts/one-nation-under-ground/.

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Trivin˜o, Jesus. ‘‘Los Nativos.’’ The Source, December 2003. http://www.losnativos .com/press.htm. Wright, Toki. Personal interview. July 22, 2007.

FURTHER RESOURCES ARTICLES Anderson, Kyle. ‘‘Slug: Music That Changed My Life.’’ Spin, December 2005, 50. Daley, Sean. ‘‘Got Punk?’’ Spin, September 2004, 100–102, 104, 106. Diers, James. ‘‘It Takes a City of 366,000 to Hold Us Back.’’ City Pages, August 27, 1997. Reeves, Marcus. ‘‘Regional Scenes.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 216–27. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999. Scholtes, Peter S. ‘‘Blazin’ on $20 a Day.’’ City Pages, September 17, 2003. ———. ‘‘Give Me the B-Boys and Free My Soul.’’ City Pages, August 31, 2005. ———. ‘‘And on the Ninth Day Sean Rested.’’ City Pages, January 19, 2005. ———. Where the Ladies At?: The Battles and Breaks behind the First Female Hip-Hop Festival.’’ City Pages June 7, 2007.

FILMS Hinton, Alex. Pick Up the Mic: The Evolution of Homohop. Rhino Films, 2006. Steelman, Austyn. Exposing Headshots: Hip Hop Below 0°. Overgreenland Productions, 2006.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Abstract Pack Bousta Set It (For the Record). Self-released, 1998. Atmosphere Overcast. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1997. Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2001. Godlovesugly. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2002. Seven’s Travels. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2003. You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2005. Beyond Comparison. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1996. Be-Sides. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1999.

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Brother Ali Shadows on the Sun. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2003. The Undisputed Truth. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2007. Carnage Sense of Sound. Hecatomb, 2007. Desdamona The Ledge. Zlink Entertainment, 2005. The Source. FS Music, 2007. Dessa False Hopes. Doomtree, 2005. The Dynospectrum The Dynospectrum. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1998. Eyedea The Many Faces of Oliver Hart. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2002. Eyedea and Abilities First Born. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2001. E&A. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2004. Heiruspecs Small Steps. Interlock Records, 2002. A Tiger Dancing. Razor & Tie, 2004. I Self Divine Self-Destruction. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2005. Kanser Inner City Outer Space. Interlock, 2000. Quintessential. Interlock, 2001. It Wrote Itself. Interlock, 2002. Self-Titled. Interlock, 2005. Maria Isa M.I. Split Personalities. Emetrece Productions, 2007. P.O.S. Audition. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2006. Rhymesayers Entertainment Headshots, Volume 1: WBBOY Sessions. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1993. Headshots, Volume 2: Arrogance. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1994. Headshots, Volume 3: Compensation. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1995. Headshots, Volume 4: History. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1996. Headshots, Volume 5: Effort. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1997. Headshots, Volume 6: Industrial Warfare. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1998. Headshots, Volume 7: Se7en. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 1999. Semi-Official The Anti-Album. Rhymesayers Entertainment, 2003.

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Tori Fixx Marry Me. US2 Records, 2005. Truth Maze Expansions and Contractions: Psoems 1:1. Tru´ Ru´ts/Speakeasy Records, 2006. Various Artists Interlock, Volume 1. Interlock, 1999. Call It What You Want. Interlock, 2006.

CHAPTER 16 Welcome to tha D: Making and Remaking Hip Hop Culture in Post-Motown Detroit Carleton S. Gholz If Detroit had not existed, hip hop’s first generation in Uptown Manhattan and the Bronx would have to have invented it. Musically Detroit has had tremendous influence on the sound of hip hop, including the 1960s soul sound of record labels like Motown, the 1970s funk provided by artists like George Clinton and his Parliament-Funkadelic, and the 1980s proto-techno acts like Juan Atkins’ work in the groups Cybotron and later Model 500. Detroit’s wider cultural legacy has also greatly influenced hip hop since its early days, especially in its subject matter and through the wide dissemination of books by Detroit’s pimp-turned-novelist Donald Goines. This is not to mention the influence of Detroit as a spectacle of post-World War II industrial demise and social meltdown caused by joblessness, drugs, and structural racism. This latter influence has come out most notably in Barry Michael Copper’s screenplay for the 1991 hip hop stylized film New Jack City which was largely based on 1980s Detroit famous crack dealers The Chambers Brothers, and, of course, Eminem’s semiautobiographical film 8 Mile in 2003. Despite these, and many other Detroit-based influences, hip hop itself did not start in Detroit. Moreover, Detroit was relatively slow in picking up on the genre of rap as its favored musical interest so Detroit had a long period before it established its own, locally popular, rap scene. Despite ephemeral rap music singles and albums going back into the early and mid-1980s, rap did not dominate Detroit’s airwaves or clubs until the late 1990s, even though Detroit had a sizeable African American market and major hip hop artists toured the region since the early 1980s. Instead, Detroit’s early appreciation of hip hop music focused on the electro sound of New York labels such as Tommy Boy, which featured artists like Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force. This electro music—based on reoccurring synthesizer vamps, pounding bass beats, short snare claps, and cymbal-like crashes provided by drum machines, like the Roland 808—had far more influence initially on Detroit ears then early rap. It would take years of dissemination and incubation before the Detroit area could offer its own version of rap music tied to 393

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an organic hip hop movement within its neighborhoods. When Detroit hip hop finally did reach a critical mass in the early 1990s, the impact would be felt around the world, with groundbreaking acts like Esham, Boss, Jay Dee, Slum Village, and Eminem proving that the city was not just living in its musical past but charting out hip hop’s future.

1980–1983 In 1980, just a year after Sugarhill Gang’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ became a national hit, New Yorker Duane ‘‘Spyder D.’’ Hughes cowrote and performed the song ‘‘Big Apple Rappin’ ’’ while attending college in Michigan, and released it via a new record label started by his mother, Doris Hughes. (the record was rereleased in 2006 as the title-track on a double-disc archival compilation by England’s Soul Jazz Records). The track, a 10-minute plus, funky, synthesizer-filled tourist brochure, mentions New York City landmarks, neighborhoods, DJs, and MCs, as well as the Big Apple’s proclivities for crime and fun. Ironically though the track featured former Motown bass player Billy ‘‘Motley’’ Wilson, current head of the Motown Alumni Association, and the label was named Newtroit. Eventually Spyder D. would hop from label to label throughout the 1980s, and Newtroit would release only one record. This little-told story of ‘‘Big Apple Rappin’ ’’ illustrates a major negative factor working against early Detroit rap music: the lack of a nationally significant record industry presence, a deficit that began with Motown Records’ departure in 1972. Despite the high quality of the musicians still available in the former Motown the evisceration of the indigenous hit-making infrastructure, so famous throughout the world in the 1960s, made something like Spyder D.’s career untenable in Detroit. Returning to New York City created the possibility of a major record deal. Detroit’s dearth of popular rap artists though did not stop the ascendance, through radio, of a new style of DJing influenced by hip hop. Detroit audience’s focus on the dance music sound emerging in early hip hop from New York, Los Angeles and, later, Miami, was greatly stimulated by two major radio forces: The Electrifying Mojo and The Wizard. Charles ‘‘Electrifying Mojo’’ Johnson ruled Detroit’s airwaves in the late 1970s and early 1980s on the radio station WJLB. Mojo, with his deep, spectral-sounding voice and studio effects, famously encouraged listeners to help him land the Mothership (a direct allusion to the fantasies of Detroit’s famous funk band Parliament-Funkadelic) by shining flashlights out their bedroom windows and blinking the lights on their cars. While that was occurring, Mojo would play an all-embracing set list that could range from soul music to classic rock to early local electro within minutes. Only a few years after making the transition to the FM dial in 1979 Mojo had a competitor in Jeff ‘‘The Wizard’’ Mills. Hired in the mid-1980s by WJLB’s FM competitor WDRQ, The Wizard went head-to-head with Mojo but not by talking. Instead, the then teenage Mills brought a new hip hop style out of local clubs and cabarets to the studios of WDRQ

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and then later in the 1980s at WJLB after Mojo had left. This fast-paced mixing style, in which Mills would mix individual records together for only seconds, as opposed to minutes, before throwing them aggressively onto the DJ-booth floor, quickly became legendary. Using multiple turntables, drum machines, eight-track effects, as well as other sound-recording equipment, Mills created a robust sonic collage that highlighted the slick, percussion heavy, technologically advanced sounds of early hip hop music. Before radio stations had a format for hip hop music, mix-shows filled the vacuum, and Mills was the preeminent pioneer in Detroit. Mojo and The Wizard were quintessential to bringing early hip hop records and DJ styles budding in New York to a mass audience in Detroit. From music producer Jay Dee and his progeny’s soulful sampling in their underground rap songs, to the local dance-floor friendly ghettotech DJs with their emphasis on scratching records speeding by at 150 beats per minute, to Dabrye’s synthesizer heavy laptop programming and its emphasis on distortion and off-kilter structures, many contemporary Detroit hip hop artists have drawn energy from the Mojo vs. Mills battles of the 1980s. The era eventually came to an end in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the pressures of media conglomeration brought Detroit’s unruly musical mixing in line with national rap and R&B formats dictated from the coasts. But through the circulation of radio mixes and folklore, Mojo and Wizard’s nimble skills and encyclopedic knowledge of Motown, rock, funk, electro, and hip hop established the horizon for rhythmic creation in Detroit.

1984–1990 Because of the influence of young DJs like The Wizard, music at local parties and cabarets heavily favored electro artists and break-neck DJing. There were few would-be rappers and those that existed would have to appeal to local tastes in a place where the DJ was king. These early MCs, like Prince Vince and Merciless Amir, therefore had to find their audience not in the party scene but on different media outlets and on the streets, neighborhoods, and basements of Detroit. One such place where rap music would be featured was on WGPR radio’s TV affiliate, one of the oldest black-owned TV stations in the country. ‘‘The Scene,’’ one of WGPR’s most popular shows from 1975 to 1987, was Detroit’s version of the nationally popular dance music show ‘‘Soul Train.’’ ‘‘The Scene’’ with its host Nat Morris, later to be rechristened as ‘‘The New Dance Show’’ and hosted by R. J. Watkins, became a Detroit institution. Starting in the early 1980s, its theme song, ‘‘Flamethrower Rap,’’ written by Felix & Jarvis and produced by now famous rock producer and former Detroiter Don Was, highlighted the show’s openness to new music. According to local hip hop historian Khary Turner, in the 1980s the show also gave young Detroit rappers like Mark ‘‘Gallo’’ Legree and Woody Easter cameos, eventually inspiring a segment called ‘‘Rap-A-Dance’’ in which local rappers would battle. Though national acts that came through town could also

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be seen on the show, these ‘‘Rap-A-Dance’’ segments were the first televised images of locally based rap talent, providing a major inspiration. WGPR’s radio station was also important in supporting early rap efforts with DJ Billy T’s ‘‘The Rap Blast’’ and ‘‘Billy T’s Basement Tapes,’’ starting in the mid-1980s and extending into the early 1990s. A new generation of Detroit rappers raised on ‘‘The Scene’’ and DJ Billy T— and conscious of Detroit’s fast-paced, bass-heavy tastes—emerged in the late 1980s. For example, Papa J. Smoove, who shared a record label with another local rap group, Rap Mafia, on Hittin’ Home Records, peppered his rhymes about lyrically battling with the devil in the midst of an electro beat on ‘‘Keep Dancin’’ (1990). Similarly, female rapper Smiley’s ‘‘Smiley But Not Friendly’’ (1990) found her streaking her vocals on top of electronic drum rolls. The track was recorded for the Detroit-based label Bryant Records, headed by former studio musician Joel H. Bryant, and was remixed by The Wizard himself (see Women Artists). Rapper J. to the D.’s ‘‘Sack Chaser’’ (1990) included a slow version and fast mix from his album Living on the Edge that was distributed by Atlanta’s independent Ichiban Records. The fast version barely allows enough time for the artist to level his disses against the ‘‘skeeze’’ who pursues him. These early rap artists came dance-ready with their hits and New York-styled deliveries. However a more street-oriented realism and slower, funkier approach was making permanent inroads with Detroit-area audiences. After years of experiencing Reagan and Bush economic policies and drug war tactics, not to mention suffering through Detroit’s own chaotic local budgeting, politics and police, audiences were primed for a tougher message. A group of local artists with a swagger in their style and rhymes offered Detroiters a funkier, more militant, visage. The aforementioned Prince Vince sampled P-Funk’s hit ‘‘Flashlight’’ for his major label single ‘‘Gangster Funk’’ (1988) for Mercury records. Another group, Awesome Dre & the Hardcore Committee sampled ‘‘Pick Up the Pieces’’ by the funky Average White Band for its boasting rap on the signature cut on ‘‘You Can’t Hold Me Back’’ (Bentley Records/Priority). Though sampling such an obvious funk standard at the time may not seem so revolutionary, the trench coats and sunglasses the front man Awesome Dre wore seemed very serious—as did the image of him holding two gang members hostage by gun point, Detroit’s skyline behind him, on the cover of their 1988 album for the nationally distributed Los Angeles label Priority. And despite the obvious New York rap influences on label-mates E.Z. B and DJ Los, the rap group Kaos & Mystro transcended coastal influences through their political visibility in Detroit’s larger community (see Kaos & Mystro). By the late 1980s, Detroit rap acts were finally articulating a larger culture of hip hop, with fashion styles, personal histories, lyrical flows, and sonic inventions that reflected a deep commitment to hip hop as a complete lifestyle. Three of these rap artists, A.W.O.L., Detroit’s Most Wanted, and Esham, could be seen as tipping points that brought something different to Detroit hip hop that would have long-

Welcome to tha D | 397 term effects (see AWOL, Detroit’s Most Wanted and Esham). Detroit hip hop was finally a musical force to contend with regionally and was beginning to pique the interest of national audiences, helping a new generation of MCs and hip hop producers in Detroit to chart their own paths.

1991–1996 With full-length albums from Kaos & Mystro, E.Z. B. & DJ Los, Awesome Dre, J. to the D., Kid Rock, Esham, ICP, Smiley, A.W.O.L., and DMW in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it’s clear that stylistically and culturally Detroit hip hop was finding its legs. Somehow, though, Detroit’s first national success came north of 8 Mile —the long road that marks the city’s northern border (see 8 Mile)—when Flintnative Eric ‘‘MC’’ Breed’s funk-heavy song ‘‘Ain’t No Future in Your Frontin’ ’’ (1991) became a national hit. Flint’s denizens had caught many of the same hip hop bugs as Detroit and, as represented in films like Roger and Me (1989) by Michael Moore, had many of the same postindustrial difficulties as Detroit, the larger city an hour to the south. ‘‘That’s Life’’ off of Breed’s 1991 album MC Breed and DFC shouted out Flint over all other geographies (‘‘I ain’t speaking on Compton, L.A., Detroit, NYC/Man I’m talking about Flint.’’). But Breed’s stylistic focus on creating a hybrid Flint rap sound would die hard as he began to work with West Coast and Southern rappers in the 1990s. Breed’s deepest commitment musically was former Detroiter George Clinton who Breed sampled throughout his career and worked with on the commercially successful Funkafied (1994). Breed brought the Midwest and, indirectly, Detroit to a national stage, performed and rapped with some of the biggest names in hip hop, and despite leaving the area for significant portions of his career, held down the funk in the region’s sonic heritage. One possible explanation why Flint had a rap hit before Detroit was that dance music genres like techno and house were being sought after from Detroit—not rap. In 1988 Techno!: The New Dance Sound from Detroit on England’s Virgin Records was released. The English had picked up techno fever through clubs like Manchester’s Hacienda where mid-1980s Detroit dance tracks, soon to be marketed as techno, kept an ecstatic dance scene humming. Internationally, journalists of this ‘‘new’’ dance music accepted a distinction between techno and rap in Detroit, despite the fact that both genres, at least in Detroit, took initial cues from DJs like the Electrifying Mojo. What was an aesthetic distinction in Europe, though, had a lot to do with class distinctions in Detroit. Some flyers from early techno dance events had explicitly banned ‘‘jits,’’ a derogatory term for undesirable elements from Detroit’s black working class youth. Of course, these same supposed undesirables were some of the same youth that turned to hip hop. But at local dance clubs like the famous Music Institute in downtown Detroit, founded by Detroit disco and house-lovers and DJed by the likes of techno producer Derrick May, this classist stance against hip hop culture spilled on to the dance floor: no rap was tolerated.

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8 MILE The broad media perception of 8 Mile is hard to balance with the local experience of the street’s economic, racial, and visual diversity. How, for instance to balance Dogmatic’s ‘‘8 Mile Road’’ from 8 Mile Chronicles (2005), where the long-time MC mentions the 8 Mile Skoneys, one of Detroit’s many 1980’s era gangs, and fallen friends, with the impression of middle-class normality of many 8 Mile neighborhoods? The answer is not to choose. One can see middle-class neighborhoods (especially west of Woodward Avenue, the arbitrary border between Detroit’s Eastside and Westside), and abandoned buildings, strip clubs that neighborhoods wish were not next door, and old jazz clubs that should probably be on the nationally historic register, all within one car ride. The survey line for the Northwestern Territory in 1787 (8 Mile’s other name is ‘‘Base Line Road’’ because of this connection), the road is legally and symbolically the border that separates Detroit from its northern neighbors. It also connects the glorious old-money environs of Grosse Pointe at the end of the road to the east, to the World War II-era plants on the street’s north side in Warren, to the Cold War era malls of the street’s west side in Southfield. Driving and stopping along 8 Mile’s length, more than wallowing in its televisual image, presents a strong argument for the street as not merely a door to understand Detroit but also to understand America in the twentieth century. The danger though is to believe in the surfaces that slide by the car window, something that recent media and even local attentions have fallen prey to. Proof was killed in a club on East 8 Mile in the spring of 2006, a tragedy that did not encourage nuanced evaluations of 8 Mile’s reputation. More recently, according to Rodd Monts, the road has gone through a number of surface improvements due to the help of the Eight Mile Boulevard Association. 8 Mile—as well as greater Detroit—is neither merely saint nor sinner. How to reflect beyond good and evil? Get in your car . . . but roll down the window.

If international consumption patterns and local class tensions were not enough, the white DJ turned MC Kid Rock, one of the first rappers from Detroit to sign a national record label deal, had his career derailed in the backlash over white rapper Vanilla Ice. The Dallas native had famously lied about his background, destroying his credibility, and putting a cloud over any white rapper’s claims to hip hop authenticity. The result for Detroit’s Kid Rock was the muting of his early major label success and the splitting up of his own local crew. He would only reemerge in the late 1990s after revamping his sound and performing on MTV shows, linking his career with the rise of ‘‘rap-rock’’ groups like Limp Bizkit (see The

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Insane Clown Posse (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Blackman). For the rest of the scene, a well-documented collapse of national rap tours at the time made it difficult for even larger local groups to get any national coverage. Record label buy-outs and shutdowns inspired by corporate conglomeration and the tightening of the airwaves due to the rise of companies like Clear Channel, would virtually guarantee that ‘‘regional’’ hip hop artists would not surface successfully until the late 1990s. If Detroit artists were going to succeed, they would have to define success on their own terms. There were multiple strategies. Some artists like Kid Rock and Boss picked up and left in order to pursue coastal opportunities (see The Blackman). Others responded by gathering around Maurice Malone’s early 1990s nomadic hip hop party, the Rhythm Kitchen, which finally settled at The Hip Hop Shop (see The Hip Hop Shop). This ‘‘Golden Age’’ community, which included a poetry scene (see sidebar: Spectacles), provided a place where local MCs could develop their skills with a small but dedicated audience inspired by the global explosion of hip hop culture. While these scenes were predominantly black, the culture, from B-Boying to beats, crossed over at places like Alvin’s, a club near Wayne State University, with its Family Funktion Wednesdays. Featuring DJs Ron ‘‘Papa Ron’’ Olson, Brian Gillespie, Alvin ‘‘Munk’’ Hill, and Jim Stone, the night of diverse musical sounds, from Acid Jazz to hip hop, started off as a one-off record release party in the spring of 1995; by popular demand the night did not end until almost three years later. Family Funktion, unlike the Music Institute, mixed genres bringing a diverse group of music lovers—black, white,

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THE HIP HOP SHOP The Hip Hop Shop (1993–1997), located at 15736 West 7 Mile Road and started by Maurice Malone, was the center of Detroit’s underground hip hop community during its golden age. In an interview Malone discussed the shop, Detroit hip hop, and his relationship to it. Malone was a long-time member of Detroit’s post-Motown music scene since the early 1980s. He first started as a party promoter in high school within the nascent techno scene before discovering fashion design as a practical passion. In 1989 he started a members-only loft party called Underground Nation in downtown Detroit. An outgrowth of his fashion interests, the party featured techno and house music and inspired many in the early rave scene. But it was his early 1990s travels to New York and Brooklyn in order to push his line of jeans that changed his musical allegiances. There he connected with that city’s hip hop culture, with artists like A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip and attending parties that looked and sounded like little he had seen in Detroit. The experience encouraged Malone to try to throw parties with rap performances back in Detroit. By the fall of 1991 Malone was back in Detroit in order to bring what he had seen in NYC back with him. With a new partner, Tracey ‘‘Trac Bryd’’ Byrd, Malone started the Rhythm Kitchen. Though associated with Stanley’s Chinese Restaurant, the Rhythm Kitchen was more of a production company than a physical space that would throw open mic parties and promote rap concerts, like Gang Starr and Leaders of the New School, at bigger venues in town. At the open mics, Malone would DJ, this time as DJ Soul Finger, with an MC performance in the middle. It was these performances, many at Stanley’s and later at The Hip Hop Shop, where the likes of Phat Kat met people like Jay Dee, Proof hosted battles with Eminem, and local heroes Laswunzout featuring Loe Louis would bubble on the brink of success. Detroit’s nascent hip hop scene, with Malone’s forward thinking, had found a formula that was working. The blueprint for the shop was the sale of Malone’s jeans and other hip hop culture specific commodities with open mic battles on Saturday afternoons. B-Boys danced in the shop, while on Saturday evenings from 5 to 7 PM rap battles raged overseen by long-time employee Proof. Shoppers came from everywhere since the shop was, according to Malone unique in the entire world in the early 1990s. It was wholly dedicated to hip hop culture, a place where visitors could hang out with MCs, buy hip hop fashion, and talk about hip hop culture, as well as battle your way to a Hip Hop Shop T-shirt (and bragging rights). To illustrate the point, Wu-Tang Clan came by just to check the store and liked it so much they were willing to play a concert for free. Malone set up the show at the Music Institute space on Broadway downtown, a space that had been central to the height of the techno scene.

Welcome to tha D | 401 The Shop had made it possible. Tags from all over the world filled the dressing room walls and everyone who was there who is still making music cites it as an influence. Malone closed The Hip Hop Shop and went back to New York City in 1997. Much to Malone’s chagrin, a shop with the same name opened in 2005 under different management but has since closed. Over the years, other venues, like the Wired Frog in Eastpointe, and even Proof’s Fight Club nights held downtown near his Iron Fist offices attempted to take over the open mic scene after the Shop’s closing. A lone video of Eminem and Proof at The Hip Hop Shop now sits on Maurice Malone’s ‘‘Hip Hop Shop by Maurice Malone’’ Web site copyrighted in 2004, a placeholder for Malone’s plans for reopening The Hip Hop Shop as a worldwide franchise.

gay and straight—together. According to cofounder Stone, ‘‘Everyone was hungry for something new and different.’’ These venues would eventually produce many of the artists now considered to represent Detroit hip hop, from Slum Village to Eminem. But this underground scene, convinced of its own authenticity and largely shut out from larger corporate opportunities on national labels or even local radio, was largely invisible and impenetrable to outsiders. The result was that even at its creative height in the mid-1990s, Detroit’s underground could not make either Eminem’s Infinite (1996) or Slum Village’s Fantastic Vol. 1 (1997) hits outside its own environs. Instead, another even more unlikely ‘‘underground’’ scene in Detroit was getting their group a major label deal and four straight gold and platinum records. Spurned by the local rap underground and ignored initially by national labels, Insane Clown Posse (ICP) chose to focus their attention on growing a loyal fan-base with obsessive local promotion, interactive high-energy stage-shows, and numerous giveaways and collectibles revolving around their Esham and Geto Boys inspired ‘‘horrorcore’’ sound. The loosely defined genre featured sexualized tales of murder and mayhem, most of them screamed by vile-mouthed, angry young men, over methodical, dirge-like production. Many in the Detroit area loved it. The result was an audience that at least in numbers was the envy of every rap group in Detroit.

1997–2006 While ICP and its diehard fans, called Juggalos, were expanding regionally and The Hip Hop Shop regulars were honing their skills locally, it was the Detroit mass’s commitment to DJs and dance music exemplified by the genre that has come to be known as ghettotech that made for true crossover musical excitement in the mid-1990s (see Ghettotech). But ghettotech by itself did not become commercially mainstream despite its infectious sound and its—at least local—

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SPECTACLES With Maurice Malone long gone from the Detroit scene, the best place to dip into Detroit’s blend of urban culture and style is at the place where Malone debuted his merchandise before The Hip Hop Shop ever existed: Spectacles. Located on 230 East Grand River in a downtown shopping area called Harmonie Park, Spectacles features up-to-date street fashion and accessories from across the country and in Detroit, as well as music, magazines, and books. In other words, it’s the perfect place to buy an outfit for Saturday night as well as buy copies of Donald Goines’ books. The store’s owner, and former business manager for Malone, Zana Smith, has been involved in small businesses in Detroit since the 1970s, eventually becoming a club promoter that worked with proto-techno DJs after the fall of disco in the late 1970s. As a sign of her long-standing reputation in this area, the last time Jeff ‘‘The Wizard’’ Mills came ‘‘home’’ to play Detroit in 2008 it was at a show promoted by Smith. Smith was also critically involved in the Detroit’s nascent poetry scene in the early 1990s. Inspired by the New York poetry scene, local poets and emcees had begun to recite their poetry and verses when they came into Smith’s shop which led her to start a Tuesday night event at the recently opened Pour’ Me Cafe´ downtown in 1994. What started as an off-night experiment became the venue’s strongest night and another spark for the local scene. After a falling out with the cafe, Smith moved the night to Carl and Cyrus Shaw’s Cafe´ Mahogany where it ran for approximately three years under her guidance. These years saw artists like Proof, Black Thought, Common, Jay Dee, Dwele, and many others hone and show off their emerging skills in a vivrant scene that complimented what was going on at venues like The Hip Hop Shop. After Smith left the night it continued, this time under the direction of Girard Ivory, DJ Carl ‘‘The Invisible Man’’ and Fluent, until the venue closed shortly after getting a liquor license in the late 1990s. Dwele’s song, ‘‘Lady of Mahogany,’’ off of Subject (Virgin, 2003), pays tribute to the venue (‘‘While she’s getting’ the soda, I’m gonna slide to the sofa and proceed to kick monopoly to lady of Mahogany.’’) The poetry scene’s inspiration can be found in the more conscious moments of Mahogany-regulars Slum Village’s work as well. The musicians from Mahogany’s later years—a group that includes rapper and freelance writer Khary Turner—would go on to form The Black Bottom Collective. Smith, like she has since 1984, continues to throw parties and invite producers, DJs, poets, scene members and even tourists to interact under the elevated ceiling of her store.

Welcome to tha D | 403 crossover appeal. That would be left to artists like Eminem who were able take advantage of shifts at the center of youth marketing. The late 1990s saw the rise of what PBS correspondent Douglas Rushkoff in the 2001 documentary Merchants of Cool called the ‘‘mooks’’ and the ‘‘midriffs’’ as marketing terms in the wars over teenage dollars. The midriffs stereotype was provided by Brittney Spears and Christina Aguilera while the ‘‘mooks’’ were modeled after characters on MTV’s ‘‘Jackass’’ and ‘‘Tom Green Show.’’ This moment fit well with three Detroit acts, all of which were represented in the Billboard charts in the summer of 1999: Kid Rock, ICP, and Eminem. The first two artists began to expand their audience in time to rise with artists like Limp Bizkit at the large, nationally televised Woodstock 1999 concerts. But it was Eminem’s mushrooming popularity in 1999 that radically changed Detroit’s hip hop scene. Using his newly found commercial success, Eminem shepherded certain local artists onto an international arena while his mere presence in the media spotlight reflected attention onto Detroit’s wider culture, whether that attention was wanted or not (see Eminem). While Eminem’s major label success starting in 1999 eventually provided opportunities for his closest compatriots, like the members of D-12, it was Jay Dee’s rise as a top producer and master of the 1990’s sampling technology that moved another set of more independently minded artists to national and international exposure (see Jay Dee and Slum Village). Detroit-raised artists like Phat Kat (see Phat Kat), Guilty Simpson, Frank ’n’ Dank, Waajeed, Black Milk, and others regularly cite Dilla, even after his death in 2006, as a source for beats and inspiration. A series of independent labels—though few Detroit-based—have released records by these rappers, including San Francisco’s Look and Los Angeles’s Stones Throw. The result has been Detroit rap’s continuing underground popularity around the country and world. In early 2006, Detroit hip hop writer, fan, and Renaissance Soul Blog writer, Kelly ‘‘K-Fresh’’ Frazier argued this very point stating in an article from Real Detroit Weekly, ‘‘Detroit hip-hop has got its foot in the door in all aspects of the game. We have major label, national independent, regional and local releases. Our artists have the ability to pack crowds locally, as well as sell out venues worldwide. Unfortunately, none of this is accomplished on a reasonably consistent basis, and our ‘potential’ is limitless’’ (Frazier ‘‘Breakin’ Records’’). Beyond Hollywood films and still operating home studios, there has also been Detroit’s developing as a major front in the struggle over hip hop politics. In Hip Hop Matters (2005), author S. Craig Watkins describes the campaign, election, and administration of current Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in 2002—Detroit’s ‘‘hip hop Mayor’’—as a case-study in the struggles over a post-Civil Rights agenda for those born in the age of hip hop. (187–92, 196–205) Kilpatrick, who is still in his thirties, has made Detroit youth a center of administration goals with his ‘‘Mayor’s Time’’ initiative, a program designed to address and engage Detroit youth by providing activities to fill teens’ potentially unstructured time after school (197–99). Watkins sees Kilpatrick then as a harbinger of a new, global as

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GHETTOTECH During the late 1990s it was the Detroit mass’s commitment to DJs and dance music exemplified in the ghettotech genre that made for true crossover musical excitement in the mid-1990s. A resurgence in the electro dance sound manipulated by a generation of DJs and producers raised on The Wizard but no longer forced to compete with him, ghettotech or booty music integrated cutting edge electronic music—from drum and bass to local Detroit techno—with dirty, bass-heavy homemade 12’’ records. According to ghettotech scholar Gavin Mueller, producers like Craig ‘‘DJ Assault’’ Adams and Ade ‘‘Mr. De’’ Mainor created tracks like ‘‘Ass ’n’ Titties’’ to be played and manipulated by a series of local new Wizards in local clubs and various radio stations across the FM dial. The only authenticity these booty-mixing soldiers—Wax-Tax-N-Dre, Don Q, Fingers, Zap, and Gary Chandler just to name a few—were interested in was outdoing each other and propelling crowds to dance. The result was that weekend nights in the mid-1990s on Detroit radio—and at radio-sponsored club nights— were venues for a tongue-in-cheek, sex-crazed musical genre that spoke across 8 Mile. Local record labels sprouted up to provide product, with Adams and Mainor’s Assault Rifle/Electrofunk label setting a high standard for low-down dirtiness. Two suburban labels also broke through with the sound. Brian Gillespie, Brian ‘‘DJ Godfather’’ Jeffries, and DJ Dick’s Twilight 76 took off by remixing Miami Bass records before producing their own, Detroit-style versions. Twilight 76 sold records like hot-cakes at local record stores. The short-lived, suburban Intuit-Solar also brought forth a DJ Assault LP, Jefferson Ave., in 2001. Few artists from this intensely Detroit-styled scene were able to crossover their local prowess into national success. There have been a few exceptions. ‘‘Ass ’n’ Titties’’ for one has become such a global hit that it was mentioned by the lead character in Gary Shentgart’s best-selling novel Absurdistan (2006). Another sign is that a Japanese company produced one of the few documentaries about the scene, The Godfather Chronicles. There was also the momentary success of the Detroit Grand Pubah’s ‘‘Sandwhiches,’’ an underground electro-booty pop hit (‘‘You can be the bun I can be the burger girl we can make sandwiches.’’) that eventually garnered the at the time two-man group—Andy Toth and Paris the Black Fu—a date on England’s ‘‘Top of the Pops.’’ The record was locally produced by Brian Gillespie’s Throw label and distributed by Twilight 76 before being picked up by the New York based Jive Electro. Another ghettotech artist, area native David ‘‘Disco D.’’ Shayman, produced the song ‘‘Ski Mask Way’’ off of 50 Cent’s The Massacre (2005). Ann Arbor-raised Shayman, who committed suicide in 2007, coined the term ghettotech, and was one of the few artists in the scene to crossover his rep as a booty DJ and producer into rap music production.

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well as national, hip hop politics rooted in youth and community activism. In a little over 10 years, from the mid-1990s production of Jay Dee to the mid-2000s with the world-conquering success of Eminem and rise of figures like Kilpatrick, Detroit had changed both the sonic landscape of hip hop and, for some, its politics.

ARIST PROFILES Women Artists Though the names that regularly surface in discussions of Detroit hip hop, from Awesome Dre to Eminem, are male, the scene has a noteworthy history of hip hop women. Local radio host Ms. Smiley’s rap career only amounted to a smattering of locally produced releases but what a career it was. Lynette ‘‘Smiley’’ Michaels’s The Smile Gets Wild (Bryant Records 1989), which featured the local hit, ‘‘Smiley But Not Friendly,’’ was produced by label-mate Duncan Hines of the group Detroit’s Most Wanted at a time when that seminal group had only one single. With remixes and radio play by The Wizard, the song, a response to 2 Live Crew’s ‘‘Get It Girl,’’ with its staccato-delivery from Smiley (‘‘I got a friendly face with an out-cold attitude.’’), is remembered as one of the first local rap singles to have gotten any notice. An earlier single had been even more explicit in its proto-rap-feminist take: ‘‘I Don’t Have 2 Sack 2 Collect.’’ Another female MC from that time, Kalimah ‘‘Nikki D./Eboni and Her Business’’ Johnson, is still in the scene as well. Johnson put out an early single as Nikki D. for Urban Suburban called ‘‘Work that Sucka’’ that got enough buzz for Johnson to be the opening act for artists like Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions when they played in Detroit. But her career went south when a name dispute with another Nikki D. forced her to change her name. Then her album for World One Records, the same label that put out Kaos & Mystro’s full-length, garnered little attention. She rejoined the scene in the late 1990s when poetry was bubbling up in Detroit coffee houses and has recently hosted an open mic night in downtown Detroit. Just a few years later, Smiley’s sassiness would look like child’s play compared to that of Lichelle ‘‘Boss’’ Laws, the only Detroit artist featured in Tricia Rose’s seminal hip hop book, Black Noise (1994). It was Boss’s song ‘‘Recipe for a Hoe’’ from Born Gangstaz (Def Jam/Rush 1993), which sampled and teased the Geto Boys ‘‘You Gotta Let a Ho Be a Ho,’’ that gave Rose pause because of the tune’s lyrical ‘‘revenge fantasies’’ against misogynistic men. The album, in a similar vein, sported images of women with shotguns on the cover; perhaps this was not Rose’s idea of positive feminist rap. But for Detroiters there was more than just feminist politics at stake. Boss, along with her DJ, Irene ‘‘Dee’’ Moore, struggled but eventually signed with a major label, got three videos produced for their album, and worked with major artists, like Erick Sermon and MC Serch. She showed that someone from Detroit could make it—that Detroit had a hip hop community worth paying attention to. A product of Detroit Catholic Schools and

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community rap youth programs, Boss made her debut as ‘‘Lady the Boss’’ on the Knowledge Is Power (1990) local rap compilation put out by Ton Def, a label run by R. J. Rice (former manager of Slum Village and now head of Barak Records) and Jewel Silas. But it was Boss’s move to New York and years in L.A. that precipitated being signed by Def Jam, a deal that brought Boss a number one rap single with ‘‘Deeper’’ (1993). Boss eventually asked to be dropped from Def Jam and moved to Texas where she was radio host in the late 1990s. Further professional and medical problems—she had to have a kidney transplant—stalled Boss’s career. Laws recently resurfaced in 2007 as a rapper on a verse for ‘‘Detroit Stand Up,’’ a track and video set up by Esham to unite Westside and Eastside rappers with artists like Big Herk, Al Nuke, and Proof, amongst others. Her flow, as well as her dark sunglasses in the video, were still intact. The year after Boss’s full-length release, female vocalist and Detroit-raised Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001, made her MTV debut with her street-savvy R&B song, ‘‘Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number.’’ In a move for local authenticity, the video featured Proof and others wearing Hip Hop Shop T-shirts. At the same time, Kori ‘‘BombShell’’ Blake was having a local hit with ‘‘What You Gonna Do? (You Can’t Get Wit The BombShell)’’ produced by techno producer Anthony Shakir. Though her career did not take off, she has had a recent revival with her album Rhapsody (2007). Though Detroit’s hip hop scene stayed underground in the 1990s, when it finally surfaced nationally women came with it. 8 Mile (2002) showed off a number of local residents and artists in short cameos but only a few got to freestyle in the same space as Eminem during the shoots. One of them was Miz Korona, who is seen rap battling Xzibit in the film. Formerly known as Pimpette before changing her performance name to Korona, she bubbled in the local open mic scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s before stepping out in the film. As for the future of Detroit women in hip hop, there is Invincible, an artist who mentions feminist-critic Audre Lorde and Detroit’s own militant techno group Underground Resistance on her Myspace page. She has only recently released a full-length LP but has already had a career that goes back to the late 1990s when she lived in New York City and hooked up with an all-female hip hop crew called Anomolies. In Detroit she dropped some verses on Paradime’s ‘‘Paragraphs’’ 12’’ (Federation 1999). It was her writing for MTV’s lyricist lounge, though, and a guest appearance on a Rawkus Records compilation from 2000 that hinted at a long-term career. More recently she rapped on the Plantinum Pied Pipers’ album Triple P (Ubiquity 2005), two songs on Dabrye’s Two/Three (Ghostly International 2006) and two more on Waajeed’s The War LP (2007). The last project included a blistering ‘‘Place Where We Dwell,’’ an insightful rap introduction to Detroit politics, personalities, and concerns, with high-hat cymbals lifted from Led Zeppelin’s ‘‘Rock & Roll.’’ Her first solo album, Shapeshifters, was released on Bling47 in June 2008.

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Kaos & Mystro Jason ‘‘Mystro’’ Wilson and Teferi (DonRico) ‘‘Kaos’’ Brent (born May 7, 1971) performed on one of the most sonically complex and politically daring albums in Detroit’s early hip hop history, Outcast Vol. 1 (World One Records 1989), channeling black nationalist politics through fast-paced beats as Kaos & Mystro. Their short career reveals a complicated relationship between the ascending hip hop culture and Detroit’s preexisting sonic and political mix. In an interview, Brent described his and the group’s musical history. Brent moved around the city a lot as a kid, spending time on the Westside before finding his way to Highland Park, a city surrounded by Detroit, where he met up with Wilson. Despite having parents with solid blue-collar jobs behind him, Brent was not immune from hanging in Detroit’s neighborhood gangs, both on Detroit’s Westside and Highland Park. Fighting and getting in trouble were his modus operandi and it was enough of a problem that Brent was kicked out of a private school and forced to attend Highland Park High. It was not just gangs that were grabbing his interest. Brent was of the generation that bought Sugar Hill Gangs’s ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ when it first came out and attended the Fresh Fest with their early Def Jam lineups in the early 1980s. He rapped all night in his complex, the Gabrielle Houses, with local groups like the Food Stamp Boys and with people like Amery ‘‘Big Herk’’ Dennard, who still raps with the Rock Bottom Collective, in Wilson’s basement. Rap was not a career idea for Brent until some older economic players stepped into the picture. Here the influence of P-Funk and Motown on Detroit hip hop is critical to understanding Kaos & Mystro’s early successes as well as the context of many early rap recordings in the city. According to Brent, the group was discovered by John Maxey, a relative brother of ‘‘Ivory’’ Joe Hunter (a pianist for the Motown house band in the 1960s called the Funk Brothers), and a band manager for R&B groups in the 1960s and 1970s in his own right. Maxey was a special education teacher at the time at Brent’s high school. Maxey’s partners included Carl ‘‘Butch’’ Small. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Small had been a percussionist for the P-Funk affiliated Sweat Band and Parlet, as well as Robert Troutman’s Zapp. According to Brent, Small could hear that ghetto-funk, an updated version of the P-Funk sound sampled for the rap generation, was becoming popular in the late 1980s and saw an opportunity to capitalize. ‘‘They were opportunists,’’ Brent said. ‘‘They had the skills and the resources.’’ Though Small would later work for Death Row Records, his rap production career began with the Westsidebased World One Records, a studio that came out of Proving Ground Records, a project he had set up with other P-Funksters but had only released one single in 1987. For World One, Small, along with his other partner Gene David, had already put out Untouchable (1988) by E. Z. B. and DJ Los (Small’s son) when Maxey hooked Brent and Wilson up with the fledgling label.

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Production and label management from an older generation was not the only influence in Kaos & Mystro’s career. Another was Dr. Errol Henderson who at the time worked with SOSAD (Save Our Sons and Daughters) to help mothers in their grieving process when they had lost their children to violence in the city. Brent met Henderson when Brent’s mother took him to one of SOSAD’s meetings and Brent rapped a song about black history. Henderson, who is now a political science professor, had a rap group himself and was part of getting Africana Studies started first at the University of Michigan and then at Wayne State University. His afrocentric politics inspired Kaos & Mystro’s lyrics and look. ‘‘He engaged and educated many of us politically in the early 1990s.’’ The other force was Reverend Wendell Anthony of Fellowship Chapel Church. The Reverend radically changed Brent’s life. ‘‘We were all street babies until we heard Anthony preaching Jesus the way he did.’’ The head of the local branch of the NAACP since 1993 and the pastor for long-time Detroit rapper Proof’s funeral in 2006, Rev. Anthony mixed Civil Rights politics with hip hop in the process gaining respect in the youth community. It was Rev. Anthony that set up Kaos & Mystro with an opening slot at Tiger Stadium to perform as an opening act for South African freedom fighter Nelson Mandela in June of 1990 in front of 49,000 people. Brent remembers rocking the crowd and even giving shout-outs to Detroit’s own political prisoners, including former Detroit Black Panther Ahmad Rahman, now a political science professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn. These influences, one from funk, another steeped in afrocentrism, and another in the church, helped crystallize the Kaos & Mystro style. Brent calls it, ‘‘Christianity with a nationalist flavor.’’ Outcast Vol. 1, the group’s only full-length album, finds Kaos & Mystro mixing samples of peers like Chuck D. of Public Enemy (who had family in Detroit at the time and knew Kaos & Mystro) and heroes like Malcolm X with uptempo drum machine patterns. The cover features Brent in a Pistons basketball jacket and Wilson in a Kente-cloth outfit designed by the duo. ‘‘Mystro on the Flex,’’ one of the key songs from the album, foregrounded Wilson’s turntable skills and with the help of then high-quality videos became a local hit. But the focus of the music was on Brent’s conscious delivery and up-from-the-streets revolutionary ideology. Though Brent did end up at Maurice Malone’s early Rhythm Kitchen shows at Stanley’s Chinese Restaurant that would end up inspiring The Hip Hop Shop (see sidebar: The Hip Hop Shop), his political orientation was different from the more secular approach to flow offered by the Rhythm Kitchen. Brent would leave World One Records for Joel Bryant’s Push Play Records for one solo record, Doin Time On Earth, before going back to college. His last rap project was The Foundation, a group that featured Brent as one of four MCs produced by Anthony ‘‘AntLive’’ Singleton, a rapper who at one point flirted with major labels in the early 1990s. According to Brent, internal differences stopped the recordings from seeing the light of day. He is presently completing his MBA while working as a supervisor at Chrysler. He plans on getting his master’s in divinity as well and eventually

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entering the seminary. Wilson, now known as J. ‘‘Maji’’ Wilson, has formed Yunion, a ‘‘hip hop ministry,’’ with an extensive online article archive with advice, according to the Web site, for ‘‘the troubled youth of America.’’

The Blackman James ‘‘The Blackman’’ Harris (born May 20, 1965) still resides in Donald Goines and Henry Ford’s Highland Park. He and his wife own The Black Whole, an African culture shop on Woodward Avenue, where he throws house parties in the basement. In an interview he described his career in Detroit and in music— an autoworker’s son, Harris grew up middle class on Detroit’s Eastside, starting to DJ as a young kid in the 1970s as well as playing around with reel-to-reel tape machines, eight-track players, and belt-driven turntables. Harris, a disco fan in the 1970s, remembers hearing rap for the first time on tracks like King Tim III’s rapping over the Fatback Band on Spring Records in 1979 and ‘‘The Bumble Bee Rap’’ off of the disco label Salsoul Records in 1981. But, according to the Blackman, Detroit at that time was into the fast-paced, drum-machine driven electro sound from Los Angeles instead of the more disco-sounding early rap that he enjoyed from places like New York. The Blackman bounced around a couple of Eastside high schools before finishing at a vocational tech school in 1983 right around the time that New York rap act Run DMC was about to partially break through Detroit’s electro exterior with ‘‘Sucka MCs’’ and ‘‘It’s like That.’’ ‘‘Before that it [rap] was a novelty,’’ Harris argues. ‘‘It was a big ass joke.’’ But Harris had learned how to DJ from disco where seamless mixing was the thing and was never fascinated by The Wizard. ‘‘He went too fast—it really annoyed me.’’ It was rap that gave Harris his break as a DJ for the Fresh 4 Crew, a young teen rap group made of 12-year-old kids with connections to the promoter and a 19-year-old Harris. They played the Fresh Fest in 1984 at the Fox Theater. The Fresh Fest featured LL Cool J., Sparky D., Divine Sounds, Jeckyl and Hyde, Melle Mel, and MC Shan amongst others. The group got to tour the Midwest, playing major cities in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The increased cultural capital and connections from being one of the only Detroiters on stage was the most important by-product of the fest for The Blackman. He was already beginning to hang out with a group of 20 or so rappers and DJs that became the Beast Crew, a loosely tied group that would meet in his basement. The crew included artists that are still acive, such as Brian ‘‘Champtown’’ Harmon and, eventually, Robert ‘‘Kid Rock’’ Ritchie (born January 17, 1971). In 1987, the Crew was doing a party out in Mt. Clemens at a cabaret and Kid Rock, according to the Blackman, ‘‘was a kid trying to get on. He just had a dream in his pocket.’’ (Kid Rock talks nostalgically about this era in ‘‘I Wanna Go Back’’ on his The History of Rock album.) Kid Rock became a part of the crew and The Blackman became one of Kid Rock’s street aficionados.

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The Blackman became, in his words, the executive producer for Kid Rock’s first full album, Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast (Zomba 1990). ‘‘I made sure it was street.’’ He also maintained a level of irreverence that spawned tracks like ‘‘Yodellin’ in the Valley,’’ Kid Rock’s ode to satisfying women orally. ‘‘We were just taking apart our influences and adding the stupid stuff we did everyday—stupid sayings we said everyday. It wasn’t real thought out—make a beat, like a beat and talk over it.’’ Harris joined Kid Rock in NYC to try to make it big, hanging out in Times Square before it got cleaned up. (see ‘‘New York’s Not My Home’’ on Grit Sandwiches). They supported Too $hort and Ice Cube on a big arena tour, playing 20,000-seaters every night. Harris remembers that it was not easy crossing Kid Rock over on those tours. ‘‘We sold it to America. Sometimes things would start with booing . . . later though there would be cheering.’’ But conditions were changing quickly. Insurance companies stopped putting up money for big rap shows, killing arena tours for hip hop for almost a decade. At the same time Vanilla Ice made life hard for white rappers by lying about his background. Harris came off the tour for Grit Sandwiches and ‘‘stepped off.’’ ‘‘It was going somewhere that I didn’t need to be,’’ according to Harris, ‘‘I would have been a real fast has-been. What Proof did for Eminem I wouldn’t do for Kid Rock.’’ Champtown, instead, would become Kid Rock’s hype-man in the mid-1990s, wearing a green afro and calling himself ‘‘The Incredible Green-Headed Negro.’’ In 1998, Kid Rock, after a long period of reinvention, this time without the Beast Crew behind him, reemerged with ‘‘Bawitdaba’’ from Devil Without a Cause, an MTV hit that gave him a second shot at fame. At the same time, The Blackman kept his hand in the local scene, DJing for Soul Clique, a group that also featured P-Funk member Duminie DePorres, and the rock band Detroit City Council. In 2006, Harris released a solo album, Collector’s Edition, on Black Shu Records.

A.W.O.L. Afrocentric Wicked Old-School Lyricists (A.W.O.L.) members Kevin ‘‘The Last Soulman’’ Johnson, Marqui ‘‘Boogie Mack’’ Vaughn, and Bennie ‘‘DJ Homicide’’ Herron (who was shot dead in 1996), released two full-length records, What It Be Like (Bryant 1993) and Detroit 4 Life (Boostrap/Rock-a-fella/I.N.D.I. 1994), during their time together. A reformed A.W.O.L., minus Herron, released two more in 2003 (Back 2 Tha Future) and 2005 (Life Sentence), before breaking up again. They released their first single, the fast-paced pimp-slap-style ‘‘You Don’t Want None of This’’ in 1989 on Bryant Records. According to historian Khary Turner, it is impossible to disassociate A.W.O.L.’s sound from their visual style in their videos on ‘‘The Box’’ and on BET in the 1990s. They wore high fashion (Coogi sweaters and Dobb hats) with a Detroit nonchalance that was ahead of its time, even by New York standards. A fight over the name A.W.O.L. with a now unremembered label-mate of the now-famous Brooklyn rapper Jay Z., prompted Jay Z. to create Roc-A-Fella records (AWOL’s label without the ‘‘k’’). The struggle

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created unnecessary trouble for AWOL, who were trying to break out of Detroit. Herron’s involvement in a homicide and armed robbery further frustrated the successes that the group had built up during the 1990s. Despite this, the group’s early influence was eventually honored: the local Detroit Hip Hop Awards gave a lifetime achievement award to the group in 2002.

Detroit’s Most Wanted Formed in 1986, Detroit’s Most Wanted, led by 1960’s soul-singer Jackie Wilson’s grandson ‘‘Motsi Ski,’’ were the first to wear gangster suits in Detroit. According to Turner, during their career they name-checked local gangs, bragged about their own drug connections (financing for their pre-Bryant Records work, according to Turner, came through a local drug dealer), and competed with other local groups to make it big. The group—Reginald ‘‘Motsi Ski’’ Abrams, MC Lee, and DJ Duncan Hines—released a number of singles and albums in the 1990s starting with their Bryant Records single ‘‘I Save My Words 4 Wax’’ (1989) recorded at PFunk’s old stomping grounds, United Sound. They would eventually procure national distribution through Atlanta’s Ichiban Records with Tricks of the Trade Volume 2 (1992). Their 1990 self-titled LP featured hardcore lyrics by Abrams and a funk-sampled feel spearheaded by Hines. ‘‘City of Boom’’ became a local hit from the album, with a 12’’ remix and a video, while another cut from the album, ‘‘Fenkell Strip’’ was important for its explicit call out to their Westside connections (Fenkell is ‘‘Five Mile’’ on Detroit’s Westside). The group’s career lasted three full-length records before conflict and opportunity broke the group up. Hines, who had produced for Detroit Boxx & Step 2, as well as other Bryant artists like Smiley, formed a group with Lee and went on to work with MC Hammer. Though it was a chance at major label exposure, it killed off the group’s original feel as Abrams took the group and its sound down a g-funked path, creating a hollow version of Dr. Dre’s West Coast sound. Abrams recorded two solo albums and formed a short-lived quartet which included Proof called the 4 Fathers. Lee rejoined Abrams for a couple of songs for the Tricks of the Trade reissue in 2004 and the original threesome reunited in 2006 to record but with little commercial success.

Esham Another major Detroit rap artist has been Rashaam ‘‘Esham’’ Smith (born 1977). Jason Birchmeier’s biography and album reviews, following the rapper’s career until the early 2000s, is the most sustained criticism on Esham, and provides the context for his inclusion here. Despite the solidness of Birchmeier’s work, the relative paucity of commentary on Esham and his career is troublesome considering the length of that career, Esham’s local influence on artists like ICP., Kid Rock, and Eminem (not to mention those more closely related to his own camp, like

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Mastamind and T.N.T., that have made albums and performed with him as N.A.T.A.S. for years), and his deranged, yet highly creative, take on hip hop in the early 1990s. Looking back on Esham’s early years—his first albums were made as a high school student on Detroit’s Eastside—it is hard not to see the rapper’s stripped-down musical palate and sexually charged, jack-the-ripper approach to lyrics as a prediction of the darkness that would creep into hip hop’s heart during the 1990s. This darker turn in hip hop’s content and character came to an international head when Eminem—who on his first full-length album described himself as cross between the New York rapper Nas, Black Sabbath lead singer Ozzy Osbourne, and Esham—sold and offended millions with his terrifying, offhanded, cartoonish tales of murder and suicidal tendencies. Whether it is now called ‘‘hardcore rap,’’ ‘‘horrorcore,’’ ‘‘acid rap,’’ ‘‘murdercore,’’ or simply the end of Western civilization, for Detroiters it was, for better or worse, nothing new. A transplant from Long Island, New York, to Detroit’s Eastside, the teenage Esham was stimulated by the lyrical flow of fellow Long Island rappers Run DMC, the violent imagery (and samples) provided by Houston rappers the Geto Boys, and rock and roll on his first album, Boomin Words from Hell (1990). The album, as Birchmeier points out, is ‘‘primitive,’’ with few samples and bare bones instrumentation—bass, guitar, piano, and drum machine. Given the state of Detroit hip hop at the time though—and even national rap coming from the coasts—the album is a revelation, with Esham’s L.L. Cool J. meets Freddy Kruger persona seemingly fully formed from the beginning. Though similar lyrically, Judgement Day Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, his 1992 releases, are sonically different, with a heavier use of rock samples that in retrospect seems to predict rock-rappers like Kid Rock years before they finally broke. The albums are sometimes cited as the first rap double-CD and are evidence—three studio length records in two years—of Esham’s early energy and ambition. It was during this period that Esham also began his work with N.A.T.A.S. or Nation (or Niggaz) Ahead of Time and Space. The group has put out seven albums over the years amidst Esham’s solo work putting Esham’s total LP output—not counting the various EPs, singles, and guest appearances—to 23 and counting. This unbelievable amount of rap hustling though did not lead to major label success until after over a decade of work. In 2000, after the success of Eminem, Esham began making a series of records for the major label T.V.T., a partnership that expanded Esham’s audience somewhat but, as Birchmeier points out, did nothing to put him in the league of other Detroit successes. Commenting on one of Esham’s T.V.T. albums, Tongues (2001), which came out after Esham’s highprofile work with fellow bizarre, sex-crazed lyricist Kool Keith, Birchmeier stated: ‘‘Yet if everyone was looking at Tongues as the album that would enable Esham to cross over to mainstream success, they were foolish. Tongues is too far out of the ordinary to cross over—creative, yes, but also odd.’’ ‘‘Creative, yes, but also odd,’’ seems to sum up Esham’s continuing career. Only a few years ago he was releasing records with ICP’s Psychopathic Records but no

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longer. He is currently back releasing his own music on his own label. Though his delivery has seemed to mellow over the years, with recent songs like the new ‘‘World Hustle’’ encouraging dancing and the ‘‘stacking’’ of paper (making money), Esham still tends to trade between Halloween-style darkness and leering stripper tunes on his full-length releases. A semiregular Podcast from his Web site, acidrap.com, features new releases and commentaries from the man himself.

Jay Dee and Slum Village The recently deceased James ‘‘Jay Dee’’/‘‘J Dilla’’ Yancey (February 7, 1974– February 10, 2006) is already a legend. His shadow looms large over Detroit hip hop, his lyrics and production work still appearing ghostlike on tracks coming out of artists both new and old. Jay Dee learned to play multiple instruments as a child and was the son of a jazz musician and doo-wop singer. He also apprenticed with 1980s P-Funk instrumentalist, Joseph ‘‘Amp’’ Fiddler, who helped him master rap’s ‘‘Golden Era’’ sampling and production equipment. But it was Jay Dee’s own hard work weighted in basement tape experiments with early collaborators and his raw yet laid-back vocals inspired by his relationship with neighborhood peers that eventually birthed the talent that will be the measure for any future underground Detroit star. Raised in the predominantly black neighborhood of Conant Gardens on Detroit’s Eastside, Yancey attended Pershing High School with Titus ‘‘Baatin’’ Glover and R. L. ‘‘T3’’ Altman in the late 1980s. The three friends’ first group would be called Senepod, ‘‘dopeness’’ backwards, before changing their name to

J Dilla (AP Photo)

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Slum Village. They were all Rhythm Kitchen attendees. Taking advantage of Maurice Malone’s stylish social networking ideas, the crew flexed their skills, built a small but loyal fan base, and connected with eventual long-term compatriots, from Proof to House Shoes. But it would be Jay Dee’s early work with Ronnie ‘‘Phat Kat’’ Cash that would cement the artist his first deal as a member of a group. The two artists met, as so many did in those days, at Malone’s Rhythm Kitchen shows at Stanley’s. The group, named 1st Down, would only release one record on the Payday label (see Phat Kat). The artistic breakthrough came with Slum Village’s first album, Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 1 (1996), which was made with home-studio samplers and synthesizers. The album was then made as a cassette that was sold for money to buy better technology to make more tapes. In the short-term, this early tape would only get a deal for Jay Dee. Slum Village would meet Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest at a local mall in 1994 resulting in Q-Tip becoming Jay Dee’s manager. The connection allowed him to begin producing for national acts as well as join the Ummah production team with Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. But long-term, Slum’s early experiments signaled that Detroit had finally been able to produce an organic classic without the explicit backing of a major studio, drug dealers, Civil Rights activists, or religious leaders. Instead Slum Village was largely a product of its own initial investments in its own creativity brought forth by Detroit’s own fertile musical landscape. Slum Village’s intervention into Detroit hip hop comes from the group’s unadorned approach to hip hop production and their commitment to a backpacking aesthetic—an overt, historical focus on hip hop skills instead of searching for mainstream popularity—in the midst of a larger gangsta rap revolution. Success would be delayed due to the corporate hip hop reshufflings of the mid-1990s despite a label deal with A&M in 1998. The result was that their ‘‘first’’ album, Fantastic Volume 2, would come out on Goodvibe in 2000, while their original first album would not be released officially until 2005. It is one of the major artistic crimes in the history of Detroit music-making. Because of this debacle, Slum Village’s sound with Jay Dee at the controls would be heard first through other acts, singles, and albums throughout the 1990s produced by Dilla. Whether it was the ‘‘vivrant’’ drum snaps on Q-Tip’s Amplified as a member of the Ummah, the minimalist nu-soul of D’Angelo’s Voodoo with the Soulquarians (which included The Roots’ drummer-producer Questlove), or an early definitive release for Detroit Tda Pimp’s ‘‘Looking Hard,’’ Jay Dee was as deeply committed to the sonic messages encapsulated in Kraftwerk albums as he was by soul LPs and ‘‘donuts’’— also known as 45s. Jay Dee worked with the best of 1990s American hip hop, marking out a subtle and crisp, funky, and sexy approach to drum sounds and sampling that define that moment. 1996 was a key year with Jay Dee producing albums by A Tribe Called Quest (Beats Rhymes and Life), Busta Rhymes (The Coming), and Pharcyde (Labcabincalifornia), not to mention standout tracks by De La Soul (‘‘Stakes Is

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High’’), and, again, Busta Rhymes (‘‘Woo-Hah!’’). At the same time, Dilla also had time for local production for 5-Elementz featuring Proof (The Album Time Forgot), as well as early solo compilation tracks for the maturing Proof. Up until the final months of his life, Jay Dee would continue to produce for some of the nation’s best and brightest (including Janet Jackson, The Roots, Common, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Pete Rock, and Mos Def amongst many others) and Detroit’s most ambitious (5-Elementz, Proof, Innerzone Orchestra, Bizarre, Tda Pimp, Royce Da 5’9,’’ Big Tone, Frank N Dank, Amp Fiddler, Elzhi, Platinum Pied Pipers, Phat Kat, Dwele, and of course Slum Village). In the early 2000s, Dilla also began to focus on his own career as both a producer of beats and an MC. Welcome 2 Detroit (2001) for England’s BBE label and the Official Instrumental Series Vol. 1 (2002) for Waajeed’s Bling47 label, were turning points in this regard. The first album introduced Jay Dee as a visible personality and lyricist committed to Detroit’s unique mixing of sounds to a global public while the second release cemented his control and competency in the production of soulful, off-centered beats. Slum Village, without Jay Dee, put out the Dirty District compilation in 2002, featuring Black Milk, Phat Kat, and Elzhi among others. Elzhi would join Slum Village to replace Jay Dee for Trinity—Past, Present and Future (2002), an album that finally featured a hit, ‘‘Tainted,’’ which got video play and allowed for a world tour. Bipolar disorder though caught up with Baatin during this era and he left the group. According to an interview with writer Kahn Davison in 2007, Baatin has begun to release singles and plans on releasing full-length solo records after a bout with significant drug problems. Curtis ‘‘Black Milk’’ Cross helped produced Slum Village’s Slum Village in 2005. Black Milk’s stellar second full-length Popular Demand (Fat Beats 2007) featured a recovered Baatin reunited with T3 and Elzhi. Slum Village’s most current DJ is named Dez, an artist who releases house tracks as Andres for the Detroit-based Mahogani Records and instrumental hip hop beats for Hipnotech Records, also in Detroit. Elzhi has recently collaborated with another local producer Nick Speed. The two Detroiters call themselves Libido Sounds and have written beats for national artists like G-Unit. Elzhi is also working on his own solo career. Jay Dee’s final records reinforced the two connected poles of his work. The instrumental Donuts (Stones Throw 2006), released days before his death and recorded while he was in the hospital, emphacized Dilla’s commitment to soul sounds, while The Shining (BBE 2006) featured his own street-level lyrical talents. Ruff Draft, a record that Jay Dee had written and produced on cassette and vinyl in 2003 was rereleased by Stones Throw after his death. The album was critically acclaimed. Kelly Carter’s exceptional piece, ‘‘Jay Dee’s Last Days,’’ chronicles Yancey’s struggles with Lupus (an inflammatory disease that affected almost every aspect of the artist’s life) and the hospital bills that the producer collected while staying committed to the creative process.

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Proof According to the notice of his death in the Detroit Free Press, Deshaun ‘‘Proof’’ Holton (October 2, 1973–April 11, 2006) was the ‘‘ambassador’’ of Detroit hip hop (Schmitt and Carter). There were few in Detroit’s hip hop scene that he did not work with or befriend, from Jay Dee to Eminem. A long-time hip hop veteran, Proof’s death in 2006 from a bouncer’s gun in a nightclub on 8 Mile put a freeze on a solo career that had finally begun to take off in 2005 with his first full-length solo album. Proof made his local name in the scene as a regular at Maurice Malone’s Rhythm Kitchen and eventually as the master of ceremonies at The Shelter and The Hip Hop Shop (see sidebars: The Hip Hop Shop and Saint Andrew’s Hall). Though an off-again, on-again member of the local group 5ELA with Reginald ‘‘Mud’’ Moore and Bernard ‘‘Thyme’’ Russell (the group continued after Proof’s exit in 1999), Proof’s name will forever be tied to Eminem. Proof was a member of groups with Eminem beginning in 1995 and continued to record with the international star until the end of his life with D-12. On Eminem’s world tours and TV performances, Proof was Eminem’s not-so-straight man, hyping the crowd and providing a dynamic foil for Eminem’s circus-like psychiatric verses. When Maurice Malone started his own record label, Hostile Takeover Records, in 1999, he signed Proof. At that point he had been a recent freestyle champion as well as been recognized by The Source in its ‘‘unsigned hype’’ column. It would be Proof’s long-time compatriot Eminem’s success, though, that would bring national attention and commercial success for Proof. Proof, as part of D12 or Dirty Dozen, composed of rappers Rufus ‘‘Bizarre’’ Johnson (also a member of the Outsidaz with Eminem), Ondre ‘‘Swift’’ Moore, Denaun ‘‘Kon Artis’’ Porter, and Von ‘‘Kuniva’’ Carlisle, made two records under Eminem’s management, Devil’s Night (2001) and World (2004) on Interscope/Aftermath. An earlier member, Karnail ‘‘Bugz’’ Pitts was killed before D12’s major label moves. But Proof’s first fulllength solo efforts would not be on Eminem’s Shady record label but instead on Iron Fist, a label that Proof cofounded with longtime friend and manager of one of Proof’s earliest groups, 5ELA, black nationalist activist Khalid el-Hakim. The label released Proof’s mixtape I Miss the Hip-Hop Shop (2004) and the sprawling, funny and funky album Searching for Jerry Garcia (2005). Earlier in 2002 on Promatic and then again on 8 Mile Chronicles (2005), Proof joined up with Kevin ‘‘Dogmatic’’ Bailey, an MC and Sicknotes production member who had been originally known as K-Stone. Dogmatic had released material with Bryant Records, the same label as AWOL and DMW in the early 1990s. It was not the only collaboration that Proof was engaged with at the end of his life—he was working both on a release with horrorcore act Twiztid and a black nationalist concept album about land ownership on his Iron Fist label—but it signals the depth of his connections in Detroit’s scene and his importance in any understanding of how it emerged.

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SAINT ANDREW’S HALL It is difficult to talk about post-Motown Detroit music, from techno and hip hop to garage rock, without talking about Saint Andrew’s Hall. Though the Rhythm Kitchen shows and The Hip Hop Shop cemented an underground following—a movement of back-packing hip hop fans more concerned with local MC battles than national deals—it was Saint Andrews’ ‘‘Three Floors of Fun,’’ inspired by Maurice Malone in the mid-1990s, that crossed the scene over to a larger, whiter suburban audience that could expand their personal tastes by moving up and down the club’s stairs. Malone’s adventure with the venue started in the fall of 1993 when Amir Daiza’s Ritual Promotion company allowed Malone to program events in the basement space of Saint Andrew’s called The Shelter on Monday nights. The Shelter itself had already become an underground dance spot in the late 1980s and early 1990s, crossing alternative and industrial music with acid house, rap, and techno records with DJs like Scott ‘‘GoGo’’ Gordon and later, Richie ‘‘Plastikman’’ Hawtin. But it was Malone’s events, with rap performances at the peak of the party, that brought a solidly hip hop audience to the venue. The night was quickly a success. Within a year though Malone was told that security was afraid of his crowd and the night was discontinued—only to open a month later with other promoters. According to Malone, Daiza had taken the concept and cut out the middleman. Malone moved his parties nearby to a space on Broadway but soon came back to rent out all three floors of the venue for bigger parties—like Leaders of the New School—that were too big for the Shelter alone. These ‘‘Three Floors of Fun’’ events took on a life of their own as Daiza saw their profitability. Moved to Saturday nights, ‘‘Three Floors of Fun’’ helped Detroit hip hop find its broader audience, where suburban kids could mix across races and sounds, and bob their heads to DJs like Hip Hop Shop regular Mike ‘‘House Shoes’’ Buchanan. Now a DJ in Los Angeles, Shoes is an evangelist for Detroit rap with his shows and Podcasts, and his sermons began on 431 East Congress on the outskirts of Greektown in downtown Detroit. A Saint Andrew’s resident for 10 years starting in 1994, Buchanan was and is a savvy hip hop populist, demanding that his crowds sing along to tracks. At the same time, he would break corporate 12’’ records in the faces of label representatives. The night sputtered out though shortly after the Eminem revolution. Now controlled and booked largely by Live Nation (formerly Clear Channel), Saint Andrew’s is still a good place to see Detroit music, from rock to hip hop.

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In April 2006, club bouncer Mario Etheridge shot Proof to death at an afterhours club on 8 Mile. Etheridge contended that he shot Proof in self-defense after Proof allegedly shot and killed Keith Bender, Etheridge’s cousin. Later, Mud, Proof’s aforementioned band mate from 5ELA, accused Etheridge of killing both Proof and Bender. Etheridge was eventually convicted for carrying a concealed weapon but not charged with murder. A well written, emotionally charged, cover story for The Metro Times by Khary Turner, a friend of Proof’s, published shortly after the murders, asked a lot of hard questions about Proof and the scene that he knew so intimately. Attempting to reconcile the apparent cold-bloodedness of Proof’s final moments with Proof’s recent actions (he had quashed beefs with local rappers like Royce Da 5’9’’) and words (he claimed that he wanted to be a better parent to his five children), Turner finished his piece saying, ‘‘Yes, I will remember Proof as the wonderful and conflicted person he was. But I will also ask why he couldn’t exercise enough restraint to consider the moment. To consider tomorrow’’ (Turner ‘‘What Do We Have to Prove?’’).

Phat Kat Despite the gloomy stereotypes, Detroit is peppered with middle-class homes and neighborhoods. However, if there is a depleted area of Detroit it is the lower Eastside. Long abandoned by factories, the area became early territory for crack gangs like the Chambers Brothers in the mid-1980s when they would buy cheap houses and turn them into crack production facilities. This is the environment where Ronald ‘‘Phat Kat/Ronnie Cash’’ Watts is from. In a recent interview, he talked about his musical upbringing in Detroit. Watts went to Southeastern High School in the late 1980s at a time when the line between street economics fueled by the drug trade and trying to build a creative life as a DJ or MC was a difficult to walk. It wasn’t until he moved to the calmer area near Westside in 1991 that he was able to focus on a career in hip hop. An audience member at Fresh Fest at a time when gold chains in the crowd from the ascendant drug economy were bigger than the chains on the artists on stage, Phat Kat remembered a time in Detroit when rap ‘‘was just something you did.’’ Only later was hip hop embraced as a larger way of life. For Phat Kat, the turning point was the Rhythm Kitchen at Stanley’s with Maurice Malone selling jeans at a table while an open mic session developed. However, there were pre-Rhythm Kitchen hints that Detroit’s rap culture was evolving into something else with groups like AWOL and Detroit’s Most Wanted cultivating a street-educated panache and braggadocio. For Watts, these local inspirations interacted with national ones—rappers like Kurtis Blow, Big Daddy Kane, and Ice Cube—to inspire his lyrics. Sonically for Watts and his early beat-maker, Jay Dee, who he met at Stanley’s in 1992, the main influence was from Detroit’s 1980s radio mix, from Mojo’s playing Kraftwerk alongside Michael Jackson and Prince to the bass heavy music of Miami’s 2 Live

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Crew and Atlanta’s MC Shy D played by The Wizard. Techno, too, was a major influence in his music. ‘‘I grew up on techno. My music is bass heavy and hard driven. There are a few songs on my new album that you can dance to.’’ Jay Dee and Phat Kat’s early 1990s group, 1st Down, was ready to make an impression, which they did one day at Shantoniques Records on Detroit’s Eastside. Guru from the group Gang Starr was in the shop promoting the album Hard to Earn (1994) when Shantoniques’ owner threw on the 1st Down tape for him. Guru gave Phat Kat a number to Payday Records in New York City, home to acts like Jeru the Damaja and, soon, Jay Z. Before Payday finally collapsed, 1st Down was able to release ‘‘Day with the Homies’’/‘‘Front Street’’ in 1995, produced by Dilla under the moniker ‘‘Jon Doe.’’ Although Payday’s dissolution put the breaks on Phat Kat’s career, he still made appearances on records by his friends, such as Slum Village. The song ‘‘Dedication to the Suckers’’ (1999), produced by Jay Dee and put out by Mike ‘‘House Shoes’’ Buchanan with help from another local DJ, promoter, and label head, Brian Gillespie, became another decisive point in Phat Kat’s career. The three-song single is a tour de force and one of the finest moments in Jay Dee and Watts’ careers; it confirmed Watts’ credibility and created an underground buzz. In ‘‘Don’t Nobody Care About Us,’’ amidst cuts from Slum Village’s DJ Dez and a synthesizer vamp from Jay Dee, Watts intoned the frustration within Detroit’s long-simmering underground: ‘‘Nobody cares about us all they do is doubt us till we blow the spot then they all want to do is crowd us.’’ The single was good enough to get Watts another major label deal—largely unsuccessful—this time with Virgin/UK. It would take until 2004 for a Phat Kat LP, Undeniable, to come out on Slum Village’s own Barak label. Watts’ most recent album, 2007’s Carte Blanche, is on San Francisco’s Look Records. Produced by his long-time partner Jay Dee before his death, as well as younger producers Black Milk, Nick Speed, and Young RJ, the album is mean, bass heavy, and spirited, with Phat Kat perhaps finally smelling success. After almost 15 years of underground recording, it would be well deserved. The album features a rerelease of the aforementioned ‘‘Don’t Nobody Care About Us.’’

Eminem Marshall ‘‘Eminem/Slim Shady’’ Mathers III (born October 17, 1972) is the most important cultural icon to come out of Detroit since Madonna in the early 1980s. A number of biographies, like Bozza’s Whatever You Say I Am, and documentaries, like Eminem AKA, have created a deluge of information about Eminem from the mid-1990s to his recent career hiatus in 2005. On a national and global level, Eminem’s emergence radically shaped millennial debates about hip hop, (racial) authenticity, and its influence on youth culture. Eminem’s early life story—his troubled back-and-forth movements from Missouri to Detroit, his deadbeat father, the struggle between his mother and grandmother for influence in his life, and the suicide death of his uncle Ronnie—has

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Eminem (Photofest)

been fairly well documented. His early career, which at first seems fairly typical for Detroit, has not. Hungry, Eminem took lessons from all that he could learn from. According to a lengthy article by writer Brian Smith, Eminem was encouraged and brought along by the same extended Beast Crew that The Blackman had helped lead when Kid Rock had come into the picture. A few years later a young Eminem, attempting to make it in a predominantly black scene, needed coaching and connections. According to Smith, it came from people like Brian ‘‘Champtown’’ Harmon a member of that same crew. But a dispute over Eminem’s girlfriend—that Champtown denies—led to the end of their friendship (Smith ‘‘Champ’s Town’’). The upshot though, according to early Eminem manager Mark Kempf, was that it led to one of Eminem’s earliest collaborations with Proof, a two-song cassette by a group called Soul Intent. The tape, which featured ‘‘M&M’’ on vocals and early music collaborators DJ Butterfingers and his brother Manix, featured two songs. The first was a lighting-quick ‘‘Biterphobia’’ while the second was a slower, more Eminem-like ‘‘Fuckin’ Backstabber.’’ The latter focussed on Champtown’s supposed treachery and featured Proof rapping on the chorus. Early beef and primitive cassette singles though were only part of Eminem’s maturation. It was the The Hip Hop Shop and Eminem’s relationship with Proof, made legendary by its fictionalization in 8 Mile, that encouraged M&M to change his name to Eminem and release his first full-length record Infinite (1996). But the album failed to break and the young rapper, now a young father, sought out local

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manager and Underground Soundz magazine promoter Mark Kempf for help. Hustling by Mark Kempf, along with Eminem’s own maturing lyrical cleverness, finally led to national exposure in 1997 when Wendy Day, based on Kempf’s urging, invited Eminem to take part in the Rap Olympics in Los Angeles. Kempf had gotten Eminem’s demo tapes to Day and, eventually, to Interscope. The label, owned by Universal and run by Jimmy Iovine, had missed the chance at signing ICP before they inked contracts with Island Records. But Iovine was able to turn Dr. Dre on to Eminem. Dre made the call to Eminem. That’s when, according to Kempf, he stopped receiving calls from Eminem. ‘‘My Name Is,’’ produced by ex-N.W.A. rapper and producer Dr. Dre, and released on Interscope, made Eminem a star in a way that led to years of debates about Eminem and America’s zeitgeist. Is he too violently explicit in his lyrics? Does he hate homosexuals? Does he hate women? Is he a bad influence? Can a white guy really understand hip hop? The payoff of these debates has been substantial for a number of interested parties, from Eminem to his label Interscope, his mentor Dr. Dre, and MTV, the station which eventually championed him. ICP. had quickly dropped off—at least compared to the millions of records sold by Eminem—and Kid Rock has only been able to cross over his one-time DJ now country-rock rapper Matthew ‘‘Uncle Kracker’’ Shafer in the ensuing years. Meanwhile, Eminem has been able to build his own career while also bringing up both new national artists like 50 Cent and local peers D12, Proof, and Obie Trice. Eminem’s 8 Mile (2002) granted screen time to a handful of local MCs including Miz Korona, Strike (formerly of the local group Mountain Climbaz), and King Gordy. Other Detroit artists, like Royce Da 5’ 9’’ have also profited from their association with Eminem. Royce worked on the song ‘‘Bad Meets Evil’’ (1999), an early single featuring both artists, put out by the original founder of hip hop magazine The Source Jonathan Schechter, for his Game Recordings. Despite squabbles with Proof and Bizarre of D-12 (quashed before Proof’s death), Royce, born Ryan Montgomery, has released a number of LPs since Eminem’s ascendance. In 2003, Eminem became embroiled in a dispute about using racial slurs on a cassette tape from his early career, a situation brought forward by Raymond ‘‘Benzino’’ Scott, then of The Source. The complicated back-and-forth between The Source and Eminem has been succinctly summarized by S. Craig Watkins in his book Hip Hop Matters. Two years later, after five full-length albums, as well as two with D12, and a series of appearances with other artists like Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Royce and Trick Trick, Eminem’s career went on hiatus. Disturbingly, during his retreat, in 2006, his long-time friend and peer, Proof, was killed. The early chapters of Eminem’s career are now over. The scene that birthed him has largely broken up, moved on, or passed on. Whatever the future brings, it will be one largely built on a new world organic to Eminem’s recent life as, perhaps, the most important pop star of his generation.

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FUTURE OF DETROIT Not everything has come up roses since the rise of Eminem and the cult-like reverence for producer and rapper J Dilla. Stakes are high and local quarrels have turned deadly. The Eastside Chedda Boyz were the subject of a deadly altercation at a downtown club in fall 2004, and Proof was murdered in the aforementioned confusing and potentially avoidable gun fight in 2006. These deaths in a scene not particularly known for its violence were not helped by Jay Dee’s passing in 2006, a loss which brought down a local juggernaut and steady connection to the national hip hop underground. It is also still difficult, in an age of nationalized radio playlists, to get support for local rappers and producers, even for Dilla prote´ge´s like the aforementioned Black Milk and Phat Kat, or fellow Stones Throw label-mate Guilty Simpson. Things do not seem to have changed much since Spring 2001 when a group of local hip hop artists protested local hip hop radio station WJLB with slogans like ‘‘When I asked to get played . . . I didn’t expect to get played!’’ (‘‘Detroit Hip Hop’’) On the political front, in early 2008, only months after helping the NAACP bury the ‘‘N-Word’’ in a mock-funeral in downtown Detroit, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick found himself in a tangle of negative local and national attention over claims of using city funds to quash evidence of an affair with his chief of staff. He has also been accused by the local press of arranging sweetheart city contracts for friends. The resulting scandal has threatened the Mayor’s job and added another cloud to Detroit and Michigan’s already gloomy economic struggles. Despite these significant set backs to Detroit’s larger hip hop community, Detroit’s local scene is still poised to hum for years to come. On the production, distribution, and marketing end is Ferndale-raised Mark Kempf’s Long Range Distribution. The distributor keeps Detroit on the map with dozens of local releases, hundreds of catalogue records, and record sleeve designs. Along with Brian ‘‘Slim’’ Paul from Inkster and Twan Howard from Westland, Kempf also pushes a magazine, Ill Flow, to replace his first magazine, Underground Soundz, which he helped produce from 1990 to 1997. A local hip hop historian and, as related above, a former manager for Eminem’s early career, Kempf has had a critical role in Detroit’s local scene. On the artistic level there are also strong signs. Ann Arbor’s Tadd ‘‘Dabrye’’ Mullinix released Two/Three (2006) on Ghostly International. It was a definitive release for the laptop expert and the many rap contributors from Detroit who made it on the album. The album’s first single and most powerful song, ‘‘Game Over,’’ featured Phat Kat and Jay Dee slapping down lyrics over organ-grinder synthesizer sounds and beautifully anachronistic hand claps. Other local MCs, including Guilty Simpson, Invincible, and Kadence, who is featured on a punk-rock timed dark-n-noisy ‘‘Encoded Flow,’’ added to Jay Dee’s blessings, made the project a watershed for local hip hop.

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Another producer, who worked with Dabrye on Two/Three but whose career goes back into the 1990s, is Robert ‘‘Waajeed’’ O’Bryant. A boyhood friend and collaborator with Jay Dee and Slum Village, Waajeed moved to New York in 2003 and formed the Platinum Pied Pipers with Darnell ‘‘Saadiq’’ Bolden. The group released its first album, Triple P (Bling47 2005) with vocals from Tiombe Lockhart and a guest appearance by Jay Dee. Waajeed’s The War LP (2007) featured a number of artists from his label, including Invincible. According to the Bling47 site, a new PPP album entitled Abundance (Ubiquity) was set for release in the summer of 2008. A promotional Youtube video documenting the creation of ‘‘On a Cloud,’’ a song off the new album, features an engaging interview with Waajeed discussing his global travels—the video begins on a recent tour of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates—and the process of making soulful, Motown inspired music in the twenty-first century. If labels like Ghostly and Bling47 and producer-hosts like Dabrye and Waajeed continue to represent Detroit, then the area is likely to continue to garner critical acclaim to accompany the major label successes made possible by Eminem. But these trailblazing artists have yet to crack local radio like some have. Stretch Money’s smooth R&B/rap song ‘‘It Takes Money to Make Money’’ (2007) is good example of a particular sound making good locally. Representing, according to Stretch himself in the lyrics of the song, the ‘‘grimey’’ Eastside as opposed to the ‘‘shiny’’ Westside, Stretch Money sold its records in local record stores, like Shantoniques, pushed its songs and videos on its Myspace page, and peppered the streets with mix CD samplers. The strong grass-roots marketing push clearly helped but so did the rapper’s sound. Acknowledging Detroit’s long love affair with 1980s drum machines, Stretch’s song features tinny drum machines and fluttering bass blasts. This sound has also made Southern rappers like Young Jeezy successful in Detroit, a fact that has not been lost on other local artists, like Moody and K-Deezy, who also traffic in the danceable, pounding, and metallic sound. The most encouraging sign for Detroit hip hop is the possibility of new local audiences and artists. There is a sizeable South Asian community in Detroit as well as huge Hispanic and Arab populations, not to mention pockets of Vietnamese, Filipinos and many more. Perhaps an artist like Kidd Skilly, the half-Mexican/ half-Indian rapper from Southwest Detroit, who recently released the song ‘‘Bhanghra Chick’’ (2007), will remind outsiders that what Detroit is or is not is at best a moving target. Said Skilly to local writer Meghana Keshavan in the summer of 2007: ‘‘There’s a gap in the music scene right now—and I think that the time’s right to introduce a new type of hip hop.’’

REFERENCES Adler, William M. Land of Opportunity. New York: Plume, 1996. Birchmeier, Jason. ‘‘Esham.’’ All Music Guide to Hip-Hop. Backbeat Books: San Francisco, 2003. 160–63.

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———. ‘‘MC Breed.’’ All Music Guide to Hip-Hop. Backbeat Books: San Francisco, 2003. 312–14. ‘‘Black Milk.’’ Black Milk. July 11, 2008. http://myspace.com/blackmk. bling47group. ‘‘PPP Abundance Vol. 2: ‘ON A CLOUD’ w/ Karma Stewart.’’ July 3, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ-2-fcVnmo (accessed July 13, 2008). Bozza, Anthony. Whatever You Say I Am: The Life and Times of Eminem. New York: Crown Publishers, 2003. Brent, Teferi (DonRico) ‘‘Kaos.’’ Personal interview. February 14, 2008. Bunkley, Nick. ‘‘Mayor’s Amorous Texts Lead to Perjury Inquiry.’’ New York Times, January 26, 2008. Carter, Kelly L. ‘‘Jay Dee’s Last Days: The Untold Story of the Noted Detroit HipHop Producer’s Drive to Make Music in the Face of Life-Threatening Illness.’’ Detroit Free Press, February 23, 2006. Case, Wendy. ‘‘Joker’s Wild: Esham, the Father of Acid Rap, Still Sounds Hungry.’’ Metro Times, February 8, 2008. Castelnero, Gordon. TV Land Detroit. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Cooper, Barry Michael. ‘‘Motor City Break-down.’’ Village Voice, December 1, 1987. Cunningham, Jonathan. ‘‘Final Moments and Nagging Questions: A ‘Normal Night’ That Exploded in Violence.’’ Metro Times, April 19, 2006. Davison, Kahn. ‘‘Lean and Sober: Baatin Comes Clean about Slum Village, Mental Rehab and Getting off Crack.’’ Metro Times, February 7, 2007. ———. ‘‘Life beyond Proof: The Rise and Fall and Rise of 5ELA.’’ Metro Times, May 19, 2004. ———. ‘‘New Days Bang: Onetime Detroit Hip-Hop Star Nikki D Is Now an Established Poet and a Sexual Therapist. Who Would’ve Thought?’’ Metro Times, March 9, 2005. ———. ‘‘On Solid Ground: Proof’s Iron Fist Label Stays Inspired and Committed with New Release.’’ Metro Times, April 26, 2006. Detroit Hip Hop. ‘‘A Look Back: FM 98 Protest Pictures.’’ July 13, 2008. http:// detroithiphop.net/2007/04/02/a-look-back-fm-98-wjlb-protest-pictures/. Detroit vs. Chicago: Jit vs Juke. Hardcore Detroit, 2007. Donnie’s Story: The Life of Donald Goines. Dir. Kevin Williams. Maddmen, 2005. Dunham, Deanna. ‘‘Jit’ On . . . Detroit’s Legacy Dance Represents!’’? Hardcore Detroit, 2005. http://www.hardcoredetroit.biz/jit/jit.html (accessed July 13, 2008). Echlin, Hobey. Behind the Paint. Psychopathic, 2003. ‘‘Elzhi.’’ Elzhi. July 11, 2008. http://myspace.com/zhifi.

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Eminem AKA. Dir. Mike Corbera. Narrated by Anthony ‘‘Treach’’ Criss. Xenon Pictures, 2004. Frazier, Kelly ‘‘K-Fresh.’’ ‘‘Breakin’ Records.’’ Real Detroit Weekly, January 4, 2006. Frazier, Kelly ‘‘K-Fresh’’ and Tate McBroom. ‘‘Jay Dee.’’ Real Detroit Weekly, February 22, 2006. Gavrilovich, Peter, and Bill McGraw, eds. The Detroit Almanac: 300 Years of Life in the Motor City. Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 2000. Gholz, Carleton S. ‘‘From Detroit to Tokyo: How DJ Jeff Mills Helped Shape Not Just a Music Scene, but an International Culture.’’ Metro Times, May 23, 2007. Harris, James. ‘‘The Blackman.’’ Personal interview. December 27, 2007. Hess, Mickey. ‘‘Hip-Hop Realness and the White Performer.’’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 22, no. 5 (2005): 372–89. ‘‘Hip Hop Ministry.’’ The Yunion Project. July 9, 2008. http://www.theyunion .com. ‘‘Invincible.’’ Bling47. July 9, 2008. http://www.bling47.com. ———. July 9, 2008. http://myspace.com/invincilana. Kempf, Mark. Personal interview. June 1, 2008. Keshavan, Meghana. ‘‘Bollywood Nights: A Generation of South Asians a New Cultural Mix.’’ Metro Times, August 22, 2007. ‘‘Kori Blake.’’ July 8, 2008. http://myspace.com/koriblake. Lipsitz, George. Footsteps in the Dark: The Hidden Histories of Popular Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Mainor, Ade. Personal interview. June 3, 2008. Malone, Maurice. Personal interview. August 22, 2007. Matthews, Adam. ‘‘Death of Disco.’’ Village Voice. August 1, 2007. McCleod, Rodd. ‘‘The Wicket World of Natas.’’ Rollingstone.com, March 2, 2000. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5923056/the_wicket_world_of_natas/ print (accessed July 13, 2008). Merchants of Cool. Dir. Barack Goodman. Correspondent Douglas Rushkoff. PBS Home Video, 2001. ‘‘Miz Korona.’’ July 9, 2008. http://myspace.com/1mizkorona. Monts, Rodd. ‘‘8 Mile Opportunity.’’ Model D, September 4, 2007. http:// www.modeldmedia.com/features/eightmile10507.aspx. Moss, Corey. ‘‘Jay Dee: Hip-Hop’s Shy Giant.’’ MTV.com, 2007. ‘‘Ms. Smiley.’’ July 9, 2008. http://www.myspace.com/lynettemichaels. Mueller, Gavin. ‘‘Ghettotech: The Bluffer’s Guide.’’ Stylus Magazine, August 28, 2007. http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/ghettotech-thebluffers-guide.htm.

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Neal, Mark Anthony. ‘‘Rhythm and Bullshit?: The Slow Decline of R&B.’’ Pop Matters, June 13, 2005. http://popmatters.com/music/features/050603randb.shtml. Newtroit. Newtroit Records. December 3, 2007. http://newtroitrecords.com. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Schmitt, Ben, and Kelly L. Carter. ‘‘D12 Rapper Proof Killed in Shooting in Afterhours Nightclub.’’ Detroit Free Press, April 11, 2006. Serpick, Evan. ‘‘Murder on Eight Mile: R.I.P. Proof.’’ Rolling Stone, April 17, 2006. Sicko, Dan. Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electro Funk. New York: Billboard Books, 1999. Smith, Brian. ‘‘Champ’s Town: Rap Maestro and the Link to Esham, Kid and Em.’ ’’ Metro Times, December 15, 2004. ———. ‘‘Same as the Old Boss.’’ Metro Times, June 16, 2004. Smith, Zana. Personal interview. February 15, 2008. Stone, Jim. Personal interview. July 13, 2008. Turner, Khary Kimani. ‘‘D-Town Volcano: Local Label Erupts on the Strength of Rising Star Stretch Money, even with Its CEO in the Clink.’’ Metro Times, June 27, 2007. ———. ‘‘Murder Rap: Three Shootings and Two Deaths Send Shocks Through Detroit’s Rap World. What Did They Have to Do with the Music?’’ Metro Times, October 6, 2004. ———. ‘‘People’s Champion: Esteemed Motor City Rapper Big Herk Probes Shut-Off Notices, Roaches and the Needs of the Streets.’’ Metro Times, March 3, 2004. ———. Personal interview. December 28, 2007. ———. ‘‘Still Wanted? Detroit’s Most Wanted Founder on D-Town Rap, DMW and Jackie Wilson.’’ Metro Times, May 24, 2006. ———. ‘‘Sun Messenger: Miz Korona Shines Through the Hype and Distractions.’’ Metro Times, March 6, 2002. ———. ‘‘What Do We Have to Prove?: Trying to Make Sense of the Tragedy.’’ Metro Times, April 19, 2006. ———. ‘‘You Don’t Want None of This: Death and Disrespect Haven’t Stopped Detroit Hip-Hop Legends A.W.O.L. But Who’s Listening?’’ Metro Times, February 12, 2003. Umile, Dominic. ‘‘Phat, Black and Cyclical.’’ Metro Times, March 28, 2007. Valk, David. ‘‘The Streets Are Alive: Waajeed’s Beats Buff Detroit’s ‘Beautiful Ugly.’ ’’ Metro Times, August 20, 2003. Warren, Tamara. ‘‘The Death of Proof: Bare Witness.’’ XXL, October 2, 2006. Wasacz, Walter. ‘‘About Face: The Biggest Names in the Underground belong to Dabrye.’’ Urb, June 2006, 84–86.

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Watkins, S. Craig. Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005. Watson, Ursula. ‘‘J Dilla, K-Deezy Triple Winners at Detroit Hip Hop Awards.’’ The Detroit News, Tuesday, August 14, 2007. Watts, Ronald. ‘‘Phat Kat.’’ Personal interview. November 1, 2007.

FURTHER RESOURCES Detroit Electronic Quarterly (DEQ) (http://www.detroiteq.com/). dETROITfUNK (http://detroitfunk.com). DetroitRap.com (http://detroitrap.com). Hardcore Detroit (http://hardcoredetroit.biz/). Long Range Distribution (http://www.longrangedistribution.com/). Renaissance Soul Detroit (http://rensoul.com).

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Boss Born Gangstaz. Def Jam, 2003. Dabrye Two/Three. Ghostly International, 2006. Detroit’s Most Wanted Tricks of the Trades, Vol. 2: The Money Is Made. Bryant Records, 1992. DJ Assault Straight Up Detroit Sh*t: Vol. 1. Electrofunk, 1996. D-12 Devil’s Night. Interscope, 2001. Eminem The Slim Shady LP. Aftermath/Interscope, 1999. Esham Boomin Words from Hell. Reel Life Productions, 1990. I.C.P. Jugganauts: The Best of ICP. Universal, 2007. Invincible Shapeshifters. Bling47, 2008. Jay Dee Welcome to Detroit. BBE, 2001. Donuts. Stones Throw, 2006. Kaos & Mystro Outcast Volume 1. World One Records, 1990.

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Kid Rock Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast. Zombie, 1990. The History of Rock. Atlantic, 2000. Phat Kat ‘‘Dedication to the Suckers.’’ House Shoes Recordings, 1999. Carte Blanche. Look Records, 2007. Proof Searching for Jerry Garcia. Iron Fist, 2005. Slum Village Fan-tas-tic Vol. 1. Donut Boy Recordings, 1996. Waajeed The War LP. Bling47, 2007.

CHAPTER 17 The Long, Hot Grind: How Houston Engineered an Industry of Independence Jamie Lynch In the 20 years since Houston artists and labels first started putting out hip hop records, the scene has grown to take on traits of some of the most successful industries in America. Almost exclusively using local resources, Houstonians reinvested their profits into their businesses and constantly utilized technological innovations to streamline art and industry. Artistically, Houston can be credited with the invention of Screwed and Chopped mixes by DJ Screw and the flourishing of the horrorcore subgenre—invented by Houston’s Gangsta N-I-P, and rooted in the nightmarish Southern Gothic motifs of The Geto Boys. Business-wise, Houston’s rap artists and label owners created a business model that often emphasized local sales over national exposure. Since the mid-1980s, Houston’s start-up rap labels have eschewed traditional marketing strategies in favor of such innovations as creating a mixtape scene, personalizing mixes, and using cars as mobile stores and to advertise new releases. Because Houston is the fourth most populated city in the United States, rap artists and labels are able to distribute a popular and relevant product directly. By staying focused on their city in terms of content and audience, Houston rappers and labels became authors and publishers of a city life. They were able to transform nightmarish scenes, local slang, and hedonism into a culture of entrepreneurship and fiscal triumphs, all centered on the philosophy of strength in numbers in the city of Houston. J Prince, the ultimate Houston hip hop CEO, describes one of the first steps to a rap career as ‘‘building a team around you, even if they don’t see your vision’’ (The Paper Chasers Vol. I). A shrewd businessman and master marketer, Prince founded Houston’s most prominent record label, Rap-A-Lot, in 1986. He helped blueprint the landscape of the Houston rap scene, distributing and promoting Houston heavyweights such as the Geto Boys, Devin the Dude, Bun B, Z-Ro, Pimp C, Yukmouth, and Trae. As Founder and CEO of Rap-A-Lot Records, J. Prince not only helped put Houston on the national radar, but also provided a model for other

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Rap-A-Lot Records CEO J Prince (Getty Images)

entrepreneurs of how to explore and take advantage of a local market while also diversifying their ventures. In 1988, J. Prince released four albums via Rap-A-Lot: Raheem’s The Vigilante, Ghetto Boys’ Makin’ Trouble, Royal Flush’s Uh Oh! and Def IV’s Nice and Hard. DJ Vicious Lee, of Def IV, recalls that at one point Rap-A-Lot pitched Raheem to A&M Records, and their other three acts were to fall under an umbrella distribution deal. Unfortunately, 17-year-old Raheem got too drunk before a listening party, and managed to blow the entire deal (Robbie). This failed deal with A&M left Rap-A-Lot an underground label, with four records containing commercial sounds and content intended for commercial distribution, and no distribution deal. The albums were not commercially viable, and none saw national play. Neither Royal Flush or Def IV would release another album on Rap-A-Lot. Raheem would release only one more, and the Ghetto Boys would change lineups (adding the key group members Scarface and Willie D) and change their spelling to Geto Boys, before seeing new success. While J. Prince’s first round of recordings did not make the national splash he had hoped for, it did make Rap-A-Lot a recognizable brand around Houston. Rap-A-Lot returned strong in 1989, with market adaptability being a contributing factor to its success: the label shifted to an underground (i.e., local) focus featuring more hardcore content. DJ Vicious Lee notes, ‘‘The Geto Boys’ stuff wasn’t about radio, it was about riding around in cars and stuff you might hear at the club’’ (Robbie). And when Teddy Riley approached Rap-A-Lot about remixing

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three songs from Nice and Hard, Rap-A-Lot, notes Lee, said, ‘‘We don’t need New York to succeed.’’ Three months later, Heavy D and the Boyz released their first platinum album Big Tyme (produced by Riley) with two songs, ‘‘We Got Our Own Thang’’ and ‘‘Ez Duz It, Do It Ez’’ based on Def IV’s songs ‘‘Our Own Style,’’ and ‘‘Do It E-Z.’’ When Def Jam cofounder Rick Rubin approached Prince about reissuing the Geto Boys’ Grip It! on his own label, Def American, Prince accepted. Prince’s partnership with Def American proved to be financially successful, and the Houston rap industry saw great growth: from 1987 to 1991 Rap-A-Lot released 12 albums, but 1992 would match that total, and from then until 1996, the label released 40 albums, showing both reinvestment in, and market recognition of their brand. J. Prince established a model of entrepreneurialism that influenced the way Houston rappers did business. Houston’s control of a Southern market share, via independent record labels, allowed them an artistic freedom from accountability to major record labels. This business model allowed for an immense output from Houston artists during the 1990s. Many other hardcore acts from markets outside Houston during the same period could have had successful careers, but were instead put through the turmoil of creative control, distribution rights, lack of communication and worst of all, having their albums censored and even shelved. Because they operated for the most part outside the umbrella of major record labels, Houston artists did not have as many industry certified gold and platinum records, outside of the Geto Boys, during the 1990s—tapes and CDs bought from a trunk are not scanned nor do they come with receipts. Artists did not need to worry about national distribution because they had a large and stable market share to sustain themselves. The independent business model employed by so many rap artists in Houston created an isolation from the music industry that mirrored the sense of social isolation put forth by Houston rappers in their lyrics. In Houston, the constructed isolation of the urban experience supplements the paranoia that the system has been designed to hold down minorities. This plays out in two distinct ways: first, the MC will rap about the trials and tribulations of ‘‘the game,’’ resulting in interactions with poverty and the penal system; second, the large-scale success of the rapper is attributed to artistic perseverance and social networking, partnered with the implementation of localized business models. During the Geto Boys’ tenure on Rap-A-Lot, J. Prince exposed many of the revenue streams that a rap career could bring on. The label put down the foundation for all the 1980s babies. They created a listenership, and they did so by setting up systems of unification. As Headkrack, a Dallas rapper, noted in an interview with Quia Querisima, ‘‘People stick together [in Houston] a lot more and they really support their local scene out there. The scene there is totally different. It’s thriving, there’s a hunger, the radio supports it. And that’s why you have so many high-profile releases coming out of Houston.’’ Not only do fans support the artists, but the artists are filtering the money they make back into their own communities

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meaning that the majority of money changing hands, is being passed in and around Houston—the business remains staunchly local and self-supporting. The artists and businesspeople of Houston hip hop followed a precedent set by earlier figures in the music industry, such as Ray Charles and Sam Cooke. Yet the achievements of Cooke and Charles are very different than those of J. Prince and DJ Screw. While all these men made forward advances in the music industry, one era set the stage for the next. Sam Cooke’s SAR label, founded in 1959, was one of the first black-owned labels, with Cooke doing more production and recruiting than recording. That same year, Ray Charles switched record labels—from Atlantic to ABC-Paramount, but only after the latter added in the clause that Charles received ownership of the masters created in their recording studios. Houston hip hop moguls J. Prince and DJ Screw had large offers from major labels, and both turned them down, choosing to distribute their music independently. Whereas Cooke and Charles had to have constant communication and negotiations with the large, white-owned labels of the day, Prince and Screw were able to bypass dealing with them while knowing confidently that their material could bring in money without major-label funding.

HOUSTON RAPPERS, BLACK AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC TRADITION In her book, Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing, Roni Sarig characterized the Geto Boys (and their contemporaries) as rapping in the Southern Gothic tradition. She described their narrative, in playwright Tennessee Williams’ words, as ‘‘an intuition of, of an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience’’ (Williams xii, qtd in Sarig 51). The Geto Boys’ dark storytelling techniques saw its members share their paranoia, suicidal tendencies, and morbid nightmares on songs like 1991’s ‘‘Mind’s Playin’ Tricks on Me,’’ where Scarface described ‘‘visions of bodies being burned,’’ and Willie D and Bushwick Bill described similarly haunting hallucinations. Their violent visions carried over from songs to real life in 1991, when Bushwick Bill, suicidal and drunk on Everclear, drove to his girlfriend’s house to ask her to shoot and kill him. On the song ‘‘Ever So Clear,’’ Bushwick describes his altercation with his girlfriend, which ended with Bill sustaining a close-range, self-inflicted gunshot wound to his right eye. He survived to do a photo shoot, including the photo of him on a hospital gurney which would become the album cover for the Geto Boys’ 1991 album We Can’t Be Stopped. With such violent imagery, the Geto Boys created a tableau for how to make it coming from Houston: represent the culture and the street, look out for family, be a businessman, and rock to funky, car-ready beats. The fatalism expressed in the lyrics of the Geto Boys and many other Houston rap artists finds its roots in the traditions of African American autobiography. Roger Rosenblatt writes of black autobiography that:

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The ability of an author to count on violence, unfairness, poverty, a quashing of aspiration, denial of beauty, ridicule, often death itself is as close to a reliance on divine inevitabilities as a modern writer can come. Blackness itself therefore becomes a variation of fate, the condition that prescribes and predetermines a life. (171) Within Houston hip hop, this ‘‘variation of fate’’ leads many rappers to dwell on the inevitability of jail, death, and drug use, topics that generated the content that would not only define the Houston rap community, but make it rich as well. Essentially, a career in rap was an attempt to escape Rosenblatt’s prescription of blackness. Developing this career, however, meant never running away from the internal conditions of Houston and the welfare of its inhabitants. A large part of this connection between Houston rap and the Houston streets means never forgetting about impoverished and incarcerated communities, as they are both an audience and a symbol of quashed aspirations. One crucial tie that many Houston rappers maintained with their communities was a constant awareness of the threat of incarceration. Michael Eric Dyson, in his 2007 book Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop, describes a common perception of the inevitability of going to prison among many black men of the hip hop generation (14–15). Reflecting this perception in their music, the Houston artists UGK recorded a series of interludes on their 1995 release Ridin’ Dirty that document one prisoner’s take on prison life. The monologues change subjects from song to song, but each portrays prison as a thoroughly negative (and unnecessarily inhumane) place. Indeed, the first words spoken on the album’s intro, ‘‘live from the motherfuckin’ pen,’’ sets the backdrop that UGK will build upon as the album progresses. As the album continues, the narrator elaborates on prison conditions, with each interlude describing one aspect of prison life. One interlude, ‘‘Diamonds and Wood,’’ laments the lack of unity among prisoners from the same city or town, noting that ‘‘the motherfuckers from your own city or your little town or whatever, you know what I’m saying, they be the worst ones.’’ Another, ‘‘Touched,’’ ridicules homosexuality in prison. Yet another, ‘‘Hi-life,’’ warns the listener of rampant violence among prisoners, concluding that the prisoner is keenly aware of its existence and should be ‘‘thankful to the Lord, for this mean I can see it from a hundred miles away.’’ Each interlude demonstrates a complete lack of trust and camaraderie among prisoners, sharing such incarcerated aphorisms as, ‘‘always keep your shoes on,’’ and ‘‘Never whistle in the shower’’ (‘‘Outro’’). Many hip hop albums utilize interludes between songs in order to maintain a certain focus on the album, especially in albums where the songs can vary in lyrical content. Like other rappers, Houston hip hop artists have tended to use interludes in order to reinforce connections to their community as well as to issues that have affected them because of their membership to their community. Positioned at the beginning of songs, these interludes effectively introduce each song,

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and frame the subsequent song alongside a contrasting (yet temporally simultaneous) prison experience. Moreover, since such interludes develop a recurring theme of contrasting prison life with life on the outside, references to prison life in the lyrics themselves reiterate, and expand upon further, the significance of prison’s influence (both directly and indirectly) on the album and artist. ‘‘One Day,’’ the first song on Ridin’ Dirty, positions the prospect of prison alongside a whole host of plagues in UGK’s community. The chorus, ‘‘one day you’re here, baby, and then you’re gone,’’ is a fatalistic account of the culmination of the evils that will defeat most. Most significantly, prison (and the larger criminal justice system), which is referred to only fleetingly, is portrayed as only one of the problems instead of a solution. UGK’s Pimp C says ‘‘the only thing promised to a player is the penitentiary’’; Bun B similarly notes ‘‘my brother been in the pen for damn near ten/but now it look like when he come out, man, I’m goin’ in’’ (‘‘One Day’’). What results from ‘‘One Day’’ is the perception that going to prison is not a consequential action where one does wrong is appropriately punished, but instead an inevitability of living in their community. If the lyrical content of hip hop can be considered a sort of dialogue among rappers, then this composes a valuable addition to prevailing discourse among rappers regarding prison. Paul Butler notes in his Stanford Law Review article, ‘‘Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment’’: The virtually universal view in the hip-hop nation is that punishing people by locking them in cages for years is a miserable public policy. Incarceration is cruel because it is dehumanizing. It is counterproductive because . . . it has been used so promiscuously in minority communities that it has lost its value as deterrence. (1014) The prominence of prison references in Houston hip hop music does not rely upon interludes that merely describe prison life. Instead, songs like UGK’s ‘‘One Day’’ comprehensively examine the institutional and retributive aspects of prison, and place them within a particular local context of rampant poverty and crime. Similarly, in ‘‘G-Code,’’ Scarface argues that the harsh conditions of prison exist in order to encourage would-be prisoners to avoid prison by becoming informants. Therefore, Scarface seems to imply that snitching (the prisoner’s dilemma) is only made possible by substandard living conditions in prison, which therefore delegitimizes prison as an institution that exists only to perpetuate itself. In the second verse, Scarface accuses Lil’ Troy of snitching on Lil’ Pots, who is now in prison. Subsequently, Lil’ Troy was so offended that he sued Scarface for defamation of character, seemingly arguing that such an accusation irreparably damaged his rap career (Sarig 321). In addition to the lawsuit, Lil’ Troy also released a DVD, Paperwork, in 2006, which features a segment about Scarface’s alleged turn as a police informant, and offers documents to back up the claim.

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Lil’ Troy’s and Scarface’s rejections of snitching on moral principles is significant because it indirectly affirms the legitimacy of the prisoner and his role as a street soldier. It is also indicative of the importance of these two men in Houston. Both rappers have been in the hip hop game since they were partners in the late 1980s. Lil’ Troy ran Short Stop Records, and in 1988 allowed J Prince to recruit his artist Scarface (who recorded for Short Stop as Akshun) and sign him to RapA-Lot, because Troy, as Sarig notes ‘‘made the majority of his income from dope dealing, [and] was not concerned’’ with the potential loss of income from Scarface’s recordings (46). The smear campaigns between the two former partners did not start until 2002, when Scarface sued Lil’ Troy for featuring his vocals he recorded as Akshun, on ‘‘Another Head Put to Rest,’’ without permission. The court awarded Scarface more than $200,000 and the feud began. In Houston rap verse, snitching is an unacceptable and selfish act to avoid punishment, making the prisoner a metaphor for rising above selfish temptations. The animosity between Scarface and Lil’ Troy had barely anything to do with the ethical code, and instead utilized accusations of snitching as a rhetorical weapon, with each party trying to prove the other as a form of a false hero. The notion of the false hero easily translates to the hated act of making false claims, and how rival acts use such claims as a way to test one’s competitor. Regarding the recent brawl at the Ozone Awards, where Trae the Truth punched fellow Houston rapper Mike Jones, DJ Remix, proprietor of Houstonhiphop.com told me in an interview for this volume, ‘‘If you say you’re from Houston, if you say you’re about Houston, you’re going to get tested everyday. Everyday you’re getting tested. So for an artist to say, ‘I’m the mayor of Houston, I’m the king of Houston,’ everybody is going to be coming for them.’’ This idea of testing by the Houston community manifests in three ways. First, the Lil’ Troy/Scarface and Mike Jones/Trae conflicts, where one party steps out of bounds, making an unfounded claim or acting unethically and is forced to defend themselves. Second, this testing ties into the popularity of collaborations and rap crews in Houston (e.g. , Screwed Up Click, South Park Coalition, and labels Swishahouse and Rap-ALot), which can provide a stable of like minds and represent power in numbers. Third, such competition is excellent for self-promotion and bragging rights. This effect can be seen in the song ‘‘Falsifyin’ ’’ by Paul Wall and Chamillionaire, who then comprised the Color Changin’ Click. They take unnamed rappers to task for being ‘‘fake, phony and falsifying.’’ The lies they uncover are predictable, relevant to generic hip hop boasts: being a cold-blooded killer, moving excessive amounts of drugs and laying game on beautiful women. In one verse from ‘‘Falsifyin’,’’ Paul Wall states, ‘‘Rappin hard, but the streets know you lie about drama,’’ calling into question what is real, embellished, and fake in rappers’ lyrics. While not all rap lyrics are autobiographical, the violent deaths of several prominent Houston rap artists, such as Fat Pat and Big Hawk, attests to the fact that all lyrics are not fantasy, either. The popular concept of the rap game as an extension of the drug trade or other criminal enterprises is rooted in the ties between

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drug trafficking and independent hip hop labels that have existed for decades. For years the music industry has filled itself with shady characters. For independent labels there is no governing body demanding transparency. There was no ethical scale determining how label start-ups should be funded. The music business, as it has always been, was a good place to turn illegal money into profit. In the Houston hip hop scene, the space between corporate life and street life has always been miniscule, providing a direct translation to the content of its lyrics. The rap market in the city became a model of success for independent labels and entrepreneurial artists always demanded that its inhabitants and purveyors stick up for themselves. In no scenario were police going to defend its interests, nor were the purveyors going to let them. The industry, built from the ground up came with the territory. Its formation provided the precedent that while death and violence are extremely painful, it was, and still is a mark of the impoverished urban climate of Houston. Screwed Up Click member Fat Pat was shot to death in Houston in 1998. Fat Pat’s brother, Big HAWK, also a member of the SUC, was shot to death in 2006 outside of a friend’s house in Houston. Both murders remain unsolved. These incidents reflect the general transience of life, and the perils of celebrity and the spotlight the people associated with Houston’s music industry. In such an environment, it comes as no surprise that there is a widespread use of marijuana, alcohol, and promethazine (aka liquid codeine, syrup, sizzurp) for purposes of recreation and coping (see sidebar: Syrup). Promethazine has faced intense scrutiny in the deaths of multiple Houston rap artists: DJ Screw died of a heart attack in 2000, Pimp C from sleep apnea complications in 2007, and Big Moe of a heart attack in 2006. Each death brought speculation that syrup abuse was the primary contributing factor, yet rappers still are quick to defend the drug against such a stigma. Syrup receives the attention that it does because of its inescapable ties to Screw music. However, the drug is used all over the country, and has been for a long time, and it has always been available over the counter. Remix told me, ‘‘It is only an epidemic when the media says it is.’’

ARTIST PROFILES Raheeem As Rap-A-Lot’s first release, Raheem’s The Vigilante (1988) set the stage for the trailblazing rap industry in Houston. An original member of the Ghetto Boys, Raheem left before they recorded an album to pursue a solo career. At first listen, The Vigilante sounds like the records of Raheem’s New York contemporaries. Fueled by guitar riffs, heavily affected drums, and staccato lines spanning the archetypal spectrum of lyrical dominance, sexual prowess, the necessity of peace and drug education in African American communities, Raheem had all the right

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SYRUP Through the rise of Houston hip hop in the South, and in the country as a whole, more and more attention has been paid to the local habit of drinking codeine cough syrup recreationally. Alternately known as lean, oil, drank, sizzurp, purp, urp, purple stuff, etc., syrup has become a mainstay of Houston hip hop videos and song lyrics. DJ Screw introduced a new form of hip hop music in the early 1990s, known as Chopped and Screwed, which was heavily influenced by the use of syrup. DJ Screw slowed down popular hip hop tracks allowing listeners to pick up more of the lyrics and sounds of faster paced hip hop. The drowsy, deep drawl created by the chopped and screwed effect was linked directly to the slowed feeling induced by syrup use. While recopies vary, syrup is typically made with Codeine/Promethezine cough syrup, soda/seltzer water, and sometimes a dissolved Jolly Rancher. Syrup is most recognizably sipped out of styrofoam cups, which are paraded about in numerous music videos as signifiers of the drug. Three 6 Mafia, a rap group from Memphis, but with strong Houston ties, promote the use of syrup very explicitly in their song, ‘‘Purple Punch.’’ Syrup has been the focus of numerous outcries from concerned groups, but the stigmas attached to it involve the health risks more than societal ills. While the drug has been associated with latency and lack of productivity, Bun B distanced it from a symptom or cause of poverty, arguing that it is a ‘‘baller’s drug’’ rather than a poor people’s drug (interview with Roll Out TV). His comment speaks to syrup as a status symbol of financial success, much in line with the hustler spirit of Houston hip hop. As far as the health risks are concerned, beyond being an addictive substance, it has been linked to the deaths of numerous local hip hop artists, including the innovative DJ Screw (chopped and screwed music) and the legendary MC, Pimp C (though sleep apnea is still believed to be the major culprit in his death). In the face of criticism of syrup related to their deaths, many local artists have defended promotion of its use. In the music video to ‘‘Duffle Bag Boy,’’ by Tha Playaz Circle, Lil’ Wayne, an admitted addict himself, is seen holding a styrofoam cup with the words, ‘‘RIP PIMP C’’ written clearly on its visible side, ironically honoring the late rapper via the drug associated with his death.

rhymes. Unfortunately, he did not have the commercial appeal of intrigue. His references to drugs and violence were usually sentiments of disapproval like this one from the album’s last cut, ‘‘Say No,’’ ‘‘Cause it aint about the crack, boy, it’s about the rappin’.’’

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Lil’ Troy Troy Birklett, aka Lil’ Troy, played an active role in the Houston rap scene from its inception. His Short Stop record label signed a little known rapper named Akshun back in the mid-1980s. J. Prince would buy out his contract, and Akshun would change his name to Scarface. Troy’s label was only one of his ventures, and despite the fact he continued selling other products (legal and illegal), he was always active in the music industry scene. In 1998, Troy took lyrics from an old track from a group he worked with, Mass 187, and set it to his song ‘‘Wanna Be a Baller.’’ The lyrics were Fat Pat’s and the song produced immediate crossover appeal, making Fat Pat a posthumous success, Yungstar (another featured artist) a local celebrity, and Troy a rich man. Universal records picked up Lil Troy, to rerelease his album nationally. Off one single, Troy banked over a million dollars. His sensational business moves motivated him to write a ‘‘cookbook’’ documenting his moves for up-and-comers. Using measurements of strategy, Troy’s autobiographical guide book about the music business, The Heat in the Kitchen: Recipe for Success, shows rappers how to make money work for them. Despite Troy’s knowledge of the subject, Short Stop would never produce a hit bigger than ‘‘Wanna Be a Baller.’’

Geto Boys The group that would go on to be Houston’s pioneering act did not initially establish a Houston sound or style that was distinct from the New York hip hop seen in the mainstream. The first Geto Boys album (printed with their original spelling, Ghetto Boys), Making Trouble, perhaps struggled because it did not promote a sound or style intrinsic to Houston. The album’s cover features the four original members (Jukebox, DJ Ready Red, Prince Johnny C, and Bushwick Bill) in black jackets, fedoras and gold rope chains—a fashion style now much more associated with the Queens group Run DMC. On Making Trouble, the Ghetto Boys even traded lines like Run and DMC, and rapped in a style that seemed to imitate their New York contemporaries. Their topics were also different than the hardcore stories they would become known for—the early Ghetto Boys rapped about the subject of curfew, a crucial misstep that highlighted the group’s inability to convey hardcore authenticity. On the song ‘‘Assassin,’’ however, the group tells a tale of a down-and-out teenager getting kicked out of his house, only to rob and beat down a female teacher. Jukebox raps, ‘‘Once lived Sheila, yeah, I meant to kill her.’’ This offhand disrespect toward women and such graphic tales of violence would become Geto Boys staples, yet on ‘‘Assassin’’ they were not delivered with conviction. Roni Sarig makes note of this hardcore imprint, and correctly reminds the reader of the song’s addendum in which the Ghetto Boys crack up laughing, explaining that they were ‘‘just buggin’ ’’ (43).

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Geto Boys (Redferns/Getty Images)

The Geto Boys’ content utilized hardcore lyrics, but the palpable attempt to emulate New York’s style lost them credibility. J Prince recognized that this initial formula did not work and held the group accountable. By the time 1989’s effort, Grip It! On That Other Level was recorded, the group had been restructured. Solo rappers Willie D and Scarface joined the group, Bushwick Bill had a more pronounced vocal role, Ready Red and Johnny C took on production and songwriting roles, and Jukebox quit because of creative differences with Willie D. The Geto Boys’ sophomore effort possessed a new vitriolic flavor. Without the East Coast posturing, the subjects and messages of the lyrics filled in the emotional experience of an urban postindustrial chaos. Orating oppositional culture and dark surrealism, the Geto Boys were shunned by MTV and other media outlets, but the album (or more appropriately, cassette tape) spread like wild fire throughout the Houston area and as far as New York and San Francisco. The group cased through tabooed fictions of rape and homicidal hot streaks, exerting their thick machismos of gangsterism and Black Nationalism. One of the most telling signs of stylistic separation was the song ‘‘Read These Nikes.’’ Intentional or not, Willie D severs any connection to Run DMC and their 1986 hit, ‘‘My Adidas,’’ using the shoe as a symbol of antisocial violence. Whereas DMC’s shoe traveled the world, played basketball and came in varying color combinations, the Nike shoe contains no aesthetic beauty, and is only a tool for stomping out those weaker than the hardcore MC. With its release of the East Coast’s bearings, Houston started to carve out its soundscape, paralleling the seeds of G-Funk and its no holds barred approach to storytelling. Grip It!’s tempo, while not slower than Making Trouble’s, is more controlled, featuring a more organic Southern sound: rhythmic, melodic basslines, bluesy

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guitar licks, and DJ sample cuts of saucy ‘‘yeahs,’’ and guttural ‘‘uhs’’ from classic rock songs. But it also embraced the chaotic sounds of a severely afflicted world. Their versatility was the creation of what J. Prince called ‘‘musical dope’’ (on ‘‘Trigga Happy Nigga’’), more authentic to the Southern experience. The best example of this is ‘‘Life in the Fast Lane,’’ where the group raps over harmonica riffs in the first and second person concerning the careers of crack/cocaine dealers. Passing no judgment, the track is sharp and bleak. Scarface’s last verse recalls his past life selling drugs before he transitioned into a rap career, building somewhat of an archetype. The connection between music and drugs helps to strengthen the bad man persona of the rapper as a vigilante artist. There seems to be no cardinality to the metaphor, and though it did not originate in Houston, it stuck around, remaining a go-to analogy of 2008 (for example, Houston rapper Z-Ro’s twelfth album’s title is Crack). As Mickey Hess points out in Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music: ‘‘Rap lyrics’ particular and unique attention to the marketing and distribution of the music see this metaphor make sense: Music as commodity and as illegal substance, making rap music out as outlaw production and distribution’’ (57). Yet this outlaw production is also represented in the personas adopted by the rappers Scarface (as in the film character Tony Montana, a Cuban gangster) and Bushwick Bill (who often referred to himself as Chuckie, the homicidal doll from Child’s Play). Respectively, one is a classic antihero— an antisocial drug lord, maniacal and paranoid—the other, a humorous villain that cannot be killed. Record mogul Rick Rubin saw the recipe for success that the Geto Boys were garnering and signed the group to a distribution deal on his Def American label. He rereleased Grip It! as a minutely altered edition, now titled The Geto Boys. Because of the album’s controversial nature and national pulse for censorship (boosted by the Supreme Court obscenity hearing over the 1991 album As Nasty As They Wanna Be by Miami’s 2 Live Crew) it featured the following disclaimer: ‘‘Def American Recordings is opposed to censorship. Our manufacturer and distributor, however, do not condone or endorse the content of this recording, which they find violent, sexist, racist, and indecent.’’ The album did not get much radio play. What it did do though was show to a crop of Houston MCs that a successful career could be forged without radio exposure. At the same time, their local exposure could not have been greater. While the group was gaining new fans every day, Willie D and Scarface did not feel like rap was where it needed to be. The MCs refused to proverbially lie down or sell out on group records and solo efforts. Willie D took exception to it on his Controversy album (a rare collector’s item) from 1989: ‘‘They saw blacks gettin’ over and tried to hold us back.’’ The significance of this quote pertains to the me against the world mantra that serves as motivation for so many rappers.

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Willie D and Scarface: Solo Releases In the early 1990s, with the Geto Boys on hiatus and no commercial exposure, times were slow in Houston in terms of countrywide revenue. After the spotlight shifted away from Houston, Willie D saw something inherently wrong with the approach taken to artistry. He who had brought rap to prominence on Houston radio, dominating the R&B market, realized that rappers ‘‘have to figure out a way to get the music into the hands of the people who are not that tampered with. And those people are the people whose only investment in the game is the love of the music, so they don’t care that you on television or you on the radio’’ (Sonzala ‘‘Willie D’’). This belief was the approach taken by Houston rappers and labels in the mid-1990s, and would translate to the immense success that Houston rappers would receive in the early 2000s. Three major characteristics would stabilize the Houston scene during this period: cagey business moves, the ability to stay in touch with the community, and musical innovation. Scarface, born Brad Jordan in the South Ward, accumulated his fame as a member the Geto Boys, and released seven solo albums since 1991. What has kept his catalog intact as one of the more holistic collections ever recorded by a rapper is the breadth of persona he embodies as an MC. Starting off as a gangster, an incarnation of a drug dealer, and sociopath, he can now be seen as the godfather of Houston rap, embodying a veterans knowledge of every corner of the industry. He even called his latest album Emeritus, meaning ‘‘retired, but maintaining a professional title.’’ Essentially, he could leave the game, but like a professor, he loves his work too much. On his debut solo album, 1991’s Mr. Scarface Is Back, his rapid rhymes seemed to only guarantee destruction of anything in his way. But it was on 1994’s The Diary that Brad Jordan would portray his complete human experience —the joy, anger, and paranoia—cementing his legacy and Houston’s viscous sounds. Scarface opens The Diary with the statement that, ‘‘It’s gonna take more motherfuckers than in the compound to murder me.’’ Perhaps more important than sound and delivery of the album was Scarface’s ability step back and comment on the role of rap music in African American communities. His track ‘‘Hand of the Dead Body’’ featuring a contemporary Los Angeles gangsta rap heavyweight, Ice Cube, opens with a parody of how corporate America perceives his genre of music: ‘‘In world news today, officials agree that rapper Brad Jordan, alias Scarface, must be stopped.’’ Scarface and Ice Cube use the song as the classic rhetorical platform, disparaging all the misinformed critics of their music, including, but not limited to: The Clintons, the Reverend Calvin Butts, and Don Cornelius. They also discuss how African American celebrities face unfair criticism while famous white people, get a free pass. Neither rapper tries to clear his name, they just want to point out the hypocrisy of numerous American institutions. Such a motivated message from Scarface comes as no surprise since the resistance Rap-A-Lot put up against bigger labels was not only strong and formidable, but seething as well.

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Scarface frames the period of gangster rap and its criticisms as an institutional problem, rapping ‘‘America’s been always known for blaming us niggas for they fuck-ups’’ (‘‘Hand of the Dead Body’’). Much of rap’s sales success came from white teenage males buying up albums with dangerous messages. Yet Scarface never lost sight of rap’s purposes of communication. The dedication to community relevance and supporting the systems that made him successful, would build Scarface a unique underground fame throughout his career. This fame has made him a commercial enigma. Of his first seven albums, six were Billboard’s #1 or #2 Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums, but he never had a #1 hit. The highest-ranking single he ever released was 1997’s ‘‘Smile,’’ which went gold with the aid of a 2Pac verse, released shortly after Pac’s assassination. Scarface never achieved major commercial success, perhaps because of his hardcore lyrical content, his Houston sound, or his unwillingness to leave Houston for New York or Los Angeles. His immovable nature kept his reverence growing in the rap game. Unwavering yet versatile, he was loyal to his sound and city. An example of this is the 1998 album, My Homies, a double disc featuring Scarface and forty other acts—on only two of the thirty tracks does Scarface rap solo. Unlike most rappers who attain success, he never made appeals to larger, more diversified audiences. Instead, it was the opposite. Rappers like Too $hort, 2Pac, Gang Starr, and Ice Cube partnered with him, which kept their names relevant within Southern hip hop circles. Throughout the 1990s, Scarface maintained a hardcore repertoire with a rapper’s integrity. For this, he was rewarded. In 1999, then CEO of Def Jam records, Russell Simmons, anointed Scarface with the title of CEO for the label’s new imprint, Def Jam South. His first big move was signing a local Atlanta rapper named Ludacris. Like the formula he saw so often copied in Houston, Scarface signed Ludacris because of the high sales numbers garnered from his independently released album Incognegro. After taking away three tracks, and adding three new ones (two produced by industry hit makers Timbland and The Neptunes), the aptly titled new product Back for the First Time, ended up selling more than 2.7 million copies during it’s first year of release. Though Def Jam had to temporarily shut down the label in 2003, Scarface’s tenure was anything but a failure. If anything, it showed artists the business opportunities that they could achieve by staying true to their roots. Willie D also had a solo career, albeit not as successful as Scarface’s. Notwithstanding, he was able to make his own distinct mark when the Geto Boys were not recording. Though some his comments can be misconstrued as bitter or desiring acclaim, Willie Dennis is a hip hop purist and a businessman and to call him stagnant or lazy would be fallacious. By 1996, Willie D had released eight solo albums and six with the Geto Boys. From then until 2000, he would not release any albums. It was during this period that the man who helped bring rap to Houston radio would host his own extremely popular radio show, Reality Check. Aired from 8 to 10 PM on Monday nights from 1996 to 1999, Willie D would provoke conversation over the airwaves with topics primarily pertaining to the African American

The Long, Hot Grind | 443 community, such the episode discussing CIA/crack-cocaine conspiracies with congresswoman Maxine Waters. Though he did play music, the platform was for the community to speak, saying that the show was a ‘‘good way to not just address issues but also to bridge some social and economic gaps’’ (Kaufman). When asked about his legacy and achievements, Willie D commented somewhat bitterly, noting, ‘‘Even with all of the things I did, I have very little to show for it outside of the artists that I see reaping the benefits of what I did: The artists, the studios, the graphic designers, the DJs and the reporters’’ (Sonzala ‘‘Willie D’’). Willie D is correct about what the Geto Boys and Rap-A-Lot did for future Houston artists. With money changing hands in auxiliary markets, it comes as no surprise that many rappers crafted respectable careers without much distribution outside of Houston, and rappers not from Houston proper went to the city with the hopes of establishing credibility.

UGK Because of their secured consumer base, members of the Houston rap industry developed a much different standard for what was considered success. A pattern developed in Houston where success became measured by the weight of one’s name, not by the depth of their bank accounts. No group represents better than UGK. Chad ‘‘Pimp C’’ Butler and Bernard ‘‘Bun B’’ Freeman, originally from Port Arthur, Texas, a city largely dependent on the oil industry, debuted in 1992 on Big Tyme Records with their album The Southern Way. Their first single, ‘‘Tell Me Something Good,’’ a rap infused version of Chaka Kahn and Rufus’s 1974 hit was added to 97.9 The Box’s playlist, and UGK entered the Houston scene with considerable acclaim, selling approximately 40,000 copies (Sarig 55). After creating a large buzz, the group was signed to Jive Records, and like the Geto Boys before them, promptly released an album largely similar to their debut with six edited/remixed tracks, and five new songs. Two songs, the overtly scathing and vitriolic against women, ‘‘Pregnant Pussy,’’ and ‘‘Muthafucka Ain’t Mine’’ were left off the album, later to be released by Big Tyme on an EP titled Banned. While my assertion that there was little major label creative interference in Houston, a fivealbum deal for UGK quashed any real resistance from the group. A major part of UGK’s appeal comes from the thick and syrupy, gospel and blues influenced production of Pimp C. As the scene was flourishing in the early to mid-1990s, clubs started to play more of the music, as did the radio. Some of Houston’s producers, N.O. Joe, John Bido, Mike Dean, and DJ Screw began to mix beats transitioning away from the rapid drum beats and driving horn lines, to a slower, more laid back groove more associated with Los Angeles’ G-Funk. The shift connoted Houston’s artistic consciousness coming into its own. While New York contemporaries Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, and Nas had bars busting at the seam with enjambed internal rhymes, Houston rappers learned to slow it down. When they needed to show the technical skill of fluid, speedy linguistics, rappers

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would simply go double time over the beat. Among others, UGK’s Pimp C were on the cusp of this sonic movement. Too Hard to Swallow showed flashes of Pimp C’s G-Funk prodigious drawl and braggadocio, while Bun B displayed his linguistic dexterity. With more money from Jive, 1994’s Super Tight brought UGK’s sound to fruition. The cadence of the mixing is not only noticeably sharper, but musically on par with Dr. Dre’s work on The Chronic. Following the same patterns of content, and sampling formulas, they had reached the pinnacle of sweet G-Funk. Because The Chronic was such a landmark album, artists like Snoop Dogg, Warren G, Daz, and Kurupt, as well as non-Death Row rappers MC Eiht, DJ Quik, and WC were able to parlay Dre’s success into their own national exposure. Because UGK was not from the same regional scene, they weren’t given the attention their music deserved. Houston’s scene, one that paralleled L.A. in many ways due to its urban sprawl, car culture (see sidebar: Cars), segregation, and passion for G-Funk, found it difficult to generate attention on a national level. But fans in Houston recognize the classic staus of Super Tight and 1996’s Ridin’ Dirty. Though L.A. had become the magnet city for G-Funk, by no means was Houston emulating its success. Houston acts such as Devin the Dude, Klondike Kat, DJ Screw, and ESG were constantly innovating, drawing from the rich musical traditions, and making it their own, and thankfully, Houston was a large enough city to shoulder a hip hop economy. In 1999 UGK entered the commercial rap scene. Though they had done extremely well for themselves, critically and locally, their appearances on JayZ’s club hit ‘‘Big Pimpin’ ’’ and Three 6 Mafia’s ‘‘Sippin’ on Some Sizzurp,’’ accelerated them into the national limelight as viable to the commercial and underground circuits. States Bun B, ‘‘The way that ‘Big Pimpin’ ’ aligned all the mainstream fanbase and crossover stations and all that, ‘Sippin on Some Sizzurp’ was the antithesis to that. It basically lined us up with all the street outlets and all the underground movements . . . . Between two records, we were able to touch anybody [who] listened to rap music that year [1999]’’ (Kondo). This publicity manifested itself into increased guest appearances on their albums, and on others. On the same parallel was Devin the Dude. With increased national visibility, thanks in part to a large cult following, their collaborations spiked dramatically. From their humble beginnings, each act found a style, pushed it through thick and thin to the point where they were joining forces with some of the biggest names in hip hop, underground, mainstream, and commercial. With local support, strategic career moves, and unadulterated skills on the mic, people in the Houston music industry created wealth without a limelight. In the 2000s, the batches of veterans and young bloods aimed to build on the careers in a thriving hip hop market.

Devin the Dude Devin the Dude, ne´e Devin Copeland, was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, and moved to Houston in the fourth grade. In the late 1980s, Devin met a blind MC/

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CARS Houston car culture has been around since the outset of hip hop in the city. Given that Houston is so heavily populated and suffering from extreme urban sprawl, residents spend inordinate amounts of time in their cars, stuck in traffic. As a result, people devote considerable attention to their cars as pastimes and as a reflection of self and city. Those who can afford to buy foreign cars, known simply as foreigns, typically just put on rims and have classy, clean paint jobs. The cars that truly get done up in pimp-like fashion are the older model, big bodied American muscle and luxury cars. Popular makes and models include Chevrolet Impalas, Cadillacs, and Lincoln Continentals. Accessories such as rims and white wall tires are used to compliment the custom candy paint jobs that Houston has become famous for in the past decade, and often elaborate sound systems to boot. The manner and extent to which people decorate their car involves an expression of identity as an individual as well as a member of a city, causing a competitive culture for the prettiest car. UGK gained early notoriety with their track ‘‘Car Freaks’’ which claimed that girls did not want to have sex with them but, instead, with their cars, demonstrating the sex appeal of one’s personality attached to their car. Just as the West Coast has ‘‘ghost riding the whip,’’ Houston has its own recreational car habits, such as ‘‘swangin’ and bangin’ ’’ and ‘‘popping seals,’’ referring to driving in a swerve, or slalom, and the use of hydraulics, respectively. Beyond the asthetic and entertainment concerns of car owners, cars serve as a mobile business platform for many artists. Houston hip hop acts have proven for some time that they can succeed financially without radio play or a commercial record deal. This is possible in large part due to the gumption of early artists to drive around playing their own demo tapes and selling records out of their trunks, embodying the spirit of self-promotion. Houston hip hop did not spread out of the city limits by way of airwaves, but instead by burning rubber en route to other cities in the region.

Producer named Rob Quest while preparing for a Southern University talent show. Quest was then a part of the group called the Coughee Brothas, a group that is still active today. Over the next year, Devin would recruit long time friend Jugg Mugg and a young DJ Screw, forming the group Odd Squad. DJ Screw would eventually be replaced by DJ Styles, and J. Prince signed the group in 1992. Their 1994 debut Fadanuf Fa Erybody, featured Rap-A-Lot producers Mike Dean and N. O. Joe, as well as Cougee Brothas, forming a style that utilized the stories of pothead lovers mixing them with a tenacious jazz and soul cadence. Unlike many Houston acts before them, their content did not include the militant rhetoric that would earn their music the label ‘‘hardcore.’’ Quest calls attention to the group’s different style

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on the intro track, ‘‘Da Squad,’’ ‘‘No combat boots or baggy pants, dreadlocks, none of that shit.’’ Odd Squad was more blunt funk than OG, ditching the gangster tone for their primary concern: ‘‘pussy.’’ In their chase, Devin deals with an addiction to sex in ‘‘Your Pussy’s like Dope,’’ bragging that he ‘‘runs up in that pussy like a fullback,’’ only to lament, ‘‘I have hope.’’ He rattles of the perils of affairs in ‘‘Fa Sho,’’ in his trademark croon about a good thing lost, only to switch back to the purely pornographic, ‘‘Shit Pit.’’ What makes this album so unique, is the versatility, from laid back lovers’ grooves to boom bap, group chant songs like ‘‘Came Na Getdown,’’ and ‘‘I Can’t See It,’’ much more akin to the contemporary sounds of Leaders of the New School and Das EFX. Though sales were low for Fadanuf, Devin managed an invitation from Scarface to join his own supergroup, Facemob in 1996. Like many collaborations of the period (The Firm, Junior M.A.F.I.A.) Facemob suffered from internal problems and disbanded after one album. Devin would go on to focus on his first solo album, The Dude. Honoring inebriation, smoking marijuana, and fornicating, Devin’s spaced out, singing raps combined Willie D’s authoritative stances of dealing with women and a Baudelairean passion for intoxication. Rapping in the third person, drawing from Quincy Jones’s 1981 character, The Dude is ‘‘known for smokin’ skunk and gettin’ drunk without knowin’.’’ Devin created a cultish, signifying figure on The Dude. His humor has become a defining trait of his work, making light of zany situations and relationships, however transient, with a stoner’s panache. Though his dirty wit made him fan favorite, The Dude did not sell well, but like his work with Odd Squad, it generated interest from an industry veteran, this time Dr. Dre. In 1999, he sang the hook for Dr. Dre’s hit single ‘‘Fuck You.’’ Since then Devin has released four studio albums, all charting in Billboard’s top 100.

ESG Everyday Street Gangster, aka ESG, was born Cedric Hill in Louisiana, but started his rap career in Houston after graduating college. His bass heavy and hypnotic debut, Ocean of Funk, released by Perrion Entertainment in 1995, kept the same gangster codes as its early 1990s predecessors. While the sounds were reminiscent of what was going on at the time in California, there were identity issues inherent in a young ESG. On his song ‘‘The South,’’ among other Southern boasts, he raps, ‘‘We got Vogues, there’s no Daytons, this ain’t L.A.’’ Critic Matt Jost contends that the attempt to differentiate from West Coast brethren, while not in vain, is a tough claim to make: ‘‘Ocean of Funk packs enough vernacular and signifiers to fill up an L.A. album with no problem: khakis and Chuck T’s, whorides and drive-by’s, OG’s and BG’s, DJ Quik quotes and Aqua Boogie samples. Even when he tells us who he’s bumping, the only references outside of the Bay and L.A. are MC Breed and Scarface.’’ Despite this, ESG was one of the first rappers to help launch his career with a screwed version of a song. Still, there was unrest for the lack of national props it was getting.

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K Rino and the South Park Coalition With Houston staying as far away possible from major labels, label heads and artists worked on their own terms with executive decision making ability. However, it was not always exclusively about the money. Sometimes it was about sticking to principals formed while growing up. Two exemplarily cases of this can be found in DJ Screw’s rapping entourage, the Screwed Up Click, and K Rino’s South Park Coalition. K-Rino was part of the group Real Chill in the late 1980s. Widely considered one of the first groups to come out of the South, they released the song ‘‘Rockin’ It’’ in 1986. Similar to contemporary acts Def IV and Royal Flush, the fastpaced, New York City tinged delivery did not achieve any commercial success. However, there was not the culture of rap radio to support the music. Before their release, what fueled the output of music was the congregation of young people in Houston’s McGregor Park. It was at these weekly events where talent pooled together and the South Park Coalition formed. K-Rino and the others were initially unaware of the market available to them, seeing the incubating culture as little more than a hobby. Because of the newness of a rap scene in Houston, K-Rino, like so many grassroots organizers, started pairing with like-minded people to form his coalition. Because of the nature of an upstart industry K-Rino describes the early stages as ‘‘on-the-job training,’’ conceding ‘‘We was walking blind, there wasn’t a blueprint set out for us to follow . . . A lot of the groups that doing it now, we run into them, they say, ‘we learned from y’all’’ (K Rino). What they learned was this: power in numbers. By recruiting neighborhood acts and affiliating with journalists and record labels, each individual act, which in 2006 totaled 65 rappers, would set themselves up for solo success, each in their own way. Maybe the most influential of the early SPC acts was Gangsta N-I-P, considered to be the godfather of the ‘‘Horrorcore’’ rap genre. As an aficionado of horror movies, N-I-P was one of the first rappers to utilize cinema as a way to frame dark urban realities. On the first song of his first album, The South Park Psycho, he raps through the gruesome images of dismembered animal parts, acts of incest, and ‘‘Frozen blood on a stick,’’ which ‘‘equals strawberry popsicles.’’ Yet in the end he states, ‘‘It ain’t N-I-P’s fault that he got crazy thoughts. Blame it on the TV.’’ Though we are not supposed to take his claims literally, they push the listener through a seething portal to portray a violent dominance of the rap game. N-I-P, like the Geto Boys, was one of the artists pushing the limits of violent content in rap, and taking down the haters and pundits with ghastly hypothetical violence. He was hired by Rap-A-Lot to ghostwrite Bushwick Bill’s song ‘‘Chuckie,’’ riffing on Bill’s size and the horror movie Child’s Play. All of Gangsta N-I-P’s albums would feature the ‘‘horrorcore content,’’ and his ‘‘psycho’’ character. Without demonizing or exalting him, his techniques of framing the rap game tie directly to Mickey Hess’s assertion that: ‘‘All hip hop is not

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autobiographical, but the majority of its lyrics are linked to the performer’s life story. Tupac and Sean Carter created personae that are deeply rooted in their own biographies, and this strong basis in reality afforded them the credibility to write fantasies based on their own experiences’’ (69). While inspirational to future horrorcore rappers, N-I-P’s work can be seen as a fantasized product from a regional scene where rampant violence and competition within the industry existed, only to be streamed through a selected lens of the Horror genre. And had K-Rino never formed the SPC, it is difficult to say where the horrorcore genre would be. Even though SPC was never a record label, nor did it have its abilities of distribution, its capabilities as a launching pad for careers was outstanding. Their consortium provided immediate credibility to the act along with a stable of other rappers. In his interview with the BBC, K-Rino states that when Gangsta N-I-P signed with Rap-A-Lot, it aligned distribution with visibility in Houston and abroad. ‘‘That’s what set our click, the South Park Coalition. That’s what put us on the map, on a worldwide scale because we [were] featured on N-I-P’s records and Dope-E’s records, and that gave us the exposure we needed’’ (K Rino). The coalition that had no blueprint used its unity to gain new networks. K-Rino spoke in literal terms about the worldwide presence during the interview because the SPC has focused much of their efforts in the international market. During the 1990s, the internet provided an exponentially larger marketplace for hip hop music than any market previous. Expediting the availability of music and ability to communicate, the SPC affiliated with labels and distributors in Great Britain, Germany, Finland, and Australia. He and other SPC acts continue to do tours overseas. With contacts and distribution in satellite markets, the SPC became extremely popular abroad. By acting locally and connecting globally, the members of the SPC embraced their reach, reaping the benefits of longevity from markets who could care less about radio play and mainstream media coverage. SPC’s global accomplishments are not indicators that they ever shifted focus away from Houston. During the 1990s Houston’s intrinsic support system strengthened indelibly because they were not counting on major label deals. Without a contingent of label representatives crawling around Houston prospecting for talent, it became that much more important for rappers and independents to pair up with local agencies—those who knew the ins and outs of the local market. ‘‘Artists in Houston, down here are businessmen first . . . None of these guys ever thought they’d get a major recording deal,’’ states UGK’s Bun B, ‘‘A lot of these cats learned to make what they needed to make happen outside of the system’’ (‘‘Music World’’). To make their own success, independent labels and cliques needed to surround themselves with the right business plans, meaning that tasks generally undertaken by majors needed filling. Rappers needed shows. SPC paired up with Wicked Crickett, an ace promoter, to get shows at clubs across Houston. Labels needed studio time. As shown in the Music World’s documentary ‘‘Screwed in Houston,’’ rappers took the money they made from their recordings and invested it in their own home studios. Rappers

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Devin the Dude and Dope-E have built their own state-of-the-art studios. Finally, rappers needed the radio. As KB da Kidnappa of Street Military proudly states, ‘‘We put our first record out in ‘91. Back then, we was sellin’ records without getting no radio play. We made our mark on the streets. The radio didn’t make us’’ (‘‘Music World’’). With a little bit of street credibility, and a loud sound system, rappers found that they could make just as much money hawking their products (mixes, albums, or DVDs) out of the back of their car. By doing the grunt work, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, says Bun B, ‘‘If they [major labels] wanna try and come down here and use us to latch on to the southern music buying market, it’s gonna cost them because we are already tied into the market’’ (‘‘Music World’’). These techniques limit the amount of money major labels can make off the artist, which explains why independents are so successful: they either need to be bought out completely, or follow one simple request, as told by KB, ‘‘All I need is distribution!’’ The unity garnered throughout Houston during the 1990s was unprecedented and the amount of collaboration hard to fathom. Once one act became popular, they were going to give an array of artists a chance to achieve success. K-Rino’s high school classmate DJ Screw, who did the vast majority of Chopped and Screwed mixes for SPC’s songs and albums best represents this impulse to collaborate on songs and build large rap crews.

DJ Screw and the Screwed Up Click In the early 1990s, DJ Screw was making ends meet the way so many beat junkies do—making mixtapes and doing club sets. It was at this time that he first started including ‘‘screwed’’ mixes of popular songs. At first the innovation was little more than hobby and a way to hang out with friends, like brewing one’s own beer. When asked how the Screwed Up Click came into being in a 1999 interview with Murder Dog Magazine (Matt Sonzala’s preeminent hip hop publication that started in Houston during the 1990s), Screw recalls ‘‘After I started doin Screw tapes. I was already doing them, they was just listening to me. They’d hear me, I’d give shout outs to different people in the neighborhoods, ‘cause I had kicked it with everybody from every neighborhood. I’d make personal tapes. I might make a tape for a couple of my partners. Sometimes I’d just be making a tape, come to the house, kick it . . . .Might get on the mic, give shout-outs. We’d ride around, listen to that in the car’’ (Bray). What started as a communal activity would become a citywide phenomenon. The trancelike songs with the deep, warped and protracted lyrics gained popularity partly because they complimented the customized sound systems of car culture and partly because they enhanced the effects of liquid codeine. More than that, it put a local spin on popular music. Only The Geto Boys had prolonged national attention, and they were quick to vocalize their distaste and agitation. As Screw was starting his career as a DJ, Willie D rapped, ‘‘The East Coast ain’t playin’ our songs.’’ Scarface duplicated the sentiment stating ‘‘Black radio is being

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disowned, not by the other race, but its own.’’ With this lack of prospects for radio promotion in mind, Screw created his own sound system and supply chain. Without a record contract or radio play, Screw was able to fortify his own market, dictating the terms of his product’s availability. Instead of going through a radio station to spread his music, he created a cottage industry. The business plan worked like this: For ten dollars, customers could customize their tapes by requesting certain songs and styles of music. Because the East Coast was not going to play Houston’s music, their music was altered to fit local tastes. Screw increased the tapes’ popularity by allowing patrons to request shout-outs, and eventually opened up the mic to customers, allowing them to freestyle. Instead of going to work in radio ‘‘politics,’’ Screw made the radio a personal medium. Soon, shout-outs and freestyles formalized into written verses and original tracks. Screw played executive producer, hand selecting the rappers and verses that made it on to the tapes. The original click consisted of Fat Pat and his brother Big HAWK, Screw’s brother AL-D, Lil Keke, Big Steve, Big Moe, and Big Pokey. The tapes were serving a dual purpose—they were a pulse to what was popular on the South Side (occasionally sending out disses to the North Side) in terms of locally and nationally (see sidebar: North Side/South Side). Almost every night, he would sell recently made tapes out of his house. His art business created a subculture and financial stability. The tapes got so popular that he moved out of his South Park home to a larger suburban structure to house his operations. With steadily increasing sales, he would buy another house just for a studio and venture to start his own record shop, Screwed Up Records and Tapes. With all the money he was making, the tapes were just as successful in launching the careers of his homeboys and clientele. His first prote´ge´ to launch a career of one of his mixes was ESG, dropping the track ‘‘Swangin and Bangin’,’’ in 1995. The chopped and screwed mix became just as popular as the original, propelling ESG to his aforementioned album deal. ESG was briefly incarcerated and would not record another album until 1998. His imprisonment did not slow down the SUC; it only opened up more verses on every mixtape that Screw did. Throughout the decade, the sound diversified. On any given song, a rapper could utilize Screw’s sound in a few different ways. There was the straight chopped and screwed mix, in which a song would be slowed down to 33 rpm, their voice deepened, and verses intersected by scratches. There was the Screwed chorus, in which a regular beat would feature a halftime (aka screwed time) sample as a refrain. Conversely, there were screwed beats that that were noticeably slower than most tracks in which the rappers would rhyme over in double-time. In 1995, Fat Pat, Lil Keke, and the rest of the Screwed Up Click became citywide stars. Screw signed locally to UGK’s old label, Big Tyme records, which gave Screw national distribution through Priority Records. Yet he never stopped churning out mixtapes. With the tapes distributed through a major, there was the caveat that he could not ‘‘screw’’ records of artists not on Priority or in his circle. Screw could not rely on Priority and Big Tyme because it meant losing his

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NORTH SIDE/SOUTH SIDE Houston is broken up into six wards with a local distinction made between the predominately African American and Hispanic sections of the northern and southern parts of the city. A few of the neighborhoods referred to in songs include Acres Home and Homestead on the north side, and Sunnyside and South Park in the south side. The North Side and South Side of Houston were known in the hip hop world as having a deep divide that occasionally erupted in violence. The North Siders identify as such by wearing blue and black and styling their hair in braids. On the flip side, South Siders wear red and black with fades instead of braids. The South Side was the prominent area in Houston hip hop for over a decade, at least as far as the mainstream is concerned, but the North Side has been thrust into the national consciousness in the better part of the last decade. DJ Michael ‘‘5000’’ Watts of the North Side took on screw music, which had been the brain child of South Side luminary, DJ Screw. His resultant record label, Swishahouse, has been responsible for most of the Houston rap on the national stage in the past half decade, such as Mike Jones, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, and Chamillionaire. Recently, much of the antagonism has dissipated, which Roni Sarig has attributed to the increased prominence Houston has received in the national spotlight (326). The rivalry has faded in the music as well, with Slim Thug and E.S.G.’s song, ‘‘Braids & Faids,’’ an ode to city solidarity, which creatively united both Swishahouse and the Screwed Up Clique after numerous lyrical taunts had been thrown back and forth over the years.

formula, his creative control, an extremely profitable cottage industry, and undoubtedly, respect. And even as his created subgenre generated national attention, there was no resistance to mixes. And there are reasons he did not receive lawsuits from artists whose songs he altered. He was a neighborhood DJ who brought along his friends and kin and did music because he loved it, keeping him safe from injunctions. Going against Screw would have meant opposing a large cache of artists and free exposure in a large market, the same one that Bun B said people needed to pay to get into. By 1999, DJ Screw was one of the hottest commodities in the South. His mixes launched immense successes for Lil Keke, Big Moe, Fat Pat, DJ DMD, Z-Ro, the Botany Boyz, Lil Flip, and Trae. He achieved financial stability for himself by selling thousands of albums every week. But in hindsight, Screw’s celebrity status was nowhere near as important as his leadership skills. Though he had large plans for himself, which included releasing a solo album where he would rap, his use of syrup would catch up with his young heart. On November 16, 2000, Screw died after suffering respiratory failure. After his death, South Side rappers would pay

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tribute to Screw whenever possible as they continued to enjoy the market he had created. As Chopped and Screwed became a true subgenre, sales would increase, but the level of unity and goodwill toward artistry would never peak as high as it did during Screw’s time in the game.

Michael “5000 “ Watts and Swishahouse Records After Screw died, the subgenre of Chopped & Screwed was gaining immense popularity and Michael ‘‘5000’’ Watts became the point man for the mixes. There was such reverence for Screw on the south side of town it seemed like nobody was willing to inherit the role he played in the music industry. Because Watts had no qualms about it, his Swishahouse label benefited immediately. His stake in the mixing game, compiled with the fact that he worked at The Box, made Watts the man to see for aspiring rappers on the north side of town. To the naked eye, two camps set up in Houston: The Screwed Up Click/South Park Coalition aligned South Side and the Swishahouse North Side. With that said, the fuel in the fire was Watts, perhaps undeservedly. He hardly provided any verbal material to be construed as an agitator; it was a minority of South Side artists that resented what they saw to be artistic infringement on his part. Artists like Z-Ro and Al-D filled mixtapes with verbal darts aimed at Watts for parlaying Screw’s innovations with market savvy, releasing a Web site, and the first major label with slowed down mixes (Screwheads will say that only DJ Screw could ‘‘screw’’ an album.) The crosstown clashes were quelled for two separate and distinct reasons. For starters, there were already intracity heavyweights teaming up to do albums before 2000. After rising through the Swishahouse ranks, Stayve ‘‘Slim Thug’’ Thomas paired up with the recently released (from prison) ESG on ‘‘Braids N’ Fades,’’ from his underground classic Shinin’ N’ Grindin’—braids signifying the North Side hairstyle and fades, the South. The track spilled with diplomatic messages, but more importantly with the mission statement ‘‘It don’t matter where you come from, long as you’re trying to get paid.’’ This sentiment was one that echo throughout Houston for the next 10 years. Sarig points out Devin The Dude’s belief that, ‘‘Once you grow out of it and look at the big picture, you’re just like, ‘Let’s try and move units in China, ain’t no sense in tripping about somebody across town’ ’’ (326). Unfortunately, as the Houston scene grew bigger, and more faces entered the fray, there was increased turmoil. Slim Thug and ESG had an acrid split, and the two traded mixtape songs dissing each other (practically a rule of engagement when feuding). Without skipping a beat, Slim Thug would go on to collaborate with another SUC member, Lil Keke (of ‘‘Southside’’ fame) without any remnants of territorial dramatics. While it was in the first decade of the 2000s that the Houston game would shift, 1997 was the year in which a different base was being built to house the future Houston scene. Michael ‘‘5000’’ Watts, a Houston native from the North Side, started his Swishahouse record label while working for 97.9 The Box, doing his

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mixtapes at regular and slowed down speeds. He grew the label just like the SUC. When asked what the biggest challenge was in starting Swishahouse, he answered, ‘‘Actually there really wasn’t a tough challenge because I started off not as a company—it grew into what it was. Most people wake up one day and want to start a record company. I didn’t start like that. I always been a DJ and did mixtapes and the mixtapes grew into a record company’’ (Souleo). Yet there was little admiration on the south side of town. The combination of Screw’s death and Watts’ lack of a zealous reverence for Screw paired with the heightened success of the rap scene on the north side of town led to palpable plexes (Houstonian slang for ‘‘beef’’) traded across interviews, mixtapes, and records. The conflicts were hyped up because of the size the Houston industry and the amount of money that was pouring in and out during the latter half of the 1990s. Before delving into the conflicts, it will be useful to speak on the money at stake. When Houston labels were snatching up talent during the mid-1990s, Tony Draper was putting together distribution deals and searching for acts outside of Texas. He started Suave House and traveled outside of Houston to find MCs with commercial potential. With infrastructure in Houston, Draper figured there was a better chance of finding a viable act somewhere not saturated with up-andcoming talent. His biggest act, Memphis’ 8Ball & MJG, went Gold in 1995 and brought Memphis to the national scene. But Draper’s real money came out of his brokering abilities. ‘‘I’ve been independent since day one,’’ Draper states ‘‘I assembled the one-stop distributors like MS, Big State, CRD, City HALL, Maverne, and Southwest Wholesales. Then I made Select-O-Hits the point guard to collect from those companies. All told, I sold 700,000 records before I ever got with a major label’’ (‘‘Koch Records’’). When Select-O-Hits disbanded in 2003, rappers like Slim Thug signed to major deals because local distribution deals no longer made the grade. Rappers counted on sales, not signing bonuses, for their income.

Color Changin’ Click Houston soon saw another falling out, this time between long-time partners and friends Paul Wall and Chamillionaire. Paul Slayton and Hakeem Seriki grew up as best friends in the northwest section of Houston, acquiring a taste for rap, particulary DJ Screw, at an early age. While in high school, the two took jobs in promotions, meeting Watts in 1997. He quickly gave them jobs, and in a little more than a year, Paul Wall and Chamillionaire got a chance to freestyle on Watts’ radio program. They generated such positive listener reviews that they were constant contributors on Swishahouse mixtapes. Because freestyling hardly paid, Cham broke to Chicago while Paul went off to Houston University. After seeing the success of Slim Thug with his Boss Hogg Outlawz label, the two quickly abandoned their plans and signed to Watts’ co-worker from The Box, Mad Hatta’s upstart Paid

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Paul Wall and Chamillionaire attend the 3rd Annual Ozone Awards in Houston on August 11, 2008. (Getty Images)

in Full record label. Along with rapper 50/50 Twin, they formed the group Color Changin’ Click. After numerous mixtapes, their full-length album, Get Ya Mind Correct won The Source’s 2002 award for best independent album after selling 150,000 units. Their skills were plentiful, pairing Paul Wall’s skills as a DJ and producer and laid-back drawl complimented by Chamillionaire’s silky tone and rapid-fire raps. Their background of persistent hard work in the hip hop industry gave the two an extended occasion to enjoy their success with narratives of the spectacular and trying life of a local celebrity. In terms of the rap game, the two of them pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, raps Paul Wall, ‘‘I stopped looking for help when I looked to myself.’’ With word play and the remarkable repartee of old friends, their boasts of legendary grinding skills (i.e., work ethic), adultery and money, coordinated the Color Changin’ Click’s career for critical and commercial success. Much to the chagrin of their fans, they ended up breaking up. Their state of irreconcilable differences can be attributed to label politics straining a friendship. In terms of all the breakups and beefs, theirs was reasonably amicable to maintain their friendship. It paid off as each went on to musical and entrepreneurial success. Chamillionaire (aka Koopa) spoke to the primary reason for the split as business: ‘‘When I was on Swishahouse, we was paying dues there. We was rapping and it was cool. It was like an internship. You can only do an internship for so long. With Paul, we grew up together. There was a lot of divide and conquer; people telling him things in his ear and people telling me things in my ear and then you got

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two guys who were friends all their lives splitting up. But that’s the nature of the game’’ (Burnett). Understandably, because of the traditions of entrepreneurship in Houston, it was hard for the two to share independent goals and business plans. After the split Paul Wall stayed connected to Swishahouse, releasing The People’s Champ in 2005, going platinum while also having the distinction of reaching #1 on the Billboard charts. His first single, ‘‘Sittin’ Sideways,’’ featuring longtime SUC member Big Pokey, finds Wall laying as ‘‘A legend in the hood for gold grills and poppin’ seals.’’ Despite varying his content to represent Houston, there was a noticeable belief that Paul Wall was only rapping as advertisement for his business, TV Jewelry. This belief, largely influenced by his verse on Nelly’s chart topping single ‘‘Grillz,’’ is unfounded. Though Paul Wall never hesitated to plug his business or passion for jewelry, he continuously employed different kinds of musical opportunities. In 2005, Wall produced a chopped and screwed version of ‘‘Haunted Cities’’ for the punk supergroup The Transplants. Since then, Wall and two ex-Transplants members Travis Barker and Rob Aston teamed up to form their own hybrid group, Expensive Taste. Meanwhile, Chamillionaire started his own label, Chamillitary Entertainment, following in the steps of previous Houston entertainers. Signing partner in rhyme 50/50 Twin, his brother Rasaq, and former Swishahouse label mate OG Ron C, his stable started quickly. In 2004, Cham dropped a bevy of material (three albums worth) in the first of his extremely popular Mixtape Messiah series, and released eight mixtapes in 2005. In November of 2005, with the traffic-related single ‘‘Ridin’ Dirty,’’ Chamillionaire’s first solo album, Sound of Revenge, pushed sales upward of 1.5 million copies. As the CEO of the record label, he was able to steady his direction by keeping his nose to the grindstone—in Houston—keeping credibility. In an interview with hip hop blog Sixshot, he opines, ‘‘A lot of the people at the major labels continuously want you in the spotlight. What I’ve realized is that it’s the groundwork that keeps you on even when you get where you wanna be.’’ He would later expand his business ventures by starting a consulting firm for entrepreneurs called Masterpiece Mindframe, targeting any and all in the hip hop industry. ‘‘We can affect a whole bunch of people and that will create a seed that will grow into another tree of more entrepreneurs,’’ he said in 2007, showing the key to revenue and sustainability and networking savvy.

THE FUTURE OF HIP HOP IN HOUSTON By never straying too far from their city, Houston rappers and labels were able to translate nightmarish violence and hedonism into a culture of entrepreneurship and monetary success. Perhaps their experiences predetermined content, and then success, but no one region had ever been so savvy about it. During the mid to late 1990s, eight independent labels were producing the preponderance of releases: Rap-A-Lot, Suave House, Wreckshop, Screwed Up Entertainment, Jam Down, Big Shot, Big Tyme, and Short Stop.

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As the Geto Boys’ career progressed, the rappers became less dependent on controversial first-person narratives, shifting to focus on claims of importance and stories from the past. Scarface’s most recent album, Emeritus, speaks with an authoritative voice that truly conveys a legacy. The title entails that because of dues paid, he is retired but will always be a heavyweight. Willie D also entered into a semiretirement. He is now doing real estate in and around Basku, Azerbijan and running a celebrity jet charter service. ‘‘Geto Boys just like any other group, definitely ain’t got all the money that they deserved, but the Geto Boys have made enough money to where they could have taken their money and invested it in certain shit. Because when you think about it, how many people done took $100,000 and turned it into $100,000,000? A lot,’’ he says. By 2005, the Geto Boys, all three well into their thirties, had matured out of their homicidal and viscerally misogynistic lyrics. It would not be fair to say they were very different from their origins, for their 2005 single ‘‘G Code,’’ possessed the mission statement, ‘‘We don’t talk to police, we don’t make a peace bond.’’ Scarface’s belief that hardcore rap serves a code of communication for the African American community resonates in the ethics the Geto Boys carried throughout their respective careers during the incubation of the Houston scene. Because they stayed true to themselves, their visible changes seem natural considering what they went through. Over time, their lyrics morphed from fuming and angry to journalistic, knowledgeable, and active. To back the viewpoint of the unfair demonization of hardcore rappers, Scarface, who rapped, albeit fictionally, about raping a woman in ‘‘Mind of a Lunatic,’’ and having orgies with inebriated and promiscuous women, on ‘‘Use Them Hoes,’’ was telling his listeners that he ‘‘had found heaven in the form of a girl,’’ on 2002’s ‘‘Heaven.’’ On a similar plane, Willie D was known for his chorus, ‘‘you gotta let a hoe be a hoe,’’ but in 2005 was explaining the importance of parenthood. When told by Matt Sonzala, the go-to Houson hip hop journalist that it was odd hearing him share stories about his family because of earlier lyrics he responded, ‘‘If it was just for me it wouldn’t be a problem. But just like you gotta let a hoe be a hoe, you gotta let a kid be a kid. Even though I make explicit music, that don’t mean that I should be sitting up in the house writing my song and my daughter come in the room and I say ‘Hey, tell me what this sound like—I fucked the b**** in her a** and then I . . . ’ That don’t mean that my kids need to be hearing that.’’ These sentiments from Scarface and Willie D highlight what seems to be a generation gap in the Houston scene. The Geto Boys helped popularize hardcore rap, bringing the ‘‘3rd Coast’’ scene to fruition. Their maturation is not a reversal from their early works, but rather a sign of their craft. They only proved that their mission and material could grow. Their transition frames how and why Houston shaped the way it did. In 2008, Houston remains a male-dominated scene (see sidebar: female rappers), although Mike Jones did sign the Louisville-born Baby Loc to his Ice Age Records label. Jones represents a new breed of Houston rapper/businessman.

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FEMALE RAPPERS The world of Houston hip hop is highly patriarchal and aggressively masculine, yet some female artists still manage to make some waves in the scene. Houston’s first large-scale female MC was Choice. She released two albums with Rap-A-Lot, including her most famous, 1991’s The Payback. By using explicit lyrics to even the playing field with male machismo verses, she was one of the first hardcore female rappers. However, ‘‘hardcore’’ translates into sexually driven, as the album contained such tracks as ‘‘Nothing But Sex,’’ ‘‘Pipe Dreams,’’ ‘‘Cat Got Your Tongue,’’ and ‘‘Backseat Betty,’’ a rebuttal to Too $hort’s ‘‘Blowjob Betty.’’ Yet her ‘‘Bad Ass Bitch’’ persona and tone would set the stage for the overt content of future female rappers like Lil’ Kim, Missy Elliott, and Khia. It should be noted that Houston male MCs rap at great length about their sexual exploits, so Choice’s strategy was effective in the sense that she showed women they could be hardcore as well. This authoritative voice would transfer over to the business side of the game too. Boss Chick DiamondNique is one such woman who has been successful by fitting into the Houston mold of assertiveness. She raps with a deep, hardened voice, conveying a sense of power, portraying herself as a boss and a hustler. That alone may not have won her the respect of male Houston hip hop luminaries, but she kept it ‘‘trill’’ by having a successful mass marketing firm and being a producer for seven years before deciding to become an MC. Her entrepreneurial spirit and self-made swagger have given her the credentials to enter this boys club. Another artist currently enjoying success is CL’CHE. She describes herself as the ‘‘Southside of Houston, TX Hottest Female’’ and positions her sexuality near the forefront of her image, yet she makes one strong caveat: that she is a hustler and will not change that role for a man. In the song Houston, she warns an aspiring lover that she is a hustler to the core, rapping, ‘‘Have you ever been with a hustling bitch? I grind in the day time and grind through the night,’’ demonstrating that she can retain her sexuality, and run with the boys at their own game. CL’CHE also has a lot of local cred for staying true to the unwritten rules of the Houston scene by putting out seven albums without a major record deal. Both artists exemplify the Houston hustler archetype typically reserved for men.

REFERENCES Boss Chick DiamondNique MySpace page http://profile.myspace.com/ index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=42944960 (accessed August 13, 2008). CL’CHE MySpace page http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction= user.viewprofile&friendid=59101875 (accessed August 13, 2008).

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Jones, a Houston native and Swishahouse rapper, founded Ice Age entertainment in 2001. Making his way up the industry ladder, Jones faced a conundrum. Imposters were collecting the upfront fee from club promoters and dashing, hurting Jones’ pockets and reputation. He came up with a quick solution—he inserted his number and email address into his songs. Noticing the solution’s effectiveness, he altered the gimmick to attain free advertizing. Harkening back to DJ Screw, Jones made custom mixtapes for dancers at various Houston strip clubs. Between the dancers’ favorite songs, Jones added the contact info. This caught the ear of Michael ‘‘5000’’ Watts who reached out and signed Jones. With Chamillionaire and Slim Thug opting out of the Swishahouse family, the label needed a new star and Jones was it. His clever marketing scheme translated well into Watts’ infrastructure, releasing the platinum selling Who Is Mike Jones? in 2005. As successful and as catchy as his music was, it seemed that Jones’ fame contributed to an acute case of ego inflation. His ‘‘strength of name’’ branding strategy, incessant in nature became abundantly obvious after his success. Instead of shedding the tagline, Jones continues the quest to remain a spectacle, one that pulled himself up by the bootstraps. His official Web site’s biography makes constant references to his never having a ‘‘silver spoon.’’ By getting Ice Age distributed through Swishahouse and owning a club under the same name, Mike Jones feels justified referring to himself as ‘‘The Mayor.’’ To use such a declaration of self-importance claiming leadership in a well-oiled and extremely profitable industry seems to over exaggerate his role in Houston hip hop’s history. When you consider that Jones has less than a decade of experience on his resume, and that none of his strategies were completely original, it is hard to make a case for him as a leader in either aesthetic or business sectors.

REFERENCES Bray, Daika. ‘‘DJ Screw.’’ Murder Dog Magazine, August 8, 1999. http:// www.murderdog.com/archives/djscrew/djscrew.html (accessed August 10, 2008). Burnett, John. ‘‘Chamillionaire: Doing It My Way.’’ Nobody Smiling. www .nobodysmiling.com/hiphop/interview/85353.php (accessed August 5, 2008). Butler, Paul D. ‘‘Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment. Stanford Law Review 56 (2004): 983–1016. Dyson, Michael Eric. Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop. New York: Basic Civitas, 2007. Hess, Mickey. Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007. Jost, Matt. ‘‘E.S.G. Ocean of Funk.’’ Rap Reviews, July 26, 2005. http://www .rapreviews.com/archive/BTTL_oceanoffunk.html (accessed August 19, 2008).

The Long, Hot Grind | 459 Kaufman, Gil. ‘‘Geto Boys on Hold While Willie D. Takes Over the Airwaves.’’ VH1 News, January 12, 1997. http://www.vh1.com/news/articles/508872/ 19970112/story.jhtml (accessed August 13, 2008). ‘‘KOCH Records Announces New Deal with Tony Draper and Suave (House) Records.’’ Word of South, April 15, 2008. http://www.wordofsouth.com/ online/?p=1073 (accessed November 19, 2008). Kondo, Toshitaka. ‘‘Exclusive: Bun B Q&A, Part One.’’ March 5, 2008. http:// blog.rhapsody.com/2008/03/exclusive-bun-b.html (accessed September 10, 2008). K Rino, and Matt Sonazala. ‘‘History of Houston’’ Interview with Semetex of BBC 1Extra. July 29, 2006 . Lil Troy. The Heat in the Kitchen: Recipe for Success. Houston: Short Stop Records, 2008. ‘‘Music World Screwed in Houston.’’ Part 3 of 5. VBS TV. http://www.vbs.tv/ video.php?id=704328566 (accessed August 2, 2008). Querisima, Quia. ‘‘Headkrack Spills Beans on Dallas Music Scene.’’ SMU Daily Campus, January 15, 2003. http://media.www.smudailycampus.com/media/ storage/paper949/news/2003/01/15/Entertainment/ Headkrack.Spills.Beans.On.Dallas.Music.Scene-2273650.shtml (accessed October 11, 2008). Robbie. ‘‘DJ Vicious Lee (Def IV) Interview.’’ June 10, 2008. http://www .unkut.com/2008/06/dj-vicious-lee-def-iv-interview/ (accessed October 3, 2008). Rosenblatt, Roger. ‘‘Black Autobiography: Life as Death Weapon.’’ In Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, edited by James Olney, 169–80. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Sarig, Roni. Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2007. Sonzala, Matt. ‘‘Willie D.’’ Murder Dog Magazine. http://www.murderdog.com/ archives/willie_d/willied.htm. (accessed August 13, 2008). Souleo. ‘‘We Run This: Michael ‘5000’ Watts.’’ Sixshot Magazine, November 19, 2008. http://www.sixshot.com/articles/13207/. (accessed November 22, 2008). The Paper Chasers Vol. I. Dir. Maxie Collier. IFC Productions, 2003. ‘‘TSS Presents Smoking Sessions with Chamillionaire.’’ August 5, 2008. http:// smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/?p=1743#more-1743 (accessed September 9, 2008). Williams, Tennessee. ‘‘This Book.’’ Introduction to Carson McCullers Reflections in a Golden Eye. New York: Bantam, 1950.

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SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Big HAWK Under Hawk’s Wings. Dead End Records, 2000. Endangered Species. Ghetto Dreams Entertainment, 2007. Big Moe City of Syrup. Wreckshop Records, 2000. Purple World. Wreckshop Records, 2002. Moe Life. Wreckshop Records, 2003. Big Pokey Hardest Pit in the Litter. Uptown/Universal, 1999. D-Game 2000. Chevis Entertainment, 2000. Da Sky’s Da Limit. Wreckshop Records, 2002. Botany Boyz Smokin’ N Leanin’. Big Shot, 1996. Thought of Many Ways. Big Shot, 1997. Boyz N Blue/Boss Hogg Outlawz Boyz N Blue. Boss Hogg Outlawz/Koch, 2004. Slim Thug Presents Boss Hogg Outlawz: Serve & Collect. Boss Hogg Outlawz/ Koch, 2007. Back by Blockular Demand: Serve & Collect II. Boss Hogg Outlawz/Koch, 2008. Bun B Trill. Rap-A-Lot/Asylum, 2005. II Trill. Rap-A-Lot/Asylum, 2008. Bushwick Bill Little Big Man. Noo Trybe, 1992. Phantom of the Rapra. Noo Trybe/Rap-A-Lot, 1995. Chamillionaire Mixtape Messiah. Chamillitary Entertainment, 2004. The Truth. Chamillitary Entertainment, 2005. What It Dew. Chamillitary Entertainment, 2005. Big Business (with Stat Quo). Chamillitary Entertainment, 2005. Man on Fire. Chamillitary Entertainment, 2005. Mixtape Messiah 2. Universal/Chamillitary Entertainment, 2006. Mixtape Messiah 3. Universal/Chamillitary Entertainment, 2007. Mixtape Messiah 4. Universal/Chamillitary Entertainment, 2008. Mixtape Messiah 5. Universal/Chamillitary Entertainment, 2008. The Sound of Revenge. Universal/Chamillitary, 2005. Ultimate Victory. Universal/Chamillitary, 2007.

The Long, Hot Grind Choice The Big Payback. Rap-A-Lot, 1991. Stick-N-Move. Rap-A-Lot, 1992. Cl’ Che’ Clasyfyd Lady. After Life, 1998. Off Da Chain. Presidential Records, 2004. Color Changin Click Deuce Bigalow. Paid in Full, 2001. Bobby Booshay. Paid in Full, 2001. Starvin Marvin. Paid in Full, 2001. Bobby Booshay 2. Paid in Full, 2002. Get Ya Mind Correct. Paid in Full, 2002. Homer Pimpson. Paid in Full, 2003. K-Mart Blue Light Special. Paid in Full, 2003. Super Bowl XXXVII. Paid in Full, 2003. Controversy Sells. Paid in Full, 2005. Def IV Nice & Hard. Rap-A-Lot, 1989. Devin the Dude The Dude. Rap-A-Lot, 1998. Just Tryin’ ta Live. Rap-A-Lot, 2002. To Tha X-Treme. Rap-A-Lot, 2004. Waitin’ To Inhale. Rap-A-Lot, 2007. Landing Gear. Razor and Tie, 2008. DJ Screw To give a ‘‘selected discography’’ for DJ Screw is to choose between apples and oranges hundreds and hundreds of times over. As a tribute to his entrepreneurial spirit, we’ll plug the store he started, Screwed Up Record & Tapes. Of the few channels that sell his music, the official location on 7717 Cullen Boulevard in Houston has the best selection. If you cannot make it there, we encourage you to browse the titles at www.screweduprecords.com/store2.html. E.S.G. Sailin’ Da South. Priority, 1994. Shinin’ N’ Grindin’. Wreckshop, 1999. City Under Siege. Wreckshop, 2000. Boss Hogg Outlawz (with Slim Thug). S.E.S., 2001. All American Gangsta. S.E.S., 2004. Screwed Up Movement. Sure Shot Recordings, 2006. The Chronicles. Sfl Records, 2008. Facemob The Other Side of the Law. Virgin Records, 1996. Silence. Asylum Records, 2006.

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Fat Pat Ghetto Dreams. Wreckshop, 1998. Throwed in the Game. Wreckshop, 1998. Greatest Hits, Slowed & Chopped. Wreckshop, 2001. Gangsta N-I-P The South Park Psycho. Priority, 1992. Psychic Thoughts. Virgin, 1993. Psychotic Genius. Virgin, 1996. Interview with a Killa. Virgin, 1998. Still Psycho. Happy Alone Records, 1999. Geto Boys Grip It! On That Other Level. Rap-A-Lot, 1989. The Geto Boys. Def American/Warner Bros. Records, 1990. We Can’t Be Stopped. Rap-A-Lot, 1991. Til Death Do Us Part. Rap-A-Lot, 1993. The Resurrection. Rap-A-Lot, 1996. The Foundation. Rap-A-Lot/Asylum/Elektra Records, 2005. Guerilla Maab Resurrected. KMJ Records, 2002. Hitz. Bcd Music Group, 2006. Rise. Bcd Music Group, 2006. Year of the Underdawgs. Bcd Music Group, 2006. KB Da Kidnappa The Underground. Spitting Venom, 2005. Spitting Venom. Spitting Venom, 2006. Klondike Kat The Lyrical Lion. Beatbox Records, 1995. Mobbin Muzik Melodies. Beatbox Records, 1997. The Biography of a Made Man. Beatbox Records, 1999. K Rino Stories from the Black Book. Electric City Records, 1995. Danger Zone. Electric City Records, 1995. (Self-Titled). Ichiban, 1998. No Mercy. Electric City Records, 1999. Pay Back. Electric City Records, 2000. Ten Year Run. Black Book International, 2003. The Hit List. Black Book International, 2004. Family Bizness. Black Book International, 2004. Stories from the Black Book. Black Book International, 2005. Underground. Blackbook International, 2005. Time Traveler. Black Book International, 2006. Book Number 7. Black Book International, 2007.

The Long, Hot Grind Triple Darkness—Wreck Time. Black Book International, 2008. Blood Doctrine. Black Book International, 2008. Lil Flip The Leprechaun. Sucka Free Records, 2000. Underground Legend. Sucka Free/Loud/Columbia, 2002. U Gotta Feel Me. Sucka Free/Sony/Columbia, 2004. Kings of the South (with Z-Ro). Payday, 2005. I Need Mine. Clover G/Asylum/Warner Bros., 2007. Lil Keke Don’t Mess wit Texas. Jam Down, 1997. It Was All a Dream. Jam Down, 1999. Peepin’ in My Window. Pyrex, 2001. Platinum in Da Ghetto. In The Paint/Koch, 2001. Birds Fly South. Averice, 2002. Street Stories. Lookin’ Up Entertainment, 2003. The Big Unit (with Slim Thug). Rap-A-Lot/Noddfactor, 2003. Changin’ Lanes. Commission Music, 2003. Wreckin’ 2004 (with Big Hawk). Presidential, 2004. Currency. Averice, 2004. Loved by Few, Hated by Many. Swishahouse/Universal Motown, 2008. Lil Troy Sittin’ Fat Down South. Uptown Records/Universal Records, 1998. Back to Ballin. Short Stop, 2001. Paperwork. Short Stop, 2006. Mike Jones Who Is Mike Jones? Swishahouse/Warner Bros., 2005. The Odd Squad Fadanuf Fa Erybody. Rap-A-Lot, 1994. OG Style I Know How to Play ’Em. Rap-A-Lot, 1991. Paul Wall Chick Magnet. Paid in Full, 2004. The People’s Champ. Swishahouse/Atlantic, 2005. Get Money, Stay True. Swishahouse/Atlantic, 2007. Pimp C The Sweet James Stories. Rap-A-Lot, 2005. Pimpalation. Rap-A-Lot Records/WEA Records, 2006. PSK-13 No Ordinary Aggin. Big Tyme Records, 1988. Born Bad? Priority Records, 1997. Pay Like You Weigh. Nightshift, 1999.

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Flagrant: The Hustle Game Project, Vol. 1. Big Tyme, 1999. Somethin’ to Lean to: Chopped & Skrewed. Nightshift, 2000. Raheem The Vigliante. A&M, 1988. Invincible. Priority, 1992. Scarface Mr. Scarface Is Back. Rap-A-Lot, 1991. The World Is Yours. Rap-A-Lot, 1993. The Diary. Rap-A-Lot, 1994. The Untouchable. Rap-A-Lot, 1997. My Homies. Rap-A-Lot, 1998. Last of a Dying Breed. Rap-A-Lot, 2000. The Fix. Def Jam South, 2002. Made. Rap-A-Lot/Asylum/Atlantic, 2007. Emeritus. Rap-A-Lot/Asylum, 2008. Screwed Up Click Compilations Blockbleeders. Screwed Up Entertainment, 1999. Soldiers United for Cash. Screwed Up Entertainment, 2004. Soldiers United for Cash pt. 2. Screwed Up Entertainment, 2005. Making History. Screwed Up Entertainment, 2005. On the Southside. Screwed Up Entertainment, 2005. Freestyle Kings. Screwed Up Entertainment, 2006. Slim Thug Already Platinum. Geffen Records, 2005. I Represent This. Boss Hogg Outlawz/Oarfin Records, 2006. Slow Loud and Bangin’ (Compilations) S.L.A.B.: Vol 1. Raw and Untamed Records, 2002. S.L.A.B.: Vol. 2. Raw and Untamed Records, 2002. S.L.A.B.: Vol. 3. Raw and Untamed Records, 2003. S.L.A.B.: Vol. 4. Raw and Untamed Records, 2004. Screenz On. BCD Music Group, 2006. The Anthem. BCD Music Group, 2006. Street Military Don’t Give a Damn. Capitol, 1993. Next Episode. Beatbox, 1995. K.B. & Lil’ Flea of Street Military. X-Bam, 1997. Aggrivated Rasta. Beatbox, 1998. Don’t Give a Damn. Beatbox, 1999. Steel Gangstaz. Beatbox, 2001. The Terrorists Terror Strikes: Always Bizness, Never Personal. Rap-A-Lot, 1991.

The Long, Hot Grind Full Scale Attack. N-Terrogation, 1995. Detonate the Landmines. Akasha, 2008. Trae Losing Composure. G-Maab Entertainment, 2003. Same Thing Different Day. G-Maab Entertainment, 2004. Assholes by Nature (with Z-Ro). BCD Music Group, 2006. Restless. Rap-A-Lot, 2006. 7 Years and Runnin’. Guerilla Maab, 2006. Life Goes On. Rap-A-Lot, 2007. The Beginning. Rap-A-Lot, 2008. It Is What It Is (with Z-Ro). Rap-A-Lot/Asylum, 2008. UGK Too Hard to Swallow. Jive/Big Tyme, 1992. Super Tight. Jive, 1994. Ridin’ Dirty. Jive, 1996. Dirty Money. Jive, 2001. Side Hustles. Jive, 2002. Underground Kingz. Jive, 2007. Willie-D Controversy. Rap-A-Lot, 1990. Clean Up Man. Rap-A-Lot, 1992. I’m Goin’ Out Lika Soldier. Rap-A-Lot, 1992. Play Witcha Mama. Wrap Records, 1994. Is It Real (My Mind Still Playin’ Tricks on Me). Ichiban Records, 1995. Loved by Few, Hated by Many. Rap-A-Lot, 2000. Yungstar Throwed Yung Playa. Straight Profit, 1999. Z-Ro Look What You Did to Me. Fisherboy, 1998. Z-Ro vs. The World. Straight Profit, 2000. King of da Ghetto. Staright Profit, 2001. Screwed Up Click Representa. Presidential, 2002. (Self-Titled). KMJ Records, 2002. Life. KMJ Records, 2002. Z-Ro Tolerance. KMJ Records, 2004. The Life of Joseph W. McVey. Asylum/Rap-A-Lot, 2004. Let the Truth Be Told. Asylum/Rap-A-Lot, 2005. I’m Still Livin’. Rap-A-Lot, 2006. Crack. Rap-A-Lot, 2008.

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CHAPTER 18 “The Sound of Money“: Atlanta, Crossroads of the Dirty South Matt Miller For the first decade of rap’s existence, Atlanta—like other cities in the South—was on the margins of the emerging genre. However, since the early 1990s, rap from Atlanta has increasingly moved towards the commercial mainstream, and in 2009, the city is a consistent source of nationally popular rap music. Atlanta’s size, growing population, booming economy, and integration with the music industry at the regional and national levels have all helped ensure that Atlanta’s rap music would be diverse and dynamic, accommodating expressions that range from underground bass and gangsta rap to mass-appeal pop rap acts. In the mid-1990s, while OutKast secured the city’s reputation with the hip hop establishment, other Atlanta artists began to break through to mainstream success with hit dance singles rooted in the Miami bass style. In the decade that followed, artists such as Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins have built upon this foundation with music inspired by the high-energy, bass-heavy dance music that forms the core of Atlanta’s thriving scene. These rappers and producers—most of whom had been involved in Atlanta’s rap scene for years prior to emerging on the national stage—used Miami bass as a starting point to develop distinctive subgenres of club rap, including crunk and, later, snap, which achieved widespread popularity on a national level. At the same time, the city has recently seen other rappers emerge—like T.I. or Young Jeezy—whose style is less rooted in club-based dance style and more in line with the conventions of gangsta rap. The emergence of a vital and influential rap scene in Atlanta was built on foundations established by earlier generations of African American musicians, producers, record label and club owners, and audiences. In the early twentieth century, the city—already a booming Southeastern metropolis—stood poised to become the center of the emerging industry of recorded popular music, and saw some of the earliest efforts at recording the nascent hillbilly and blues genres. However, this early activity was soon eclipsed by other regional centers like Nashville and the further growth of the music industry in national centers like New York and 467

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Los Angeles. African American musicians and performers from Atlanta played a role in postwar genres of black music, like R&B and rock and roll (Willie ‘‘Piano Red’’ Perryman, Chick Willis) and soul (Gladys Knight, Arthur Conley) though the city’s musical culture never attained the same level of national prominence as that of regional competitors like Memphis or New Orleans. The funk era of the 1970s saw several important groups, including Brick, Cameo, the S.O.S. Band, and others, rise from Atlanta to make important contributions to the genre. The creativity and adaptability of Atlanta-based rappers, producers, and record label owners helped establish the city as one of the nation’s rap capitals, but they were enabled by two other major structural factors: its status as a major hub of commerce and transportation in the Southeast, and its rapidly growing population, of which middle-class African Americans remain a major component. Atlanta’s historical role as a center of black economic and educational achievement, in combination with its expanding economy in the late twentieth century, have contributed to its ability to draw African Americans from other regions, including the Northeast.

WELCOME TO ATLANTA A booming local and regional economy has made the growth of metro Atlanta’s population one of the fastest in the country in recent decades. The incorporated city of Atlanta (with a population of around 500,000) consists of most of Fulton County and large parts of Dekalb County, but the wider metropolitan area spreads over 10 counties and has a population of more than five million. The demise of segregation and the subsequent explosion of suburban development radically transformed the racial geography of Atlanta and its environs, and had significant economic, social, and political consequences. While whites fled the urban center for northern counties like Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee, black suburban expansion increasingly occupied the lower half of the greater metro. Whites have lost their numerical majority in Fulton and DeKalb counties, both of which have a large number of black elected officials (Atlanta’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, was elected in 1973). The city’s established black middle class, rooted in neighborhoods like Auburn Avenue and South Atlanta, institutions like the Atlanta University Center (a cluster of historically black colleges and universities including Morehouse, Spelman, Morris Brown, and Clark Atlanta), and collective memories of the civil rights struggles, has fostered a climate that increasingly attracts others like them to the city. Within a wider trend of black ‘‘return migration’’ to Sunbelt cities, Atlanta retains the status of a ‘‘mecca’’ for African Americans seeking middle-class prosperity and a compatible cultural environment. Many of these newcomers settled in the southwestern part of the metro area, including the nearby cities of East Point and College Park. Farther out towards the east, black middle-class residents began to move to the suburb of Stone Mountain in the 1970s and 1980s.

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While the educated black middle class retains a strong and influential presence in Atlanta, many African Americans in the city have remained trapped in a cycle of poverty, with geographic isolation and substandard education leaving them illprepared to take advantage of the region’s economic growth. Throughout the metro area, blacks are much more likely than whites to live in poverty, and predominantly black areas have had difficulty attracting new investment by industry, which has increasingly concentrated north of the city. Over 19 percent of the population of the city of Atlanta and its predominantly black southern suburbs had an income below the federal poverty level in 2000, nearly twice the national average. The area to the west of downtown along the road formerly known as Bankhead Highway (see sidebar: Bankhead) is one of the least developed parts of the metro area,

BANKHEAD In the northwest side of the metro area, between the SWATS and the mainly white suburban parts of north Fulton County and separated from the downtown core by the Vine City and West End neighborhoods, lies the Bankhead neighborhood, named after its central artery, Bankhead Highway. Because of its contemporary association with concentrated poverty and urban blight, the road’s name was changed in 1998 to honor a prominent local attorney associated with the civil rights movement, but the neighborhood around Donald Lee Holloway Parkway retains the name ‘‘Bankhead’’ nonetheless. Several public housing projects were built in the predominantly workingclass area, including Perry Homes, Bowen Homes, Hollywood Courts, and the notorious Bankhead Homes, built on top of a landfill in 1970. Atlanta’s far northwest area has suffered from a lack of residential, commercial, and industrial development, high unemployment, high crime rates, and some of the most concentrated poverty in the city. Landmarks on Holloway Parkway including the Blue Flame Lounge strip club, and Toe Jam Music, a retail space, and studio. In the lyrics of their 1995 song ‘‘Soul Food,’’ Goodie Mob paid tribute to Bankhead Seafood. The Bankhead area has been an important source of contributors to Atlanta’s hip hop scene. The shoulder-shrugging dance known as the ‘‘Bankhead Bounce’’ was featured in the video for TLC’s 1994 video for ‘‘Waterfalls,’’ and the next year was immortalized in song by Diamond and a 15-yearold rapper named D-Roc who would later become one of the Ying Yang Twins. Dwayne ‘‘Emperor’’ Searcy, a radio DJ associated with Lil Jon who became a prominent fixture in the Atlanta rap scene, grew up in Bankhead. Bankhead native Clifford ‘‘T.I.’’ Harris became one of the rising stars of the Atlanta scene after 2000. Several of the most prominent groups, labels, and studios associated with the recent ‘‘snap’’ style emerging from Atlanta have strong ties to Bankhead, including Dem Franchize Boyz and the group D4L.

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and has been marked by concentrated black poverty for several decades. While not as desperate as those in Bankhead, the conditions in other working-class and poor black neighborhoods in the southwest and in east side areas like Decatur and south Dekalb County have been far from ideal. By the late 1990s, many of the public housing projects that had been built for Atlanta’s poor had become blighted and unlivable. Like many other cities, Atlanta has embarked upon a drive to disperse the concentrated poverty created by the projects, razing the worst projects to mixed-income developments, with the resultant displacement of some of the city’s poorest citizens. The influx of black migration to Atlanta in recent decades brought with it several individuals who would go on to make important contributions to the city’s rap scene. The Bronx-rooted MC Shy D (Peter Jones) was one of the earliest to publicly proclaim his association with Atlanta. OutKast’s Big Boi (Antwan Patton) moved to the city from Savannah early in his high school years; Chris ‘‘Ludacris’’ Bridges moved to College Park from Champaign, Illinois, when he was 12. Throughout the 1990s, aspiring artists moved to Atlanta from other places to take advantage of the city’s music industry and vibrant African American social and cultural scene. Milwaukee native Todd ‘‘Speech’’ Thomas (of Arrested Development), Theodore ‘‘Easy Lee’’ Moye, Oakland’s Too $hort, New Orleans’ Darryl Howard (who has recorded under the names PMW and Freak Nasty), Flint, Michigan native MC Breed (Eric Breed), and Chicago’s Da Brat were among the rap artists who sought their fortunes in the expanding Atlanta scene of the 1990s. The city exerted a strong pull within the greater Southeastern region, and many aspiring artists from elsewhere in Georgia and adjoining states used connections with Atlanta’s rap scene and industry to build their careers, including Jay ‘‘Young Jeezy’’ Jenkins from Hawkinville (near Macon), Warren ‘‘Bubba Sparxxx’’ Mathis, from rural LaGrange, Albany’s Field Mob, Savannah’s Camoflauge, and the group A-Dam Shame, originally from Memphis. Atlanta’s rise to prominence as a rap capital was enabled by processes with deep historical roots. First, the city’s status as a historic center of African American culture, commerce, and history; second, its prominent position within the economy of the Southeast. For several decades now, the major regional offices of the ‘‘Big Six’’ music corporations have been located in Atlanta, and the city is also home to the regional offices of music publishing firms ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. Another key factor in Atlanta’s transformation has been the presence of an active black business sector and the middle-class lifestyle to support it. ‘‘White flight’’ fueled northward suburban growth, but Atlanta retained its reputation as ‘‘one of the few places in America that black business people feel comfortable.’’ The black music industry in Atlanta gained prestige when ‘‘Jockey’’ Jack Gibson, a pioneer of Atlanta black radio who had gone on to work for Motown and Stax Records, began his ‘‘Jack the Rapper Family Affair’’ convention in Atlanta in 1977 to provide a networking opportunity for producers, distributors, and promoters of African American popular music. The annual convention grew along

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DECATUR About six miles to the east of downtown Atlanta, with a population around 18,000, Decatur was founded in 1823 and is the area’s oldest incorporated municipality. It is the county seat of DeKalb County, which also contains the easternmost portion of the city of Atlanta. In terms of racial composition, Decatur went from 85 percent white in 1960 to around 60 percent white in 2000, although whites no longer constitute a majority in Dekalb County, which as of 2000 was the most ethnically diverse county in Georgia. Predominantly black neighborhoods are clustered on the south side of Decatur and the surrounding county. The small and centrally located African American community called Beacon Hill was razed around 1970 in the name of urban renewal, pushing residents southward into Oakhurst, which has been home to the majority of Decatur’s black residents and much of the city’s low-income housing since the 1960s. Although the city of Decatur itself covers only four square miles, the area known popularly as ‘‘Decatur’’ is considerably larger, due in part to the fact that several zipcodes in unincorporated DeKalb County used ‘‘Decatur’’ as part of their mailing address. Within Atlanta’s rap music geography, ‘‘Decatur’’ includes parts of the Memorial Drive, Glenwood Road, and Candler Road corridors in the southern part of unincorporated Dekalb County, and is closely associated with proximate Atlanta neighborhoods like Kirkwood, East Atlanta, and the now-closed East Lake Meadows housing project. Clubs such as Jazzy T’s (an adult entertainment establishment on Columbia Road), the East Atlanta teen club Shyran’s Showcase (owned by Shyran Blakely), and retail establishments such as Third World Records (formerly located on Candler Road) were some of the institutions that supported the rap scene in Decatur and the surrounding area. Decatur and Candler Road were mentioned by MC Shy D on his 1988 single, ‘‘My Caddy’’ (4Sight), and during the same period Candler Road was also the site of the retail operation run by King Edward J. Several important Atlanta rappers and DJ/producers—including Kilo, DJ Kizzy Rock, Andre 3000 of OutKast, and Lil Jon’s backup group The East Side Boys, the duo The YoungbloodZ, and Gucci Mane—enjoyed connections to Decatur, some more transitory than others.

with the city’s expanding hip hop industry until 1994, when a brawl between rival crews at a downtown hotel led to the withdrawal of city support for the convention, which relocated to Orlando before closing shop in 1996 (Sarig 95–97). Over the years, artists and companies in Atlanta’s rap scene have depended upon local media to spread their music to wider audiences. Initially, Atlanta lacked a commercial radio outlet for rap, which was supported by DJs at the city’s college and community radio stations. Mix shows on WRAS 88.5 (Georgia State

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University), WREK 91.1 (Georgia Institute of Technology), and WRFG (a community-run station based in Little Five Points) provided exposure for local rappers, as well as an outlet for DJs, producers, and others to gain experience working in radio. Dwayne ‘‘Emperor’’ Searcy, a close associate of Lil Jon, became the program director at WRFG before moving on to become one of the central figures in the operation of WHTA, ‘‘Hot 97.5’’ (after 2001, ‘‘Hot 107.9’’), which for more than a decade has been Atlanta’s most prominent commercial rap station. Established in 1995, it was Atlanta’s first hip hop station, and (beginning in 1996) has thrown an annual ‘‘Birthday Bash’’ that showcases top rap acts from within and outside of Atlanta. Urban contemporary station WVEE (103.5 FM), known as ‘‘V-103,’’ added hip hop to their offerings of R&B and classic soul in 2000. V103 features the DJ and on-air personality Greg Street and has provided a more limited venue for the exposure of local rap. Within the realm of public access cable television, the show American Rap Makers (hosted by Arnell Starr) has shown local artists’ videos and has interviewed artists, producers, and covered a variety of events for over a decade beginning in the early 1990s. Artists who were outside of mainstream distribution networks sold their records at small retail outlets in Atlanta’s black neighborhoods, and beginning in the early 1990s, at Earwax Records and Tapes in midtown, a store dedicated exclusively to hip hop. In addition to being rooted in Atlanta’s rich history of black achievement and civil rights struggles, the style and content of locally produced rap music also draw influence and inspiration from other, more problematic aspects of the city’s contemporary reality. As a major destination for conventions, Atlanta has seen the proliferation of strip clubs along with other entertainment and service industries. These clubs, which run the gamut from seedy hole-in-the-wall establishments to ostentatious palaces serving gourmet food, have become a prominent feature of Atlanta’s landscape and make substantial contributions to the local economy. Clubs like Magic City, the Blue Flame Lounge, Strokers, the Playboy Palace, and Pin-Ups, among many others, have played a central role in incubating, inspiring, and exposing rap music made in the city. Strip clubs themselves have increasingly occupied central roles in rap lyrics by Atlanta artists, either as a generic setting for narrative (as in D4L’s ‘‘Laffy Taffy’’ or the Ying-Yang Twins’ ‘‘Whistle While You Twurk’’) or in reference to specific clubs, such as the storied Clermont Lounge, described by Bubba Sparxxx. While strip clubs straddle the divide between respectability and debauchery, other aspects of the city’s entertainment and youth culture have also proved challenging to city and community leaders. The ‘‘Freaknik’’ Spring Break event (see sidebar: Freaknik) brought large numbers of black college students to cruise Atlanta’s downtown during the 1990s, prompting a crackdown by the city on the freewheeling street party, and further exposing racial divisions in the metro area. Similar tensions between young black partiers (and the establishments they patronize) and homeowners and politicians in primarily white areas have most recently

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FREAKNIK Freaknik was a gathering of African American college students in Atlanta that occurred annually during Spring Break between 1982 and 2000. The event began in 1982 as a small, one-day picnic in John A. White Park for members of the D.C. Metro Club, an organization of Atlanta University Center students from the Washington D.C. area. In 1989, the event was held at Washington Park and featured a live band playing D.C.’s ‘‘go-go’’ music, and drew 20,000. With increased attendance came complaints from residents of neighborhoods in southwest Atlanta and parts of Dekalb County concerning excessive traffic, noise, littering, and drunken rowdiness. In the early 1990s, the event increasingly spread outside of the mainly black southwest and into predominantly white areas such as Midtown and the area around Piedmont Park. By 1993 Freaknik drew approximately 100,000 to Atlanta; the next year’s gathering saw a doubling of that number. Attempts by civic authorities, student organizers, and event promoters to provide destinations for the revelers were largely ignored, as young people cruised the streets and socialized, often imposing a paralyzing gridlock on car-dependent intown residents. At the same time, its reputation was growing within hip hop circles as the ultimate street party for young, urban African Americans, as evidenced by a reference to the event in the lyrics of New Orleans rapper Mystikal’s 1995 song ‘‘Y’All Ain’t Ready Yet.’’ As the event grew in size, it increasingly served as a venue to expose and promote artists and companies producing rap music in Atlanta; as groups like OutKast used Freaknik to expand their audience n the early 1990s, they contributed to the accelerating momentum of the city’s hip hop industry. Throughout the mid-1990s, the car traffic associated with Freaknik fostered recurrent opposition among residents of intown Atlanta neighborhoods. As the event grew, the public discourse quickly became polarized along racial lines, with newly elected mayor Bill Campbell struggling to straddle the growing divide between (mostly white) intown property owners and business interests and (mostly black) supporters of the students’ right to gather. In a bid to put the brakes on the annual celebration, in 1994 Campbell made the mistake of openly discouraging the revelers from coming to the city, a position that he abandoned after it proved to be unpopular with his middle-class black constituents. In years that followed, Campbell combined a strategy of ‘‘zero-tolerance’’ policing of the event with a public position of bland acceptance. The 1995 Freaknik descended into the looting of mall stores at Underground Atlanta, but the event’s fate was sealed as it became increasingly associated with the harassment and assault of women in the later half of the 1990s. Campbell still managed to survive an electoral challenge in 1997 from City Council President (and on-the-record Freaknik opponent) Marvin Arrington, and eventually saw the festival’s attendance reduced to nothing before he left office.

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crystallized in the entertainment and business district of Buckhead north of downtown, where concerns about large and sometimes unruly nightclub crowds led the city council to pass an ordinance rolling back the closing time by two hours in 2003. While many of the city’s most prominent members of the rap music industry have offices in Buckhead, the vibrant and diverse local scene was nurtured in the black neighborhoods in the southern half of the metro area, including Decatur and nearby South DeKalb County in the east, the southwest (SWATS) including East Point and College Park, and in the poverty stricken ‘‘Bankhead’’ area in the northwest (see sidebar: SWATS).

EARLY YEARS (1980–1990) Atlanta’s engagement with the rap genre goes back to 1980, when local label Shurfine (in operation since the early 1960s) released the single ‘‘Space Rap’’ by Danny Renee and the Charisma Crew. However, this record by what was probably a New York-based group was more of an anomaly within the world of Atlanta hip hop, which was still in its infancy. When rap first began to emerge in Atlanta in the 1980s, it did so slowly in ways that reflected the standard-setting role of New York and other early centers of hip hop culture. The New York City Fresh Festival tours —hip hop’s first large touring concert—were important venues in which Atlantans were exposed to the new genre. As the Miami bass style blossomed in the mid to late 1980s, it also began to exert an influence upon Atlanta’s developing scene, pulling aspiring artists south, and introducing styles of production, lyrical content, and vocal delivery that increasingly diverged from those which prevailed in New York and Los Angeles. During the 1980s, the collective efforts of rappers, DJs, producers, independent record labels, nightclubs, and audiences all contributed to the formation of a local Atlanta rap scene and the infrastructure to support it. The first rapper to emerge from the local scene was Mo-Jo (Edwin Lyons, Jr.), who built his reputation by rapping on the AM radio broadcast live from the Sans Souci nightclub. His first release was ‘‘Battmann: Let Mo-Jo Handle It’’ on Frills Records in 1982; in 1984 he produced two singles, ‘‘Only in America’’ and the more successful ‘‘Jump, Stomp, and Twist’’ on Jam-The-Box Records. The first Atlanta-based artist to achieve anything more than local success was MC Shy D (Peter Jones), whose career and biography demonstrate how early rap in Atlanta depended upon biographical and professional connections with other, more advanced centers of rap music production. Jones had been exposed to the nascent hip hop culture in his childhood in the Bronx River Projects, and when at age 12 he moved with his family to Ellenwood, Georgia, around 1980, he brought the new art form with him. He formed a rap group and also performed at concerts and talent shows around the city in a dance group called the Break Kings with his friend and collaborator Tony Rock (Anthony Durham). After graduating from high school, his career as a solo rapper took off when he won a contest to open a concert by Run-DMC and Roxanne Shante at

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SWATS While some of the earliest participants in the Atlanta rap scene had roots in Decatur, its prominence has been nearly eclipsed by the rise of rap music associated with the SWATS, or the southwest quarter of the Atlanta metro area. In addition to the Cascade Heights, Greenbriar, Adamsville, and Oakland City neighborhoods, the SWATS also encompasses the adjoining cities of College Park and East Point. Initially popularized by LaFace artists OutKast and Goodie Mob, the use of the term ‘‘SWATS’’ to refer to the southwest came into vogue around 1996, along with the use of ‘‘ATL’’ as a nickname for the city at large, which was embraced by civic leaders in the 2003 ‘‘brand Atlanta’’ campaign. Middle-class and working class blacks make up much of the population of the SWATS, which is anchored to Atlanta’s downtown by the West End neighborhood and the Atlanta University Center. Campbellton Road is one of the main arteries of the area, and has been the site of many raporiented clubs, including the Sans Souci, Club Illusions, and, further out, the Jellybeans skating rink in the Ben Hill neighborhood. Just south of the Atlanta city limits is the city of East Point, a separate municipality incorporated in 1886 with a population around 32,000. Once mostly white, East Point’s demography has undergone dramatic changes recently; in the last 30 years, the city has shifted from 91 percent white in 1970 to just 31 percent in the late 1990s. In the same period, East Point has lost population, has had trouble attracting new business investment, and has recently endured severe financial problems at the municipal level. Large-scale construction projects, including the nearby airport, as well as a MARTA public transportation rail line that took the place of much of East Point’s commercial center, have transformed the small city in ways that are not uniformly positive. Further south lies the city of College Park, a predominantly black middle and working class suburb with a population of around 20,000. It sits next to the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport complex, now one of the busiest in the world. Constructed in the 1970s under the administration of Maynard Jackson, the location of the airport was intended to provide a source of jobs for south side Atlantans. However, this achievement was not without its costs, including the disruption of established neighborhoods and substantial noise pollution. The list of rappers, producers, and label owners associated with the SWATS is long. It includes, most famously, OutKast and their production team, Organized Noize, who in their early years recorded in Rico Wade’s Dungeon studio in East Point, as well as Bonecrusher and Killer Mike. College Park has given birth to a large number of artists, including Ludacris, Pastor Troy, producer DJ Smurf, and more recent arrivals including Yung Joc, Lil Fate, and V.I.C.

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Atlanta’s Omni stadium. His Hey performance drew the notice of Miami bass rapper Gigolo Tony and his manager, who signed the teenaged rapper to Miami’s 4Sight Records. Backed by DJ Man, a veteran of King Edward J’s J Team, MC Shy D released ‘‘Rapp Will Never Die’’ for 4-Sight in 1985, followed by another 12’’, ‘‘Shy D Is Back’’ in 1986. In 1987 he signed with Luther Campbell’s Luke Skyywalker Records, and released a full-length album, Got to Be Tough. The following year he released the single ‘‘Shake It’’ and the album Comin’ Correct in ’88, which included ‘‘Atlanta That’s Where I Stay,’’ one of the earliest rap songs to openly celebrate the city. His friend Tony Rock, after a stint in the army, signed with Campbell’s Effect Records sublabel in 1989, where he released several singles and an album, Let Me Take You to the Rock House. MC Shy D left Skyywalker in 1989, and pursued legal action for unpaid royalties; when Jones won a $2.3 million judgment against the company (now known as Luke Records), Campbell was forced into bankruptcy. His career embodies the complex intersections of place, style, and commerce that have shaped the contours of rap music in the U.S. South. As he began his career, the style and content of his vocal performances were strongly rooted in his exposure to early Bronx hip hop. However, the musical backing for these performances reflected a Miami aesthetic that, as the 1980s progressed, increasingly diverged from rap’s mainstream conventions as established in New York and L.A. MC Shy D brought authentic Bronx hip hop to Atlanta and Miami, but the city’s audiences, artists, and producers also exercised a significant influence upon his own style as his career matured. This influence was strongest in the later 1990s, when Shy D ventured into producing, working with Tha Rhythm and DJ Smurf, among others, and releasing his own and others’ records on his Benz Records label. MC Shy D released several singles on Benz Records in 1990 and an album for WRAP in 1994. Some of the production for MC Shy D’s recordings on Luke Skyywalker Records was handled by Aldrin ‘‘DJ Toomp’’ Davis, another transplanted Atlantan drawn by Miami’s fertile rap scene. After parting company with Luther ‘‘Luke Skyywalker’’ Campbell in the early 1990s, Davis started the duo 2 Nazty with 2 Live Crew expatriate Mark ‘‘Brother Marquis’’ Ross. The group released the album Indecent Exposure on the Jacksonville, Florida-based Attitude Records in 1993. He helped to usher in the crunk era by producing several songs on Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz’s 1997 debut, Get Crunk, Who U Wit—Da Album, including the hit single ‘‘Shawty Freak a Lil Sumtin’.’’ While Miami figured centrally in the development of the careers of MC Shy D and DJ Toomp, other aspiring rappers and producers from Atlanta worked closer to home to lay the groundwork for a self-sufficient local rap scene. Miciah Raheem, known by the stage name Raheem the Dream, became a prominent figure in Atlanta hip hop beginning around 1986, releasing 12’’ singles including ‘‘Eliminator’’ and performing at clubs like My Brother’s Keeper and Shyran’s Showcase. Building on these nightclub performances, Raheem progressed to opening shows

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for touring national groups like Run-DMC and LL Cool J. He and his brother Jarvis operated a record label (Arvis) out of the suburban community of Smyrna, Georgia, The label produced Raheem’s records as well as those by emerging rappers. Kilo (Andrell Rogers) grew up in Decatur. He broke into the local rap game by opening shows for Raheem at clubs like the Night Light, and was one of the first artists released on the Arvis label. In 1990, he attracted regional attention with his single and album, America Has a Problem . . . Cocaine, which became a regional hit as the crack epidemic swept the nation, selling around 40,000 copies. Kilo’s early efforts show a strong influence from old-school New York rap, as well as Miami bass, with a strong emphasis on mildly risque´ lyrics, voiced in a nasal tenor. Several songs, like ‘‘Georgia’’ and ‘‘A-Town Rush’’ (also the title of his 1992 album), were designed to establish the authenticity of Atlanta’s emergent rap scene. The success of A-Town Rush led to his signing in 1992 with WRAP, a subsidiary of Ichiban Records, an Atlanta-based independent label and distributor specializing in contemporary Southern black music. WRAP rereleased A-Town Rush and produced a video for the record’s first single, ‘‘Hear What I Hear’’; another WRAP album, Git Wit da Program, followed in 1993. In the early 1990s, rap music in Atlanta started to show the influence of gangsta rap music such as that produced by L.A.-based N.W.A. or Houston’s Scarface. The trio the Hard Boyz, which released the album A-Town Hard Heads with Ichiban in 1992, represented one of the earliest gangsta rap groups in Atlanta. Their contemporaries, the trio Success-N-Effect, were also influenced by the gangsta style and attitude, but combined it with the angry black nationalist rhetoric (and dense, unsettling, sample-driven soundscapes) of Public Enemy. The group, led by Brother Rich J X (Johne Battle) and including DJ Len, signed with Miami’s On Top Records in 1989, and had a regional hit with the antidrug song ‘‘Roll It Up My Nigger.’’ Their debut album for On Top, In the Hood (1989) sold more than half a million copies. The group signed with Ichiban’s WRAP, and released the album Back-N-Effect in 1991 which spent more than three months on Billboard’s R&B chart. Success-N-Effect penetrated the national media consciousness in 1992, with the release of their controversial song ‘‘The Ultimate Drive-By,’’ a single also included on their WRAP album Drive By of Uh Revolutionist. The song’s lyrics fantasized the assassination of several prominent white politicians, including President Bush, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, David Duke, and ex-police chief Daryl Gates, who had recently been associated with the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles. The cover of the single depicted the group in a car, leaving the scene after shooting a robed Klansman, who lies prone on the ground. In the wake of the controversy around several prominent antipolice rap songs, including N.W.A.’s ‘‘Fuck tha Police’’ and Ice T’s heavy metal song ‘‘Cop Killer,’’ the song received substantial press coverage both within and outside of Atlanta. Success-N-Effect’s career petered out along with the controversy around the song, however, and the

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group disbanded after releasing a further 12’’ in 1993 on WRAP, ‘‘40 Acres and a Mule,’’ which featured a guest appearance by Public Enemy’s Chuck D. Arrested Development, led by rapper Todd ‘‘Speech’’ Thomas, was one of the earliest Atlanta-based groups to connect with national audiences and to express a self-consciously Southern identity. A native of Milwaukee, Thomas spent his summers with his grandmother in rural Tennessee, and moved south in 1987 to attend the Art Institute of Atlanta. Partnering with Savannah, Georgia native Tim ‘‘DJ Headliner’’ Barnes, Thomas formed Arrested Development, a six-person group whose work featured rootsy, spiritually uplifting lyrics inspired by the afrocentric Native Tongues movement, and which would eventually grow to include several other members. Hailed by music critics, the group won two Grammys for their 1992 debut album on Chrysalis, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of . . . . Rural themes in songs such as ‘‘Tennessee’’ and the group’s penchant for overalls and other rustic signifiers contributed to a vision of Southernness consciously framed as an antidote to the materialism and violence present in other rap music popular at the time. While the group’s debut album sold over 1.5 million copies, the group broke up after sales of their next effort fell short of expectations.

EARLY 1990S: THE SCENE MATURES Beginning in the early 1990s, a new generation of producers and record label owners had become established in Atlanta who possessed the know-how and industry connections to produce rap music (as well as R&B and pop) that could be competitive in the national market. Over the course of the 1990s, Atlanta-based artists, producers, and labels achieved success with a variety of different styles of rap music aimed at different markets, but the earliest breakthroughs fall into the category of pop or teen rap. Producers like Dallas Austin, Jermaine Dupri, and Kevin ‘‘She’kspere’’ Briggs, working with labels like LaFace and So So Def, produced a number of highly successful pop rap acts, ranging from the ultra-accessible Kris Kross and Anotha Bad Creation to the more edgy girl group TLC. Dallas Austin was a key individual in Atlanta’s transformation into a pop rap and R&B capital in the 1990s. He moved to Atlanta in 1986 from Columbus, Georgia, and built upon his early exposure to music by playing and performing in various bands. His career as a producer began in earnest in 1989, when he started Dallas Austin Recording Projects (D.A.R.P.) and produced the hit song ‘‘Mr. D.J. ’’ for Joyce ‘‘Fenderella’’ Irby’s first solo album. This attracted the attention of Motown Records, who hired Austin to produce an album by the preteen pop rap sextet ABC (Anotha Bad Creation) from the College Park suburb of Atlanta. ABC had come to Motown via L.A., where they had gone to record demos, when they performed an impromptu audition for Michael Bivins, a member of New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe. Bivins arranged for the group to be signed to Motown, and selected Austin as his collaborator in producing the group. With their Jackson 5-like cuteness, safe material, and tightly honed performances backed by

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Austin’s tracks, the group’s debut album went double-platinum within a year of its release, and signaled Austin’s status as one of the city’s most adept rap and R&B producers. The partnership between Austin, Bivins, and Motown bore more fruit when the 1991 debut album by Philadelphia-based R&B quartet Boyz II Men, produced by Austin, sold more than 10 million copies and earned Austin the accolade of Billboard’s Producer of the Year. Between 1993 and 1997 he operated his own independent record label, Rowdy Records, distributed by LaFace and its parent company Arista. Jermaine Dupri (born 1972) was another Atlanta-based producer who helped establish the city’s reputation for mass-appeal pop rap and R&B. Dupri grew up in the College Park area of Atlanta and achieved enormous commercial success as a songwriter and producer before the age of 20 with teen rap group Kris Kross. He started his So So Def label in 1992 and has since become known as one of the top U.S. producers of pop, R&B, and rap acts. Dupri (who uses his mother Tina’s last name) was introduced to the music business at an early age by his father Michael Mauldin, a concert promoter and manager of rap and R&B groups who went on to run the black music divisions of several national music companies. Mauldin’s central role in the organization of the New York City Fresh Fest (the first national tour of rap acts, staged in 1984 and 1985) provided Dupri with access to some of the top-selling rap acts of the period. The break dancing youngster soon began a three-year stint as part of the stage show for the group Whodini, appearing in the music video produced for their song ‘‘Freaks Come out at Night.’’ Through Whodini he became associated with a

Jermaine Dupri (Jerome Albertini/ Corbis)

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female singing duo called Silk Tymes Leather, for whom he produced an album in 1989. Dupri’s career as a songwriter and producer moved to the fast track when he launched a teen sensation called Kris Kross. After bumping into Chris Kelly and Chris Smith at southwest Atlanta’s Greenbriar Mall, Dupri molded the two 13year-olds into a marketable group, teaching them how to rap, writing their material, and concocting their signature image (based on clothing worn backwards). Dupri’s father Mauldin managed the duo, and brought them to Columbia Records, who signed the act to their Ruffhouse imprint. Their 1992 album Totally Krossed Out (with hit single ‘‘Jump’’) would eventually sell over seven million copies. Building upon this success, Dupri established So So Def in 1992 as a joint venture with Columbia Records, with his father in the position of CEO. After a successful debut by the female R&B quartet Xscape, Dupri produced the debut of Chicago-based female rapper Da Brat (Shawntae Harris), who debuted on the Kris Kross song ‘‘Da Bomb.’’ Her debut album Funkdafied (1994) made her the first solo female rapper to sell over one million copies of an album. In mid-1995, the label released another album by Xscape, followed by Da Brat’s sophomore effort Anuthatantrum in late 1996. In the late 1990s, the label released million-selling albums by R&B artists Usher and Jagged Edge, and released Dupri’s own debut as a rapper in 1998. Jermaine Dupri Presents Life in 1472: The Original Soundtrack featured guest appearances by rap luminaries including Slick Rick, Nas, and Jay-Z, among others. So So Def introduced the teen rapper Lil Bow Wow in 2000, one of the last projects to occur under the agreement with Columbia. After 2000, Dupri and his record label bounced between major labels; he moved to Arista in 2002, then in 2003 accepted a position as President of Urban Music at Virgin Records. In his two-year tenure there, in addition to producing R&B hits with Usher and Mariah Carey, he helped Atlanta’s club-oriented ‘‘snap’’ style reach national audiences with the group Dem Franchize Boyz. Dupri left Virgin in 2007 to accept a position as President of Island Urban, which oversees Def Jam. Alongside So So Def, the LaFace Records label, which produced several topselling pop, R&B, and rap artists during the decade, was one of the most important companies involved in bringing attention to Atlanta’s rap scene in the 1990s. Founded in 1989 by Antonio M. ‘‘L.A.’’ Reid and R&B star Kenneth B. ‘‘Babyface’’ Edmonds as a joint venture with Arista, the label produced 33 number one records by artists including TLC, Outkast, Usher, and Toni Braxton. The collaboration between Edmonds and Reid began in the early 1980s when both were members of the Indianapolis group The Deele, with whom they released three albums. The pair moved to Los Angeles in 1985, where they established themselves as a songwriting and production team, working with pop and R&B acts including Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men, and Pebbles. Edmonds, meanwhile, had enjoyed his own success as a producer and singer in the late 1980s and early 1990s (most notably with soundtracks for Waiting to Exhale and The Bodyguard). In 1989, they relocated to Atlanta and cofounded LaFace as a joint-venture with

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major label Arista. The first artist signed to the fledgling label was Damian Dame, whose song ‘‘Exclusivity’’ provided their first number one hit. Reid and Edmonds continued to collaborate on songwriting and production until 1993, when Edmonds moved to California, while Reid remained in Atlanta and focused on the administrative side of the company. LaFace established itself as a major player in Atlanta’s rap scene with the 1992 release of an album by female rap/R&B trio TLC. The group, which came to LaFace after being developed by L.A. Reid’s wife, R&B star Pebbles, consisted of members T-Boz (Tionne Watkins), Left Eye (Lisa Lopes), and Chilli (Rozonda Thomas). Their 1992 album, Ooooooohhh . . . on the TLC Tip, was largely produced by Dallas Austin (who had moved from Motown to LaFace) and produced three top-10 hits, launching the singing/dancing/rapping trio’s career. Their follow-up effort, 1994’s CrazySexyCool, produced two number one hits (‘‘Creep’’ and ‘‘Waterfalls’’) and eventually sold more than 11 million copies, helping to further establish the reputation of LaFace and Atlanta in general for producing highly marketable rap and R&B. Four years would pass before the group released their next album, 1999’s Fanmail, which spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 and sold six million copies on the strength of hit singles ‘‘No Scrubs’’ and ‘‘Unpretty.’’ A fourth album, 3-D (produced by Organized Noize), was released in 2002 after the death of group member Lisa Lopes in a car accident in Honduras. With a combined total of over 21 million albums sold, TLC is one of the most successful female groups in music history.

OUTKAST Energized by TLC’s success in the early 1990s, LaFace delved deeper into Atlanta’s hip hop scene. With the signing of the duo OutKast in 1993, the company shifted from rap groups shaped for mainstream pop success to artists who were more in line with the values and conventions of a hardcore rap audience. Releases by OutKast and their Dungeon Family associates (including the group Goodie Mob), supported by the production team Organized Noize, cemented LaFace’s (and, by extension, Atlanta’s) reputation as a source of serious and authentic hip hop in addition to polished pop and R&B. Over the course of the 1990s, OutKast would become one of the most celebrated and critically acclaimed rap acts ever to emerge from Atlanta, stretching the stylistic parameters of rap even as they remained grounded in the culture and style of Atlanta’s black neighborhoods. Andre Benjamin (known as ‘‘Dre’’ and, after 1999, ‘‘Andre 3000’’) and Antwan ‘‘Big Boi’’ Patton began their collaboration while students at Tri-Cities High School in the East Point area of southwest Atlanta, finding common ground in a preference for sharp dressing and music by New York rap groups like A Tribe Called Quest. Their recording career began in 1994, after they auditioned for producer Rico Wade. From the unfinished basement studio in East Point called The Dungeon, Wade headed up a production team known as Organized Noize, which

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OutKast at the Shoreline Amphitheater on July 18, 2002. (Tim Mosenfelder/Corbis)

also included Pat ‘‘Sleepy’’ Brown, Ray Murray, and Big Rube. After recording the 17-year-old rappers, Wade secured a deal for them with LaFace Records. Their first single ‘‘Player’s Ball’’ was a laid-back and funky paean to Atlanta’s black youth culture, and spent six weeks at the top of the Billboard rap charts in 1993. Their debut album, 1994’s Southernplayalisticadillacmusik, featured richly textured production that depended heavily upon ‘‘live’’ instrument sounds in addition to samples. The duo’s lyrics were strongly oriented towards the spaces and culture of black Atlantans, but the duo rejected the hook-based approach favored by artists working in the regionally popular bass style, instead producing more complexly rendered themes and vocal performances. The album sold more than a million copies, reaching the Top 20 on the Billboard album charts, and earning the group the ‘‘Best New Artist of the Year Award’’ from The Source magazine in 1995. In the 1996 release ATLiens, Patton and Benjamin ventured into production, efforts which resulted in the hit song ‘‘Elevators (Me and You).’’ The album met with widespread critical and commercial acclaim, selling more than a million and a half copies and popularizing the use of the term ‘‘ATL’’ to refer to Atlanta. The pair solidified their creative control by producing most of the songs on their next album, 1998’s Aquemini, which reached sales of 2.5 million copies. The album’s hit song ‘‘Rosa Parks’’ provoked a lawsuit by the song’s namesake and civil rights-era legend, which was eventually settled in the group’s favor. The 2000 album Stankonia represented a tour de force for OutKast and their label LaFace. The album sold five million copies and broke new ground as the first all-rap record to contend for the prestigious ‘‘Album of the Year’’ award at the Grammys. ‘‘Ms. Jackson’’ became their first number one pop single, and the album won two Grammy Awards out of five nominations. Subsequently, they toured as

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the opening act for hip hop singer Lauryn Hill, using a live backup band and further establishing themselves as representatives of hip hop music’s creative vanguard. Following the release of Stankonia, the pair started their own record label, Aquemini Records, and in mid-2001 (a year that also saw the introduction of another venture, OutKast Clothing) Aquemini released its first record, by rapper Slimm Calhoun. OutKast released Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in 2003, which, with two hit singles (‘‘Hey Ya!’’ and ‘‘The Way You Move’’) proved to be an enormous commercial, critical, and crossover success, earning the duo three Grammy Awards, including ‘‘Album of the Year.’’ Beginning in 2004, the pair further diversified by coproducing and starring in the $27 million film production Idlewild, which, along with an accompanying soundtrack album composed by the group, was released in 2006. Following on the heels of OutKast’s debut for LaFace, the label scored another coup in the rap genre with another talented street rap group from Atlanta’s southwest side, the quartet Goodie Mob, which included Big Gipp (Cameron Gipp), Cee-Lo (Thomas Callaway), Khujo (Willie Knighton, Jr.), and T-Mo (Robert Barnett). Their first single, ‘‘Cell Therapy,’’ was representative of the group’s early sound, which combined dark and imaginative production from Organized Noize with dense, complex lyrics laced that framed black poverty and white racism through the lens of conspiracy theories and mysticism. Part of the group’s appeal rested upon the variety of vocal styles that it encompassed; in addition to rapping, Cee-Lo contributes soulful, gospel-inflected singing to many of the group’s songs, a feature which complemented the rap styles of the three remaining members. The group’s LaFace debut, 1995 Soul Food, (which sold 500,000 copies) contained the song ‘‘Dirty South,’’ featuring the rapper Cool Breeze. The song’s title and lyrics refer simultaneously to the image of the South as a region, the image of Southern blacks within the world of hip hop, and, on a local level, the south side of Atlanta, home to the majority of the city’s black residents. Songs like ‘‘Dirty South’’ and ‘‘Soul Food’’ celebrated the culture and collective struggle of working-class and poor black Atlantans and voiced alienated and apocalyptic critiques of the social order and the racial hierarchy upon which it rests. The group went on to release Still Standing in 1998, which with standout songs such as ‘‘They Don’t Dance No Mo’’ proved to be the group’s most successful effort in terms of sales and critical acclaim. They released the album World Party in 1999 before disbanding, after which group member Cee-Lo went on to release several albums for Arista as a solo artist. Dropped by Arista, he has most recently enjoyed success as a member of the pop group Gnarlz Barkley. Throughout the later half of the 1990s, LaFace released records by a range of rap artists, many of them produced by or associated with Organized Noize and the Dungeon Family. However, releases by Parental Advisory, Cool Breeze, Witchdoctor, Lil’ Will, among others, fell short of the success that OutKast and (to a lesser extent) Goodie Mob had achieved. LaFace also supported several

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sublabels, including Dallas Austin’s Rowdy and Tony Mercedes. Ghet-O-Vision, another LaFace sublabel, was headed up by former LaFace A&R director Kawan ‘‘KP’’ Prather. The new subsidiary signed the duo The YoungbloodZ, whose debut album Against da Grain was released in 1999. Prather also signed Clifford ‘‘Tip’’ Harris, whose Ghet-O-Vision debut sold poorly despite his impressive rap skills and contributions by high-profile guests like the Dancehall artist Beenie Man. In 2000, BMG (Arista’s parent company) bought out Reid and Edmonds’ 50 percent share of LaFace for $100 million and the company relocated to Los Angeles as part of a restructuring deal. The label closed its Atlanta offices, and Reid moved to New York to accept a position as Arista’s president and CEO.

ATLANTA BASS In the mid-1990s, pop rap groups like Kris Kross and TLC demonstrated Atlanta’s capacity to produce acts which could be marketed to broad audiences. At the same time, the city’s credibility within more exclusive hip hop circles was on the rise, as evidenced by a special section devoted to Atlanta included in the November 1994 issue of The Source, which featured articles on Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin, OutKast, and the Organized Noize production team, among others. These groups and individuals enjoyed substantial popularity at the local level, but they shared the Atlanta and surrounding regional market with others rooted in the thriving ‘‘bass’’ or ‘‘booty’’ rap scene. As producer and rapper Lil’ Jon remarked, ‘‘Back in high school, we listened to rap and everything, but bass is what got the party hyped’’ (Murray 1996). Stylistically, Atlanta’s bass music did not differ substantially from the Miami bass genre of which it was an outgrowth. The uptempo music prioritized low and powerful bass sounds, which were often complemented by cross rhythms created by hi-hats or handclaps. Extended and nonrepetitive lyrical narratives, while never completely absent, often existed within songs structured by chanted refrains designed to engender audience participation and encourage and enhance embodied enjoyment in the form of dancing. As Atlanta’s music industry expanded in the 1990s, labels, producers, and artists with ties to the city increasingly dominated the production of uptempo bass records, once the exclusive province of Miami, while also incorporating influences from other regional centers like New Orleans and Memphis. In comparison with hardcore gansgta or political/cultural rap, hook-driven bass hits like ‘‘Dazzey Duks’’ and ‘‘Bankhead Bounce’’ were considered by many hip hoppers to be novelty songs with no lasting impact. In reality, these early Southern club hits were the first of what would be a growing body of material that linked the underground Atlanta club rap scene with national audiences and companies. Record label owner Tony Mercedes, who moved from Augusta to Atlanta around 1994, was at the center of several of these underground bass sensations, producing several hit regional singles that brought the energetic Southern club

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sound to a mass audience. He began his eponymous record label in 1992 with the single ‘‘Dazzey Duks,’’ a tribute to super-short cutoffs by Augusta-based Duice. After promoting the record independently for more than a year, Mercedes saw ‘‘Dazzey Duks’’ reach platinum status and spent months on the Billboard charts. He followed his success with Duice with another highly successful bass crossover act, Tag Team. The duo’s 1993 single, ‘‘Whoomp! (There It Is)’’ achieved quadruple-platinum sales and stands as the best-selling bass single in history (Tompkins 2002). Other local independent labels also produced breakthrough bass records in Atlanta. ‘‘Bankhead Bounce,’’ a song by Leonard ‘‘Diamond’’ Atkins featuring a 15-year-old rapper, Deongelo ‘‘D-Roc’’ Holmes, celebrated a dance popularized on the city’s west side, and was on the front end of an Atlanta trend of bass songs using the chanted phrase ‘‘what’s up’’ in the chorus. Atlanta’s role in the bass genre was further expressed when So So Def released the compilation, So So Def Bass All-Stars, in 1996, a project largely supervised by ‘‘Lil Jon’’ Smith featuring local legends like MC Shy D and DJ Smurf and producing a hit single by Ghost Town DJs. Carlos ‘‘Kizzy Rock’’ Young and Michael ‘‘DJ Smurf’’ Crooms, both veterans of King Edward J.’s J-Team, were two of Atlanta’s top bass artists and producers in the mid-1990s, creating local reputations with mixtapes and attaining regional popularity with songs like ‘‘Crank This Shit Up!’’ and ‘‘Ooh Lawd (Party People).’’ Both artists released records on Ichiban and the Ichiban-distributed Black Label Records, run by Xavier Hargrove. Kizzy Rock released several singles for Tommy Boy in 1994, then moved to Black Label, where he produced his fulllength debut Can’t Stop the Rock in 1996. He released another full-length, Grand Champion, independently in 1999. DJ Smurf released several full-length albums for Ichiban/WRAP including 1995’s Versastyles and 1998’s Dead Crunk, as well as an album (ColliPark Music) on MC Shy D’s Benz Records label in the late 1990s.

THE CRUNK GENERATION By 1998, Atlanta had earned a reputation within the music industry as a fertile source of rap, R&B, and pop, leading the city’s mayor, Bill Campbell, to quip, ‘‘There is no Atlanta sound . . . unless, of course, you like the sound of money’’ (Sack 1998). Atlanta’s status in the early 1990s as a source of crossover pop-rap acts and its subsequent emergence as a source of authentic, serious hip hop in the mid-decade gave way to a period in which Atlanta became the epicenter of a new style or subgenre of rap which would eventually become known as ‘‘crunk.’’ The style was nurtured in clubs like Charles’ Disco (see sidebar: Charles’ Disco) and others, where young black Atlantans abandoned themselves to rowdy collective enjoyment.

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CHARLES’ DISCO Charles’ Social Club, also known as Charles’ Disco, was a nightclub located in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood, and was one of the many bars, teen clubs, and strip joints in which the Atlanta scene evolved and thrived. Located at 1235 Simpson Rd. N.W. (now renamed Joseph E. Boone) at its intersection with Ashby Street, the club was operated by Charles Tatem (uncle of Goodie Mob rapper T-Mo), who rented space in one of the many strip malls that stretch across Atlanta’s urban-suburban landscape. In addition to DJs and dancing, Charles’ Disco also featured special events like the weekly ‘‘Mr. Knock-Out’’ competition described by Tatem’s nephew, Goodie Mob rapper T-Mo, in which male patrons would vie for the approval of female patrons in a ‘‘sexy man contest’’ (‘‘Crew Love’’ 2001: 77–78). In its late 1980s heyday, Charles’ Disco and similar clubs (like the nearby Sam’s Disco) drew large and enthusiastic crowds of young African Americans to drink, dance, and socialize, and the club was the scene of many late-night episodes of fisticuffs and gunplay. The atmosphere that prevailed at Charles’ and places like it helped to inspire the rowdy, collective spirit that would form the core of the crunk style: as local rapper Sammy Sam claimed, ‘‘That was the first crunk club in Atlanta’’ (Black Cat Bone 2002). Closed for over a decade, the club remains a nostalgic touchstone for a generation of Atlanta-based hip hop artists and their peers; Charles’ was referenced in the lyrics of OutKast’s song ‘‘Spottieottiedopaliscious’’ (on the 2001 album Big Boi & Dre Present . . . OutKast ), and Tionne ‘‘T-Boz’’ Watkins of the group TLC claimed that the song ‘‘Hands Up’’ (on the 2002 album 3D) was inspired by an episode in Charles’ Disco in which she encountered her then-boyfriend grinding against some other woman—‘‘I was like, ‘Oh-no-the-hell-he-ain’t’ ’’ (Seymour 2002).

Stylistically, crunk relied upon many of the same techniques which had characterized bass music, with hooks rather than extended lyrics voiced over beats with floor-rumbling bass designed for large club systems. Compared to bass, crunk production was starker and slower, using eerie synthesizer lines to create a darker, more menacing feel. Lyrically, it replaced (to some extent) the unbridled male sexualized enjoyment depicted in bass with expressions of rage, pain, and aggression. Like bass, crunk lyrics often focus on female dancers, either as addressees of exhortations to dance or as objectified background to other narratives. However, in comparison to bass, crunk lyrics contain significantly more violent overtones and depictions of confrontation and violence between men. The crunk vocal performance involves collectively chanted or shouted choruses punctuated by extended screams and other emotionally charged vocal sounds.

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Lil Jon at the 31st Annual American Music Awards on November 16, 2003. (ABC/Photofest)

At the forefront of the new musical style was Atlanta’s ‘‘Lil Jon’’ Smith, a DJ, producer and vocalist who had spent several years working as an A&R representative for So So Def Records and who had produced the So So Def Bass Allstars project in 1996. Also in the early 1990s, Smith had worked as a club and party DJ with his crew Black Market Entertainment. Smith started as a radio DJ at the college station WRAS, then moved on along with fellow DJ Dwayne ‘‘Emperor’’ Searcy to WRFG, a community station, where they hosted a mix show called ‘‘World Party.’’ In 1996, he joined two backup performers from Decatur and formed the group Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz. The group’s debut, Get Crunk, Who U Wit—Da Album (1997), featured guest appearances by several Atlanta stalwarts including Kizzy Rock, producer Jazze Pha, and rapper Playa Poncho; it was one of two albums released independently by the group in the late 1990s that reached gold record status, mainly on regional sales. The song’s lyrics are some of the earliest to prominently feature the word ‘‘crunk.’’ In 2001, Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz signed with New York-based TVT Records, a move that proved enormously successful for both parties. Beginning with 2001’s Put Yo Hood Up (2001), the group steadily increased in popularity. As Lil Jon rose to stardom and other artists emerged producing similar material, crunk and its most visible artists were greeted with considerable derision and disdain from mainstream media outlets and many hip hop purists. However, by 2003 The Source named Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz Group of the Year. Lil Jon continued in his role as crunk’s standard bearer with releases including Kings of Crunk (2004) and Crunk Juice (2005), which was cross-promoted with an energy drink by the same name.

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Alongside Lil Jon, the duo Ying Yang Twins was another Atlanta-based act who enjoyed enormous commercial success with the crunk style. The group included Deongelo ‘‘D-Roc’’ Holmes, who had debuted in 1995 as the vocalist in the regional hit song ‘‘Bankhead Bounce’’ and had subsequently released several bass albums on Ichiban/WRAP. His 1997 release True Dawgs prominently featured a rapper named Eric ‘‘Kaine’’ Jackson, and the two rappers formalized a partnership as the Ying Yang Twins while working on a track for DJ Smurf’s 1998 release, Dead Crunk. With Smurf as producer, the pair released the strip club anthem ‘‘Whistle While You Twurk’’ in 2000, which led to a signing with Universal and the release of the album Thug Walkin’. They moved to Koch for their next album, 2002’s Alley, then signed with TVT in 2003 after collaborating with Lil Jon on his smash hit ‘‘Get Low.’’ Their 2003 album Me & My Brother sold well, but their album USA (United State of Atlanta) did even better, driven by the popularity of ‘‘Wait (the Whisper Song).’’ The pair released their fifth album, Chemically Unbalanced, in 2006. Strongly rooted in the culture and values of the strip club, the Ying Yang Twins have consistently produced music that pushes the boundaries of crunk and hip hop generally, using whoops, shouts, growls, and other vocal affectations to create a vast range of sounds and timbres (as evidenced in songs such as ‘‘I-Yi-Yi’’ or the hoarsely whispered ‘‘Wait’’). In addition to Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins, the Atlanta crunk scene—which in many ways blends seamlessly into the mid-1990s bass scene that preceded it— included other successful artists with a similar approach to self-presentation, narrative voice, and vocal performance. Wayne ‘‘Bone Crusher’’ Hardnett started with the group Lyrical Giants, which was signed to Tommy Boy Records, and went on to develop a career as a solo artist with songs like the thunderous ‘‘Never Scared.’’ Rapper Pastor Troy rose to local fame in the late 1990s as one of the prominent artists associated with the new crunk style featuring aggressive, chanted group vocals. His father, a Haitian-American Baptist preacher and former drill sergeant, can be seen as influencing Pastor Troy’s tendency to blend ideas drawn from the worlds of religion and militarism in his lyrics, vocal performance style, and imagery, a potent, apocalyptic mixture, evident in his first full-length release, 1999’s We Ready: I Declare War. Along with his group Down South Georgia Boyz, he released several albums independently, signing with Universal in 2002 and producing the album Universal Soldier, which featured the song ‘‘Are We Cuttin’ ’’ with Ms. Jade, his most commercially successful effort to date. The military theme was also portrayed by Drama, another local rapper who enjoyed success with his crunk-like song ‘‘Left, Right, Left.’’ Pastor Troy’s associate, Rasheeda (one of the few women performers in the genre), enjoyed a brief period of local prominence on the strength of regional hits such as 2004’s crunk anthem ‘‘Vibrate.’’ With a more laid-back and humorous style than his contemporaries in the crunk subgenre, Chris ‘‘Ludacris’’ Bridges (born 1977) has become one of Atlanta’s best-known hip hop artists on the national stage. Born in Illinois but raised in

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Ludacris performs at ‘‘Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis’’ on July 7, 2007, in New York City. (NBC/ Photofest)

Atlanta, Bridges worked in local radio before releasing his independent debut Incognegro; the album’s regional success led to Brad ‘‘Scarface’’ Jordan, new head of Def Jam South, to sign Ludacris to the label. Ludacris’ debut for Def Jam, Back for the First Time (2000), sold over three million copies on the strength of songs including ‘‘Southern Hospitality’’ and established Ludacris as one of the leading lights of rap music in Atlanta. In late 2001, he released Word of Mouf, which achieved double platinum sales thanks in large part to the singles ‘‘Area Codes’’ and ‘‘Roll Out (My Business).’’ The combined sales of these and subsequent albums, like Chicken-N-Beer (2003), The Red Light District (2004), Release Therapy (2006), and Theater of the Mind (2008) make him one of the top-selling solo artists in the history of Southern rap. In addition to his highly successful work as a solo artist and numerous guest appearances on other artists’ songs (including R&B star Usher’s smash hit ‘‘Yeah’’ in 2004), Ludacris brought his five-person group, Disturbing Tha Peace, to Def Jam for the album Golden Grain in 2002. His profile in the mainstream media rose in 2002 when he was hired as a spokesperson for soft drink giant Pepsi, only to be released after conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly raised objections to the rapper’s messages and image. However, his humorously lewd lyrics and good-time attitude have continued to endear him to audiences and critics, who were quick to make the association between Ludacris’s pimp raps and the idea of the ‘‘Dirty South.’’ He became the focus of a brief controversy in 2005 after he appeared at the Vibe Hip-Hop Awards clad in a leather suit with a ‘‘confederate flag’’ motif,

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and again in 2008 over the lyrics in his song ‘‘Politics (Obama Is Here)’’ from his mixtape The Preview. While Atlanta has became closely associated with crunk in the last 10 years, the city’s audiences and record labels have also enabled the rise of other artists purveying more straightforward gangsta or thug rap, which often revolves around narratives of hustling in the drug game, or ‘‘trapping.’’ Clifford ‘‘T.I.’’ Harris (born 1980) has emerged as the most successful of these artists, although his meteoric rise has been interrupted several times by brushes with the law. His 2001 debut with LaFace/Ghet-O-Vision, I’m Serious, failed to produce a single and sold poorly despite his impressive rap chops and a guest appearance by reggae artist Beenie Man. Subsequently, he continued to build his local reputation with several mixtapes (featuring his crew, P$C, Pimp $quad Click) produced by DJ Drama, with whom the rapper has maintained a close relationship. His next album, Trap Muzik, was released in 2003 under a new agreement with Atlantic Records, who distribute Grand Hustle Records, a company founded by T.I. and Jason Geter in 2003. Driven by hit songs like ‘‘Rubberband Man’’ and ‘‘24’s,’’ the album reached platinum sales. His rise was interrupted by a one-year sentence for probation violation in 2004, during which time he still managed to film a music video (for the song ‘‘Let’s Get Away’’) using prisoners and guards in the maximum security wing of the Fulton County jail. He released his fourth album, Urban Legend, late in the same year. In 2005, his album King debuted at the number one spot on the Billboard 200, a feat repeated with his 2006 effort T.I. vs. T.I.P. In May 2006 he and his entourage were involved in an altercation after a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio, in which his assistant and childhood friend Philant Johnson was fatally shot. His debut as a motion picture actor came in 2006 with the film ATL, which he followed in 2007 with an appearance in American Gangster. In October 2007, he was arrested on a variety of charges related to the possession of unregistered machine guns and silencers. He was convicted in March of 2008 and sentenced to serve a year in jail after completing 1,000 hours of community service. His sixth album, Paper Trail, was released later that year, and featured two singles (‘‘Whatever You Like’’ and ‘‘Live Your Life,’’ featuring singer Rihanna) that reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. In June of 2008, the rapper signed a three-film deal with Sony Picture Entertainment. Jay ‘‘Young Jeezy’’ Jenkins, (born 1977), a native of Columbia, South Carolina, who developed his career in Macon, Georgia, has also ably represented the gangsta genre in Atlanta. He caught the attention of national audiences with his narratives of the drug trade beginning with 2005’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, which reached double-platinum sales, followed by the highly successful The Inspiration. In addition to his official releases, he has also recorded several mixtapes in DJ Drama’s ‘‘Gangsta Grillz’’ series, including Trap or Die (2004) and You Can’t Ban the Snowman (2006). Jeezy has gone on to open a clothing store in downtown Atlanta and a record label, CTE (Corporate Thugz Entertainment), although his

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public statements of affiliation with jailed gang leader Demetrius ‘‘Big Meech’’ Flenory, formerly head of the Black Mafia Family, have caused some concern among the music industry. In 2005, Jenkins became embroiled in a dispute with Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane (Radric Davis) over the latter’s hit single ‘‘Icy.’’ A confrontation between one of Jeezy’s Macon associates and Gucci Mane left the former dead and the latter facing murder charges. In jail, Davis was unable to promote his debut album, but the rapper was eventually released after prosecutors dropped the murder charge. His 2005 release Trap House sold well enough to secure a contract with Atlantic Records, where he released Back to the Traphouse in 2007. In recent years, as crunk has faded into the background as a distinct style, other Atlanta-based artists have successfully crossed over to mainstream audiences with music that originated with the city’s club scene and a new generation of independent record label owners. In 2005 and 2006, Atlanta-based groups were at the forefront of a less aggressive style characterized by slightly slower tempos than crunk and extremely sparse backing tracks which often feature the metronomic sound of snapping fingers, which has led to the use of the name ‘‘snap’’ to describe the subgenre. Along with crunk and other Southern styles such as Miami bass or New Orleans bounce, snap relies heavily upon call-and-response lyrical constructions and often features narratives of sexual objectification, desire, titillation, and conquest set in a strip club or nightclub. The group Dem Franchize Boyz was one of the first to break through to mainstream success, with their 2004 single ‘‘White Tee.’’ In 2006 they reached the top of Billboard’s rap charts with the song ‘‘Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It’’ (featuring Lil Peanut and Charlay). Another 2006 snap single, ‘‘Laffy Taffy,’’ by the group D4L, represented a massive crossover success, selling a record-breaking number of downloads. The group’s 2006 album Down 4 Life also produced several top-selling ringtones. While the stylistic particularities of snap have been left behind, Atlanta continues to be a reliable source of club rap with a similar feel, as evidenced by the 2008 regional hit by V.I.C. (Victor Owuso), ‘‘Get Silly.’’ In recent years, so-called ‘‘mixtapes’’—full-length CDs released independently by DJs—have become a central part of ‘‘official’’ marketing strategies. Philadelphia native DJ Drama (Tyree Simmons), working with Don Cannon and Brandon ‘‘DJ Sense’’ Douglas, formed a crew the Aphilliates while attending college at Clark Atlanta University in the late 1990s. Since that time, DJ Drama has emerged as one of the most successful producers of mixtapes in the Atlanta area, producing a number of releases for artists including T.I., Young Jeezy, and Lil Wayne under the popular ‘‘Gangsta Grillz’’ series, which spotlights Southern rappers. The success of Gangsta Grillz has led to a weekly radio show for the Aphilliates, an album deal with Atlantic Records, and another partnership with major label Asylum. Despite mixtapes’ semilegal status with regard to rights and royalties, they have been generally tolerated (if not encouraged) by the mainstream music industry for

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their promotional value. However, an investigation in early 2007 into the Aphilliates’ mixtape operation initiated by the police chief of Morrow, Georgia, (pop. 5,000) and supported by the Recording Industry Association of America led to a raid in which tens of thousands of CDs (along with a variety of music equipment and vehicles) were seized from the DJs’ studio and warehouse. DJ Drama and Don Cannon were charged under the state’s Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute and, as of this writing, still face hefty fines and up to five years prison time if convicted. Their arrest has helped to focus a national debate about the role of such ‘‘grey-market’’ activities in the rap industry. In late 2007, Gangsta Grillz: The Album was released by Atlantic under their Grand Hustle imprint. Since being charged, DJ Drama has continued to produce mixtapes for top-drawer Southern artists. Atlanta continues to serve as a launching pad for new artists, and several recent arrivals have found success in the pop mainstream. Tallahassee, Florida native TPain (Faheem Najm) has released three albums in the last two years, reaching mainstream success with catchy, hook-driven material with an emphasis on sung choruses, often using the ‘‘Auto Tune’’ vocal effect. Collaborated with Ludacris and Lil Wayne, Atlanta will likely continue to benefit from the presence of producers and label owners whose roots in the local and regional rap scene stretch back decades. These include Aldrin ‘‘DJ Toomp’’ Davis, who got his start producing music for Luther Campbell’s Miami-based label. He produced some of T.I.’s biggest hits, including ‘‘24’s,’’ and the Grammy-winning ‘‘What You Know,’’ and won another Grammy for his work with Kanye West in 2008. He is co-owner of record label NZone Entertainment. Atlanta is likely to maintain its prominence within the world of hip hop in the Southeast in years to come. Producers associated with the crunk era of the late 1990s like Mr. Collipark and Lil Jon have moved from the underground to the mainstream. The past decade has seen the increased mainstream exposure of music that originated in Atlanta’s nightclubs and strip joints, resulting in subgenres like snap and crunk, a trend which will likely continue as major labels continue to seek the next rising star and local independents like Big Oomp Records continue to groom emergent local talent. Mr. Collipark’s signing of Soulja Boy Tell Em (DeAndre Way) after the viral spread of ‘‘Crank That (Soulja Boy)’’ signals a new era in which companies explore virtual spaces like Youtube in an attempt to find promising unsigned artists with hit potential. While Atlanta remains a city with vital and deep-rooted African American communities, the demographics of the metro area have been changing dramatically over the last decade. Hispanics now make up around 10 percent of Atlanta’s population, and their numbers have increased an estimated 900 percent since 1990. International migrants such as these have increasingly contributed to Atlanta’s diversity, a fact which will likely influence the city’s musical culture.

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REFERENCES Black Cat Bone. ‘‘Sammy Sam.’’ Murder Dog [2002?]. February 16, 2004. http:// www.murderdog.com/archives/sammysam/SammySam3.html. ‘‘Crew Love.’’ XXL [#?? ’year end issue’] 2001, pp. 74–78, 80 [‘‘genealogy Bonsu Thompson and Lang Whitaker’’]. Murray, Sonia. ‘‘Sound Shopping: Def ‘All-Stars’ Blasts Back to Roots.’’ The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, June 4, 1996, B2. NewsBank Inc. Emory Libraries, Atlanta, GA. http://www.newsbank.com (accessed September 9, 2008). Sack, Kevin. ‘‘In the New South, an Heir to Motown.’’ New York Times, March 8, 1998: [section 2, 1]. NewsBank Inc. Emory Libraries, Atlanta, GA. http:// www.newsbank.com (accessed September 9, 2008). Sarig, Roni. Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing. New York: Da Capo Press, 2007. See esp. chap. 5, ‘‘Atlanta —Fusion and Family’’ (pp. 94–145); chap. 7, ‘‘Atlanta as the New Motown’’ (pp. 170–218); chap. 10, ‘‘Crunk Gets Crunk’’ (pp. 272–312). Seymour, Craig. ‘‘Two for One: Life without ‘Left Eye’: TLC Says New Album, ‘3D,’ Signals End of an Era.’’ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 10, 2002: M1. NewsBank Inc. Emory Libraries, Atlanta, GA. http://www .newsbank.com (accessed September 9, 2008). Tompkins, Dave. ‘‘The Primer.’’ The Wire 223 (September 2002): 42–47. ‘‘Welcome to Atlanta’’ [special section]. The Source, November 1994, 49–62, 102. [articles on Jermaine Dupri, Dallas Austin, Organized Noize, OutKast].

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Arrested Development 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of . . . Chrysalis, 1992. Bone Crusher AttenCHUN! So So Def Records, 2003. Da Brat Funkdafied. So So Def, 1994. D4L Down for Life. Asylum Records, 2005. DJ Kizzy Rock Can’t Stop the Rock. Black Label Recordings, 1996. DJ Smurf Dead Crunk. Ichiban Records, 1998. D-Roc Englewood 4 Life! WRAP Records, 1995.

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Goodie Mob Soul Food. LaFace Records, 1995. Gucci Mane Trap House. Big Cat records/Tommy Boy Music, 2005. Kilo Get This Party Started. WRAP Records, 1995. Kris Kross Totally Krossed Out. Sony, 1992. Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz Put Yo Hood Up. TVT Records, 2001. Ludacris Word of Mouf. Def Jam Recordings, 2001. MC Shy D Got to Be Tough. Luke Skyywalker Records, 1987. Mo-Jo ‘‘Jump, Stomp and Twist.’’ Jam-The-Box, 1984. OutKast ATLiens. LaFace Records, 1996. Soulja Boy Tell Em souljaboytellem.com. Collipark Music, 2007. T.I. Trap Muzik. Atlantic, 2003. TLC CrazySexyCool. LaFace Records, 1994. Various Artists So So Def Bass Allstars. Sony, 1996. Witchdoctor A S.W.A.T. Healin’ Ritual. Interscope Records, 1998. Ying Yang Twins My Brother & Me. TVT Records, 2004. Young Jeezy Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101. Island Def Jam Music Group, 2005.

CHAPTER 19 Virginia Is for Lovers and Rappers: Hampton Roads Rappers, Changing the Game Laurie Cannady Go to any Hampton Roads, Virginia, high school football game right before halftime and you’ll see the many spectators waiting in anticipation. If you’re an outsider, you probably think that they are waiting for that phenomenal pass or tackle that will send the crowd into a roar. But, if you’re a native Virginian from Portsmouth, Norfolk, or Virginia Beach, then you know what the wait is about. You know that the crowd is counting down the minutes, the seconds, until the field is transformed into a concert stage. You know that it doesn’t matter if the home team is losing 40–0, or the star quarterback has left the field with an injury. All that matters are the uniform-clad members of the high school marching band, making their way to the field, filing into formation, and mobilizing into entities of entertainment (see sidebar: Hampton Roads High School Bands). The bass of the tuba, thumping in the hearts of audience members, becomes the heart of the band. The snare drum keeps time with the movements of the drum major and majorettes. The sounds of the bass drum boom through the field into the stands as if they are the chants of wise men choreographing the moves of a tribal dance. Old high school rivalries that date beyond the ages of many of the players on the football field are fought out in musical arrangements that present the most current songs of the hip hop scene. This is what occurs on any given Friday night. This is the music of the Hampton Roads heart, and it has consistently influenced rappers that were born and bred in that area. If this picture demonstrates anything, it shows that Virginians, specifically, Hampton Roads Virginians, are serious about their music. Big bass, big dance, and big sound infuse the music of the Hampton Roads area. It also infuses the music of its hip hop artists. It is no easy feat to define the character of Hampton Roads’ hip hop music. In fact, in Third Coast: Outkast and Timbaland and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing, Roni Sarig successfully argues that the Hampton Roads area was considered a ‘‘blank slate’’ in regards to hip hop (147). Despite the earlier

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HAMPTON ROADS HIGH SCHOOL BANDS In the Hampton Roads area, high school bands are a staple of the African American and hip hop experience. The marching band takes on a role of its own as it becomes a weekly form of entertainment, where new music is introduced, and oldie-but-goodies are celebrated. The concept of the high school band in the Hampton Roads area is not a new one. In fact, marching bands have long been a form of entertainment that has been synonymous with the hip hop experience. It’s not unusual to go to a high school or college football game and find that the majority of the audience is anticipating the band performance, more than the athletic performance taking place on the football field. Understanding the role of high school and college marching bands on the Hampton Roads’ hip hop scene is imperative if one hopes to understand Hampton Roads’ hip hop music. First, marching bands are known for the rhythm, which is carried by the drum beats that are often seen in any competitive band performance. You’ll find this same heavy rhythm in most of the songs produced by Timbaland and Pharrell. Second, Hampton Roads’ marching bands are best known for their choreography. It isn’t enough to just have a powerful sound. While power is a requirement, showmanship is just as important. Similar to the choreography and uniforms seen in Missy Elliot’s videos, it’s not difficult to see the impact that Hampton Roads’ marching bands have had on her music. Manor High School, the school in which Missy Elliot attended often made a showing at the ‘‘Battle of the Bands’’ sponsored by Hampton Roads’ most popular marching band, Norfolk State University. The battle of the bands is composed of various high school bands in the Hampton Roads area. In the early 1990s Manor, Woodrow Wilson, IC Norcom, Churchland High School, and Cradock High School were participants. The schools would compete for recognition and validation. High school marching bands in the Hampton Roads area are much more than the typical extracurricular activity. It is a way of life. As the students work from sun up till sun down in the summer months, it’s easy to see that it, like Hampton Roads’ hip hop, is a unique expression of self. It is an opportunity for Hampton Roads youth to find voice, a voice that easily translates from the football and parade fields to the tracks of Pharrell and Timbaland.

absence of hip hop culture in that area, with the talents of its performers and producers, Hampton Roads has grown into a powerhouse within the world of music: A small group of talents—performers, but more significantly, producers— brought an entirely new sound from the place where the highway ends. The

Virginia Is for Lovers and Rappers | 497 music of Timbaland and Missy Elliot, and of The Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, brewed in secret, behind-the-scenes in a place no one would find, then—with no regional ties limiting its appeal—it got exported and turned into hits for just about anyone and everyone in American pop. (147–48) With the extraordinary efforts of a few rappers and producers, the Hampton Roads area was placed on the hip hop map, thus changing the musical landscape of the rap world. One prevalent characteristic of hip hop in the Hampton Roads area is its marriage with the world of R&B. Before 1990, the Hampton Roads area was, as Ronig argues, devoid of a regional rap culture. Seated between the Bronx, the hip hop capital of America, and Florida, considered the Dirty South of that particular period, much of the music enjoyed in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, and Norfolk was from those two regions. That was until musical genius, Teddy Riley, entered the Hampton Roads scene. Riley is the father of ‘‘New Jack Swing.’’ In a Black Entertainment Television (BET) documentary on Riley, DJ Red Alert calls him the ‘‘Hidden Genius,’’ because he let his music, not his physical presence, speak for him (Teddy Riley: The Man Behind the Music). New Jack Swing is the hybrid combination of hip hop and R&B. As a musical archetype it is known for its ‘‘swing beats.’’ Andre Harrell describes this style of music best. He states, ‘‘[New Jack Swing] takes the best elements of the melodic sound of R&B, married to some D.C. Go Go, with some hip hop, [and] James Brown drum samples’’ (Teddy Riley: The Man Behind the Music). Much like the high school and university bands in the Hampton Roads area, the drum beat carries the rhythm of the songs from the ‘‘New Jack Swing’’ era. Before the days of the artists featured in this chapter, New Jack Swing infused hip hop into R&B tracks. It wasn’t unusual to hear artists like Color Me Badd and Keith Sweat singing to a beat that seemed more fitting for a hip hop artist. With his new sound, Teddy Riley landed in the Hampton Roads area as if it was a musical territory to be conquered. Housing his first production studio in Virginia Beach, up-and-coming singers, writers, and rappers had first dibs at tracks produced by Riley. Introduced to the music scene as a member of the R&B group, Guy, Riley, made a smooth transition to hip hop. By producing songs for rappers like Wrecks-N-Effect, Redhead Kingpin, and Heavy D and the Boyz, the marriage between hip hop and R&B was cemented, leading to the birth of New Jack Swing and a transformation of the 1990s music scene. Although Riley’s music studio was housed in the Hampton Roads area, initially, his musical contributions had no direct impact on Virginia’s hip hop scene. Music from artists like Wrecks-N-Effect and Keith Sweat was certainly enjoyed by Virginians in the Hampton Roads area; however, these artists were not native Virginians. It wasn’t until Riley began to work with up and coming producer Timothy

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(Timbaland) Mosely that a native hip hop emerged in the Hampton Roads, Virginia area. Once Riley began mentoring Timbaland and Timbaland began molding his own artists, Virginia’s hip hop scene proved itself to be a powerful force, distinctly different from its counterparts in the Dirty South and the Brooklyn/Bronx areas. The usage of slang like ‘‘No diggity’’ became commonplace in raps performed by artists from the Hampton Roads area. Hand claps became a common trait of its music. This evolution can in some ways be compared to the impact of jazz on the African American community. Big band/bass sounds replaced the hard rap sounds that had dominated hip hop. As opposed to the fast and sporadic beats that were unique to artists like Luther Campbell and the 2 Live Crew, Timbaland’s productions had more subtle beats, reminiscent of Samba music. This is seen in Elgin (Ginuwine) Lumpkin’s debut album, Ginuwine the Bachelor. While Timbaland’s productions with Ginuwine demonstrate the changing face of R&B music, the character of hip hop in the Hampton Roads was not affected until Timbaland’s production of his own album with long time friend, Magoo. It is with this production that hip hop in Virginia took on its own voice. As stated in Shaheem Reid’s article, ‘‘My Block: Virginia,’’ the Hampton Roads area quickly became a powerful voice in the world of hip hop. This is demonstrated as the author states: The place with the most banging beats right now is not Atlanta, New York or even the city where Dr. Dre creates his magic, Los Angeles. It’s little old Virginia—more specifically, the Hampton Roads area, which includes the cities of Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk and of course Virginia Beach. (Reid 1) With the continued success of Hampton Roads’ hip hop sons and daughters, this voice continues to grow, solidifying the region’s place in hip hop history.

TIMBALAND Timothy (Timbaland) Mosley (born on March 10, 1971) is a native of Norfolk, Virginia. At the age of 19, Timbaland became the prote´ge´ of Devante Swing, producer, performer, and songwriter for the R&B group Jodeci. Timbaland has worn many hats since his beginnings in the genre of hip hop. From DJ to monster producer, he has etched out a place for himself in hip hop history: [Timbaland] has had many reincarnations—from disc jockey DJ Tiny Tim to half of the hip hop group Timbaland & Magoo; from membership in Devante Swing’s Swing Mob crew known as Da Bassment to S.B.I. (Surrounded by Idiots), a production ensemble including Pharrell Williams, to being CEO of his own label, Mosley Music Group. (Timbaland Biography)

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Timbaland (Jessica Miller/Corbis)

Timbaland’s evolution as a producer and an artist demonstrates his flexibility as a ‘‘music man.’’ He has worked in almost every genre of music from pop to hip hop. He has also worked with an array of artists, from Elton John to Nickleback. With the diversity of the talent with which he works, Timbaland has earned the moniker ‘‘musical genius.’’ Despite his major successes with hip hop, Timbaland refuses to be labeled as a hip hop producer. Timbaland states: No, I’m not a hip-hop producer [ . . . ]. I am a producer [ . . . ]. I’m not hiphop, because Jay-Z is not just hip-hop. He wouldn’t be speaking at the United Nations if he was just hip-hop. He wouldn’t own a basketball team if he was just hip-hop. He is bigger than hip-hop. I’m bigger than hip-hop. I do everything. (Reid) His ability to ‘‘do everything’’ has ensured longevity in his career. Recently teaming up with musical heavy hitters, Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, Timbaland has produced hit after hit. His beats are recognizable before the first note is sung. He has created a musical voice that is uniquely his own and everyone is craving it. Earning millions for his tracks, as a producer, Timbaland, is in demand. However enormous his successes are now, Timbaland came from the most humble of beginnings.

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Raised in Norfolk, Virginia, Timbaland began making beats on a Casio keyboard. Those musical productions certainly differ from the ones made in his million dollar studio in Virginia Beach today (see sidebar: Virginia Beach). Early on in his career, Timbaland began working with another Hampton Roads hip hop artist, Missy Elliot. After being signed to Devante Swing’s Swing Mob label, Missy, Timbaland, and Magoo traveled to New Jersey where Timbaland and Magoo were signed to Swing Mob as a rap duo. Although Timbaland was signed as a rapper, the majority of his earlier work with Swing Mob was in the area of production. He played a small role in the production of Jodeci’s platinum album, The Show, The After Party, The Hotel. It is with Jodeci that Timbaland began honing his skills as a master producer. Despite his work with Jodeci, Timbaland experienced a limited amount of success under Devante’s tutelage. He worked on productions for members of The Bassment, Devante’s version of a boarding school for musicians, but received no significant production credit. It wasn’t until Timbaland’s production of the R&B group 702’s song ‘‘Steelo’’ that he debuted as a producer separate from Devante Swing. While Timbaland’s success with 702 was significant, it pales in comparison to his success with Elgin (Ginuwine) Lumpkin, Jr. Ginuwine’s debut album, Ginuwine, the Bachelor was a producer’s dream. It was solely produced by Timbaland. His presence as a unique and unpredictable producer was readily apparent in the sound that filled Ginuwine’s debut album. Songs like, ‘‘Only When You’re Lonely,’’ incorporate sound effects reminiscent of storms that might occur in a heart that is in turmoil. The syncopated sound of the beat throughout the song seems to keep time with a broken heart. This dynamic can also be seen in songs like ‘‘Hello.’’ Throughout this song, the dial tone and busy signal of a neglected phone reflect the lonely caller’s sadness. R&B productions like these demonstrate Timbaland’s ability to make his music entertaining on all levels. While listeners are lulled by Ginuwine’s voice, they are also entertained by the behind-thescenes action that generally occurs in everyday life. Every lover has felt a storm raging in his mind as he realizes that he is a jilted lover. Every girl has heard the dial tone ringing in her ear when she wanted nothing more than to hear her lover’s apologetic words. With his inclusion of sound effects, Timbaland makes these experiences real for his listeners. He is able to connect on a common level, where we all have been and all hope to rise from. Although Timbaland’s first successes as a producer were in the genre of R&B, this in no way negates his standing within the hip hop community. Soon after his work with Ginuwine, Timbaland released his own rap album with long-time friend Melvin (Magoo) Barcliff. Magoo, born in Norfolk, Virginia, had a nasal voice that made his songs reminiscent of A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip. Rather than this comparison being an advantage, it might have been Magoo’s albatross. One Q-Tip was enough for the hip hop industry and Magoo’s sound was not as endearing as Timbaland’s beats. Despite those limitations, in 1997, Timbaland and Magoo released

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VIRGINIA BEACH If Virginia is for lovers, then Virginia Beach, Virginia, must be where lovers go to cool off. Virginia Beach is one of Virginia’s most visited tourist attractions. With a beach front that is 300-feet wide and a boardwalk that spans three miles, Virginia Beach offers native Virginians and tourists the vacation experience of a life time. Known for its seafood cuisine, mixed with Southern delicacies, Virginia Beach offers tourists a well-rounded vacation experience. There is kayaking, sailing, and surfing throughout much of the summer season. Tourists can sometimes spot dolphins and whales during their visits. While Virginia Beach is seen as an oasis for most tourists, it is also a proving ground for major players in the hip hop scene. Malice of the group Clipse states: ‘‘22nd Street, Virginia Beach, this is what we call the strip. [ . . . ] It be poppin’ like when the colleges come down here, you would see Jay-Z down here and you could see BIG out here. [It was] just a cipher’’ (My Block: Virginia). Despite the beauty of Virginia Beach’s coast, some communities that surround the beauty also breed the harsh raps performed by the rappers like Clipse. While Virginia Beach, Virginia, is purportedly for lovers, there are portions of the Hampton Roads area that often erupt into black-on-black crime and drug activity. This isn’t the Virginia that is often seen in travel brochures, but it is the Virginia that can be seen in the lyrics of Hampton Roads’ hip hop artists. Bordered by Chesapeake, Portsmouth, and Norfolk, Virginia Beach serves as a pipeline to the Atlantic Ocean. Interstate 264 leads all drivers to Virginia Beach’s shore. Even though Virginian rappers don’t spend an extensive amount of time rapping about Virginia’s coast, it is still an important place in Hampton Roads’ hip hop. Much in the way that the Bronx and Brooklyn play a role in the lives of most New York rappers, Virginia Beach is the place where up-and-coming rappers could connect with major players in the game. This is the place where many Hampton Roads’ hip hop artists’ dreams were born.

REFERENCE ‘‘My Block—Virginia.’’ My Block Series. MTV, Virginia. February 16, 2007.

their first album, Welcome to Our World. Even though their first album was not as well received as Ginuwine’s The Bachelor, several of the singles from that LP further solidified Timbaland as a hip hop artist and producer. The most notable single from this album is ‘‘Up Jumps Da Boogie.’’ This track is signature Timbaland.

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With the ‘‘hand-clap’’ throughout the entire song, listeners can’t help but clap and rock with the beat that Timbaland has provided. Delivering his raps with a vocoder, one of the first rappers to do this, Timbaland ‘‘Southern twang’’ bleeds through. With Southern phrases like, ‘‘shuckin’ and jivin’,’’ ‘‘peep my rhyme,’’ and the continued usage of the ‘‘vicki, vicki,’’ an imitation of a DJ scratching a record, Timbaland successfully crafts a sound and style that is uniquely his own. As a Hampton Roads rapper, his style becomes a characteristic seen in much of the music created in that area. As often seen in Timbaland’s songs, he consistently represents and ‘‘shouts out’’ Virginia as his base, his home state. In ‘‘Up Jumps Da Boogie’’ the line, ‘‘I fly to L.A. then come back to Virginia’’ differs from the diatribe associated with rappers flying across the country. Usually, rappers in their music, situate themselves between the two coasts, from Los Angeles to New York. Any variation of that drops them in the Miami or the Dirty South area. Timbaland proudly places Virginia on the hip hop map. By doing this he validates his existence as a rapper that is not born and raised in the traditional geographical areas that are usually seen as hip hop bases. He has ‘‘changed the game’’ by creating a space for himself and other rappers from his region. In his production of ‘‘Up Jumps Da Boogie,’’ Timbaland creates a perfect union between his, Magoo’s, and Missy’s rap lyrics, and the feathery vocals that are Aaliyah’s contribution. Unlike any other producer before, Timbaland takes the art of collaboration to new heights. His appreciation for hip hop and R&B is apparent in his productions. One genre does not overshadow the other. A far cry from hip hop from the Bronx and the Dirty South, Timbaland’s productions intertwine R&B and hip hop and present them as if they are a genre of music in and of themselves, together. They are not seen as separate entities. They work together in order to form a perfect whole. Joining these two sounds together can be seen as genius on Timbaland’s part. First, it exposes both types of music to audiences that sometimes segregate themselves. Music listeners generally had to make a choice between R&B and hip hop when choosing an artist or a song. R&B was generally seen as music for the women and rap was inherently male. By joining the two genres, Timbaland has been able to increase the fan base, while recruiting new listeners who are intrigued by this new animal, this happy medium between R&B and hip hop. In addition to the productions of his music, Timbaland also differed from traditional rappers with his content. Unlike West Coast and East Coast rappers, Timbaland was not overly involved in the ‘‘gangsta rap’’ that flooded hip hop throughout the 1990s. Nor were his lyrics overly sexed like that of rappers like Luke from the 2 Live Crew. Timbaland’s music was and continues to be fun. Rapping about dancing, ‘‘chilling with short hotties,’’ and feeling good about life, Timbaland created music that embraced the beauty of life rather than the destruction within it. There is no posturing within his lyrics or videos. Hypermasculinity is not a staple of his music. Even when the overly publicized East Coast versus West Coast rivalries were occurring, Timbaland and his music steered clear of that chaos. In many

Virginia Is for Lovers and Rappers | 503 ways, his influence has ensured that much of the hip hop generated in the Hampton Roads area remains rooted in that ‘‘Southern hospitality’’ while maintaining artistic integrity. By producing songs that don’t fit into the mold of ‘‘gangsta rap’’ or ‘‘booty shaking’’ music, Timbaland creates a style that has influenced almost every genre of the industry. Timbaland’s earlier start as right hand man to Devante Swing is in stark contrast to the way in which his career continues to flourish. Now, he has right hand men and women that he molds into power producers much like himself. His prote´ge´, Floyd Nathaniel (Danja) Hill is a perfect example of Timbaland’s ability to nurture up-and-coming powerhouses in the musical industry. At 26, Danja has already earned a Grammy for his own productions. Seen as one of the top producers within the R&B and hip hop industry, Timbaland commands millions of dollars for his sound, and artists are willing to pay. After producing hit songs like ‘‘Brush Ya Shoulder Off’’ for Jay Z and ‘‘Ayo Technology’’ for 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake, Timbaland has been able to join the different regions of hip hop with his beats. With the production of ‘‘You Won’t See Me Tonight,’’ featuring Aaliyah, Timbaland successfully produced with lyrical genius Nas as well. Without dispute, he is a ‘‘hit maker.’’ When lyrics touch his beats, they are destined to turn gold or platinum. Despite his success as a producer, he hasn’t been as successful as a rapper. Unlike rapper/producers Jermaine Dupri and Dr. Dre, Timbaland has never been seen as a strong lyricist. In fact, his productions often sell more than his own lyrical creations. Despite this fact, Timbaland is still thriving within the world of hip hop. With his new album, Shock Value, Timbaland once again, demonstrates the way in which both R&B and hip hop can exist within the same worlds. When listening to this album, it’s difficult to discern whether or not it is an R&B or hip hop album. With the single ‘‘The Way I Are,’’ featuring Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado, this ambiguity continues. The same can be said of the single, ‘‘Give It to Me.’’ Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake’s vocals fit nicely on top of Timbaland’s beats as his vocoded voice intermittently chimes in. This song could be played in any club, in any hustler’s car, and in any hair salon on a Saturday. Timbaland’s productions are truly music of the people and serve as a proud representation of Hampton Roads music. Timbaland also has an uncanny ability to bridge not only musical gaps, but cultural gaps as well. This is seen with his production of One Republic’s single, ‘‘Apologize.’’ Voices like that of lead singer, Ryan Tedder, wouldn’t normally be heard over an R&B beat; however, with Timbaland’s production, it all seems to make sense. It makes sense because Timbaland is not afraid to evolve; he is not afraid to do the unexpected. In an interview on the Shock Value album, Timbaland states: I came up with the name Shock Value by [sic] everything that I do be [sic] shocking to the public. Meaning like, they wouldn’t expect me to do this.

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Much like the majority of his career, Shock Value certainly delivers. With small rap contributions throughout the album, Timbaland is able to highlight his versatility as a producer. Although he may not stand with lyricist kings like Biggie, Tupac, Jay-Z, and Nas, he is the yin to their yang. He is the beat to their step. He is the music to their ears.

MISSY ELLIOT Melissa ‘‘Missy’’ Elliot was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1972. Her parents soon separated, and Missy attributes much of her personal strength to the lessons that she learned as she watched her mother struggle through a difficult marriage. In the Newsweek interview, ‘‘Missy’s Back with Real-World Rap,’’ Veronica Chambers discusses this process with the artist: Elliott learned a lot about standing up for herself in Portsmouth, Va. She watched her mother endure physical abuse [ . . . ]. Watching her own mother

Missy Elliot (Getty Images)

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get out of an abusive marriage was transformative. ‘‘She packed up and we left,’’ says Elliott. ‘‘Seeing my mother become very strong and very independent had a huge impact on me.’’ (60) In order to thrive in the music industry, an abusive relationship in and of itself, Missy has utilized that strength in the most effective way possible. In high school, Missy won several talent shows and performed at various venues in the Hampton Roads area (see sidebar: Manor High School). She later connected with rap artist, Magoo, who introduced her to Timbaland. She then coupled her songwriting abilities with Timbaland’s production skills. Missy recalls their first meeting: ‘Tim had this little Casio keyboard, and he has big hands. So it was hilarious to see him play on that Casio. But he had a way of making a record sound like something I hadn’t heard before’ (Sarig 153). After their initial meeting, Timbaland and Missy became a hard-hitting team. Producing songs and beats became their work. After toiling in their homes for years, Timbaland and Missy’s hard work finally paid off. They were able to produce strong demos for themselves. Those demos couldn’t have come at a better time for Missy and her career. After some finagling, she was able to make contact with up-and-coming producer and Jodeci member, Devante Swing. After a Jodeci concert in Virginia, Missy located his hotel room. She then gave the performance of a lifetime, a performance that earned her an opportunity to work with Devante as an artist (Morgan 151). Ironically, Missy did not start her career as a hip hop artist. In Sista, a group managed and produced by Devante, Missy was lead vocalist. Even in the group single, ‘‘Brand Nu,’’ Missy’s unique style shined through. Her vocals are a far cry from the ‘‘hee hee hee yows’’ and the ‘‘vicki vickis’’ that are now seen as trademark Missy sounds. Missy flourished in the environment of Devante’s organization, the Bassment. Similar to the format often seen on reality television shows today, the artists in the Bassment competed against each other in songwriting competitions. The boot camp format was also instrumental in the creation of Missy’s unique style. Missy states that the Bassment’s secluded environment encouraged her to develop a style that was all her own: ‘‘We were isolated from any musical influences [ . . . ] and I think it forced up to come up with our own sound. You can’t imitate something you’ve never heard’’ (Sarig 156). The Bassment was a creative goldmine for Missy. Timbaland’s production abilities and Missy’s determination landed her a guest spot on Jodeci’s ‘‘Sweaty,’’ a track on which Timbaland also had a small production role. ‘‘Sweaty’’ was the beginning of Timbaland’s and Missy’s musical careers. However rapid Missy’s ascent after her affiliation with the Bassment, her journey was not without adversity. First, her role as a star pupil of the Bassment quickly soured. While she was still seen as one of the most powerful artists in

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MANOR HIGH SCHOOL It’s not often that a small-town high school rises above obscurity and has center stage on a national television show. This is exactly what has happened to Woodrow Wilson High School, previously known as Manor High School, with Missy Elliot’s visit to the school on the hit UPN show, Road to Stardom. Missy Elliot attended Manor High School from 1986 to 1990. Ironically, Missy was not as dedicated to her studies as she has been to the music industry. Missy states: ‘‘I was always cutting up in the hallways. I skipped school all of the time’’ (Ogunnaike 1). In high school, she was also voted class clown. However endearing her class clown status might have been, it also got her into trouble at times. Missy states: ‘‘I was smart but didn’t apply myself. One year, I changed all the F’s on my report card to B’s’’ (‘‘Missy Elliott’’). Missy’s offense was eventually discovered, but she was still able to graduate high school. One would think that these high school difficulties would harden Missy’s heart for Manor High School, but it has done the opposite. On Missy Elliot’s reality show, Road to Stardom, she takes the show’s contestants on a tour of the school, where one of their challenges is to perform during a talent competition. As Missy shows the contestants around the school, her love of that environment is evident. Of all of the riches that Missy Elliot has garnered and the places around the world that she has visited, Manor High School still holds a place in the artist’s heart. During the Road to Stardom segment on Manor High School, Missy Elliot recounts the talent shows that she herself participated in, allowing the viewer to see the impact that those high school performances had on her career. Missy’s visit to Manor demonstrates the appreciation that she feels for the school and the teachers that helped her grow into her voice as a student and as an entertainer.

REFERENCES ‘‘Missy Elliott—Missy’s Delinquent School Days.’’ Contactmusic.com, July 28, 2004. http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndweb pages/missy.s%20delinquent%20school%20days (accessed June 8, 2008). Ogunnaike, Lola. ‘‘Letting the Sunshine in at Her Mellowest, Rapper Missy Elliott Is Still a Ball of Fire.’’ New York Daily News: Entertainment, May 13, 2001. https://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/ 2001/05/13/2001-05-13_letting_the_sunshine_in__at_.html (accessed April 4, 2008).

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the organization, she was growing tired of the lack of work funneling through the organization. There were also problems with her mentor Devante: Tensions between Devante and Missy were rising. Missy felt frustrated by the lack of work getting done in the Bassment, and sensed that Devante resented her the more she asserted herself as the crew’s creative leader. (Sarig 155) These issues led to Missy and Timbaland leaving the Bassment in 1994. Before her exit, she worked with Raven-Symone´ on the track ‘‘That’s What Little Girls Are Made Of’’ (Sarig 155). The success of this track gave Missy the visibility that she longed for, but it was also an awakening for the talented rapper. While beauty and image didn’t seem to be an issue for female rappers like Queen Latifah and MC Lyte, it quickly became one for Missy. After the release of ‘‘That’s What Little Girls Are Made Of,’’ she was told that her voice would be used in the video, but her face and body would not (Sarig 156). As stated in an interview with Essence writer, Joan Morgan, Missy was aware that her looks might hinder her commercial success: ‘‘[Missy] was told in the earliest days of her career to stick to songwriting because she didn’t have the right look to make it as an artist’’ (150). While this comment may seem trivial today, after all of Missy’s current accomplishments, the rapper did have cause for concern. While MC Lyte and Queen Latifah had been successful in their rap careers, they also fit a mold that had been created by the rap industry. Like Missy, MC Lyte was not overly feminine, but she was of smaller stature, a petite and attractive woman. Queen Latifah might not have been the archetypal video girl, wearing a size six, but the content of her music allowed for those physical differences. As an afrocentric performer, the emphasis of her music was on ancestral roots rather than present standards of beauty. In addition to her message, Queen Latifah often wore baggy African garb that essentially hid her figure. In comparison, Missy was shorter and had a fuller body type. In addition to her physical appearance, femininity was not Missy’s strong suit. The rejection of the label concerning ‘‘What Are Little Girls Made Of,’’ caused Missy to question her dreams of stardom in the music industry. Would her look appeal to mass media? Would she be able to attract women and men with her look and her sound? All of these questions caused Missy to make a difficult decision; rather than focusing on a career as a rap artist, she would focus on her song writing abilities. Alongside Timbaland, Missy returned to Virginia. They continued working together. Soon after her return to Virginia, Missy received the opportunity of a lifetime. Michael Bivins, rapper and vocalist with the group New Edition, enlisted Missy’s services. He wanted her to write songs for the female group, 702, composed of three young women from Las Vegas. ‘‘Steelo,’’ 702’s first single, was a commercial success. Released in the summer of 1996, it was considered an instant success. Not only was this a songwriting success for Missy, it was also a marked success for her growing rap career. Missy made a special appearance on the track, offering up a

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rap style that hadn’t been heard before. It was uniquely her own. In contrast to her work on ‘‘What Little Girls Are Made Of,’’ Missy had a role in the ‘‘Steelo’’ video. In the video, it’s hard to ignore the look of the satisfaction that covers her face as she dances throughout her rap. ‘‘Steelo’’ did two things for Missy’s rap career. First, it gave her the visibility as a performer that she had been striving for since her days in Virginia. Second, it introduced her face and her body to the American public. Contrary to the beliefs of the label heads over Raven’s single, mainstream America had accepted Missy. Her unconventional beauty fit nicely with her unconventional rhymes. ‘‘Steelo’’ was the affirmation that Missy needed in order to continue pursuing her rap career. After ‘‘Steelo’s’’ success, Missy’s star began to rise. As a writer, she was in demand. As a rapper, she was like no other. Missy’s next big break came when she and Timbaland had an opportunity to work with Aaliyah, a 16-year-old R&B singer, who had weathered the controversy of a relationship with singer and producer R. Kelly. Like Missy, Aaliyah wasn’t the typical singer. She was a beautiful girl, but she did not dress in a provocative manner as most R&B divas did. In Timberland boots, baggy jeans, and a cap, Aaliyah had a style all her own. She was pegged as the girl-next-door who made good. Her style meshed perfectly with Missy’s. Their first project together was the single, ‘‘If Your Girl Only Knew.’’ Timbaland provided the production and Missy wrote the lyrics for the song. Timbaland also produced and performed some of the background vocals. The single was a smash hit. Once again, Timbaland and Missy were being recognized for the contributions to the music industry. In all, Timbaland and Missy wrote seven tracks on One In a Million, and both of their first two creations earned Aaliyah top-ten hits [ . . . ]. Missy and Timbaland suddenly came into focus as one of 1996’s hottest new production teams. (Sarig 156) While Missy’s productions with Aaliyah offered her the popularity that had eluded her with her other projects, it did nothing to further her rap career. That break came at the hands of an up-and-coming producer who was born in Missouri and raised in Mount Vernon, Puff Daddy. Puff Daddy arranged for Missy to perform on a single with Gina Thompson, entitled ‘‘The Things You Do.’’ Coming in on the charts at 15, ‘‘The Things You Do’’ was another summer success. The work with 702, Aaliyah, and Gina Thompson gave Missy’s career the push that it need. It was the first time, since the beginning of her music career, that she would have the ability to negotiate her worth in an industry that had recently rejected her because of her untraditional beauty. In 1997, Missy released her first solo album. In a video clad with musical stars like Total, Lil Kim, Da Brat and Puffy, Missy’s entertaining performance redefined the concept of the hip hop video. There were women dancing; however, the ‘‘bootie’’ shaking just for the sake of entertainment was replaced with wellchoreographed moves. Throughout the video, distortions amplified some of the

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physical traits that made Missy look different from other rap stars. Distortions of noses, lips, and eyes, made those characteristics comical rather than unattractive. And, Missy did not stop there. With her video commentary on beauty in the music industry, Missy wore an oversized, trash-bag-looking garment throughout the video. With this brilliant move, Missy’s physique became a nonissue. In addition to her look, her dance moves were stellar. The myth that only petite women looked good while dancing was dispelled with Missy’s performance. She was not only entertaining to listen to; she was also entertaining to look at. Her innovation did not stop with the album Supa Dupa Fly. In the video ‘‘She’s a Bitch,’’ Missy sports a bald head with diamond eyebrows that run to the top of her head. She and her dancers look like aliens; however, their unusual appearances make for a video that focuses more on the dance movements than their looks. It’s apparent that Missy was intent on making her music and her videos about her talent, rather than her music alone. This endeavor proves to be successful for her. Rather than being known for her songs, she was known for her creative videos: ‘‘The Rain’’ and its popular video—which had Missy dancing around in what appeared to be inflated plastic garbage bags—served as the shock troops of Missy and Timbaland’s entry into the hip-hop and pop mainstream. Where once the cold reality of the streets reigned, Elliott now presented the Technicolor surrealism of the no-man’s-land. Subsequent videos were equally dazzling, earning Missy a reputation as MTV royalty. (Sarig 157) Throughout her career, Missy has sold 7.6 million albums and won five Grammys. Missy’s discography explains her unconventional success. Supa Dupa Fly laid the foundation for her current successes with tracks like, ‘‘The Rain,’’ ‘‘Sock It to Me,’’ and ‘‘Hit Me Wit Da Hee.’’ This album was a commercial success for Missy. Soon after its release, it went platinum. On her first album, Missy earned three Grammy nominations. Not only was her music accepted by street critics, but the music industry had given her the proverbial nod as well. She was well on her way to being the most successful female rapper of all time. Missy’s second album Da Real World was not as much of a commercial success as Supa Dupa Fly, but it was still a solid album. With guest appearances from upand-coming Detroit rapper Eminem, Newark rapper Redman, and Atlanta rapper Big Boi, she had a certifiable hip hop album with representation from all regions of the hip hop world. The album, Miss E . . . So Addictive was a nice rebound for Missy’s rap career. ‘‘Get Ur Freak On,’’ one of Missy’s most innovative tracks, was a clear success. With an animalistic vibe and one of Timbaland’s most eccentric beats, this track shot to the top. Hitting #7 on Billboard’s Hot 100, Missy had another hit on her hands. Each of her remaining albums went platinum, and she has consistently been able to garner at least one successful single for each of her albums. Under Construction’s ‘‘Work It’’ was the same caliber of music as ‘‘Hot Boyz’’ and ‘‘Get Ur Freak On.’’ The video that accompanied it was equally

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entertaining. With intricate dance moves and a plot filled with social messages that were difficult to catch if viewers didn’t watch carefully, Missy, once again set a new bar for hip hop videos. As a commentary on the different ways in which America’s population ‘‘works it,’’ ‘‘Work It’’ is as much a social piece as it is a form of entertainment. By dealing with topics like the possible objectification of female strippers, blacks refusal to return to slavery, and the way in which all cultures have the right to ‘‘work that thanga thanga thanga thang,’’ Missy moves beyond the role of entertainer to educator. With each of her album releases, she has challenged her audience to love themselves even when others have not loved them. The same can be said of This Is Not a Test and The Cookbook. While neither of these albums has risen to the level of success that Supa Dupa Fly and Under Construction have earned, they have consistently satisfied Missy’s base, her core audience. Tracks from these albums like ‘‘Lose Control’’ and ‘‘Pass That Dutch’’ confirm that Missy and her talents are here to stay. As a Virginian rapper, Missy definitely affirms the motto, ‘‘Virginia Is for Lovers.’’ Rather than a divider within the hip hop arena, Missy has been able to join different coasts and regions of hip hop. Having collaborated with rappers from each region of hip hop, Missy has been a ‘‘uniter.’’ Her lighthearted and intriguing lyrics, coupled with videos that make viewers think and dance, places Missy in a class by herself. She is one of the most successful and sought after talents of her time. Ironically, she isn’t from the East or the West Coast. She’s not from the Midwest or the Dirty South. She is none of these things and then she is all of these things. A long way from Portsmouth, Virginia, she is definitely a small-town girl who made something of herself. There is no telling where her talent will take her, but rest assured in knowing that it will be fun to watch as she allows it to go where it wants to go. Who would have thought that a small town, Virginian girl would have the strength to overcome her own obstacles while inadvertently uniting hip hoppers in other regions. Maybe no one but Missy could have envisioned this, but it appears that she is enjoying the opportunity to put ‘‘back those hip hop dividers’’ and allow each region and each rapper an opportunity to work this craft, this world of hip hop.

PHARRELL One of the most unique aspects of Hampton Roads’ hip hop scene is the relationships between the different artists that rise from that area. These connections can clearly be seen in the relationship between Timbaland, Missy, and Pharrell. Sarig states, ‘‘While [Timbaland] was running things in the Salem High School hip hop world, across town at Princess Anne High, Pharrell Williams was making his name as a hotshot drum major in the marching band’’ (Sarig 151). As a drum major, Pharrell directed the high school band, ensuring that the band executed moves and musical arrangements in the appropriate manner. In many ways,

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Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams) (Roxanne Lowit/Corbis)

Pharrell and his success challenge the traditional views of hip hop artists and producers. As a self-proclaimed ‘‘nerd’’ and also known as ‘‘Skateboard P,’’ Pharrell is not your typical hip hop artist. His unique style can easily be traced to his beginnings. During his seventh grade year, Pharrell attended a band camp for gifted children, an endeavor that would traditionally be seen as ‘‘square’’ within the hip hop community. This is where he met Chad Hugo, a Filipino-American originally from Portsmouth, Virginia. Soon after their first meeting, Pharrell and Chad founded The Neptunes, an alternative style band, composed of Pharrell and Chad. The group’s name and much of their initial music was influenced by their connection to Hampton Roads, specifically the Virginia Beach area. Hugo states: We were trying to do an alternative type of band, and we just wanted a name that stood out [ . . . ]. When we started out, a lot of our shit had to do with water. Being on the beach tied that in. And the body is made out of 75 percent water, the earth is covered with three-fourths water—all that type of shit. (152) During his time in the group, The Neptunes, Pharrell also joined Timbaland’s group, ‘‘Surround By Idiots’’ (SBI). Magoo and his friend, Larry Live were also a part of this group. S.B.I. was an opportunity for these musicians to hone their skills. They often worked on beats and songs together in their spare time.

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After graduating in 1991, Pharrell and Chad Hugo made a decision that would be life-altering. Even though they had graduated from school a year or so earlier, both young men decided to participate in Princess Anne High School’s talent show. One of Terry Riley’s representatives was sitting in the audience, about to discover what would one day be one of the biggest production teams in hip hop history. Needless to say, The Neptunes won and won big. Ironically, because of their inactive statuses at the school, they weren’t even competing. Despite that fact, Teddy Riley’s representative was so impressed with the group’s unique style that he set them up to meet Teddy Riley: [The group] did jazz inflected hip-hop, a style inspired by Native Tongues acts like Tribe Called Quest, with some R&B singing added in. Riley’s assistant attended the talent show and reported back: The winner was the group that wasn’t competing. Riley invited The Neptunes over to the studio to play, and he liked what he heard. (Sarig 152) Through this new relationship with Teddy Riley, Pharrell and Chad became interns without the actual appointment. They spent most of their days in Teddy Riley’s studio, learning the trades of the craft that would one day offer them success. This relationship eventually led to The Neptunes big break within the hip hop world. After working with Riley for some time, Pharrell and Chad received an impressive amount of exposure: Through Riley, the duo helped out with the first Blackstreet album (Hugo even contributed some saxophone), while [Pharrell] also helped write the Wreck[s]-N-Effect hit, ‘‘Rump Shaker.’’ From there, the duo started racking up production gigs with SWV, Maxi Priest, MC Lyte, and Noreaga, all eventually leading to Janet Jackson and Mary J. Blige. The Neptunes were on their way. (Kimpel 124) Like Timbaland and Missy, a joint venture led to Pharrell and Chad’s success. Together, Pharrell and Chad had several notable productions. In 1992, they produced SWV’s single, ‘‘Love Will Be Right Here.’’ Sampling Michael Jackson’s ‘‘Human Nature,’’ this song was a fast success. In fact, the 1990s were extremely important production years for The Neptunes. Producing songs for Blackstreet, Total, and Mace, The Neptunes had hit after hit. They produced, ‘‘When Boy Meets Girl’’ for Puffy’s new group, Total and ‘‘Lookin’ at Me’’ for rapper Mase. They continued to delve into the rap world with the production of ‘‘Superthug’’ for Noreaga and a fun and flighty production of ‘‘Got Your Money’’ for Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Both songs hit the charts hard. With its unusual helicopter sound effects, ‘‘Superthug’’ placed #15 on the hip hop charts. Sarig states: ‘‘the track’s helicopter effects and off-kilter beat suggested Williams and Hugo were beginning to take cues from Timbaland’’ (159). Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ‘‘Got Your Money’’ placed #19. With an unconventional hook and a sampling of ‘‘Billie Jean’’ ‘‘Got Your

Virginia Is for Lovers and Rappers | 513 Money’’ was a song that girls could dance to and guys could bump in their trucks. These two tracks placed Pharrell and Chad on the hip hop map. They had distinguished themselves as hard-hitting producers. Like Timbaland and Missy, it had been difficult for them as they maneuvered through the hip hop world, but they were able to overcome the many obstacles. As if producing some of the hottest hits in hip hop history wasn’t enough, Pharrell decided to step from behind the scenes to the forefront as an artist in his own right. A long way from the streets of Virginia Beach, Virginia and the talent shows that he and Chad frequented, his talent as a recording artist would have to shine on its own. This would be no easy feat. With his thin and sometimes weak falsetto, Pharrell appeared on Jay Z’s, ‘‘I Just Wanna Love U’’ and Mystical’s ‘‘Shake Ya Ass.’’ Undoubtedly, Pharrell is not as talented a singer as crooners Usher and Ginuwine; however, what he lacks in vocal talent, he makes up for in charisma. Both songs were a commercial success, strongly in part to Pharrell’s contribution. His soft falsetto was the right balance for hard rappers like Jay Z and Mystical. Sarig describes these two tracks as ‘‘undeniable slices of pop perfection’’: ‘‘I Just Wanna Love U’’ and ‘‘Shake Ya Ass’’ were enduring signposts of the millennial pop era—not utterly unique in the way that Timbaland’s tracks were, but remarkable in their buoyancy and propulsive spirit. (Sarig 160) This is the same spirit that is seen in ‘‘Got Your Money,’’ Ludacris’s ‘‘Southern Hospitality,’’ and Mystikal’s ‘‘Danger.’’ During the beginning of the year 2000, The Neptunes as a production team were everywhere, and there was no fear of overexposure. The Neptunes immediately showed that their talents were valid in other genres of music. They easily made the transition to op and they made it in true star style. Britney Spears’ ‘‘Slave for You’’ and Timberlake’s ‘‘Like I Love You’’ demonstrate The Neptunes’ ability to create hits in any genre. They are the chameleons of the music industry and they have not stopped changing yet. The 2004 release of Snoop Dogg’s ‘‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’’ clearly demonstrates Pharrell’s many faces. Ably rapping the first verse in this song, Pharrell supplies a solid rap performance with an even stronger musical production. Reminiscent of the bass used in most high school bands, the simple sound of the bass drum coupled with the trilling whistle and the clucking of the tongue make ‘‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’’ a single for the ages. Along with the bass-filled beats and trill throughout the song, Pharrell is also dancing in the video. It’s not as exciting and ground breaking as Missy’s videos, but it is certainly a fun video to watch. It’s also very telling of the way in which Pharrell and Chad’s beginnings influence their music. Through the video, Snoop Dogg’s son is seen holding an instrument that is commonly seen on a high school field during a band performance. The eldest of Snoop’s sons holds a bass drum that is much bigger than his small frame. Chad Hugo beams in and out of the video sporting a keyboard that looks better suited for a young child. Pharrell and Chad easily integrate the tools that gave them their first

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start in the music industry with one of their most successful songs. While evolving into the hottest producers in hip hop today, they have maintained the individuality that gave them their start. There is no argument that this individuality has worked wonders for them. Not only have these Virginian artisans changed the way that music looks, they have changed the look of fashion as well. With his unique style and fashion sense, Pharrell has become a national fashion icon. In 2003, he created a partnership with Reebok in which he started two new fashion lines: ‘‘Ice Cream, a collection of men’s and women’s footwear, and Billionaire Boys Club, a men’s clothing collection’’ (Thomas). These lines have been extremely successful. Considered high-end sportswear, Pharrell’s lines of clothing and shoes have been released in limited quantities. Because of the limited quantity, they are on the pricier side, being sold in only 40 stores, worldwide: The brands are very exclusive and are only available in approximately forty stores worldwide including Barney’s New York Flagship and Co-op stores, Fred Segal in Santa Monica, Collette in Paris, and other high end boutiques around the world. (‘‘About’’) Considering all of the initiatives that Pharrell and Chad could have placed their names on, (i.e., water or cologne), attire has been a fruitful endeavor. Not only has this initiative allowed them to grow beyond their musical talents, it has given them wider appeal. They have become major players in pop culture and this new distinction has made their transition to pop and alternative forms of music a smooth one. This mass appeal can be directly attributed to Pharrell’s unwillingness to be narrowly defined. Instead of conforming to the stereotypical rapper image, he has created his own, one that his audience appreciates and wants to emulate. Editor-in-chief of Esquire states: Pharrell’s a reflection of that hybrid youth culture. [ . . . ] He represents a lot of different people—skate to street to hip-hop. One day he’s producing JayZ, the next he’s working with No Doubt. He speaks to youth culture in a real way for this generation. (Thomas) This flexibility is Pharrell’s strongest characteristic. In a world where taking chances are often seen as too risky, Pharrell makes it one of his most endearing qualities, one that has earned him numerous awards. A perfect example of this is when he was named Esquire’s best-dressed man for the year 2005. Granger states: Hitmaker Pharrell Williams, 32, tops the 2005 list because of the way he infuses high-end haberdashery into today’s baggy hip-hop craze. [ . . . ] Really, it’s mostly confidence. He has a way of mixing fine tailoring with clothes that are relaxed, so he looks equally put-together and casual at the same time. (Thomas)

Virginia Is for Lovers and Rappers | 515 Pharrell’s dramatic rise in pop culture has not stopped with just that accomplishment. He is constantly making a splash in the entertainment world. However, his collaborations are no longer limited to musical artists. In 2007, he collaborated with Cameron Diaz and Al Gore on the Live Earth event, an event that ‘‘raise[d] awareness and money for environmental organizations in the same way that Live Aid did for Famine [ . . . ] (‘‘Cameron Teams Up with Al Gore’’). He also performed at the memorial concert for Princess Diana. Pharrell has taken hip hop and its culture to places that it has not always been welcomed. His trailblazing persona has shown that hip hop and its major players cannot and should not be narrowly defined. Despite stereotypes that show rappers to be one dimensional, Pharrell has grown into a well-rounded and complex individual. His complexities begin and end with the way in which his style and finesse have shaped the entertainment industry. For example, Pharrell has also kicked down traditional images of sexiness in American society and redefined the term ‘‘hot.’’ Nerds are now hot. Skinny, short, and ethnic boys are now hot. A man with fitted polo shirts and straight-legged jeans is now hot. Trucker hats are now hot. More so than Missy and Timbaland, Pharrell’s style and his music have become a way of life, a part of American culture that can easily be traced back to Virginia’s Hampton Roads area.

CLIPSE One of the newest rap duos to come out of the Hampton Roads area is Clipse, a group composed of brothers Gene and Terrence Thornton. Gene (Malice) and Terrence (Pusha T) were born in the Bronx and relocated to Virginia as children. Malice and Pharrell had known each other for some years. Like Pharrell and Chad, Clipse also had a connection to Teddy Riley and his studio: ‘‘Around 1996 [the brothers] started hanging around at Teddy Riley’s Famous Recording Studio and talking to Teddy’s brother Markel [ . . . ] about signing to his production company’’ (Sarig 164). That arrangement never came to pass; however, Clipse were able to land a deal with Missy Elliot’s first production company, Elektra. Much like Missy’s initial experience with Elektra, Clipse did not get far. They completed their first album with Elektra; however, that album was never released. Subsequently, their connections with Pharrell paid off. Four years after the unsuccessful deal with Elektra, Clipse began to work with The Neptunes. Although Clipse were reared in Virginia and they had an album that was produced by Virginians, their music was distinctly different from the typical music coming from the Hampton Roads area. Their music was rougher and had a more aggressive tone. In fact, their lyrical styles were more similar to New York rappers than that of Virginian rappers. With songs that describe life in Hampton Road’s projects, Clipse were exposing a part of Virginia that had been omitted in Missy and Timbaland’s works. In the song ‘‘Virginia’’ drugs and murder are common topics: ‘‘I’m from Virginia, where ain’t shit to do but cook/Pack it up, sell it, triple price, fuck

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Clipse (WireImage/Getty Images)

the books.’’ While Timbaland’s, Missy’s, and Pharrell’s song topics varied, Clipse’s were one-dimensional. Similar to the ‘‘gangsta’’ rappers from up North and the booty-shaking songs from the South, Clipse incorporated both of these worlds in their music. According to Clipse’s own description of themselves, this distinction seems entirely appropriate: ‘‘Pusha and Malice always considered themselves East Coast-style rappers’’—something that became apparent in 2005, when they joined with two Philadelphia MCs Ab-Liva (of Major Figgas) and Sandman to form the Re-Up Gang (Sarig 164), and enlisted Boston mixtape DJ Clinton Sparks to record their first mixtape, 2004’s We Got It 4 Cheap: Volume 1. In many ways, Clipse rejected the label of Southern rapper. Pusha T states: I was raised here, but Virginia isn’t what I know as Southern. [ . . . ] There’s no way I could call this the Dirty South. This is the middle ground before you start going Deep South. This is the mixing pot of everything; it’s dead smack in the middle. (Sarig 164) Perhaps their rejection of the Southern rapper label has in some way hindered their success. As rappers from Virginia who sound like rappers from New York, they complicate the hip hop landscape. As most rappers pay homage to their region in the fact that their hip hop identities are connected to the area in which they grew up, Clipse might be seen as the red-headed step children of this area. While they had a significant amount of success with their first album Lord Willin and The Neptunes produced track ‘‘Grindin,’’ their presence in the hip hop industry has been

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minimal at best. Despite their big talent, the group has had several missteps that have hindered their success. After Lord Willin, their second album, Hell Hath No Fury, was released late 2006. This album did not receive the acclaim of Lord Willin. In the first week, it failed to reach Gold with sales in the range of 78,000. The lackluster sales have been attributed to the tension between Clipse and their label, Jive. They landed on Jive’s label after Sony and BMG merged, causing Jive to take over artists that had been originally signed to Arista. Requesting to be released from the contract with Jive offered no solution. In May 2007, several years after continuous struggle with their label, Clipse were released from Jive Records. As well as being a duo from Virginia, Clipse have joined forces with Philadelphia rappers, with the hopes of rekindling the fire that they had with their first release. Now, as the Re-Up gang, they are planning an album release in 2008. Whether this endeavor will be successful remains to be seen. Clipse have had a difficult time settling into a regional identity. While their talent is big enough to rise above any regional distinctions, the lack of allegiance to any one area makes it difficult for them to charm the music industry in the way that their Virginian counterparts have. Time will only tell if they are able to change the game in the way that Timbaland, Missy, and The Neptunes have done. Maybe they will be able to embody a ‘‘middle ground’’ that allows them to celebrate the duplicity of their beginnings, their appreciation and representation of the Northern and Southern hip hop games. Whatever the future holds, they will always have ties to the land that is Virginia.

THE FUTURE OF HIP HOP IN THE HAMPTON ROADS AREA With fashion, ring tones, television entertainment, and music, Virginia has certainly impacted the hip hop game, in many ways making it an all inclusive endeavor that joins the different mediums of entertainment. How is it that one of the smallest regional areas of hip hop has had such a powerful effect on the music and entertainment industry? In many ways, the success of these small town rappers and producers can be attributed to their beginnings. Anyone who has ever visited the Hampton Roads area understands why it is often referred to as the ‘‘armpit’’ of Virginia. With black on black crime, uncontrollable drug wars, and widespread poverty, this distinction has its roots in truth. However, these conditions made rappers/producers like Timbaland, Missy, Pharrell, Chad, and Clipse hungry and this hunger gives rise to a level of resolve that predetermines success. Rather than asking how such big talents were born in such a small place, a more appropriate question might focus on where hip hop in the Hampton Roads is going now that it’s most influential players have flown the coup. Although Missy and Timbaland hail from Virginia, they no longer reside in the Hampton Roads area. Despite this, they each maintain a home in the area. It’s

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not entirely clear where Pharrell resides; however, he also keeps a home in Virginia. Their presence or lack thereof can definitely be attributed to the future of hip hop in the Hampton Roads area. Much like the effect of Teddy Riley’s presence in Virginia Beach during the late 1980s and early 1990s, these superstars still have an impact on the music scene in Hampton Roads. Even if their physical presence is not often seen in the area, their histories and futures act as a reminder that success is possible, despite where you come from. Evidenced by the up-andcoming rappers in the area today, this message has hit its mark. As Malice states in ‘‘MTV’s My Block: Virginia,’’ ‘‘everybody out here wants to be somebody.’’ This is apparent with artists like Skillz and Fam-lay. Both rappers are from the Norfolk area. Like Timbaland and Missy, they have been grinding behind the scenes and are waiting for the moment when the industry will recognize and appreciate their talents. With both artists having signed with The Neptunes, this should not be too long. Ced Hughes is another name to watch out for. Like Missy and Timbaland, Ced Hughes is not like anything we’ve seen before. Unlike any other hip hop artist, he raps ‘‘over electro and familiar indie-rock’’ (‘‘Local Artists to Watch’’). In tight jeans and devoid of any fashion staples, Ced will certainly create a buzz with his unique style and his approach to hip hop: ‘‘I see a lot of the scenester hipster kids come out, and I don’t think hipster is a negative word,’’ says Hughes, whose own sartorial choices can run to the whimsical. (He often wears those cheap plastic Wayfarers with the neon arms you find at drugstores.) ‘‘Everybody is trying to be so different that they end up looking the same. If I want to wear a white tee and tight jeans, I will. I don’t care’’ (‘‘Local Artists to Watch’’). By rejecting the traditionally ‘‘thug image’’ that is often sported by hip hop artists, Ced can have as big of an impact on hip hop as the artists that precede him. Whatever the outcome is, trust that Virginians will be watching and waiting for the next star to sprout up in their midst. Beyond the future hip hop artists that are sure to come out of the Hampton Roads area, some Hampton Roads’ artists are literally laying the groundwork for future success that goes beyond the world of hip hop. In 2006, Pharrell announced that he was building a ‘‘computer-based community resource center’’ in Virginia Beach (‘‘Musician Plans’’). This center will give under-privileged children access to computers with the hopes of moving them away from crime and toward prosperity. Pharrell states: The reason why I’m starting this center is there are so many routes you can take as a young minority in Virginia. You can have somebody teach you in the hood how to make, manufacture and intend to distribute crack cocaine, or we could buckle down and educate our youth, and one of these kids could be the next chemist for Pfizer. One of these kids could end up being the guy

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FUTURE RECORDS The name Future Records Recording Studio doesn’t mean a lot to most people. Even questioning the significance of a music studio in the Virginia Beach area would leave most readers stumped. But, if you mention Teddy Riley, Virginia Beach, and music studio all in the same sentence, most hip hop followers know exactly what you’re talking about. They know that the king of New Jack Swing and the founder of Future Records Recording Studio is indirectly responsible for many of the productions heard on the radio today. They know that Teddy Riley and his vision of hip hop began in a small studio called Future Records. In the mid-1990s, Riley moved his studio to Virginia Beach, Virginia in order to escape the ‘‘rigors’’ of big city life (‘‘Teddy Riley’’). Future Records Recording Studios was a haven for up and coming rappers and producers. Timbaland, Pharrell, and both members of the Clipse spent a significant amount of time at Riley’s music studio. Future Records was a place for aspiring musical artists to hone their talents. It served as a physical manifestation of the level of success that Hampton Roads producers and rappers could eventually obtain. It seems as if the way to gold or platinum in the Hampton Roads area was through Future Records. Riley often invited new talent to the studio, allowing them to watch and learn how to make music come alive. Timbaland, Pharrell, Chad, and Clipse all attribute their current success to the time that they spent in Riley’s studio. In the MTV special, My Block: Virginia, Murder-T attributes his drive to succeed in the music industry to Teddy Riley’s’ presence in Virginia. Ironically, Riley’s escape became a gateway for Hampton Roads’ hip hop empire. Certainly, he couldn’t have known the impact that his move would have on the music industry. Thankfully, his dream of cultivating a new musical style is now a reality within the Hampton Roads area.

REFERENCE ‘‘Teddy Riley.’’ VH1.com, March 30, 2008. http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/ riley_teddy/bio.jhtml.

that murdered somebody, or he could go to defend his country. We’ve got to do something about it. We’ve got to stand up for our youth. (‘‘Musician Plans’’) It is inspiring to see Pharrell stand up for Virginia’s youth much in the way that Teddy Riley first stood up for him. Although Pharrell’s contributions are notably different from Riley’s, the lives that will be touched by his success will

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hopefully be able to dream dreams that will also impact the Hampton Roads area in a positive way. Even though hip hop in the Hampton Roads area has never claimed a whole coast or been solely attached to a Northern or Southern region, it has managed to flourish in what has often been seen as a wasteland. If I had to choose a characteristic that is unique to Hampton Roads’ hip hop artists, it would have to be their ability to take nothing and then turn it into something. This is not to negate the fact that most rap artists have had to overcome overwhelming obstacles in order to obtain success. But, it is to say that these artists had personal obstacles, as well as obstacles dealing with location. There was no precedent for superstar status in Portsmouth, Norfolk, or Virginia Beach. There were no stories of triumph that Timbaland, Missy, Pharrell, and Chad could hang on to. All they had was an opportunity that was presented to them in the form of Teddy Riley’s recording studio, in a world that had originally been seen as a blank slate. These talented artists turned that blank slate into a smorgasbord that can make all Virginians proud.

REFERENCES ‘‘About.’’ Billionaire Boys Club: Ice Cream, March 19, 2008. http://www .bbcicecream.com/. Als, Hilton. ‘‘The Next Music Mogul, ‘The New Negro’.’’ The New Yorker 144 (October 20, 1997): 8. ‘‘Cameron Teams Up with Al Gore to Announce Live Earth.’’ PopSugar, February 16, 2007. http://popsugar.com/140265 (accessed March 18, 2008). Chambers, Veronica. ‘‘Missy’s Back with Real World Raps: She Dishes about Hip Hop, Her Cupcake Diet and How Eavesdropping Can Yield a Hit Song.’’ Newsweek, July 5, 1999, 60. Kimpel, Dan. How They Made It. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2006. Morgan, Joan. ‘‘The Making of Miss Thang.’’ Essence 92 (March 2000): 8. ‘‘My Block—Virginia.’’ My Block Series. MTV, February 16, 2007. Reid, Shaheem. ‘‘My Block: Virginia.’’ MTV.COM, March 18, 2008. http:// www.mtv.com/bands/m/my_block/virginia/news_feature_021607/. Sarig, Roni. Third Coast : Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing. Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2007. Teddy Riley: The Man Behind the Music. BET, June 12, 1999. Thomas, Karen. ‘‘Power, Grace, and Great Style.’’ USA Today, August 10, 2005. http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-08-10-esquire-main_x.htm (accessed April 8, 2008). ‘‘Timbaland Biography.’’ Timbaland: Official Site, March 3, 2008. http:// www.timbalandmusic.com/bio/. ‘‘Timbaland & Magoo Featuring Missy Elliott and Aaliyah ‘Up Jumps Da Boogie.’ ’’ Mixtape Maestro Presents: 90’s R&B Junkie, March 17, 2008. http://

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90srbjunkie.blogspot.com/2008/03/timbaland-magoo-featuring-missy-elliott. html (accessed April 4, 2008). Venable, Malcolm. ‘‘Local Artists to Watch: A Dulcimer Player, Rapper, and a Punk Band.’’ The Virginia Pilot, April 18, 2008. http://hamptonroads.com/ 2008/04/local-artists-watch-dulcimer-player-rapper-and-punk-band (accessed May 7, 2008). ———. ‘‘Musician Plans to Build Resource for Beach Youth.’’ The Virginia Pilot, July 19, 2006. http://hamptonroads.com/node/128051 (accessed May 7, 2008).

FURTHER RESOURCES Clipse-Re Up Gang Records. http://www.clipseonline.com/. Missy Elliott. http://www.missy-elliott.com/. Pharrell. http://www.pharrellwilliams.com/. Start Trak Entertainment. http://www.startrakmusic.com/. Teddy Riley Music Group. http://www.trmusicgroup.com/. Timbaland: Official Site. http://www.timbalandmusic.com/default.aspx. Visit Hampton Roads Virginia. http://www.visithamptonroads.com/.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Clipse Lord Willin’. Star Trak, 2002. Hell Hath No Fury. Re-Up Gang/Star Trak, 2006. Missy Elliott Supa Dupa Fly. East/West Records, 1997. Da Real World. East/West Records, 1999. This Is Not a Test. Elecktra, 2003. The Cookbook. Atlantic, 2005. Neptune Productions Snoop Dogg. ‘‘Drop It Like It’s Hot.’’ R&G: The Masterpiece. Star Trak, 2004. Mystical. ‘‘Shake It Fast.’’ Let’s Get Ready. Jive, 2000. The Neptunes The Neptunes Present . . . Clones. Star Trak, 2003. Pharrell Williams In My Mind. Interscope, 2006. Teddy Riley Guy. MCA, 1988. The Future. MCA, 1990.

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Timbaland Shock Value. Interscope, 2007. Tim’s Bio: Life from Da Bassment. Virgin, 1998. Timbaland and Magoo Welcome to Our World. Atlantic, 1997. Indecent Proposal. Virgin, 2001. Timbaland Productions Ginuwine. Ginuwine, the Bachelor. Sony, 1996. Aaliyah. One in a Million. Atlantic, 1996.

CHAPTER 20 Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty: Community and Dance in New Orleans Rap Rich Paul Cooper It was the early 1990s and hardly anyone knew or cared about the rhythmic developments that were shaking the city of New Orleans, waiting to erupt onto the national scene. New trends were emerging in rap and the entire nation was listening, some critically, others admiringly. Gangsta rap held uncontested sway, pushed to the fore by N.W.A.’s inflammatory lyrics and then later bolstered by the polarizing and challenging personality of Tupac Shakur and his feud with the Notorious B.I.G. Black and white kids alike were turning to gangsta rap, tuning their radios to the rivalries between the West Coast and the East Coast, while at the same time there were national movements led by people like C. Delores Tucker and Bob Dole to censor the excessive violence, misogyny, and materialism they argued were plaguing the country’s youth through rap. Meanwhile, New Orleans was developing its own distinct style of rap with deep roots in the city’s musical culture, a style that ignored the development of themes in national trends and instead focused on local themes, communal affirmation, and dance. That style of rap was bounce. Bounce only gained a national audience by merging with other preexisting styles of rap. ‘‘Pure’’ bounce remained largely a New Orleans phenomenon, but the local support for bounce was always enough to keep bounce fueled with an influx of young, up-and-coming rappers, and opportunities to sell their records. In his essay ‘‘Bounce: Rap Music and Cultural Survival in New Orleans,’’ Matt Miller notes that bounce was, and still is, supported mainly by ‘‘DJs, nightclub owners, sweet shop owners, record label owners, [and] teenage dance crews’’ (17). An excellent example of this grassroots support is Peaches Records and Tapes, a New Orleans music store devoted entirely to supporting local rap artists and DJs (see sidebar: Peaches Records and Tapes). Although bounce still exists primarily on a local, grassroots level, ‘‘big name’’ artists and labels like No Limit Records and Cash Money Records are responsible for drawing attention to bounce. In the late 1990s both labels gained notoriety for distinct sounds which combined elements of gangsta rap with elements of bounce; they charted their own territory. 523

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PEACHES RECORDS AND TAPES Peaches Records and Tapes was the only independent record store in New Orleans that specialized in rap music, especially bounce. As noted by Matt Miller in ‘‘Bounce: Rap Music and Cultural Survival in New Orleans,’’ New Orleans rap has often flourished without aid from major distributors and labels, mostly through grassroots efforts, street teams, and retailers like Peaches. Many local rappers credit Peaches as a place that first introduced them to rap. Owner Shirani Rea also never hesitates to allow younger upand-coming stores to sell their material. An excellent example would be Da Entourage, a group which had a momentary hit with ‘‘Tha Bunny Hop’’ (2003). Although Da Entourage is from Lafayette and not New Orleans, the story goes that the group appeared in Peaches, played their song, and showed the owner how to do the bunny hop, a dance that goes along with the song. Their CD was soon for sale in Peaches. Despite the fact that Peaches’ main focus is rap and hip hop, Peaches also deals in soul, jazz, and gospel. Because anyone can be the DJ at the next block party and remixing and sampling are common, Peaches carries more vinyl and cassettes than other small record stores. Peaches is primarily interested in the music and doesn’t sell posters or T-shirts. The original site of Peaches Records and Tapes, 3129 Gentilly Blvd, was an easily recognizable landmark because of the murals which adorned its exterior walls, usually portraits of local rappers. Since Hurricane Katrina, the future of Peaches Records and Tapes has been relatively uncertain because rent at the previous location tripled and the store had to move to another neighborhood. But considering the love that New Orleans locals have for Peaches and local rap, and considering local sales have often carried New Orleans rap through times in which national sales were suffering, the chances of the record store recovering are high. Although long time manager Eddie Gaspard was lamenting the closing of the previous location when he told NOLA.com, ‘‘This was the meet spot. It was the hanging spot. Now it’s gone,’’ his comments illustrate that locals will always remember the influence the store had on the local rap scene and how it gave young rappers a chance to showcase their skills.

The history of No Limit and Cash Money Records is also the history of bounce— but bounce in dialogue with the prevalent national trends in rap, specifically gangsta rap. The music these labels produced is best described as gangsta-bounce. No Limit Records has since gone bankrupt and Master P (Percy Miller), the label’s owner, is in the process of starting a record label that is adamantly against the use of violent and sexist language. Cash Money Records suffered some setbacks after losing its major artists due to internal disagreements, but is currently thriving

Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty | 525 and successful as of 2007. Around the turn of the century it seemed that New Orleans rap, and with it bounce, would return to being a New Orleans phenomenon. But after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, record labels again took a serious interest in the Dirty Dirty South. In the wake of hurricane Katrina, with New Orleans residents spread across the United States in a disastrous diaspora, New Orleans rap has become a major cultural force. Lil Wayne (Dwayne Carter, Jr.) now boasts to be the best rapper alive, having wrested the title from its previous holder, Jay-Z, and he has worked with rappers like Fat Joe and T.I., further consolidating the ties between New Orleans rap and rap nationwide. Additionally, more attention is being given to bounce music in an effort to document New Orleans culture, to prevent particular cultural influences from being erased in the tumult of rebuilding an entire city. For example, the 2007 documentary Ya Heard Me? chronicles the development of bounce and reveals, perhaps because of the recent hardships suffered in New Orleans and the presence of New Orleans refuges in major cities across the United States, that bounce has reemerged even stronger. In the documentary a voice-over narrates what bounce is: ‘‘it’s not ghetto music, it’s not R&B, it’s project music.’’ Yet despite bounce’s roots, bounce is more than just project music. Bounce is the heartbeat of New Orleans, simultaneously the cultural expression of disenfranchised groups and an expressive art which crosses economic and social boundaries through one common element: dance. Bounce’s extreme focus on dance is also part of a larger history of what Miller calls expressive cultural affirmation in New Orleans. New Orleans culture constantly stresses the importance of different peoples celebrating together. Nowhere is this stress on celebration more pronounced than in the celebration of Mardi Gras. Although disputes, violence, and degrading sexual acts do occur during Mardi Gras, the event is overwhelmingly surprising because an entire city can celebrate together without rioting or other extreme forms of violence. Furthermore the excesses, especially sexual, are for the most part confined to the French Quarter. The carnival attitude prevails: social boundaries and distinctions melt away and the entire city comes together in a single moment of orgiastic celebration. But Mardi Gras is ultimately only the culmination of the expressive forces continuously building in the city and waiting to be released. New Orleans culture as a whole is focused on the outward and open expressions of the various subcultures that comprise the city. Examples of this expressive culture include second lines, the funeral turned into an outward aesthetic expression, and groups like the Mardi Gras Indians, Skull and Bones, and the Baby Dolls—groups of working class blacks who appear in elaborate costumes and march in parades during carnival (see sidebar: Mardi Gras Under the Bridge). There are two major cultural influences at work in the city. One, the carnival celebrations which originated in the West under the influence of the Catholic Church, Mardi Gras, and, two, because of New Orleans’ port city status, African and Carribean musical and cultural influences. The African and Carribean

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MARDI GRAS UNDER THE BRIDGE Mardi Gras Under the Bridge is the name of the predominately African American Mardi Gras celebration that takes place under the Claiborne I10 overpass at the intersection of N. Claiborne Ave. and New Orleans Ave. This celebration is known for its family friendly atmosphere, and instead of showcasing rappers, emphasis is placed on the Mardi Gras Indians. Ostracized from participating in Mardi Gras and cutoff from access to basic infrastructural needs, African Americans organized Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, which were designed to assist members with anything from medical bills to food. These organizations also organized their own Mardi Gras Krewes, the most famous of which is Zulu. The PBS documentary All on a Mardi Gras Day (2003) brought attention to this alternative Mardi Gras celebration and also includes rare footage from the celebrations which occurred before the area was razed in 1956 to build the I-10. Although rap does not play a direct role in these celebrations, New Orleans Brass Bands do. New Orleans Brass Bands have a more direct lineage from jazz, but in recent years Brass Bands have participated in a reciprocal development with New Orleans rap. The current ‘‘hip hop generation’’ is the same group of people who are filling the role as the future musicians in New Orleans. The Rebirth Brass Band is at the fore of the rap/brass fusion, often adapting and covering popular rap songs, and Rebirth’s ‘‘Feel Like Funkin’ It Up,’’ for example, has been sampled by local DJs and producers. Other brass bands that have a heavy rap influence include New Birth and the Soul Rebels. Brass bands are important to any celebration in New Orleans, and like bounce they are strongly embedded in New Orleans’ history and culture of dancing, sensuality, and call-and-response exchanges with the crowd. Beyond Mardi Gras Under the Bridge, brass bands are also important to Second Lines in New Orleans. A wealth of information can be found about Second Lines. It is important to note that the same people attending Second Lines as part of their lives, not as tourists, are the people who consume and produce New Orleans rap. Or as Juvenile notes in the refrain for his song ‘‘Run for It’’ (1998): ‘‘If you at a second line and them boys got a gun/you betta run for it, run for it, run.’’

influences are in many ways directly responsible for other musical forms which began in the city, especially early jazz, and the essential additions that were made to ‘‘Blues, Rock and Roll, Soul, and Funk during the latter half of the twentieth century’’ by New Orleans artists (Miller 19). This cultural gumbo, a mixture of Western, African, and Carribean cultural expressions, is essential to the power and sway that bounce has. New Orleans culture has been primed for bounce music

Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty | 527 for well over a century; the pan-New Orleans unity expressed in bounce has strong historical roots. This unity expressed in bounce stands in direct contradiction to the tensions and violence that exist in the city. Bounce also has important antecedents in the history of rap in general. Although ‘‘pure’’ bounce was and is radically different from other forms of rap that prevailed and still prevail nationally, bounce closely resembles the early forms of hip hop that were emerging in New York City throughout the 1970s. DJ Kool Herc, a Carribean immigrant to the United States considered by many to be the father of rap, developed a simpler form of rap in which a DJ would play a beat and an MC would chant or rap over the beat. The point was to involve the crowd and to move the crowd to dance. Therefore dance halls and parties were responsible for the proliferation of rap, not major recording labels or national distributors (Chang 67–85). This observation is fully concordant with Miller’s observations that bounce, due to economic and infrastructural reasons, is primarily supported by local audiences and venues. Bounce is also much closer to earlier forms of rap in intent; the DJ’s main purpose is to move the crowd to dance. To this bounce was added a heavy emphasis on project/neighborhood/ward culture (see sidebars: The Magnolia Projects; Wards.; Wards). A bounce DJ will call out every ward, project, and African American neighborhood in New Orleans in a single song. For example, in their song ‘‘New Orleans Block Party’’ PNC (Partners’N’Crime) calls out the following neighborhoods: the seventeenth ward, Gert town, the tenth ward, the St. Thomas projects, the fourth ward, the Iberville projects, the third ward, the Calliope projects, the ninth ward, the Desire projects, the seventh ward, the St. Bernard projects, the fifteenth ward, the Fischer projects, the sixth ward, Hollygrove, the Melpomene, and Pigeon Town. The idea is to represent your hood, an integral part of hip hop culture, by dancing and celebrating harder and louder than the other neighborhoods. Although neighborhood distinctions are often a source of violence—New Orleans is plagued by ward and project based rivalries—a bounce block party produces a space in which all neighborhoods are given equal opportunity for expression with little to no threat of violence. This accounts for the antecedents to bounce, both in New Orleans culture and in rap in general; the specific history of bounce begins in the early 1990s. Rapper C-murder’s (Cory Miller) novel Death Around the Corner is set in the late 1980s and early 1990s and provides and insider’s glance into the early state of rap in New Orleans. Miller relates the story of a young man, Daquan, growing up in the Calliope housing projects in New Orleans. Through a series of events mostly beyond his control—Daquan’s mother is murdered by his father and then Daquan’s older cousin Jerome, his only male role model, teaches him the drug trade—Daquan finds himself at the head of the Cutt Boyz, the most feared and respected drug dealers in the Calliope. Rap is Daquan’s only method for dealing with the pain he has felt and the pain he has inflicted; rap is a way for him to escape, figuratively and literally, life in the projects. Early on there are no New

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MAGNOLIA PROJECTS (AND NEW ORLEANS PROJECTS IN GENERAL) The Magnolia Projects is one of the largest housing projects in New Orleans and is bordered by Louisiana Avenue, South Claiborne Avenue, La Salle Street, and Washington Avenue. Its official name is the C.J. Peete but it is commonly referred to as the ‘Nolia or the MP3. Many rappers started their careers inside of the Magnolia Projects, participating in rap battles and block parties, but the most notable rappers to come from the Magnolia are Juvenile and Soulja Slim. Juvenile (Terius Grey) is an icon of the New Orleans rap game: he began his career as a bounce artist with the album Being Myself (1994, Warlock Records) and since then has been on the front lines of New Orleans rap, not only adapting to the newest trends but also creating his own. Soulja Slim (James Tapp, Jr.) achieved notoriety for a rap style that stayed true to its roots. He gained a permanent place in New Orleans lore because of his untimely murder in 2003. A detailed account of Soulja Slim’s life and career can be found in Nik Cohn’s Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap (2005). The Magnolia was originally constructed in 1941 and additions were made in 1955. Like many housing projects throughout the United States, the Magnolia is plagued by crime: the crime rate in the Magnolia alone is higher than many full municipalities and a significant portion of New Orleans murder statistics originate in the Magnolia. In 1998, as part of the HOPE IV revitalization program, the Housing Authority of New Orleans began demolishing parts of the Magnolia. The demolition of the projects has been a source of dispute: one side argues that the projects are conducive to violence and that close living quarters are detrimental to human development while the other side points to the fact that many of the residents displaced by the destruction of their homes will not be able to afford the newer housing that will replace the projects. A cursory glance at New Orleans projects/ward/ neighborhood culture reveals that the projects, despite their negative aspects, play an essential role in how New Orleanians imagine themselves and their relations to their surroundings. In 2006 residents filed a class actions suit against HUD for refusing to reopen more than half of the city’s housing units after Hurricane Katrina. They wanted to return to their homes. Since the projects play an essential role in New Orleans rap, their approaching destruction could prove disastrous to New Orleans rap. A single song will often name all of the projects in the city, calling on the residents to dance, or to ‘‘shake it’’ for their hood. For a voyeuristic and ultimately uncritical look at life in the Magnolia Projects, see Straight from the Projects (2003), a short documentary hosted by the former No Limit rapper C-murder (Cory Miller) about the three major housing projects in the third Ward: the Magnolia, the Calliope, and the Melpomene. Although the focus of this

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landmark is the Calliope, the CP3, it must be stressed that the other projects in the city are also integral to the city’s music and sense of community—the projects that someone identifies with depends on which part of the city that person is from, and where their people are. Other housing projects in New Orleans include: St. Bernard, Fischer, Desire, Florida, Lafitte, and Iberville. The St. Thomas, demolished in the 1990s, has faded from memory yet continues to live on in the music it helped create.

Orleans rappers. Daquan and his friends grow up listening to rappers like Rakim (who Juvenile also cites as a major inspiration), and there is little to no mention of New Orleans rappers. True to life, Daquan, who aspires to be a rapper, does not have that option until the early 1990s when New Orleans rap first begins to develop and spread across the country. Prior to the early 1990s, rap from New Orleans was only a minor force in the lives of New Orleans residents, but there were still rappers from New Orleans making the New Orleans rap scene possible. Though they made the scene possible, these rappers were not necessarily integral in shaping specific New Orleans styles because they tended to create more mainstream rap; DJs and MCs from New Orleans were not developing their own style but were mimicking previous existing styles that had spread across the country from the East and West Coasts and down to Miami. Miller offers a few examples: the group formed by MCs Gregory D, Sporty T, and DJ Baby T secured a contract with the Miami based 4-Sight records; Gregory D also teamed up with DJ/producer Manny Fresh (Byron O. Thomas) and both were signed to the Dallas based Yo! Records; other rappers who secured deals with major labels or independents included MC Thick, Bustdown, Tim Smith, and Warren Mayes. While all of these groups, MCs, and DJs are important for making New Orleans rap possible, only one, Manny Fresh, the much sought after producer whose beats were integral to the ascension of Cash Money Records, has continued to play an important and integral role in shaping New Orleans rap. All of these precursors, with the exception of Manny Fresh, pale in comparison to the influence that bounce artists have had in New Orleans throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. Pinpointing the exact date of the first bounce song recorded in New Orleans is difficult; rather there is a confluence of artists and artistic energies in the early 1990s that combine to create bounce. The accepted history is that MC T.T. Tucker and DJ Erv drew on certain characteristics of other preexisting styles and further developed those styles to create bounce. As identified by Miller, these are the major defining characteristics of bounce: chanted, repetitive lyrics (‘‘I’m the nigga/the nigga nigga/the nigga nigga’’); local place identification, the strong commitment to local New Orleans neighborhood/ward/project culture mentioned earlier; and heavy sampling from the New York based Show Boys’ 1986 hit ‘‘Drag Rap.’’ This sample is more commonly referred to as the ‘‘triggaman beat’’ and is

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often modified by dog barks, claps, or the ‘‘dum, da-dum-dum’’ riff from the theme music of Dragnet. The characteristic that most distinctly distinguished bounce from national trends in rap was the reliance on chanted, call-and-response expressions which emphasized crowd involvement, community, and dance over and above other elements such as drug culture, sexual exploitation, or violence. DJ Jubilee’s music best supports this claim for an emphasis on community and dance that contradicts the sexual exploitation, violence, and unchecked materialism of gangsta rap.

DJ JUBILEE AND “PURE“ BOUNCE DJ Jubilee (Jerome Temple) was working as a special education teacher at West Jefferson High School when he was discovered by Earl J. Mackie and Henry F. Holden, the producers of Take Fo’ Records, an independent New Orleans label. Temple was performing at a school dance, and after seeing the way the crowd reacted to his performance, the two producers knew they wanted to sign Temple immediately. Recalling the experience, Mackie said, ‘‘He [DJ Jubilee] rocked the crowd for about 30 minutes. It was like Soul Train. The whole gym was doing what he said’’ (Diettenger). No matter what venue DJ Jubilee’s shows take place in and no matter what crowd he is performing for, the result is always a mass hysteria of dancing. DJ Jubilee’s music is bounce at its purest. In ‘‘pure’’ bounce the petty divisions of wards, projects, neighborhoods, and even the division of white and black, are effaced; they fade away and are replaced by expressions of unity. This is accomplished through the pan-New Orleans character of DJ Jubilee’s songs. No ward, project, neighborhood, or school is left out: everyone is called on, equally, to dance and to express themselves through their bodies. This expressive unity also crosses the boundaries of black and white. DJ Jubilee is a household name in New Orleans, and whether the crowd is composed of white, catholic school kids from uptown or black, public school kids from the projects, everyone is compelled to dance, as if the DJ had issued an injunction binding all present to the movements of their bodies. This claim is difficult to substantiate beyond the use of anecdotal evidence. A 2007 column from The Daily Reveille, Louisiana State University’s student newspaper, written by a young white woman, focused solely on her recent attendance at a DJ Jubilee concert, and the fact that everyone there put away their petty differences (some of the girls where from competing all-girl private schools in New Orleans) and followed Jubilee’s order to dance (Gibbons). This is not merely an appropriation of black culture by white kids: New Orleans culture in general has always focused on outward aesthetic expressions. Also notable are the conventional sexual boundaries that bounce transgresses. Bounce, more than any other form of rap, has eagerly accepted artists of alternative sexual lifestyles. Other rap forms are caught up in an extreme machismo, the effect of which is the continuous use of sexist language and degrading portrayals of

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women. Bounce, though there still are no major women DJs or MCs, is also performed by gay men and transvestites. These rappers are known as sissy rappers, and although the term can be interpreted as derogatory, bounce crowds have little trouble attending concerts and buying records by sissy rappers. DJ Jubilee works very closely with the best known of these sissy rappers: Katey Red (Kenyon Carter). Katey Red is a transvestite and is best known for her song ‘‘Melpomene Block Party.’’ She began her career opening for DJ Jubilee and has since drawn national attention. Neil Strauss, a writer for both the New York Times and Rolling Stone Magazine, wrote an article on Katey Red for the New York Times in 2000. Whether this attention is the result of her musical abilities or the controversy over her gender identification is debatable. Nonetheless bounce has made significant strides in overcoming the machismo and homophobia that characterizes mainstream rap. Bounce has the ability to bind normally antagonistic groups and mentalities through dance, an ability made possible by the sole intent of bounce: to make people dance and feel good. This is exactly the point at which bounce contradicts the nihilism and materialistic nature of gangster rap. But gangsta rap is also an integral part New Orleans rap and the most popular rap coming out of New Orleans is rap that straddles the divide between positive expressions of cultural and communal unity and the negative expressions, violent and sexist, of gangsta rap. This music is gangsta-bounce, and the dash in the name makes the divide in focus and intent between these two styles of rap explicit. This divide, the divide between affirmative expressions of community and negative, violent, and sexist expressions, are the two poles this chapter will continue to investigate. The contradiction, or the divide, must be developed both historically and theoretically. Historically, attention must be given to No Limit Records and Cash Money Records, the two major New Orleans labels responsible for introducing gangsta-mediated bounce themes to national audiences.

NO LIMIT SOLDIERS: THE GANGSTA SEED The history of No Limit Records traces an unbroken line between the musical developments in New Orleans in the 1990s and the gangsta rap scene flourishing on the West Coast. Working from California, Master P (Percy Miller) started the label in 1990. In the early years Master P had little success and the artists he signed were and remain relatively unknown. Following the moderate success of his 1994 compilation albums West Coast Bad Boyz I & II, Master P decided to expand his record label and began signing New Orleans rappers. The artists he signed included Mia X (Mia Young), Mystikal (Michael Tyler), bounce group Kane and Abel, and Master P’s brothers, Silkk the Shocker (Vyshonn Miller) and C-murder. In 1995 Master P joined with his two brothers to form the group TRU, and their 1995 album True went on to reach gold status. After these successes No

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Master P (Universal/Photofest)

Limit’s West Coast rappers felt they weren’t being compensated fairly and Master P moved his base of operations from the West Coast to New Orleans. Operating out of New Orleans, No Limit Records quickly became a major recording label. In addition to his brothers, Mystikal, and Mia X, Master P signed high profile rapper Snoop Dogg and local New Orleans legend Soulja Slim (James Tapp, Jr.)—for a detailed account of Soulja Slim’s life and career see Nik Cohn’s Triksta: Life and Death in New Orleans Rap. Master P’s 1997 album Ghetto D and his 1998 album MP Da Last Don both reached number one on the Billboard 200. Master P also experienced some successes as an actor and director with his underground film I’m Bout It (1997), which lead to the production of two more films, I Got the Hook Up (1998) and Foolish (1999). By 2000 it was clear that No Limit Records was reaching the end of its glory days. Mystikal left the label and his album Let’s Get Ready debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in 2000 and by 2002 the only rappers still signed to No Limit Records were Master P’s immediate family. In 2003 No Limit Records filed for bankruptcy. No Limit’s sound was originally more similar to a West Coast gangsta style than it was to bounce. Miller notes that ‘‘the music released on the label had less in common with the local aesthetic values of bounce and more in common with West coast based gangsta rap’’ (24). Their style contained all of the necessary characteristics: violence, drugs, sexism, and undying fealty to the streets and to their people. They loudly proclaimed their loyalties, issuing warnings like ‘‘you don’t want to go to war with a soldier’’ (Master P); if they did go to war they vowed to never hesitate. Just call Hoody Hoo and your crew would react: ‘‘grab the gat, where they at, rat-a-tat-tat’’ (Master P). Unabashedly glorifying drugs, Master P sold dope out of ice cream vans. Mia X was the baddest chick, but most women were merely

Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty | 533 objects to the No Limit soldiers, who yelled like they were following orders, giving their songs a fascist aesthetic: strong group identification supported by militaristic demonstrations and music. No Limit’s group identification is similar to the group identification found in bounce, but a No Limit Soldier’s group identification was always a hostilely oriented identity. They were bound by their hatred of anything that threatened their band of brothers: ‘‘Fuck them otha niggas/I’m down for my niggas’’ (C-Murder). Bounce group identification displaces this anger through dance and then builds on that displacement the possibility of a pan-New Orleans identification—an identification that can only be brought about through the previous existing tensions, the anger. From this smallest common denominator emerge broader ways in which No Limit Records drew on bounce. Master P and others would chant lyrics like ‘‘How you do dat dere,’’ a phrase similar to the same chants found in bounce. In the late 1990s and early 2000s No Limit Records picked up several bounce artists— Choppa (Darwin Turner) is the most notable of these—after Master P noticed that another label in the city was making money through gangsta-bounce. That label was Cash Money, and no one did it bigger than they did.

CASH MONEY MILLIONAIRES: DOING IT BIG Cash Money began in 1991 but was primarily a New Orleans phenomenon, focusing specifically on local acts like UNLV, an acronym for Uptown Niggas Living Violently, composed of rappers Lil’ Ya, Tec-9, and Yella Boy. UNLV never gained an audience outside of the city—they broke with Cash Money Records and their lead vocalist, Yella Boy, was murdered, speculatively due to a hit put out on him by Brian ‘‘Baby’’ Williams the CEO of Cash Money. The other members of UNLV went on to produce more work, still as UNLV, but without a label or a lead vocalist they could only access a local audience. UNLV is important to mention in more than just passing because almost every New Orleans rapper mentions UNLV as an influence; UNLV was central to the development of gangsta-bounce. In an interview Juvenile claims that his 2001 hit ‘‘Set It Off’’ from Project English, sampled the beat from UNLV’s ‘‘Drag ’em ‘N’ the River’’ (1993) which inaugurated the use of the characteristic ‘‘dum da-dum-dum’’ rift from the Dragnet theme music in bounce, because Juvenile wanted to pay his respects to Yella Boy (InsideHoops). And it was Juvenile’s presence as a member of the Hot Boys that changed Cash Money’s artistic limits. Juvenile was born Terius Grey. He grew up in the Magnolia housing projects in the third ward, one of the most dangerous projects in the city. Juvenile began his career in bounce by working night clubs, selling CDs and cassettes. In his own words, ‘‘We was like, the cats that made the cds, the cassette tapes, and went out to clubs and put had them in a bag and sold them for $10 apiece right there in front of the clubs, just like that. And that’s how bounce started’’ (InsideHoops). Juvenile was there at the beginning, hustling to keep bounce alive. In 1994 Juvenile

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Juvenile (Stacy Kranitz/Corbis)

released his album Being Myself and the hit single from the album gave bounce its name; that single was ‘‘Bounce for the Juvenile.’’ Whereas the bounce DJ Jubilee performed was usually more a sequence of shout-outs to neighborhoods and dance moves chanted over and over, like ‘‘take your dog for a walk!/a walk it like a stick it like a walk it like a stick like a . . . /monkey on a stick,’’ Juvenile’s music was saturated with his lifestyle. The bounce mentality was always there: ‘‘Bounce for the Juvenile’’ mentions every project and major African American neighborhood in New Orleans. Every community is praised for ‘‘slinging iron’’ and being a bunch of ‘‘uptown (or downtown) niggas that don’t mind dying,’’ but immediately afterwards the violence is refocused into dance, and Juvenile calls on the crowds to ‘‘bounce for the juvenile, bounce, bounce for the juvenile.’’ When Juvenile joined the Hot Boys, this mixture of gangsta rap and bounce was enough to attract the attention of Universal Records. In 1998 Cash Money CEO Brian ‘‘Baby’’ Williams signed a $30 million pressing and distribution contract with Universal. Universal’s investment quickly paid off: that same year Juvenile released the album Solja Rags and 400 Degreez. Although Solja Rags sold relatively well, it was 400 Degreez that brought national attention to the Cash Money Millionaires. The hit single from the album, ‘‘Back That Azz Up,’’ was a pop crossover hit and exposed more people to gangstabounce than had ever been exposed to it before. The defining characteristics were all there. They were gangsta and most of the songs lyrics were devoted to the objectification of woman; but they were bounce so the primary concern was making people dance. The chorus consisted of the repetition of phrases like ‘‘Girl you

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look good/won’t you back that ass up.’’ ‘‘Back That Ass Up’’ was a dance that DJ Jubilee had already made popular—DJ Jubilee sued Cash Money Records over copyright infringement, but the court eventually found in favor of Cash Money. Lil Wayne’s verse in ‘‘Back That Ass Up’’ also popularized the phrase ‘‘drop it like its hot’’ with the line ‘‘After you back it up and stop/then drop, drop, drop, drop it like it’s hot.’’ Snoop Dogg later produced a number one single, ‘‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’’ (2004), which drew directly from New Orleans rap slang. But Juvenile’s successes weren’t the only successes for Cash Money Records. In 1999 B.G. (Christopher Dorsey) released his hit song ‘‘Bling-Bling.’’ The song had an immediate effect on American vernacular: ‘‘bling-bling’’ virally invaded all facets of American culture to signify ‘‘doing it big’’ and other lavish expressions of wealth (see sidebar: New Orleans Slang and Dialect), and the term was added to Webster’s Dictionary in 2003. Even after Juvenile left Cash Money over disagreements about money, Cash Money pushed on, bolstered by Manny Fresh’s beats and Lil Wayne’s unique lyrical style. Manny Fresh has been in the rap game longer than any other major rapper from New Orleans. He became a DJ at the age of 10 with the hip hop group New York Inc. Rapper Gregory D later took notice of Manny Fresh, and the two released the album The Real Deal in 1992 on RCA records. The album did not gain much attention outside of New Orleans. Soon after Manny Fresh became the inhouse producer for Cash Money Records. According to Juvenile, Fresh’s presence was one of the major reasons he agreed to work with the label (InsideHoops). Manny Fresh produced all of the beats for cash Money Records, whether those were the group efforts like Hot Boys or the independent releases by Juvenile, Lil Wayne, B.G., and others. Manny’s biggest accomplishment was creating the defining sound of gangsta-bounce. His style was unparalleled, relying heavily on synthesizers and always energetic—it was bounce music and it had to make people dance. Manny’s 2004 album The Mind of Manny Fresh is his most experimental album to date. Producing his own album, and not just another Big Tymers album, allowed Fresh to pursue avenues which were normally denied to him. In his own words: ‘‘When I’m doing a Big Tymers album I have to think about what would Baby like and how the songs will fit into our image. I can’t go edgy on a Big Tymers album. I can’t really do the different things that I want to do. If I feel like I want to sing a slow song and its off key, I can’t do that on a Big Tymers album’’ ( Ejams.com). Manny’s single solo album is responsible for incorporating bounce with elements of ‘‘jazz . . . dancehall, reggae, and 70s soul’’ (Ejams.com). In 2005 Manny Fresh left Cash Money Records over financial troubles, but still continues to play an important role in New Orleans rap. His beats are responsible for launching New Orleans artists to star status. Lil Wayne was only considered a minor artist, relatively unimportant, until ‘‘Go DJ’’ was released, a song built on a ‘‘menacingly minimalist’’ Manny Fresh beat (XXL). Lil Wayne grew up in Hollygrove, a part of the seventeenth ward in New Orleans. When he was 11 years old Lil Wayne forced his way into Cash Money

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NEW ORLEANS SLANG AND DIALECT New Orleans slang is significantly different from any other slang or dialect from the South. It is in no way similar to the Southern drawl that the South is stereotypically known for, nor does the Cajun accent capture the speech patterns of people from New Orleans. Instead, New Orleans slang is closer to a Brooklyn accent because it is derived from the accents of the German, Italian, and Irish immigrants that populated the city. As a port city, New Orleans speech patterns were also affected by other distinct immigrant groups, especially those from the Caribbean. Although the distinctions are mostly in the pronunciation of words, the dropping of the postvocalic ‘‘r’’ for example, there are particular phrases which are peculiar to New Orleans, some of which are taken from French. For example: ‘‘lagniappe’’ for ‘‘a little something extra’’; ‘‘making groceries’’ for ‘‘going to the grocery store’’; ‘‘beaucoup’’ which can be used many ways but usually means ‘‘a lot, much of, or very’’; and ‘‘neutral grounds’’ for the street medians. Rap culture in New Orleans is continuously generating new slang. The following definitions and others can be found at www.nohallablack.com.

504 (n): the area code for New Orleans, but also used to identify that someone is from New Orleans. The term was made popular by the 504 Boyz. Act a donkey (v): to act wild or to be extremely funny or skilled at something (like rap). Drove (adj): to be driven crazy or irritated; disgusted or upset over something. Ha bruh/humbrah (response expression): true dat; I couldn’t agree more; you took the words right out of my mouth. Hot boy/hot girl (n): used to describe someone who’s on fire, someone who’s sought after and getting paid. The phrase was popularized by the Cash Money Millionaires, especially the Hot Boys. ‘dem people (n): usually used to describe the police, but can refer to any municipal agency such as firemen or EMTs. In the humorous song ‘‘I’m on Fire’’ from the album Ghetto Fabulous (1998), Mystikal proclaims, after catching on fire, ‘‘C-c-call them people to me, II-I’m on fire!’’ You workin’ with somethin’ (expression): usually uttered in appreciation of a woman’s physical assets, but can also apply to any assets that a person may have, male or female. Also takes the form of ‘‘let me see what ya’ workin’ with,’’ which is often an invitation to dance.

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Although phrases like ‘‘stuntin’ ’’ are often argued to have originated in New Orleans, the proliferation of the term makes certain knowledge nearly impossible. Despite this, one of the most popular phrases in rap and culture in general, so popular that it was admitted into Webster’s dictionary in 2003, is the term ‘‘bling-bling,’’ which generally refers to any ostentatious display of wealth. The term came from the song by the same name from BG, Baby, and Lil Wayne from Cash Money. To quote BG after the phrase was entered into the dictionary, ‘‘I just wish that I’d trademarked it’’ (Oh).

REFERENCE Oh, Minya. ‘‘ ‘BlingBling’ Added to Oxford English Dictionary.’’ MTV News, April 30, 2003. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1471629/ 20030430/bg.jhtml

Records. Lil Wayne harassed Brian ‘‘Baby’’ Williams by constantly showing up at the studio and leaving freestyle raps on Williams’s answering machine. Williams mentored the young Lil Wayne and included him in the group’s recordings: Lil Wayne became a central figure in the group Hot Boys. In 1999, when Lil Wayne was only 17 years old, he released his first album, Tha Block Is Hot. Since then Lil Wayne has released five albums: Lights Out (2000), 500 Degreez (2002), a reference to Juvenile’s hit album 400 Degreez, Tha Carter (2004), Tha Carter II (2005), and Tha Carter III (2007). In addition to his original albums, Lil Wayne also released a series of mixtapes called Da Drought I, II, and III. Lil Wayne’s

Lil Wayne performs at the Gibson Amphitheater in Universal City, California, on March 29, 2009. (Getty Images)

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success has largely depended on his theatricality, a theatricality trained in the expressive incantations of the bounce Lil Wayne grew up hearing and making. An article in The New Yorker notes that even at a young age Lil Wayne, unlike other rappers who tend to rely on a brute thuggishness in their lyrical stylings, ‘‘was already enough of a ham to know that stage-whispering the phrase ‘the block is hot, the block is hot’ sounded more threatening than yelling it’’ (Frere-Jones). Despite retaining a semblance of bounce’s expressive elements through his style, Lil Wayne’s music is not bounce. If DJ Jubilee’s music represents one pole in the gangsta-bounce continuum, the pole of ‘‘pure’’ bounce, Lil Wayne’s music best represents the other pole, the gangsta pole. Lil Wayne is not a gangsta rapper in the same way that groups like N.W.A. were: he is not thugging and killing cops. Lil Wayne’s gangsta style is closer to the Mafia variation of East Coast rappers like Biggie Smalls; he valorizes the good life, especially making money. When Lil Wayne rhymes it is with a swagger and braggadocio that, however silly at times, such as when Wayne refers to himself as a Martian, still maintains the ‘‘don’t give a fuck’’ attitude that defines much mainstream rap. His gangsta style can be reduced to two essential elements: getting paid, no matter what the cost, and not caring what anyone else has to say about it. He constantly reaffirms that he is about making money, nothing else: ‘‘So much money on my mind/it’s all I remember’’; when Philadelphia rapper Gillie dissed him by claiming he was Wayne’s ghostwriter, he barely acknowledged Gillie; and in the song ‘‘Georgia Bush’’ (2006), an openly political song which samples Ray Charles’ ‘‘Georgia on My Mind,’’ he defies the white political establishment by associating the confederate flag with ‘‘a white cracker motherfucker that probably voted for [Bush].’’ With pop hits like ‘‘You Ain’t Know’’ (2007), his collaboration with Robin Thicke in ‘‘Shooter’’ (2007), and his appearance on Destiny’s Child’s ‘‘Soldier’’ (2004), Lil Wayne has become a pop rapper, getting paid. This is not a problem because it perfectly fits the lifestyle he espouses: get paid, no matter what the haters might say. Lil’ Wayne, as of 2007, seemed to be distancing himself from his Southern rap roots. Although he claims in ‘‘Shooter,’’ that ‘‘if we too simple/then ya’ll don’t get the basics’’ as a response to the frequent criticism that Southern rap is too simple, his most recent songs are not Southern rap. Meanwhile, there are still rappers from the South making money by sticking to the basics. Bounce music has had a huge influence in the South. Atlanta-based UNK’s song ‘‘Walk It Out’’ (2006), has received a great deal of radio play and been remixed by rappers like Andre´ 3000 from Outkast and it is directly indebted to bounce. The phrase ‘‘walk it out’’ could easily fit into any one of DJ Jubilee’s songs—DJ Jubilee even has a song titled ‘‘Walk with It.’’ Southern rap is thriving, which reveals that although Lil Wayne may be defiant, by abandoning his roots, he is still enthralled and subject to money. The money comes first; if anyone is hating on him because of that, he does not care. Nonetheless the final element has been revealed: gangsta-bounce is still an important part of not only New Orleans culture, but Southern culture in general.

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MONEY’S A DEAD END, FLIP THE SCRIPT Before discussing the future of New Orleans rap I will turn to a more politically oriented discussion of the development from bounce to gangsta-bounce and finally the abandonment of bounce altogether. Given the way the music industry functions and the ‘‘make money’’ ideology rappers like Lil Wayne vehemently espouse, it is inevitable that the positive elements inherent in bounce are soon forgotten. However there are moments within this general movement from bounce to gangsta rap when the possibilities for something else emerge, for a new style of rap that is authentically political, still at odds with existing power structures, and still ‘‘real.’’ When agitated bodies responding to systemic oppression, the crossroads of dance and violence, combine with the political messages that are inherent to all forms of gangsta rap, a new paradigm becomes possible: the agitated bodies of a conscious community working against those who would keep that community oppressed, whether the threats are internal or external. The power for this comes from the binding of the community. Bounce begins the process of binding the community, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is proving to be the catalyst capable of producing a spontaneous political consciousness in that community and the rappers who represent it. The biggest obstacle to this possibility of a defiant, war music grounded in a strong sense of community and identity is the ‘‘make money’’ ideology that currently pervades rap. The following argument will move in the same progression of the previous, historically oriented part of this chapter, beginning with ‘‘pure’’ bounce, moving through gangsta-bounce, and then finally into gangsta rap. Each phase will be identified with its essential characteristic: dance, identity, and the political, respectively. Each of these essential characteristics contains its own direct contradiction. Dance, as agitated bodies, also contains violence; identity, as group identification, contains both positive, shifting identifications as well as negative, violent identifications; and the political, as gangsta rap, contains both a defiant attitude aimed at those who created the oppressive social structures which exist, and an escape from those structures, making money, which only reinforces the existing power structures. From these contradictions emerge the possibility of the reverse flow, the return to dance not as a response to oppression but as defiant war music, music that is agitating and political. The possibility of the reverse flow depends entirely upon one element: the cohesion of the community and the constant redefinition of inside and outside in relation to that community. Dance induces overwhelming emotions in the dancers; dance is ecstatic and the dancers are overtaken by a rapturous delight, almost as if in a trance. The dance also creates a circle of common identification; everyone who dances is included in the inside of the circle. Referring to the practices of the native population in Algeria during French colonial control, Frantz Fanon writes, ‘‘the circle of the dance is a permissive circle: it protects and permits . . . . There are no limits— inside the circle’’ (57). ‘‘Pure’’ bounce fulfills the same function in New Orleans

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that native African rituals and dances played for the colonial natives. A circle is created by the explicit recognition of certain neighborhoods and peoples that are allowed into the circle. Within this circle the dancers are protected from violence and permitted to allow their bodies to reach a state of ecstatic delight that, in the case of bounce, is explicitly sexual. This is not a bad thing: the ecstatic delight is grounded in pleasure and the senses and within the circle everything is permitted. Fanon comments that before the dance, ‘‘the men and women were impatient, stamping their feet in a state of nervous excitement; when they return, peace has been restored to the village’’ (57). With dance comes the release of negative tensions and the creation of a community, a circle, an inside and an outside. Fanon then demonstrates how these dance practices are forgotten and replaced by violence against the oppressor during the struggle for liberation. A similar displacement occurs in bounce, but the violence originally found in bounce is not directed at the source of oppression. Instead it is violence within the community, acted out for the sake of pure, brute survival. Dance mediates this violence within the community. What was originally a response to the terrible conditions that inner-city African Americans were forced to live in, dance, is now forced to confront its opposite, violence. Dance creates a permissive circle that forces the violence to the psychological outside. In Juvenile’s 1994 song ‘‘Bounce for the Juvenile’’ violence is everywhere—the verses contain a violence which surround the interior of the chorus, the call to ‘‘bounce, bounce for the Juvenile,’’ the call to dance. Within the chorus the listeners are protected from the violence of the verses. Ricky B’s ‘‘Shake It for Ya Hood’’ (1997) also demonstrates this tense relationship between dance and violence. Aside from the lack of the ‘‘triggaman beat,’’ ‘‘Shake It for Ya Hood’’ contains all of the elements of gangsta-bounce. The verses in the song are written as if Ricky B were driving around the city reporting on all the events that he sees. He acknowledges that the communities are filled with violence—‘‘read it in the Times Picayune/murder rate BOOM.’’ As he rides through the city he calls out all of the major African American neighborhoods; like ‘‘pure’’ bounce the song is heavily indebted to an emphasis on neighborhood/ward/project culture. The song is ambivalent: Ricky B is not celebrating the violence, yet the song is upbeat. He is surrounded by death, yet he is proud of all the soldiers and warriors, and an upbeat calypso rhythm in the background never lets the song slip into abjection and pessimism. This approach might seem crass, but it is an important survival skill. Despite all of the hardships surrounding daily life in New Orleans, dance allows everyone to continue to survive in the face of those hardships. Hence the refrain: ‘‘Shake for ya muthafucking hood if it’s all good.’’ The circle is New Orleans, all of the neighborhoods are mentioned, and the inside of the circle constantly butts against the outside of the circle, the violence. An important question emerges: what is the root of this violence that these communities are trying to protect themselves against? Here the general state of New Orleans in the 1990s plays a central role. New Orleans relies on its tourist industry to keep the city going, hence there are no manufacturing jobs or other well paying

Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty | 541 jobs. Instead, poor African Americans are forced into the service and entertainment industries. The residents do not have access to proper education—New Orleans’ school systems are deplorable—so they have few options beyond serving other people for minimum wage. Added to this is the influx of crack-cocaine and heroin into poor African American communities during the 1990s, an influx that was labeled epidemic. Young black men and women see drug dealers who are living comfortably and surrounded by material wealth, and when you don’t have material wealth it means a lot—it means, essentially, survival. The drug game is the ultimate free enterprise—it is free trade, capitalism, in an almost pure form. In the normal free exchange between equal partners, buyer and seller/dope dealer and dope fiend/dope dealer and other dope dealers, law is what keeps one party from taking from the other party by the use of sheer force. Without law the strongest decides the rules of the game. Since the drug game is entirely illegal, law cannot possibly apply to the drug game. Therefore force becomes the deciding factor in all transactions. If someone crosses you or cheats you, you kill them. This violence then finds its way into the rest of the community through exposure and glorification. In bounce the violence is displaced by dance—a communal space is created that resists violence. But this community cannot protect its members from the violence that surrounds them in their everyday lives; it can only create a temporary safe space. New group identifications begin to form as an immediate form of protection against the vicissitudes of everyday life; the click forms, the gang, the crew. When force is the only rule of law, the best way to combat those forces is to band together with other similarly minded people. The clique forms to ensure monetary success, to ensure that its members, should violence find them, will have other people there to protect them, and soon becomes an active form of violence in the community. Although gangs never fully caught on in New Orleans it was still necessary to form a tight group that strictly defined the inside against the outside. This is the source of No Limit’s fascistic aesthetic: No Limit soldiers formed a tight knit group, and every member of that group was ready to die or go to war for the other members of the group. The same mentality begins to overtake the neighborhood/ward/project culture on which New Orleans rap was built. Instead of your ‘hood representing a shifting identity amidst a larger identity, identity now becomes a protection from others. Neighborhood representations begin to take on an entirely different character. If a No Limit soldier repped the third ward, he didn’t rep the third ward in conjunction with the other neighborhoods; the third ward was set at odds with other neighborhoods. This setting-at-odds as the source of inter-community violence sheds light on Matt Miller’s claims that despite the unifying power of bounce, bounce is also a sight of contestation between communities. This contestation can be directly traced back to the rule of force that governs everyday life in these neighborhoods. When the stakes are survival and there is no rule of law, law is taken into the hands of the strongest and most dangerous groups.

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Because of the economic state of the citizens of the city, forgotten and forced into a mode of brute survival, the gangsta element comes to the fore, not only in the form of violence and gangs, but also in the form of an attitude. That attitude is the ‘‘Fuck You’’ attitude that is so pervasive in rap. Todd Boyd argues that this resistant power is the ultimate strength of hip hop, ‘‘hip-hop, more accurately wants to provoke white people and ‘bourgie ass niggas’ to say something, while laughing all the way to the bank. This ultimate disregard for the approval of the mainstream is quite liberating, indeed’’ (11). Hip hop is not nihilistic—it has its own beliefs and own ways of negotiating the world, many bred from necessity. Hip hop stands for what it believes in, it ‘‘is concerned with being ‘real,’ honoring the truth of one’s own convictions . . . hip-hop sees compromise as false, fake, and bogus, and . . . they are willing to die for these beliefs’’ (Boyd 11). Because hip hop will always resist being fully accepted in mainstream white culture, it is inherently a political movement. Those in power will make constant demands on hip hop to change, yet hip hop will refuse to change as a matter of respect and dignity. Yet when Boyd writes that rappers will be ‘‘laughing all the way to the bank,’’ he reveals the central weakness of his argument. The ‘‘make money’’ ideology is the most heinous and integral part of the white power structure. It was making money that led to modern slavery, colonial empires, and inner-city poverty conditions. The dominant power structures have had a stranglehold on making money for centuries, and family values, human rights, and the sovereign rights of nations have all meant nothing when faced with making money. The same thing occurs in hip hop; nothing matters more than making money, and if anything interferes with making money, take care of it in any way possible. In Ben Younger’s Boiler Room (2000) the stock market is referred to as the ‘‘white man’s version of selling crack’’ (147). Boyd uses this example to argue that white masculinity is appropriating a perceived Blackness. This fails to account for the history of the capitalist system of production, a long, venerated history of hustling and living by the gun. Younger may be appropriating a perceived image of Blackness, but it is an image of Blackness that has uncritically accepted the capitalist mode of production, the same mode of production largely responsible for poverty and inequality. The contradiction here becomes irreconcilable. Hip hop refuses to be appropriated by the white power structures, yet it is only by appropriating one of the most heinous white power structures, capitalism, that hip hop is able to spread its message. Hurricane Katrina forces the contradiction to crisis; it marks the point when it becomes necessary in reality to flip the script, to stop relying on the ‘‘make money’’ ideology and its violent baggage as a mode of existence; necessary because the identity of African Americans in New Orleans weighs heavily on the music they produce. Their music is a voice resisting the erosion of their lives, their homes, and their histories. This is no hyperbole: the history of African Americans in New Orleans is in jeopardy. New Orleans has become an experiment in ‘‘disaster capitalism’’; the Bush Administration has been more concerned with the

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economic profitability of reconstruction rather than the pressing need to rebuild homes and lives (Klein). The capitalists do not care about anything except making money; therefore the ‘‘make money’’ ideology does not defy white power structures. Rather, it is the white power structure. New Orleans rap artists quickly began producing songs and videos about Katrina. The two which best illustrate the tension between the ‘‘make money’’ ideology and the concerns of the community are Juvenile’s video for ‘‘Get Ya Hustle On’’ (2006) and Lil Wayne’s diatribe against the government, ‘‘Georgia Bush.’’ In Juvenile’s video, three children walk through the debris of the lower ninth ward wearing George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Ray Nagin masks. As they pass, residents hold painted signs with messages like ‘‘You Already Forgot,’’ and in one scene a Chevrolet Avalanche on 22s is being drawn by a team of horses. Juvenile is trying to call attention to the mismanagement of the disaster by all levels of government. The message? The power structures don’t care and a solution is not forthcoming, so ‘‘get your check from FEMA’’ so you can ‘‘go out and score some coc-a-ina.’’ Everything returns to the drug game, to perfected capitalism untainted and unaffected by the rule of law. The city is given a voice and an essential identity is bolstered, especially since Juvenile is from the third ward, not the ninth ward. Yet instead of focusing on agitating this identity, abstract individuals are encouraged to take care of themselves, even if that means selling drugs to survive. The reality of this situation is that of a situation forced upon a group of people. The same is true for Lil’ Wayne’s ‘‘Georgia Bush.’’ The song is defiance at its strongest and rawest, a mixture of ‘‘history, conspiracy, anger, and confusion . . . style and venom’’ and Lil Wayne’s sincere identification with all New Orleans people who suffered during the storm and are still suffering (Marcia). Yet when this defiant attitude is contrasted with Lil Wayne’s pop icon status and his emphasis on getting paid, it is hard to not take his claims with a healthy dose of cynicism. Making money may be necessary if Lil Wayne is to get his message out, but the ideology is not. And as the previous historical section of this chapter revealed, bounce’s successes in local markets and venues in New Orleans makes the distinction between making money and selling out all too clear. Lil Wayne seems on the verge of selling out, but since Lil Wayne has also been making more and more of his songs available for free online, only the future can decide. These post-Katrina songs flip the script because a new, politically charged idea comes to the fore, an idea bolstered by the common identification of all those affected by Hurricane Katrina: this grind, this hustle in the streets, is about everyone. The community has been redefined; it is no longer the tight-knit group surviving against the odds but a much larger group trying to survive. The ‘‘make money’’ ideology will continue to plague the city, both through drug dealers and politicians, unless this new community agitates itself to work in its collective self-interest. The future of bounce is not a bleak one. New Orleans refugees are taking bounce with them to other cities and the influence is mostly a positive one. Gone are the days when East Coast and West Coast rivalries plagued rap; popular bounce

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songs extend an open hand to other parts of the nation, an invitation to join the circle. The remix of UNK’s ‘‘Walk It Out’’ features New York rapper Jim Jones calling on New York neighborhoods to ‘‘walk it out’’ and Andre´ 3000 telling the Eastside, Westside, Southside, and Northside to ‘‘walk it out.’’ The paradigms which began in bounce, dance use towards the realization of a shifting and open community, is becoming a regular occurrence in mainstream rap. And despite the fact that many criticize Southern rap for its perceived lack of complexity, the South continues to invite other regions into the circle. Many New Orleans artists are also resisting the examples set by rappers like Lil’ Wayne, and instead are capitalizing on the redefinition of the inside and the outside that was one of the results of Hurricane Katrina. The inside is everyone who has suffered; the inside is all of the New Orleans residents who have been forced to move to other cities in America; the inside is all those called into the circle. The outside is all those who would exploit New Orleans and its people for personal economic gain; the outside is anyone who blames the victims; the outside is those who do not understand the power of the circle. Instead of agitating bodies as a reaction to oppression, bounce is now in the process of agitating bodies—communal, shifting bodies—towards political consciousness and action. Mia X’s ‘‘My FEMA People’’ is in every way a bounce song: it relies on the triggaman beat, the lyrics are chanted and neighborhoods are called out. What differs her song from ‘‘pure’’ bounce is its political commentary converted into a danceable form. Songs by artists like DJ Jubilee or Ricky B are fatally happy and optimistic; Mia X’s song is intensely angry. The track seethes with indignation and an undying sense of community. Mia X chants over and over, ‘‘where my people, I got love for my people’’; she agitates not as a release but as an angry, defiant, challenge to all those who have abandoned the city and its people in their time of need. Her people are still out there listening; her people are New Orleans’ people, and they’ve taken the bounce spirit with them across the United States. If it were to escape the ‘‘make money’’ ideology in all of its forms, bounce could form the basis for a new war music, a war music that agitates the body, defies dominant power structures, and is, most importantly, firmly rooted in the shifting and open identities of a transnational, diasporic community. If the conclusion of this analysis seems optimistic, I can only blame it on the piece of New Orleans that I carry around inside of me. If the truth is to be told, the odds are against bounce in its struggle to free itself from the ‘‘make money’’ ideology, and this ideology is infectious and unyielding. The real situation of the people must change first, and if the kernels of resistance which I have dedicated this chapter to are to help change anything, they must continue transgressing the boundaries of limited identities and continue agitating the circle towards demanding changes for the entire community, not just for individuals. The game is being played out every day on the streets and in the boardrooms; the future of bounce as a voice for communities not just in New Orleans but across the nation depends on its results.

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REFERENCES Boyd, Todd. The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of HipHop. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Chang, Jeff. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005. Diettenger, Cristina. ‘‘DJ Jubilee and Mr. Temple.’’ www.bestofneworleans.com. Ejams.com. ‘‘The Mind of Mannie Fresh.’’ http://ejams.com/manniefresh.htm. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Frere-Jones, Sasha. ‘‘High and Mighty.’’ The New Yorker. 2007. www.newyorker .com/arts/critics/musical/2007/08/13/070813crmu_music_frerejones. Gibbons, Rachel. ‘‘DJ Jubilee Brings Nostalgia, Joy.’’ The Daily Reveille, 2007. http://media.www.lsureveille.com/media/storage/paper868/news/2007/08/27/ Entertainment/Dj.Jubillee.Brings.Nostalgia.Joy-2937416.shtml. InsideHoops.com. ‘‘Juvenile Interview.’’ 2005. http://www.insidehoops.com/ entertainment/juvenile-interview-062105.shtml. Klein, Naomi. ‘‘The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.’’ The Nation, May 2005. Marcia, Peter. ‘‘Review: Lil Wayne/DJ Drama Dedication 2.’’ Pitchfork 22 (June 2006). http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9148-dedication-2/. Miller, Matt. ‘‘Bounce: Rap Music and Cultural Survival in New Orleans.’’ HypheNation: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Critical Moments Discourse 1, no. 1 (2006): 15–31. Miller, Cory, AKA C-Murder. Death Around the Corner. New York: Vibe, 2007.

FURTHER RESOURCES Bonisteel, Sara. ‘‘F—Katrina: New Orleans Hip-Hop Remembers the Hurricane.’’ www.FOXnews.com, 2006. Cash Money Records. http://www.cashmoney-records.com/. Cohn, Nik. Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Halla Black!!! We the People, U the People, We All the People. http://www .nohallablack.com. Noz. ‘‘Hip-Hop on a Higher Level: And All I Got in Return Was a Dern Country Song.’’ XXL Magazine, 2006. http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=4060. Ya Heard Me? 2007. http://www.yaheardmefilm.com/index.html.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY B.G. Chopper City in the Ghetto. Cash Money, 1999.

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The Heart of Tha Streetz. Koch Records, 2005. The Heart of That Streetz, Vol. II. Koch Records, 2005. Big Tymers How You Luv That? Cash Money, 1998. How You Luv That? Vol. II. Cash Money, 1998 I Got That Work. Cash Money, 2000. Hood Rich. Cash Money, 2002. Big Money Heavyweight. Cash Money, 2003. Birdman Birdman. Cash Money, 2002. Fast Money. Cash Money, 2005. Like Father, Like Son. Cash Money, 2006. 5 Star G. Cash Money, 2007. Choppa Straight from the N.O. No Limit, 2003 Choppa Style. Take Fo, 2003. Da Real Choppa. Body Head Ent, 2005. C-Murder Life or Death. Priority, 1998. Bossalinie. Priority, 1999. Trapped in Crime. Priority, 2000. C-P-3.com. Priority, 2001. Tru Dawgs. Riviera, 2002. The Truest $#!@ I Ever Said. Koch, 2005. The Best of C-Murder. Priority, 2005. The Tru Story: Continued. Koch, 2006. DJ Jubilee 20 Years in the Jets. Take Fo, 1996. Bouncin’ All Over the World. Take Fo, 1999. Take It to the St. Thomas. Take Fo, 2000. Get Ready Ready. Take FO, 2000. Walk with It. Take Fo, 2004. 5th Ward Weebie Ghetto Platinum CD. Most Wanted Empire, 2001. Da Unexpected. Fat Boy Ent., 2003. Hot Boys Get It How U Live!! Cash Money, 1999. Guerilla Warfare. Cash Money, 1999. Let ‘em Burn. Cash Money, 2003. Juvenile Being Myself. Warlock, 1994. 400 Degreez. Cash Money, 1998.

Bouncin’ Straight Out the Dirty Dirty | 547 Tha G Code. Cash Money, 1999. Solja Rags. Cash Money, 1999. Project English. Cash Money, 2001. Juve the Great. Umvd Labels, 2003. Reality Check. Atlantic/WEA, 2006. Kane and Abel 7 Sins. Priority, 1996. Am I My Brother’s Keeper. Priority, 1998. Rise to Power. East/West, 1999. Most Wanted. Most Wanted Empire, 2000. Last Ones Left. Entertainment Solutions, 2002. Welcome Home. Entertainment Solutions, 2003. Street Legends: The Underground Tapes. Entertainment Solutions, 2004. Katey Red Melpomene Block Party. Take Fo, 1999. Y2 Katey. Take Fo, 2000. Lady Red Lady Red. On Song, 1996. Hi a Lady. On Song, 1998. Lil’ Wayne Tha Block Is Hot. Cash Money, 1999. Lights Out. Cash Money, 2000. 500 Degreez. Cash Money, 2002. Tha Carter. Cash Money, 2004. Tha Carter, Vol. II. Cash Money, 2005. Dedication. Aphilliates, 2006. Dedication, Vol II. BCD Music Group, 2006. Tha Carter, Vol. III: The Leak. Cash Money, 2007. Lil’ Weezy-Ana, Vol. I. Cash Money, 2007. Mannie Fresh The Mind of Mannie Fresh. Cash Money, 2004. Master P 99 Ways to Die. Priority, 1995. Ice Cream Man. Priority, 1996. Ghetto D. Priority, 1997. MP Da Last Don. Priority, 1998. Ghetto Postage. Priority, 2000. Only God Can Judge Me. Priority, 2000. Good Side, Bad Side. Koch, 2004. Living Legend: Certified D-Boy. Guttar Music, 2005. Featuring . . . Master P. Priority, 2007.

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Mia X Good Girl Gone Bad. Priority, 1995. Unlady Like. Priority, 1997. Mama Drama. Priority, 1998. Mystikal Mystikal. Big Boy, 1995. Mind of Mystikal. Jive, 1995. Unpredictable. Jive, 1997. Ghetto Fabulous. Jive, 1998. Let’s Get Ready. Jive, 2000. Tarantula. Jive, 2001. PNC (Partners ‘N’ Crime) PNC 3. Big Boy. 1995. Rookie Card. WEA/Warner, 2007. Silkk the Shocker The Shocker. Priority, 1996. Charge it 2 Da Game. Priority, 1998. Made Man. Priority, 1999. My World, My Way. Priority, 2001. Soulja Slim Give it 2 ‘em Raw. Priority, 1998 The Streets Made Me. No Limit South, 2001. Years Later. Cut Throat Comitty, 2002. Years Later . . . a Few Months After. Koch, 2003. Turk Young and Thuggin’. Cash Money, 2001. Still a Hot Boy. Laboratory, 2005. Convicted Felons. Laboratory, 2006. UNLV (Uptown Niggas Living Violently) Unfortunately No Longer Virgins. Ichiban Old Indie, 1993. Uptown 4 Life. Cash Money, 1996. 6th and Baronne. Cash Money, 1998. The Return of UNLV. Blazin South, 2001.

CHAPTER 21 Soul Legacies: Hip Hop and Historicity in Memphis Zandria F. Robinson As the first stop out of the Mississippi Delta and the last major stop out of the South for Delta migrants during the Great Migrations of African American people to large urban centers in the North, Memphis, Tennessee has been and continues to be a strategic repository of rural and urban cultures. The eruption of an underground hip hop scene in Memphis in the late 1980s was prefigured by the historical synthesis of these cultures, as well as the sounds and struggles of movements for rights, equality, and humanity. In what Marc Anthony Neal terms a ‘‘post-soul’’ context—the current historical moment in black aesthetic culture that began in the 1980s after various soul and civil rights movements had subsided—Memphis serves as the intersection of the postindustrial conditions of unemployment and urban disinvestment, post-Civil Rights youth cultures, the reassertion of the South as a culturally, historically, and in some cases economically distinctive American region, and this history of fused musical genres and cultures. Contemporary Memphis artists forward their own presentations of the existential gangsta style, drawing on West Coast gangsta rap, as well as the Southern gangsta rap style popularized in mainstream media by Houston’s Geto Boys, to construct and represent the gritty yet laid-back pimp styles of Memphis emcees. Memphis artists also worked to solidify the importance of movement—from buck-jumping, to gangsta walking, to other modes of expressivity—to hip hop music and Southern culture. Now-mainstream artists such as Three 6 Mafia and Eightball and MJG, and to a lesser extent Project Pat and a host of others, have introduced the nation to a signature Memphis sound—one that relies almost invariably on a continuous stream of eighth notes played by an actual or simulated high-hat, interrupted and/ or accompanied at key rhythmic intervals by the bass drum—aesthetic, and landscape. Memphis’ underground artists, too, create a sound that is definitively and often explicitly tied to the city’s soul legacy. Still, whether underground or mainstream, Memphis artists’ particularities are both explicitly and implicitly rooted in the distinctive history of the place and region. 549

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Not unlike the beginnings of hip hop production in most regions, Memphis hip hop began in the basements, attics, and closets of shotgun houses, the practice rooms of university music buildings, and anywhere else artists could set up a drum machine, microphone, and recording devices. Because of the soul legacy and civil rights history of the city, most Memphis children, particularly black children, are socialized at home and in public schools to understand the importance of civil rights and music to Memphis as well as to their own identities as Memphians. Thus, hip hop in this region often has a connection to soul music and/or civil rights struggles, whether it is sampling from Stax (see sidebar: Stax Records) artists or critiquing inequality and forwarding themes of black consciousness. While reflective of broader trends in contemporary society, especially those affecting youth and African American populations, Memphis hip hop, like hip hop in other regions, retains a place-based focus that accentuates regional distinctions as well as youth and African American cultural universals (Forman xv–xxii). Memphis’ contributions to contemporary hip hop culture are myriad and complex, and in many ways, subtle and obscure. Stax artists are among the most sampled artists in hip hop. Further, their contributions to hip hop samples have perhaps been underestimated, as contemporary hip hop artists have increasingly sampled from B-sides and more obscure artists in order to maximize creativity and minimize nonpractitioners’ ability to identify various samples. Luke ‘‘Red Eye Jedi’’ Sexton, a prominent DJ on the Memphis local hip hop scene, as well as cofounder of Memphix Records and member of underground group Tunnel Clones, argues that Stax samples are the building blocks for a significant number of hip hop albums (Herrington 2006). Thus, before hip hop was officially conceived, Stax artists laid a sufficient portion of the groundwork for the deconstruction of soul, providing the background for ‘‘spectacular vernaculars’’ (Potter 1–23). Beyond and through this historical contribution, contemporary hip hop artists in Memphis read their own life experiences through soul music and a gritty edge illustrative of both goodness and vice. Memphis hip hop is marked by a Southern articulation of gangsta, which includes the pimping and violence reflective of the city’s persistent and often widespread poverty. Drawing on The Showboys’ ‘‘Drag Rap,’’ or ‘‘Triggerman’’ as it was popularly known, became a skating rink favorite and a staple of bourgeoning hip hop scenes throughout the South. Memphis rappers made ‘‘lock ‘em in da trunk’’ a recurring theme of the city’s gangsta persona, from Eightball and MJG to a number of underground artists. Memphis rappers are often aware of this tension between goodness and vice, seeking to demonstrate two distinct, yet inextricably linked, sides of life in the city. Derelick of local underground collective Iron Mic Coalition (IMC) describes Memphis in ‘‘901 Area Code’’ (2005) as both the city of ‘‘gangland feuds and throw-away twentytwos,’’ and ‘‘fly girls’’ brought up on ‘‘cornbread and butter.’’ From pimping to drug dealing to gun violence, Memphis’ country, laid-back, and easygoing feel is disrupted by these familiar urban problems. Nonetheless, while the problems may be similar to those of other urban locales, historical poverty, combined with

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STAX RECORDS Located at the corner of McLemore and College Street in South Memphis, around the corner from LeMoyne-Owen College and right in the heart of the neighborhood, Stax Records began as a small record shop and modest recording studio. It was the brainchild of Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, who took the first two letters of their last names to form the name of the company. Opening in 1959, Stax evolved into a recording studio that would house and nurture some of the most important musical acts of the twentieth century. Otis Redding, Booker T. and the MGs, the Staple Singers, and Luther Ingram were among the numerous soul artists that recorded at Stax at one time or another in their careers. The interracial, organic, and collaborative nature of musical creation at Stax prefigures and informs the contemporary hip hop scene in Memphis. Financial troubles in the 1970s led to the closing of Stax and the dispersal of its artists. The Stax building sat vacant until it was sold to the Southside Church of God in Christ for a nominal sum. Despite protest, the church eventually demolished the building, citing plans to build a community center. The center was never built, and the land went undeveloped until the Stax Museum of American Soul Music was built on the original site of the record company. Today, the Stax Museum educates Memphians and tourists about ‘‘Soulsville, USA.’’ Amongst its various efforts to be integrated into the South Memphis community and the Memphis community at large, Stax hosts a music academy and recently opened a charter school that will eventually host all grades from sixth through twelfth. In addition to recognizing its contemporary place in the Memphis community, it also recognizes its legacy and continued relevance to hip hop artists. To honor hip hop and its contributions to the preservation and reinvention of soul music, the museum hosted ‘‘HipHop Immortals,’’ an exhibit featuring black-and-white photographs of seminal hip hop artists. Thus, the museum like the company, sound, and artists it commemorates, is essential to Memphis hip hop scene.

distinctively Southern understandings of violence and honor, render the manifestation of these problems, as well as how they enter into cultural expressions such as hip hop, different. The Memphis hip hop sound is descended from the city’s soul music, funk, and a blend of rap from the East and West Coasts. The signature sound on most Memphis hip hop tracks is continuous high-hat cymbals usually occurring in continuous sets of sixteenth notes, punctuated in varying rhythms with a sharp snare drum, especially on the second and fourth beats of each measure. The general pace of the beats is slower than rap in other regions, although the steady high-hat and

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interrupting snare drum facilitate the steady flow of both lyrics and the music. While a variety of samples, typically Stax soul and funk samples, may layer the tracks, the sixteenth note high-hat and punctuating snare are the primary basis, with bass and melody as secondary to the overall sound. As Memphis hip hop is diverse, the high-hat sound is utilized differently across subgenres; however, the continuous high-hat is a distinctive Memphis sound that has been picked up by other regions, among other styles, to fashion ‘‘Southern-sounding’’ beats. The call-and-response chants that have come to characterize the manifestation of crunk music popularized by Lil Jon originated in Memphis clubs, as DJs shouted terse yet powerful phrases to hype the crowd. Songs such as Three 6 Mafia’s ‘‘Tear Da Club Up’’ (1995) and ‘‘Hit a Muthafucka’’ (1997) combined chants and buck-jumping—highly energetic jumping, either in place or from place to place—and frequently turned Memphis clubs into black mosh pits. These chants are undoubtedly descended from the slave chants, field hollers, work songs, and chain gang calls-and-responses endemic to the American South. In their postsoul manifestation, these chants serve not only to get the club hyped, but also to express and release the aggression of poverty and disenfranchisement of life for many youth and minorities in an increasingly marginalized urban Memphis. Finally, three distinct Memphis dances are important to note, not so much for their widespread adoption—indeed Memphis hip hop is not known for its dance or fashion styles—but for their role in capturing the spirit of Memphis hip hop and in influencing dance styles that did achieve mainstream appeal. The first dance, the gangsta walk, is a rhythmic, forwarding moving, alternating-foot stomp that involves swinging the arms slightly in concert with the stomping movements. It was popularized at Crystal Palace Skating Rink, the quintessential space for deejaying and hip hop in the 1980s and 1990s. The gangsta walk arose as a manifestation of both masculine and feminine posturing, a coordinated display of solidarity on the dance floor—or the floor of the skating rink after the skating had ended— and an articulation of the swagger of the pimp and the hardness of the gangsta. The second dance, buck-jumping, is a Delta phenomenon from New Orleans to Memphis. It was from Memphis, however, that buck-jumping migrated to Atlanta and became the intentional yet rhythmic collision with others, the flying elbows, and the high-energy jumping that came to characterize the first phase of crunk music before the more performative and feminized ‘‘snap’’ crunk emerged. The final dance, juking/jukin’/jookin’, has been made visible in the mainstream through Crunchy Black, now former member of Three 6 Mafia. The dance title is directly descended from blues juke joints, dance clubs where African American migrants would spiritually release society’s oppression through vigorous, soulful, and sometimes sexual dancing. The juke joint was exported throughout the country, to wherever African American populations migrated. Not coincidentally, the juke joint maintains its strongest hold and manifestation in Chicago, the destination of many African American migrants from the Mississippi Delta. In its contemporary Memphis manifestation, juking is an improvised mixture of break dancing,

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CRUNK While the origins of the term are contested, it most likely is a Southern articulation of the past tense of ‘‘crank,’’ specifically denoting the act of personally becoming cranked up or cranking something up. In a Delta/Southern/ ‘‘country’’ accent, ‘‘crank’’ or ‘‘cranked’’ would more than likely become ‘‘crunk,’’ hence the basic denotation of the term as a state of being wound up and perhaps more intense than a normal state of being. Crunk is both linguistically and connotatively related to ‘‘buck,’’ an earlier articulation of increased intensity accompanied by fervent dancing, jumping, and posturing. Getting buck and/or crunk are also related to group chanting of phrases meant to incite and excite a dancing crowd at a club. Three 6 Mafia is largely responsible for the reintroduction of such chants into African American music, a practice developed during DJ Paul and Juicy J’s days as deejays on the Memphis scene. This group chanting was institutionalized in Three 6 Mafia records such as ‘‘Tear the Club Up,’’ ‘‘Hit a Muthafucka,’’ and ‘‘Break Da Law.’’ Yet, although the crunk sound originated in the early releases and mixtapes of Three 6 Mafia, it was exported to Atlanta and popularized by DJs and artists on the Atlanta scene. Through the mainstreaming of crunk by artists like Atlanta’s Lil Jon, the subgenre has become wildly popular and broadly recognized. The form has evolved into snap crunk, which is oxymoronic in that snap crunk inspires more choreographed and controlled dance movements and replaces highpitched synths and booming bass lines with sampled and synthesized finger snaps. Nonetheless, the crunk form has become a staple of clubs and continues to incite crowds, whether it is to buck-jumping or snapping. Every July since 2002, Memphis has hosted Crunkfest, a super-concert that brings the hottest acts in rap, and specifically the most significant crunk artists and Southern artists, to the city. Hosted by S&S Entertainment, the festival, which has evolved to span across a weekend and boasted 10,000 attendees at the last concert, celebrated its fifth anniversary in July 2007.

moonwalking, soul steps and spins, and gangsta bravado, executed in sequence and often in a competition context. With juking, Crunchy Black and others are signifying on and remixing a history of Southern black expressivity through dance and movement. From crunk dances to crunk production, the continuous influence of soul music, both in style and creative process, is evident in Memphis hip hop, even at moments when the lyrics, topics, and production seem furthest removed from the hopeful and aspirational tone of most soul music. The resilience and longevity of Memphis hip hop is in many ways dependent upon the care today’s artists take with soul

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music and soul histories. In fact, a great deal of what emerges on the Memphis hip hop scene is a product of the history of migration, the integration of urban-rural cultures, and African American efforts to express their distinctive being and life experiences through movement, song, and musical creation.

SOUL HISTORIES In order to fully appreciate the contemporary hip hop scene in the region, it is necessary to understand the roots of the peoples that came to populate Memphis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the music and cultures they brought with them, and how they forged a different kind of city life made up of the best and worst of urban and rural existence. Their attempts to coexist under black codes and Jim Crow are chronicled in the history and music of the region, which serves as the basis for contemporary Memphis hip hop. The Great Migration is arguably the most significant movement of people in American history, changing the racial landscapes of most major American cities and prefiguring the overwhelming concentration of African Americans and other people of color in postindustrial inner cities. While the dominant narrative of the Great Migration imagines green, rural migrants moving directly from farms where they had been sharecroppers and going directly to Northern urban centers from Chicago to Detroit to Cleveland, this narrative obscures a historical demographic reality. A significant number of migrants who moved north were already urbanized before migrating to urban centers. Memphis was just one of these Southern urban centers, but its significance lies in its geographic situation as one of the major urban centers from which people migrated not only north but west as well (Tolnay 216). As people from the Mississippi Delta migrated to and settled in Memphis, they brought rural sensibilities, gospel culture, and blues up Route 61, now popularly known as the Blues Highway. Largely sharecroppers and farmhands, these migrants brought with them the field hollers, chants, and call-and-response styles that had become institutionalized communication and coping strategies during slavery. In Memphis, rural folk mingled not only with already urbanized blacks in the city, but were also affected by the urban landscape and myriad urban vices. It was this intersection of rural and urban black cultures, as well as in some cases black and white cultures, that facilitated the production of Memphis’ distinctive contributions to American music and culture. Like most urban cities of the early American South, black people and black labor were essential to the creation, maintenance, and prosperity of Memphis. Established on the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff because of its ideal geographical location on the Mississippi River and its strategic situation as a gateway to the West, Midwest, and the Deep South—hence the designation of the region as the ‘‘MidSouth’’—Memphis functioned largely as a regional and national distribution site for cotton. The city sprawls miles eastward from the Mississippi River, extends south to the Mississippi state line, and reaches north to old factories and rural

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fields. An epidemic of yellow fever in the late nineteenth century drove most of the inhabitants from the city, and the rapid population decrease, coupled with the devastation of the epidemic, compelled the city founders to give up Memphis’ charter for over a decade. At the behest of city founders and leaders, African American soldiers who had served for the Confederacy during the Civil War protected the city from looters eager to exploit the vulnerability of the city. When city leaders and whites returned, black-white relations quickly devolved into the preepidemic Jim Crow system and blacks were once again relegated to preestablished black neighborhoods in South Memphis, which was just south of the city’s downtown, North Memphis, just north of the downtown, and other neighborhoods further east of the Mississippi River, including Orange Mound and Binghamton, established to contain the growing population of black residents, many of whom were migrants from the Mississippi Delta, after the abolition of slavery. Richard Wright, acclaimed American writer, wrote of his experiences in the postepidemic, early twentieth century Memphis in the final chapters of his autobiography, Black Boy, capturing the constant tension and stifled passions of blacks in the Jim Crow South. As black and white relations across the nation were characterized by physical and psychological violence, like most urban areas, Memphis was fraught with race and class struggles that spanned from the infamous lynching of three black grocers of which Ida B. Wells wrote passionately in 1892 in her newspaper Free Speech and Headlight of Memphis to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 during a visit to the city in support of the black sanitation workers’ strike. Yet, it is not so much the racial history of the city as black and white residents’ attempts to reconcile that history as human beings that influenced the production of blues, gospel, jazz, rock and roll, soul, and hip hop in Memphis. Indeed, Memphis residents, rural and urban, did not passively accept their situation. They turned their experiences in the Delta and the city into musical and cultural narratives that legitimated their existence as autonomous beings, regardless of the social situation in which they found themselves. Hailed as the ‘‘Main Street of Black America’’ and the Harlem of the South, Beale Street (see sidebar: Beale Street) served as a formalized space in which business, blues music, juke joints, dancing, gospel music, churchgoing, and liquor drinking combined to serve as the cultural basis for contemporary black performative and spiritual cultures in Memphis and other regions. After many Beale Street clubs declined and closed, economically ravaged by the Depression and World War II, the blues, jazz, and community forged by Delta migrants and native Memphians was reborn and expanded in South Memphis with the 1957 founding of Stax Records. Blues, gospel, and jazz fused with rock and roll to become soul—that country-urban sound that combined the strivings and expressions of the totality of African American culture. Forwarding an organic soul sound that spoke both to Southern gospel and blues traditions and civil rights struggles, Memphis music emphasized the existential, rather than outright protest, dynamics of black life in America. The Stax soul sound, like its successor, Memphis hip hop, has often been characterized

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BEALE STREET Intersecting the Mississippi River at Riverside Drive, Beale Street stretches approximately two miles west from the river. It was home to a number of businesses and churches, including the historic Beale Street Baptist Church. It was also the site of Ida B. Wells’ paper, The Free Speech and Headlight of Memphis, which was burned by a mob enraged by Wells’ published response to the lynching of three black grocers. Characteristic of Memphis’s penchant for combining decadence and goodness in tight spots, in the early decades of the twentieth century, Beale Street was also home to all manners of vice, from bootlegging and prostitution to gambling and violence. The street’s reputation, positive and negative, quickly became a draw for green migrants and aspiring musicians, who brought the music of the Delta to the clubs of the street. Jug bands and street performers populated the streets, hats outstretched and instrument cases were open for donations. Hailed as the Main Street of black America and the Harlem of the South, Beale Street is essential to the history of black Memphis culture, from blues and jazz to soul and gospel. With blues greats, like W. C. Handy and B. B. King, the street was the musical home to a great deal of artists whose influence surpassed their respective genres to shape the landscape of American music. By World War II, however, a series of events, including changes in the city’s policies towards vice, had left the bustling Beale Street of the early decades of the twentieth century behind for something less boisterous, less organic, and by proxy, less musical. Beale Street had fallen into disrepair, and over the next decade, a number of shops and clubs would close. Relatively abandoned, the music that had once filled the two-mile stretch had migrated to other parts of the city. In the urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 1960s, many of the buildings on the street were razed in preparation for renewal. Yet, revitalization would not come until the 1980s and 1990s. Today, Beale Street is a generic downtown city space, complete with a chain multiplex, a number of chain restaurants, and thematized tourist spaces that feature Elvis, soul, and the blues as objects for consumption. Still, despite the commodification of the street’s history, the social memory of the place lives on through older Memphis residents and the contemporary production of music on local hip hop, soul, and rock scenes.

as gritty, raw, and organic, reflective of the personal histories of the artists, the historical reality of life in the urban and rural South, and the often spontaneous and accidental nature of the musical collaboration. Still, King’s assassination threatened to silence the gritty sounds and interracial collaborations of Stax Records. After King’s assassination and the subsequent

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rioting, the then famous Stax sound, built on the struggles of rural and urban people attempting to navigate a racialized and segregated urban space and nation, was seen as not direct enough in articulating black demands. While music has once allowed Stax musicians to easily transcend race and racism, tensions escalated with the audacity of the injustices. Paralleling the rise in Black Nationalism and the Black Power Movement, African American music moved more definitively into protest mode, and funk music arose to articulate frustration with previous methods of achieving equality, with the growing unrest of underemployed blacks marginalized in inner cities, and passion for the zeitgeist of the 1970s. Stax, too, produced funk as well as soul sounds, and even brought soul to California in the now famous Wattstax celebration—a commemoration of the Watts Riots—demonstrating solidarity with the struggles of blacks in urban centers all over the nation. Yet, the feel-good funk sound was making noise outside of Memphis, as well as outside of the South, and the region silently turned inward, endeavoring to make sense of the death of the voice and face of Stax Records, Otis Redding, the assassination of King, the continuing class struggles and inequality in the city, and the seemingly worsening conditions for blacks in the region. After King’s death, the city proceeded with urban renewal projects it had begun over a decade earlier and razed most of historic Beale Street and some surrounding black communities, almost in an attempt to erase the soul history that had precipitated King’s assassination. Still, the bourgeoning and now more definitive Black Power movement touched Memphis in the same way it touched cities across the nation. Memphis was primed to accept the offspring of Black Power and funk; moreover, it was poised to transform the genre with its soul history and particular urban and cultural experiences. Riots ensued and curfews were instituted; yet, when the majority of the initial confusion subsided, Memphis artists still struggled to proceed. While Stax artists’ popularity increased, Stax Records fell into financial trouble beginning in 1974, and artists dispersed to other labels and other regions, attempting to continue their sound and careers. The importance of hip hop to Memphis, as a city attempting to heal from cultural trauma, cannot be overstated. The advent of hip hop in New York and its subsequent migration to urban centers around the country rattled a region still devastated and moreover disappointed by the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet, it was not until the 1980s that hip hop took serious hold in Memphis, perhaps reflective of the virtual standstill the region had been experiencing since King’s death. Although some political gains had been made—Harold E. Ford was elected to the House of Representatives in 1974 and Willie W. Herenton, who would go on to become mayor in 1991 and be elected for an unprecedented four additional terms, became the first black Superintendent of the Memphis City Schools in 1979—the black community, without its Beale Street, had mourned and devised strategy in sitting rooms and behind closed church doors. As the post-Civil Rights generation nationwide cast new eyes and sounds onto the social condition of minorities in America, youth in Memphis were inspired by the struggles of youth

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in other urban locales and publicly expressed their dissatisfaction, as well as their joy, hopes, and experiences, through the emerging hip hop form. While the early hip hop cultures and sounds of the East and West Coasts of the United States grew largely and often directly from the funk styles ushered in by James Brown and George Clinton, early Memphis hip hop held fast to the homegrown classic soul sound exemplified by Stax Records and Stax artists in the 1960s, drawing on the music that had held in it such promise for a positive race relations future. Memphis youth, brought up on Memphis soul, still envisioned the potential of the nation through the soul lens and worked to make the young hip hop genre speak and listen to soul music. The visceral and organic nature of soul and funk is now a public artifact, commemorated in historical plaques, museums, including the Stax Museum and the Center for Southern Folklore, and specialty record shops. Today, Beale Street has been refashioned into a hypermedia tourist spot, lined with bars, restaurants, and shops themed with music—jazz, soul, blues, and Elvis Presley—and barbeque. While Beale is no longer Black America’s Main Street and has all of the ‘‘sanitized razzmatazz’’ (Muschamp 27; quoted in Hannigan 67–78) of most American downtowns that rely on tourist commerce for survival, it still remains an important space and place in Memphis artists’ social memories. Further, it is often physically the site of hip hop and neo-soul shows, and continues to be home to small variety of ‘‘authentic’’ performers. One such group, the Beale Street Flippers, reanimated Beale’s street performer tradition, displaying and perfecting the 1980s acrobatic pastime of young black men in the city’s housing projects and parlaying the gymnastic productions into a relatively successful career performing at NBA half-time shows across the country. Thus, while the physical landscape has changed, the soul history continues in both memorial and actual form. Essentially, the distinctiveness of Memphis hip hop lies in its history of struggle and soul, and its resilience despite social and cultural trauma. Inspired by gangsta rap, early Memphis hip hop poured from home studios in black neighborhoods, skating rinks, and the trunks of Chevrolets. The styles of West Coast gangsta rap met the gritty, organic styles of Southern gangsta—Delta descendants that had been thoroughly urbanized and subjected to the crises of the postindustrial disinvestment in urban areas, but still maintained country sensibilities—and fundamentally transformed understandings of the differences in black regional cultures.

MEMPHIS’ HIP HOP HISTORY Hip hop is widely recognized as the postmodern deconstruction of soul, blues, jazz, gospel, funk, and rock and roll. That is, hip hop takes these preceding genres and collapses, manipulates, and remixes them into something new while generally retaining some recognizable piece of the original songs and genres. Memphis hip hop utilizes this universal method of deconstruction, yet is more indebted to the legacies of soul, blues, gospel, and rock and roll in particular because of the

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region’s prominent role in popularizing and mainstreaming these genres. Further, the city’s history as a haven to Delta migrants uniformly influences the crunk chants, buck-jumping, and gangsta walking that have come to be staple sounds and movements of the region. Memphis’s contributions to hip hop have only recently been institutionally acknowledged by hip hop, and perhaps still have not received an appropriate level of attention given the breadth of the city’s musical and cultural history. Not unlike their antecedents migrating to Memphis to escape the poverty of the rural South, some Memphis artists, from Eightball and MJG to Jazze Pha, have packed up their soul histories, pulled up their musical and cultural roots, and migrated to other Southern cities, or to other regions altogether, in search of better opportunities and support networks for their craft. It is the lack of recognition, coupled with the exodus of artists and talent, that compels Memphis underground and pop artists to either represent the region unflinchingly or grumble about the stifling nature of the city. Yet, no matter where they end up, from Stax samples to gangsta walking, Memphis hip hop artists have remained loyal to the city’s history of soul and pimp cultures. Still, many local artists argue that Memphis hip hop, not unlike the city in general, suffers from a ‘‘crabs in the bucket’’ syndrome (Sarig 278–82) that has obscured some of Memphis’s best talent, shut out of a supposed artists’ good-ol’boy network that allegedly controls the inner-workings of city’s hip hop scene.

Early Artists, Early Labels By the late 1980s and early 1990s, gangsta rap had become one of the primary influences on urban rap scenes. Memphis was just as plugged into the gangsta sound as other locales, and artists were eager to articulate their own overlapping and dissimilar experiences as Southern gangstas. In fact, one of the pioneers of Memphis rap, and the first Memphis artist to receive attention, albeit brief, from a national label, aptly calls himself Gangsta Pat. Born Patrick Hall, Gangsta Pat is the son of Willie Hall, drummer for the Bar-Kays, one of the house bands for Stax artists in the late 1960s and 1970s. He was picked up by On The Strength, a record label based out of a home on one of the major thoroughfares of Orange Mound, a historically black Memphis neighborhood. His work was the postsoul answer to gangsta rap, and his 1991 #1 Suspect presented a Southern gangsta flavor that officially brought hip hop ‘‘home’’ to Memphis. Although Gangsta Pat was subsequently shuffled to various labels, he enjoyed relative success and is an essential pioneer on the underground scene, even for contemporary artists. Other early artists were able to achieve more commercial success, although that success was often only the product of a gritty longevity based on stamina and talent. One such artist, Al Kapone—Alphonzo Bailey—achieved early success with ‘‘Lyrical Drive By’’ (1994), released on crossover label Outlaw Records. Kapone eventually went on to establish his own record label, Alcatraz, but was generally unsuccessful in attracting major label attention or attention beyond the

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underground hip hop networks of the Deep South. In fact, justly and finally, Kapone recently achieved critical acclaim for his ghostwriting work on the soundtrack of Hustle & Flow (2004), as well as for his work with other crunk artists, including Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz. Eightball (Premro Smith) and MJG (Marlon Jermaine Goodwin) began at On the Strength records and solidified the complexity of the Dirty South rap, lyrically and musically. Also from Orange Mound, the duo’s pimp style and lyricism quickly magnetized the expanding hip hop field in Memphis, as a number of producers made beats for the two and up and coming deejays, including Juicy J—Jordan Houston—who would go on to become part of successful collective-turnedduo Three 6 Mafia. Yet, as was and to a certain extent continues to be the case in Memphis, the duo’s work was reaching only but so far beyond the Memphis city limits. When presented with the opportunity, after some thought and negotiation, Eightball and MJG headed to Houston Texas to the Suave label. Comin’ Out Hard (1993), released on the Suave label, is the first classic Memphis hip hop album to receive noticeable attention outside of Memphis. The album featured the two personas now synonymous with Memphis rap and Southern rap in general—the gangsta and the pimp. The lessons on pimping, robbing, and drug dealing are familiar, and yet their Southern intonation and delivery, and in some instances relative ruthlessness in comparison with gangsta and pimp stories from other regions, marked Memphis hip hop as distinct. In ‘‘Mr. Big’’ for instance, Eightball narrates, in the classic style of black storytelling, his rise from impoverished McDonald’s employee to petty drug dealer to Mr. Big, a dealer with women, authorities, and

Eightball and MJG (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

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the market cornered. ‘‘Armed Robbery’’ features the duo alternating verses that detail a bank and armored car robbery, respectively. These narratives are not devoid of self-reflection and are not nihilist; in fact, Eightball and MJG frequently reflect on urban poverty and violence as well as the possibilities for attaining the American Dream through various nonnormative means. Further, blues, funk, soul, and/or jazz cuts and samples lace each of the tracks, signifying a connection with the spiritual roots of black music and culture. In line with the black storytelling tradition, the black Southern preacher, either in his preacher voice or in an Everyman voice, surfaces to legitimate and solidify the narrative. Comin’ Out Hard testified to two facts—the first was that pimping was far from dead, especially in Memphis, Tennessee and the South at large; and the second was that the South was just as affected by the postindustrial ‘‘disappearance’’ (Wilson xiii–xxiii) of lifesustaining jobs in urban locales as Chicago, New York, Oakland, and Los Angeles, which often resulted in youth adaptation of nontraditional paths to success. After putting Memphis, Tennessee, curls, and gold teeth on the map and schooling the unlearned on contemporary pimping methods and styles, Eightball and MJG went on to release several more albums and are now on Sean Combs’ Bad Boy South label. While mainstream success did not come until the release of In Our Lifetime, Vol. 1 in 1999, the years following the release of Comin’ Out Hard —which included the releases of the funky and reflective On the Outside Looking In (1994) and On Top of the World (1995)—paved the way for a number of new artists, producers, and DJs to make names for themselves on the Memphis hip hop scene. Breaking out of regional and translocal confines continued to be difficult, but now success had become probable for some and inevitable for others. Before Comin’ Out Hard, the Memphis sound may have been destined to remain trapped, still silenced by the aftermath of the death of King.

DJs and Tapes, Dances and Clubs Characteristic of most early hip hop scenes, DJs and clubs were key in shaping the interest, sound, and direction of the Memphis hip hop scene. Most of the early dissemination and creation of hip hop culture, and hip hop music in particular, occurred through various Memphis clubs, from Orange Mound’s (see sidebar: Memphis Neighborhoods) No Name to Studio G downtown on Beale Street, now the Plush Club. Memphis had always been about the magic of creation within a collective: from the chants of rural sharecroppers, to coordinated dancing in Beale Street clubs, to call-and-response in black churches, to the organic and often serendipitous creation of music in Stax Records in South Memphis. It is no coincidence, then, that Memphis clubs became the space in which not only the elites of the region’s rap—DJs, rappers, label owners, producers—shaped the culture, but Memphians moved by hip hop, but not necessarily directly participating in its production, shaped the culture as well. The club served as the space in which artists and hip hop consumers collaborated together over the beats of East Coast rap,

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MEMPHIS NEIGHBORHOODS There are four key neighborhoods that are important in Memphis hip hop, as they are the neighborhoods from which many artists hailed and continue to hail. After the abolition of slavery, blacks were largely concentrated in two areas of the city: South Memphis, the area of town south of downtown Memphis, and North Memphis, the area of town north of downtown Memphis. As these areas became densely populated and unable to sustain further migrants, new neighborhoods, including Orange Mound and Binghampton, were created to house and manage the city’s growing black population. Each community had strong social institutions—including churches, clubs, stores, and even a historically black college, LeMoyneOwen—that buffered the African American community from racism and the ravages of poverty. Like most Southern cities, Memphis was slow to integrate, and rendered a rather liberal interpretation to the Supreme Court language of ‘‘all deliberate speed,’’ construing the high court’s directive as leave to integrate when it chose. Still, King’s assassination in 1968 hurried along this integration process, which in turn led to both white and black middle class flight. Whites left historically white neighborhoods for developing suburbs significantly east of the downtown and upwardly mobile blacks, previously segregated in North and South Memphis, Orange Mound, and Binghampton, moved into these abandoned white neighborhoods. The most notable of these neighborhoods that transitioned from white to black in the 1970s was Whitehaven. Not two decades since its integration, the neighborhood became known as ‘‘Blackhaven,’’ both negatively and positively. While North and South Memphis had already gained a reputation for crime and violence—the areas contain some of the poorest census tracts in the city and were the location of the majority of the city’s housing projects—Whitehaven would come to have this same reputation of urban disinvestment and rampant crime as the original black middle class populations that migrated to the neighborhood moved east. South and North Memphis have both been spaces of musical creation since the decline of Beale in the mid-twentieth century. Despite and perhaps because of the increasing poverty and underemployment that plagued American inner cities in the postindustrial era, South Memphis and North Memphis, affected by structural shifts in the labor market and the closing of key factory-based industries in the city, became the prime locations for hip hop creation in the 1980s. While the trajectory of the Whitehaven community was certainly different from the historically black neighborhoods of South and North Memphis, and even Orange Mound, as a vibrant black community, it, too, became a hotbed for the creation of hip hop music. Today, South Memphis, North Memphis, Orange Mound, and Whitehaven remain significant neighborhoods that provide the experience and inspiration to create the most definitive of hip hop records from Memphis.

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West Coast gangsta and pimp rap, and Miami bass. The intersection of these genres created a distinctive Southern-gangsta-pimp sound with complementary dances and slang. From trading mixtapes to deejaying, Memphis artists shaped the sound of the South inside and outside of various clubs and skating rinks. Through mixtapes, previously underappreciated or under-distributed tracks could be rereleased alongside the hottest established records of the East Coast, West Coast, Houston, and New Orleans. Often remastered, extended, and remixed with added signature scratches to increase club appeal, mixtapes, as in other regions, served not only to disseminate new music and introduce new artists, but also to highlight the production skills of up and coming DJs. The mixtape market was everywhere; in addition to being sold in the typical places (e.g., from car trunks, stereo shops, and clubs), mixtapes were also distributed and sold in high schools, at drum battles and band battles, and even in churches. One significant place where mixtapes were made, sold, and traded was Crystal Palace Skating rink. In South Memphis on Third Street, the Memphis leg of the Blues Highway, Crystal Palace sits as a historical haven for Memphis’ rap artists since the 1980s. As skating and skating rinks are key elements in Southern black youth culture, Crystal Palace’s situation as one of the most important spaces for hip hop cultural creativity in Memphis is not necessarily unique or novel within the broader context of the Southern region of the United States. Yet, because so much of Memphis’ hip hop culture was created there, Crystal Palace continues to be important today. It is essential to the history of Memphis hip hop as a centralized location where beats and dances came out of basements and living rooms and were tried out on a crowd composed of the toughest hip hop critics in the city, all eager for something new, authentic, and representative. Several DJs were essential to the scene during its formative years in the late 1980s and early 1990s as well. One such DJ, Spanish Fly, who had a significant impact on the Memphis scene at its outset and continues to DJ at Hot 107 (see sidebar: Hot 107), one of two major R&B and hip hop stations in the region, is a recognized legend on the scene. It was this combination of places and personas that made hip hop a recognizable cultural product imbued with local sensibilities and interests. Key to the mystique of Crystal Palace was the eruption of innovation in dance and movement that would occur there after attendees removed their skates. Sunday nights at the rink were spectacle enough with pimps, gangstas, pretty women, and bad women on wheels. After the skates came off, the dances that had only begun to take shape on the skates came into full fruition on the rink floor. From the inner rink, the younger, less experienced watched as folks gangsta walked, juked, and buck jumped. From outside the rink beyond capacity crowds cheered and shouted for the latest manifestation of the dances. The entirety of the rink would gangsta walk, either in place or around the rink; crowd participants would buck-jump, either in place or into one another; and duos would battle in juking, moving and spinning, moonwalking and turning one another’s caps or chains, prefiguring the

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antics of And1 Basketball Mixtapes and rendering break dancing a Southern articulation. From the DJs pumping inspiring jams—local, East Coast, and West Coast —to the dances inspired by them, Crystal Palace was an important place, akin to a large studio with scores of collaborators, where the Memphis community at large participated in the formation of hip hop.

Three 6 Mafia: Local/Translocal Domination Most Known Unknown, the title of Three 6 Mafia’s 2005 release, epitomizes the experiences of artists on Memphis’s hip hop scene from the early 1990s until quite recently. That is, while a plethora of artists, including Kingpin Skinny Pimp, Gangsta Boo, DJ Paul and Juicy J, Project Pat, La Chat, Playa Fly, Lord Infamous, and Koopsta Knicca, amongst others, were carving and framing a distinctive genre of Southern rap, most of this work went unnoticed and underappreciated beyond the translocal (for more background on this term, see Bennett and Peterson 8–10) hip hop scenes of Houston, Memphis, and Atlanta. While Eightball and MJG were putting Memphis rap on the map from Houston, DJ Paul and Juicy J, two of the major producers of mixtapes in the early 1990s, stepped in to organize and modify the scene and sound that would produce crunk and eventually garner the Memphis region mainstream attention and success. Whitehaven native Paul Beauregard and North Memphis native Jordan Houston —DJ Paul and Juicy J—were poised to take over the Memphis hip hop scene in the early 1990s. The two began at their respective high schools in separate parts of town, creating mix tapes, networking with emcees, and hanging out at local record companies, including On the Strength, original recording home of Eightball and MJG. When they officially met and decided to work together, they had amassed between them a considerable amount of popularity, as well as a formidable and sizable force of emcees and mixtapes. Releasing a series of mixtapes featuring original production and raps, they formed Triple 6 Mafia and established a persona outside of the gangsta and pimp that would continue to influence the Memphis sound even when the prevalence of the themes associated with the persona subside—a dark persona, heavily influenced by goth culture and heavy metal music, as well as strangely positive ruminations on a book-of-Revelations-style hell and torture. The newly formed group included DJ Paul and Juicy J, along with Paul’s nephew Lord Infamous (Ricky Dunigan, b. 1975), Juicy’s brother Project Pat (Patrick Houston, b. 1972), Kingpin Skinny Pimp (Derrick Hill), La Chat (Chastity Daniels, b. 1980), Playa Fly (Ibn Young, b. 1977), Gangsta Boo (Lola Mitchell, b. 1979), Gangsta Blac (Courtney Harris, b. 1974), Koopsta Knicca (Robert Cooper), and others. In 1995, Triple 6 Mafia’s Mystic Stylez was released to much anticipation and local acclaim. The tracks sampled cacophonous doomsday bells and high-pitched synthesizer sounds, slowed organ riffs, keyboard chromatics, and featured a steady high-hat and alternating bass and snare. Indeed, Mystic Stylez was Southern horror

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HOT 107 While not as old as rival station K97, Hot 107.1 KXHT-FM—‘‘Where HipHop Lives’’—has, since its inception in Memphis in 1997, attempted to distinguish itself from other African American stations in the city by emphasizing and privileging hip hop music and culture in broadcasts and lineups. Targeting the 18-year-old to 30-year-old market, the station adjusts its music lineup based on demographic and opinion data from this age group. Thus, while the station relatively consistently sticks to the hardcore, urban, Southern gangsta hip hop as its main staple and situates R&B as secondary, necessary evil, 107 adjusts its musical lineup to achieve the ideal balance between smooth, slow, R&B, and hardcore hip hop. Headquartered in Hickory Hill, a recently transitioned neighborhood with an increasing amount of time, Hot 107, like any radio station, is driven by its DJ personalities. It boasts some of the finest and most experienced DJs in the industry, as well as DJs, such as Spanish Fly, with a direct connection to the establishment and solidification of the local hip hop scene. Superman, Spyderman, Jus Borne, and Boogaloo, along with Big Tiny, Rob Storm, and the Wake Up Team, TK and KJ, round out the DJ lineup. The station makes genuine attempts to listen to the market and its constituents, which has resulted in a number of productive and reciprocal collaborations between listeners and the station. For instance, DJs are not unwilling to make space for underground music to be dispersed over the airwaves, although the process of actually making it on to the radio requires the right social networks in addition to a hot track. By providing a radio venue exclusively vested in Southern rap and hip hop culture, Memphis’s music consumers are able to sample a broad spectrum of underground and mainstream rap from various places in the South. Not only is such a forum inspiring in the sense that it provides a constant flow of sounds to spark creativity, but it is also inspiring in that Hot 107 features many Memphis artists who were only recently hustling and consigning mixtape CDs at local record shops.

rap: on Mystic Stylez, a recycled version of an earlier mixtape track, ‘‘Smoked Out, Loc’ed Out,’’ Crunchy Black identifies as the ‘‘demon child,’’ Gangsta Boo identifies as the ‘‘devil’s daughter,’’ Lord Infamous flows in a ghostly voice about ‘‘torture chambers,’’ and Juicy J implores potential challengers to ‘‘smoke a blunt of death.’’ While this was certainly a departure from easy pimping and armed robberies, there is still talk, laced between the torture and devil references, of both pimping and robbing. While Eightball and MJG’s style had been largely inspired by call and response, Triple 6 Mafia’s eerie beats were punctuated by chants (e.g., ‘‘break da law’’ and ‘‘tear da club up, nigga, tear da club up’’). Despite the subject

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matter and nontraditional sound, Mystic Stylez was wildly successful and the various records became the soundtrack for gangsta walking, buck-jumping, getting crunk,and marijuana smoking at Crystal Palace and various Memphis clubs. The following year, DJ Paul and Juicy J utilized their acumen to measure and address critiques of Mystic Stylez and lightened their style and content to reach a broader audience, still retaining the distinct sound they had forged on mixtapes and the first album. The End (1996) featured a more complex and diverse mix of tracks that touched the pulse of Memphis audiences. The rambling, creepy piano riffs were still there, and minor keys still dominated most of the tracks, and yet The End featured recognizable soul samples, many of them from Stax artists, like Johnnie Taylor’s ‘‘Good Love’’ on ‘‘Good Stuff,’’ a laid-back tribute to good marijuana. These soul samples connected with segments of the hip hop audience that may have been wary of Mystic Stylez outright and frequent flirtations with things evil and quite contrary to Christian teachings, widespread and ingrained in the Bible Belt. Even on the darker tracks, like ‘‘Life or Death,’’ the subject matter is far more reflective: ‘‘[I] ask Jesus for forgiveness for all the sins I done did,’’ and later the speaker contemplates whether or not he will be let into heaven. The track is lined with a minor-key pattern of four synthesized half notes layered with highhat and snare and bolstered by a steady bass line of half notes. Further, ‘‘Life or Death’’ exhibits connections to hip hop beyond the South. The hook features a screwed sample of Tupac’s widely quoted first line from ‘‘Hail Mary’’ (Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, 1996), juxtaposed with a screwed sample from the intro to Tupac’s song ‘‘Bomb First (My Second Reply).’’

Memphis Mainstreamed: Artists and Albums, 1997 to Present Although it took more than a decade, Memphis hip hop finally achieved a formidable mainstream presence with the commercial success of Three 6 Mafia’s ‘‘Tear Da Club Up ’97,’’ a rerelease of an old crunk classic that had been retooled to have widespread appeal, on Chapt. 2: World Domination. DJ Paul and Juicy J released a number of mixtapes and released other group members’ albums, including Gangsta Boo’s Enquiring Minds (1998) and Project Pat’s Ghetty Green (1999). Eightball and MJG’s In Our Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1999), released through Universal Music Group, was marketed to the duo’s broadest audience ever. Their mainstream popularity presented two models of success, one in town and one out of town, for upcoming artists to follow. Yet, the success would not come without strife, particularly for Three 6 Mafia, and old allegations of the group’s plot to shut out and/or exploit all aspiring rap artists on the Memphis scene. One by one, Three 6 Mafia’s crew, which at one point included almost a dozen members, began to leave the group for one reason or another, following the group’s 1995 success with Mystic Stylez. Playa Fly left the group first and immediately put out a seven-minute diss track, ‘‘Triple Bitch Mafia,’’ on a mixtape, which was

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released the following year on his first independent album, Fly Shit (1996). All of the group members are targeted in one way or another, from accusations of experiential inauthenticity to wack raps. On the group’s rather general response to hating, ‘‘Jealous Ass Bitches,’’ which appeared on Underground Volume 3: Kings of Memphis (2000), they take an amazingly sophisticated position on the hating that still speaks of credibility—established business credibility that the group was unwilling to sacrifice in a beef with people whom they deemed as merely jealous. Still, other artists left the group and label in disputes over money, solo album release dates being pushed back, and other drama. The solo albums that were released on the Hypnotize Minds label or affiliated labels, like Prophet Records, despite the beefs that would follow some of them, further established the Memphis sound in non-Southern markets. Kingpin Skinny Pimp’s King of Da Playaz Ball (1996) is perhaps one of the most classic of these series of post-Mystic Stylez albums. The album showcased Skinny Pimp’s sixteenth- and thirty-second-note raps, which are thought to have inspired the styles of Bone Thugs N Harmony. Gangsta Boo’s 1998 Enquiring Minds, which features the gritty feminist tracks ‘‘Where Dem Dollars At?’’ and ‘‘Nasty Trick’’ that demonstrate Lady Boo’s vast lyrical skills and situate her as a legitimate contender for, if not the rightful holder of, the title ‘‘Queen of the South.’’ ‘‘Ballers,’’ the single from Project Pat’s 1999 Ghetty Green, with its now-signature syncopated rhymes, achieved some major radio play due to a remixed collaboration of the track with Cash Money emcees. His 2001 Mista Don’t Play: Everythang’s Working and subsequent albums solidify Pat as a distinct force on the Memphis scene that has been able to achieve mainstream success. Other artists once affiliated with Three 6 Mafia became mainstays on the local scene and heavily integrated into the Southern hip hop scene at large. Gangsta Blac went on to release a number of albums, including the seminal I Am Da Gangsta (1998) and 2001’s Down South Flavor. In many ways, Three 6 Mafia enabled and inspired a number of artists to establish their own formidable record labels. Further, the success of Three 6 Mafia contributed to up-and-coming artists’ ability to attract major label attention—like ‘‘Sell My Dope’’ rapper and TVT Records artist Yo Gotti, who is behind the New Prophet Camp label. Finally, Eightball and MJG continued to release projects as a duo and as individual acts. Signing with Bad Boy, the duo released Livin’ Legends (2004) and Ridin’ High (2007), both reminiscent of classic Ball and JG, yet distinctly Bad Boy, and in many ways distanced from the soul and funk sounds that characterized early releases. Three 6 Mafia’s recent release, Southern Smoke 18 (2006), as well as the highly anticipated Last 2 Walk (2007) have garnered the artists not only a place, but also perhaps longevity in the mainstream. While direct links to soul music and soul histories may be difficult to discern for the non-Southern listener, these artists continue to represent Memphis, through lyrics and production subtleties, as their original rap stomping grounds.

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Long Live the Underground: The Diversity of Memphis’s Hip Hop Scene The robustness of any regional hip hop scene, regardless of its longevity and mainstream successes, is dependent upon that region’s underground hip hop scene. Artists on Memphis’s underground hip hop scene run the gamut from backpackers to gangstas and can be found performing in venues all over the city. While one of the unintended consequences of the mainstream success of other Memphis artists is that other artists are expected to fit the mold created by their predecessors, this has not stifled the diversity of artists on the scene, many of whom have garnered a great deal of local and translocal success. If the early days of the Memphis hip hop scene were plagued by the ‘‘crabs in the bucket’’ syndrome (Sarig 278–82) and rumors of Three 6 Mafia’s sabotage and hegemony, two relatively recent advances in technology—computer-based production of beats and the emergence of social networking Web sites like MySpace—have curbed such sentiments. Advances in beat production and the increased ability of many aspiring artists to acquire the equipment and software necessary to produce music have expanded the field of possibilities for artists, as well as expanded the scene to accommodate an increasing number of artists. While the mixtape market is still essential and vital to artists’ success, social network sites have provided a space for artists to disperse their music and sound, gratis or for a fee, as well as a space for them to cast a wide net for interest from larger distribution companies and labels. Further, while travel between local scenes—from Memphis to Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte, and New Orleans—is still significant, trading CD mixtapes can largely be accomplished over the Internet. In addition to these technological advances in music production and distribution, this relative openness of the scene is also linked to the general acceptance and success of Southern artists in mainstream and corporatized hip hop. Yet, while increased technological advances can account for the number of artists operating on the scene, it does not fully explain the diversity of artists on the scene. The city’s soul legacy, however, and its socialization of children into loving, appreciating, and evaluating the world through music may be responsible for the backpackers, gangstas, and conscious rappers that populate the scene. Further, in the spirit of collaboration across differences fostered by Stax artists, different types of artists often work together to bring much-deserved attention to the city’s history and contemporary artists. On the underground, there is less pressure to distinguish oneself from others through limiting artistic affiliations. As such, in an attempt to reach the broadest audience possible, there have been a number of shows that feature backpacker emcees in the same lineup as conscious emcees and gangsta emcees. These shows are most likely to occur in midtown Memphis, the city’s bohemian area, while exclusively gangsta rap acts often perform in venues in Whitehaven, Orange Mound, and North Memphis. There are numerous hip hop acts on the underground scene. A few acts are notable not necessarily because of their relative success, but because of their

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significance to the resurgence and maintenance of the underground scene since 2000. The IMC is a collection of four separate acts—reminiscent in constitution and delivery of the Wu-Tang Clan—and a DJ, Capital A. The various acts had been operating separately and encountering one another at rap battles and shows since 2000 and finally joined together as a collective in early 2004. Fathom 9 is a solo act within the collective, a lyricist who does a good share of the production. Masters of Sound (M.O.S.) includes Derelick, Milk, and Duke, three emcees best described as low-key ‘‘revolutionary but gangsta’’ with a keen sensibility about local, urban issues. Fyte Club is a duo composed of The Mighty Quinn and General MacArthur, the former a strict lyricist, the latter, a straight-to-the-point rapper with classic Memphis flow. Kontrast consists of Jason ‘‘Da Hater’’ Harris, the dogooder high school teacher, and Empee, the intoxicated evil conscience; Empee produced a track for the Hustle and Flow (2005) soundtrack and the duo’s ‘‘Size 13’s,’’ an ode to cars that simply ‘‘get from here to there,’’ is a local favorite. DJ Capital A scratches on each group’s tracks and on the collective’s first album, The 1st Edition, released in 2005. Emcees Bosco and Rachi combine with DJ Red Eye Jedi to form Tunnel Clones, a group that epitomizes the magnetic nature of Memphis soul music as harbinger of future change and possibilities. Although none of the members are from Memphis, their albums are a postsoul mixture of funk and hip hop, reflective of the history of Memphis and the legacy of hip hop. Red Eye Jedi is cofounder, with Dante Carfanga and Chad Weekley, of Memphix Records, a label that presses up a variety of hip hop 45s and a soul/funk phenomenon with an international underground following of crate diggers. The group’s first album, Concrete Swamp (2005) is a renowned classic of the new underground era in Memphis hip hop. World Wide Open (2007) brings more ‘‘crispy and Southern fried’’ flows that ‘‘hit [the] spot,’’ solidifying the place of soul and now old-school rap samples in contemporary Memphis hip hop. A number of other acts rounds out the diversity of the underground scene, from the goth-crunk Chopper Girl, who could very well have been a member of Three 6 Mafia in the mid-1990s, to Free Sol, a hip hop fusion band led by emcee Christopher ‘‘Free’’ Anderson, whose long hustle on the underground scene recently paid off in the form of a deal with Tennman Records, recently revived and now fronted by Justin Timberlake. Lord T. and Eloise, founders of ‘‘Aristocrunk,’’ represent the absurd end of the Memphis hip hop spectrum, but have enjoyed wild success, particularly among the college crowd, delivering social commentary from the other side of urban life, performing in nineteenth century garb complete with powdered wigs. Brothers Marrio ‘‘Big Yo’’ and Elirico ‘‘Rico Law’’ Marshall inhabit the other end of the spectrum, working with Southern rappers from Kingpin Skinny Pimp to the Yin Yang Twins, producing classic Memphis rap descended both from soul sounds and the early sounds of Eightball and MJG. Again, there are a number of acts on Memphis’s underground scene, all influenced by, in one way or subgenre

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or another, the legacy of Memphis soul music and the history of race relations in the city.

The Region on Film: Craig Brewer’s Hustle and Flow The themes of both underground and pop hip hop, as well as expressions of life in Memphis, come alive most comprehensively in Hustle and Flow (2005), Craig Brewer’s long-in-the-making project that tells the story of a pimp, his women, hip hop, and redemption. Hustle and Flow begins with the protagonist-pimp DJay, played by Terrence Howard, waxing philosophical to one of his prostitutes, Nola, in his rusty blue-with-a-purple-hood-and-front-quarter-panels Chevrolet Caprice Classic as the two work the track in downtown Memphis. The opening sequences in the film have the audience ride along with Nola and D-Jay down various main throughways in the city—six-lane streets lined with various chain stores, local shops, fast food joints—to the twang of a rock and roll electric guitar. Essentially, the diegesis follows D-Jay’s hustles—pimping and selling drugs, themes not unfamiliar to Memphis audiences and audiences that had come to know Memphis through the early works of Eightball and MJG, Three 6 Mafia, and others. The plot also follows D-Jay’s rap flows as he struggles to have his voice heard and present an authentic representation of his experiences, the experiences of those like him, and Memphis in general. From the first scene of the film, the audience is prompted to anticipate the climax—a Fourth of July party at which Skinny Black, an underground Memphis rapper turned successful hypermedia rapper, played by Atlanta

Three 6 Mafia (WireImage/Getty Images)

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rapper Ludacris, will be in attendance. Brewer follows the trials of an underground rapper trying to complete a demo tape, from equipment mishaps to noisy neighbors interfering with recording. Although the film ends with the protagonist being arrested and jailed for assaulting Skinny Black, he enters the local jail with a hit song on radio and buzz around the city. The audience can be confident that he will emerge a renewed spirit and make a life with one of his prostitutes and her newborn daughter. The film consciously signifies on Memphis’s hip hop cultural institutions, from a huge party complete with Chevrolets, Cadillacs, gold teeth, bumping stereo systems, and dancing on the sprawling lawn of Crystal Palace Skating Rink to the everyday scenes of the South Memphis neighborhood and home where the main characters live and work. While Brewer’s attempts to write and direct against the ’hood film genre—epitomized by films like Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton 1991), New Jack City (Mario van Peebles 1991), Juice (Ernest Dickerson 1992), South Central (Steve Anderson 1992), and Menace II Society (Hughes Brothers 1993)—at times fall short, he draws on the theme of the essential goodness of all people, regardless of their social situation, and uses the trope of the black church to ground this theme and narrative squarely in Memphis’s gospel culture. In a memorable scene, D-Jay visits high-school buddy and producer, Key, played by Anthony Anderson, at a church for which he records. As D-Jay sits in on the choir’s recording session, a black woman soloist, singing ‘‘I Told Jesus It Would Be All Right (If He Changed My Name),’’ moves D-Jay to tears. This moment, the film suggests, is the catalyst for D-Jay’s resoluteness to be a better person and to find his own voice. Yet, this movement of the spirit does not stop D-Jay from putting Alexis, the more explicitly sassy and indignant of the women, out of the house, along with her infant son, still in his walker. Nor does it stop him from continuously manipulating Nola, including pimping her for a better-quality microphone, to achieve his end goal of producing a demo to present to Skinny Black on the Fourth of July. Thus, even in his humanity, D-Jay retains the almost incomprehensible grittiness of the pimps described and embodied by Eightball and MJG more than a decade previous. Hustle and Flow brings hip hop ‘‘home to the South,’’ as if hip hop, like Northern black populations, had forebears to leave the South for the North generations ago, but is now ‘‘returning home’’ to its roots and new cultural opportunities no longer available in the sterile urban centers of the North and West Coast. Hustle and Flow rewrites hip hop historiography through a Southern lens. The soundtrack is filled with old blues cuts, new sounds by Memphis’ Bo-Keys—a premium soul band responsible for most of the scoring of the soundtrack—and contemporary Southern hip hop songs. The soundtrack roots hip hop in blues and soul music, implicitly rejecting the idea that the beginnings of hip hop could be traced directly to a specific corner in the Bronx, New York. The urban space of Memphis presented in the film, absent shots of areas of town that might point definitively to

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city-ness of Memphis, grounds hip hop in an old-fashioned home, full of rurality and tension, ease and violence. Brewer declares that Hustle and Flow is a movie about ‘‘platinum versus gold.’’ The battle between ‘‘platinum’’ and ‘‘gold’’ in the film is a battle for an authentic representation of hip hop, but also for the throwback authenticity of the ‘‘golden’’ South. Not only does this battle signify a distinction between postsoul time eras, but it also draws a distinction between authentic and inauthentic hip hop cultural production. D-Jay, Key, and Suge all have some form of gold teeth in their mouths, and it is these three, along with Shelby (who is authentically a cool-ass-white boy precisely because he does not have gold teeth) who work together to produce ‘‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,’’ with Suge singing the song’s hook. They create a makeshift studio in D-Jay’s home—not unlike many underground studios in Memphis and other regions—that is soundproofed with numerous cup-holders collected from fast-food restaurants stapled all over the wood-paneled walls. They utilize an old MPC, tape player, and keyboard to produce the beats, and they record all of the tracks onto cassette tapes. In contrast, Skinny Black and members of his crew don platinum teeth, and are frequently represented as caricatures of gangsta rap in their videos, which D-Jay watches on television throughout the film. Skinny Black is arrogant, rude, and ignorant, and declares that, ‘‘the best place to keep Memphis is in [his] rearview.’’ Further, when D-Jay shows Skinny Black a copy of one of Skinny’s own demo tapes, which D-Jay has kept, Skinny Black remarks that he has not seen one of those in years. When D-Jay gives Skinny Black his own freshly created demo tape, Skinny Black retorts, ‘‘What am I supposed to do with this? I don’t even own a cassette tape player! Don’t you know this is the new millennium?’’ The battle here, then, is between an authentic postsoul moment in which underground Memphis hip hoppers truly represented Memphis and created and produced ‘‘by any means necessary,’’ and an inauthentic postsoul moment in which hypermedia rappers represent and embody archetypal and stereotypical images of blackness cloaked in materiality and superfluity. As platinum teeth have superseded gold teeth in some black circles and gold teeth have remained the standard in others, the metaphor is an apt one to engage varying articulations of blackness within and through the postsoul era. In the struggle between authentic and inauthentic, gold and platinum, cassette tapes and compact discs, and good and evil, good triumphs, as the film ends with D-Jay’s ‘‘right to contribute a verse’’ validated by airplay on local radio station Hot 107 and respect and recognition by two prison guards, who share their demo with D-Jay—appropriately dubbed on a cassette tape.

MEMPHIS HIP HOP AND POSTSOUL FUTURES Memphis has always had a strong, organic, underground culture and sound, from blues to gospel to jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and soul. The contemporary hip hop scene

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draws on this history and utilizes it for the raw materials that it provides for beatmaking as well as for its authentic musical legacy and currency. In many ways, Memphis hip hop artists see the soul legacy as validating their right to make music and have it heard in Memphis and beyond. Through online networking venues such as MySpace and MemphisRap.com, the scene has exploded with a number of acts, each with something distinct to offer the scene. The region continues to contribute artists to the hip hop mainstream, further solidifying the Memphis hip hop style originally established by early DJs, Al Kapone, Eightball and MJG, and Three 6 Mafia. Al Kapone has finally received long-awaited recognition for his contributions to the scene through his work on Hustle and Flow and subsequent collaborations; Three 6 Mafia has released successful albums and backed and cultivated a number of artists; and Eightball and MJG continue to represent Tennessee on Bad Boy South. Young artists such as Kinfolk Kia Shine, Yo Gotti, and Free Sol are carrying on and reinventing the styles created by these Memphis rap pioneers, as well as expanding the importance of the South in the hip hop mainstream. Further, the underground scene continues to flourish as an increasing number of acts take their soul-inspired tracks to the Internet, release parties, high schools and colleges, churches, clubs, and shows. Perhaps the single most definitive indicator that Memphis hip hop will continue to be spotlighted, and perhaps more widely recognized for its contributions to hip hop through soul music, is the success of Hustle and Flow (2005). Not only did the film function to disperse Memphis sensibilities to a broader audience, but it also highlighted the complexity of the collaborative process of cutting tracks and creating a demo. Moreover, it brought hip hop ‘‘home to the South,’’ complementing the rise of Southern culture and hip hop artists, from Trick Daddy to T.I. DJ Paul and Juicy J, along with fellow Hypnotize Minds rapper Frayser Boy, won the Academy Award in 2005 in the Best Original Song in a Motion Picture category for ‘‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.’’ Just as the song was a moment of existential triumph in the film, it was a moment in which Memphis hip hop was being recognized as a legitimate contributor to hip hop and American music cultures. These triumphs have not, however, been without criticism. Detractors contend that the film’s inherent misogyny and implicit condoning of pimping further facilitates the exploitation of women and misogyny in American culture. Further, while MTV’s Adventures in Hollyhood is supposed to comically chronicle the experiences of Three 6 Mafia and various crew members after they have ‘‘made it,’’ critics lodge that the show is a coon buffoonery that contributes to negative images of African Americans on television. Still, despite criticism of the film’s theme of pimping, the general bristling at the idea of a song about pimping winning an Oscar, and negative reactions to Adventures in Hollyhood, the exposure is at last shining a light on the region in its current form, as well as underlining the importance of soul histories and legacies to postsoul cultures.

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REFERENCES Bennett, Andy, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and HipHop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Hannigan, John. Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis. New York: Routledge, 1998. Herrington, Chris. ‘‘The Roots of Hip-Hop.’’ The Memphis Flyer, September 7, 2006. http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/Content?oid=oid%3A19378 (accessed September 17, 2007). Muschamp, Herbert. ‘‘A Flare for Fantasy: ‘Miami Vice’ Meets 42nd Street.’’ New York Times, May 21, 1995: Sec. 2, pp. 1, 27. Neal, Mark Anthony. Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic. New York: Routledge, 2002. Potter, Russell A. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Sarig, Roni. Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2007. Tolnay, Stewart E. ‘‘The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond.’’ Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003): 209–32. Wilson, William Julius. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage, 1996.

FURTHER RESOURCES Bond, Beverly, and Janann Sherman. Memphis in Black and White. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2003. Bowman, Rob. Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records, New Edition. New York: Schirmer Books, 2003. Bullard, Robert D., ed. In Search of the New South: The Black Urban Experience in the 1970s and 1980s. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989. Green, Laurie B. Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle. Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Honey, Michael. Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Hustle and Flow. Craig Brewer. Terrence Dashun Howard, Anthony Anderson, Taryn Manning, Teraji P. Henderson. Film and DVD. Paramount/MTV Films, 2005. Knight, Richard. The Blues Highway: New Orleans to Chicago—a Travel and Music Guide. Hindhead, Surrey, UK: Trailblazer Publications, 2001.

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Mays, Hosea, and Carla Littlejohn. 2001–2007. September 15, 2007. http://www .MemphisRap.com Rushing, Wanda. ‘‘Globalization and the Paradoxes of Place: Poverty and Power in Memphis.’’ City and Community 3, no. 1 (2003): 65–81. Vaughn, Sandra. ‘‘Memphis: Heart of the Mid-South.’’ In Search of the New South: The Black Urban Experience in the 1970s and 1980s, edited by Robert D. Bullard, 98–120. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Al Kapone Pure Ghetto Anger. Outlaw, 1994. Sinista Funk. Basix, 1994. Da Resurrection. Basix, 1995. Memphis Underground Hustlas. Alcatraz, 1995. Chopper Girl Dirty Dolla$. Hoodoo Labs, 2004. Wicked Witch Mixtape. Hoodoo Labs, 2006. Eightball and MJG Comin’ Out Hard. Suave, 1993. On the Outside Looking In. Suave, 1994. On Top of the World. Suave, 1995. In Our Lifetime, Vol 1. UMVD Labels, 1999. Living Legends. Bad Boy Entertainment, 2004. Free Sol 11:11. Memphis Records, 2004. Gangsta Blac Can It Be? Prophet Records, 1996. I Am Da Gangsta. Super Sigg Records, 1998. 74 Minutes of Bump. Diamond Records/404 Music Group, 1999. Down South Flava. Koch Records, 2001. Gangsta Boo Enquiring Minds. Relativity, 1998. Both Worlds *69. Hypnotize Minds, 2001. Gangsta Pat #1 Suspect. On Top, 1991. Kingpin Skinny Pimp King of Da Playaz Ball. Prophet, 1996. Skinny But Dangerous. Basix, 1996. Pimpin’ and Hustlin’. Rap Hustlaz, 2002.

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La Chat Murder She Spoke. Koch, 2001. Dramatize. Rap Hustlaz, 2004. Lord T. and Eloise Aristocrunk. CYN Productions/IODA Albums, 2006. Marshall Law Productions Presents Rico and Big Yo Legal Hustlin’: The Exclusive Mixtape, Volume 1. Marshall Law Productions, 2005. Playa Fly Fly Shit. Super Sigg, 1996. Movin’ On. Super Sigg, 1998. Project Pat Ghetty Green. Hypnotize Minds, 1999. Mista Don’t Play: Everythang’s Workin’. Hypnotize Minds, 2001. Crook by da Book: The Fed Story. Columbia, 2006. Three 6 Mafia Mystic Stylez. Prophet, 1995. The End. Prophet, 1996. Chapter 2: World Domination. Relativity, 1997. When the Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1. Loud, 2000. Da Unbreakables. Hypnotize Minds, 2003. Most Known Unknown. Hypnotize Minds, 2005. Tunnel Clones Concrete Swamp. Memphix, 2005. World Wide Open. Hemphix, 2007. Yo Gotti Life. TVT, 2003. Back 2 Da Basics. TVT, 2006.

CHAPTER 22 Tropic of Bass: Culture, Commerce, and Controversy in Miami Rap Matt Miller Miami’s geographic, demographic, and economic connections to the Caribbean have strongly influenced the diversity of popular music produced in the city, including rap. As Luther ‘‘Luke Skyywalker’’ Campbell opined, ‘‘The Cubans and the Caribbean blacks gave this city its personality. The Latin style blended with the black, Caribbean rhythm and colors and that is what Miami is . . . . Cubans and the other Latins gave this town a rhythm and the blacks gave it soul’’ (223). The prevalence of DJ groups in the 1970s and the rise of a thriving pirate radio scene in the 1990s are among the dimensions of the city’s rap scene which can be understood within a Caribbean cultural context. The city’s rap scene began to take off in the late 1980s, as local independent labels, working with talented in-house producers, drove the development of a distinctive interpretation of the rap form, which eventually came to be called ‘‘Miami Bass.’’ The style drew influence from rap’s early ‘‘electro’’ period, as well as incorporating stylistic elements from reggae and other Caribbean genres. Around 1990, the Miami scene attracted national attention, largely due to the efforts of Luther Campbell, a promoter, club owner, and performer who rose to national prominence as the leader of the 2 Live Crew. The efforts of Campbell and other Miamians provided inspirational and material resources for the establishment of rap scenes in nearby Southern cities like Atlanta and New Orleans, which eventually developed their own centers of gravity with regard to music industry infrastructure and musical style. Miami Bass enjoyed several years of expanding interest from national audiences, before its scene was largely eclipsed by those of nearby Southern cities like Atlanta and New Orleans. In the post-Bass era, Miami’s rap scene, nurtured in black neighborhoods like Overtown and Liberty City (see sidebars: Overtown and Liberty City), continued to evolve, and eventually rose again to national prominence thanks to the efforts of another entrepreneur, Slip-N-Slide Records’ Ted Lucas. With a roster including Trick Daddy, Trina, Rick Ross, and Plies, Slip-N-Slide has been a major player in 577

PIRATE RADIO In recent decades, ‘‘pirate’’ FM radio stations—unlicensed broadcasters operating from clandestine locations—have flourished in South Florida, thanks to the area’s flat terrain and its sizable Caribbean immigrant population, who bring with them traditions of small-scale radio broadcasting and listening. Illegal broadcasting reached its peak in Miami during the years of the mid- to late 1990s, but as many as 20 such stations remain on the FM dial at any given time. Hip hop forms a large portion of their playlists, along with Caribbean dance music like Jamaican reggae or Haitian konpa as well as religious and community-oriented broadcasts. In Miami’s neighborhoods, radio represents an essential means of reaching local or linguistically specific audiences, but for small operators, attaining a license for a spot on the crowded FM dial remains prohibitively expensive. At the same time, the technology needed to broadcast illegally has become progressively more affordable and portable over the past several decades. Small transmitters using 100 watts or less can power a station with a reach limited to the immediate, neighborhood area. However, not all pirate stations maintained such a low profile—hip hop station HOT 97.7 FM sent its signal out over two 1,000-watt transmitters (still a fraction of the average 50,000 or 100,000 watts used by licensed commercial stations). The absence of advertising adds to the appeal of pirate radio, but many of these stations have been semicommercial ventures, underwritten by club owners or promoters hoping to draw patrons to upcoming parties or events. In 1998 and 1999, the Federal Communications Commission launched massive and coordinated raids in an attempt to banish pirates from Miami airwaves. While they seized tons of broadcasting equipment, their efforts were only partially successful; new stations appeared to fill the void left by the closings, and many stations that had been shut down quickly acquired new equipment and resumed their activities. With regard to rap music, BASS 91.9 FM was one of Miami’s best known pirate radio stations in the mid-1990s. Based in Liberty City (and with a broadcast range generally limited to that neighborhood), it was founded early in 1993 by producer Calvin Mills II and Albert ‘‘Uncle Al’’ Moss, a prolific radio, club and party DJ who headed up the Sugarhill DJs group and released many singles and albums for the On Top label. The station’s studio occupied a cramped space tucked away amongst the povertystricken sprawl of Liberty City, where Uncle Al mixed uptempo bass records and added his own layer of announcements, shout-outs, and listener calls. Uncle Al was shot to death in 2001 during a confrontation with three armed men at his North Miami home. While police lack the evidence to charge anyone with his murder, initial accounts suggested that the responsible parties were pirate radio broadcasters angry over interference caused by a station operated by Moss’s roommate. Uncle Al’s death was especially hard on Liberty City’s children, for whom he lived up to his avuncular stage name. In the years since his death, the annual Peace In the Hood festival has paid tribute to his efforts to reduce violence in Liberty City and Miami’s other poor communities.

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OVERTOWN Black railroad workers, laborers, and service employees were essential to the establishment of Miami as a resort town in the early twentieth century, but their lives were constrained by harsh practices of segregation. Blacks were relegated to the Colored Town section, north of the city’s downtown, with the more desirable parts of Miami reserved for whites. As Colored Town’s population grew in the 1930s and 1940s, overcrowding resulted in slumlike conditions, although it also served as a vital center of black middle class life and culture. Black entertainers, who could perform in Miami Beach but were banned from obtaining lodging there, headed to Colored Town with its hotels, restaurants, and venues like the Lyric Theater catering to black audiences. Like many of the economic and cultural enclaves that evolved during the height of segregation, in the postwar era Colored Town declined, marginalized by multiple and interrelated forces; the demise of segregation, the rise of suburbanization, and so-called urban renewal, which often imposed severe disruptions upon historic black neighborhoods. In the early 1960s, the elevated highways 95 and 395 were built through the heart of Overtown, connecting Miami’s downtown to the Interstate system but wreaking incalculable damage upon the fabric of an already challenged community. The neighborhood’s decline has continued in following decades; in 2003, the neighborhood had a large homeless population, and suffered from a 55 percent poverty rate in spite of various development initiatives. Overtown’s embattled population erupted into a civil disturbance in late December 1982, after a young black man was shot to death by a Hispanic police officer in a video arcade in the neighborhood. The area erupted into a riot, with residents overturning and setting fire to police cars and looting stores. When the officer was acquitted in early 1984, a smaller-scale disturbance rocked the neighborhood. Another police shooting saw rioting again return to Overtown in 1989, when a Hispanic police officer shot to death a fleeing black motorcyclist, resulting in the additional death of a passenger on the bike. The ensuing riots, which spread to nearby Liberty City and black areas in Coconut Grove over the course of several days, resulted in one fatality and $1 million in damages. The Overtown area has been declining in population, and does not boast anywhere near the same number of famous rap names as nearby Liberty City. However, some residents of the embattled community (who often call themselves ‘‘towners’’) have made important contributions to the local scene. The duo Eerk & Jerk released a song called ‘‘The Overtown Hop’’ in 1991. The duo Piccalo is from Overtown, as is rapper Menace.

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LIBERTY CITY Liberty City is a predominantly black neighborhood in Miami’s northwest side. It grew around the Liberty Square housing project (sometimes called ‘‘Pork N’ Beans’’) between Northwest Sixty-second and Sixty-seventh streets, which opened in the late 1930s to relieve overcrowding in nearby Overtown and to prevent blacks from settling to the south and east of ‘‘Colored Town.’’ Liberty City and Model City (a larger area made up of Liberty City and the nearby Brown’s Subdivision) grew as a result of the displacement of thousands of blacks from Overtown in the 1960s due to the construction of interstate highways. The northwest sector of Miami-Dade County, which includes Allapattah, West Little River, Brownsville, and Opa-Locka in addition to Overtown and Liberty City, has remained home to the majority of the county’s black residents, even decades after the abandonment of de jure segregation. Liberty City and other parts of the Model City area (as well as black areas of Coconut Grove) exploded in violence on May 17, 1980, after several Miami-Dade County police officers were acquitted by an all-white jury in Tampa of charges ranging from evidence tampering to second degree murder charges. The trial resulted from the death of an unarmed black motorcyclist named Arthur McDuffie who was handcuffed and beaten into a coma by a group of policemen after a high-speed chase. The riots, the worst in the city’s history, lasted for four days, wreaked $100 million in damage to property, and resulted in 18 deaths, most of them residents of the poor black neighborhoods where the riots occurred. In the riot’s aftermath, city leaders and federal officials promised initiatives to rebuild and improve the area’s economy, which remained largely unfulfilled, as federal loans helped businesses leave the area rather than put down new roots. Some improvements occurred in the areas of police-community relations, however when the city’s first black police chief was hired in 1985. Liberty City has contributed many well-known names to Miami’s rap scene, most notably Luther Campbell, who grew up and opened a teen club, recording studio, and headquarters of his record company in the neighborhood. Among the many rappers and producers hailing from Liberty City are ‘‘Pretty’’ Tony Butler, Anquette, ‘‘Disco Rick’’ Taylor and the Dogs, ‘‘Uncle Al’’ Moss, Trick Daddy, Trina, Jacki-O, Blac Haze, and the Quick Hit Boyz.

Southern rap since the late 1990s. Other recent developments in the city, including the 2002 debut of bilingual rapper Pitbull and the rise in popularity of reggaeton and other Spanish-language, rap-influenced styles confirm Miami’s status as a place where culture mixture and cross-influence produce innovative interpretations of the rap form.

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MIAMI HISTORY Located near the tip of Florida Peninsula on land around Biscayne Bay, Miami was founded relatively recently (in 1896), but now stands as the seventh largest metropolitan area in the United States and the nation’s primary point of interface with the Caribbean. Located in the most populous county in the state, the City of Miami’s population in 2007 was close to 410,000, within the greater metropolitan area’s population of 5.4 million. The barrier island separated from the mainland by the northern part of Biscayne Bay was incorporated as a separate municipality, Miami Beach, in 1915. Connected to the city of Miami by several causeways, it had a population just shy of 90,000 as of 2000. To the north of Miami-Dade County lies Broward County, with the resort town of Fort Lauderdale separated from Miami by the municipality of Hollywood. African Americans from proximate areas in the U.S. South and Bahamians had been in Miami since the city’s founding in 1896, but in the last 50 years the city has also seen the arrival of influential groups of immigrants from the nearby Caribbean, many of them fleeing political repression. Miami’s Cuban community grew dramatically after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and received a large and controversial boost during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, in which around 125,000 people from the close by island arrived in the city. Cuban-Americans now constitute the area’s largest ethnic group, and exercise substantial political clout in the local and regional arena. The city’s ethnocultural balance was also dramatically changed in the late 1970s and 1980s, when between 50,000 and 70,000 Haitian refugees arrived in the city, fleeing the worsening conditions under the Duvalier regime. Cubans and Haitians formed a part of a linguistically and culturally diverse mixture that also includes Jamaican, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, and a host of other nationalities. Although black laborers played a crucial role in establishing the city, for much of the twentieth century African Americans were legally barred from all neighborhoods except Colored Town, a segregated area located to the north of the city’s center that later became known as ‘‘Overtown.’’ By 2006, Miami’s black population had expanded to other neighborhoods like Liberty City, Allapattah, OpaLocka, Brownsville, Carol City (a black neighborhood in North Miami near the Broward County line), and formed slightly over 22 percent of Miami’s total population. Still, the persistence of racially based exclusion and inequality throughout the twentieth century, in combination with the destitution of many of the city’s recent immigrants, has contributed to dire social conditions in Miami. It was the nation’s poorest major city in 2000; in 2006, nearly a quarter of the city’s residents lived below the poverty level, more than twice the rate for Florida as a whole. Independent record labels catering to the city’s immigrant population flourished in the decades before rap emerged, as Miami became the erstwhile economic capital of the Caribbean. Through dance-oriented genres like reggae, konpa, and salsa, Miami’s Caribbean immigrants have made important contributions to the

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city’s vibrant and diverse local music industry. The richness of the city’s music scene, and its status as an economic and cultural gateway connecting the United States and the Caribbean, have helped Miami to become the anchor of the U.S. Latin music industry. It is the home of the Latin music headquarters of all six major multinational music companies, as well as regional offices of publishing firms BMI and ASCAP. As a resort town, Miami has had no shortage of clubs and bars where rappers and DJs could ply their trade. Many of the city’s strip clubs—including Coco’s Lounge, the Mint Lounge, Bootleggers, Take One, and others—enjoy close ties with the Miami rap scene. One of the best-known of these establishments, Club Rollexx (located just south of Opa-Locka at the intersection of Unity Blvd. and NW 119th St.) has been open for business for over three decades, and was mentioned in Rick Ross’s song ‘‘For Da Low,’’ among others. Its notoriety eventually reached the lawyers of Swiss watch giant Rolex, who filed an injunction against the club over trademark infringement in 2007. Other venues, like the Inferno, Laziers, Paradise, Club One 83, and the various nightclubs or teen clubs owned by Luther Campbell have all contributed to the commercial infrastructure of Miami’s rap scene. Miami’s visibility within the world of hip hop was increased when it became the venue for the annual Source Hip-Hop Music Awards in the late 1990s. Held at venues like the Jackie Gleason Theater, the Miami Arena, and the James L. Knight Center, the event has featured performances by stars such as OutKast, Lil Kim, Ja Rule, and others and formed the basis for a wide range of events at clubs and other venues around the city. The event was marked by controversy in 2001, when Source insider Raymond ‘‘Benzino’’ Scott was involved in a scuffle with a Miami Beach police officer and the magazine’s publisher David Mays moved the event to the City of Miami. WEDR (‘‘99 Jamz’’) has consistently been the Miami area’s top commercial station playing rap, although the market has grown more competitive in recent years. As it evolved from its status as a disco trendsetter in the 1970s, the station has maintained a strong community focus, and has helped to incubate the city’s rap scene. Key individuals in the Miami scene’s formative late 1980s period, such as label owner Bo Crane or producer Eric Griffin, began their careers at the station. Luther Campbell learned the ropes from WEDR afternoon DJ (and, later, General Manager) Jerry Rushin in the mid-1980s, and had his own show (‘‘The Luke Show’’) on the station in the late 1990s. Uncle Al (Albert Moss) also worked as a DJ at the station. The station’s dominance among young urban listeners was challenged in 2003, when Clear Channel converted its ‘‘oldies’’ station to a hip hop format. Around the same time ‘‘Power 96’’ (WPOW 96.5) shifted to a more rapheavy format, with Miami veteran DJ Laz (Lazaro Mendez) as their afternoon DJ. Clubs in the South Beach area of Miami have, in recent years, increasingly become a gathering spot for young, African American crowds listening and dancing to hip hop. With rap moguls like Jonathan ‘‘Lil’ Jon’’ Smith and P. Diddy

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owning mansions in exclusive communities like Sunset Island or Star Island, South Beach has been the site of massive crowds on Memorial Day Weekend, partially in response to the decline of other street parties in Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale, South Beach area of Miami Beach was overwhelmed with more than 200,000 collegeage black partiers on Memorial Day Weekend. As rap celebrities mingled at Miami Beach clubs like Level and The Living Room, the growing crowds focused a racially coded debate about what type of partiers Miami Beach should attract.

ROOTS OF MIAMI RAP The city’s African American residents had nurtured a thriving black music scene in the 1970s, and Miami became known for soul, funk, and disco thanks to the efforts of artists including Clarence Reid (and his X-rated alter ego, Blowfly) and Betty Wright in the 1970s. The earliest independent labels dealing with rap had their roots in the disco era, during which Miami was an important source of innovation and creativity on the national stage, led by companies, including Henry Stone’s TK Records, Glades and Konduko, among others. DJ and producer ‘‘Pretty Tony’’ Butler was a central figure in the Miami scene in the early 1980s. Butler grew up in Liberty City, experimenting with electronics and building his rotation as an in-demand DJ at high school dances and other venues, such as the Superstar Rollerteque skating rink. In 1983 he partnered with promoter Sherman Nealy to form the Music Specialists Incorporated label, investing in a studio in Little River and securing distribution from New York-based Sunnyview Records. The label’s first single, ‘‘Freestyle’’ by Freestyle Express, was followed by one under Pretty Tony’s name, the synthesizer-driven ‘‘Fix It in the Mix’’ in 1984. Working with artists including Trinere (‘‘All Night’’) and Debbie Deb (‘‘When I Hear Music’’), Butler pioneered the ‘‘freestyle’’ genre of highenergy, danceable pop. He continued to release singles under his own name for the label, including ‘‘Computer Language’’ and ‘‘Jam the Box’’ in 1984. 4-Sight records, owned by William ‘‘Billy’’ Hines, was a pioneering rap independent in mid-1980s Miami. The label grew out of Hines’s experience running a record store in nearby Fort Lauderdale. Its first release was ‘‘Beef Box’’ by Ervin ‘‘M.C. Chief’’ German (featuring Sexy Lady), in 1984, along with other releases in that year by Maggotronics (James ‘‘Maggotron’’ McCauley) and Renaro ‘‘Renard with no Regard’’ Gresham. Other early releases on the label include 1985’s ‘‘The Parents of Roxanne,’’ by former nightclub bouncer Anthony ‘‘Gigolo Tony’’ Keller and Lacey Lace, the B-side of which featured scratching by Jam Pony Express DJ Victor ‘‘Slick Vic’’ Austin. 4-Sight signed Atlanta-based rapper Peter ‘‘M.C. Shy D’’ Jones, who, with the backing of DJ Man, released his debut single ‘‘Rapp Will Never Die’’ on the label in 1985. In addition to Miami acts like the U.S.A. Breakers (‘‘This Beat Is Hard’’) and Gigolo Tony (whose 1986 single ‘‘Smurf Rock’’ was released on the Gold Star sublabel), 4-Sight also released a single by seminal New Orleans group, The Ninja Crew, in 1986. 4-Sight released

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full-length albums by Gigolo Tony in 1987 (Ice Cold) and 1989 (Ain’t It Good To Ya) where his efforts were ably supported by DJ Crash. As 4-Sight became established, Hines’s son Adrian rose to become one of the most popular artists on the label. Adrian had started his music career DJing in his father’s record store, and recorded under the name MC ADE (‘‘Adrian Does Everything’’). The use of the Roland 808 drum machine by producer Amos Larkins on MC ADE’s 1985 debut ‘‘Bass Rock Express’’ makes it a foundational record in the Miami Bass genre. Adrian, who followed up in 1986 with ‘‘Bass Mechanic,’’ which featured programming by James McCauley (under his ‘‘DXJ’’ moniker), and released his debut album, Just Sumthin to Do on 4-Sight in 1987. In 1989, he released the LP How Much Can You Take, with the single ‘‘Da Train.’’ His last full-length solo effort, An All Out Bash, was released by the label in 1991. 4-Sight’s output, which continued until 1994, represented a diverse range of material, including bass-heavy dance tracks by Iceman JA (Michigan native John Hamilton), rap by Gigolo Tony, and the pop-rap group KJ an da’ Fellas, who released a cover of Tommy James and the Shondells’ 1966 hit ‘‘Hanky Panky.’’

LUTHER CAMPBELL & 2 LIVE CREW With 4-Sight providing an outlet for some of Miami’s earliest rap releases, other entrepreneurs were rising to form the next generation of independent labels in the city. Luther Campbell, born in 1960, was the most prominent of these figures to emerge in the mid-1980s. Campbell grew up in Liberty City, one of five sons in a working-class family with roots in Jamaica and the U.S. South. His parents helped foster his budding entrepreneurial sensibility; he installed a Pac-Man arcade game in his parents’ house to collect quarters from neighborhood kids, and sold tapes of records from his father’s reggae collection. In the mid-1970s, Campbell entered the world of DJ groups (see sidebar: DJ Groups), but his inclusion in the Ghetto Style DJs related less to his musical abilities and more to the fact that Campbell owned a van in which he could drive the group to events. Campbell’s years with the Ghetto Style DJs, playing in venues like African Square Park in Liberty City, provided a solid introduction to the local music scene and business, and he continued to develop his career as a promoter throughout the early 1980s, setting up shows by Run-DMC, Mantronix, and other out-of-town rap acts. The proceeds from these events funded the creation of the Pac Jam Teen Disco and, in 1986, the Skyywalker Records label. It was in this capacity that he became aware of a California-based group called 2 Live Crew who were transitioning from a party DJ crew to a making their own career as recording artists. The group’s members—DJ/producer David ‘‘Treach DJ Mr. Mixx’’ Hobbs, rapper Chris ‘‘Fresh Kid Ice’’ Wongwon, and Mark ‘‘Brother Marquis’’ Ross (a Rochester, New York native who replaced early member Yuri ‘‘Amazing Vee’’ Vielot)—met in Riverside, California, where they had landed as part of their military obligations. Campbell became aware of the

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2 Live Crew (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

2 Live Crew by way of singles on their Fresh Beat Records label, which was distributed by L.A.-based independent Macola Records, and arranged for them to come to Miami to perform at his club and on the radio. Due to the enthusiastic reception that they received, the group relocated to Miami. Campbell became their manager, but soon moved on to become a full-fledged member, drawing upon his experience in the Ghetto Style DJs to become the 2 Live Crew’s ‘‘hype man,’’ adding a more dynamic and interactive element to the group’s performance to meet the expectations of Miami crowds. Fresh Kid Ice and Brother Marquis were far from the most accomplished lyricists in late 1980s rap, and were limited to basically competent party and boast raps. Still, their anachronistic style of MCing fit well with Miami’s penchant for call-and-response-based participation between audience and performer. A large part of the group’s appeal for Miami audiences doubtlessly rests with the group’s DJ and producer, California native David ‘‘Mr. Mixx’’ Hobbs, who was responsible for the early and effective adaptation of the 808 drum machine and SP 12 and SP 1200 samplers, a combination that he used to produced long, low bass tones and funky breakdowns. Campbell capitalized Luke Skyywalker Records in 1986 in order to release the group’s records, using his Pac Jam Teen Disco (see sidebar: Pac-Jam Teen Disco) as the label’s offices. The Miami version of 2 Live Crew debuted in 1986, when the

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DJ GROUPS DJ groups—mobile entertainers who built their own systems to entertain crowds at various venues—proliferated in the Miami area in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including groups such as the Kingsmen DJs, Ghetto Style DJs, Space Funk DJs, SS Express Phase II, We Funk Deejays, and the Triple M DJs. They formed a highly competitive and dynamic subculture, where supremacy was determined by the volume of bass that the speaker cabinets could generate and the uniqueness of the performance of the DJs, who would often add vocal parts, sound effects, or engage in creative mixing in order to win the crowd’s acclaim. With Miami’s semitropical climate encouraging outdoor partying, DJ groups set up at venues including parks, parties, high school dances, car washes, and skating rinks. Sometimes, two or more such groups competed against one another in fiercely contested ‘‘clashes.’’ As Luther Campbell explained, ‘‘This was before rap. It was when rap was being created. We DJ’ed differently down here’’ (Campbell and Miller 22). Miami DJ groups were influenced in important ways by the Jamaican sound system culture, which hit its stride in the 1960s. Participants in these collective enterprises included ‘‘selectors’’ mixing popular records through a powerful and bass-heavy system and ‘‘deejays’’ working the crowd and inserting their own patter over the recorded music, part of a larger group that included those responsible for more mundane tasks such as security and moving equipment. In ‘‘clashes,’’ two or more systems take turns trying to win the crowd’s acclaim with ‘‘exclusives’’—one-off recordings by popular artists, often mentioning the sound system’s name—as well as highly creative combinations of recorded music, sound effects, and various kinds of live vocal performance. Miami’s DJ groups, like their Jamaican counterparts, devoted substantial resources of time, energy, and money to the creation of sound systems that would keep the crowd dancing and dominate the competition with technological supremacy and tasteful and creative musical performance. The activities of these groups contributed on many levels to Miami’s early development of a thriving and stylistically distinct interpretation of hip hop, providing a rich array of practical experience and a highly dynamic culture of innovation and experimentation. One important result of this process is the technique known as ‘‘regulating’’ or ‘‘mic checking’’ that emerged from the DJ culture and was made famous by the Fort Lauderdale-based Jam Pony Express, in which music is cut in and out while a DJ adds short and precisely timed vocal parts which often change the meaning of the original song into a new local context.

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PAC-JAM TEEN DISCO Despite the strong associations between Miami’s hip hop scene and the city’s thriving adult entertainment industry, strip clubs represent only the most exclusive and eroticized of a wide range of contexts in which Miami rap has evolved and thrived. The Pac Jam Teen Disco, a club catering to Liberty City teenagers started by Luther Campbell in the mid-1980s, was one such space, a grassroots, everyday spot where Campbell and others like him were able to both contribute to and draw inspiration from the enthusiastic activities of young dancers. The Pac Jam had its origins in Campbell’s years as a concert promoter, when he and his Ghetto Style DJs associates spun records at the Sunshine Skating Center in Homestead, Florida. Using the name ‘‘Pac Jam,’’ the group drew large numbers of young dancers to the venue with events which included ‘‘soul night’’ and ‘‘reggae night,’’ among others. This success spurred Campbell to rent the PacJam II (at 1205 NW 54th St. at 12th Ave.), creating the only ‘‘teen club’’ in the sprawling Liberty City neighborhood. For several years, the club served as a venue for Liberty City DJs and rappers, as well as out-of-town rap acts brought in by Campbell. When he began releasing records, he used the club ‘‘to test music on the jitterbugs’’ (1992, 24), reflecting Campbell’s genius for synergistic structuring of his commercial (and cultural) enterprises. When he took over the management of 2 Live Crew and began his Skyywalker Records label, the PacJam II doubled as the corporate offices of his label until Campbell moved to the upscale Biscayne Boulevard area. However, he later returned to establish his two-story Luke Records entertainment complex in the Little Haiti at 8400 NE Second Ave., which included a new version of Pac Jam. This version of the teen club operated until 1997, when the complex was purchased by a church group. Luke opened several other nightclubs catering to adult crowds around the city, including Strawberries in Hialeah, and Luke’s Miami Beach (1045 Fifth St.), both of which were closed after legal problems related to overflow crowds and liquor licensing. Strawberry’s Too Lounge in Hialeah was closed after a shooting incident.

single ‘‘Trow [sic] the D.’’ (backed with ‘‘Ghetto Bass’’) was released, credited to ‘‘Ghetto Style with the 2 Live Crew’’ in early pressings. The single’s A-side was inspired by a dance popular among Miami youth, the ‘‘throw the dick.’’ The group’s debut album, 2 Live Is What We Are (1986), was dedicated to Malcolm X, but the cover imagery (which depicts the group members clowning in the parking lot of Campbell’s Pac Jam club) and lyrics of songs like ‘‘We Want Some Pussy’’ and samples of X-rated nightclub comedian Rudy Ray ‘‘Dolemite’’

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Moore signified the group’s status as decadent partiers. Driven by Campbell’s seemingly unstoppable capacity to network, promote, and hustle product, the music of the 2 Live Crew and other Miami Bass groups began to spread to adjoining parts of the South by way of collective activities that took place at nightclubs, concerts, or parties. The record was certified gold in July of 1987, while Campbell and the group ramped up a schedule of national and international concert tours. The cover of the group’s second album, 1988’s Move Somethin’ depicted the group soaking in a hot tub with a swimsuit-clad woman towering over them with her back to the camera, making it the first of many Miami Bass record covers to use the ‘‘booty’’ motif. The outrage caused by the depraved misogyny in the lyrics of songs like ‘‘S&M’’ eclipsed any appreciation of the innovative musical dimensions of the album, which was released as the Miami Bass sound was being revolutionized by producers using the Roland 808 drum machine in combination with the SP 1200 sequencer to produce deep and hard-hitting bass tones. A large portion of the music produced by 2 Live Crew on this and later releases consists of instrumentals and DJ mixes catering to the growing local and regional subculture around bass-heavy, uptempo dance music. Campbell and his group maintained a commitment to producing innovative and high-quality music, a fact which escaped many contemporary critics. While the mixes on Move Somethin’ were done by the group’s DJ David Hobbs, Campbell tapped New York-based producer Jose ‘‘Chep’’ Nunez for a ‘‘Bass Waves Megamix’’ released on a 12’’ single sometime in the late 1980s. Nunez had made a name for himself working with early hip hop artists including Kurtis Mantronik, creating dazzling and innovative mixes by cutting and splicing audio tape with razor blades, a treatment which he applied to the 2 Live Crew’s early singles with impressive results.

OTHER SKYYWALKER ARTISTS While Campbell continued to develop the 2 Live Crew’s following in the late 1980s, he also signed a number of talented local and regional performers to his record label. Atlanta rapper Peter ‘‘MC Shy D’’ Jones moved from 4-Sight to Skyywalker, where he released the 1987 album, Got to Be Tough. He followed with 1988’s Comin’ Correct in ‘88, where Aldrin ‘‘DJ Toomp’’ Davis and Michael ‘‘Mike Fresh’’ McCray took over the production. Miami-based artists released in the late 1980s included a female trio, Anquette, led by his cousin Anquette Corte Allen, who had local success with songs including ‘‘Ghetto Style’’ and ‘‘Throw the P’’ (an answer song to the 2 Live Crew’s ‘‘Throw the D’’). In 1989, the group released ‘‘Janet Reno,’’ a tribute to the then-Miami-Dade County prosecutor for her efforts to collect child support from delinquent fathers. In late 1987, the label signed 13-year-old Le Juan ‘‘Le Juan Love’’ Biggers, who released two 12’’ singles, ‘‘My Hardcore Rhymes’’ and ‘‘Everybody Say Yeah.’’

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By 1990, Campbell estimated the earnings of his music ventures at $17 million, and his expanding empire included multiple independent record labels and three nightclubs. In addition to Skyywalker Records, he operated several sublabels and distributed others, like Fort Lauderdale-based Hip Rock, which released records by the group Afro-Rican (composed of Derrick Rahming, Mark Rice, and Juan Arroyo), including the 1989 album Against All Odds. Campbell released a number of rap artists on his Effect Records sublabel, beginning with DJ Mike and MC Cool C, who released the single ‘‘Do That Shit!’’ in 1988. Atlanta native Anthony Durham, under the name Tony M.F. Rock released several singles on Effect in 1989, followed by the full-length Let Me Take You to the Rock House in the same year. Beginning in 1989, Effect was also home to the group Poison Clan, led by Jeffrey ‘‘JT Money’’ Thompkins, who released the album 2 Low Life Muthas in 1990 and attracted attention in 1992 with the single ‘‘Shake Whatcha’ Mama Gave Ya’,’’ produced by Kenneth ‘‘Devastator’’ Terry and featured on the full-length Poisonous Mentality. In 1991, Effect released New Orleans-based rapper John ‘‘Bust Down’’ Bickham’s debut album, Nasty Bitch (Chapter 1). Campbell ventured into political rap when he signed Richard ‘‘Professor Griff’’ Griffin, who had recently departed Public Enemy under an anti-Semitic cloud, and released his album Pawns in the Game in 1990, which featured production by Miami stalwart Clay ‘‘Clay D’’ Dixon. Griffin released several other albums on the label before parting ways with Campbell in 1993.

LEGAL TROUBLES While a substantial percentage of Campbell’s profits came from relatively inoffensive acts like MC Shy D, Anquette, and Le Juan Love, it was the 2 Live Crew’s Xrated lyrics and strip club-inspired portrayal of women which defined the wider public awareness of his activities, leading to a series of attempts to criminalize and repress the group’s recorded and live expressions. The first of these started in the summer of 1988 in the small town of Alexander City, Alabama, where an undercover officer (acting on a citizen’s complaint) purchased a cassette copy of Move Somethin’ from a record store catering to a mainly white clientele. Copies of the group’s recordings, as well as other rap releases, were confiscated, and obscenity charges were filed against the store’s owner, Tommy Hammond, who was quickly convicted in a municipal court and fined $500. The conviction was overturned on appeal after a courtroom trial in early 1990 in which lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union brought to the stand as witnesses New York Times music critic John Leland and Carlton Long, a scholar of African American culture. However, this episode represented merely the opening salvos of a legal battle over rap music, obscenity, and censorship which would intensify in the coming years and which would make Luther Campbell and the 2 Live Crew into household names across the nation.

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While the antismut forces regrouped, Campbell’s career as a record label owner and promoter was growing in tandem with the popularity of the 2 Live Crew, who were expanding beyond their regional base after two highly successful albums, each of which sold over 500,000 copies. The 1989 double LP release, As Nasty as They Wanna Be, became the group’s most successful album, selling over two million copies and reaching the number three spot in Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart. Much of this success was driven by the single, ‘‘Me So Horny,’’ for which Campbell produced a video that received substantial play on MTV. The nonexplicit version of the album, As Clean as They Wanna Be, sold over 500,000 copies. As the group’s popularity increased in the late 1980s, the campaign to censor their vulgar expressions in songs such as ‘‘If You Believe in Having Sex’’ also picked up steam. In South Florida, this was largely due to the energetic efforts of Jack Thompson, an attorney from the nearby city of Coral Gables. Building on the legacy of Anita Bryant, who led a successful drive to defeat an ordinance ensuring equal rights for gays and lesbians in Miami-Dade County in 1977, Thompson and his allies in the Christian fundamentalist movement called for the intervention of law enforcement to prevent Campbell’s music and message from reaching impressionable young people. His message found a receptive audience in then-governor Bob Martinez (R), who pressed for legal action against the group’s music. Nick Navarro, the no-nonsense Sheriff of Broward County, brought the album before Broward County Court Judge Mel Grossman, who affirmed that Nasty was probably obscene and therefore subject to being removed from stores where minors could shop. Navarro and his deputies warned retailers that they would risk arrest if they sold the group’s recordings. After the Sheriff followed through on his threats to arrest noncompliant retailers and hauled in Charles Freeman of the Fort Lauderdale-based E-C Records for selling Nasty, 2 Live Crew brought suit against Navarro in the federal court of Judge Jose Gonzalez for exercising illegal prior restraint in his warnings to record stores. The trial, which spanned the months of March to June 1990, included testimony by Miami New Times rap critic Greg Baker, as well as Leland and Long in a reprise of their appearance in Alexander City. When Gonzalez ruled in June 1990, he fined the Sheriff for prior restraint, but, more importantly, found that the 2 Live Crew’s album was obscene and could be understood as having no value outside of a prurient interest. His ruling, which mandated that anyone selling copies of Nasty in South Florida would be subject to arrest and prosecution, galvanized widespread support for Campbell and the 2 Live Crew as a symbol of freedom of expression and the First Amendment. A day after Judge Gonzalez issued his ruling, on June 9, 1990, the group performed for a crowd of around 500 people at Club Futura (just across the Broward County line near Hollywood, Florida), where, in addition to performing songs from their latest album, they led the crowd in chants of ‘‘Fuck Martinez’’ and ‘‘Fuck Navarro.’’ As they left the show, Campbell and Wongwon were arrested,

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and misdemeanor obscenity charges were filed against members of the group, resulting in yet another widely publicized trial in which 2 Live Crew’s sophomoric lyrics served to focus issues of artistic merit, freedom of expression, censorship, and institutionalized racism. Judge June Johnson presided over a trial in which the defense (headed, as in the previous cases, by Atlanta-based lawyer Bruce Rogow) presented testimony affirming the artistic and cultural relevance of the group’s work, this time including the eminent scholar Henry Louis Gates. The jury’s ‘‘not guilty’’ verdict reflected a growing feeling among the wider public in the South Florida area that the attempts to prosecute musical obscenity were an embarrassment and a distraction from more substantive issues, which found confirmation in Sheriff Navarro’s electoral defeat as he sought a third term in 1992. At the height of the controversy, Campbell released a solo album, The Luke LP (also known as Banned in the U.S.A.), which attempted to capitalize on his newfound status as First Amendment poster child, sampling Bruce Springsteen’s ‘‘Born in the USA’’ and including crude but clearly politicized rhetoric (in songs like ‘‘Fuck Martinez’’) alongside less memorable fare like ‘‘Do the Bart.’’ The Luke LP sold enough copies to qualify for gold record status, and was the first of what would be a string of solo albums released by Campbell over the course of the 1990s. It also marked the beginning of troubles between Campbell and his fellow 2 Live Crew members, as the latter were paid a flat fee for their substantial contributions to the album, which was the first of several Luke releases billed as ‘‘featuring the 2 Live Crew.’’ In 1991, 2 Live Crew released Live in Concert, the first live rap album in history. In the same year, they also released Sports Weekend: As Nasty as They Wanna Be, Pt. 2, which included a single, ‘‘Pop that Pussy,’’ inspired by a dance that group members saw in New Orleans clubs. Campbell bought a half-million dollar home in the exclusive Miami Lakes subdivision, and was diversifying into fields of music publishing, development, and mortgage companies, a recording studio, and several nightclubs. As Campbell and The 2 Live Crew became known nationally and sold increasing numbers of records, they faced other legal challenges. In 1990, Campbell paid $350,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Star Wars creator George Lucas, and agreed to stop calling himself ‘‘Luke Skyywalker’’ and change the name of his record company, which became Luke Records. In the same year, he signed a short-lived distribution deal with Atlantic Records. In 1992, the question of whether 2 Live Crew’s music was going to be considered legally obscene was finally resolved when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned Judge Gonzalez’s ruling on Nasty. While the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the overturning of the Gonzalez decision, in 1993 it heard a case involving the 2 Live Crew’s song ‘‘Pretty Woman’’ (a bawdy reworking of Roy Orbison’s original featured on 1989’s As Clean as They Wanna Be), which publishing firm Acuff-Rose argued violated their copyright. After a trial that included extensive discussion of and citation of lyrics

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from the 2 Live Crew song (which portrayed a grotesque, ‘‘big hairy woman’’), the Court ruled in March 1994 that the 2 Live Crew’s version of ‘‘Pretty Woman’’ qualified as a parodic expression protected by the First Amendment. However, Campbell’s remarkable string of legal victories in highly symbolic and publicized cases had reached its end. Financially overextended by the constant expansion of his business ventures, Campbell’s tendency to live an extravagant lifestyle helped push him into the red. His financial collapse was precipitated by a judgment against him resulting from a lawsuit filed in Dade County Court by former Skyywalker artist Peter ‘‘MC Shy D’’ Jones. Rather than settle, Campbell’s lawyers allowed the case to go to trial, where a judgment of $2.3 million was levied against the company, a figure that the budding mogul was unable to pay. In an effort to collect fees, Campbell’s in-house counsel, former tax lawyer Joe Weinberger, spearheaded an effort to force the label into involuntary bankruptcy, which succeeded in 1995. Weinberger paid $800,000 for the rights to much of the Luke Skyywalker/Luke Records catalog, including the 2 Live Crew recordings. Weinberger pressed and sold this material under his Lil Joe Records imprint. Years of high living and a lack of attention to long-term financial planning eroded Campbell’s assets quickly, and he spent the second half of the 1990s trying to reestablish his financial footing. Through it all, Campbell remained active in making records, promoting himself and other artists on his roster, and cultivating a variety of spin-off enterprises. In 1992, he repaired some of the damage wrought by 2 Live Crew’s acrimonious dissolution, settling with ex-members David Hobbs and Mark Ross. Over the course of the 1990s, Campbell continued to release music by himself and other Miami artists working with similar material. In the early 1990s, the new Luke Records imprint released singles and albums by Disco Rick and the Wolf Pack (including the 1992 single ‘‘Wiggle Wiggle’’) and the 1992 album Back from Hell. In 1993 the label released the holiday-themed compilation, Christmas at Luke’s Sex Shop, which featured Campbell alongside other artists on his label performing songs such as ‘‘Ho, Hoe, Hoes’’ and ‘‘Jesus Is Black.’’ Campbell released a steady stream of solo albums, including 1992’s I Got Shit on My Mind, which was credited to ‘‘Luke PKA Luther Campbell AKA Captain Dick,’’ and depicted the rapper on the cover sitting on the toilet reading the sports section while two near-naked strippers frolicked in the shower. Driven by catchy club anthems like ‘‘I Wanna Rock’’ and ‘‘Head, Head and More Head,’’ the album (again billed as ‘‘featuring the 2 Live Crew’’) reached the #20 spot on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. His next effort as a soloist, 1993’s In the Nude (Lil Joe), was followed by Freak for Life (1994, Luke Records), which included the popular ‘‘It’s Ya Birthday.’’ His 1996 album Uncle Luke proved to be one of his most successful to date, rising to the #8 spot on Billboard’s Top R&B/HipHop Albums chart on the strength of the single ‘‘Scarred,’’ which reached the number seven spot on the magazine’s Hot Rap Singles chart. Campbell continued to

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release solo albums throughout the 1990s, including 1997’s Changin’ the Game and 2001’s Something Nasty (released by Koch). He hosted ‘‘The Luke Show’’ on WEDR in the late 1990s, and in 2008 broke into television with his reality show, ‘‘Luke’s Parental Advisory,’’ (on cable station VH1) where viewers can watch Campbell juggle the challenges of being a responsible partner to his fiance´e Vanessa and parent his two teenage children while staying on top of his adult entertainment business, the Luke Entertainment Group. Now known affectionately as ‘‘Uncle Luke,’’ Campbell remains a central figure in the local Miami scene. As one of the earliest rap record moguls in the South, his entrepreneurial drive coupled with his unwavering commitment to his core audience—young urban blacks—served as a model for many artists and labels from other regional centers who have attained prominence in the past decade. His legacy remains a mixed one in Miami, however, as his substantial achievements have been tarnished somewhat by his pornographic reputation and his contentious relationship with many of his former artists and collaborators. His contributions were not formally recognized or acknowledged until he won the Lifetime Achievement award at the locals-only Miami Awards in 2004.

MIAMI BASS Luther Campbell was merely the most visible and controversial of many participants in a vital and dynamic local music subculture. While Luke and 2 Live Crew drew the media spotlight in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a vibrant Miami Bass scene was bubbling over, driven by independent record labels and the creative synergy between producers, rappers, and Miami audiences. The Miami Bass style that crystallized in the early 1990s was heavily influenced by the Caribbean musical culture that pervaded Miami. Made for dancing, it was defined by a fast tempo (often around 125 beats-per-minute), an emphasis on the production of deep, loud, and sustained bass tones, and the use of layered percussive elements (produced with drum machines or sequencers) punctuated by fills and breakdowns. Producers often added congas and handclaps to the polyrhythmic mixture, with hi-hats patterns used to create a metronomic framework upon which producers laid highly syncopated bass ‘‘drops,’’ often produced in the late 1980s and early 1990s by sampling the Roland 808 into the E-mu SP 1200. Lyrics often took the form of call-and-response designed to facilitate crowd participation. The style was influenced by rap’s ‘‘electro’’ era, drawing inspiration from recordings including Jonzun Crew’s ‘‘Pack Jam,’’ Afrika Bambaataa and Arthur Baker’s ‘‘Planet Rock,’’ and T La Rock & Jazzy Jay’s bass-heavy ‘‘It’s Yours’’ (1984) produced by Rick Rubin. Miami producers enthusiastically adopted new musical technology like the Roland 808 drum machine and the E-Mu SP 12 or SP 1200 sampling drum machines. As the Miami Bass scene grew in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a distinction obtained between the sex-oriented music such as that produced by groups like 2 Live Crew or the Dogs, sometimes referred to as ‘‘booty

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bass,’’ and the so-called ‘‘techno bass’’ produced by artists like MC ADE or Bass Mekanik (Neil Case), who relied much less on call-and-response chants and lyrics in general and produced music designed to test the limits of car and club systems. The Miami Bass style was strongly associated with the strip-club environment, the male lyrical subject, and male producers and record label owners. Still, women made up a large portion of its audience, and an important minority in the ranks of its artists. In addition to Skyywalker’s Anquette, other women rappers of the late 1980s include the Bronx-born Missy Mist, who recorded for Eric Griffin’s Never Stop Productions. Other women rappers in the Miami Bass period—including Fresh Celeste, L’Trimm, and the Get Fresh Girls—made important contributions to the genre and represented the female perspective as rappers. Alongside Skyywalker and 4-Sight, other local independents emerged in the late 1980s to compete in the Bass arena. Joey Boy Records, along with its JR Records and On Top Records imprints, was one of the most prominent of these companies in the thriving Miami Bass scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was operated by Cuban-born Jose Armada, Jr. (whose father owned a record pressing plant) and Allen Johnston. Based in the North Miami neighborhood of Allapattah, it produced its first release (a reggae record) in 1985. While the label’s early efforts were geared towards the pop-oriented freestyle genre, in the late 1980s it increasingly served as a venue for local hip hop. Much of the early rap material on Joey Boy was the work of brother duo Calvin Mills II and Carlton Mills, who performed and produced a variety of material for Joey Boy and its sublabels under names including Rock Force, The Miami Boyz, The Amazing Wizards, and (when joined by Terrence Edwards) M-4 Sers. The Mills brothers would leave the Joey Boy stable in the early 1990s, but formed an essential part of the label’s rap offerings in the peak years of Bass. The Joey Boy sublabel On Top released singles by Bass artists Half Pint (Curtis Alan Jones) and Em-N-Em, as well as an album by John ‘‘Iceman J’’ Hamilton, Mega Jon Bass (1993). The label’s roster also included the Atlanta-based hardcore rap group Success-N-Effect and the Hispanic rap group Mentally Disturbed. With Miami Bass emerging in the early 1990s as a successful subgenre, the enterprising Armada enlisted the Orlando-based duo DJ Fury and Rx Lord (Brian V. Graham and Robert Lewis) to record on his label under the name Bass Patrol, producing singles and albums like 1988’s Rock This Planet. The trio The Dogs were another successful rap act in Armada’s stable. Led by Richard ‘‘Disco Rick’’ Taylor, who was backed up by two former football players (Keith ‘‘Peanut’’ Bell and Labrant ‘‘Ant D’’ Dennis) from Liberty City, the group took a page from 2 Live Crew’s playbook, combining ‘nasty’ chants and raps with bass-heavy, uptempo backing tracks in their releases. The group enjoyed a local hit with 1990’s ‘‘Take It Off,’’ and produced the full-length The Dogs in the same year. The label also released a full-length solo effort by Disco Rick, The Negro’s Back, in late 1990, before 1991’s Beware of the Dogs. Armada and Johnston released another Dogs

Tropic of Bass | 595 album, K-9 Bass, without Taylor, who had moved to Luke Records backed by the group The Wolf Pack. Joey Boy continued to produce rap records throughout the 1990s, chiefly on its On Top imprint. DJ Uncle Al (Albert Moss) recorded many singles and albums for On Top, including albums What’s My Name (1993), Go Ladies (1995), and others. However, as the 1990s came to a close, Joey Boy was moving out of rap and into reggaeton and other, similar hybrids of African American and Caribbean music styles. Hot Productions, an independent label specializing in dance music, was founded in 1985 by Henry Stone (who had helped to define the disco era as the head of TK Records) and Paul Klein. As Miami Bass was becoming a local phenomenon in the late 1980s, the company distributed records on a variety of small independent labels in the genre. Hot Productions distributed Miami Bass singles by artists such as MC Fresh C, Double Duce, the Gucci Crew II, The Home Town Boyzz, and DJ Wink D featuring Candy Fresh, on small labels including Boomtown, Gucci, and Insane Beat. The label had a hit with the female duo L’Trimm’s ode to Miami’s growing and bass-focused car audio subculture, ‘‘Cars with the Boom’’ (1988, Time-X Records). The label folded after several years of prolific releases in the late 1980s. Vision Records, started by brothers Howard and Ron Albert in partnership with Steve Alaimo in 1987, was another important independent label in the late 1980s and early 1990s Miami, mainly due to its association with Clay ‘‘Beat Master Clay D’’ Dixon, a rapper and producer with roots in Tallahassee. Dixon was centrally involved in the label’s hip hop output, which began in 1988 with releases including ‘‘Boot the Booty’’ by MC Cool Rock and MC Chaszy Chess and ‘‘Stomp N’ Grind’’ by Half Pint, both of which featured scratches and other production work by a then-unknown Orlando DJ named Magic Mike (Michael Hampton). In the same year, the label released ‘‘Rock the House’’ by Beat Master Clay D and DJ Magic Mike, which featured beat boxing by Prince Raheim (Raheim Thomas) a native of Queens, New York who moved to Miami in 1985. In addition to distributing Clay D’s Beat Master Records imprint, Vision released several of his singles and the albums You Be You and I Be Me (1988) and Pull It All the Way Down (1989). He left the label around 1990 and moved to Pandisc, where he released singles including ‘‘Give Me a Bottle’’ (1991) and ‘‘We’re Goin’ Off’’/‘‘Dazzy Duke Down’’ (1992). Magic Mike soon parted ways with his Miami affiliates, and forged a pioneering path releasing records on his Orlando-based Cheetah Records. With substantial knowledge of the technical side of production, he became an early purveyor of the techno-bass style, mostly instrumental music designed to push club or car audio systems to their limit with ever-increasing bass frequencies. His 1988 debut on Cheetah, ‘‘Magic Mike Cutz the Record’’ and 1989’s ‘‘Drop the Bass’’ were followed by full-length efforts such as Bass Is the Name of the Game (1990) and Back to Haunt You (1991). Other releases, such as Bass, the Final Frontier and

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This Is How It Should Be Done (1993) were released on Hampton’s Magic Records. Other small-scale ventures also contributed to the flourishing Miami Bass scene. Norberto ‘‘Candyman’’ Morales, a member of the Triple M DJs, opened the Bass Station nightclub (which competed with Luther Campbell’s PacJam) and founded the independent Bass Station Records in 1987. The label relied upon St. Louis native (and former WEDR radio DJ) Eric ‘‘Never Stop’’ Griffin as their in-house producer. The label had a local hit with female rapper Dimples Tee’s ‘‘Jealous Fella’s’’ (1987). In his production on the group Dynamix II’s 1987 ‘‘Just Give the D.J. a Break,’’ Griffin broke new ground in his programming of the E-mu SP-1200 drum sampler, achieving complex and tonally varied bass sounds which set the standard for Miami Bass production in the following years. Despite the promise of its first year of operations, Bass Station folded after Morales was found murdered in his upscale Lake Lucerne home in late 1987. After a brief stint as in-house producer at Suntown Records (owned by Edward ‘‘Non-Stop’’ Meriweather, Griffin formed his own label, Never Stop Productions, which (like much of the Bass Station catalog) was distributed by Bo Crane’s Pandisc. He found success with the Bronx-born female rapper Missy Mist (Michelle Broom), whose debut single ‘‘Make It Mellow’’ (1988) made a respectable showing on the Billboard rap singles chart. In the lyrics of a second single, ‘‘Gettin’ Bass,’’ Missy Mist described the aesthetics and practices of the emerging Miami Bass scene. She was signed to an album deal with Atlantic, which resulted in the album Let the Good Times Roll. Griffin eventually left Miami to return to his native Missouri; he was murdered in East St. Louis in 1998 by individuals seeking to steal his musical equipment. Pandisc, an Opa-Locka-based dance label started by New Jersey native Bo Crane in 1981, rose to become another pillar of the thriving Miami Bass scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Crane had been in the Miami music and radio business since the 1970s, and worked closely with Henry Stone’s disco powerhouse TK Records. With Pandisc (and its many sublabels and distribution agreements) Crane released a wide variety of material, including both Bass and pop rap acts. One of Crane’s biggest hits came from with the pop-rap duo Young & Restless, consisting of Carol City native Charles Trahan and Leonerist Johnson. The group released their debut Something to Get You Hyped in 1989, driven by singles including a version of the Coasters’ 1959 hit ‘‘Poison Ivy’’ and ‘‘B Girls,’’ which made a showing on the Billboard rap chart. Pandisc was strongly invested in techno-bass, and featured several of the most prolific producers of that style. Neil Case, who cut his teeth working in sound systems in Jamaica before moving to Miami, released several singles and albums for Pandisc as Bass Mekanik or Beat Dominator. Under its Jamarc imprint, Pandisc released music by a variety of groups or aliases associated with James McCauley (known as ‘‘Maggotron’’ and ‘‘DXJ,’’ among other colorful aliases), another

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groundbreaking producer of mostly instrumental Miami Bass singles and albums, known for his eclectic and creative approach to composition. After early singles for 4-Sight and Joey Boy, McCauley found a home at Pandisc in the late 1980s, where he released a large number of singles and albums under a variety of colorful pseudonyms over the course of more than a decade, including Smokey D and DXJ, The Maggotron Crushing Crew, Bassadelic, and DJ Extraordinaire. McCauley’s efforts helped to establish Pandisc as the chief producer of so-called techno bass, sample-heavy and effects-laden instrumentals designed to put car and club systems to the test. Other Pandisc-distributed labels included West Palm Beach label Cut It Up Def, which released records by Jock D and Latin and Lethal, among others. As well as Breakaway Records, which released singles and an album by the Get Fresh Girls in the early 1990s. The success of the Miami scene in the early 1990s is reflected in an issue of The Source magazine from March 1994, which was dedicated entirely to ‘‘Miami’s mindblowin’ world of bass music, boomin’ systems and strippers.’’ The magazine’s cover showed Luther Campbell teeing off on a palm tree-lined golf course as four scantily-clad young ladies look on. In addition to the cover story on Luke, the magazine featured articles on many other rappers and producers, including Clay D, Magic Mike, 2 Nazty, David ‘‘Mr. Mixx’’ Hobbs, M.C. Shy D, DJ Uncle Al and the Bass 91.9 pirate station, Miami’s strip clubs and the white rapper Vanilla Ice, who settled in an exclusive Miami enclave after his brief moment of fame. However, in the mid-1990s, Miami status as the exclusive capital of Bass was fading. Artists like Tag Team or Duice (operating out of Atlanta) or Jacksonville, Florida’s 95 South, enjoyed brief and spectacular success with songs like ‘‘Whoomp! There It Is’’ or ‘‘Dazzey Duks,’’ songs which demonstrated Miami’s pervasive influence even as they served to displace the city from its prior position of prominence and saturate the market for uptempo dance music.

POST-BASS: 1996–2008 As rap scenes in Atlanta, New Orleans, and Memphis drew national audiences and companies in the late 1990s, Miami seemed to fade into the background. However, in the post-Bass years, new generations of artists, companies, and audiences were coming of age and laying the groundwork for new developments in the city’s rap scene. The city’s immigrant communities have contributed in important ways to the evolution and diversification of rap music produced in Miami. The city’s large Haitian community remains, to a large extent, culturally, linguistically, and economically marginalized. However, it has nonetheless contributed several noteworthy individuals, groups, and business to the Miami rap scene. The Haitian presence in rap was given a boost by the emergence and rise to popularity of the Fugees, a New York-based group of Haitian e´migre´s featuring Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, who has close ties to Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood.

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The Haitian-American rap group Zoe Pound emerged in Miami in early 1995 with the single ‘‘Zoe Pound, Get Down.’’ The nine-member group represented the experience and perspective of young Haitian-Americans who had grown up in Miami’s Little Haiti after the massive wave of immigration in the 1970s and 1980s. After building their reputation locally at venues such as Club Utopia and Luther Campbell’s PacJam, the group (which included among its members James ‘‘Red Eyezz’’ Pierre, Emmaneul ‘‘Blind’’ Mazard, Macharry ‘‘Mackazoe’’ Lafontant, and Maurice ‘‘Golden Child’’ James) received a major boost when they opened for Haitian-American sensations The Fugees at Miami’s Cameo theater in 1996. The group collaborated with the New Orleans-based Hot Boys on the single ‘‘Tear It Up’’ in the mid-1990s. Zoe Pound proved to be short-lived, but the group was not the only point of intersection between the city’s Haitian e´migre´ community and its rap music scene. Distributed by the New York-based independent Warlock Records, EKG Records was an important presence in the post-Bass Miami scene of the late 1990s. The label was founded by businessman Jacques Evens Thermilus, who left Haiti at age seven, settling with his family in Brooklyn in the 1960s before moving south to Miami later in the same decade. He built on his experience working construction jobs as a union carpenter to become the owner of his own company specializing in concrete work. As his business grew, Thermilus became well-known in South Florida political circles as a campaign contributor and eventually branched out into the music business, founding his label around 1995 and later building a recording studio at the headquarters of his construction company. EKG Records drew upon the talents of individuals with deep roots in Miami’s music scene. Sam Ferguson, the label’s A&R (‘‘artists and repertoire’’) representative, was a veteran of the Space Funk DJs who later co-owned the Bass Station nightclub. As a manager, Ferguson brought the pop-rap duo Young & Restless to the edge of stardom before his career was stalled by a jail sentence. Other Miami veterans played foundational roles in EKG’s rise; the legendary ‘‘Pretty Tony’’ Butler produced an early release, 1996’s single ‘‘It’s Party Time’’ by RedN-Black. Butler also produced a 1997 single by Disco & the City Boyz; the group’s 1998 release, ‘‘Get ’Em Up’’ was produced by Clay D. In the late 1990s, EKG enjoyed moderate success with singles (including ‘‘Where-U-At’’) and an album (1998’s Res-Sa-Rec-Shun) by Blac Haze (Ted Outler), and also released material by the group P.O.L.O. Dynaztee. In 1999 the label signed the group Piccalo, who released the single ‘‘Big Money Baller$’’ followed by the full-length Everyday Reality in 2000. Produced by Dwayne ‘‘Spider Man’’ Webb and Edward ‘‘E-Spect’’ Wright, the album featured songs like ‘‘Simmer Down’’ and ‘‘Massacre’’ which showed an imaginative blend of Caribbean influences in its composition and production. After 2001, however, EKG Records became a casualty of the larger collapse of Thermilus’ business empire amidst corruption and fraud allegations.

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THE FUTURE OF HIP HOP IN MIAMI Started in 1994 by Carol City native Ted Lucas (born 1973), Slip-N-Slide Records grew over the course of the late 1990s to become the prime conduit to national success for Miami artists. The rise of Slip-N-Slide happened simultaneously with the decline of the Miami Bass style, which by the mid-1990s had saturated both the local and national markets. When he established the label, Lucas, built upon his own experience as a promoter and benefited from the exodus of local music industry personnel from the sinking Luke Records ship. He signed the group Tre +6 as the label’s first artist, and over the next decade built a roster of talent that has ensured its position as the city’s top rap label. Between its founding in 1993 and 2006, when Lucas parted with Atlantic and signed a three-year distribution agreement with Def Jam, Slip-N-Slide sold more than 15 million albums, a number that only grew in subsequent years with successful releases by Rick Ross, Plies, and others. Maurice ‘‘Trick Daddy’’ Young, whose career took off in the late 1990s, was the label’s first artist to break through to the rap mainstream. Young grew up in the Liberty Square housing project as one of 12 siblings, and spent several years behind bars in the early 1990s. The murder of his half-brother, Derek ‘‘Hollywood’’ Harris, inspired him to retire from the street life and turn to rapping. He began his career as Trick Daddy Dollars, and debuted under that name in a guest appearance on Luther ‘‘Luke’’ Campbell’s hit single, ‘‘Scarred,’’ in 1996. His first album for Slip-N-Slide was 1997’s Based on a True Story, which was distributed by Warlock and sold over 100,000 copies. He dropped ‘‘Dollars’’ from his name before releasing his next album, www.thug.com, in 1998. The album was the first Slip-N-Slide release to be distributed under a new agreement with Atlantic

Trick Daddy performs at the Apollo Theater in New York City on November 23, 2004. (Getty Images)

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Records, and sold over one million copies driven by the single ‘‘Nann Nigga,’’ which rose to the number 3 spot on Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart. The song featured a guest appearance by Katrina ‘‘Trina’’ Taylor, a 19-year-old associate of Trick Daddy and label owner Ted Lucas. With Trick Daddy’s career rising, Lucas wasted no time in developing his next breakout artist. A high school friend of both Lucas and Trick Daddy, Katrina ‘‘Trina’’ Taylor was a former majorette who had tried her hand at exotic dancing and aspired to a career in real estate before the success of her debut on ‘‘Nann Nigga’’ convinced her to forge a career as a rapper. She released her own debut album, Da Baddest Bitch, in 2000, which was distributed by Atlantic and achieved platinum sales. Her second album, Diamond Princess (2002) went gold, climbed Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, with single ‘‘B-R-Right’’ contributing to its sales. 2005’s Glamorest Life features the single ‘‘Here We Go,’’ and in 2008 she released her fourth album, Still Da Baddest, which topped the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Trick Daddy followed his Slip-N-Slide debut with Book of Thugs: Chapter AK verse 47 (2000), which included the horn-driven single ‘‘Shut Up’’ with guests Deuce Poppito, Trina, and CO. Later in 2000, he released Thugs Are Us, with the hit single ‘‘I’m a Thug,’’ and was featured on the cover of rap music magazine The Source. His fifth album, 2002’s Thug Holiday, featured the hit ‘‘In Da Wind,’’ with a guest appearance by Goodie Mob veteran Cee-Lo. In 2004, Trick Daddy released the Thug Matrimony: Married to the Streets album, driven by the single ‘‘Let’s Go,’’ which rose to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2008, he parted ways with Slip-N- Slide, forming his own Dunk Ryders imprint. In 2006, Slip-N-Slide introduced their next breakthrough artist, Rick Ross (William Roberts), who was born in 1976 and grew up in the Carol City neighborhood. His hit single, ‘‘Hustlin’ ’’ (which is representative of his lyrical focus on the cocaine trade in South Florida), sold over one million ringtone units before the release of his debut album, Port of Miami, which rose to the top spot on the Billboard 200 album charts and achieved platinum sales. His second album, Trilla, came out in 2008, and also topped the Billboard 200 chart, driven by the hit single ‘‘Boss’’ featuring the ubiquitous T-Pain. Miami’s rap scene continues to exert a gravitational pull over much of the peninsula. From Fort Myers, (located north of Tampa on Florida’s west coast), Plies (Algernod Lanier Washington) has become one of the most popular rappers associated with Miami in recent years. After several mixtape releases, he signed to Slip-N-Slide after in 2004. His debut album, The Real Testament, was released in August 2007, with the song ‘‘Shawty’’ (featuring T-Pain) achieving substantial airplay. In June of the next year, he released Definition of Real, and in December of 2008 released his third full-length, Da REAList and made the cover of Vibe magazine, proving him to be one of the most prolific and successful rappers to emerge from the Miami scene in recent years.

Tropic of Bass | 601 While Slip-N-Slide has dominated the local Miami scene in recent years, artists working with other labels have also emerged. In 2003, Angela ‘‘Jacki-O’’ Kohn had a local hit with the song ‘‘Nookie Real Good’’ on the local independent Poe Boy label. The release of her debut album, Poe Little Rich Girl, was delayed when the label’s distribution deal with Warner Bros. fell apart, and was eventually released through the New York-based independent TVT in 2004. Despite the moderate success of singles (including ‘‘Slow Down,’’ addressed to her erstwhile rival, Trina), Kohn parted ways with Poe Boy. By 2007, she had declared bankruptcy and was attempting to forge a new career as a record label owner and mixtape producer. Miami’s Cuban-American community produced its best-known contribution to the rap world in the form of Pitbull (Armando Pe´rez). While he grew up in neighborhoods all over the Miami metro area, he remains rooted in Little Havana, where he has invested in a barbershop on the neighborhood’s famous ‘‘Calle Ocho’’ (S.W. 8th St.). He debuted on Lil Jon’s Kings of Crunk album in 2002 with ‘‘Pitbull’s Cuban Rideout’’ and signed with New York-based independent TVT Records. Driven by singles ‘‘Culo’’ and ‘‘Dammit Man,’’ his 2004 debut M.I.A.M.I. (‘‘Money Is a Major Issue’’) won critical acclaim and sold over 600,000 copies, building upon his ability to bridge Hispanic and African American audiences. He has maintained close ties with artists in the reggaeton genre; his mixtape release, Money Is Still a Major Issue, featured guest appearances by Daddy Yankee and Queen Ivy, and he appeared on a remix of Daddy Yankee’s mega-hit ‘‘Gasolina.’’ His musically diverse follow-up album, El Mariel, in 2006, sold 225,000 copies; a third album, The Boatlift, in 2007, sold less than half of that number. To some extent, this trajectory relates to the troubled status of his label, TVT, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008 after losing a lawsuit (to the tune of $4.58 million) against Slip-N-Slide over the Miami label’s release of early Pitbull material. While Miami’s local music scene and industry has helped several recent artists achieve national fame, others, like Flo Rida (Tramar Dillard), have sought their fortunes outside of the city. Dillard grew up in Carol City, and built his local following with mixtapes. However, his career hinged upon trips to Los Angeles, where he forged a relationship with producer (and former member of Jodeci), DeVante DeGrate. After living in California for three years, he moved back to Miami around 2006, and appeared on DJ Khaled’s highly successful 2007 mixtape release, We the Best, in the song ‘‘B—I’m from Dade County.’’ Signed to the Atlantic-distributed Poe Boy label, he then produced a massive hit in the form of ‘‘Low’’ (featuring T-Pain), which spent 10 weeks at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles chart. In early 2008 he released the full-length album, Mail on Sunday. Recent developments in Miami’s rap scene demonstrate that the city remains an important source for rising hip hop talent and an important node in the national industry. The city’s scene benefits from the activities of producers including Cool & Dre, Derrick ‘‘Bigg D’’ Baker,’’ and Gorilla Tek. Radio personality DJ Khaled

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has hosted countless hip hop stars on his three mixtapes, released by the independent Koch label. He followed 2006’s Listennn with We the Best (2007), which featured guest appearances by Lil Wayne, T.I., and Rick Ross, among others, and sold almost 300,000 copies. In 2008 he released We Global, which included contributions from Trick Daddy and Plies as well as veterans Nas and Missy Elliot. In addition to the regular rotation of stars and moguls through the clubs, beaches, and exclusive subdivisions of Miami Beach, some, like Lil Wayne and Bryan ‘‘Baby’’ Williams (from New Orleans-based Cash Money Records), have made Miami home, further cementing the city’s status as a hip hop hotspot. As the epicenter of the U.S. Latin music industry, Miami will continue to play a central role in the continuing development of rap-influenced Spanish language dance music genres. Reggaeton artists from Puerto Rico like Tego Calderon and the group Calle 13 make frequent stops in Miami, and Cuban reggaeton artists (like Elvis Manuel, DJ Carlitos, and DJ Jerry, who were among the missing in a failed attempt to reach the United States in April of 2008) maintain strong ties to the city’s exile community. Thanks to the foundational efforts of Luther Campbell, and the more recent efforts of Slip-N-Slide’s Ted Lucas, among others, Miami’s local rap industry seems likely to continue to develop and promote new artists into the rap mainstream. On a grassroots level, rap will continue to contribute to and draw from the vital and dynamic cultural mixture that obtains in Miami; it will also be shaped by the city’s side-by-side extremes of wealth and poverty. The unique culture, climate and lifestyle of Miami will continue to foster a distinctive sense of place: As rapper Trick Daddy remarked, ‘‘I can’t go nowhere else. They got laws in other cities where you can’t buy liquor on Sundays. And then it be cold in most other cities.’’ (Korten 1999).

REFERENCES Campbell, Luther, and John R. Miller. As Nasty as They Wanna Be: The Uncensored Story of Luther Campbell of the 2 Live Crew. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 1992. Korten, Tristram. ‘‘Phat Thug Rap: How Three Inner-City Kids Turned Tragedy into a Soon-To-Be Platinum Hip-Hop Hit.’’ Miami New Times, August 26, 1999, no page. Lexis Nexis Academic. Emory Libraries, Atlanta, GA. http:// www.lexisnexis.com (accessed September 9, 2008). The Source, no. 54 (March 1994). ‘‘Special Issue: Miami Bass.’’

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY 2 Live Crew Move Somethin’. Luke Skyywalker Records, 1988.

Tropic of Bass Beat Dominator Techno Bass. Pandisc, 1992. Beatmaster Clay D. & the Get Funky Crew You Be You and I Be Me. Vision Records, 1988. Blac Haze Res-Sa-Rec-Shun. EKG Records, 1998. DJ Khaled We the Best. Koch Records, 2007. DJ Magic Mike Bass, the Final Frontier. Magic Records, 1993. DJ Uncle Al What’s My Name. On Top Records, 1993. The Dogs The Dogs. JR Records, 1990. Dynamix II ‘‘Just Give the D.J. a Break.’’ Bass Station Records, 1987. Ghetto Style and 2 Live Crew ‘‘Trow the D. and Ghetto Bass.’’ Luke Skyywalker Records, 1986. Jacki-O Poe Little Rich Girl. TVT Records, 2004. Jam Pony Express ‘‘To the Window to the Wall.’’ Express Records, 1995. Jock D. with D.J. Swift ‘‘Partytime.’’ Cut-It-Up-Def/Pandisc, 1991. Luke Uncle Luke. Luther Campbell Music, 1996. MC A.D.E. Just Sumthin to Do. 4-Sight Records, 1987. MC Shy D Got to Be Tough. Luke Skyywalker Records, 1987. Missy Mist ‘‘Gettin’ Bass’’/‘‘Let the Good Times Roll.’’ Never Stop Productions, 1989. Piccalo Everyday Reality. EKG Records, 2000. Pitbull M.I.A.M.I. TVT Records, 2004. Plies The Real Testament. Slip-N-Slide Records, 2007. Poison Clan 2 Low Life Muthas . Effect Records, 1990.

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Pretty Tony ‘‘Fix It in the Mix.’’ Music Specialists, Inc., 1984. Rick Ross Port of Miami. Slip-N-Slide Records, 2006. Trick Daddy www.thug.com. Slip-N-Slide Records, 1998. Trina Da Baddest Bitch. Slip-N-Slide Records, 2000. Various Artists The Bass That Ate Miami. Pandisc, 1989.

CHAPTER 23 Paradise Lost and Found: Hip Hop in Hawai’i Rohan Kalyan ‘‘Even though we’re struggling,’’ Ke’ala from the Hawai’ian rap group Sudden Rush tells me during an interview for Hip Hop in America: A Regional Guide, ‘‘we cannot forget that we’re in paradise and we gotta have fun too.’’ Indeed, hip hop from Hawai’i is often about the struggles that native Hawai’ians endure everyday: being at the bottom of a steep economic ladder, working multiple jobs in a tourist-oriented service economy, trying to keep pace with rising real estate prices that threaten their very existence in their ancestral homelands, dealing with the proliferation of addictive drugs like methamphetamine (aka ‘‘ice’’), as well as the ugly legacy of an unaddressed history of illegal annexation and military occupation by the United States of America over the past century. Hip hop in Hawai’i seems very much about balancing these everyday pressures with the fun and relaxation that music affords. Hip hop in Hawai’i is not so much about forgetting about these problems in ‘‘paradise,’’ but learning to live with them, and making sure that the struggle does not get the best of Hawai’ians. Don Ke’ala Kawa’auhau Jr.’s words are fitting for a hip hop artist living in a place like Hawai’i. From its origins more than 30 years ago, hip hop music has given voice to the disenfranchised segments of America’s inner-city population. At the same time, the foundations of hip hop were in vibrant and ecstatic neighborhood parties with break dancers, DJs, MCs, graffiti artists, and spectators enjoying the time to get away from their daily struggles and celebrate to the rhythms and expressions of a budding hip hop culture. Even though these inner-city youths were struggling with their own urban problems (drugs, underemployment, poverty, failing schools, etc.), they still managed to create a time and space in which to enjoy life and live it to its most fun potential, almost as a strategy for social and cultural survival. But Hawai’i’s culture, history, and geography are much different from that of the ‘‘mainland’’ United States. The fact that locals here often make this distinction—between Hawai’i and the ‘‘mainland’’—in everyday conversation speaks 605

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loudly to the fact that Hawai’ians consider their state and their culture to be quite unique and different from the rest of America. The local music scene here expresses this attitude, and is embodied in local hip hop. Radio stations here frequently play local songs and genres that could not be heard anywhere else in the states. At the same time, the influence of mainland hip hop is undeniable, as no less than three local stations play the latest hits from the hip hop charts. Being a small island community with a multiethnic population, one that has no numerical majority (Hawai’i is one of only four states in America in which non-Hispanic whites are not the majority), Hawai’ian hip hop is best seen as a blend of mainstream hip hop culture and local musical forms and styles. In Hawai’ian hip hop, one sees vernacular expressions, dialects, musical forms and rhythms that would quite simply be impossible to find anywhere else in the United States. At the same time, questions of incorporating elements from mainstream, mainland hip hop often confront issues of local authenticity and Hawai’ian cultural autonomy. In this regard, the music of Sudden Rush in particular is exemplary in its ability to incorporate American hip hop in an undeniably Hawai’ian context, as will be detailed later in this chapter. But in many ways, Hawai’i is not so different from the mainland. Much like in other parts of the United States, mainstream hip hop from major American cities can be heard in numerous clubs, bars, and dancehalls. In addition, the presence of American retailers, corporations, and not to mention the U.S. military, brings Hawai’ian culture into close conversation with mainland culture, producing a distinct local hybrid. ‘‘Jawaiian’’ music seems to embody this mix the best, blending traditional Hawi’ian music (often played on ukulele and sung in the Hawai’ian language) and Jamaican reggae. This music is by far the most popular form of local music heard on area radio stations here. But in recent years Hawai’ian hip hop has made its mark on the local scene, and is slowly finding new niche spaces in which to develop and grow. Of course, hip hop in Hawaii is diverse in its styles and expressions, just like its counterparts on the ‘‘mainland.’’ Ke’ala from Sudden Rush, a group regarded almost universally as the originators of Hawaiian hip hop, makes a useful distinction by dividing hip hop music coming from the islands into two categories. On the one hand, Ke’ala points out, there are many Hawaiian rappers that emulate mainstream American hip hop styles, mirroring developments and trends on the mainland, often using similar slang expressions and beats while mimicking fashion-styles and lyrical content. On the other hand, you have groups like Sudden Rush and others that take inspiration from hip hop on the mainland, but make it their own by incorporating Hawaiian vernacular (known locally as pidgin) into their lyrics, sometimes even rapping wholly in Hawai’ian language and using traditional Hawai’ian musical forms and chants in their songs. This chapter will focus on the latter genre of Hawai’ian hip hop music, which conscientiously strives to distinguish itself from mainland hip hop through the use of vernacular expressions, dialects and languages, local references, and local musical styles.

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BACKGROUND ON HAWAI’IAN HIP HOP Hawai’i’s historical and political relationship to the mainland is complex and controversial. Many argue that the islands were illegally annexed by the United States at around the turn of the twentieth century, their internationally recognized sovereignty disregarded and ultimately usurped when Hawai’i was made the fiftieth state in 1959. In 1993 President William Jefferson Clinton issued an official Apology Resolution on behalf of the U.S. government, apologizing for the overthrow of the Hawai’ian Kingdom. Despite this, however, the Hawai’ian Islands continue to be a U.S. possession, and most of its territory is now owned by the U.S. Military. In light of this shady past, groups like Sudden Rush rose to popularity in the mid-to-late 1990s, pushing a political message for the recognition of Hawai’ian sovereignty and the institution of Hawai’ian independence from the United States. This message went hand in hand with a cultural mobilization known as the Hawai’ian Sovereignty Movement that was beginning to pick up steam following the Apology Resolution, as more and more Hawai’ians were agitating for historical redress to the illegal annexation and subsequent military occupation of their lands. But a Supreme Court decision in 2000 put a serious damper on the prospects for Hawai’ian independence. The underlying message of this decision was that Hawai’ians must reconcile their cultural differences within the assimilationist frame of the U.S. Constitution, which allows for ethnic diversity, but ultimately demands that cultural difference be subordinated to a unified American identity, even for those historically colonized by the United States. In the face of such decisions and their legally binding power, the Hawa’iian Sovereignty Movement faces important questions regarding how to articulate cultural difference with respect to the United States in politically and culturally subversive ways. In this regard, Hawai’ian hip hop continues to be one venue for political and cultural resistance. As will be described in their artist profile section, Sudden Rush found hip hop to be a powerful medium for spreading their message to many who did not know about the complicated political history of the Hawai’ian Islands. Using hip hop as a sort of political platform to spread the word to those who might not be interested in reading or otherwise learning about Hawai’i’s stolen sovereignty, Sudden Rush dominated the airwaves and performed on stages all over the islands, particularly throughout the late 1990s. But not all hip hop in Hawai’i has been as political as the music of Sudden Rush. More recently, thanks to wide availability of the internet, independent rap artists have emerged and recorded and distributed their music online. While local hip hop culture is not as well-established as it is in many other American regions and states, the development of accessible technology and distribution networks online allows for a thriving underground hip hop scene. While Hawai’i is largely off the ‘‘hip hop map’’ in terms of producing nationally recognized rap artists and

PIDGIN Within ‘‘local’’ Hawai’ian culture, the use of pidgin is often times a source of pride and distinction. Indeed, pidgin is often called the unofficial language of Hawai’i. In its more global context, pidgin is often times understood as a hybrid language that results when two or more cultural groups, each speaking different tongues, come into contact and live together for an extended period of time. Similar to creole, pidgin is a product of history, and in the Hawai’ian context, it contains traces of native Hawai’ian, English, and an assortment of Asian languages. Rather than seen as a kind of ‘‘broken-English,’’ it may be better to see pidgin in Hawai’i more as a form of ‘‘broken-Hawai’ian,’’ since native Hawai’ian seems to form the structure of the dialect and provides many of its colorful phrases. Almost anyone who has grown up on the islands can speak, or at least understand pidgin, and most often uses it in everyday life, especially when speaking with other locals. And similar to ‘‘ebonics’’ in the urban community of mainland America, pidgin provides a fluid vehicle for rappers in Hawai’i, and is often used to code meanings so that only locals can understand, almost like a kind of inside joke. Here are some of the more common pidgin words one might hear in everyday life on the islands, as well as their translations: — Akamai (intelligent, smart) — Brah/bruddah (brother, or ‘‘bro’’; ex: ‘‘Eh, brah!’’) — Bumbye (later on) — Da Kine (versatile word used to replace words that can’t be remembered or are unknown to the speaker; e.g., ‘‘Eh, you da kine!,’’ meaning, ‘‘Hey, you’re whatshisname!’’) — Garans (guaranteed) — Grind (to eat) — Hana Hou (one more time; encore) — Hawai’ian Time (to be late) — Howzit (how are you?) — Huhu (mad) — What like beef? (do you want to fight?) — Lolo (crazy) — Moke (big, tough local) — Pau (finished) — Stink Eye (a dirty look, like right before a fight) — Talk story (conversation at length)

REFERENCE On-line Hawaiian-Pidgin Dictionary: www.dakine.net/hawaii/culture/ dictionary-pidgin.shtml.

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songs, there is an interesting conversation between Hawai’ian culture and mainland culture that makes hip hop music coming from here unique and exciting. In almost all hip hop coming from these islands, there is a negotiation of cultural identity, and a desire to define the singularity of being a local Hawai’ian. Because Sudden Rush is the most well-known and well-established of the Hawai’ian hip hop groups, touring all year round on different islands as well as on the mainland, they will be the major focus of the artist profile section in this chapter. The music of Sudden Rush embodies much of what is unique and distinct about Hawai’ian hip hop, namely that Hawai’ian hip hop, much like its counterparts on the mainland, has provided a means of expression for those whose voices were not previously heard, or were silenced in one way or another. Combating the historical loss of their paradise islands to the U.S. government through a politically charged music, Sudden Rush rediscovers its ‘‘lost’’ paradise in the unique form of Hawai’ian hip hop music and the culture it engenders. In the next section, I will orient the reader towards the local hip hop scene in Hawai’i, focusing primarily on the island of Oahu and the city of Honolulu. Following the artist profile of Sudden Rush, I move on to several more recent independent rap groups that perform widely around on the island of Oahu as well as the other Hawai’ian Islands. I will conclude by discussing the future possibilities of Hawai’ian hip hop, and discuss how local hip hop artists see their own local scene developing in the coming years.

UNDERGROUND HIP HOP IN HAWAI’I: THE LOCAL SCENE Hip hop coming from the state of Hawaii is by definition underground, since no rapper has really made a name for himself outside Hawaiian audiences, or made a mark on the American hip hop map with a hit single, video, or album. The feeling among artists here, however, is that this is not something to lament, especially since most of the music that influences Hawaiian hip hop from the mainland comes from the American underground hip hop scene. Even the biggest and most established group, Sudden Rush, call themselves a part of ‘‘the Polynesian Underground,’’ referring to the broader group of mostly tropical islands in the Pacific Ocean, including Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, Micronesia, Rapa Nui, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and other island chains in the Pacific. Through the popularity of a number of underground hip hop radio shows played on the local and highly popular college radio station KTUH (broadcast from University of Hawai’i at Manoa on the island of Oahu), hip hop has formed its own unique cultural milieu amongst young people on the islands, with frequent live shows on weekends at local bars and dance clubs. At times, larger venues are used.

HISTORY OF ILLEGAL ANNEXATION While many on the mainland may be unfamiliar with the story of Hawai’i’s illegal annexation into the United States, this history is common knowledge to most of the island’s residents. In fact, what is most likely perceived as a ‘‘tropical’’ paradise, or the fiftieth state of the union, to many Americans, is also the site of a sovereign kingdom that continues to be occupied by the United States. Hawai’i was recognized as an independent country on November 28, 1843. As a sovereign state under a royal monarch, Hawai’i entered into and signed numerous treaties with other states, thereby gaining implicit recognition and inclusion into the ‘‘family of nations.’’ In fact, Hawai’i was the first non-European country to be admitted into this family. Although European contact with the Hawai’ians came more than 100 years before, it was not until January 16, 1893, that the Hawai’ian Kingdom was overthrown by a group of white businessmen, ministers, and lawyers who wanted the protection of the United States in order to protect their political and economic interests on the islands. Although only a small minority, this white contingent enjoyed disproportionate power over natives and other Asian settlers brought in to work on sugar plantations. The very next day, on January 17, the last Hawai’ian Queen Liliokalani, as head of state, personally asked President Grover Cleveland to investigate the overthrow. Cleveland discovered through this investigation that the U.S. military violated international law by overthrowing a sovereign country, and Liliokalani and Cleveland entered into an executive agreement in order to restore kingdom rule to the islands. The agreement was never implemented. The resulting noncompliance of the United States lies at the source of the history of illegal annexation. In 1898, Hawai’i was occupied for military purposes by the United States during the Spanish-American War. Over time, since this occupation, the United States perpetuated the idea of Hawai’i as a dependent territory, and in 1959 the U.S. government made Hawai’i a state. In 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton issued an ‘‘apology bill’’ for the overthrow and subsequent occupation of the Hawai’ian Kingdom. This event reenergized what is called the Hawai’ian Sovereignty Movement, which has made demands for the reinstitution of Hawai’ian Kingdom Law, and the deoccupation of the islands by the U.S. military. But these demands have been unmet thus far, and Hawai’i continues to be occupied. Not surprisingly, this unrepented history of illegal annexation has been the subject matter of much Hawai’ian hip hop, most notably that of Sudden Rush, considered the originators of Hawai’ian hip hop.

REFERENCE Sai, David Keanu. ‘‘A Slippery Path towards Hawaiian Indigeneity: An Analysis and Comparison between Hawaiian State Sovereignty and Hawaiian Indigeneity and Its Use and Practice in Hawai’i Today.’’ Journal of Law and Social Challenges 10 (forthcoming).

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A monthly Hawaiian underground hip hop show, ‘‘The Next Movement’’ (whose name is inspired by the song of the same title by the Philadelphia-based rap group The Roots), provides the most accessible and fertile space for performers, artists, dancers, and audiences who light up the stage with their creative energies. In an open environment that in some ways embodies the ‘‘Aloha spirit,’’ ciphers regularly form as beat boxers, free-stylers, break dancers, and DJs recreate the most dynamic moments of hip hop in a place 5,000 miles away from where hip hop originated, in the Bronx, New York. The vibe at these gatherings is one of acceptance and belonging, as new MCs are welcomed to compete in free-style competitions. Indeed, this may be one of the positive attributes of being a small, underground scene. One reality of this underground status, however, is that most artists must maintain day jobs in order to make ends meet. On an island chain where the cost of living is rising more rapidly than most salaries and wages, artists for the most part cannot perform for a living. No artists are signed to major record deals on labels from New York, Los Angeles, Houston, or anywhere else on the mainland. The up-and-coming SIQ records represent a growing number of talented local hip hop artists, while some groups like No Masterbacks have collaborated with labels in California, even getting distribution in retail outlets like WalMart and Borders. Perhaps as a sign of hip hop’s growing popularity here, the local Hawaii Music Awards nominated groups like No Masterbacks, Hunger Pains, and Tempo Valley for best hip hop artist of the year in 2007. But these ceremonial events lack mainstream attendance and corporate sponsorship, allowing them a certain amount of leeway and freedom on the one hand, but keeping artists and the music underground, on the other. Because distribution here is relatively limited, with only a few local record labels to choose from, the Internet has provided a space for new artists to put their music out and spread it to listeners. According to local hip hop expert Jacob Miyasato (aka DJ Genuine HI) who spins an underground show on KTUH, this democratization of recording and distribution technology has both positive and negative consequences for Hawai’ian hip hop on a whole. On the one hand, it allows anyone to be heard, as long as they possess the technical know how to create beats, write rhymes, and record themselves. Internet sites like MySpace.com, SoundClick.com, and others create spaces for local artists to put out their music for free. On the other hand, however, more mediocre, amateur, and inexperienced artists bring down the average quality of the music, thus delegitimizing the talent and skills of a select group of Hawai’ian hip hop artists. According to Miyasato, this is an inescapable part of the internet and information technology as sites for music production and distribution. Another side effect of the wide availability of technology for recording and free distribution on the internet is that production style and quality varies. At its best, hip hop from Hawai’i embodies an original and unique spirit that blends local musical traditions with elements that are, to one degree or another, adopted from

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mainland hip hop. Much hip hop here is inspired by the early-to-mid-1990s era of rap, with such influences as Naughty by Nature, Tribe Called Quest, Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G., N.W.A., and others. In addition, there is a lot of experimental production which incorporates local Hawai’ian musical instruments like the ukulele and often plays with the porous boundaries that separate hip hop from its close relatives, reggae and jazz. It is not uncommon, therefore, to see multiple musical traditions intertwined in a single song. In terms of fashion and style, again, hip hoppers in Hawai’i have a manner that is all their own. While it is not uncommon to see those who mimic the highly influential urban styles of the big mainland cities, most rappers are in casual wear that is appropriate to the sunny and warm year-round climate of the Hawai’ian Islands. It is more common, therefore, to see rappers in T-shirts and shorts, often wearing ‘‘slippahs’’ (the local way of signifying slippers, or sandals/flip-flops). Many emcees and DJs sport kukui necklaces made of nuts and seed pods, which are traditionally worn for traditional Hawai’ian cultural performances like hula. In addition, many perform with a lei, which is the Hawai’ian word for garland or wreath that is worn around the neck and traditionally made from flowers. The informal and relaxed wear corresponds with the general, open environment that one finds at hip hop shows, especially in Honolulu, which is the site of the state of Hawai’i’s capital, and its largest city as well. Whereas hip hop shows on the mainland are often marked by gang tensions that at times lead to violence, the attitude in Hawai’i is more oriented towards collaboration and camaraderie. While this may just be an indication of underground hip hop’s nascent presence on the islands— leading artists to focus more on what is common amongst each other than on what is different—it may also be indicative of the more relaxed attitude towards everyday life that makes Hawai’i so culturally different from the mainland.

ARTIST PROFILES Sudden Rush The hip hop trio Sudden Rush (composed of Don Ke’ala Kawa-auhau Jr., Shane Veincent, and Caleb Richards) formed in 1993 and are widely considered to be the founding fathers of Hawai’ian hip hop. In the early 1990s, Ke’ala points out, there were some hip hop groups on the islands, such as Urban Joint on the island of Oahu, who got radio play and had a decidedly ‘‘mainland’’ style, but Sudden Rush broke through in a big way by blending American hip hop with Hawai’ian dialects, expressions, and musical traditions. Hailing from ‘‘The Big Island’’ of Hawai’i, the group was influenced by hip hop artists such as Heavy D, Ice Cube, Queen Latifa, and groups like N.W.A. and Naughty by Nature. ‘‘One thing about hip hop,’’ Ke’ala says in an interview with me, ‘‘is that you gotta rap about what you know and how you live.’’ With this in mind, Sudden Rush strove not to merely mimic what artists on the mainland were rapping about, namely the harsh realities

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of American inner cities and ghettos, but rather rap about what locals on the islands could relate to. In this sense of ‘‘keeping it real’’ in terms of relating the music to local contexts and culture, Sudden Rush established Hawai’ian hip hop as a musical genre in its own right, at once inheriting the spirit of American hip hop while creating a space to produce a music that was markedly different. The group has put out three albums to date: Nation on the Rise (1995), Ku’e (1998), and ‘Ea (2002). As can be discerned from the album titles, Sudden Rush articulates a political message directed towards the expression of Hawai’ian cultural identity, often through the deployment of the Hawai’ian language, use of which has steadily declined in the years since the U.S. military occupation. Rapping in Hawai’ian, according to Ke’ala, has been a way of establishing pride in the national culture and Hawai’ian language, which was forbidden from being spoken by American missionaries who came to the islands in the nineteenth century, and was later discredited by the U.S. government, which established English as the official language of school instruction. As Fay Yokomizo Akindes has pointed out, ‘‘muting the Hawaiian language and imposing the language of the colonizer was a means of controlling the minds of the colonized’’ (Akindes 83). While Ke’ala is the only member of Sudden Rush who is fluent in Hawai’ian, having studied it in college, all three frequently use Hawai’ian words and mix them into their lyrics with fluidity and ease. One of the things that distinguish Sudden Rush from other Hawaiian hip hop groups, Ke’ala points out somewhat light-heartedly, is that ‘‘in our music ninety-nine percent of the time the Hawaiian words are pronounced correctly.’’ This gives the group a greater sense of authenticity in the eyes of its listeners, and has even pushed many of Sudden Rush’s fans to learn Hawai’ian in order to understand Sudden Rush’s lyrics. All this, according to Ke’ala, is a part of their goal to disseminate pride in the Hawai’ian language as well as in their culture. According to Akindes, who has written about Sudden Rush in academic circles, the ‘‘hybrid mixing of rhythm and sounds . . . takes on a decidedly political and resistant turn in Hawaii’’ (84). Akindes connects na mele paleoleo (Hawai’ian term for ‘‘hip hop’’) to the Hawai’ian cultural ‘‘renaissance [that] relegitimizes the Hawai’ian language as an acceptable spoken, written and embodied language’’ (87). In Sudden Rush’s music, there is a sort of two-pronged strategy that is at work. On the one hand, their use of language and culture has allowed Sudden Rush to present listeners with new ways of forming cultural identities and taking pride in the rich Hawai’ian traditions that have been victimized by history, continuing today with the ongoing U.S. military occupation. On the other hand, there is an explicit political goal of Hawai’ian sovereignty that is being pushed by Sudden Rush in its songs, as they explained in a 1997 interview to the Maui Beat: ‘‘We’re all part Hawaiian and the sovereignty issue is coming to the forefront, and we felt we could reach people who maybe don’t like to read about it through the medium of music . . . Our favorite music is Hawaiian but we got into rap music because the

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rhythm and beat moves you, and you can really say what you mean without restriction. There is a lot more you can play with as far as telling a story.’’ During Sudden Rush’s heyday in the mid-to-late 1990s, Akindes notes that ‘‘Sudden Rush’s rap music politicized the airwaves of Hawaiian music radio stations . . . which have station policies restricting DJs from discussing the politically controversial Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement’’ (90). At this time, they were also performing widely abroad, where ‘‘Sudden Rush’s function as messengers of Hawaiian nationalism extends to the Diaspora on the ‘mainland’ ’’ (94). There is something about hip hop as a musical form, Ke’ala told me in our interview, that allows people to voice their opinions, to express their frustrations, and to let out their emotions. Through a dynamic mix of entertainment, politics, and performance, Sudden Rush has spread their message to listeners. And the reason why they have been successful is that people relate to their message and take it to heart. This is another reason why they feel no need to emulate ‘‘mainland’’ hip hop groups in terms of style. They feel they connect better to their local audiences by rapping what they know about, so that their fans can relate. On the song ‘‘True Hawaiian,’’ from the album Ku’e, for instance, the group repeatedly poses the question ‘‘What’s a true Hawaiian?’’ Instead of responding to each inquisition in English, Ke’ala puts together a string of Hawaiian words that are left untranslated: ‘‘Mana/Haaheo/Aloha/Ikaika.’’ This lyrical move pushes the listener to figure out what being a ‘‘true Hawai’ian’’ is all about, and contests the common stereotype of the Hawai’ian people being a carefree, hospitable group that greets tourists with open arms at the landing of every visiting plane of ship. By leaving part of the song untranslated, Sudden Rush makes a claim on Hawai’ian identity that is resistant to the touristic desires of the more than five million people that visit the islands each year expecting a beautiful, friendly island full of happy natives. In the song ‘‘Paradise Found,’’ also on the Ku’e album, the group argues that after having their ‘‘paradise’’ stripped from them by the occupying American military, they found their new paradise through the musical spirit of hip hop, imagining and rapping about a future in which Hawai’ians can finally have a say in what happens to their islands. Among other things, Sudden Rush ‘‘finds paradise’’ in the use of the Hawai’ian language, and the learning of traditional Hawaiian practices of fishing and hula. The space of hip hop’s expression also allows Sudden Rush to make connections with other groups disenfranchised in America through historical injustice. In ‘‘Paradise Found’’ they commiserate with Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexicans, each of whom were victims of America’s expansionary greed and inhumane political creed. Locating themselves within the ‘‘Polynesian Underground,’’ they find transnational connections with other islanders in the Pacific. All these lyrical strategies point to the underlying political discontentment that is a common feature among Hawai’ians here, but is rarely discussed or heard about by most tourists and Americans on the ‘‘mainland.’’ In addition, by relating with

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other oppressed or marginalized groups, Sudden Rush pushes forth the possibility of a coalition politics that combats social injustice in order to imagine more just and equal futures. Although Sudden Rush is unquestionably Hawai’i’s most influential and wellestablished hip hop group, their impact outside the islands has been limited. In fact, no Hawai’ian hip hop group or artist has made a profound national impact. Part of this has to do with the geographical distance of Hawai’i from the mainland, but part of it also might have to do with the realities of living in a tourist economy like Hawai’i, where costs of living are drastically out of proportion with average salaries and wages. Ke’ala told me that, as an artist, it is difficult to pay the bills through music alone, whether through CD sales or performance profits, so that each member of the group maintains a day job to make ends meet, while performing on weekends in order to pursue their musical passion and make extra money. With economic realities restricting their creative capabilities, Hawai’ian hip hop has largely been relegated to circulating amongst the Hawai’ian Islands. As far as the future goes for Sudden Rush, they are planning on putting out two albums within the next year. One will be entitled Hana Hou (Hawai’ian for ‘‘encore’’), which will feature remixes of earlier songs, rerecordings, as well as three or four new songs. An album of entirely new songs, entitled The Overthrow, promises to be a big release for the group, as they continue their quest to restore political sovereignty, independence, and cultural pride to the Hawai’ian people.

Creed Chameleon Going to a hip hop show on an average Saturday night in Honolulu is undoubtedly a singular experience. For one thing, the only shows with any regularity are underground ones, featuring predominantly Asian-looking kids spitting sharp, rapid-fire lyrics with DJs spinning introspective beats, but never afraid to get the party started with a bump and a stomp. In Hawai’i every race or ethnicity is a minority (see sidebar: ‘‘Local’’ vs. ‘‘Haole’’). You could say something similar about musical genres. If there is a majority social group, it is that hybrid mix that is usually some combination of Hawaiian-Asian-Caucasian. This mix usually calls itself ‘‘local.’’ Within the local scene, underground hip hop sits comfortably alongside related genres like roots reggae, dub, and Jawaiian (Jamaican-Hawaiian Island blend). Here, artists like Creed Chameleon are quickly making a name for themselves in Honolulu by adopting the underground consciousness from the mainland that searches the textual fabric of everyday urban life, spinning tales and anthems designed to collectivize audiences around relevant local issues and hypnotic beats. Born Kristofer Rojas, underground hip hop artist ‘‘Creed Chameleon’’ lived in Guam, Singapore, the Philippines, California, and on the East Coast before settling in Hawai’i. Creed writes and performs songs that he describes as ‘‘music to break barriers and inspire.’’ His rap discussions range from his observations of a community plagued with afflictions of a ‘‘duplicitous human psyche,’’ juxtaposed with

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‘‘LOCAL’’ VS. ‘‘HAOLE’’ It does not take too long for a visitor to Hawai’i to notice that one of the biggest cultural divides here is that between ‘‘locals’’ and ‘‘haoles.’’ This latter term is a Hawai’ian language word that denotes ‘‘foreign,’’ or ‘‘foreigner.’’ Though its usage predates the 1778 arrival of Captain James Cook (generally accepted as the first Westerner to reach the islands), its connotations are closely linked to the history of Western presence in Hawai’i. In its more modern usage, the term was associated with the children of Caucasian immigrants in the early 1820s. At times, the word ‘‘haole’’ refers to whites, whether they were born on the islands or not. It can also be looked at more broadly, referring to all those who were not born in or native to Hawai’i. Somewhat paradoxically, the term ‘‘local,’’ which is often portrayed as the opposite of ‘‘haole,’’ is not necessarily mutually exclusive to ‘‘haole.’’ For instance, it would be perfectly possible for a Caucasian individual to be born in Hawai’i, and therefore be a ‘‘local,’’ even though he or she may have been called ‘‘haole’’ growing up. Indeed, the latter term is often used disparagingly against whites, perhaps as a lasting legacy of the colonization of the islands by white Europeans (see sidebar: ‘‘History of Illegal Annexation’’). The term ‘‘local’’ is no less complex than ‘‘haole.’’ Because Hawai’i has such an ethnically diverse, where no one group forms a distinct majority, the term may be used as a way of consolidating a single identity amongst those who grow up together on the islands. The term has many connotations itself, referring, for instance, to ‘‘local food,’’ ‘‘local style,’’ ‘‘local boy/girl,’’ and so on. It may be the case that, while the term ‘‘local’’ is difficult to define, and has many different usages, it gains its utility primarily when seen in contrast to ‘‘haole.’’ All this is to say that the ‘‘local’’ versus ‘‘haole’’ identities are often times the sites of intense cultural conflict in Hawai’i. In Oahu, for instance, ‘‘haole’s’’ are often disparaged for turning the island into a tourist trap. It is not uncommon to hear verbalized aggression coming in the form of ‘‘haole’’-rants, where often times the word is preceded by an expletive. In the context of Hawai’ian hip hop, however, the lines that divide these two are regularly crossed. Many rappers who are prominent in the local scene are themselves newcomers from the mainland, often times migrating from cities such as Los Angeles or San Francisco. Indeed, perhaps one way of integrating into ‘‘local’’ culture, among many other ways, is through immersion into the local music scene. Not surprisingly, many of these ‘‘local’’/ ’’haole’’ identitarian dramas are played out in Hawai’ian hip hop, where the majority of artists consider themselves ‘‘local.’’

REFERENCE Silva, Noenoe. Aloha Betrayed. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

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spiritual learning spit from the heart. Creed’s wisdom comes through in the realization of the multiple social realities that often intersect with, or undermine, human morality. Having a love of heavy metal, Creed was introduced to hip hop at the early age of 10, writing rhymes through his familial influences. This would serve to be a catalyzing event that would later spawn his career as a writer and artist. His musical influences are varied in style and texture, ranging from KRS-One and Jay-Z to Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull, to the Beatles. His current release ‘‘Love Potion Cyanide’’ features producers Ion Myke, Educated Guess, Riff Raff, and Old Joseph with two tracks featuring guest artists DJ Observe and Nocando. Indeed, Creed Chameleon’s style and attitude embodies the collaborative spirit of the Hawai’ian hip hop scene. Off the album ‘‘Love Potion Cyanide,’’ released on local SIQ Records out of Honolulu, Creed Chameleon, Educated Guess, and DJ Observ offer a range of different styles and lyrical themes, ranging from party anthems to soul searching tracks that reflect an inward looking disposition. Self-described as ‘‘Hawi’ian rebel music,’’ the most powerful song on the record is ‘‘Rock Ice,’’ in which Chameleon tells the story of his older brother’s addiction to ‘‘ice,’’ or methamphetamine (see sidebar: ‘‘Ice’’). ‘‘Ice’’ is a widely abused drug with growing prevalence in Honolulu. According to many, ‘‘ice’’ has caused an epidemic of addicts on Oahu and the other Hawai’ian Islands, often times afflicting those located at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, especially native Hawai’ians. Indeed, ‘‘ice heads’’ are among the most visible elements of urban life in Honolulu, where along with a large number of homeless they are increasingly left to their own or find themselves in jail. Chameleon is very much adopting underground hip hop to a Hawai’ian audience when he raps ‘‘cats in Hawai’i love to rock ice.’’ Coming from the very heart of the epidemic, at the familial level, Chameleon himself falls into this world along with his ‘‘Hawai’ian brothers’’ but eventually gets out of the habit and leaves his listeners with a positive public message regarding methamphetamine: ‘‘leave it alone.’’ On the song ‘‘Weapon of Choice,’’ Chameleon relates a common theme in underground circuits on the mainland, emceeing and performing just to get by in everyday life. One reality of being a hip hop artist in Hawai’i, with its relatively small and independent scene, is the need to get day-jobs to pay the bills and get by in a tourist-oriented economy that is currently in the midst of an extended real estate boom. As housing prices skyrocket and the costs of living rise, hip hop is a means not only to cope economically, earning extra cash on weekend gigs, but also to cope spiritually, allowing for the artist to release himself on stage in front of captivated audiences. On the song ‘‘Father of the Year,’’ Chameleon discharges his emotions as he relates the desire to be a better father to his child than his father was to him. More mundane themes are included in songs like ‘‘All Stuck’’ and ‘‘Missing You,’’ which are a love song and a childhood memory, respectively.

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‘‘ICE’’ In recent years, many of the islands which constitute Hawai’i have been beset by the widespread use of ‘‘ice,’’ or methamphetamine, also known as ‘‘crystal meth.’’ Methamphetamine is considered a psychostimulant, and is highly addictive. Upon consumption (often times smoked or snorted) the drug enters the brain and sparks a release of norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin, leading to a temporary ‘‘high.’’ This high is often described as causing euphoria and excitement, which is largely why it is often abused. Withdrawal from the drug can be difficult, and is often characterized by excessive sleeping, eating, anxiety, and craving. Other common nicknames for methamphetamine include ‘‘meth,’’ ‘‘crystal,’’ ‘‘tine,’’ and ‘‘glass.’’ In Hawai’i, it is widely acknowledged that there is an ‘‘ice epidemic,’’ which has touched tens of thousands of lives, not only those addicted to methamphetamine, but their families and friends as well. The impact of the drug can be felt on families, young children, schools, crime rates, prisons, and even business. Though its rise in widespread use is relatively new, some studies have indicated that methamphetamine has been smoked on the island of Oahu since at least the late 1970s. By the late 1990s, police, courts, and social service agencies began to notice signs that ‘‘ice’’ was getting to be more plentiful, that the price was dropping, and that use was dramatically increasing. The state has tried to implement mandatory minimum prison terms for felony methamphetamine offenders, and have even proposed to raise taxes on alcohol and tobacco in order to pay for increased drug enforcement, but all indications are that the epidemic seems to be getting worse every year. According to one recent report, in the year 2002, nearly 45 percent of all male arrestees in Honolulu tested positive for ‘‘ice.’’ Not surprisingly, the ‘‘ice epidemic’’ has hit poorer communities in Hawai’i the hardest, communities often times made up of native Hawai’ians. Many local hip hop artists address the epidemic in their music, as many of them come from the milieu most directly impacted by the drug.

REFERENCE Dayton, Kevin. ‘‘Children of Ice.’’ The Honolulu Advertiser, September 16, 2003. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/current/ln/childrenofice.

But both contain local inflections that make their location from Hawai’i unique with respect to hip hop on the mainland. ‘‘All Stuck,’’ for instance, tells the story of a crush who is described as hapa, or ‘‘half-Japanese/half-white’’ (actually, hapa is the Hawai’ian word that refers to any mix of two different races or ethnicities).

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And in ‘‘Missing You’’ most of the references are to local memories growing up on the island of Oahu.

Amphibeus Tungs ‘‘We like to keep it all original, not just copy what everyone else on the Mainland is doing,’’ Beau Sun of Amphibeus Tungs told Honolulu Magazine in June 2006. This group, which hails from the Hawai’ian island of Maui, keeps it ‘‘original’’ by blending old-school hip hop beats with soul, jazz, and island melodies. Amphibeus Tungs was created in 1999 by emcees Quest Eons, Beau Sun, and Doc. Platypus for the purpose of ‘‘forwarding the movement of life, culture, rhythm on the Islands and beyond.’’ Growing from battle emcees to full-blown composers of spoken word, they strive to keep originality and integrity a part of modern day music in Hawai’i. In 2004 they welcomed Jai Freedom Lewis (beats&mind), turntablists Jay Peace Pipe and Pazzes 1, and a ukulele player named Chef Strum, making the group’s musical ensemble truly unique in Hawai’i. In 2006 Amibeus Tung marked the birth of a new Hawai’ian hip hop record label: Subliminal Freedom! Amphibeus Tung is the first group to be drafted by Subliminal Freedom! Recordings and will be releasing their debut album 1st Impressions in the coming year. Known for their strong song writing ability and heavy stage presence, their live show is of a caliber matched by only a few on these islands, with a growing fan base to match. Amphibeus Tungs has performed with legendary artists ranging from underground hip hop to rap groups known worldwide, such as: Chino XL, The Visionaries, Living Legends, World Famous Beat Junkies, Digital Underground, Tha Alkaholiks, Swollen Members, Zion I, Terms None, The L.A. symphony, Breeze EvaFlowen, Black Eyed Pea’s, Creed Chameleon, S.U.N., Jonah the Whale, Big MuthaFucken MOXX, Autoble LabRats, Chaka BloodSaw, Buff 1 and KT of Athletic Mic League, Tee O, Demune, Boss man Tate of Gorilla Funk Mob, Emirc, and Syze 1. Bringing a swank dubbiness to their beats and rhymes—displaying Hawai’i’s unique musical cross-fertilization with Reggae traditions—the group’s rapid fire lyrics and musical motifs create an often surprisingly dark and gloomy picture, especially considering the sunny tropical island from which they originate! On the song ‘‘If you only had a brain,’’ they establish themselves as the ‘‘difference between commercial rappers and the underground.’’ The words from the samples are incorporated into the structure of the song, as they use their title sample to express their dissatisfaction with the fledgling rap scene on Maui. On the song ‘‘Running Away,’’ one gets a distinct feeling of the parochial attitude that embodies the stereotypical ‘‘island mentality,’’ and Amphibeus Tung seems to use this song to express a desire to transcend their local habitus and reach out to a larger world beyond these Pacific islands. Their most political song by far is the earlyMarley influenced ‘‘Burn It Down,’’ where they decry the treatment of natives on both the mainland and in Hawaii. Commenting on the treatment of indigenous

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peoples in the United States, they detail a history of violence against Native Americans perpetrated by white settlers, where ‘‘now they give them reservations like they live in restaurants.’’ Later in the song, they single out the Babylon on Oahu, Waikiki, the tourist hub that seemingly monopolizes Oahu’s local economy by catering endlessly to tourists. ‘‘Burn It down!’’ they proclaim, fueling the rebellious fire that burns in their dark and furious music.

Ill Valley Productions ‘‘Fresh out da backyard, for your enjoyment!!’’ Perhaps no other underground hip hop group from Oahu epitomizes the carefree surf lifestyle that brings so many people to the island every year, year-round. Dubbed ‘‘surf-hop’’ for the noticeable presence of the unique North Shore ‘‘country’’ lifestyle in their lyrics and musical formulas, Ill Valley carves out a space all of its own on Oahu. The North Shore of Hawai’i is famous for its big winter season waves, which attract top surfers from all over the world to compete in various surf competitions. But the other side of competitive surfing is a ‘‘cruisin’ ’’ lifestyle and attitude which takes everyday life at an easy pace. This North Shore lifestyle comes through in Ill Valley’s music. Ill Valley Productions was founded by Kahokule’a ‘‘Hoku’’ Haiku in 2001. Hoku (aka Ill Valley) was born on the Island of Oahu and raised on Maui (The Valley Isle). He is a third generation Kamehameha Schools graduate, a school founded to educate native Hawaiians. As Hoku tells it, it all started in the backyard on the North Shore of Oahu with original poetry, an ukulele, and a BR-532 Roland Digital Studio. Due to some ‘‘baby mama drama,’’ Hoku soon moved back to Maui for a few years. While there, old ties were reunited and once again the roots and Maui sound seeped back into his life. Late night jam sessions were regular. The crew there included Bengali, Dougie Boy, and Kaina Costa, who continue to make a name for themselves in the Hawai’i music industry. In 2004, Hoku moved back to Oahu and continued to pursue his musical interests. Wednesday Night jam sessions at Keola’s, up in St. Louis Heights (in Honolulu), were happening often and were a favorite hangout for Hawai’i’s top local entertainers and musicians. In the summer of 2006, Hoku began working on his first full-length album. The ‘‘Ill Valley CD’’ was released on March 15, 2007. The CD was mixed by Mainland DJ Patrick John. It features Hoku’s original laid-back ‘‘talk story’’ lyrics and modern day native Hawai’ian perspective (‘‘talk story’’ is the pidgin phrase for getting together with friends and socializing). The frequent use of pidgin mixed in with local dialects is what separates Ill Valley from most rappers on Oahu. The instant island classic ‘‘Old School Toyota,’’ was met with praise by rap critics island-wide, as well as on the mainland. The song was chosen ‘‘Hawaiian Homegrown Pick’’ on 102.7fm. Several songs have received radio airplay (102.7fm, Stone Groove Radio, 93.9fm Mind Tactics Show, KTUH Radio, Monday Night Live) and television airplay on local shows like Boardstories TV and Billabong Surf TV. Ill Valley performs at local venues such

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as Dave and Busters, Fashion 45, Hawaiian Hut, O Lounge, Boardriders, Tsunami’s, Anna Bannanas, Red Lions, Breakers, BC Burrito, Onstage Bar, Kainoa’s Bar, and many a backyard party. The groups most well-known song is also most emblematic of its unique style. ‘‘Old School Toyota’’ contains frequent use of pidgin words like hapa (of mixed race or ethnicity), ‘‘small kine’’ (a little bit), and ‘‘choke’’ (a lot). In its unique ‘‘surf-hop’’ style, songs like ‘‘Old School Toyota’’ and ‘‘Backyard Party’’ relate stories of life on the North Shore of Oahu, which is famous for its big waves and annual surf contests, which regularly attract some of the world’s best surfers. Evoking images of bonfire night parties on the beach, backyard sessions of ‘‘talk story’’ and ‘‘burning,’’ the group also sends more serious messages that relate to local attitudes towards the economic development of the laid-back North Shore lifestyle, arguing that mainland developers and ignorant tourists often ‘‘think Aloha can be wrapped in plastic.’’ Echoing the common refrain ‘‘Keep the Country Country!’’ Ill Valley pushes its message of beach fun with a warning to those who may take such pleasures for granted. Through their music, we get a sense of the agitation towards urban development that seems to slowly be spreading all over the island of Oahu.

THE FUTURE OF HAWAI’IAN HIP HOP As hip hop is a relatively up-and-coming genre of music on these islands, it is difficult to say what the future has in store for Hawai’ian hip hop. There are an increasing number of underground shows and hip hop oriented gatherings which are popular amongst young locals. At the University of Hawaii at Manoa on the island of Oahu, the radio station KTUH provides the most dynamic forum for the proliferation of Hawai’ian hip hop. The school also is the site of frequent shows and performances, where talented groups battle rap, beat box, break dance, and break beats. One positive aspect of Hawai’ian hip hop’s relatively nascent status here is that there is not a whole lot of arrogance in the underground scene. The most promising feature is that new artists are welcomed and space is open for friendly competition and collaboration. For the group Sudden Rush, this is what Hawai’ian hip hop should be all about. In their minds, they would like to see two things happen. One is the continuation of the spirit of collaboration, especially as it pertains to native Hawai’ians getting together and helping each other spread the message about Hawaiian history, culture, and identity. The second thing they would like to see is the continuation of the unique style that allows hip hop to go where other genre’s inherited from the mainland cannot go, that is, to the hearts and minds of local listeners. ‘‘There’s a lot of groups,’’ Ke’ala from Sudden Rush told me, ‘‘talking about things that Hawaiians can relate to,’’ such as the difficulty of making ends meet, racism on the islands, but also the times when family and friends get together for beach barbeques and relations. While Sudden Rush is a model for

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SURFING Surfing is a major part of Hawai’ian culture, both in a traditional sense, as well as a more contemporary one. Culturally known as ‘‘the sport of the ali’i,’’ or tribal chiefs of traditional Hawai’ian society, surfing arose from the Polynesian culture of those who settled in the Hawai’ian islands almost 2,000 years ago. To this day, surfing remains a salient feature of local culture, and most Hawai’ian hip hoppers are familiar with the sport, either as practitioners themselves, or enthusiasts of other water-related surf-sports, like boogie boarding, body surfing, or body boarding. Surfing is a surface water sport in which a long, narrow board is used to carry participants along the face of a breaking wave. Now produced primarily from fiberglass or other synthetic materials, traditional Hawai’ian boards were originally made from wood. In fact, surfing was a central part of ancient Polynesian culture, and in most cases, the chief was the most skilled rider of the tribal community, and usually had the highest quality board made from the best tree. Indeed, one could delineate the lines that divided different social classes in Hawai’i from surfing culture, where the ruling class exclusively surfed the best beaches with the most ideal breaks, with the best boards. Commoners, on the other hand, were not allowed on the same beaches, but often gained prestige by displaying their ability to ride on heavy, lower quality boards. Surfing permeated many different facets of Polynesian culture, including myth and religion, and many tribal chiefs would gain authority and respect by the skills they displayed on the waves. When Europeans ‘‘discovered’’ the islands and began colonizing the lands beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, the sport saw a gradual decline in popularity amongst natives. This had to do with a more general decline in native tradition following contact with Europeans. But the sport was brought back into popular use in the early twentiethcentury, and now Hawai’i is widely considered one of the premier surf spots in the world. On the island of Oahu, for instance, the famous ‘‘Pipeline Surf Competition’’ attracts the best surfers from all over the world during the winter surf season. Today, surfing has even spawned a variant of Hawai’ian hip hop, called ‘‘surf-hop,’’ which takes in the laid-back lifestyle of surf culture.

REFERENCE http://www.surfingforlife.com/history.html.

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other local hip hop artists to follow, Ke’ala urges them to find their own paths: ‘‘The secret to our success is the appeal we have to all kinds of different people. We talk about things that they can understand. It would be nice to hear other rappers like that. If you can find an avenue in the mainstream, go for it. But you need to find a unique style.’’ Finding a unique style should not be difficult for Hawaiian hip hop, as the distinct local culture of these islands continues to make the differences between Hawaii and the mainland manifest in all kinds of new and creative ways.

REFERENCES Akindes, Fay Yokomizo. ‘‘Sudden Rush: Na Mele Paleoleo (Hawaiian Rap) as Liberatory Discourse.’’ Discourse 23, no. 1 (2001): 82–98. Franklin, Marianne, ed. Resounding International Relations: On Music Culture and Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Kawa’auhau, Don Ke’ala. Telephone interview conducted on February 14, 2008. Merry, Sally Engle. Colonizing Hawai’i. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Sai, David Keanu. Personal interview conducted on June 9, 2008. Silva, Noenoe. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Woodhouse, Jon. ‘‘Sudden Rush Makes Mark with Ku’e.’’ Maui Beat, June 26, 1997.

FURTHER RESOURCES Kanele. Hawaiian Music and Musicians. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1979.

WEB SITES Amphibeus Tungs: www.amphibeustungs.com. Creed Chameleon: www.myspace.com/creedchameleon. Ill Valley Production: http://www.myspace.com/illvalley. Sudden Rush: http://www.myspace.com/darappanui.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Amphibeus Tungs 1st Impressions. Subliminal Freedom, 2008.

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Creed Chameleon Love Potion Cyanide. Sharlene Oshiro, 2006. Ill Valley Productions Ill Valley. Ill Valley Productions, 2007. Sudden Rush Nation on the Rise. Wreck X Shop, 1995. Ea. Quiet Storm, 2002.

APPENDIX Regional Hip Hop Playlist Danielle Hess Bronx ‘‘South Bronx’’ and ‘‘The Bridge Is Over’’—Boogie Down Productions ‘‘Feel the Horns’’—Cold Crush Brothers ‘‘Lyrical King (From the Boogie Down Bronx)’’ and ‘‘It’s Yours’’—T La Rock ‘‘Suicide’’—Busy Bee ‘‘MC’s Delight’’—Grandmaster Caz ‘‘Luchini (This Is It)’’—Camp Lo ‘‘3 Card Molly’’—C-Rayz Walz ‘‘Children’s Story’’—Slick Rick ‘‘Feel the Heartbeat’’—Treacherous Three ‘‘Funky for You’’—Nice & Smooth ‘‘Redrum’’—Nine ‘‘Fuck Compton’’—Tim Dog Brooklyn ‘‘Brooklyn Rocks the Best’’—Cut Master D ‘‘Go Brooklyn’’—Stetsasonic ‘‘Kickin’ 4 Brooklyn’’—MC Lyte ‘‘Juicy’’—Notorious B.I.G. ‘‘Brooklyn’s Finest’’—Jay-Z ‘‘Just to Get a Rep’’—Gang Starr ‘‘Jeep Ass Nigga’’ and ‘‘Take a Walk’’—Masta Ace ‘‘Ain’t No Half Steppin’ ’’—Big Daddy Kane ‘‘Brooklyn Zoo’’—Ol’ Dirty Bastard ‘‘Ghetto Rock’’ and ‘‘Brooklyn’’—Mos Def

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‘‘Super BK’’—Boot Camp Clik ‘‘Crooklyn’’—Crooklyn Dodgers (Masta Ace, Buckshot, and Jeru da Damaja) ‘‘Top Billin’ ’’—Audio Two ‘‘Brooklyn’’—Fabolous ‘‘Lighters Up’’—Lil Kim ‘‘Bucktown’’—Smif N Wessun Queens ‘‘The Bridge’’—MC Shan ‘‘Sucker MCs’’—Run DMC ‘‘Queens Get the Money’’—Nas ‘‘I’m Bad’’—LL Cool J ‘‘Check the Rhime’’—A Tribe Called Quest ‘‘Shook Ones Part Two’’—Mobb Deep ‘‘Queens Pimp’’—50 Cent ‘‘Music Makes Me High’’ and ‘‘Renee’’—Lost Boyz ‘‘Shiftee’’ and ‘‘Slam’’—Onyx ‘‘Simon Says’’—Pharoahe Monch Long Island ‘‘Microphone Fiend’’—Eric B and Rakim ‘‘Me, Myself, & I’’ and ‘‘Long Island Wildin’ ’’—De La Soul ‘‘Fight the Power’’—Public Enemy ‘‘P.T.A’’—Leaders of the New School Manhattan ‘‘The New Style’’—Beastie Boys ‘‘Iron Galaxy’’—Cannibal Ox ‘‘Get Crunk Music’’—Diplomats ‘‘Harlem’’—Jim Jones ‘‘Welcome to New York City’’—Cam’ron ft Jay Z and Juelz Santana ‘‘Danger Zone’’—Big L ‘‘Digital Tears’’—MF Grimm ‘‘It Takes Two’’—Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock ‘‘The Poverty of Philosophy’’—Immortal Technique ‘‘La Di Da Di’’—Doug E. Fresh ‘‘Purple Jag’’—Raekwon and Posta Boy

Appendix | 627 Staten Island ‘‘Love Is in the House’’—Force MDs ‘‘Blue Cheese’’—UMCs ‘‘7th Chamber (Part II)—Wu-Tang Clan ‘‘Stroke of Death’’—Ghostface Killah ‘‘Tical’’—Method Man ‘‘Incarcerated Scarfaces’’—Raekwon ‘‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’’—Ol’ Dirty Bastard ‘‘Staten Island’’—Fes Taylor ft. Mr. President ‘‘Ya’ll Should Get Lynched’’—N.Y.O.I.L. Philadelphia ‘‘Total Wreck’’ and ‘‘3 the Hard Way’’—Bahamadia ‘‘Sound of Philadelphia’’—Reef the Lost Cauze ‘‘It Ain’t New York’’—MC Breeze ‘‘Magnificent Jazzy Jeff’’ and ‘‘Rock the House’’—DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince ‘‘Things Fall Apart’’—Roots ft Erykah Badu ‘‘My Part of Town’’—Tuff Crew ‘‘Beanie (Mack Bitch)’’—Beanie Sigel ‘‘Get Down on the Ground’’—Gillie Da Kid New Jersey ‘‘Paper Chase’’—Krown Rulers ‘‘Hey Young World’’—Dave Ghetto ‘‘Mr. Rocket Launcher’’—Wise Intelligent ‘‘Rock Dis Funky Joint’’—Poor Righteous Teachers ‘‘Welcome to da Bricks’’ and ‘‘Brick City Mashin’ ’’—Redman ‘‘Chief Rocka’’—Lords of the Underground ‘‘U.N.I.T.Y.’’—Queen Latifah ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’—Sugarhill Gang ‘‘Ready or Not’’—Fugees ‘‘Everything’s Gonna Be All Right (Ghetto Bastard)’’—Naughty by Nature ‘‘Break Fool’’—Rah Digga Washington D.C. ‘‘5 O’Clock in the Morning’’—Nonchalant ‘‘Da Butt’’—EU

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‘‘Let Me Clear My Throat’’—DJ Kool ‘‘Beat Rock’’ and ‘‘On It’’—Tabi Bonney ‘‘Dear You’’—Asheru ‘‘Welcome to DC’’—Tree Gotti ‘‘Chillin’ ’’—Wale Virginia ‘‘Hello New World’’—Clipse ‘‘We Run This’’—Missy Elliott ‘‘Up Jumps Da Boogie’’—Timbaland and Magoo Boston ‘‘I Got to Have it’’ and ‘‘Boston’’—Edo G ‘‘Beauty’’—Edan ‘‘I Heard It Today’’—Mr. Lif ‘‘God Less America’’—7L & Esoteric ‘‘Never Off (On & On)’’—Y Society ‘‘Personal Journalist’’—Sage Francis (Providence, Rhode Island) Chicago ‘‘The Corner’’—Common ‘‘Homecoming’’—Kanye West ‘‘Pro Nails’’—Kid Sister ‘‘Overnight Celebrity’’—Twista ‘‘Black Mags’’—Cool Kids ‘‘Stolen’’—Rhymefest ‘‘Dumb It Down’’—Lupe Fiasco ‘‘Cabrini Green Rap’’—MC Sugar Rae Dinky ‘‘Continuous’’—Daily Plannet (Gary, Indiana) Detroit ‘‘Recipe for a Hoe’’—Boss ‘‘Lose Yourself’’—Eminem ‘‘Black Wrist Bros’’—Proof ‘‘Frankly Speaking’’—Awesome Dre & the Hardcore Committee ‘‘Rock City’’—Royce da 5’9 feat. Eminem ‘‘Ain’t No Future in Your Frontin’ ’’—MC Breed (Flint) ‘‘Binary Shuffle’’—Binary Star (Pontiac)

Appendix | 629 ‘‘Air’’ featuring Doom—Dabrye (Ann Arbor) Donuts—J Dilla Twin Cities ‘‘Fuck You Lucy’’—Atmosphere ‘‘Illegal Busyness’’—Micranots ‘‘Rain Water’’—Brother Ali Rural South ‘‘Ms. New Booty’’—Bubba Sparxxx featuring Ying Yang Twins (Georgia) ‘‘Boy Looka Here’’ and ‘‘Let’s Get This Paper’’—Rich Boy (Alabama) ‘‘Mississippi’’—David Banner (Mississippi) Miami ‘‘Pop That Pussy’’—2 Live Crew ‘‘Lower the Dynamite’’—DJ Magic Mike ‘‘We Takin’ Over’’—DJ Khaled ‘‘Hustlin’’—Rick Ross ‘‘Opa-Locka’’—Brisco feat. Rick Ross ‘‘I’m in the Hood’’—Brisco feat. Lil Wayne ‘‘The Big Lick’’—Trina Atlanta ‘‘Dirty South’’ and ‘‘Cell Therapy’’—Goodie Mob ‘‘Elevators (Me and You)’’—Outkast ‘‘Crispus Attucks’’—Prophetix ‘‘Bring em Out’’—T.I. ‘‘Get Low’’—Lil Jon featuring Ying Yang Twins ‘‘Go Getta’’—Young Jeezy ‘‘Move Bitch’’—Ludacris ‘‘85’’—Youngbloodz Houston ‘‘Mind’s Playin’ Tricks on Me’’—Geto Boys ‘‘Wanna be a Baller’’—Lil Troy ‘‘Too Much Lean in my Cup’’—Fat Pat ‘‘Int’l Players Anthem’’—UGK featuring Outkast ‘‘They Don’t Know’’—Paul Wall

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‘‘Knockin Doors Down’’—Pimp C ‘‘Chunk up the Deuce’’ and ‘‘I’m a G’’—Lil Keke ‘‘What a Job’’—Devin the Dude Los Angeles ‘‘L.A.’’—Murs ‘‘Straight Outta Compton’’ and ‘‘Boyz-N-the-Hood’’—N.W.A. ‘‘Nuthin’ but a G Thang’’—Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg ‘‘Colors’’ and ‘‘Six N the Morning’’—Ice T ‘‘Dreams’’—The Game ‘‘It’s Funky Enough’’—The D.O.C. ‘‘Hand on the Pump’’—Cypress Hill ‘‘Steady Mobbin’’—Ice Cube ‘‘The Funkiest’’—Funkdoobiest ‘‘Only When I’m Drunk’’—Tha Alkaholiks ‘‘This Way’’—Dilated Peoples featuring Kanye West St. Louis ‘‘Country Grammar’’—Nelly ‘‘Summer in Da City’’—St. Lunatics ‘‘My Zone’’—Huey ‘‘Hood Hop’’ and ‘‘Tipsy’’—J-Kwon ‘‘In Ya Face’’—Ebony Eyez ‘‘Holidae In’’—Chingy featuring Ludacris and Snoop Dogg Ohio ‘‘Sexual for Elizabeth’’—Five Deez ‘‘Cold Turkey’’—J-Rawls ‘‘So Tired’’—Hi-Tek featuring Dion, Bun B, Devin the Dude, Pretty Ugly ‘‘When Da Hum Plays’’—Ronnie Ron ‘‘The House the Dog Built’’—Jibiri Wise One ‘‘First of the Month’’—Bone Thugs N Harmony ‘‘Hold the Floor’’—Camu Tao Indianapolis ‘‘1,000,000 + 1’’—Mudkids

Appendix | 631 Kentucky ‘‘Four MCs Murdered’’—Code Red ‘‘One More for the Haters’’—Bukshot ‘‘Louisville’’—Get Down Family ‘‘Country Boyz’’—Nappy Roots ‘‘Lollipop’’—Lil Wayne ft. Static Major ‘‘Linguistics’’—Cunninlynguists ‘‘My Old Kentucky Home’’—KD featuring Demi Demaree and Derek ‘‘Child’’ Monyhan North Carolina ‘‘Lovin’ It’’—Little Brother featuring Joe Scudda ‘‘Welcome to Durham’’—Butta Team ‘‘Changes of Atmosphere’’—Supastition ‘‘Raise Up’’—Petey Pablo ‘‘Tired’’—Jozee Mo ‘‘Jus Chillin’’—Joe Scudda Nashville ‘‘Sanctuary’’—Count Bass D ‘‘Hold On’’—Young Buck Featuring 50 Cent Memphis ‘‘Triple Six Clubhouse’’ and ‘‘Stay Fly’’—Three 6 Mafia ‘‘Pimp in My Own Rhyme’’—8 Ball and MJG ‘‘Weak Niggaz’’—Project Pat ‘‘Krispy’’—Kia Shine New Orleans ‘‘Pass Me Da Green’’—Master P ‘‘Georgia . . . Bush’’—Lil Wayne ‘‘First Key’’—Birdman and Lil Wayne ‘‘Bling Bling’’—B.G. ‘‘What’s Happenin’’—Juvenile ‘‘Down for My Niggaz’’—C Murder ‘‘Hoody Hoo’’—TRU ‘‘Shake Ya Ass’’—Mystikal

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‘‘I’m Comin’ ’’—Silkk the Shocker ‘‘Bang! Bang!’’—The Knux (New Orleans/Hollywood) Oakland ‘‘Oakland’’—Too $hort ‘‘All Eyez On Me’’—2Pac ‘‘Catch a Bad One’’—Del tha Funky Homosapien ‘‘93 Til Infinity’’—Souls of Mischief ‘‘Doowutchyalike’’—Digital Underground ‘‘Feelin’ Myself’’—Mac Dre ‘‘Big Ballin’ with My Homies’’—E-40 ‘‘Strap on the Side’’—Spice-1 ‘‘I Got 5 On It’’—The Luniz Seattle ‘‘Posse on Broadway’’—Sir Mix-A-Lot ‘‘SeaTown Ballers’’—Kid Sensation ‘‘What If It’s True’’—Lifesavas ‘‘Motion Movement’’—Blue Scholars ‘‘Welcome to Seattle’’—Boom Bap Project Hawaii ‘‘True Hawaiian’’—Sudden Rush ‘‘Weapon of Choice’’—Creed Chameleon ‘‘Running Away’’—Amphibeus Tung ‘‘Old School Toyota’’—Ill Valley Productions

Selected Bibliography

Abrahams, Roger D. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Adline Publishing Company, 1973. Ahearn, Charles, ed. Yes Yes Y’all: An Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2002. Akindes, Fay Yokomizo. ‘‘Sudden Rush: Na Mele Paleoleo (Hawaiian Rap) as Liberatory Discourse.’’ Discourse 23, no. 1 (2001): 82–98. Arnold, Eric K. ‘‘Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: A Tale of Twin Cities.’’ The Source, June 1999, 113–14. Bennett, Andy. ‘‘Rappin’ on the Tyne: White Hip Hop Culture in Northeast England— an Ethnographic Study.’’ The Sociological Review 47, no. 1 (February 1999): 1–24. Bennett, Andy, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. Bickelhaupt, Susan. ‘‘Boston Stations Accept the Rap.’’ The Boston Globe, December 10, 1993, 72. Boyd, Todd. The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip-Hop. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Brooks, Michael W. Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Brown, Ethan. Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler. New York: Anchor Books, 2005. Bryant, Jerry H. Born in a Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Butler, Paul D. ‘‘Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment.’’ Stanford Law Review 56 (2004): 983–1016. Bynoe, Yvonne. ‘‘Getting Real about Global Hip-Hop.’’ Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 3 (1): 77–84.

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Selected Bibliography

Castleman, Craig. ‘‘The Politics of Graffiti.’’ In That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 21–30. New York: Routledge, 2004. Cohn, Nik. Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Condry, Ian. Hip Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Countryman, Matthew J. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. Cross, Brian. It’s Not About a Salary . . . Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 1993. De Barros, Paul. Jackson Street after Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle. Seattle, WA: Sasquatch, 1993. Derogatis, Jim. ‘‘Rhyme Time: Hip-Hop’s Everyman Stays True to His ‘Blue Collar’ Roots.’’ Chicago Sun-Times, July 9, 2006. Devereaux, Andrew. ‘‘ ‘What Chew Know about Down the Hill?’: Baltimore Club Music, Subgenre Crossover, and the New Subcultural Capital of Race and Space.’’ Journal of Popular Music Studies 19, no. 4 (2007): 311–41. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899. Dundes, Alan, ed. Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of African-American Folklore. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1973. Dyson, Michael Eric. Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop. New York: Basic Civitas, 2007. Evil, Pierre. Gangsta Rap. Paris: Flammarion, 2005. 50 Cent. From Pieces to Weight. New York: Pocket Books, 2005. Flores, Juan. From Bomba to Hip Hop. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Forman, Murray. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and HipHop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. ———, and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. Franklin, Marianne, ed. Resounding International Relations: On Music Culture and Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Gaunt, Kyra D. The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip Hop. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. Gonzales, Michael A. ‘‘The Juice Crew, Beyond the Boogie Down.’’ In The Vibe History of Hip Hop, edited by Alan Light, 101–9. New York: Three Rivers, 1999.

Selected Bibliography

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Gueraseva, Stacy. Def Jam, Inc. Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, and the Extraordinary Story of the World’s Most Influential Hip-Hop Label. New York: One World, Ballantine, 2005. Hess, Mickey. Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007. ———, ed. Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007. Jenkins, Sasha. ‘‘Graffiti: Graphic Scenes, Spray Fiends, and Millionaires.’’ In Vibe History of Hip-Hop, edited by Alan Light, 35–41. New York: Vibe, 1999. Knight, Richard. The Blues Highway: New Orleans to Chicago—a Travel and Music Guide. Hindhead, Surrey, UK: Trailblazer Publications, 2001. Krims, Adam. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Marshall, Wayne. ‘‘Giving up Hip-Hop’s Firstborn: A Quest for the Real after the Death of Sampling.’’ Callaloo 29, no. 3 (2006): 868–92. Miller, Matt. ‘‘Bounce: Rap Music and Cultural Survival in New Orleans.’’ HypheNation: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Critical Moments Discourse 1, no. 1 (2006): 15–31. Mitchell, Tony, ed. Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the U. S. A. New York: Wesleyan University Press, 2002. Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Perry, Imani. Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Reeves, Marcus. ‘‘Regional Scenes.’’ In Vibe History of Hip-Hop, edited by Alan Light, 217–27. New York: Vibe, 1999. Rivera, Raquel. New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Sarig, Roni. Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2007. Wacquant, Loı¨c. ‘‘Scrutinizing the Street: Poverty, Morality, and the Pitfalls of Urban Ethnography.’’ American Journal of Sociology 107, no. 6 (May 2002): 1468–1532. Wepman, Dennis, Ronald B. Newman, and Murray B. Binderman. The Life, the Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976.

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Index

A and R, 357 A-Dam Shame, 470 A-Plus, 270, 271 A to K (Cypress Hill), 20 A Touch of Jazz, 147, 157 A-Town Hard Heads (Success-N-Effect), 477 ‘‘A-Town Rush’’ (Kilo), 477 A Tribe Called Quest, viii, xl, 48, 61– 62, 85, 110, 112, 160, 209, 247, 296, 414, 481 A&M Records, 430 Aaliyah, xxii, xliv, 81, 90, 406, 502, 508 Ab Liva, xlvii, 166, 516 ABC (Angel Berto Crew), xxxiii, 314 ABC (Anotha Bad Creation), 159, 478 Abdul, Paula, 365 Abeo, Ryan; xlvii; See also RA Scion Abilities, 366, 378–379; See also Eyedea and Abilities Above the Law, 237, 238, 242, 245 Above the Rim (film), 96 Abraham, Brian, 330

Abrams, Reginald, 411; See also Motsi Ski Abramz, 381 Abstract Pack, 363, 366, 377, 378 Abstract Rude, 248 Absurdistan (Shentgart), 404 Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 150 Abundance (Platinum Pied Pipers), 423 Abyss, 192 Ace, 186 Ace Capone, 146 Aceyalone, 247, 248 acid rap, 412 acidrap.com (Web site), 413 Act Like You Know (MC Lyte), 83, 84 ‘‘Action’’ (The Treacherous Three), 35 activism, by MC Lyte, 83–84 Ad-Rock, 58, 79 ADA. See Alternative Distribution Alliance Adams, Craig, 404; See also DJ Assault Adidas (Huey), 357, 358 Adidas Tree, 208 637

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Index

Adler, Bill, 15 Adrenaline Rush (Twista), 322 ‘‘Adrenaline Rush’’ (Twista), 322 Adrenaline Rush 2000: Twista’s Greatest Hits (Twista), 322 Adrenaline Rush 2007 (Twista), 323 ‘‘Adrian Does Everything’’ (MC ADE), 584 ‘‘Advance’’ (Ced Gee), 13 The Adventure of Slick Rick (Slick Rick), 15, 36 Adventures in Hollyhood (MTV), 573 The Adventures of Schoolly D (Schoolly D), 154 The Adventures of the B-Boy/D-Boy (Muja Messiah), 383 ‘‘Adventures on the Wheels of Steel’’ (Michael K), 197 Aero and the Soundmen, 168 Aerosmith, 54, 202, 204 Aesop Rock, 380, 386 ‘‘African Alert’’ (radio show), 345 African Americans: autobiography, 432–433; Black culture as global culture, xvi; Black Nationalism, 11; Great Migration, xvi, 549, 554; history of, 555; influence on hip hop, xvi; Social Aid and Pleasure clubs, 526 Afrika Baby Bam, 62 Afrika Bambaataa, ix, xv, xxxii, xxxv, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 24, 34, 53, 77, 225, 246, 593; photo, 11 Afrika Islam, xvii, xxxv, 3, 227, 231, 232 Afro-Rican, 589 ‘‘After the Laughter’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 125, 127 Aftermath Records, xlv, 201, 220, 249 Against All Odds (Afro-Rican), 589 Against da Grain (The YoungbloodZ), 484 ‘‘Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number’’ (Aaliyah), 406

Aggracyst, 386 Aguilera, Christina, 403 ‘‘Ah, That’s the Joint’’ (AJ), xxxv Ahearn, Charlie, xi, 11 Ahmad, 248 Ain’t It Good To Ya (Gigolo Tony), 584 ‘‘Ain’t No Future in Your Frontin’’’ (Breed), xli, 397 ‘‘Ain’t No Nigga’’ (Jay-Z), 93 Ain’t No Other (MC Lyte), 83 ‘‘Air Force Ones’’ (Nelly), 351, 358 AJ, xxxv ‘‘AJ’’ (Kurtis Blow), 35 AK47, 328 AKA Mr. K-Sen (Kid Sensation), 301 Akindes, Fay Yokomizo, 613, 614 Akon, xxiii Akrobatik, 195, 214, 218, 219, 220 Akshun, 435, 438 Al-D, 452 Al Kapone, 559, 573 Al Nuke, 305 Alaimo, Steve, 595 Albee Square Mall, 114 Albert, Howard, 595 Albert, Ron, 595 The Albulation Network (Ric Jilla), 332 The Album Time Forgot (5-Elementz), 415 Alcatraz Records, 559 Alejan, D.J., 345 Alexander, Lavell, 305 Alexander, Shawn, 302–303 Alexander, Stefan, 370, 382; See also P.O.S. Ali Shaheed Muhammad, viii, 61, 62, 112 All, Eddie F., 346 All-Ages Dance Ordinance, 308 All Bets Off (Juice), 330, 331 All Eyez on Me (Tupac Shakur), 242, 243, 245

Index ‘‘All Falls Down’’ (Kanye West), 333, 334 All Hail the Queen (Queen Latifah), 182, 183 ‘‘All I Do’’ (Rhymefest), 315 ‘‘All I Eva Wanted’’ (The Grind Family), 332 ‘‘All I Need’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 131 All In Together Now Crew, 117, 124 ‘‘All My Bitches Are Gone’’ (Sir Too $hort), 266, 276 ‘‘All N My Grill’’ (Missy Elliot), xlv All Natural, 332 All Natural, Inc., 332 ‘‘All Night’’ (Trinere), 583 All on a Mardi Gras Day (documentary), 526 ‘‘All or Nothing’’ (Fat Joe), 15 All or Nothing (Fat Joe), 22 ‘‘All Stuck’’ (Creed Chameleon), 617, 618 ‘‘All That I Got Is You’’ (Ghostface Killah), 132 ‘‘All the Above’’ (Beanie Sigel), 164 ‘‘All the Way to St. Lou’’ (Chingy), 357 Allah Justice, 125; See also GZA Allen, Anquette Corte, 588; See also Anquette Alley (Ying Yang Twins), 488 The Alliance, 80, 110 allomotives, 244 Allstar the Fabulous, 332 Almighty RSO Crew, 195, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 217, 218, 219 Alonso, Alejandro, 12 Alpo, 37 Altamarino, Antonio, 218; See also Tangg the Juice Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), 387 Altman, R.L., 413; See also T3 Alvarez, Carmelo, 227 Alvin’s (club), 399

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Amazing Vee, 584 The Amazing Wizards, 594 America Has a Problem. . .Cocaine (Kilo), 477 ‘‘America Has a Problem. . .Cocaine’’ (Kilo), xl, 477 American Bandstand (TV show), 149 American Gangster (Common), 325 ‘‘American Rap Makers’’ (radio show), 472 American Records, 299 AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted (Ice Cube), xxi, xl Amoeba Music, 263 Amp, 413 Amp Fiddler, 415 Amphibeus Tungs, 619–620 Amplified (Q-Tip), 414 An All Out Bash (MC ADE), 584 ‘‘An Open Letter to NYC’’ (Beastie Boys), 79 Anderson, Christopher, 569; See also Free Anderson, Edward, 195, 202 Anderson, Ernestine, 288 Anderson, Londell, 370; See also Contac Anderson, Marian, 149 Andre 3000, 160, 471, 481, 543 Andre Nickatina, 278 Andres, 415 Angel, xvi, xxxiii, 314 Angel, Brandon, 167 Angel Berto Crew (ABC), xxxiii, 314 ‘‘Angry Black Man on an Elevator’’ (Rhymefest), 336 Animal House (club), 346–347 Anomolies, 406 Anotha Bad Creation (ABC), 159, 478 Another 1 4 U 2 N V, 158 Another Bad Creation (ABC), 159, 478 ‘‘Another Head Put to Rest’’ (Akshun), 435 Another Level Records, 375

639

640

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Index

‘‘Another Wild Nigga From the Bronx’’ (Fat Joe), 18, 19 Anquette, 580, 588, 589, 594 answer records, xx, xxxvi, 15, 57, 157 Ant, 366, 372, 374, 378, 379; photo, 373 Ant Banks, 264 Ant D, 594 Ant-Live, 408 Anthony, Rev. Wendell, 408 The Anti-Album (I Self Divine), 376 anti-Semitism, xl Anticon, 366 Antidisestablishmetabolism (Heiruspecs), 380 antipolice rap songs, 477 Antoinette, 83 Anuthatantrum (Da Brat), 326, 480 Apache, 78 ‘‘Apache’’ (Herc Kool), 6, 7 The Aphilliates, l, 147–148, 491 ‘‘The Apollo’’ (Kid Capri), 32 Apollo Theater, 32, 33 ‘‘Apologize’’ (Timbaland), 503 Apple Bottoms, 358 AQBOX, 186 Aqua Teen Hunger Force (TV cartoon), 154 ‘‘Aquaboogie’’ (P-Funk), 267 Aquemini (OutKast), 482 Aquemini Records, 483 Arabian Prince, 237 Arcade Fire, 387 ‘‘Are We Cuttin’’’ (Pastor Troy), 488 Are You Ready for W.O.R. (WithOut Rezervation), xliii ‘‘Are You Really Real?’’ (The Force MDs), 122 ‘‘Area Codes’’ (Ludacris), 489 Arista Records, 480, 481, 483, 484, 517 Aristocrunk, 569 Armada, Jose, Jr., 594 Armageddon, 22 ‘‘Armed Robbery’’ (Eightball & MJG), 561

Armstead, Derek, 40; See also Bloodshed Armstrong, H., 376; See also DMG Army of the Pharaohs, 168 Aroe & The Soundmakers, 157 Arrested Development, x, xli, 209, 348, 478 Arrington, Marvin, 473 Arroyo, Juan, 589 The Art of Story Telling (Slick Rick), 37 The Art of War (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony), 238 The Artifacts, 184–185 Artist Direct, 300 Artistic Bombing Crew, 314, 316 Arvis Records, 477 As Clean as They Wanna Be (2 Live Crew), 590, 591 As Nasty As They Wanna Be (2 Live Crew), xl, 440, 590 Ashanti, 22 Ashby, Big John, xxxi Asia One, 377 Ason Unique, 124, 125; See also Ol’ Dirty Bastard; The Professor ‘‘Aspiring Sociopath’’ (Atmosphere), 374 ‘‘Ass ‘n’ Titties’’ (DJ Assault & Mr. De), 404 ‘‘Assasin’’ (Geto Boys), 438 Assault Rifle/Electrofunk, 404 Asylum Records, 491 ‘‘At the Helm’’ (Souls of Mischief), 271 ‘‘At the Party’’ (The Treacherous Three), 35 The Atban Klann, 240 Atkins, Jeffrey, 64 Atkins, Leonard, 485; See also Diamond ATL (film), 490 Atlanta (Georgia): 1980–1990, 474, 476–478; Bankhead, 469–470; bass music, 484–485; clubs, 472;

Index Decatur, 471, 475, 477, 487; early 1990’s, 478–481; Freaknik, 472, 473; hip hop in, x, xvi, xvii, xxi– xxii, xxxiv, xxxix, xliii, 265, 467– 492; musical history, 467–468, 470–472; neighborhoods, 468, 473, 474, 475; nickname, 178; Oakland-Atlanta axis, 265; overview, 468–474; population, 468– 469; radio shows, 471–472; SWATS, 474, 475 ‘‘Atlanta That’s Where I Stay’’ (MC Shy D), xxxix, 476 Atlantic Records, 21, 80, 202, 303, 490, 491, 591 ATLiens (OutKast), 482 Atmosphere, 368, 369, 372, 374, 380, 385; photo, 373 Attitude Records, 487 Audio Achievements, 233, 236 Audio Two, xxxviii, 79, 80, 81, 109, 110 Audition (P.O.S.), 370, 382 Austin, Victor, 583; See also DJ Slick Vic ‘‘Auto Tune’’ (T-Pain), 492 AVI Records, 317 Awesome Dre & the Hardcore Committee, xxxix, 396, 397 ‘‘Awnaw’’ (music video), x A.W.O.L., 396, 397, 410–411 Ayers, Roy, 79 ‘‘Ayo Technology’’ (50 Cents & Justin Timberlake), 503 Azor, Hurby, 60; See also Luv Bug ‘‘B—I’m from Dade County’’ (DJ Khaled), 601 B-Boy-B, xxxiii, 314 ‘‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse: Hello Brooklyn’’ (Beastie Boys), 79, 93 b-boy clothes, 52, 53 b-boy dance style, xii, xxxiv, 151 B-Boys Records, 13, 400 The B. Coming (Beanie Siegel), 163

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B-Dog, 328 B-fresh, 374 B-Girl-Be, 383 ‘‘B Girls’’ (Young & Restless), 596 B-Legit in The Click, 281 B-Mello, 306–307 ‘‘B-R-Right’’ (Trina), 600 B-Real, 239 B. Stille, xliv Baatin, 413, 415 Baby Bash, 303 Baby Dolls, 525 ‘‘Baby Got Back’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299, 308 ‘‘Baby Huey’’ (Herc Kool), 6 Baby Jesus, 264 Baby Loc, 456 Babyface, 480–481 Bacdafucup (Onyx), xlii Back 2 Tha Future (A.W.O.L.), 410 Back 2 the Game (Do or Die), 328 Back at Your Ass for the Nine-4 (2 Live Crew), xxxii Back for the First Time, 442, 489 Back from Hell (Disco Rick and the Wolf Pack), 592 Back-N-Effect (Success-N-Effect), 477 ‘‘Back That Ass Up’’ (DJ Jubilee), 535 ‘‘Back That Azz Up’’ (Juvenile), 534 ‘‘Back to Boom’’ (Kid Sensation), 301 Back to Haunt You (Magic Mike), 595 Back to the Feature (Wale), l Back to the Old School (Just-Ice), xxxvii Back to the Traphouse (Gucci Mane), 491 Back2Basics, 169 ‘‘Backseat Betty’’ (Choice), 457 Backstreet Boys, 123 ‘‘Backyard Party’’ (Ill Valley), 621 ‘‘Bad Bad Man’’ (Fat Joe), 18–19 Bad Boy Entertainment, xxi, xxii, 39, 40, 52, 87, 89, 245

641

642

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Index

Bad Boy South Records, 561 ‘‘Bad Boyz’’ (Almighty RSO), 217 ‘‘Bad Meets Evil’’ (Eminem), 421 Bahamadia, xvi, 147, 160, 186 Bailey, Alphonzo, 559 Bailey, Kevin, 416; See also Dogmatic Baker, Arthur, 54, 593 Baker, Derrick, 601; See also Bigg D Baker, Greg, 590 Balam, Xilam, 385 ‘‘Ballers’’ (Project Pat), 567 ‘‘Ballin’’’ (Jim Jones), 81 BAM Media, 302 Bamboozled (film), 95, 96 Bangin’ on Wax (Ronnie Ron Phillips), 245 Bango the B-Boy Outlaw, xl ‘‘Bankhead Bounce’’ (D-Roc), 484, 485, 488 Bankhead bounce (dance), 469 Banned (UGK), 443 Banned in the U.S.A. (2 Live Crew), 591 banned songs. See obscenity Banner, David, xlvi Bar-Kays, 559 Barak Records, 419 Barboza, Roy, 220 Barcliff, Melvin, 500; See also Magoo Bardeaux, 306 Baritone Tip Love, 158 Barnes, Tim, 478; See also DJ Headliner Barnett, Robert, 483; See also T-Mo Barry, Fred, xxxii; See also Penguin Barry, Steve, 202; See also Mr. Beautiful Barry B, 36 B.A.R.S. The Barry Adrian Reese Story (Cassidy), 166 Bartizal, Leah, 384; See also Leah Base, Rob, xxxix, 38 ‘‘Baseball’’ (Uh Baby), 374 Based on a True Story (Trick Daddy Dollars), xliv, 599

‘‘Basketball’’ (Kurtis Blow), 35 Basquiat, Jean-Michel, 75, 98 Bass Is the Name of the Game (Magic Mike), 595 ‘‘Bass Mechanic’’ (MC ADE), 584 Bass Mekanik, 594, 596 bass music, 484–485 Bass Patrol, 594 ‘‘Bass Rock Express’’ (MC ADE), 584 Bass Station (nightclub), 596 Bass Station Records, 596 Bass, the Final Frontier (Magic Mike), 595 ‘‘Bass Waves Megamix’’ (Chep), 588 Bassadelic, 597 Bassment, 505, 507 ‘‘Bat Rap’’ (T.C.), 375 ‘‘Batterman’’ (Toddy Tee), 231 Battle for Rap Supremacy (KRS-One & MC Shan), 18 Battle, Johne, 477; See also Brother Rich J X ‘‘Battmann: Let Mo-Jo Handle It’’ (Mo-Jo), 474 Bavgate, 259 Bawitdaba, 410 Bay Area. See Oakland; San Francisco The Bay Bridge (San Francisco), 278 BBE Records, 415 BDP. See Boogie Down Productions Be (Common), 325 ‘‘Be Ok’’ (Bahamadia & Rah Digga), 186 ‘‘Be on the Lookout’’ (Juice), 330 Be-Sides (Musab), 378 Beale Street Flippers, 558 Bean, Ronald M., 134; See also Mathematics Beanie Sigel, 145, 146, 160, 162, 163–165 Beans, 163 Beasley, Mark, 377; See also MSP

Index Beast Crew, 409, 420 Beastie Boys, xxi, 58, 79, 93, 145, 154, 384 beat boxing, 9, 36, 201, 376 Beat Dominator, 596 Beat Master Clay D, xxxix, 595 Beat Master Records, 595 Beat Street (movie), 35, 36, 78 beatboxing, xxxix, 15 The Beatles, 617 Beatnuts, 185 Beats Rhymes and Life (A Tribe Called Quest), 414 Beau Sun, 619 Beauregard, Paul, 564; See also DJ Paul Beautiful Minds (Killah Priest & Chief Kamachi), xlix Beck, Robert, 228 Beeda Weeda, 271 ‘‘Beef Box’’ (MC Chief), xxxvi, 583 Beenie Man, 484 ‘‘Beepers’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 Being Myself (Juvenile), 528, 534 The Believer (Common), 325 The Believer’s Project (Iomos Marad), 332 Bell, Keith, 594; See also Peanut Bell, Larry, 305; See also D.L.B. Bell Biv DeVoe, 159, 210, 478 The Bell Curve (Murray & Herrnstein), 2 Belo, 328 Ben Ari, Miri, 335 Bender, Keith, 418 Bengali, 620 Benjamin, Andre, 481, 482; See also Andre 3000; Dre Bennett, Andy, xviii Benz Records, 476, 485 Benzino, 195, 211, 220, 421, 582 Berlin (Germany), xi Berry, Chuck, 354 Berry, Halle, 96–97 Berto (B-Boy-B), xxxiii, 314

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Best of Junior M.A.F.I.A. (Junior M.A.F.I.A.), 90 ‘‘Bet Ya Man Can’t (Triz)’’ (Terror Squad), 22 Betha, Mason, 40; See also Murder Mase Beware of Dogs (The Dogs), 594 Beyond, 366, 369, 374, 378 Beyond Reality, 294 B.G., xlv, 535 ‘‘Bhanghra Chick’’ (Kidd Skilly), 423 Bible of a Pimp (Sir Too $hort), 265 Bickham, John, 589; See also Bust Down Bido, John, 443 ‘‘Big Apple Rappin’’’ (Spyder D), xix, xxxiv, 394 The Big Bang (Busta Rhymes), 85 ‘‘Big Bango Theory’’ (Bango the B-Boy Outlaw), xl Big Beat/Atlantic, 303 Big Boi, 470, 481 Big Chuck, 200, 201, 220 Big Daddy Kane, xvii, xx, xxxii, xxxix, 2, 15, 35, 55–56, 75, 81, 110, 112, 418, 443 Big Dris, 96 Big Funk, 364 Big Gipp, 483 Big HAWK, xlviii, 435, 436 Big Herk, 346, 407 Big Jess, 379 Big Krizz Kaliko, 349 Big L, xliv, xlv, 39–41 Big Lip Kareem, 186 Big Man the Terror, 218 Big Meech, 491 Big Moe, 436, 451 ‘‘Big Money Baller$’’ (Piccalo), 598 Big Oomp Records, 492 The Big Picture (Big L), 41 ‘‘Big Pimpin’’’ (Jay-Z), xxiii, xlv, 444 Big Pokey, 455 Big Pooh, xlv Big Pun, xlv, xlvi, 21, 22

643

644

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Index

Big Rube, 482 Big Snuff aka U Neva Know, 192 Big Tiny, 565 Big Tone, 415 Big Tyme (Heavy D & Boyz), 431 Big Tyme Records, 443, 450 Big V, xliv Big Yo, 569 Big Zach, 368, 379 Bigg D, 601 Biggers, Le Juan, 588; See also Le Juan Love Biggie Smalls, 75, 81, 83, 91, 110, 111, 121, 538; See also The Notorious B.I.G. Billy Bump, 364 Billy Roadz, 191 ‘‘Billy T’s Basement Tapes’’ (DJ Billy T), 396 ‘‘Bin Laden’’ (Mos Def), 95 Binary Star, xlv Birchmeier, Jason, 411, 412 Birdman, ix, xxiii, xlix Birklett, Troy, 438; See also Lil’ Troy Biscuithead Records, 215, 216–217 ‘‘The Bitch in Yoo’’ (Common), xxi ‘‘Bitch Niggas’’ (State Property), 164 ‘‘Bitch/Trick with a Good Rap’’ (Sylk Smoov), 350 ‘‘Biterphobia’’ (M&M;), 420 Bivins, Michael, 159, 479, 507; See also Bell Biv DeVoe Biz Markie, 15, 55, 56, 61, 112, 118, 124, 192, 296 Bizarre, 415, 416, 421 Bizarre Ride II (The Pharcyde), 247 Bizzy Bee, 158, 201 BJ the DJ, 345 Blac Haze, 580, 598 ‘‘Black’’ (Juice), 331 Black, Chauncey, 86 The Black Album (Jay-Z), xxiii, xlvii, 382 Black Album (Prince), 370 The Black Atlantic: Modernity and

Double-Consciousness (Gilroy), xvi Black Bottom Collective, 402 Black Boy (Wright), 555 Black Clover Records, xlix ‘‘Black Connection’’ (De La Soul), 23 The Black Eyed Peas, 240 Black Hohl, 366 Black Label Records, 485 Black Landlord, xvii, 159 Black Mafia Family, 491 Black Mafia Life (Above the Law), 242 Black Market Entertainment, 487 Black Milk, 403, 415, 419, 422 Black Moon, xlii, 77, 81, 82, 107, 111, 113 Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (Rose), 91–92, 405 Black on Both Sides (Mos Def), 94, 99 Black Panthers, 258–260, 272, 282, 295 Black Pearl, 345 Black Roulette (DMG), 376 Black Sabbath, 412, 617 Black Sheep, 61, 62, 345 Black Shu Records, 410 ‘‘Black Snow’’ (Snow Goons), xxiii, xlix Black Spades (gang), 10, 11 Black Star, 94, 96, 97 Black Sunday (Cypress Hill), 239 Black Thought, 159, 160, 161, 383, 402 Black Wall Street Records, 280 The Black Whole, 409 Blackalicious, 294, 296, 301, 304, 305 The Blackman, 409–410, 420 Blackman, Toni, 89, 99–100 Blackout (Redman & Method Man), 181 Blackout 2 (Redman & Method Man), 181

Index Blackstreet, 38, 39, 123, 512 Blake, Kori, 406; See also BombShell Blakely, Shyran, 471 The Blastmaster, 13, 16; See also KRS-One Blige, Mary J., 39, 87–89, 91, 93, 131, 132, 294, 325 Blind, 598 ‘‘Bling-Bling’’ (B.G.), xlv, 535 Bling47, 406, 415, 423 block parties, 3, 20, 31, 76, 200, 527 Block Party (Dave Chappelle), 190 Blondie, 18 Blood in My Eye (Ja Rule), 65 Blood Money (Mobb Deep), 68 Bloods (gang), 229, 365 Bloodshed, 40 ‘‘blowedians,’’ 248 Blowfly, 583 ‘‘Blowjob Betty’’ (Sir Too $hort), 457 Blowout Comb (Back2Basics), 169 ‘‘Blue Cheese’’ (UMCs), 123 Blue City Crew, 227 Blue Collar (Rhymefest), 336 Blue Flame Lounge, 469 Blue Notes, 149 The Blue Scholars, 304, 308 BMG, 484, 517 Bo-Keys, 57 The Boatlift (Pitbull), 601 ‘‘Bob George’’ (Prince), 370 Bobby Brown, 210 Bobby Digital, 134 Body Hat Syndrome (Digital Underground), 268 ‘‘Body Rock’’ (The Treacherous Three), 16, 35 Body Rock Crew, 200, 201, 202, 220 Bodyrock, 205 Boiler Room (Younger), 542 Bolden, Darnell, 423; See also Saadiq Bomb Squad, xxi, xl BombShell, 406 Bon Ami label, 187 Bond Hill Crew, xxxv

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Bone Crusher, 475, 488 Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, xxii, xliii, 238, 347, 348, 567 Bongo Band, 7 Bonney, Tabi, xlix Boo-Yaa Tribe, xxxviii, xxxix, 227, 237 The Booga Basement, 189 Boogaloo, 565 ‘‘Boogie Down Battleground,’’ 19 Boogie Down Productions (BDP), xx, xxxvii, xxxviii, 13, 25, 57, 94 Boogie Mack, 410 Book of Thugs: Chapter AK verse 57 (Trick Daddy), 600 Booka B, 376 Booker, Adam, 376 Booker, Mayor Cory A., 179 Booker T. and the MGs, 551 Boom Skward, 184 Boomin Words from Hell (Esham), 412 Boot Camp Clik, 81, 82, 107, 168 Boot Records, 202 ‘‘Boot the Booty’’ (MC Cool Rock), 595 ‘‘booty bass,’’ 593–594 booty music, 404 Born Again (Junior M.A.F.I.A.), 90 Born Gangstaz (The Boss), xlii, 405 Born in a Mighty Bad Land: The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction (Bryant), 229 ‘‘Born in the USA’’ (Bruce Springsteen), 591 Born to Mack (Sir Too $hort), 264 Bosco, 569 Bosko, 303 ‘‘Boss’’ (Rick Ross), 600 The Boss, xlii, 394, 399, 405–406 Boss Chick DiamondNique, 457 Boss Hogg Outlawz Records, 453 Boston (Massachusetts): 1979–1988, 196–207; 1988–1995, 207–213; 1995–2008, 213–221; Adidas Tree, 208; dance scene, 198, 199–200;

645

646

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Index

hip hop in, xiv, xvi, xxxv, 195–221; murder rate, 208–209, 220; neighborhoods, 200–201; radio shows, 197, 198, 203–207, 216, 221; record stores, 215, 216–217; rock clubs, 218, 219; violence in, 208–210, 218, 220 Boston City Breakers, 198 Boston Goes Def (Mr. Beautiful), 202 ‘‘Boston Got Next’’ T-shirts, 221 Boston Poppers and Lockers, 198, 207 Botany Boyz, 451 Bougard, Selwyn, 134; See also 4th Disciple bounce, xxxvii, 523, 525, 527, 529, 530, 540, 543 ‘‘Bounce: Rap Music and Cultural Survival in New Orleans’’ (Miller), 523, 524 ‘‘Bounce for the Juvenile’’ (Juvenile), 534, 540 Bourdieu, Pierre, 229 Bourgois, Philippe, 19 Bousta Set It (For the Record) (Abstract Pack), 378 ‘‘Bout Time I Funk You’’ (Johnson Brothers Band), 198 The Box, 453 ‘‘The Box’’ (video), 410 Boyd, Glen, 290, 302, 308; See also Shockmaster Boyz II Men, 123, 145, 159, 431, 479, 480 ‘‘Boyz II Men’’ (Busta Rhymes), 86 Boyz N the Hood (film), 571 ‘‘Boyz-N-The Hood’’ (N.W.A.), 154, 235, 236, 237 Bozza, Anthony, 343, 419 ‘‘Braids & Faids’’ (ESG), 451, 452 ‘‘Braids N’ Fades’’ (ESG), 452 Braille Method, 378 Brain, Dow, 215 Branch, Darrell, 40; See also Digga ‘‘Brand New’’ (Rhymefest), 336

‘‘Brand Nu’’ (Sista), 505 Brand Nubians, xxxix, 113, 184 Brandy (MC Lyte), 83 Braxton, Toni, 480 Break 84 (event), 346 ‘‘Break Da Law’’ (Three 6 Mafia), 553 break dancing, 11, 78, 151, 195, 197, 198, 199, 227, 315–316, 552 Breakaway Records, 597 breakbeat music, xi, 5, 8, 9 ‘‘Breakdown New York Style’’ (The Toe Jammer), 202 Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (film), xxxiv, 227, 228, 231 Breakin’ and Enterin’ (film), 78, 226, 231 ‘‘breaking,’’ xxxiv, 34 ‘‘Breaking: The History’’ (Holman), 78 Breed, Eric, 470; See also MC Breed Breeze, xx, xxxvi, 144, 154, 156 Breeze Records, 154 ‘‘Bremelo’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 298–299 Brent, Teferi, 407; See also Kaos Brewer, Craig, 570, 572 Brewington, Dean, 377; See also Rasta ‘‘Brick City Mashin’’’ (Redman), 181 Brick Records, 219 ‘‘The Bridge’’ (Shan), xx, xxxvii, xlvi, 15, 57, 158 ‘‘The Bridge Is Over’’ (BDP), xx, 15, 21, 25, 57, 110, 117 Bridge Wars, xix, xx, xxxvii, xlix, 15, 56–57, 110, 114, 158 Bridges, Chris, 470; See also Ludacris Briggs, Kevin, 478; See also She’kspere Brim, Joseph L., 346 ‘‘Bring It on’’ (Jay-Z), 91 ‘‘Bring Out the Sound System: The West Indian Roots of Hip Hop’’ (The Point CDEC & City Lore), l Broad Street Bully, 163 Bronx (New York): Bridge Wars, xix,

Index xx, xxxvii, xlix, 15, 56–57, 110, 114, 158; Cedar Park, 5; graffiti in, xxxiv; The Hevalo, xxiv, 5, 7; hip hop in, xi, xiii, xix, xx, xxiii, xlix, 1–25, 31; musical scene in, 3–6; poverty and violence in, 1–3, 11– 12; social context of, 1–3; street gang culture, viii, ix, 12 ‘‘Bronx Keeps Creating It’’ (Fat Joe), 21 Bronx River Organization, 11 ‘‘Bronx Tale’’ (KRS-One), 21 Bronx Terra. See Fat Joe Bronx Warriors (movie), 2 Bronx Zulu Nation Organization, xv ‘‘Brooklyn’’ (MC Lyte), 83 Brooklyn (New York): 1970s, 76–78; 1980s, 79–82; Bushwick neighborhood, 78, 110; Da Beatminerz, xv, 82, 107–115; hip hop in, 75–101, 107–115; odes to, 79; overview, 75, 88, 114; West Indian culture, 85 Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival, 77, 82, 99 ‘‘Brooklyn Rocks the Best’’ (Cut Master D), 79 Brooklyn Sound, xvii, 113 Brooklyn Spartans (Kel Spencer), 81 ‘‘Brooklyn Zoo’’ (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), 131 Brooklynati (Tanya Morgan), xxiv, l Brooklynati (Web site), xxiv, l ‘‘Brooklyn’s Finest’’ (Jay-Z), 75, 91, 92 Brooks, Michael W., xi Broom, Michelle, 596; See also Missy Mist Brother Ali, 368, 369, 370, 372, 374, 380–381, 383; photo, 380 ‘‘Brother, Brother’’ (Rah Digga), 186 Brother Jules, 364 Brother Marquis, xxxvii, 476, 584, 585 Brother Rich J X, 477

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Brothers from Another (Young Gunz), 165 ‘‘Brothers on my Jock’’ (EPMD), 180 Brown, Bobby, 217 Brown, Cecil, 244 Brown, Derrick, 300; See also Vitamin D Brown, Ethan, 51 Brown, Herman, 300 Brown, James, 78, 558 Brown, John, xxv Brown, Pat, 482 Brown, Rahem, 184; See also Tame One Brown, Vincent, 186; See also Vinnie Brown Door (club), 59 Brown Sugar (film), 95, 96 ‘‘Brown Sugar’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 Browne, Tom, 49 Browz, Ron, 42 ‘‘Brush Ya Shoulder Off’’ (Jay-Z), 503 Bryant, Anita, 590 Bryant, Joel H., 396, 408 Bryant Records, 396, 410, 411 BTNHResurrection (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony), 238 Bubba Sparxxx, 470, 472 Buchanan, Mike, 417, 419; See also House Shoes buck-jumping, 549, 552, 553, 563 Buck the Saw (Mr. Supreme), 296 Buckshot, xxi, xxiii, xliii, xlviii, 82, 112 ‘‘Bucktown’’ (Smif-N-Wessun), 113 Buckwild, 40 Bugz, 416 Building Better Bombs, 382 Bullys wit Fullys, 280 ‘‘The Bumble Bee Rap,’’ 409 Bumpy Johnson, 166 Bumsquad DJs, 307 Bun B, 434, 437, 443, 444, 448, 449 Bunkley, Keath, 332; See also Spotlite the Big Idea with Status

647

648

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Index

Bunkley, Kevynn, 332; See also Allstar the Fabulous Buren, Gregory, 291; See also Funkdaddy ‘‘Burn It Down’’ (Amphibeus Tung), 619–620 ‘‘Burn Rubber’’ (Lords of the Underground), 190 ‘‘burns,’’ 78 Burwell, Sammy, 62; See also DJ Sammy B Busdriver, 248, 250 ‘‘Bush Killa’’ (Paris), 273 Bushwick Bill, 432, 438, 439, 440, 447 Bust Down, 589 Bust It Records, 37, 155 Busta Rhymes, xv, 17, 62, 75, 76, 81, 83, 84–86, 97, 137, 191–192, 294, 414, 415 Bustdown, 529 Busy Bee, xxxiv Butch, 407 Butler, Chad, 443; See also Pimp C Butler, Ishmael, 169; See also Butterfly Butler, Paul, xv, 434 Butler, ‘‘Pretty’’ Tony, 580, 583, 598 ‘‘Butta Messenga’’ (X-Caliber), 217 Butta Team, xvii Butterfly, xlii, 169 ‘‘Buttermilk Biscuits’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 301 By All Means Necessary (Kenny Parker), 16 Byrd, Tracey, 400; See also Trac Byrd C-Funk, 273 C-Mack, 329 C-murder, 527, 528, 531, 533 C-Rayz Walz, xlvi, 24 C-Town, 41 cable television, 80 ‘‘Cabrini Green Rap’’ (Sugar Rae Dinky), xix, xxxvi, 317

Cadilac Records (film), 97 The Cadillacs, xxxv, 197 Caesar, Howard, 179 Cafe´ Mahogany (club), 402 Cage, John, 216 Calderon, Tego, 602 Calhoun, Slimm, 483 Cali-bama rhyme flow, 159 ‘‘California Love’’ (Tupac Shakur), 243 ‘‘California Love’’ (video), 245 ‘‘California Vacation’’ (The Game), 250 call-and-response, 384, 530, 552, 565, 585, 593 Callaway, Thomas, 483; See also Cee-Lo Calle 13, 602 Calliope, 112 The Calm Before the Storm (Tech N9ne), xlv Cam, 40 ‘‘Came Na Getdown’’ (Devin the Dude), 446 Camoflauge, 470 Camouflage is Relative (Pete Miser), 305 Camp Lo, xliv, 22 Campbell, Cindy, xi, 5 Campbell, Clive, xi, xxxi, 3; See also Kool Herc Campbell, Don, xii, xxxii, 228 Campbell, Luther, xx. xxxvii, 476, 492, 577, 580, 584–593, 597, 602 Campbell, Mayor Bill, 473, 485 ‘‘The Campbellock’’ (dance), xxxii, 228 The Campbellock Dancers, xxxii Campbellock Jr., xxxii Cam’ron, 37, 40, 41, 42 Camu Tao, xlix Can I Borrow a Dollar (Common), 323–324 ‘‘Can I Kick It?’’ (A Tribe Called Quest), 62

Index ‘‘Can You Make it Hot?’’ (Do or Die), 328 Candy Fresh, 595 Candyman, 596 Cannady, Laurie, xvi, 495 Cannon, Don, l, 148, 491, 492 Can’t Stay Away (Too $hort), xlv Can’t Stop the Rock (Kizzy Rock), 485 ‘‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop’’ (Young Gunz), 165 Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation (Chang), xii Cap D, 332 Capaciti, 368, 376 Capital Punishment (Big Pun), xlv Cappadonna, 134, 135 ‘‘Cappucino’’ (MC Lyte), 84 Captain Beat, 345 ‘‘Car Freaks’’ (UGK), 445 Carey, Mariah, 86, 480 Carey, Percy, xvi; See also Grimm, M.F. Carfango, 569 Caribbean-Americans, 76, 85 Caribbean influence on hip hop, xv, 76, 85 Carlisle, Von, 416; See also Kuniva Carnage, 376, 383, 384 Carnage Big Quarters, 387 Carnival (Wyclef), 190 The Carnology Vol. 0.5 (Carnage), 376 ‘‘Cars and Shoes’’ (The Coup), 272, 278 ‘‘Cars with the Boom’’ (L’Trimm), 595 Cartagena, Joe, 18; See also Fat Joe Carte Blanche (Phat Kat), 419 Carter, Angela, xx, 143 Carter, Dwayne, Jr., 525; See also Lil Wayne Carter, Kelly, 415 Carter, Kenyon, 531; See also Katey Red

Carter, Ron, 160 Carter, Sean, 448 Carter, Shawn, 91; See also Jay-Z Casanova Crew (gang), 10 Case, Neil, 594, 596; See also Bass Mekanik Cash Money, 166, 220 Cash Money Clique, 64 Cash Money Records, xl, xlv, 145, 146, 166, 523, 524–525, 529, 531, 533–535, 602 Cash, Ronnie, 414; See also Phat Kat ‘‘Cashmere Thoughts’’ (Jay-Z), 91 ‘‘Casper’s Groovy Ghost Show’’ (Casper), xxxiv, 317 Cassidy, 145, 146, 162, 165–166 Castellano, Paul, 131 Castellari, Enzo G., 2 Castor, Jimmy, 78 Castro, Danny, 20 Casual, xliv, 271, 272 ‘‘Cat Got Your Tongue’’ (Choice), 457 The Catacomb (Micranots), 375 Catch 22, 314 CCA, 322, 329, 338 ‘‘The Cchill Cut’’ (The I.R.M. Crew), 374 Cchill Productions, 374 Ced Gee, xxxviii Cedar Park (Bronx), 5 CedGee, 13, 15 Cee-Lo, xxiii, 483, 600 ‘‘Cell Therapy’’ (OutKast), 483 Celph Titled, 168 censorship, xxxvi, 154, 440 The Chain Gang Vol 2 (State Property), 166 ‘‘Chain Hang Low’’ (Jibbs), 358 Chain Reaction, 197 Chaka Khan, 37 Chali 2na, 301 Chambers, Veronica, 504–505 Chamillionaire, 435, 453–455, 458; photo, 454

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649

650

|

Index

Chamillitary Entertainment, 455 Champtown, 409, 420 Chan, DJ Charlie Chan. See DJ Charlie Chan Soprano Chandler, Gary, 404 Chang, Jeff, xii, 15 ‘‘Changes’’ (Tupac Shakur), 90 Changin’ the Game (Luther Campbell), 593 chants, call-and-response, 384, 530, 552, 565, 585, 593 Chappelle, Dave, 81, 190 Chapt. 2: World Domination (DJ Paul & Juicy J), 566 Charisma Crew, xxxiv, 474 Charizma, xl, xliii Charlay, 491 Charles, Ray, 288, 432, 538 Charles’ Disco (club), 483, 485, 486 Charles Gallery (club), 33 Charlie Chan, xliv Charlie-Mack, 329 Charlie Rock, 39 Chase the Cat (Sir Too $hort), 265 Chauncey Black, 86 Chedda Boyz, 422 Cheeba, Eddie, xi, 31, 32 The Cheeba Crew, 33 Cheese, xxxvi Cheetah Records, 595 Chef Strum, 619 Chemically Unbalanced (Ying Yang Twins), 488 Chemistry (Buckshot & 9th Wonder), xlviii Cheney, Warren Scott, xvi, 313 Chep, 588 Chez Vous roller skating rink (Boston), 200, 201, 219 Chi Ali, 61 ‘‘Chi-City’’ (Common), 325 Chicago (Illinois): break dancing, 315–316; DJs, 317; graffiti in, xxxiii, 313, 314–315, 316; hip hop in, xvi, xvii, xix, xxxiv, 313–339;

MCs, 317, 319; neighborhoods, 315, 320, 321; nickname, 178; overview, 313; population, 313; radio in, 319; violence, 320 Chicago City Limits Vol. 1, 331 ‘‘Chicago Emcees’’ (Iomos Marad), 332, 339 ‘‘Chicago-Rillaz’’ (Rhymefest), 315 Chicago’s Most Wanted (CMW), 314 Chicken-N-Beer (Ludacris), 489 Chief Boot Knocka (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 Chief Kamachi, xlix, 145, 168 Chief Rocka Busy Bee, 39 ‘‘Chief Rocka’’ (Lords of the Underground), 190 Chief Xcel, 304 ‘‘Chiefin Reefa’’ (MCGz), 330 Children of the Corn (COC), 40 Chill Will, 36 Chilli, 481 Chillin (The Force MDs), 121 Chingy, 351, 355, 357 chirp scratch, 144 Choice, 457 Chop Shop Studio, 169 Chopmaster J, 267 Choppa, 533 chopped and screwed effect, 437, 450, 452 Chopper Girl, 569 The Chosen Few, 381 Christmas at Luke’s Sex Shop (Luther Campbell), 592 ‘‘Christmas Rappin’’’ (Kurtis Blow), xxxiii, 34, 35 The Chronic (Dr. Dre), xlii, 62, 241, 242, 444 Chronic 2001 (Dr. Dre), 249 Chrysalis, 478 Chubb Rock, 76, 83, 110 Chuck, 205 Chuck D, 408, 478 ‘‘Chuckie’’ (Bushwick Bill), 447

Index ‘‘C.I.A. (Criminals in Action)’’ (Zach De La Rocha), 18, 167–168 Ciccariello-Maher, George, 257 Cincinnatti (Ohio), xxxv, xlviii cipher workshop, 99 City Beat Band, 197 City Lore, l ‘‘City of Boom’’ (Detroit’s Most Wanted), 411 ‘‘City of Dope’’ (Sir Too $hort), xxi, 264 City Spud, 352 Civilisation Vs. Technology (KRS-One), 17 CL Smooth, 345 Clark, Larry, 239 Clark Kent, 7, 91 ‘‘The Classic Collection,’’ 229–230 Classical II, 38 Clavessilla, Daniel, 296; See also DJ Mr. Supreme Clay, Cassius, xxxi; See also Muhammad Ali Clay D, 589, 595, 597, 598 Clayton, Roger, xxxiii, 226, 230, 231, 232, 234 CL’CHE, 457 Clear, Duvall, 55; See also Masta Ace Clef, 189 Clemens, David, 198 Clemente, Rosa, 377 Clermont Lounge, 472 Cleveland (Ohio), 348 The Click, 267 ClienNtelle, 233 ‘‘Clientele’’ (Sylk Smoov), 350 Clinton, George, 267, 268, 269–270, 276, 280, 344, 397, 558 Clinton, Pres. William Jefferson, 607, 609 Clipse, xlvii, 501, 515–517, 519; photo, 516 clock theory, 9 Clockers (film), 83 Club 54, 354

Club Casino, 347 Club Disco Fever, xxxiii Club Futura, 590 Club Harlem World, 39 Club Rollexx, 582 Club Utopia, 598 Club UX (TV show), 167 Clutch, Ron, xliv CMW (Chicago’s Most Wanted), 314 CO, 600 The Coalition, 305 C.O.B., 332 COC. See Children of the Corn Cocoa Brovaz, 167 COD, 206 Code Red, xlvi, 386 codeine cough syrup, 436, 437 Coffee and Cigarettes (film), 137 Cohen, Jonathan, 67 Cohen, Matthew Brian, ix, 117 Cohn, Nik, 528, 532 ‘‘C.O.K.E.’’ (CCA), 329 Coke La Rock, xv, 7 Cold 187um, 238 Cold Blood, 267 Cold Chillin’ Records, 55, 56, 124, 129 ‘‘Cold Cold World’’ (Kiethy E), 205 Cold Crush Brothers, 5, 11, 55 ‘‘Cold Wind Madness’’ (Ice-T), xxxv, 228, 229, 231, 365 ‘‘The Coldest Rap’’ (Ice-T), xxxv, 228, 229, 231, 365 Coldhard, 327 Coleman, Brian, 215 Coleman, Lamont, 39; See also Big L Coles, Alton, 146; See also Ace Capone Coles, Dennis, 125; See also Ghostface Killah Collective 7, 377 Collector’s Edition (The Blackman), 410 College Dropout (Kanye West), 168, 333, 334, 335

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651

652

|

Index

The College Dropout (Kanye West), xlvii ColliPark Music (DJ Smurf), 485 Color Changin’ Click, xlvi, 435, 453–455 Color Me Badd, 497 Colorblind Records, 207 Colors (film), 208, 232 Colossal Entertainment, 165 Colston, Bruce, 190; See also DJ Lord Jazz Coltrane, John, 149 Columbia Records, 40, 64 Combs, Sean, xxii, 38–39, 87, 89, 561; See also P. Diddy Combs, Zachariah, 379; See also New MC ‘‘Come Close’’ (Common), 325 Come Home with Me (Cam’ron), 42 Comin’ Correct in ’88 (MC Shy D), 476, 588 Comin’ Out Hard (Eightball & MJG), xlii, 560, 561 The Coming (Busta Rhymes), 86, 414 ‘‘Coming of Age’’ (Jay-Z), 91 Common (Common Sense), xxi, xxxv, xliii, 21, 314, 315, 317, 324–326, 338, 347, 348, 402, 415; photo, 324 Common Market, xlvii community of multiple ghettoes, 20 Comparison (Musab), 366, 374, 378 Compton, Autumn, 384 Compton (California), 237, 243, 249 ‘‘Compton’’ (The Game), 250 Compton’s Most Wanted, 231, 237, 243 ‘‘Compton’s N Da House’’ (N.W.A.), 237 ‘‘Computer Language’’ (Pretty Tony), 583 Concentrate, 376 Conception Records, 293, 296 A Concert for Hurricane Relief (Kanye West), 334

Concord Affiliated (CCA), 329 Concrete Clique, 214 Concrete Swamp (Tunnel Clones), 569 ‘‘Conditioner’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 136 Condry, Ian, xi, xviii Conglomerate Music, 331 ‘‘Conglomerate Music’’ (Juice), 331 Connected (Foreign Exchange), xlvii Conscious Daughters, 273, 274 conscious rap, 314, 338, 348 Conspiracy (Junior M.A.F.I.A.), 89 Contac, 370 ‘‘Continuous’’ (Daily Plannet), 332 Controversy (Willie D), 440 Cook, Dr. Richard, 318 Cook Corporation, 120 The Cookbook (Missy Elliot), 510 Cooke, Sam, 431 The Cool (Lupe Fiasco), 337, 339 Cool & Dre, 601 Cool Breeze, 483 Cool C, xx, 146, 158 Cool Earl, xi, xxxi, 151 Cool Gzus, 218 The Cool Kids, xxiv, xlix, 338 Cool Nutz, 293, 303, 308 Cool Will, 201 Coolio, 237 Cooper, Ralph, Sr., 32 Cooper, Rich Paul, 523 Cooper, Robert, 564; See also Koopsta Knicca ‘‘Cop Killer’’ (Ice T), 211, 477 Copeland, Devin, 444; See also Devin the Dude The C.O.R.E., 381 The Core DJs, 306–307 Cormega, xlvi Cornbread, xi, xxxi, 151, 152 ‘‘The Corner’’ (Common), 325 Coronel, Felipe, 96; See also Immortal Technique Corporate Thugz Entertainment (CTE), 490–491

Index Cosby, Bill, 164 Cosmic Key, 143 Cosmic Reaction, 198 Cougee Brothas, 445 Count Bass D, 160 Country Grammar (Nelly), xlv, 343, 352, 353, 355, 356 ‘‘Country Grammar’’ (video), 357 Countryman, Matthew J., 148 The Coup, 272, 274–277, 278, 282 ‘‘Cowards in Compton’’ (Luther Campbell), xx, xlii Cowboy Plaz, 364 ‘‘Cowboys’’ (The Fugees), 186, 189 CPO, xxi, 237, 245 Crack (Z-Ro), 440 ‘‘Crack Attack’’ (BDP), 13 Crack Era, 37–38 Craig G, xlix, 55, 63 Crane, Bo, 582, 596 ‘‘Crank That (Soulja Boy)’’ (Soulja Boy), 492 ‘‘Crank This Shit Up’’ (Kizzy Rock & DJ Smurf), 485 Crash Crew, xxxiii, xxxiv, 98 Craz Life (Lil Rob), xlv Crazy Rob, 78 CrazySexyCool (TLC), 86, 481 ‘‘C.R.E.A.M.’’ (Raekwon), 129 Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Peterson), x Creation, 317 Creed Chameleon, 615, 617–618 ‘‘Creep’’ (TLC), 481 Creepin’ On Ah Come Up (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony), xliii, 238 Criminal (Scientifik), 219 criminal imagery, 4, 228, 231 Criminal-Minded(BDP),xxxviii,13,17 Crips (gang), 229, 365 Criss, Anthony, 186; See also Treach Critical Beatdown (Ultramagnetic MCs), xxxviii, 15 Critique Records, 202 Crocket, Kelly, 374; See also Kel-C

Crooked I, 337 Crooked Path, 291 Crooklyn (Crooklyn Dodgers), 79, 82 Crooklyn (film), xliii, 81, 82 Crooklyn (music video), 83 Crooklyn Dodgers, xliii, 79, 82 Crooms, Michael, 485; See also DJ Smurf Cross, Brian, 228 Cross, Curtis, 415; See also Black Milk cross-country collaborations, xxiv cross fader, 9 Crucial Conflict, 317, 319, 321, 327, 338 Crucial Tactics, 138 Crunchy Black, 552, 553, 565 crunk, 476, 485–491, 492, 552, 553, 569 Crunk Juice (East Side Boyz), 487 Crunkfest, 553 ‘‘Crush on You’’ (Biggie Smalls), 89 ‘‘Crush Tonight’’ (Ginuwine), 22 ‘‘Cry You a River’’ (Vakill), 331 Crystal C, 197 Crystal Palace Skating Rink, 552, 563–564, 571 CTE (Corporate Thugz Entertainment), 490–491 Cuauhtli, Felipe, 385, 387 Cuban-American community, 601 Cuban Link, 22 ‘‘Culo’’ (Pitbull), 601 Cummings, Deanna, 377 CunninLynguists, x. xii, xlvi Cupryna, Dave, 368 curse words: use of, 82; See also obscenity Curtis (50 Cent), 65–66, 335 Cut It Up Def Records, 597 Cut Up Crew, 346 Cuttin’ Kal, 374 Cybotron, 393 Cypress Hill, 20, 190, 238, 239–240

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653

654

|

Index

D-12, 22, 293, 348, 403, 416, 421 D. Black, 308 D-Ex, 345 D-Moe, 279 D-Nice, 16 D-Roc, 469, 485, 488 D-Shot, 281 D-Tension, 219, 220 D&D Studios, 112–113 D4L, 469, 472, 491 Da Baddest Bitch (Trina), 600 Da Baydestrian (Mistah F.A.B.), 283 Da Beatminerz, xv, 82, 107–115, 120, 167, 185 ‘‘Da Bomb’’ (Kris Kross), 480 Da Bomb Squad, 184 Da Brat, xxi, 317, 326–327, 347, 470, 480, 508 ‘‘Da Bricks’’ (Redman), 180 ‘‘Da Bridge 200’’ (Nas), xlvi Da Brought I/II/III (Lil Wayne), 537 Da Bulldogs, xli Da Bush Babees, 62 Da Drought 3 (Gillie da Kid), 166 Da Entourage, 524 ‘‘Da Fat Gangsta’’ (Fat Joe), 19, 21 Da Grassroots, 296 Da Hater, 569 Da Hol’ 9, 357 ‘‘Da Jawn’’ (Bahamadia), 160 Da Real World (Missy Elliot), 509 Da REAList (Plies), 600 ‘‘Da Rockwilder’’ (Redman), 228 ‘‘Da Science Hip-Hop Show’’ (radio show), 345 Da Slumpin EP (MCGz), 330 ‘‘Da Squad’’ (Odd Squad), 446 ‘‘Da Train’’ (MC ADE), 584 Dabrye, xlix, 402, 422, 423 Daddy Yankee, 601 Daddy’s Home (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 300 ‘‘Dah Shinin’’’ (Smif-N-Wessun), 107, 108 Daily Plannet, 332, 338

Daiza, Amir, 417 Daley, Mayor Richard, 316, 318 Daley, Slug, 366; See also Slug Dallas Austin, 478, 479, 484 Dallas Austin Recording Projects (D.A.R.P.), 478 Damian Dame, 481 ‘‘Dammit Man’’ (Pitbull), 601 Damon Dash, 92, 163, 164 Damon Dash Music Group, 164 Dan One, 152 Dana Dane, 81, 91 dance, xii; b-boy dance style, xii, xxxiv, 151; b-boy style, xii, xxxiv; Bankhead bounce, 469; in Boston, 198, 199; break dancing, xxxiv, 11, 78, 151, 195, 197, 198, 199, 227, 315–316, 552; buck-jumping, 549, 552, 553, 563; The Campbellock, xxxii, 228; Chicago syltes, 315– 317; electro dance, 404; in Europe, 397; footworkin,’ 317; gangsta walking, 549, 552; ghettotech, 401, 404; hip hop dance, xii, xxxii; jukin,’ 316–317; juking/jukin’/jookin,’ 316–317552–553; ‘‘locking,’’ xxxii, 198, 228; in Los Angeles, 227, 228; in Memphis, 549, 552, 563; ‘‘popping,’’ xxxiv, 198, 228; response to, 539–540; ‘‘thizzle dance,’’ 293; ‘‘throw the dick,’’ 587; violence in, 540–541 dance halls, 527 D’Angelo, 414, 415 Danger Mouse, xxiii, xlvii Dangerous Music, 264 Daniels, Jessie Lee, 118 Danja, 503 Danny Dee Rock, 296 Danny Renee, xxxiv, 474, 484 Danois, Ericka Blount, 47 Dare Iz a Darkside (Redman), 181 ‘‘Dark Skin Girls’’ (Del tha Funkee Homosapien), 270 The Darkest Cloud (Vakill), 331

Index ‘‘Darling Nikki’’ (The Coup), 276 D.A.R.P. (Dallas Austin Recording Projects), 478 Das EFX, xxxviii, 17, 158, 185, 446 Dash, Damon ‘‘Dame,’’ 41, 42 Dat Nigga Daz, 242 DATKID, 178, 181, 183, 184, 186, 191, 192, 193 Dave Ghetto, 168 Davey D, 267, 272 David, Gene, 407 David, Solomon, 303; See also Jumbo the Garbageman Davis, Aaron, 329; See also Charlie-Mack Davis, Aldrin, 476, 492; See also DJ Toomp Davis, Anthony, 366; See also Ant Davis, Daryl, 233; See also Lyrad Davis, Douglass, 35; See also Fresh, Doug E. Davis, Jonathan, 61; See also Q-Tip Davis, Miles, 354 Davis, Radric, 491; See also Gucci Mane Davison, Kahn, 415 Davy DMX (Davy D), xxxv, 48, 77 Day, Wendy, 214, 421 The Day After (Twista), 323 A Day in the Life (JCG and the Dog Pound), 350 ‘‘A Day in the Life’’ (Juice), 331 ‘‘Day with the Homies’’ (1st Down), 419 ‘‘Daydreamin’’’ (Lupe Fiasco), 337 ‘‘Daylight’’ (Brother Ali), 381 Daz, 293 Daz Dillinger, 147 Daze, 98 ‘‘Dazzey Duks’’ (Tony Mercedes), 484, 485, 597 ‘‘Dazzy Duke Down’’ (Clay D), 595 D.B.A., 303 de Barros, Paul, 288 De La Rocha, Zach, 18, 167

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De La Soul, xvi, xxxix, xlii, 23, 61, 62, 110, 112, 157, 168, 247, 294, 301, 345, 414–415 Dead Crunk (DJ Smurf), 485, 488 The Dead Has Arisen (Lil’ Half Dead), 242 ‘‘Dead On It’’ (Prince), 370 Deadlee, 386 Dean, Mike, 443, 445 ‘‘Dear Brooklyn (#5)’’ (Kel Spencer), 79 Death Around the Corner (C-murder), 527, 529 Death Certificate (Ice Cube), 350 Death Row Records, xxi, xxii, xli, 147, 240, 241, 242, 245, 247, 250, 407 Death Wish (movie), 2 Debbie Deb, 583 Decatur (Georgia), 471, 475, 477, 487 Decker, Scott H., 351 ‘‘Dedication to the Suckers’’ (Phat Kat), 419 Dee, 405 deejays. See DJs The Deelee, 480 ‘‘Deep Cover’’ (Dr. Dre), 241 ‘‘Deep Cover’’ (N.W.A.), 158–159 Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia (Abrahams), 228 ‘‘Deep Krate Radio’’ (radio show), 345 ‘‘Deep Rooted’’ (Iomos Marad), 332 ‘‘Deeper’’ (Boss), 406 ‘‘A Deeper Shade of Soul’’ (Urban Dance Squad), xxxix ‘‘Deerty’’ (Nelly), 355 Def American, xxxix, 431, 440 Def IV, 430, 431, 447 Def Jam, Inc.: Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, and the Extraordinary Story of the World’s Most Influential Hip-Hop Label (Gueraseva), 58 Def Jam Records, xxxvi, 36, 40, 52,

655

656

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Index

58, 59, 62, 63, 65, 93, 130, 235, 406, 407, 480, 489, 599 Def Jam South, 442 Def Jam Vendetta (video game), 181 Def Jeff, 200 Def Jux, 366 Def Poetry Jam (TV show), 96 Def Rock, 201, 215, 217 Def Squad, 180 Defalco, Adam, 219; See also DJ Papa D Definite Jux, 24 Definition of Real (Plies), 600 ‘‘Definition’’ (Black Star), 94 Deirdre Roper, 60 Del, 272 Del Mar, Jamaica, 377 Del tha Funkee Homosapien, xliv, 269–270; photo, 269 Delgado, Lino, 198, 199, 200–201; See also Leanski Delicious Venom, 370, 384–385 Delicious Vinyl, xxi, xlii Delite, 364, 365 Dem Franchize Boyz, 469, 480, 491 ‘‘Dem Streetz’’ (The Grind Family), 332 Dennard, Amery, 407; See also Big Herk Dennis, Labrant, 594; See also Ant D Dennis, Willie, 442; See also Willie D Denton, Sandra, 60; See also Pepa DePorres, Duminie, 410 Derelick, 550, 569 Desdamona, 376, 383, 384, 387 Dessa, 382 Destiny’s Child, 190 Detroit (Michigan): 1980–1984, 394– 395; 1984–1990, 395–397; 1991– 1996, 397–401; 1997–2006, 401– 405; clubs, 399–401; 8 Mile Road, 398; female rappers, 405–407; ghettotech, 401, 404; hip hop in, 195–196, 348, 393–423; radio shows, 394–395; Saint Andrew’s

Hall, 417; underground scene, 401 Detroit 4 Life (A.W.O.L.), 410 Detroit Boxx & Step 2, 411 Detroit City Council, 410 Detroit Grand Pubah, 404 ‘‘Detroit Stand Up’’ (video), 406 Detroit’s Most Wanted, 396, 405, 411 Deuce Leader, 168 Deuce Poppito, 600 DeVante DeGrate, 601 Devante Swing, 500, 503, 505, 507 Devastating Dee, 374 Devastator, 589 Devil Without a Cause (MTV), 410 DeVille, Skinny, xliv ‘‘D’evils’’ (Jay-Z), 91 Devil’s Night (D-12), 416 Devin the Dude, 376, 444–446, 449, 452 Devo, 306 Devoux brothers, xxxviii, xxxix Dez, 415 D.G.P., 162 Dia de Loa Muertos (Los Nativos), 385 Diallo, David, ix, xvi, 1, 225 Diamond, 485 Diamond D, xli, 40, 113, 247 Diamond Princess (Trina), 600 ‘‘Diamonds and Wood’’ (UGK), 433 ‘‘Diamonds (from Sierra Leone)’’ (Kanye West), 335 The Diary (Scarface), 441 Dice, 314 Dido, 305 Die. See P. Diddy Diehl, Matt, 353, 355 A Different Mirror (Toki Wright), 381 ‘‘Dig It’’ (The Coup), 275 Digable Planets, xlii, 81, 146, 169, 269 Digga, 40 Diggin’ In the Crates (DITC) Crew, 40 Diggs, Cindy, 213–214, 220, 221 Diggs, Mitchell, 132; See also Divine

Index Diggs, Robert F., 124; See also Prince Rakeem; RZA D.I.G.I.T.A.L. (KRS-One), 18 Digital Underground, xxxviii, 147, 266, 267–268, 272, 273 Dilated Peoples, 107, 247, 250 Dilla. See J Dilla Dillard, Tramar, 601; See also Flo Rida Dimples D, 57 Dimples Tee, 596 Dinero, 81 Dinky, Sugar Rae, xix, xxxvi Diplo, xlvi, 168 Diplomatic Immunity (The Diplomats), xlvii, 42 Diplomatic Immunity 2 (The Diplomats), 42 Diplomatic Records, 42 The Diplomats, xlvii, 41, 42, 165 Dipset, 31, 41, 42 Dirty District (Slum Village), 415 Dirty Dozen. See D-12 Dirty Harriet (Rah Digga), 186 Dirty Harry (movie), 2 ‘‘Dirty South’’ (OutKast), 483 Dis Nigga’s Nutz (Cool Nutz), 303 dis records, xx, xxi, xxxvii, xli Disco & the City Boyz, 598 Disco C, 156 Disco Construction, 232 Disco D, 404 ‘‘Disco Dreams’’ (Mean Machine), xxxv Disco Fever (club), 33, 47 Disco P, 202, 205 Disco Rick, 592, 594 Disco Stompers, 110 ‘‘Discombobulatorlator’’ (Breeze), xxxvi, 144, 154 ‘‘Diseased America’’ (The I.R.M. Crew), 374 DisoBAYish (Messy Mary), 280 Disposable Arts (Masta Ace), xlvi Disturbing tha Peace, 489

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DITC Crew. See Diggin’ In the Crates (DITC) Crew Divine, 132 Divine Sounds, 409 Division Underground, 364 Dixon, Clay, 589; See also Beat Master Clay D; Clay D DJ Active, 201 DJ Aladdin, 231 DJ Assault, 404 DJ B-Mello, 306–307 DJ Baby T, 529 DJ Billy T, 396 DJ Butterfingers, 420 DJ Capital A, 569 DJ Carl, 402 DJ Carlitos, 602 DJ Cash Money, 143, 145, 155, 156 DJ Casper, xxxiv, 317, 318 DJ Charlie Chan Soprano, 345, 347, 350 DJ Cheap Cologne, 382 DJ Chris, 228 DJ Clay D, 589, 595, 597 DJ Code Money, 154 DJ Crash, 584 DJ Crystal C, 197 DJ Culture (Poschardt), 4, 8 DJ Cut Chemist, 234 DJ DATKID, 178, 181, 183, 184, 186, 191, 192, 193 DJ Def Jeff, 206 DJ Def Rock, 201, 215, 217 DJ Dez, 415, 419 DJ Dick, 404 DJ DMD, 451 DJ Dr. Rock, 119, 123 DJ Drama, 148, 490, 491, 492 DJ Duncan Hines, 405, 411 DJ E-Z Rock, xxxix, 38 DJ Easy Lee, 16, 35 DJ Elusive, 379 DJ Emperor, 469, 472, 487 DJ Erv, 529 DJ Evil Dee, 107–115; photo, 108

657

658

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Index

DJ Extraordinaire, 597 DJ Flash, 229 DJ Franky Knuckles, 317, 318 DJ Fury, 594 DJ Geespin, 220 DJ Genuine HI, 611 DJ Gigahurtz, 307 DJ Godfather, 404 DJ Groove, 317, 318 DJ groups, Miami, 586 DJ Headliner, 478 DJ Hollywood, xi, 31, 32, 34–35, 76, 246, 599 DJ Homicide, 410 DJ Irv, 64 DJ Jayceoh, 221 DJ Jazzy Jay, xxxvi, 58, 59 DJ Jazzy Jeff, 143, 144, 145, 147, 155, 156–157, 349, 374; photo, 156 DJ Jerry, 602 DJ Jerry Jay, 201 DJ Johnny T, 111 DJ Jubilee, 530, 534, 538 DJ K-Rock, 83 DJ Kamikaze, 294, 301 DJ Kaos, 185 DJ Kayslay, 346 DJ Khaled, xxiii, xlix, 165, 601–602 DJ Kizzy Rock, 471 DJ Knew Rulz, 168 DJ Koo Koo, 201 DJ Kool Akiem, 365, 366, 375 DJ Kool D, 39 DJ Kut, 345–346, 350 DJ Laz, 582 DJ Len, 477 DJ Lord Jazz, 190 DJ Los, 396, 397, 407 DJ Magic Mike, xxxix, 299, 350, 595, 597 DJ Man, 476, 583 DJ Mark the 45 King, 182, 187 DJ Master Vik, 144, 168 DJ Michael K, 197 DJ Mike, 589

DJ Mikey D, 205 DJ Miz, 155 DJ Mr. Mixx, xxxvii, 584, 585 DJ Mr. Supreme, 293, 296 DJ Muggs, 138, 239 DJ Nasty Nes, xxxiv, 290, 297, 307–308 DJ Observ, 617 DJ On & On, 221 DJ Pam the Funkstress, 274, 377 DJ Papa D, 219 DJ Papa Ron, 399 DJ Patrick John, 620 DJ Paul, 564–566, 573 DJ Polo, 55, 57 DJ Pooh, 269 DJ Premier, xvii, xxxix, 17, 22, 64, 77, 82, 91, 94, 112, 113, 123, 147, 195, 210 DJ Prime, 26, 203 DJ Prince of Charm, 275 DJ Quik, 237, 243, 245, 328, 350 DJ Randy, 39 DJ Raw, xliii DJ Ready, 291 DJ Ready Red, 438, 439 DJ Red Alert, l, 57, 62, 121, 497 DJ Red Eye Jedi, 550, 569 DJ Remix, 435 DJ Rev Shines, 304 DJ Rock, 279 DJ Roy Barboza, 220 DJ Run, Son of Kurtis Blow, 35, 49, 204 DJ Sammy B, 62 DJ Scott La Rock, xxxviii, 13, 16, 57, 117 DJ Scratch, 346 DJ Screw, xlv, 429, 431, 436, 437, 443, 444, 445, 447, 449–452, 453, 458 DJ Scribble, 296 DJ Sense, 491 DJ Shadow, 296 DJ Shortee, 377

Index DJ Slick Vic, 583 DJ Smurf, 475, 476, 485, 488 DJ Soul Finger, 400 DJ Spanish Fly, 563, 565 DJ Spin, 206 DJ Spinderella, 60 DJ Spinna, 109 DJ Styles, 445 DJ Subtraction, 192 DJ Sureshot, 296 DJ T., 226 DJ Too Tuff, 157, 158 DJ Toomp, 476, 492, 588 DJ Ultraviolet, 145 DJ Uncle Al, 577, 580, 582, 595, 597 DJ Unknown, 229, 231, 233 DJ Vicious Lee, 430 DJ Wink D, 595 DJ X-Caliber, 217, 376 DJ Yella, xxxiv, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237 DJs, xiv, xix, xxxiv, 33; bounce, 527; in Chicago, 317; female turntablists, xxxvii; history of, 4–5, 8–9; in Los Angeles, 225, 232; in Memphis, 565; in Miami, 586; in Minneapolis, 364, 369; in New Orleans, 527; in the Northwest, 306–308; in Philadelphia, 143–144; in St. Louis, 345 D.L.B., 305 DMac, 347 DMC, xviii, xxxi, 47, 49, 50, 52, 66– 67, 204, 345 DMC: My Adoption Journey (documentary), 67 DMG, 365, 376 DMW, 397 DMX, 65 ‘‘Do It E-Z’’ (Dev IV), 431 Do or Die, 314, 317, 319, 321, 328, 338 Do or Die: Greatest Hits (Do or Die), 328

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‘‘Do That Shit!’’ (DJ Mike & MC Cool C), 589 ‘‘Do the Bart’’ (2 Live Crew), 591 Do the Right Thing (film), 81 Doap Nixon, 168 The D.O.C., xxi, 237, 238, 240 Doc. Platypus, 619 Doctor’s Advocate (The Game), 249 The Documentary (The Game), 242, 249 D.O.D. (Do or Die), 328 Dodd, Clement, xv; See also Sir Coxsone Doe, Jon, xlvi Dogg Chit (The Dogg Pound), 245 The Dogg Pound, 245 Doggystyle (Snoop Doggy Dogg), 241, 242, 245, 265 Dogmatic, 416 ‘‘Dog’n the Wax’’ (Roger Clayton), 231 The Dogs, 594 The Dogs (The Dogs), 594 Doin Business As (D.B.A.), 303 Doin Time On Earth (Kaos & Mystro), 408 Doin’ What I Gotta Do (Doug E. Fresh), 36–37 Doitall, 190 Dole, Bob, 523 Dolemite, 587–588 ‘‘Dolemite Toast’’ (Rudy Ray Moore), xxxii ‘‘Dollaz and Sense’’ (MCGz), 330 ‘‘Dolly My Baby’’ (Super Cat), 87 Domestik Soulgerz, 214 Dominating MCs, 157 Domino, 281 Don Cartagena (Fat Joe), 21, 22 The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (Tupac Shakur), 243 Don Q, 404 Donald D, xvii Done with Mirrors (Aerosmith), 204

659

660

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Index

Donovan, Kevin, 6, 10; See also Afrika Bambaataa Don’t Cross Me (San Quinn), 279 ‘‘Don’t Give Me No Bammer’’ (RBL), 279 ‘‘Don’t Nobody Care About Us’’ (Phat Kat), 419 Don’t Stop Rappin’ (Sir Too $hort), 262, 263 ‘‘Don’t Treat Your Girl Like a Dog’’ (Wu), 202 ‘‘Dontcha’’ (Pussycat Dolls), 300 Donuts (Jay Dee), 415 Donwill, xxiv Doodlebug, xlii, 146, 169 Doomtree Records, 367, 370, 382 ‘‘Doowhutchyalike’’ (Shock G & Chopmaster J), 267 Dope-E, 449 ‘‘Dope for the Folks’’ (TDS Mob), 206 Dope Girl Posse, 162 Dorsey, Christopher, 535; See also B.G. Double Black Album (Cheap Cologne), 382 Double Def, 201, 206 Double Duce, 595 Doug E. Fresh. See Fresh, Doug E. Dougie Boy, 620 Douglas, Brandon, 491; See also DJ Sense Down By Law (MC Shan), 56 Down South Flavor (Gangsta Blac), 567 Down South Georgia Boyz, 488 Dozia, 169 ‘‘Dr. Bombay’’ (Del tha Funkee Homosapien), 270 Dr. Dre, xx, xxi, xxii, xxxiv, xli, xlii, xlv, 21, 62, 158, 195, 201, 220, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 241–242, 242, 249, 421, 444, 446, 503 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 39, 230 Dr. Jockenstein, xv, 344, 349

Dr. Who Dat, 145 ‘‘Drag ’em ’N’ the River’’ (UNLV), 533 ‘‘Drag Rap’’ (The Show Boys), xxxvii, 529, 550 Dragnet theme music, 530, 533 Drama, l, 488 Drama Entertainment Family, 220 Draper, Tony, 453 Dre, 481 ‘‘Dre Day’’ (Dr. Dre), xx, xlii, 238 ‘‘Dreamchasers’’ (MURS), 234 ‘‘Dreams’’ (The Game), xiii Drip, 314 Drive By of Uh Revolution (Success-N-Effect), 477 ‘‘Drivin’ Me Wild’’ (Common), 325 Droop-E, 281 ‘‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’’ (Pharrell & Snoop Dogg), xlvii, 513, 535 ‘‘Drop the Bass’’ (Magic Mike), 595 Dru Down, 259, 265, 267 drug culture: Bronx, 19, 21; Houston, 436; New Orleans, 541; Queens, 51 drug trafficking, 436 ‘‘Druglord Superstar’’ (MC Lyte), 84 drugs: glorification of, 532; methamphetamines, 617; syrup, 436, 437, 451 ‘‘Drugs’’ (Biggie Smalls), 89 Du Bois, W.E.B., xvi, 148 Du Vernay, Ava, 248 dual geography, 23 dual referential strategy, 14 Dub C, 237, 249 The Dude (Devin the Dude), 446 ‘‘Duffle Bag Boy’’ (music video), 437 Duice, 485, 597 Duke, 569 Duke, George, 273 ‘‘Dukey Stick’’ (George Duke), 273 ‘‘dum da-dum-dum’’ riff, 530, 533 ‘‘Dumb It Down’’ (Lupe Fiasco), 337, 339

Index Dungeon, 481 Dungeon Family, xxii, 481, 483 Dunigan, Ricky, 564; See also Lord Infamous Dunk Ryders Records, 600 Dupri, Jermaine, xxi, 40, 326, 478, 479–480, 484, 503; photo, 479 Durham, Anthony, 474, 589; See also Tony M.F. Rock The Dust Brothers, xxi Dutch, 166 Duttch Mastah, 192 Dutton, Jake, 293; See also Jake One Dwele, 402, 415 DXJ, 584, 596, 597 Dynamix II, 596 Dynasty, 78 The Dynasty: Roc La Famillia (Jay-Z), 165 ‘‘Dynomite (Going Postal)’’ (Rhymefest), 336 The Dynospectrum (I Self Divine), 376 Dyson, Michael Eric, xiii–xiv, xxiii, 433 E-40, 263, 265, 272, 277, 281, 293, 303, 360 E-C Records, 590 E-Roc, 274 E-Spect, 598 E-Street Icehouse, 305 E-Swift, xlii E&A (Eyedea and Abilities), 379 E&A Studios, 379 E.1999 Eternal (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony), 238 ’Ea (Sudden Rush), 613 Eamon, 80 Ear Candy (Funkdaddy), 293 Early Dead, 345 Earwax Records and Tapes, 472 ‘‘Ease Back’’ (Ultramagnetic MCs), 15 East Coast Family, 159

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East Coast/West Coast tensions, xx– xxi, xxii, xli, xliv The East Side Boys, 471 East St. Louis, 351, 354 The Eastside Boyz, 370, 476, 487 Easy Gee, 33 Easy Lee, 16, 35, 470 Easy Mo Bee, 55, 111 Eat Out More Often (Rudy Ray Moore), xxxii Eaton, Al, 264, 267, 279; See also Baby Jesus Eazy Duz It (MC Ren), 237 Eazy-E, xx, xlii, xliii, 38, 154, 195, 213, 234, 235, 236–237, 238, 240, 242, 245, 298 Eboni and Her Business, 405 ‘‘Ebonics’’ (Big L), 40 Ebony Eyez, 347, 358, 359 ECD, xi The Ecstasy garage (Bronx), 5 Ed O.G., viii, xli, xlvii, xlvii, 195, 207, 211, 215, 219–220, 221; photo, 208 Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs, 211–212 Edan and the Porn Theater, 218 Eddie Cheeba, xi, 31, 32, 33, 75 Eddie F. All, 346 EDGP, 162 Edmonds, Kenneth B., 480–481; See also Babyface Educated Guess, 617 Edutainment (BDP), 17 Edwards, Terrence, 594 Eerk & Jerk, 579 Eeyeaya (Contac), 370 Effect Records, 476, 589 Efil4zaggin (N.W.A.), 238 E.G., 329 ‘‘Ego Trippin’’’ (Ultramagnetic MCs), 15 ‘‘Egypt, Egypt’’ (Egyptian Lover), 235 Egyptian Lover, 227, 229, 230, 231, 235 ‘‘E.I.’’ (Matt Diehl), 355

661

662

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Index

‘‘8 Ball’’ (Eazy-E), 298 8 Ball & MJG, 453 8 Diagrams (Wu-Tang Clan), 135 8 Mile (film), xxv, 367, 393, 406, 420 8 Mile Chronicles (Dogmatic), 398, 416 ‘‘8 Mile Road’’ (Dogmatic), 398 8 Mile Skoneys (gang), 398 808s & Heartbreak (Kanye West), 336 Eightball, xlii, 549, 550, 559, 560, 564, 565, 566, 567, 569, 570, 573; photo, 560 84 (artist), 168 80 Blocks from Tiffany’s (Weis), 2 EKG Records, 598 Eklipz, 377, 378 El Arco Iris, 384 El Che (Rhymefest), 336 El da Sensei, 184, 185 el-Hakim, Khalid, 416 El Mariel (Pitbull), 601 El Nino (Def Squad), 180 El-P Records, 247, 374, 379 Elam, Keith, 195, 205; See also Guru Elba, Eldris, 96 Electric Boogaloo (film), xxxiv, 227, 228, 231 Electric Circus (Common), 325 Electrifying Mojo, 394, 395, 397, 418 electro dance, 404 electro-funk, 199, 239 electro-rap, 232, 233, 239, 393, 593 Elektra Records, 131, 270, 515 The Element of Surprise (E-40), 293 ‘‘Elevators (Me and You),’’ 482 Elf4zaggin (N.W.A.), xx, 158 ‘‘Eliminator’’ (Raheem the Dream), 476 Elisra, Akiem, 365; See also DJ Kool Akiem Elliot, Melissa, 504; See also Missy Elliot Ellis, David, 365, 370, 375; See also T.C.

Ellis, Joseph, 154, 155; See also MC Breeze Eloquent Peasants, 366 Elvis Manuel, 602 Elzhi, 415 Em-N-Em, 594 EMC3 Crew, 201 The Emerald Street Boys, 290, 297, 300, 307 The Emerald Street Girls, 290, 308 Emeritus (Scarface), 441, 456 Emily Bloodmobile, 370, 382 Eminem, xvii, xxiii, xxv, xliv, xlv, xlvii, 85, 95, 107, 190, 191, 196, 220, 226, 249, 330, 348, 367, 393, 394, 400, 401, 403, 410, 411, 412, 416, 419–421, 509; photo, 420 Eminem AKA (documentary), 419 Emo E, 200, 201, 205 emo-rap, 371 ‘‘Emotions’’ (Twista), 322 Empee, 569 Emperor, 469, 472, 487 The Emperor and the Assassin (I Self Divine & Akiem), 375 Empire Roller Rink, 114 Emynd, 382 ‘‘Encoded Flow,’’ 422 Encore, 271 The Encore (club), 49, 50 The End (DJ Paul & Juicy J), 566 ‘‘End of Days’’ (Vakill), 331 Enem, 152 ‘‘The Enemy’’ (DITC), 40 England, hip hop in, xviii, xix, 397 Enigma Records, 306 Enjoy Records, 35 Ennis, Antonio, 200, 220; See also Emo E ‘‘Enquiring Minds’’ (Gangsta Boo), 566 Enquiring Minds (Gangsta Boo), 567 Enta da Stage (Black Moon), xlii, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113

Index Enter the 36th Chamber (Wu-Tang Clan), xlii, 17 Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (Wu-Tang Clan), 128, 129–130, 135 EP (Digital Underground), 268 Epic Records, 42 Epitaph Records, 276 EPMD, 110, 180 Epps, Linda Caldwell, 178–179 Equinox, 168 Eric B., xxxviii, 37 Erykah Badu, 160, 325, 415 ESG, 444, 446, 450, 451 Esham, 394, 396, 397, 401, 406, 411–413 Esoteric, 195, 214, 218, 219, 220 The Essential Traum Diggs Mixtape (Traum Diggs), xxiii, 168 Ethel Cee, 145 Etheridge, Mario, 418 Evans, Barry Slim, 166–167 Evans, Faith, 87, 90 Eve, 145, 146–147, 162; photo, 163 Eve (sitcom), 162 The Eve After Dark (club), 232–233 Eve-Olution (Eve), 162 ‘‘Ever So Clear’’ (Bushwick Bill), 432 Everlast, 231 ‘‘Every Breath You Take’’ (The Police), 90 ‘‘Everybody Say Yeah’’ (Le Juan Love), 588 ‘‘Everyday I Wait’’ (Breed), l Everyday Reality (Piccalo), 598 Eve’s After Dark Club, xxxiv Evil E, 231 ‘‘Exclusivity’’ (Damian Dame), 481 ‘‘Execution Style’’ (T-Max), 215 Executive Playhouse (club), 6 Expansion Team (Dilated Peoples), 247 Expansions + Contradictions (Psoems 1:1) (TruthMaze), 375 Explicit Game (Dru Down), 265

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Explosive Mode (San Quinn & Messy Mary), 280 Extreme, 366 ‘‘extreme local,’’ 14, 22 Eyedea, 24, 366, 378, 381 Eyedea and Abilities, 371, 372, 378, 379, 385 ‘‘Eyes Are the Soul’’ (MC Lyte), 84 ‘‘Eyes of my Father’’ (Reef the Lost Cauze), 168 Eyes on This (MC Lyte), 83, 84 E.Z. B, 396, 397, 407 ‘‘Ez Duz It, Do It Ez’’ (Heavy D & Boyz), 431 ‘‘F**K It. I don’t want you back’’ (Eamon), 80 ‘‘Fa Al Y’all’’ (Da Brat), 326 ‘‘Fa Sho’’ (Devin the Dude), 446 F.A.B. See Mistah F.A.B. Fab Five Freddy, xi, 98 Fabara, Sandra, xxxv, 202; See also Pink Facemob, 376, 446 Fadanuf Fa Erybody (Odd Squad), 445, 446 Faith, xxii False Hopes series, 382 ‘‘Falsifyin’’’ (Paul Wall & Chamillionaire), 435 family businesses, 80, 118 Family Funktion (club), 399 The Family Tree, 332 Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 1 (Slum Village), 401, 414 Fan-Tas-Tic Vol. 2 (Slum Village), 414 Fanmail (TLC), 481 Fanon, Frantz, 258, 539, 540 The Fantasia (club), 49, 50 Fantastic Damage (Abilities), 379 Fantastic Five, 11 Fantastic L.D.s, 118–119 ‘‘Fantasy’’ (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), 136 Farrakhan, Louis, 166 Farrow Black, 364

663

664

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Index

Fasion, Azie ‘‘AZ,’’ 37 The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift (Lifesavas), 305 Fat Beats, 366 Fat Boys, 75, 81, 110 Fat Cat, 50 Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip-Hop Hustler (Brown), 51 ‘‘Fat Cats, Bigga Fish’’ (The Coup), 275 Fat Joe, xliii, 15, 17, 18–22, 40, 67, 525 Fat Joe’s Halftime, 21 Fat Pat, xlv, 435, 436, 438, 450, 451 fatalism, 432 The Fatback Band, 33–34, 76 Fatback Band, xxxiii, 409 ‘‘Father of the Year’’ (Creed Chameleon), 617 Fathom 9, 569 Faulkner, Daniel, 150 ‘‘Fear Not of Man’’ (Fela Kuti), 94 Fear of a Black Planet (Public Enemy), xl Fearless Four, 47 Feast or Famine (Reef the Lost Cauze), 168 Fee, 217 Feedback (Jurassic 5), 247 ‘‘Feel Like Funkin’ It Up’’ (Rebirth), 526 ‘‘Feel the Heartbeat’’ (The Treacherous Three), 35 ‘‘Feel the New Heartbeat’’ (BDP), 16 Fela Kuti, 94 Felicia Loud, 294 Felix, 380 Felix, Brian, 330 Felix & Jarvis, 395 ‘‘Felon Sneakers’’ (Run DMC), 16 Felt, 374 female emcees, 83, 144, 162, 182, 191 ‘‘Female Funk’’ (Sir Too $hort), 262 female rappers, xxxiii, 145, 153, 162,

182, 191, 197, 326, 333, 377, 383, 384, 396, 405–407, 456, 457, 480, 488, 594 female turntablists, xxxvii ‘‘The Feminine Voice in Hip Hop’’ (Blackman), 99 feminism, 82 Fenderella, 478 ‘‘Fenkell Strip’’ (Detroit’s Most Wanted), 411 Ferguson, Sam, 598 Fernando, S.H., 1, 2, 11 ‘‘Fever’’ (Rhymefest), 336 Fiddler, Joseph, 413; See also Amp Field Mob, 470 The Fifth Element, 367 50 Cent, xlvi, 22, 40, 61, 65, 67, 137, 249, 294, 335, 404, 421, 503 50/50 Twin, 455 53 Chambers of Danger (MCGz), 329 Figga 4 Life Entertainment, 166 Figgas 4 Life (Major Figgas), 166 Fight Club, 401 ‘‘Fight Club’’ (M.O.P.), 22 The Final Tic (Crucial Conflict), 327 Finally (Abilities), 379 ‘‘Find Out’’ (Armageddon), 22 Finding Forever (Common), 325 Fine, Stu, 123, 124 Fingers, 404 Firehouse Studios, 129 First Avenue Club, xli First Born (Eyedea and Abilities), 379 1st Down, 414, 419 The 1st Edition (IMC), 569 The 1st Lady Bianca, 166 1st Lady Mecca, 192, 193 first-person ghetto narratives, 15 first-person stories, xiv First Priority, 80 First Round Knock-Out (World Class Wreckin’ Cru), 233 Fishbone, 305 Fisher, Rashiya, 185; See also Rah Digga

Index Fishscale (Ghostface Killah), 137 Fishscales, xliv Fitzgerald, Ella, 32 ‘‘The Five Boroughs is Back’’ (LL Cool J), xxiii 5ELA, 416, 418 5-Elementz, 415 Five Fingers of Funk, 305 500 Degreez (Lil Wayne), 537 ‘‘Five Line King’’ (Brother Ali), 369 Five Percent Nation, 55, 383 5 O’Clock (Nonchalant), xliv 5 Pointz, 67 ‘‘Fix It in the Mix’’ (Pretty Tony), 583 Fixx, Tori, 385–386 Flamboyant Entertainment, 40 ‘‘Flamethrower Rap,’’ 395 Flash, 314 ‘‘Flashlight’’ (P-Funk), 396 ‘‘Flava in Ya Ear,’’ 87 Flavor Unit, 182 Flavor Unit Records and Management, 183, 184 Fleetwood, Kevin, xxxv, 196–197, 202 Flenory, Demetrius, 491; See also Big Meech Flint (Michigan), hip hop in, 397 Flipmode Imperial (Flipmode Squad), 185 Flipmode Squad, 22, 85, 86, 185 Flo Rida, 601 The Floorlords, 195, 198, 199, 200, 207 ‘‘Flow Joe’’ (Fat Joe), 18 Fludd, Jeff, 49 Fluent, 402 Fluid (club), 144, 167 Fluky Luke, xxxii Fly Shit (Playa Fly), 567 ‘‘The Focus is Back’’ (Lyrical), 221 Folks Music (Mars Black), xlviii Food & Liquor (Lupe Fiasco), 337 Food Stamp Boys, 407 Foolish (film), 532 footworkin,’ 317

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‘‘For Da Low’’ (Rick Ross), 582 . . .For Persons with DJ Abilities (Abilities), 379 For Tha Streetz Vol. 2 (CCA), 329 ‘‘For the Record’’ (Abstract Pack), 378 ‘‘For You/Just One Rhyme’’ (Pete Miser), 305 The Force, 34, 49, 206 The Force L.D.’s, 137 The Force MCs, xxxiv, 114, 119, 120, 121 The Force MDs, ix, xxxiv, 114, 117, 118, 119, 121–123, 130, 137; photo, 120 Force of the Imperial Master, 124 Ford, Harold E., 557 Foreign Exchange, xxiv, xlvii ‘‘Forgive Me, Girl’’ (Mr. Magic), 121 Forman, Murray, viii, ix, xiv, 10, 12, 13, 14, 22 Fort Apache: The Bronx (movie), 2 ‘‘40 Acres and a Mule’’ (Success-N-Effect), 478 40 Cal, 42 40/40 Club, 93 Foster, Herbert Ford, IV, 377; See also Sess Foster, Pacey, xvi, 195 Found Sound Recording, 169 The Foundation, 408 Foundation Movement, 221 The Founding Fathers, 24–25 4 Fathers, 411 400 Degreez (Juvenile), xlv, 534, 537 4-Mil Productions, 191 4-Sight Records, xxxvi, 476, 529, 583–584, 597 4Peace, 220, 221 Fourth Dimensional Rocket Going Up (Vitamin D), 301 4th Disciple, 134 Foxx, Jamie, 323, 335 Foxy Brown, 21, 75, 81, 83, 93, 162

665

666

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Index

Frank ’n Dank, 403, 415 Franky Knuckles, 317, 318 Frayser Boy, 573 Frazier, Adonis D., 381 Frazier, Kelly, 403; See also K-Fresh Freak for Life (Luther Campbell), 592 Freak Nasty, 470 Freaknik, 472, 473 ‘‘Freaks Come out at Night’’ (music video), 479 Freddy B, 110, 261 Freddy Fresh, 364 Free, 569 Free Agent (Ric Jilla), 332 Free at Last (Freeway), 165 ‘‘Free C-Mack’’ (CCA), 329 ‘‘Free Mumia’’ movement, 150 Free Sol, 569, 573 Free Speech and Headlight of Memphis, 555, 556 freedom of expression, 590; See also censorship; obscenity Freeky Zeeky, 41, 42 Freeman, Bernard, 443; See also Bun B Freeman, Charles, 590 Freestyle (Freestyle Express), 583 Freestyle Express, 583 The Freestyle Fellowship, 246, 247, 248 ‘‘freestyle’’ genre, 583 Freestyle Union (FSU), 99 Freeway, 145, 162, 164, 165 Fresh, Doug E., xv, xvii, xxxi, xxxvii, 15, 35–37, 38, 39, 60, 118, 201; photo, 36 Fresh Beat Force, 201 Fresh Beat Records, 585 Fresh Celeste, 594 Fresh Fest, 409, 418, 479 Fresh 4 Crew, 409 Fresh Kid Ice, xxxvii, 584, 585 The Fresh MC, 202, 205 The Fresh Prince, 143, 144, 145, 156–

157, 158, 374; photo, 156; See also Smith, Will The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (TV show), 143, 157 Fresh to Impress Crew, 202, 211 Fresh Tracks (radio show), xxxiv, 290, 297, 307 Fresh Traditions, 385 The Freshest Kids (documentary), xi ‘‘Friend or Foe’’ (Jay-Z), 91 Frills Records, 474 From Hucklebuck to Hip-Hop: Social Dance in the African American Community in Philadelphia (Roberts), 148–149 ‘‘Front Street’’ (1st Down), 419 Frost Bee, 201 ‘‘Fruit Basket’’ (UMCs), 123 Fruits of Nature (UMCs), xli, 123 Frusciante, John, 137 FS Music, 383 FTI Crew, 202, 205, 207 ‘‘Fuck a Perm’’ (The Coup), 275 ‘‘Fuck Compton’’ (Tim Dog), xx, xli, 244–245 ‘‘Fuck Martinez’’ (2 Live Crew), 591 ‘‘Fuck tha Police’’ (N.W.A.), 477 ‘‘Fuck the South Bronx/This Is Compton’’ (Tweedy Bird Loc), xx, xli, 245 ‘‘Fuck You’’ (Dr. Dre), 446 ‘‘Fuck You Lucy’’ (Slug), 373 ‘‘Fuckin’ Backstabber’’ (M&M), 420 ‘‘Fugee-La’’ (The Fugees), 190 The Fugees, 186, 188–190, 598 Full Clip (film), 85 Full Effect, 317 Fulton Street Mall, 61 Fundamentalist, 376 Funk Brothers, 407 Funk Daddy Is Tha Source (Funkdaddy), 293 Funk Doctor Spock, 180; See also Redman Funk Effects, 198, 207

Index ‘‘Funk for the Folks’’ (Soul Searchers), 206 funk-rap, 264 Funk U Right on Up (Funkdaddy), 293 Funkdaddy, 291–293, 301 ‘‘Funkdafied’’ (Da Brat), 326 Funkdafied (Da Brat), xxi, 326, 397, 480 Funkdoobiest, xliii, 190 ‘‘Funkin for Jamaica’’ (Tom Browne), 49 Funky Bunch, 207, 210 Funky Four Plus One More, xxxiii, 114 Funky Fresh Jazz, 297 Funky Fresh Records, 207, 215, 216 Funky Technician (Lord Finesse & Mike Smooth), xl ‘‘Funky’’ (Ultramagnetic MCs), 15 ‘‘Funkytown’’ (Unicus), 370 Furious Five, xix, 11, 18, 24, 47, 233, 318 Furius ‘‘Iceman’’ Stylz, 345 Furtado, Nelly, 499, 503 Future Development (Del tha Funkee Homosapien), 270 Future Records Recording Studio, 519 Future Rhythm (Digital Underground), 272 Fyte Club, 569 ‘‘G-Code’’ (Scarface), 434 G-funk, 17, 241, 242, 243, 245, 265, 444 G-Hop, 192 G. Love & Special Sauce, 212–213 G-Stack, 259 G-Unit Records, 67, 137 G. Wiz, 345 G-Wiz, 349 Gagne, Josh, 219; See also Truth Elemental Gale, Trevor, 48 Gallo, 395 Gambino crime family, 131, 135

Gamble, Kenneth, 149 The Game, ix, xiii, 242, 249 ‘‘The Game’’ (Common), 325 ‘‘Game Over’’ (Dabrye), 422 ‘‘Game Recognize Game’’ (Mac Mall), 279 Game Recordings, 421 The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip Hop (Gaunt), xvii gang culture. See street gang culture gangbanging culture, 231 ‘‘Gangsta’’ (Motion), 217 gangsta anthem, 236 ‘‘Gangsta Birch’’ (video), 188 Gangsta Blac, 564, 567 Gangsta Boo, 564, 565, 566, 567 gangsta-funk, 241 Gangsta Grillz (DJ Drama), 148, 490 Gangsta Grillz: The Album, 492 Gangsta Grillz series, 490, 491 Gangsta N-I-P, 429, 447–448 Gangsta Pat, xli, 559 gangsta/pimp persona, 228, 229 gangsta rap, xx, xxxviii, 19, 20, 22, 128, 144, 145, 153, 195, 231, 237, 238, 245, 294, 314, 319–320, 351, 441, 467, 477, 490, 502, 523, 531, 532, 538, 549 gangsta walking, 549, 552 Gang Starr, xvii, xxxviii, xxxix, 81, 82, 123, 147, 195, 199, 210, 211, 345, 365, 400, 442 ‘‘Gangster Boogie’’ (Schoolly D), xxxv, 153 ‘‘Gangster Funk’’ (Prince Vince), xxxix, 396 gangsterism, 323 The Gap Band, 307 Garcia, Adam, 168 Garcia, Bobbito, 62–63, 153 Garden State (film), 137 Garvey, Marcus, 94 Garvin, Foster, 319

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667

668

|

Index

Gary (Indiana): hip hop in, 329, 332; overview, 313; violence, 321–322 Gaskin, Charles, 109 ‘‘Gasolina’’ (Pitbull), 601 Gaspard, Eddie, 524 Gates, Daryl, 477 Gates, Gentleman Jim, 343–344 Gates, Henry Louis, xv, 591 Gaunt, Kyra D., xvii Gaye, Marvin, 90 Gee Street Independent, 37 Geechi Suede, 23 Geffen Records, 62, 131 Gene Poole, 376 General MacArthur, 569 The Genius, 124, 125; See also GZA Genocide and Juice (The Coup), 275–276 Gentleman Jim Gates, xiv, xxxiii George, Nelson, 81 ‘‘Georgia’’ (Kilo), 477 ‘‘Georgia (Bush)’’ (Lil Wayne), xlviii, 538, 543 German, Ervin, xxxvi, 583; See also M.C. Chief Get Crunk, Who U Wit—Da Album (Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz), 476, 487 ‘‘Get Down on da Ground’’ (Gillie Da Kid), 166 ‘‘Get ’Em Up’’ (Disco & the City Boyz), 598 ‘‘Get Fly’’ (Atmosphere), 374 ‘‘Get Fresh’’ (St. Paul Slim), 383 Get Fresh Crew, xxxvii, 36; photo, 36 Get Fresh Girls, 594, 597 Get in Where You Fit in (Sir Too $hort), 266 ‘‘Get It Girl’’ (2 Live Crew), 405 ‘‘Get It Wet’’ (Twista), 322 ‘‘Get Low’’ (Lil Jon), 488 Get Low Playaz, 279 Get Low Recordz, 279 ‘‘Get Me’’ (Twista), 323

‘‘Get Money’’ (Biggie Smalls), 89 ‘‘Get Plugged’’ (Rhymefest), 336 Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (50 Cent), xlvi, 67 ‘‘Get Silly’’ (V.I.C.), 491 ‘‘Get Tha Fortune’’ (video), 64 Get That Paper (Do or Die), 328 ‘‘Get the Hell On With That’’ (Ludacris), 22 ‘‘Get Ur Freak On’’ (Missy Elliot), 509 ‘‘Get Ya Hustle On’’ (video), 543 Get Ya Mind Correct (Color Changin’ Click), xlvi Get Ya Mind Correct (Paul Wall), 454 Geter, Jason, 490 The Geto Boys, xxi, xxxvii, xxxix, xliv, 365, 376, 401, 405, 412, 429, 430, 431, 432, 438–440, 442, 449, 456, 549; photo, 439; See also Ghetto Boys The Geto Boys (Geto Boys), 440 Getsug, Aaron, 330 ‘‘Gettin’ Some’’ (Shawnna), 333 GGC (Graffiti Groove Crew), 314 Ghana, 384 Ghet-O-Vision Records, 484, 490 ghetto: community of multiple ghettoes, 20; first-person ghetto narratives, 15; glorified in hip hop, xiii–xiv, 14; inter-ghetto deeprootedness, 23; representations of, 23; symbolic community of, 14; See also gangsta rap ‘‘The Ghetto’’ (radio show), 205 ‘‘The Ghetto’’ (Sir Too $hort), 264 ghetto anthems, 242 Ghetto Boys, 430, 436, 438; See also Geto Boys The Ghetto Children, 301 Ghetto D (Masta P), 532 ghetto-funk, 407 ‘‘Ghetto Love’’ (Da Brat), 326 Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop (BDP), 16

Index ‘‘Ghetto Style’’ (Anquette), 588 Ghetto Style DJs, 586 ‘‘Ghetto Style with the 2 Live Crew’’ (2 Live Crew), 587 ghettocentrism, 23 ghettotech, 401, 404 Ghetty Green (Project Pat), 566, 567 Gholz, Carleton S., 393 Ghormley, H. Warren, 292 Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai (film), 134 Ghost Town DJs, 485 Ghostface Killah, 125, 126, 130, 132, 135, 137 Ghostface Meets MF (Mos Def), 95 Ghostly International, 422, 423 Gibson, Jack, 470; See also Jockey Gift of Gab, 294, 301 Gigolo Tony, xxxvii, 476, 583, 584 Giles, Cameron ‘‘Killa Cam,’’ 40; See also Cam’ron Gillespie, Brian, 399, 404, 419 Gillespie, Dizzy, 149 Gillie, 538 Gillie da Kid, 145–146, 162, 166 Gilroy, Paul, xvi Ginuwine, 22, 498, 500 Ginuwine the Bachelor (Ginuwine), 498, 500 Gipp, Cameron, 483; See also Big Gipp Girard Ivory, 402 ‘‘Girl (That’s Your Life)’’ (Sir Too $hort), 263, 264 ‘‘Girl Tonight’’ (Twista), 323 ‘‘Girlfriend’s Story’’ (MC Lyte), 83 ‘‘Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble’’ (DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince), 156, 157, 374 ‘‘Girls, Girls, Girls’’ (Jay-Z), 93 Git Wit da Program (Kilo), 477 ‘‘Give It Up or Turn it Loose’’ (James Brown), 78 ‘‘Give Me a Bottle’’ (Clay D), 595 Gizmo, 80, 109, 314

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‘‘Glad 2 B Alive’’ (Huey), 353 Glamorest Life (Trina), 600 Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop Outside the USA (Mitchell), xix Globus, Yoram, 228 glocality, xviii Glorius L, 377, 378 The Glove, 226, 228, 230, 232 Glover, Titus, 413; See also Baatin Gnarlz Barkley, xxiii, 483 ‘‘Go!’’ (Common), 325 ‘‘Go Brooklyn’’ (Stetsasonic), 79 ‘‘Go DJ’’ (Lil Wayne), 535 ‘‘Go for It’’ (MC Breeze), 155 Go-Go, 346, 417 Go Ladies (Joey Boy), 595 ‘‘Go on Girl’’ (Roxanne Shante), 56 ‘‘Go See the Doctor’’ (Kool Moe Dee), 16 Goapele, 271 The Goats, xvii, 159 ‘‘God Bless the Dead’’ (Tupac Shakur), 90 God Complex, 214 ‘‘God Said Lyte’’ (MC Lyte), 84 Godfather, 345 The Godfather Chronicles (documentary), 404 Godfather D (club), 192 Godfather of Latin rap, 239 Godlovesugly (Atmosphere), 372 Goerge, Nelson, 7–8 Goines, Donald, 2 Golan, Menahem, 228 ‘‘Gold Digger’’ (Kanye West), 335 Gold Star Records, 583 Golden Boys, 334 Golden Child, 598 Golden Grain (Disturbing Tha Peace), 489 Goldstein, Pamela E., 179 Gomez, Nick, 179 Gonzalez, Judge Jose, 590 Good Life Cafe´, 246, 247, 248 ‘‘Good Love’’ (Johnnie Taylor), 566

669

670

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Index

Good Side Bad Side (Crucial Conflict), 327 ‘‘Good Stuff,’’ 566 Goode, Mayor Wilson, 150, 152 Gooden, Lolita Shante, 55; See also Shante, Roxanne Goodie Mob, xxii, 469, 481, 483, 486, 600 Gooding, Jr., Cuba, 227 Goodvibe, 414 Goodwin, Marlon Jermaine, 560; See also MJG Gordon, Scott, 417; See also Go-Go Gorilla Tek, 601 Gorilla Zoe, 337 Got to Be Tough (MC Shy D), 476, 588 ‘‘Got Your Money’’ (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), 512, 513 ‘‘Gotta Thing for You’’ (Da Brat), 327 Graduate (Kanye West), 334 Graduation (Kanye West), 65, 315 Grae, Jean, xxiii graffiti: in Chicago, xxxiii, 313, 314– 315, 316chirp scratch, 144; 5 Pointz, 67; in New York City, xxxii, xxxv, 78in Newark, 184; in Philadelphia, xi, xii, xvi, xxxi, xxxii, 144, 151–152Philadelphia style, 151–152; transform scratch, 144 Graffiti Bridge (film), 375 Graffiti Groove Crew (GGC), 314 Graham, Brian V., 594; See also Rx Lord Graham Central Station, 267 Grama, Douglas, 113 Grand Champion (Kizzy Rock), 485 Grand Hustle, 492 Grand Slam, 109 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (video game), 121 Grandmaster Caz, xii, xiv, xlvi, 3, 5, 6, 42, 55, 77 Grandmaster D.S.T., 226

Grandmaster Flash, xv, xvii, xxxi, 1–2, 6, 8–9, 10, 18, 24, 34, 47, 51, 155, 197, 225, 233, 300, 318, 349, 364; photo, 6 Grandmaster Flowers, xxxii, 77, 109 Grandmaster Lonzo, 232–233, 233 Grandmaster Melle Mel, xix Grandmaster Nell, 143 Grandmasters (GZA), 138 Grandwizard Theodore, 18, 155 Grant, Anthony, 218; See also Cool Gzus Grant, Dwight, 163; See also Beanie Sigel Grant Hustle Records, 490 Grant, Oli, 132; See also Power Gravediggaz, 131 ‘‘Gravel Pit’’ (RZA), 135 Grayskul, 372 The Great Adventures of Slick Rick (Slick Rick), 15, 36 ‘‘Great Lakes Remix’’ (MCGz), 329, 330 Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion Church, 42 The Greatest Beats, 197 Greatest Hits (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony), 238 ‘‘Green Island’’ (Redman), 181 Greenberg, Stephen, 370 Greene, Alfonzo, 377; See also Knowledge MC Greene, Pamela, 60; See also DJ Spinderella The Greenhouse Effect (Don Cannon & DJ Drama), 148 The Greenhouse Effect, Volume 1 (Asher Roth), l Gregory, Dick, xviii Gregory D, 529 Gresham, Renaro, 583; See also Renard with no Regard Grey, Jean, 387 The Grey Album (Danger Mouse), xlvii

Index Grey, Terius, 528, 533; See also Juvenile Grice, Gary, 124; See also The Genius; GZA Griffey, Dick, 240–241 Griffey, Ken, Jr., 302 Griffin, Eric, 582, 594, 596; See also Never Stop Griffin, Richard, 589; See also Professor Griff Griffith, Ellen, 59 Griffith, Eugene, 59 grillz movement, 358 ‘‘Grillz’’ (Nelly), 455 Grimm, M.F., xvi The Grind Family, 332, 338 ‘‘Grindin’’ (The Neptunes), 516 G(riot), 332 Grip It! On That Other Level (Geto Boys), xxxix, 431, 439, 440 Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast (Kid Rock), xl, 410 Grossman, Mel, 590 Ground Control Records, 330 Grunge music, 287, 290 Gucci, 595 Gucci Crew II, 595 Gucci Mane, 471, 491 ‘‘Gucci Time’’ (Schoolly D), 154 Guce, 280 Gueraseva, Stacy, 58 ‘‘Guerrila Funk’’ (Paris), 273 Guerrilla Funk Records, 263, 273 Guilty Simpson, 403, 422 Guru, xvii, xxxviii, xxxix, 82, 147, 160, 195, 199, 203, 210 Guthrie, Talbot, 305 Gutterfly: The Original Soundtrack (Lifesavas), 305 Guy, 38, 39 Guy, Rashawnna, 333; See also Shawnna ‘‘Guys Ain’t Nothing but Trouble’’ (Ice Cream Tee), 157 Guzman, David, 227

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Gwen Stefani, 162 GZA, ix, 112, 124, 125, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134, 138, 381; See also Allah Justice; The Genius ‘‘H-Nigga Groove (Keep a Bitch Broke)’’ (Hugh-EMC), 279 The H Project, 385 Hack Tao, xvii, 159 Hager, Steven, 8 Haiku, Kahokule’a, xlvi, 620; See also Hoku ‘‘Hail Mary,’’ 455 Hairston, Orvell, 218; See also Big Man the Terror Haitian community, 597–598 ‘‘Half-Cocked Concepts’’ (P.O.S.), 370 Half Pint, 594, 595 Hall, B., 246 Hall, Marcel, 55, 56; See also Biz Markie Hall, Nathaniel, 62, 81; See also Afrika Baby Bam Hall, Patrick, 559; See also Gangsta Pat Hall, Willie, 559 Hamilton, Charles, 42 Hamilton, John, 584; See also Iceman J Hammad, Suheir, 88 Hammond, Tommy, 589 Hampton, Michael, 595; See also Magic Mike Hampton Roads (Virginia): high school bands, 496, 497; hip hop in, 495–520 hamster style, 9 ‘‘Hand of the Dead Body’’ (Scarface), 441, 442 ‘‘Hands Up’’ (T-Boz), 486 Handy, W.C., 556 ‘‘Hanky Panky’’ (Tommy James and the Shondells), 584 Hard Boyz, 477

671

672

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Index

Hard Knock Life, Vol. 2 (Jay-Z), 92 Hard to Earn (Phat Kat), 419 ‘‘Hardcore’’ (EPMD), 180 Hardcore (Lil’ Kim), 89 hardcore rap, 412, 445 Hardnett, Wayne, 488; See also Bone Crusher Hardy, Antonio, 55; See also Big Daddy Kane Hardy, Ron, 318 Hargrove, Xavier, 485 Harlem (New York): 1990s, 38–41; 2000 and beyond, 41–43; early years of hip hop, 33–37; hip hop in, 12, 31–43; late 1980s and the Crack Era, 37–38 Harlem World (club), 38, 39 Harlem World (Mase), 40 Harmon, Brian, 409, 420; See also Champtown Harper, Ron, 317 Harrell, Andre, 39, 497; See also Dr. Jekyll Harris, Clifford, 469, 484; See also T.I.; Tip Harris, Courtney, 564; See also Gangsta Blac Harris, Derek, 134, 599; See also DJ Hollywood; True Master Harris, James, 409; See also The Blackman Harris, Jason, 569; See also Da Hater Harris, Michael, 241 Harris, Shawntae, xxi, 326, 480; See also Da Brat Harris, William, 365; See also TruthMaze Harry O, 241 Harsh Game for the People (Cool Nutz), 303 Hassan (Hass G), xix, xxxvii, 123, 135, 137 Hate, 314 ‘‘Hav’’ (Crucial Conflict), 327

‘‘Have a Nice Day’’ (Roxanne Shante), 56 Havoc, 68, 112 Hawai’i: fashion in, 612; hip hop in, xlii, xlvi, 605–623; history of, 607, 609, 616; illegal annexation of, 607, 609; ‘‘local’’ vs. ‘‘haole,’’ 616; methamphetamines, 617, 618; overview, 606; pidgin, 606, 608, 620; radio in, 609, 611, 620; rapping in Hawai’ian, 613; surfing, 621, 622; underground hip hop, 609, 611–612 Hawai’ian Sovereignty Movement, 607, 609 Hawkins, Lamont, 126; See also U-God Hawtin, Richie, 417; See also Plastikman Haynes, Cornell, Jr., 343; See also Nelly HBO Crew, 198 ‘‘Head, Head and More Head’’ (2 Live Crew), 592 Headkrack, 41 HeadQcourterz Studios, 82, 113 Headshots collective, 168, 366, 372, 378 Headshots series, xlii, 366, 374, 377, 385 Headspin, 368 Headz or Tailz (Do or Die), 328 ‘‘Hear What I Hear’’ (Kilo), 477 Heard, Larry, 318 ‘‘Heard em Say’’ (Kanye West), 335 Heart, xxxv, 202 ‘‘The Heart Gently Weeps’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 135 ‘‘Heart It from Here’’ (Kanser), 370 The Heat in the Kitchen: Recipe for Success (Lil’ Troy), 438 Heath Brothers, 149 ‘‘Heaven’’ (Scarface), 456 Heavy D, 96, 431, 497 Heavy D and the Boyz, 497

Index heavy metal, 290 Hecatomb Records, 367, 376 Hedges, Robert, 382; See also Muja Messiah Heiruspecs, 366, 368, 371, 380 Hell Hath No Fury (Clipse), 517 Hell Rell, 42 Heller, Jerry, 235, 237, 238, 240 ‘‘Hello Brooklyn’’ (Jay-Z), 93 ‘‘Hello Brooklyn 2.0’’ (Jay-Z & Lil Wayne), 79 ‘‘Hello, Daddy-O and Mommy-O, This is Jocko’’ (Jocko Henderson), 149 ‘‘Hellohihey’’ (Lifesavas), 305 Heltah Skeltah, 82, 107 Henderson, Dr. Errol, 408 Henderson, Jocko, xv, xxxiii, 144, 149 Hendrix, Jimi, 289, 295 Henry G, 230 Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, 267 The Herculoids, 7, 12 Here Come the Lords (Lords of the Underground), xlii Here I Am (Eve), 162 ‘‘Here We Go’’ (Trina), 600 Herenton, Willie W., 557 Herrnstein, Richard, 2 Herron, Bennie, 410, 411; See also DJ Homicide He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper (DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince), 144 Hess, Mickey, xii, 143, 440, 447–448 Hetfield, James, 382 The Hevalo, xxiv, 5, 7 ‘‘Hey Ma’’ (Cam’ron), 42 ‘‘Hey Mama’’ (Kanye West), 335 ‘‘Hey Ya!’’ (OutKast), 483 Hezekiah, 145, 168 ‘‘Hi-life’’ (UGK), 433 Hi Pointe Cafe´, xliv, 347 Hi-Tek, xxiii Hicks, Andre, 280; See also Mac Dre Hieroglyphics, 263, 269, 270, 271

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Hieroglyphics Imperium Recordings, xliv, 263, 271, 378 High Performance, 199 ‘‘High Power Rap’’ (Cash Crew), xxxiv High Risk (Prophetix), xlvi High School Graduate (Kanye West), 334 Higher Learning (film), 85 Hill, Alvin, 399; See also Munk Hill, Cedric, 446; See also ESG Hill, Darryl, 133; See also Cappadonna Hill, Floyd Nathaniel, 503; See also Danja Hill, Lauryn, xlv, 35, 189, 483, 597; See also L-Boogie Hilltop Hustlers, 146, 158, 168 Hines, Adrian, 584; See also MC ADE Hines, Duncan, 405, 411 Hines, William ‘‘Billy,’’ 583 Hip City Swingers, 158 hip hop: African American model of authenticity, x–xi, xvi; antipolice rap songs, 477; banned songs, xxxvi, xl, 154, 440, 589–593; bass music, 484–485; block parties, 3, 20, 31, 76, 200; ‘‘booty bass,’’ 593– 594; bounce and, xxxvii, 523, 525, 527, 529, 530, 540, 543; breakbeat, xi, 5, 8, 9; Bridge Wars, xix, xx, xxxvii, xlix, 15, 56–57, 110, 114, 158; chopped and screwed effect, 437, 450, 452; conscious rap, 314; crossover to mainstream, xii; crunk, 476, 485–491, 492, 552, 553; East Coast/West Coast tensions, xx–xxi, xxii, xli, xliv; electro-rap, 232, 233, 239, 393, 593; emo-rap, 371; in Europe, 397–398; ‘‘freestyle’’ genre, 583; ghettotech, 401; graffiti art and, xi, xii, xvi, xxxi; hardcore rap, 412; Hawaiian hip hop, xlii, xlvi; history of, xi–xv, xix, xxxi–l, 6–7, 31; Hmong hip hop, 384;

673

674

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Index

homo hop, 383, 385; horrorcore sound, 401, 412, 447; Hurricane Katrina and, xlviii, 95, 525, 528, 539, 542, 543, 544; Internet and, xxiv, xlvii, l, 271, 611; Latino rap, xl, 230, 238, 239–240, 384; local imagery in, viii–xi, xiv, 12, 14; mixtapes, 491–492; model of authenticity, x–xi; ‘‘New Jack Swing,’’ 38, 497; pure form of, xii, xiii; Raggamuffin hip hop sound, 217; reality-rap, 231; reggae and, 15, 76, 85, 205, 214, 217; rhyme lineage, xvii–xviii; rural themes, x; scratching, 226; snap crunk, 552, 553; ‘‘snap’’ style, 480, 491; Southern Gothic tradition, 432; Southern speech and, xvi, xxii, 356; space and place in, xxiii–xxiv, 14; speed rap, xxxiv, 16, 35; street gang culture and, ix; surf-hop, 620, 621; ‘‘triggaman beat,’’ xxxvii, 529–530, 540; virtual city, xxiv–xxv; See also gangsta rap ‘‘Hip Hop Ain’t Dead. It Lives in the South’’ (Ludacris), xlviii ‘‘Hip Hop and Funk’’ (radio show), 267 hip hop artists: female artists, xxxiii, xxxvii, 83, 144, 145, 153, 162, 182, 191, 326, 333, 377, 383, 384, 396, 405–407, 456, 457, 480, 488, 594; Latino rappers, xl, 230, 238; sissy rappers, 531; suburban background of, xxv; territorialism, ix Hip Hop Brooklyn Festival, 77, 82, 99 hip hop clubs, xxiv Hip Hop Cultural Center, 43 hip hop culture, central elements of, xi hip hop dance, xii, xxxii hip hop fashion, 338 ‘‘Hip Hop Hooray’’ (Naughty by Nature), 188 Hip Hop Is Dead (Nas), xix, 147

‘‘Hip Hop Is Dead’’ (Nas), xii, xlviii Hip Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (Condry), xi, xviii Hip Hop Lives (BDP & Marley Marl), xxiii, xlix, 57 Hip Hop Matters (Watkins), 91, 403, 421 hip hop ministry, 409 The Hip Hop Shop, 399, 400–401, 402, 408, 416 ‘‘The Hip Hop Shop’’ (radio show), xxxvi, 365 ‘‘Hip Hop Soldier’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 298 ‘‘Hip Hop’s Founding Fathers Speak The Truth’’ (George), 8 Hip Rock, 589 Hipnotech Records, 415 Hispanic Causing Panic (Kid Frost), 230, 239 Hispanic rappers, xl, 230, 238 History (Headshots), 378 ‘‘History of Funk’’ (radio show), 267 The History of Rock (Kid Rock), 409 Hit a Muthafucka (Three 6 Mafia), 552, 553 ‘‘Hit Me Wit Da Hee’’ (Missy Elliot), 509 HITS (magazine), 308 Hittin’ Home Records, 396 Hmong hip hop, 384 Ho, Pete, 305; See also Pete Miser ‘‘Ho, Hoe, Hoes’’ (Disco Rick and the Wolf Pack), 592 Ho-Made Records, 305 Hobbs, David, 584, 585, 588, 592, 597; See also DJ Mr. Mixx; Treach Hodges, Dean, 262 Hoku, xlvi, 620 Holden, Henry E., 530 Holdin’ It Down (CCA), 329 ‘‘Holding Down the Game’’ (Twista), 323 Hollertronix, xlvi, 168

Index Holloway, Anthony, 32 Hollywood. See DJ Hollywood Hollywood Talent Night, 198, 203, 207 Holman, Michael, 78 Holmes, Deongelo, 483; See also D-Roc Holton, Deshaun, 416; See also Proof ‘‘Holy Rock’’ (Dwayne Omarr), 202 The Home Town Boyzz, 595 Homeboys Only Crew, 198 ‘‘Homecoming’’ (Kanye West), 315 homo hop, 383, 385 homophobia, 531 The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Forman), viii, 14 ‘‘Hood Hop’’ (J-Kwon), 353, 355, 357, 359 ‘‘Hood Rock’’ (Kevin Fleetwood and the Cadillacs), 197 Hoods Pack the Jam (Micranots), 375 Hoodstock, xliii Hoover Crips (gang), 229 Hopper, Dennis, 232 Hornsby, Bruce, 90 Horovitz, Adam, 58; See also Ad-Rock horrorcore sound, 401, 412, 447 Hostile Takeover Records, 416 Hot Boys, 534, 535, 537, 598 ‘‘Hot Boyz’’ (Missy Elliot), 509 ‘‘Hot in Herre’’ (Nelly), 22, 355 Hot Mix Five, 318 Hot Productions, 595 ‘‘Hotel’’ (R Kelly), 166 House Arrest 2, 317 house music, 318 House-O-Matic, 316 The House of Hits, 55 House of Pain, 124, 231 House Shoes, 417, 419 ‘‘The House the Dog Built’’ (Jibri Wise One), xli Houston (Texas): car culture, 445;

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codeine cough syrup, 436, 437; female rappers, 456, 457; hip hop in, 429–458, viii–ix, xxiii; independent record labels in, 431, 455; neighborhoods, 451, 452; prison as hip hop theme, 433–434; Southern Gothic tradition, 431 Houston, Jordan, 560, 564–566; See also Juicy J Houston, Patrick, 564; See also Project Pat Houston, Whitney, 480 How a Black Man Feels (Schoolly D), 154 ‘‘How Can I Just Kill a Man’’ (Cypress Hill), 239 How High (film), 137, 181 ‘‘How I Could Just Kill a Man’’ (Cypress Hill), 238 ‘‘How Many MCs’’ (Black Moon), 113 How Much Can You Take (MC ADE), 584 ‘‘How to Lose Your Mind’’ (Reef The Lost Cauze), 168 ‘‘How to Roll a Blunt’’ (Redman), 181 ‘‘How Ya Like Me Now’’ (Kool Moe Dee), 16 Howard, Darryl, 470; See also Freak Nasty; PMW Howard, Terrence 570 Howard, Twan, 422 Hudson, Kevin, 294 Huey, Steve, 17, 347, 353, 355, 357 Huff, Leon, 149 Hugh-EMC, 279 Hughes, Ced, 518 Hughes, Duane, xxxiv, 394; See also Spyder D Hugo, Chad, xv–xvi, xli, 511–513; photo, 511 human beat box, 36 ‘‘human metronome’’ technique, 201 ‘‘Human Nature’’ (Michael Jackson), 512

675

676

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Index

‘‘The Humpty Dance’’ (Digital Underground), 147, 268, 272 Humpty Hump, 268 Hunger Pains, 611 Hunt, Shane, 296; See also DJ Sureshot Hunter, ‘‘Ivory’’ Joe, 407 Hunter, Jason, 125; See also Inspectah Deck Hurricane Katrina, xlviii, 95, 334, 525, 528, 539, 542, 543, 544 Hush Tours, 42 Hustle & Flow (film), 560, 569, 570– 571, 571–572, 574 Hustle St’arr, 192 hustler culture, 51, 229 Hustler’s Convention (Lightnin’ Rod), xxxii ‘‘Hustlin’’’ (Rick Ross), 600 Hyperbolic Lounge, 191 ‘‘hyperghettoes,’’ 2 hypermasculinity, 502 Hyphy sound, 280, 281–282 The Hypnotic MCs, 143, 144 Hypnotize Minds Records, 567, 573 ‘‘I Ain’t the Nigga’’ (The Coup), 275 I Am Da Gangsta (Gangsta Blac), 567 ‘‘I Came Home’’ (Rhymefest), 336 ‘‘I Can’t Feel My Face’’ (Lil Wayne), 166 ‘‘I Can’t See It’’ (Devin the Dude), 446 ‘‘I Cram to Understand You (Sam)’’ (MC Lyte), 83 ‘‘I Don’t Have 2 Sack 2 Collect’’ (Smiley), 405 ‘‘I Don’t Kare’’ (Redman), 180 ‘‘I Don’t Stop’’ (Hugh-EMC), 279 ‘‘I Dream of DJs’’ (The I.R.M. Crew), 374 ‘‘I Got 5 on It’’ (The Luniz), 266 ‘‘I Got Cha Opin,’’ 113 ‘‘I Got Game’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 I Got Next (KRS-One), 18

I Got Shit on My Mind (Luther PKA Luther Campbell AKA Captain Dick), 592 I Got the Hook Up (film), 532 ‘‘I Got to Have It’’ (Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs), xli, 195, 212 ‘‘I Gotcha’’ (Lupe Fiasco), 337 ‘‘I-Ight’’ (Doug E. Fresh), 37 ‘‘I Just Wanna Love U’’ (Jay-Z), 513 ‘‘I Know’’ (Jay-Z), 93 ‘‘I Know What You Want’’ (Busta Rhymes & Mariah Carey), 86 ‘‘I Left My Wallet in El Segundo (A Tribe Called Quest), viii ’’I Made It’’ (Jay-Z), 93 I Miss the Hip-Hop Shop (Proof), 416 ‘‘I Need a Beat’’ (LL Cool J & Rick Rubin), 59 ‘‘I Need Love’’ (LL Cool J), 60 ‘‘I Practice Looking Hard’’ (E-40), 277 I Self Divine, 365, 369, 374, 375, 383, 384, 387 ‘‘I Shot Ya’’ (LL Cool J), 21 ‘‘I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson’’ (video), 156 ‘‘I Used to Love H.E.R.’’ (Common Sense), xxi, xliii, 324 ‘‘I Wanna Be Down’’ (MC Lyte), 83 ‘‘I Wanna Go Back’’ (Kid Rock), 409 ‘‘I Wanna Rock’’ (2 Live Crew), 592 I Want All That (Funkdaddy), 293 ‘‘I Want to Be Free’’ (Sir Too $hort), 265, 266, 272 ‘‘I Wanted 2 Be an MC’’ (Desdamona), 383 I Wish My Brother George Was Here (Del tha Funkee Homosapien), 269, 270, 272 ‘‘I-Yi-Yi’’ (Ying Yang Twins), 488 I.B.M., 374 Ice Age Records, 456, 458 Ice-C, 143 Ice Cold (Gigolo Tony), 584 ‘‘Ice Cold’’ (I Self Divine), 369

Index Ice Cream, 109 ‘‘Ice Cream’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 61 Ice Cream Tee, 145, 157, 158 Ice Cube, xxi, xl, xli, 195, 234, 236, 237, 238, 269, 270, 272, 350, 386, 410, 418, 441, 442 Ice Dog, 158 Ice-T, xvii, xx, xxxv, xxxviii, xl, 153, 154, 211, 227, 228–230, 231, 232, 234, 239, 365, 477 Iceberg Slim, 228, 378 Iceman J, 584, 594 Ichiban Records, 301, 396, 411, 477, 485 Ichiban/WRAP, 477, 485, 488 Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Music, Movement, and Culture (Marshall), xv, xxi, 160 ICP (Insane Clown Posse), 397, 399, 401, 403, 411, 413, 421; photo, 399 ‘‘Icy’’ (Gucci Mane), 491 ‘‘If I Ruled The World’’ (Kurtis Blow), 35 ‘‘If U Ain’t Affiliated’’ (CCA), 329 ‘‘If You Believe in Having Sex’’ (2 Live Crew), 590 ‘‘If You Were Mine’’ (U-Krew), 306 ‘‘If Your Girl Only Knew’’ (Missy Elliot), xliv, 508 ‘‘I’ll Be Missing You’’ (Biggie Smalls), 89, 90 ‘‘I’ll Be There for You’’ (Mary J. Blige), 131 Ill Chemistry, 376, 383 Ill Communications (Beastie Boys), 384 Ill Flow (magazine), 422 Ill Valley, 620 ‘‘Ill Valley CD’’ (Ill Valley), 620 Ill Valley Productions, xlvi, 620–621 Illmatic (Nas), 17, 64, 177, 191 Illusion, 366, 376 Illvibe Collective, 168 Ilyas, xxiv ‘‘I’m a Hustla’’ (Cassidy), 165, 166

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‘‘I’m a Thug’’ (Trick Daddy), 600 I’m Bout It (film), 532 I’m Serious (T.I.), 490 Imari, 314 Imarisha, Walidah, 96 IMC (Iron Mic Coalition), 550, 569 Immortal Technique, xv, 24, 96 Imperial G, 214 ‘‘In Da Club’’ (50 Cents), 22, 249 ‘‘In Da Wind’’ (Trick Daddy), 600 ‘‘In Luv Wit Chu’’ (Da Brat), 327 In My Lifetine, Vol. I (Jay-Z), 92 In Our Lifetime, Vol. 1 (Eightball & MJG), 561, 566 In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Bourgois), 19 In the Hood (Success-N-Effect), xl, 477 In the Nude (Luther Campbell), 592 ‘‘In This City’’ (Micranots), 375 ‘‘In Ya Face’’ (Ebony Eyez), 358 Incognegro (Ludacris), 442, 489 ‘‘The Incredible Green-Headed Negro,’’ 410 Indecent Exposure (2 Nazty), 476 Indigo, 384 Infamous (Mobb Deep), 17 Infamy (film), 152 Infinite (Eminem), xliv, 401 iNFiNiTi (Lyrical), 221 The Information Society, 365 Ingersoll, Evan ‘‘Chuck,’’ 338 Inglish, Chuck, xxiv Ingram, Luther, 551 The Injection (Delicious Venom), 385 Inkster, 422 Inner City Griots (The Freestyle Fellowship), 247 Inner City Outer Space (Kanser), 379 Innerzone Orchestra, 415 Insane Beat, 595 Insane Clown Posse. See ICP Insight, 218, 219 Inspectah Deck, 125, 126, 134 The Inspiration (Young Jeezy), 490

677

678

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Index

Intellectuals of Rhyme, 158 Intelligent Hoodlum, 202 Interlock Records, 370, 379, 380 ‘‘Interlude’’ (Busta Rhymes), 86 ‘‘Internationally Known’’ (DITC), 40 Internet, hip hop and, xxiv, xlvii, l, 271, 364, 611 Interscope, 421 Intuit-Solar, 404 Invincible, 406, 422 The Invisible Man, 402 Iomos Marad, 314, 332, 338, 339 Ion Myke, 617 Iovine, Jimmy, 421 Ipecac Neat (P.O.S.), 382 Irby, Joyce, 478. See also Fenderella The I.R.M. Crew, 365, 374 The I.R.M. Crew (The I.R.M. Crew), 374 Iron Flag (Wu-Tang Clan), 135 ‘‘Iron Man’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 298 Iron Mic Coalition (IMC), 550, 569 Ironman (Ghostface Killah), 132 Irving, Craig, 169; See also Doodlebug Irving, Marlon, 303; See also Vursatyl Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music (Hess), xii, 440 Island Records, 421 Island Urban, 480 ‘‘It Ain’t New York’’ (MC Breeze), xx, 144 It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back (Public Enemy), xxxviii ‘‘It Takes Money to Make Money’’ (Stretch Monkey), 423 ‘‘It Takes Two’’ (Rob Base & E-Z Rock), xxxix, 38 It Wrote Itself (Kanser), 379 It’s a Big Daddy Thing (Big Daddy Kane), xxxix, 32, 55 ‘‘It’s Da Game’’ (Hugh-EMC), 279 ‘‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp’’ (Three 6 Mafia), xlviii, 572

‘‘It’s Just Begun’’ (Jimmy Castor), 78 ‘‘It’s Like That’’ (Run DMC), 47, 51, 409 It’s Like That: A Spiritual Memoir (Run), 52 ‘‘It’s My Beat’’ (Jazzy Joyce & Sweet T), xxxvii ‘‘It’s Party Time’’ (Red-N-Black), 598 ‘‘It’s Ya Birthday’’ (Lil Joe), 592 ‘‘It’s Yours’’ (T La Rock), xxxvi, 58, 59, 593 IV (Cypress Hill), 239 Izzy Ice, 110 J Dilla, 81, 403, 413–414, 415, 419, 422; photo, 413 J-Kwon, 353, 355, 357, 359 J Prince, xxxvii, 429–430, 431, 432, 435, 438, 440, 445; photo, 430 J-Ro, xvii, xlii J Sumbi, 247 J-Swift, 247 J-Team, 476, 485 Ja Rule, 61, 64, 65, 67, 326 ‘‘Jack the Rapper Family Affair’’ convention, 470–471 ‘‘Jackass’’ (MTV), 403 Jacki-O, 580, 601 Jackie Robinson Steppers Marching Band, 88 Jackmaster Funk, 318 Jackpot (Chingy), 351 Jackson, Curtis James, III, 65, 335; See also 50 Cent Jackson, Eric, 488; See also Kaine Jackson, Janet, 415 Jackson, Mayor Maynard, 468 Jackson, Michael, 418, 512 Jackson, O’Shea, 236; See also Ice Cube Jackson, Wes, 77 Jackson, Wyatt, 220 Jackson Street after Hours: The Roots of Jazz (de Barros), 288

Index Jaco, Wasalu Muhammad, 336; See also Lupe Fiasco Jacobs, Greg, 266; See also Shock G Jadakiss, 21, 67, 165 Jae Millz, 42, 85 Jagged Edge, 480 Jah Jah Shakur, 192, 193 Jahiem, 188 Jake One, 293–294, 296, 301 Jam Master Jay, xlii, xlvi, 48, 52, 65, 66, 214, 386 ‘‘Jam Master Jay’’ (Run DMC), 47 Jam Pony Express, 583, 586 ‘‘Jam the Box’’ (Pretty Tony), 583 Jam-The-Box Records, 474 Jamaica (Caribbean), xv, 4, 75–76, 215, 217 Jamaican ragga, 15 Jamaican sound system, 4–5, 8, 586 Jamarc Records, 596 James, Cheryl, 60; See also Salt James, Laron, 41–42; See also Juelz Santana James, Maurice, 598; See also Golden Child James, Mayor Sharpe, 177, 179 James, Rick, 53 ‘‘Janet Reno’’ (Anquette), 588 Japan, xi, xviii–xix, xxxviii, xlii Jasiri Media Group, 294 Jason, Kenny, 318 Jawaiian music, 606, 615 Jawn P, 201 Jay Dee, 247, 394, 400, 402, 403, 413, 414, 415, 419, 422, 423 ‘‘Jay Dee’s Last Days’’ (Carter), 415 Jay Peace Pipe and Pazes, 619 Jay-T, 303 Jay-Z, viii, xxiii, xlv, xlvii, 40, 75, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, 90, 91–94, 95, 112, 162, 163, 164, 165, 382, 410, 444, 480, 513, 525, 617; photo, 92 Jayceoh, 221 Jaysaun, 221 Jaz-O, 90

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Jazz, 112 Jazze Pha, 487, 559 Jazzmatazz (Guru), 160, 195 Jazzy Jay, xxxvi, 58, 59, 593 Jazzy Jeff, xxxvii, xxxviii, 110, 143, 144, 145, 147, 155, 156–157, 349 Jazzy Joyce, xxxvii, 21 Jazzy T’s (club), 471 JCB and the Dog Pound, 350 ‘‘Jealous Ass Bitches’’ (Three 6 Mafia), 567 ‘‘Jealous Fella’s’’ (Dimples Tee), 596 Jealous One’s Envy (Fat Joe), 21 Jealous Ones Still Envy (J.O.S.E.) (Fat Joe), 22 Jean, Wyclef, xv, 17, 160, 189, 190, 597 Jeckyl and Hyde, 409 Jedi Mind Tricks, 145, 168 Jeffers, Eve Jihan, 162 Jefferson, Marshall, 318 Jefferson Ave. (DJ Assault), 404 Jeffries, Brian, 404; See also DJ Godfather Jenkins, Jay, 470, 490; See also Young Jeezy ‘‘Jenny From the Block’’ (Jennifer Lopez), 23, 24 Jermaine Dupri Presents Life in 1472: The Original Soundtrack (Jermaine Dupri), 480 Jerome XL, xlix ‘‘Jersey, Yo!’’ (Redman), 181 Jeru da Damaja, 83 ‘‘Jesus Is Black’’ (Disco Rick and the Wolf Pack), 592 ‘‘Jesus Walks’’ (Kanye West), 314, 333, 334–335, 339 Jewel T, 158 Jewelz (OC), 40 Jha Jha, 42 Jibbs, 353–354, 358 Jibri Wise One, xli Jiles, E-Zekiel, 41; See also Freeky Zeeky

679

680

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Index

Jimmy Jam, xxxv, 121, 122, 365 Jimmy2Times, 376 Jive, 16, 264, 270 Jive Electro, 404 Jive Records, xl, 62, 154, 443, 444, 517 JJ Fad, 240 JMJ Records, 66 Jneiro Jariel, 145 Jock D, 597 Jockey, 470 Jodeci, 39, 500, 505, 601 Joey Boy Records, 594, 595, 597 Joey Crack. See Fat Joe Joey Jihad, 168 John Africa, 150, 151 ‘‘John Blaze’’ (Fat Joe), 21 Johnny Brenda’s (club), 167 Johnny C, 439 Johnny O, xxxiii Johnson, Charles, 394; See also Electrifying Mojo Johnson, Cynthia, 370 Johnson, Judge June, 591 Johnson, Kalimah, 405; See also Eboni and Her Business; Nikki D Johnson, Kevin, 410; See also The Last Soulman Johnson, Lawrence Curtis, 197; See also Maurice Starr Johnson, Leonerist, 596 Johnson, Michael, xxxv, 197; See also Jonzun, Michael Johnson, Philant, xlviii, 490 Johnson, Rufus, 416; See also Bizarre Johnson, T Hasan, xxi JohnsonBrothers Band, 197–198 Johnston, Allen, 594 Johnstone, Magnus, 197, 205, 206 Jon Doe, 419 Jones, Calvin, 374; See also Cuttin’ Kal Jones, Cordell, 218 Jones, Curtis Alan, 594; See also Half Pint

Jones, Jim, xxiii, 41, 81 Jones, Joseph Guillermo, III, 41; See also Jones, Jim Jones, Mike, viii, 435, 456, 458 Jones, Nasir, 62; See also Nas Jones, Peter, 9, 470, 583, 588, 592; See also MC Shy D Jones, Quincy, 288, 295 Jones, Russell, 124; See also Ason Unique; Ol’ Dirty Bastard; The Professor Jones, Tish, 383–384 Jonzun, Michael, xxxv, 197 Jonzun Crew, 593 Jordan, Brad, 441; See also Scarface Jordan, Michael, 83 Joseph, Tony, xvi, xxxiv, 225, 234 Jost, Matt, 446 JP Chill, 319 JR Records, 594 JR Writer, 42 JT, 143 JT Money, 589 J.T. the Bigga Figga, 278, 279 Judgement Day Vol. 1 (Esham), 412 Judgement Day Vol. 2 (Esham), 412 Juelz Santana, 41–42 Jugg Mugg, 445 Juggalos, 401 Juice, 330–331, 338 Juice (film), 96, 571 Juice and the Machine, 330 Juice and the Machine: Live at the Party (Juice), 331 The Juice Crew, xx, xxxvii, 15, 55, 56, 57, 81, 112, 118, 121, 158 ‘‘Juice Crew Dis’’ (Cool C), xx, 158 ‘‘Juicy’’ (The Notorious B.I.G.), xiii Juicy J, 560, 564, 565, 566, 573 Juju Mob, 168 juke joint, 552 Jukebox, 438, 439 juking/jukin’/jookin,’ 316–317, 552–553 Julez Santana, 347

Index Jumbo the Garbageman, 303, 304 ‘‘Jump’’ (Kris Kross), 480 ‘‘Jump Around’’ (Everlast), 231 ‘‘Jump on It’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 300 ‘‘Jump, Stomp, and Twist’’ (Mo-Jo), xxxvi, 474 June Luva, 80 The Jungle Brothers, 61, 62, 81 ‘‘Jungles of Da East’’ (Joe Mansfield & Edo G), 215 Junior M.A.F.I.A., 81, 87, 89, 90, 114 Junior Mafia, xxii Junior Radigan, 217 Jurassic 5, 247, 250, 301 Jurassic 5 LP (Jurassic 5), 247 Jus Bleezy, 346, 352 Jus Borne, 565 Jus Family Records, 303, 308 ‘‘Just a Friend’’ (Biz Markie), 56 Just a Little Sample (Cheap Cologne), 382 Just Black, 352 Just Blaze, xxiii, xlvii, 165 ‘‘Just Give the D.J. a Break’’ (Dynamix II), 596 ‘‘Just Having Fun’’ (Doug E. Fresh), 36 Just-Ice, xxxvii, 155, 156 Just My Take (MC Lyte), 84 Just Sumthin to Do (MC ADE), 584 Justice and Simeon, 334 Juvenile, xlv, xlviii, 300, 526, 528, 533–534, 540, 543; photo, 534 K-9 Bass (The Dogs), 595 K-Deezy, 423 K-Fresh, 403 K-Phi-9, 316 K Rino, 447–449 K-Stone, 416 K-Tel Records, 365, 374 Kadence, 422 Kahokule’a Haiku, xlvi, 620; See also Hoku

Kaina Costa, 620 Kaine, 488 Kala (M.I.A.), xlviii Kalyan, Rohan, 605 Kam, 274 Kamal Ibn John Fareed. See Q-Tip Kamikaze (Twista), 322, 335 Kane, Big Daddy. See Big Daddy Kane Kane and Abel, 531 Kansas City (DJ), 364 Kansas City (Missouri), hip hop in, 348–349 Kanser, 366, 368, 370, 379 Kante, Bosco, 303; See also Bosko Kanye West. See West, Kanye Kanye West Foundation, 334 Kaos & Mystro, 396, 397, 405, 407–409 KAP the Bicentennial Kid, 152 Kapone, 56, 63 Kapone, Al, 559, 573 Katastrophe, 386 Katey Red, 531 ‘‘Katrina Clap (Dollar Day)’’ (Mos Def), 95 Kawa’auhau, Don Ke’ala, Jr., 605, 612; See also Ke’ala Kay, xxiv, xlvii Kay Gee, 187, 188 Kazzaam (film), 327 KB da Kidnappa, 449 Keak da Sneak, 259, 281 Ke’ala, 605, 606, 612–615, 621, 623 Keators, 221 ‘‘Keep Dancin’’’ (Rap Mafia), 396 ‘‘Keep On, Keepin’ On’’ (MC Lyte), 83 Keep Right (KRS-One), 18 ‘‘Keep Rising to the Top’’ (Get Fresh Crew), 36 ‘‘Keep the Country Country!’’ (Ill Valley), 621 Keith from up da Block, 167 Kel-C, 374

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681

682

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Index

Keller, Anthony, 583; See also Gigolo Tony Kelly, Chris, 480 Kelly, Dupre, 190; See also Doitall Kelly, R., 22, 166, 328, 508 Keltgen, Gregg ‘‘Max,’’ 378; See also Abilities Kemp, Ross, 352 Kempf, Mark, 420, 421, 422 Kenner, David, 241 Kenny Mack & G-Ism, 303 Kenny P, xliv Kentucky, x Keshavan, Meghana, 423 ‘‘Kettenkreation’’ (Spezializtz), xi Kevin Fleetwood and the Cadillacs, xxxv Kevvy Kev, xxxvi Key, Rachel, 287 Keys, Alicia, 335 Khalil, 122 Khayree, 280 Khia, 457 Khujo, 483 ‘‘Kick, Push’’ (Lupe Fiasco), 337 ‘‘Kickin’ 4 Brooklyn’’ (MC Lyte), 83 Kid Capri, 17, 32 Kid Cudi, l Kid Frost, xxxv, 230, 239 Kid Jordache, 110 A Kid Named Cudi (Kid Cudi), l Kid Rob, 344 Kid Rock, xl, 397, 398, 399, 403, 409, 410, 411, 420, 421 Kid Sensation, 291, 298, 301–302 Kid Sister, xlix, 338 Kid Skilly, 423 Kid Smooth, 304 Kidz (tutoring program), xlix Kieth, Farley, 318; See also Jackmaster Funk Kiethy E, 203, 205, 210 Kill Bill (film), 137 Kill My Landlord (The Coup), 275

‘‘Kill That Noise’’ (The Juice Crew), 57 Kill the Vultures, 366 ‘‘Kill Us All’’ (Twista), 323 Killa Cam, 40 Killa Tay, 280 Killadelphia: More Bodies than Days (Young Chris), 165 Killah Priest, xlix Killarmy, 133–134 Killer Mike, 475 ‘‘Killers’’ (Ice-T), 231 Kilo, xl, 327, 471, 477 Kilpatrick, Mayor Kwame, 403, 405, 422 Kim Tim III, 409 Kinfolk Kia Shine, 573 King (T.I.), 490 King, B.B., 556 King, Dr. Martin Luther Jr., xxxii, 555 King, Roderick G. ‘‘Rod,’’ 344 King, ‘‘New Jack Swing,’’ 55 King Britt, xlii, 146, 169 King Cool Nutz (Cool Nutz), 303 King Edward J, 471, 476, 485 King Gordy, 421 King IXL, 364 King Karnov, 378 ‘‘King Kut’’ (Word of Mouth), xxxvi King Odie, 344, 345, 350 King of Da Playaz Ball (Kingpin Skinny Pimp), 567 King of Philly (Gillie da Kid), 166 ‘‘King of Rock’’ (MC Lyte), 84 King of Rock (Run DMC), 54 King Tim III, 409 ‘‘King Tim III (Personality Jock)’’ (Fatback Band), xxxiii, 34, 76 Kingdom Come (Jay-Z), 92 Kingpin Skinny Pimp, 564, 567 Kings of Crunk (East Side Boyz), 487 Kings of Crunk (Lil’ Jon), 601 Kingsmen, 289 Kingsmen DJs, 586 Kizz My Black Azz (Eazy-E), 238

Index Kizzy Rock, 485, 487 KJ an da’ Fellas, 584 Klein, Paul, 595 Klondike Kat, 444 KMD, xvii ‘‘Knee Deep’’ (Parliament Funkadelic), 273 Knew Rulz, xxiii Knight, Marion, xxii, xli, 240, 245; See also Suge Knighton, Willie, Jr., 483; See also Khujo Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop (Dyson), xiii–xiv, 433 Knowledge Is Power (Boss), 406 Knowledge MC, 377 Known Rulers, xxxix Knowstalgic, 384 Koch Records, 68, 165, 453, 488, 602 Kohn, Angela, 601; See also Jacki-O Kon Artis, 416 Konder, Bobby, 217 Kontrast, 569 Kooe Moe Dee, 39 Kool Akiem, 365, 366, 375 Kool DJ Kurt, 34, 49 Kool G Rap, 35, 55, 57, 186 Kool Herc, xi, xv, xvii, xxxi, xxxii, l, 3–8, 10, 12, 31, 76, 216, 225, 246, 527; photo, 4 Kool Herc and the Herculoids, 7, 12 Kool Keith, xxxviii, 15, 156, 412 Kool Kim, 123, 124, 137; See also Hassan (Hass G) Kool Kurt, 35 Kool Moe Dee, xxxiv, 16, 35, 38 Kool Rocksteady, 318 Koopa, 454 Koopsta Knicca, 564 KP, 484 Kraftwerk, 226, 230, 414, 418 Kramer, Joey, 204 Kraz, 152 Krazy Drayzy, xxxviii Krims, Adam, x–xi

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Kris Kross, xxi, 326, 358, 479, 480 Kristyles (KRS-One), 18 Krown Rulers, xxxviii KRS-One, xxiii, xlix, 13, 15–18, 56– 57, 77, 82, 94, 110, 117, 167, 192, 245, 617 Kru Cut Records, 233 Krumb Snatcha, 220 Krush Groove (film), 35, 121 K.T., 214 Ku’e (Sudden Rush), 613, 614 Kuniva, 416 Kurt Nice, 192 Kurtis Blow, xxxiii, 12, 32–33, 34, 35, 48, 49, 51, 192, 230, 364, 418; Greater Hood Memorial AME Zion Church, 42; photo, 19 Kurupt, xxxvii, 147, 242, 248 Kut, xxxv Kuumba Lynx, 317 Kweli, Talib, xxiii, 81, 94 Kyber (club), 167 ‘‘Kyendi Kyendi’’ (Toki Wright), 381 L-Boogie, 189 L.A. (MURS), 242, 250, 480–481 La Chat, 564 La Coka Nostra, 221 ‘‘La Di Da Di’’ (Slick Rick), 15, 36 ‘‘La Di Da Di’’ (White Boy Crew), 206 L.A. Kid, 157, 158 L.A. Posse Records, 230 ‘‘La Raza’’ (Kid Frost), 239 La Rock, Scott, xxxviii, 13, 16, 57, 117 L.A. Sunshine, 16, 35 Labcabincalifornia (The Pharcyde), 247, 414 Lacey Lace, xxxvii, 583 Lackawanna Blues (film), 95 Lackland, Nethanial, 211 ‘‘Ladies First’’ (Queen Latifah & Monie Love), xl, 147, 183

683

684

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Index

Ladies Fresh, 182 Ladies Love Cool James. See LL Cool J Lady B, xxxiii, 34, 144, 145, 153, 162 Lady Boo, 567 ‘‘Lady of Mahogany’’ (Dwele), 402 Lady Pink, 151, 377 ‘‘Lady the Boss’’ (Boss), 406 Ladybug Mecca, xlii, 77, 169 LaFace Records, 480, 481, 482, 483– 484, 490 ‘‘Laffy Taffy’’ (D4L), 472, 491 Lafontant, Macharry, 598; See also Mackazoe Lahiri, Jhumpa, 88 Laidback Records, 329 Landy B, 182 Larada, Marshall, 382 Large Professor, 64 Larkins, Amos, 584 Larr, Larry, 158 Larry D, 202 Larry Live, 511 Larson, Lars, 364 Larson, Micheal, 378; See also Eyedea Last 2 Walk (Three 6 Mafia), 567 Last Emperor, 145, 167 The Last Poets, xxxi, xxxii, 247 The Last Soulman, 410 Laswunzout, 400 Late Registration (Kanye West), 334, 335 Later, 314 Latin Alliance, 239 Latin and Lethal, 597 ‘‘Latin Lingo’’ (Cypress Hill), 239 Latin music industry, 602 Latino gangs, 239 Latino rap, xxxiv, xl, 230, 238, 239– 240, 384 Launch Pad (radio show), 220 Laws, Lichelle, 405–406; See also Boss Lawson, Amanda, 343 Lazerbeak, 382

The L.D.s, 118 Le’ Chalet (club), 49 Le Juan Love, 588, 589 Leaders of the New School, 61, 62, 84, 85, 400, 417, 446 Leah, 384 ‘‘Lean With It, Roc Wit It’’ (Lil Peanut & Charlay), 491 Leanski, 198 ‘‘Lecco’s Lemma’’ (radio show), 197, 202, 205, 206 Led Zeppelin, 406 Lee, Murphy, 349, 356, 361 Lee, Spike, 81, 83 Lee, Tou Saiko, 370, 384–385 Lee, Travis, xvi, xxxv, xxxvi, 364; See also Travitron Lee, Vong, 370, 384; See also Knowstalgic Left Eye, 147, 481 ‘‘Left, Right, Left’’ (Drama), 488 The Legendary Traxter, 328 ‘‘Legends of Hip Hop,’’ 230 Legit Ballin’ Vol. 1 (Twista), 322 Legit Ballin’ Vol. 2 (Twista), 322 Legree, Mark, 395; See also Gallo Leland, John, 589, 590 ‘‘Lesson 4: The Radio’’ (Cut Chemist), 234 ‘‘The Lesson’’ (Kiethy E), 205 ‘‘Let Me Be Your Lover’’ (U-Krew), 306 ‘‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’’ (Gwen Stefani), 162 ‘‘Let Me Love You’’ (Mr. Magic), 121 ‘‘Let Me Show You’’ (Abstract Pack), 378 Let Me Take You to the Rock House (Tony M.F. Rock), 476, 589 Let the Good Times Roll (Missy Mist), 596 Let There Be Eve . . . Ruff Ryders’ First Lady (Eve), 162 ‘‘Let’s Get Away’’ (T.I.), 490

Index Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 (Young Jeezy), 490 Let’s Get Ready (Mystikal), 532 ‘‘Let’s Get That Paper’’ (Rich Boy), xiii ‘‘Let’s Go’’ (Trick Daddy), 600 Lewis, Dvonne, 294 Lewis, Jai Freedom, 619 Lewis, Robert, 594 Lewis, Terry, xxxv, 121, 122, 365 Lex Diamonds, 131 Lexington (Kentucky), x Libido Sounds, 415 License to Ill (Beastie Boys), 145, 154 Life (KRS-One), 18 Life After Death (Biggie Smalls), 89 Life and Times of S. Carter (Jay-Z), 92 ‘‘Life in the Fast Lane’’ (Geto Boys), 440 Life in the Gang: Family, Friends and Violence (Decker & Van Winkli), 351 ‘‘Life Is. . .Too $hort’’ (Sir Too $hort), xxi, 264 Life of a Kid in the Ghetto (Ed O.G. & Da Bulldogs), xli, 195, 211 ‘‘Life or Death’’ (DJ Paul & Juicy J), 566 Life Sentence (A.W.O.L.), 410 Life Support (film), 81 The Life, the Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler (Wepman, Newman & Binderman), 229 Lifesavas, 303–305, 308 LifestylE-Z ov da Poor and Dangerous (Big L), xliv, 40 Lifter Puller, 370 ‘‘The Light’’ (Common), 325 Light in the Attic (Sharpshooters), 296 Lightnin’ Lee & Poppy P, 158 Lightnin’ Rod, xxxii Lights Out (The Toe Jammer), 198 Lights Out (Lil Wayne), 537 ‘‘Lights Out, Party’s Over’’ (Antoinette), 83

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‘‘Like I Love You’’ (Justin Timberlake), 513 Like Water for Chocolate (Common), 325 Lil’ Boosie, 337 Lil Bow Wow, xxi, 480 Lil’ Buddy, 366 Lil D, 259 Lil Fate, 475 Lil Flip, 451 Lil’ Half Dead, 242 Lil Joe, 592 Lil Joe Records, 592 Lil’ Jon, xxi, 281, 326, 350, 370, 467, 469, 471, 472, 476, 484, 485, 487, 488, 492, 552, 553, 582, 601; photo, 487 Lil Keke, 450, 451, 452 Lil’ Kim, xxii, xxiii, 81, 82, 83, 89, 162, 457, 508 Lil Mama, 81 Lil Peanut, 491 Lil Rob, xlv Lil Ruckie, 166 Lil’ Troy, 434, 435, 438 Lil Wayne, viii, xxiii, xlviii, xlix, l, 35, 79, 93, 146, 148, 160, 166, 437, 491, 492, 525, 535, 537–538, 539, 543, 544, 602; photo, 537 Lil Whit, 357 Lil’ Will, 483 Lil’ Ya, 533 Lilly Allen, 325 Limelite, Luv, & Niteclubz (Da Brat), 327 Limp Bizkit, 159, 398–399, 403 Lincoln, Tom, 330 Linkin Park, 93 Liquid Swords (GZA), 131, 132 Liquor, Walt, 293 Listen2thaWerds (Juice), 330 Listennn (DJ Khaled), 602 Litefoot, xli Little Brother, xlv Live and Let Die (movie), 2

685

686

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Index

Live from the Studio (Heiruspecs), 380 Live Hardcore Worldwide (BDP), 17 Live in Concert (2 Live Crew), xli, 591 Live Nation, 93 ‘‘Live Your Life’’ (T.I.), 490 ‘‘Livin’ in tha Murda Cap’’ (CCA), 322 ‘‘Livin in the City’’ (Hassan & 7–11), xix, xxxvii ‘‘Livin’ In the Murda Cap’’ (CCA), 329 Livin’ Large, 56 Living Colour, 37 Living Legends, 374 Living Like Hustlers (Above the Law), 238 Living on the Edge (Rapper J to the D.’s), 396 Living Single (TV show), 183 Livio, 293 LL Cool J, xxiii, xxxvi, 21, 35, 37, 48, 57–60, 156, 230, 235, 298, 409, 412; photo, 58 Lo-Kee, 214 The Lockers, xxxii, 228 Lockhard, Tiombe, 423 Lockhart, Charles, 374 ‘‘locking’’ (dance), xxxii, 198, 228 Lolita, 384 ‘‘Lollipop’’ (Lil Wayne), xxiii, l Long, Carlton, 589, 590 ‘‘Long Island Wildin’’’ (De La Soul), xlii Long Range Distribution, 422 Look Records, 403 ‘‘Lookin’ at Me,’’ 512 ‘‘Looking Hard’’ (Tda Pimp), 414 Loonatix Productions, 367 Lopes, Lisa, 147, 481; See also Left Eye Lopes, Tony, 198 Lopez, Jennifer, 23–24 Lord Finesse, xl, 21, 40 Lord Have Mercy, 86 Lord Infamous, 564, 565

Lord Jamar, 184 Lord T. and Eloise, 569 Lord Willin (Clipse), 516, 517 Lorde, Audre, 406 Lords of the Underground, xlii, 190 Lorenzo, Irv, 64, 68 Los Angeles (California): allomotives, 244; alternative rap scene, 246–247, 249; dance, 227, 228; gangsta rap, 195; hip hop, xvi, xx, xxi, 225–250, 265; hip hop dance, xii; neighborhoods, 250; radio shows, 226, 230 ‘‘Los grandes e´xitos en espan˜ol’’ (Cypress Hill), 240 Los Nativos, 366, 370, 372, 384, 385 ‘‘Lose Control’’ (Missy Elliot), xliv, 317, 509, 510 Losing Ground (Murray), 2 The Lost Boyz, viii Lotwin, David, 113 Loud Records, 127, 128 ‘‘Louie, Louie,’’ 289 The Love Below (OutKast), 483 ‘‘Love Is a House’’ (The Force MDs), 118, 122 Love Letters (The Force MDs), 121 ‘‘Love Potion Cyanide’’ (Creed Chameleon), 617 ‘‘Love Rap’’ (Spoonie Gee), 35 ‘‘Love Will Be Right Here’’ (The Neptunes), xli, 512 Lovebug Starski, xxxiii, xxxiv, 33, 48 Lovelace, Darryl, 49; See also DMC ‘‘Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love)’’ (BDP), 17 ‘‘Low’’ (T-Pain), 601 Low Budget, xlvi, 168 The Low End Theory (A Tribe Called Quest), 62, 85, 160 Low Profile, 237 ‘‘Low Rider’’ (Kid Frost), 239 lowriders, 239, 250 L.O.X., 23 LST, 364

Index L’Trimm, 594, 595 Lucas, George, 591 Lucas, Ted, xliii, 577, 599, 600, 602 Lucio, Larry, 377 Lucy Ford: The Atmosphere EPs (Atmosphere), 372 Ludacris, xiii, xlviii, 22, 244, 442, 470, 475, 488–490, 492, 513; photo, 489 Luke, xlii, 502 Luke Entertainment Group, 593 The Luke LP (2 Live Crew), 591 Luke Records, 476, 591, 592, 595 ‘‘The Luke Show’’ (radio show), 593 Luke Skyywalker Records, xxxvii, xl, 195, 476, 573, 585, 591, 592 ‘‘Luke’s Parental Advisory’’ (TV show), 593 Lumpkin, Elgin, 498; See also Ginuwine Lundy, Antoine, 118, 123; See also TCD Lundy, Rodney, 122; See also Khalil Lundy, Stevie, 118, 123; See also Stevie D The Luniz, 259, 265–266, 303 Lupe Fiasco, 336, 336–338, 339, 348; photo, 337 Luq, xliv, 347 Luv Bug, 60 Luva, Juen, 80 Lynch, Jamie, viii, 429 Lynn, Lonnie Rashid, Jr., 323; See also Common Lyons, Edwin, Jr., 474; See also Mo-Jo Lyrad, 233 Lyrical, 221 Lyrical Giants, 488 Lyrical Lord Plourde, 217 Lyrically, 356 The Lyricist Lounge, 20, 185, 247 Lyricist Lounge (KRS-One), 18, 95 Lyte as a Rock (MC Lyte), xxxix, 83

M-4 Sers, 594 M-Room (club), 167 M-Slash, 214 ‘‘M&M’’ (Eminem), 420 Ma 6-T Va Craquer, 18 The Mac, 267 Mac Dre, xlviii, 267, 279, 280, 282, 283 Mac Lethal, xlvii, xlix, 372 Mac Mall, 267, 279 Mac Money, 158 Mace, 112, 512 machismo, 530–531 The Mack (film), 257, 260, 265, 267, 282 Mack, Craig, xxii, 39, 87, 91 Mack, Greg, 226, 234–235, 237 Mack 10, xxi ‘‘Mack Attack,’’ 234, 264 Mack Daddy (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 Mac Dre, 293 Mack Music (Musab), 378 Mackazoe, 598 Mackie, Earl J., 530 Macola Records, 233, 235, 236, 585 Made Men, 195, 219, 220 Madlib, 387 Magabug, 215 Maggotron, 583, 596 Maggotron Crushing Crew, 597 Maggotronics, 583 Magic Mike, xxxix, 299, 350, 595, 597 ‘‘Magic Mike Cutz the Record’’ (Magic Mike), 595 Magic Records, 596 ‘‘Magic Stick’’ (50 Cent), 137 Magoo, 498, 500, 511 Mahogani Records, 415 Mail on Sunday (DJ Khaled), 601 Main Ingredient Productions, 214 Mainor, Ade, 404; See also Mr. De The Mainroom (club), 386 Maji, 409 Major Figgas, 162, 166

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687

688

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Index

‘‘Make It Mellow’’ (Missy Mist), 596 Make Some Noise (Masta Ace & Edo G), xlvii Make Way Fo Da Bad Guy (MCGz), 330 Maker, Donny, 201; See also Def Rock making the personal universal, xiv Making Trouble (Ghetto Boys), 438, 439–440 Malcolm X, xxxi, 259, 408, 587 Malice, 14, 501, 515, 518 Malone, Maurice, 399, 400, 414, 416, 417, 418 Mammen, Dick, 387 Mandela, Nelson, 408 Manhattan (New York City), 110, 114; Apollo Theater, 32, 33; Harlem, 31–43; See also Harlem; New York City ‘‘Maniac b/w Gangster Boogie’’ (Schoolly D), xxxv, 154 M.anifest, 370, 384 M.anifestations (M.anifest), 384 Manix, 420 Manny Fresh, 529, 535 Mansfield, Joe, 215, 219 Mansfield, Roosevelt Darnell, III, 377; See also RDM Mantronix, 584 The Many Faces of Oliver Hart or How Eye One the Write Too Think (Eyedea), 379 Marcoulis, Dan J., 376; See also Jimmy2Times Mardi Gras Indians, 525 Maria Isa, 369–370, 384, 387 Marky Mark, 207, 210, 211 Marley Marl, xxiii, xlvi, xlix, 15, 54– 57, 63, 64, 77, 81, 112, 121 Mars Attacks Marines, 235 Mars Black, xlviii Marsh, James, 218 Marshall, Anthony, 20

Marshall, Elirico, 569; See also Rico Law Marshall, James. See Hendrix, Jimi Marshall, Marrio, 569; See also Big Yo Marshall, Terry, 317, 318; See also DJ Casper Marshall, Wayne, xv, xxv, 6, 11–12 Marshall Mathers LP (Eminem), 249 Martin, Christopher, 82; See also DJ Premier Martin, Gid, xxxiii, 230 Martin, Glorius, 377; See also Glorius L Martin, Lionel, 79 Martinez, Alberto, 37; See also Alpo Martinez, Gov. Bob, 590 Marvelous, 143 ‘‘Mary Jane’’ (CCA), 329 Mase, 40, 41, 87, 512 Mason, Donald, 314, 331; See also Vakill Mason-Dixon Line, 350–351 Mass 187, 438 Mass Break Team, 198, 207 The Massacre (50 Cents), 404 The Massacre (Curtis Jackson), 335 ‘‘Massacre’’ (Spider Man & E-Spect), 598 Massive B label, 217 Masta Ace, xx, xxi, xlii, xliii, xlvi, xlvii, 55, 81, 82, 110, 112, 160 Masta Killa, ix, xxi, 127–128, 137 Mastamind, 412 The Master Criminal, 218 Master D, 79 Master P, xl, 90–91, 531, 532, 533; photo, 532 Mastermind label, 217 Masterpiece Mindframe, 455 Masters In Control (M.I.C.), 291 Masters of Sound (M.O.S.), 569 Mathematics, 134 ‘‘Mathematics’’ (Mos Def), 94–95

Index Mathers, Marshall, III, 419; See also Eminem; Slim Shady Mathis, Warren, 470; See also Bubba Sparxxx Mathy-Zvaifler, Marissa, 373 Mau Mau Rhythm Collective, 274–275 Mauldin, Michael, 479, 480 Maurice Starr, 197–198 Max B, 42 Maxey, John, 407 Maxwell, Todd Keith, 215; See also T-Max May, Derrick, 397 Mayes, Warren, 529 Maylay Sparks, 168–169 Mays, Dave, xxxix, 195, 206, 211, 216, 218 Mazard, Emmaneul, 598; See also Blind MC ADE, 584, 594 MC Black Thought, 159, 160, 161, 383 MC Breed, xli, l, 397, 470 MC Breed and DFC (Breed), 397 MC Breeze, xx, xxxvi, 144, 154, 156 MC Capers, 202, 205 MC Chaszy Chess, 595 M.C. Chief, xxxvi, 583 MC Cool C, 589 MC Cool Rock, 595 MC Eiht, 237, 243 MC Eyedea, 24, 366, 378 MC Fantasy, 205 MC Frankie Wrainwright, 221 MC Fresh C, 595 MC Hammer, 37, 155, 158, 411 MC Keithy E, 203, 205, 210 MC Lee, 411 MC Lyrical, 221 MC Lyte, xxxix, 79, 80, 81, 83–84, 97, 110, 202, 350, 387, 507 MC Paul Barman, 168 MC Perry P, 143

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MC Planet Asia, 293 MC Polecat, 215 MC Popeye, 200, 201 MC Ren, 234, 237, 238 MC Ricky D., 36; See also Slick Rick MC Robby B, 144 MC Scientifik, 215 MC Serch, 63, 405 MC Shan, xx, xxxvii, xlvi, 15, 18, 55, 56, 57, 63, 201, 409 MC Shy D, xvi, xxxvi, xxxix, 419, 470, 471, 474, 476, 485, 583, 588, 589, 592, 597 MC Spice, xvi, 200, 202, 205, 207, 221 MC Sugar Rae Dinky, 317 MC Supernatural, 18, 20, 247 MC Thick, 529 MCA, 79 McCauley, James, 583, 584, 596, 597; See also DXJ; Maggotron McClendo, James, 305 McCray, Darryl, 151; See also Cornbread McCray, Michael, 588; See also Mike Fresh McDaniels, Darryl, xviii, 49, 204; See also DMC McDaniels, Uncle Ralph, xxxvi, l, 79, 100 MCDJ Force, 206 McDuffie, Arthur, 580 McGriff, Kenneth, 51, 64; See also Supreme McGruff, Herb, 41 MCGz, 329–330, 338 McKie, Jesse, 206 McLaine, Billy and Bobby, 198 McManus, Brian, 164 McMillan, Don, 233, 235 McPherson, Sean, 380; See also Twinkie Jiggles MCs. xv, xix, xx, xxiii, xxiv; in Chicago, 317, 319; Latino, 239; in Minneapolis, 369

689

690

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Index

Me & My Brother (Ying Yang Twins), 488 ‘‘Me and Jesus the Pimp in a ’79 Granada Last Night’’ (The Coup), 276 ‘‘Me So Horny’’ (2 Live Crew), 590 Mean Machine, xxxv Means, Kevin, 200 Medina, Benny, 232 Medina, Raul, Jr., xliii; See also DJ Raw Medusa, 248 Meeks, Eddie, xlvi Mega Jon Bass (Iceman J), 594 Megatron, 198 Melle Mel, 33, 35, 47, 53, 77, 409 Mello Melanin, xlvi Mellow Man Ace, xl, 239 ‘‘Melpomene Block Party’’ (Katey Red), 531 Melvin, Harold, 149 Memphis (Tennessee), 549–573; Beale Street, 555, 556, 558; clubs, 561, 563; crunk, 552, 553; Crystal Palace Skating Rink, 552, 563–564, 571; dance in, 549, 552, 563; DJs, 565; history of, 554–558; history of hip hop, 550, 558–573; neighborhoods, 562, 563; radio in, 563, 565; Stax Records, 76, 550, 551, 555, 556–557, 558 Memphis Bleek, 91, 164 Memphix Records, 550, 569 Men Are from Mars, Pornstars Are from Earth (Mac Lethal), xlvii Menace, 579 Menace II Society (film), 571 Mendez, Lazaro, 582; See also DJ Laz Mental Floss for the Globe (Urban Dance Squad), xxxix Mentally Disturbed, 594 ‘‘Mentirosa’’ (Mellow Man Ace), xl, 239 Mercedes, Tony, 484

Merchants of Cool (documentary), 403 Merciless Amir, 395 Mercury, 119, 122, 123, 130 Mercury Records, xxxix, 396 Meriweather, Edward, 596; See also Non-Stop Merry-Go-Round, 7 Mesh, 379 ‘‘The Message’’ (Cassidy), 165, 166 ‘‘The Message’’ (Grandmaster Flash & Furious Five), 24 Messy Mary, 280 Metal Church, 290, 298 ‘‘Meters’’ (Heiruspecs), 371 methamphetamines, 617, 618 Method and Red (TV show), 137, 181 Method Man, xxiii, 123, 125–126, 130, 133, 137, 157, 181 ‘‘Method Man’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 130 Metro Concepts, 214 Metropolis (The C.O.R.E.), 381 Mexican American rap, xxxv MF Doom, xvii, 381 MF Grimm, 155 M.I. Split Personalities, 384 M.I.A., xlviii Mia X, 531, 532–533, 544 Miami (Florida), 577–602; 1996– 2008, 597–598; clubs and bars, 592, 593; Cuban-American community, 601; Cuban community, 581; DJ groups, 586; Haitian community, 597–598; hip hop in, xliii, 195; history of, 581–583; independent record companies, 595–597; Latin music industry, 602; legal issues, 589–593; Liberty City, 580; Miami Bass, 577, 593–597; minorities in, 581; neighborhoods, 577–580; Overtown, 577, 579, 581; Pac Jam Teen Disco, 585, 587; radio stations, 578, 582, 597; roots of rap, 583–584 Miami Bass, 577, 593–597

Index The Miami Boyz, 594 M.I.A.M.I. (Money Is a Major Issue) (Pitbull), 601 M.I.C., 291 ‘‘mic checking,’’ 586 Mic Geronimo, 64 Michael, Lynette, 405; See also Smiley Michael K, 197 Michel, Prakazrel, 189; See also Pras Michel’le, 238, 240 The Micranots, xli, xliii, 365, 366, 375 Mictlan, Mike, 382 ‘‘midriffs,’’ 403 Midwest, xxi, 347; hip hop in, 347– 349; Mason-Dixon Line, 350–351; stereotypes of, 369; See also Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; Gary; Kansas City; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; St. Louis; St. Paul ‘‘Midwest Invasion’’ (Twista), 349 ‘‘Midwest Swing’’ (Nelly), 349, 358 ‘‘Midwest Swing’’ (Penelope), 353 Midwest Thug Niggaz (CCA), 329 Mighty Mic Masters, 110 Mighty Mighty Bosstones, 219 The Mighty Quinn, 569 Mikah 9, 247, 248 Mike D, 79 Mike Fresh, 588 Mike Gee, 62 Mike Music, 110 Mike Smooth, xl Mikey, 338 Mikst Nutz, 214 ‘‘Military Minds’’ (Buckshot), xxi Milk, 569 Milk D, 80, 109 Millenium Thug, xlvi Miller, Cory, 527, 529; See also C-murder Miller, Matt, x, xvi, 467, 523, 524, 541, 577 Miller, Percy, 90, 531; See also Master P

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Miller, Vyshonn, 531; See also Silkk the Shocker Millions More Movement, 166 Mills, Calvin, II, 578, 594 Mills, Carlton, 594 Mills, Jeff, 394, 402; See also The Wizard Milwaukee (Wisconsin), hip hop in, 348 Mind of a City Slicker, Heart of a Country Nigga (Billy Roadz), 191 Mind of a Lunatic (Scarface), 456 The Mind of Manny Fresh (Manny Fresh), 535 ‘‘Mindless’’ (Dow Brain & Brad Young), 215 ‘‘Mind’s Playin’ Tricks on Me’’ (Geto Boys), 432 Minneapolis (Minnesota): Dinkytown, 367, 368; DJs, 364, 369; female artists, 377, 383, 384; The Fifth Element, 367; hip hop in, xvi, xxxv, xxxvi, 168, 349, 363–388; neighborhoods, 363, 387; nicknames, 369; ‘‘Peace Parties,’’ 368; radio shows, 365 Minneapolis B-Boy Organization, 374 Miri Ben Ari, 335 mirror-turn-lamp, xiv The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Lauryn Hill), xlv, 190 Miser, Pete. See Pete Miser Miss E. . .So Addictive (Missy Elliot), 509 ‘‘Miss You’’ (Aaliyah), 90 ‘‘Missing You’’ (Creed Chameleon), 617, 619 ‘‘Missing You’’ (Diana Ross), 90 Missouri, speech pattern, 356 Missy Elliot, xxii, xliv, xlv, 162, 300, 317, 457, 496, 500, 504–510, 515, 602; photo, 504; videos, 508–509 Missy Mist, 594, 596 Mista Don’t Play: Everythang’s Working (Project Pat), 567

691

692

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Index

Mistah F.A.B., 259, 272, 274, 282–283 Mister Cee, 55, 111 The Mitch Thomas Show (TV show), 149 Mitchell, Felix, 259, 261 Mitchell, Lola, 564; See also Gangsta Boo Mitchell, Tony, xix ‘‘Miuzi Ways a Ton’’ (Public Enemy), 350 Mix-A-Lot. See Sir Mix-A-Lot Mix Master Mike, 79 The Mix Tape (KRS-One), 18 Mix Tape Vol. 1 (Ric Jilla), 332 mixing techniques, xi, xvi Mixmasters, 235 Mixtape Messiah series, 455 mixtapes, 491–492, 537, 563, 565, 566, 601, 602 Mixxing, 225 Miyasato, Jacob, 611; See also DJ Genuine HI Miz Korona, 406, 421 Mizell, Jason, 49 MJG, xlii, 549, 550, 559, 560, 564, 565, 566, 567, 569, 570, 573; photo, 560 Mkali, Chaka, 365; See also I Self Divine; Self One ‘‘MN Nice’’ (Maria Isa), 369–370 Mo’ Better Blues (film), 81 Mo-Jo, xxxvi, 474 Mo Roc, 143 Mo Unique, 328 Mobb Deep, xlvi, 17, 63, 67, 68 Mobb Music, 264, 265, 268, 273 Mobb Sqwad, 158 Mobstability (Twista), 322 ‘‘Mobstaz Ink’’ (Vakill), 331 M.O.C. (Masters of Sound), 569 Model 500, 393 Moe Love, 15 Moleman Records, 319, 330, 331, 374 Molina, Arturo, Jr., xxxv, 230, 239;

See also Kid Frost Moltke, Shawn, 55; See also MC Shan ‘‘Moments in Time’’ (The Force MDs), 123 The Monastery (disco), 290 Money B, xxxviii, 147, 293 Money Is Still a Major Issue (Pitbull), 601 The Money (Litefoot), xli Monie Love, xvii, xl, 61, 145, 147, 183 Monstamind Records, 215 Monster’s Ball (film), 96 Montgomery, Ryan, 421; See also Royce Monts, Rodd, 398 Monty G, 158 Monumental (Iomos Marad), 332 Monzie D, 109 Moochie, 384 Moochy C, 370, 373 Moody, 423 Mooka Jerz, 191 ‘‘mooks,’’ 403 Moore, Irene, 405; See also Dee Moore, Jonathon, 294–296, 301 Moore, Michael, 225, 226, 234, 397; See also Mixxing Moore, Ondre, 416; See also Swift Moore, Reginald, 416; See also Mud Moore, Rudy Ray, xv, xxxii, 587–588; See also Dolemite Moorer, Lana, 83; See also MC Lyte M.O.P., 22, 114 Morales, Norberto, 59; See also Candyman Morgan, Craig, 55; See also Craig G Morgan, Joan, 82, 507 Morley, Jefferson, 1 Morphine, 219 Morris, Nat, 395 Morris, Tracie, 82 Morrow, Mark, 206 Morrow, Tracy, 228; See also Ice-T

Index Morse, Kevin, 305 Morse, Steve, 207 Mos Def, 20, 61, 62, 76, 81, 83, 86, 94–97, 109, 294, 415 Moseley, Timothy, 497–498; See also Timbaland Mosley, Tony, 370, 375; See also Tony M Moss, Albert, 577, 580, 582, 595; See also Uncle Al Most Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star (Black Star), 94 The Most Feared Man in Hip Hop, 245 Most Known Unknown (Three 6 Mafia), 564 Most Wanted, xxxvii ‘‘Mother Hip Hop’’ (Akrobatik), 214 Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of African-American Folklore (Dundes), 229 Motion, 217 Motley, xxxiv, 394 ‘‘The Motorbooty’’ (Del tha Funkee Homosapien), 270 Motown Records, 183, 394, 478, 479 ‘‘Motownphilly’’ (Boyz II Men), 159 Motsi Ski, 411 Mountain Climbaz, 421 MOVE, 150–151 Move Somethin’ (2 Live Crew), 588, 589 Moye, Theodore, 470; See also Easy Lee MP Da Last Don (Master P), 532 Mr. Beautiful, 202 ‘‘Mr. Big’’ (Eightball), 560 Mr. Collipark, 492 Mr. De, 404 ‘‘Mr. D.J.’’ (Dallas Austin), 478 Mr. Funky, 190 Mr. Green, 191 Mr. Greenweedz, 332 Mr. Lif, 145, 218, 219, 220 Mr. Life, 195, 214

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Mr. Magic, xxxiii, xxxv, 57, 119, 120, 121 Mr. Mixx, xxxvii, 584, 585, 597 Mr. Scarface Is Back (Scarface), 441 Mr. Supreme, 293, 296 ‘‘Mr. Tung Twista’’ (Twista), 322 Mr. Vote. See P. Diddy Mr. Walt, 107–115, 120, 185 ‘‘Ms. Jackson’’ (OutKast), 482 Ms. Jade, 488 Ms Melodie, 16 MSP, 377 ‘‘Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment’’ (Butler), 434 Mud, 416, 418 Mueller, Gavin, 404 Muffla, 230 Muhammad, Ali Shaheed, viii, 61, 62, 112, 414 Muhammad, Hakim, 305 Muhammad, Haneef, 165; See also Young Neef Muhammad Ali, xviii, xxxi Muja Messiah, 373, 382 Muklashy, Wasim, 130 Mullinix, Tadd, xlix, 406, 422; See also Dabrye multiregional groups, xxiv, xlii Mumford, Kevin, 177 Munk, 399 Murda Mook, 42 Murder Dog Magazine, 449 Murder, Inc., 64–66 Murder Ink, 22 Murder Mase, 40 Murder-T, 519 ‘‘Murder Was the Case’’ (movie), 245 murdercore, 412 Murray, Bill, 137 Murray, Charles, 2 Murray, Keith, 21, 180 Murray, Ray, 482 Murray’s Revenge (MURS), 250

693

694

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Index

MURS, xxiii, 234, 242, 249, 250, 374, 381 Musab, 366, 376, 378 The Music Box (club), 318 Music Box (TV show), 79 ‘‘Music Makes Me High’’ (The Lost Boyz), viii Music Specialists Inc., 583 musical families, 80 ‘‘Muthafucka Ain’t Mine’’ (UGK), 443 ‘‘My Adidas’’ (Run DMC), 439 ‘‘My Block: Virginia’’ (MTV), 518, 519 ‘‘My Caddy’’ (MC Shy D), 471 ‘‘My Drink N’ My 2 Step’’ (Cassidy), 166 ‘‘My FEMA People’’ (Mia X), 544 My Ghetto Report Card (E-40), 281 ‘‘My Hardcore Rhymes’’ (Le Juan Love), 588 My Homies (Scarface), 442 ‘‘My Hooptie’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 ‘‘My Last Blunt’’ (The Coup), 275 ‘‘My N***a’’ (Penelope), 353 ‘‘My Name Is’’ (Eminem), 421 ‘‘My Part of Town’’ (Tuff Crew), xix, 158 ‘‘My Philosophy’’ (BDP), 16 ‘‘My Prerogative’’ (Armageddon), 22 ‘‘My Summer Vacation’’ (Ice Cube), 350 ‘‘My World’’ (Big Pun), 22 The Mystery of Chess Boxing (film), 125 Mystic Stylez (Three 6 Mafia), xliv, 564–565, 566 Mystikal, 473, 513, 531, 532 Mystro, 407 ‘‘Mystro on the Flex’’ (Kaos & Mystro), 408 N*Sync, 123 N2Deep, 293, 303 Najm, Faheem, 492; See also T-Pain

‘‘Nann Nigga’’ (Trick Daddy), 600 Napoleon’s (club), 192 Nappy DJ Needles, 345 Nappy Roots, x, xliv, xlvi Nard, 328 Nas, xii, xiii, xviii, xix, xlvi, xlviii, 17, 21, 35, 48, 57, 62–64, 67, 82, 111, 121, 147, 165, 177, 199, 412, 443, 480, 602; photo, 63 Nasir, Sar’d, 166; See also Gillie da Kid Nasty Bitch (Chapter 1) (Bust Down), 589 Nasty Nes, xxxiv, 290, 297, 307–308 ‘‘Nasty Trick’’ (Gangsta Boo), 567 NastyMix Records, 297, 299, 301 N.A.T.A.S., 412 Nate Dogg, xxii, 242 Nation Conscious Rap (Grandmaster Caz), 3 Nation on the Rise (Sudden Rush), 613 National Southside Profile, 350 The Native Ones, 366, 385 Native Tongues Posse, xvii, 61, 62, 85, 94, 123, 147, 183 Los Nativos, 366, 370, 372, 384, 385 Nature, xlvi Nature of a Sista (Queen Latifah), 183 Naughty, 185 Naughty by Nature, 107, 183, 186– 188, 387; photo, 187 Navarro, Nick, 590, 591 Neal, Marc Anthony, 549 Nealy, Sherman, 583 Nee-Yo, 85 The Negro’s Back (Disco Rick), 594 Negus One, 294 Nelly, xlv, 22, 165, 343, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 358, 360, 455; photo, 344 Nelson, Charles, 119; See also Mercury Nelson, Leah, 377 NEMNOCH, 376

Index The Neptunes, xv–xvi, xxiii, xli, xlvii, 511–513, 515 Neptunes, photo, 511 N.E.R.D., 336 Netherlands, xxxix Network Crew, 143, 144, 168 Network (Kanser), 379 Never, 327 Never Die Alone (Goines), 2 ‘‘Never Scared’’ (Lyrical Giants), 488 Never Stop, 596 Never Stop Productions, 594, 596 The New Beats: Exploring the Music, Culture, and Attitudes of Hip-Hop (Fernando), 1 ‘‘The New Dance Show’’ (radio show), 395 New Edition, 39, 197, 198, 210, 478, 507 New Jack City: The Next Generation (film), 146, 393, 571 ‘‘New Jack Swing,’’ 38, 497 New Jersey: hip hop in, xiv, xix, xxxiii, xxxvii, xxxviii, 177–193; New School, 191–192 New Jersey Nets, 93 New Kids on the Block, 197, 198, 199, 210 New MC, 379 New Music Seminar Battle for World Supremacy, 155 New Orleans (Louisiana): African and Caribbean influence on, 525–526; bounce, xxxvii, 523, 525, 527, 529, 530, 540, 543; brass bands, 526; carnival and, 525, 526; hip hop in, xxxvii, 523–544; housing projects, 528–529; Hurricane Katrina and hip hop, xlviii, 95, 433, 525, 528, 539, 542, 543; Peaches Records and Tapes, 523, 524; slang and dialect, 536–537 ‘‘New Orleans Block Party’’ (Partners’N’Crime), 527

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New Orleans Brass Bands, 526 The New Pornographers, 387 The New Power Generation, 370, 375 New Prophet Camp Records, 567 ‘‘New Rap Language’’ (BDP), 16 ‘‘The New Rap Language’’ (The Treacherous Three), xxxiv, 35 The New Style, 187 ‘‘The New Style’’ (Beastie Boys), 154 New York City: Fresh Fest, 409, 418, 479; graffiti in, xxxii, xxxv; The Lyricist Lounge, 20; origins of hip hop in, xi, xv, xvi, 20; population, 288; See also Bronx; Harlem; Manhattan; Queens; Staten Island New York/Paris/Dakar (Positive Black Soul), 18 The New York Puppeteers, 198, 207 Newark (New Jersey): graffiti, 184; hip hop hot spots, 192 hip hop in, xix, 177–193; nickname, 178; population, 177–178; social conditions, 177–179 Newark. A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America (Mumford), 177 Newark Riots, 178 Newbury Studios, 215 Newcastle upon Tyne (England), xviii Newman, Ali (Jason), 369; See also Brother Ali Newton, Huey P., 258 Newtroit, 394 Next, 188 Nice & Smooth, xxxix, 55 Nice and Hard (Def IV), 430 Nick Speed, 415, 419 Nicolay, xxiv, xlvii, xlix Nigga Please (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), 136 Niggaz With Attitude, 234, 237 Nigger (Gregory), xviii Nikke, 314 Nikki D., 405 Nine, xliii

695

696

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Index

Nine Livez (Nine), xliii ‘‘901 Area Code’’ (Iron Mic Coalition), 550 ‘‘9 mm Goes Bang’’ (BDP), 15 9th Wonder, xxiii, xlv, xlvii, xlviii 93 ’til Infinity (Souls of Mischief), 270 ‘‘99 Problems’’ (Jay-Z), 93 The Ninja Crew, 583 Nirvana, 287 Nketia, J.H., 384 ‘‘No Coast’’ (Abstract Pack), 378 ‘‘No Coast’’ (St. Paul Slim), 383 No Goats, No Glory (The Goats), 159 No I.D., 317, 328 N.O. Joe, 376, 443, 445 No Limit Records, xl, 91, 523, 524, 528, 531–533, 541 No Man’s Land (Souls of Mischief), 270 No Masterbacks, 611 ‘‘No More Lies’’ (Michel’le), 238 No Name (club), 561 No Need for Alarm (Del tha Funkee Homosapien), 270 No One Can Do It Better (The DOC), 238 No Said Date (Masta Killa), 137 ‘‘No Scrubs’’ (TLC), 481 ‘‘No Sleep Til Brooklyn’’ (Beastie Boys), 79 ‘‘No Vaseline’’ (Ice Cube), 238 No Way Out (Biggie Smalls), 89 ‘‘No Way Out’’ (MCGz), 330 Noble, Reggie, 179; See also Redman ‘‘Nobody Loves the Hood’’ (Huey), 353 Nomadic Wax, 81 Non-Stop, 596 Nonchalant, xliv ‘‘Nookie Real Good’’ (Jacki-O), 601 Nope, 152 Noreaga, 293 Norfolk (Virginia), xxii ‘‘The Northwest Sound,’’ 289

‘‘(Not Just) Knee Deep’’ (Digital Underground), 268 ‘‘Not Yet Free’’ (The Coup), 275 Not4Prophet, 96 ‘‘Nothing But Sex’’ (Choice), 457 ‘‘Notorious’’ (Almighty RSO), 209 The Notorious B.I.G., xiii, xv, xxi, xxii, xliv, 39, 82, 86–87, 89, 97, 137; photo, 87 The Notorious K.I.M. (Biggie Smalls), 89 Now (Kanser), 379 ‘‘Now Where Ya’ll At?’’ (MCGz), 330 ‘‘Numb/Encore’’ (Jay-Z), 93 ‘‘The Number One’’ (Atmosphere), 369 #1 Suspect (Gangsta Pat), xli, 559 Numskull, 266 Nunez, Jose, 588; See also Chep Nuriddin, Jalal, xxxii; See also Lightnin’ Rod ‘‘Nuthin’ but a G Thang’’ (Dr. Dre), 241 Nutter, Mayor Michael, 143 N.W.A., viii, xx, xxxviii, 13, 38, 61, 153, 154, 158, 195, 235, 237–238, 245, 250, 265, 298, 350, 477, 523; photo, 236 N.W.A. and the Posse (N.W.A.), 298 NYC Rules (El-P), 247 Nyce, Steve, 201 NYOIL, 137 NZone Entertainment, 492 O & Sparks, 162, 165 O-Solo, 191, 192 Oakland (California): The Bay Bridge, 278; Black Panthers, 258–260, 272, 282; hip hop in, 261–277, 280–284; neighborhoods of, 259; Oakland-Atlanta axis, 265; sideshows, 273–274; sociopolitical overview, 257–261 ‘‘Oakland’’ (Sir Too $hort), xxi

Index Obelisk Movements (I Self Divine & Akiem), 375 Obie Trice, 348 O’Bryant, Robert, 423; See also Waajeed obscenity, xxxvi, xl, 154, 440, 589–593 O.C., 40, 83, 271 Ocean of Funk (ESG), 446 ODB. See Ol’ Dirty Bastard Odd Squad, 445 Oddjobs, 366 Official Instrumental Series Vol. 1 (J Dilla), 415 OG Ron C, 455 Ogbar, Jeffrey O.G., xiii, xvii, xviii, 159 O.G.C., 82, 107 Ogg, Alex, 1 ‘‘Oh Boy’’ (Cam’ron), 42 Oh, My God! (Get Fresh Crew), xxxvii, 36 The O’Jays, 149 okayplayer (Web site), xxiv, xlvii Ol’ Dirty & the Bastard (film), 125 Ol’ Dirty Bastard (ODB), ix, 81, 112, 124, 125, 131, 132, 135, 136, 512; See also Ason Unique; The Professor Old Joseph, 617 Old School Flava (The Treacherous Three), 35 ‘‘Old School Toyota’’ (Hoku), xlvi, 620, 621 Oliphant, Clarence, 300 Oliver, Mickey, 318 Olson, Ron, 399; See also DJ Papa Ron Olympia Palace (club), 49 Omarr, Dwayne, 197, 201, 202 ‘‘On a Cloud’’ (Waajeed), 423 On the Outside Looking In (Eightball & MJG), 561 On The Strength Records, 559, 560, 564

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On Top of the World (Eightball & MJG), 561 On Top Records, 477, 577, 594 ‘‘One Day’’ (UGK), 433 One Day It Will All Make Sense (Common), 324–325 187 Ride By (Tweedy Bird Loc), 245 ‘‘One for Peedi’’ (Peedi Peedi), 165 ‘‘One for the Treble’’ (Davy DMX), xxxv, 48–49 100Juice (Juice), 330 One in a Million (Aaliyah), xxii ‘‘One in the Chamba’’ (Almighty RSO), 195, 211 One Life 2 Live (CCA), 329 One Man Stan, 345 1-MP, 218 ‘‘1–900-Hustler’’ (Freeway) One Republic Records, 503 ‘‘One Time’s Got No Case’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 ‘‘One to Grow On’’ (UMCs), 123 112 (artist), 40, 87, 89 online forums, hip hop and, xxiv Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (Raekwon), 131 Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II (Raekwon), 138 ‘‘The Only Color That Matters Is Green’’ (Pace Won), 191 ‘‘Only in America’’ (Mo-Jo), 474 ‘‘Only When You’re Lonely’’ (Ginuwine), 500 ‘‘Only You (Remix)’’ (112), 40 Onyx, xlii, 66, 112 ‘‘Oo-poppa-doo, how do you do,’’ (Jocko Henderson), 149 Oogie, 197 ‘‘Ooh Lawd (Party People)’’ (Kizzy Rock & DJ Smurf), 485 ‘‘Ooh, We Love You Rakeem’’ (Prince Rakeem), 124 Oooooooohhh. . .on the TLC Tip (TLC), 481

697

698

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Index

open-air parties, 3, 20, 31 Operation Stackola (The Luniz), 266 Opio, 270 ‘‘O.P.P.’’ (Naughty by Nature), 186, 188 ‘‘Opposites Attract’’ (video), 365 Orange Krush, 48 Orangeman, 200, 201 Organix (The Roots), xlii, 158, 160 OrganixA (The Roots), xlii The Organization, 11 Organized Konfusion, xl Organized Noize, 475, 481–482, 483, 484 ‘‘Original Human Beat Box’’ (Doug E. Fresh), 36 Ortiz, Joell, 337 Osbourne, Ozzy, 412 Oschino, 164 Otter, Cecil, 382 ‘‘Our Own Style’’ (Dev IV), 431 Out of Town Posse, 206 ‘‘Out Ta Flip’’ (Dow Brain & Brad Young), 215 Outa Control Fillmoe gang, 279 Outcast Vol. 1 (Kaos & Mystro), 407, 408 Outerspace, 168 OutKast, xxii, xlii, xliii, xlv, 244, 467, 470, 471, 473, 475, 480, 481–483, 484, 486; photo, 482 OutKast Clothing, 483 outlaw characters, 229 Outlaw Records, 559 Outler, Ted, 598; See also Blac Haze ‘‘Outro’’ (UGK), 433 Outsidaz, 185, 190–191, 416 Overcast (Atmosphere), 372 The Overlords, 376 ‘‘Overnight Celebrity’’ (Twista), 322 ‘‘The Overtown Hop’’ (Eerk & Jerk), 579 Owens, Dana, 181; See also Queen Latifah Owuso, Victor, 491; See also V.I.C.

Ozone, 228, 300 P. Diddy (Puff Daddy), 38–39, 40, 50, 89, 307, 508, 582–583 P-Dog, 273 P-funk, 267, 268, 270, 396, 407 ‘‘The P is Free’’ (Black Star), 94 P$C, 490 Pac Jam Teen Disco, 585, 587 Pace Won, 189, 190, 191 Pacific Northwest: area codes, 309; DJs, 306–308; hip hop in, 287–309; musical history, 288–291; ‘‘The Rocket,’’ 302; See also Portland; Seattle PacJam, 587, 596, 598 PacJam II, 587 ‘‘Pack Jam (Look out for the OVC)’’ (Michael Jonzun), xxxv, 197, 593 Pack Pistol Posse, 192 PAGN. See Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network Pagne, 376 Paid Dues Independent Festival, 381 Paid in Full (Eric B. & Rakim), xxxviii Paid in Full (movie), 37, 165 Paisley Park Records, 385 Pam the Funkstress, 275 Pandisc Records, 595, 596–597 Papa Doc, xxv Papa J. Smoove, 396 Paper Chase (Known Rulers), xxxix The Paper Chasers Vol. I (J Prince), 429 Paper Tiger, 382 Paper Trail (T.I.), 490 Paperwork (Lil’ Troy), 434 Papoose, 81, 86, 337 Paradime, 406 ‘‘Paradise Found’’ (Sudden Rush), 614 ‘‘Paragon’’ (Daily Plannet), 332 ‘‘Paragraphs’’ (Paradine), 406 Parental Advisory, 483 ‘‘Parents Just Don’t Understand’’ (DJ

Index Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince), 145, 156 ‘‘The Parents of Roxanne’’ (Gigolo Tony & Lacey Lace), xxxvii, 583 Paris, 263, 272, 273–274 Paris the Black Fu, 404 ‘‘Paris, Tokyo’’ (Lupe Fiasco), 337 Paris Toon, 206 Park Side Killers, 154 Park Sounds, 109 Parker, Kenny, 16, 17 Parker, Laurence ‘‘Krishna,’’ 13, 57; See also KRS-One Parker, Maceo, 305 Parker, Terrence C., 330; See also Juice Parlet, 407 Parliament Funkadelic, 267, 273 Partners ‘N’Crime (PNC), 527 ‘‘The Party Continues’’ (Da Brat), 326 Party Music (The Coup), 276 ‘‘Party Over Here’’ (Lord Finesse), 40 ‘‘Party Stylin’’’ (UMCs), 123 ‘‘Pass That Dutch’’ (Missy Elliot), 510 ‘‘Pastime Paradise’’ (Stevie Wonder), 376 Pastor Troy, 475, 488 ‘‘Patriot Act’’ (St. Paul Slim), 383 Patton, Antwan, 470, 481, 482; See also Big Boi Paul, Brian, 422; See also Slim Paul Revere, 289 Paul Wall, viii, 165, 435, 453–454, 455; photo, 454 Paul’s Boutique (Beastie Boys), xxi pause tapes, 203 Pawns in the Game (Professor Griff), 589 The Payback (Choice), 457 The Payback (O & Sparks), 165 Payday Records, 419 PC Crew, 200 P.E.A.C.E., 247 ‘‘Peace of Mind’’ (Top Choice Clique), 216

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‘‘Peace Parties,’’ 368 Peaches Records and Tapes, 523, 524 Peanut, 594 Peanut Butter Wolf, xl, xliv Pearl Jam, 287 Pearson, Trisco, 120; See also Trisco Pebbles, 480, 481 Peedi Crakk, 164, 165 Peedi Peedi, 165 peek-a-boo system, 9 Pendleton, Rusty, 198, 199, 200, 201, 214, 216, 221; See also The Toe Jammer Penelope, 353 Penguin, xxxii ‘‘The People’’ (Common), 325 ‘‘The People’s Champ’’ (Paul Wall), 455 People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (A Tribe Called Quest), xl, 62 Pepa, 60 Pepo, 314 Peppermint, 314 Pe´rez, Armando, 601; See also Pitbull Perry, Imani, xviii Perry, Joe, 202, 204 Perry, Virgshawn, 185; See also DJ Kaos Pete Miser, 305 Pete Rock, 64, 415 Peterson, Richard, x Petrie, Daniel, 2 PF Cuttin, 111 Phanjam (Tuff Crew), 158 PH.A.N.J.A.M. (Tuff Crew & Krown Rulers), xxxviii The Pharcyde, 246, 247, 250, 414 Pharrell, xvi, xli, xlvii, 61, 123, 510– 515, 518, 519; photo, 511 Phat Kat, 400, 403, 414, 415, 418– 419, 422 Phesto, 270 Phife Dawg, 61, 62 Phil Mo, 332

699

700

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Index

Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), 143–169; 1956–1986, 151–155; 1986–1990, 155–159; 1993–1998, 159–162; 1999–2008, 162–167; Back2Basics, 169; Center City, 150; DJs in, 143–144; graffiti in, xi, xii, xvi, xxxi, xxxii, 144, 151–152; hip hop in, xvi, xvii, xix, xx, xlvi, 151–169, 196; history, 148–151; Mural Arts Program, 152; murder rate, 145, 146, 167; neighborhoods, 160; nickname, 178; racial tensions in, 149–151, 154, 160; social context, 145; Society Hill, 150; South Street, 160, 161; Underground Sound, 167–169 Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network (PAGN), 152 Philadelphia Freeway (Freeway), 165 Philadelphia Homicide City (film), 167 Philadelphia International Records, 149 The Philadelphia Negro (Du Bois), xvi Philbert, Harry, 370; See also Unicus Phill Most Chill, 158 Phillips, Ronnie Ron, 245 Philly Talk (magazine), 149 Philpot, Jay, 58 Phonte, xxiv, xlv, xlvii Phull Surkle, 366 Piccalo, 579, 598 Pick a Bigger Weapon (The Coup), 276 Pick Up the Mic (documentary), 385 ‘‘Pick Up the Pieces’’ (Awesome Dre & the Hardcore Committee), 396 ‘‘Pickin’ Boogers’’ (Big Daddy Kane), 56 Picture This (Doe or Die), 328 pidgin, Hawai’i, 606, 608, 620 Pierce, Paul, 220 Pierre, James, 509; See also Red Eyezz Pierre Evil, 231, 238, 245

‘‘Piggybank’’ (50 Cent), 67 Pilant Johnson, xlviii Pilot, 314 Pimp $quad Click, 490 Pimp C, xlix, 434, 436, 437, 443, 444 ‘‘Pimp of the Year’’ (Dru Down), 265 ‘‘pimp-ology,’’ 328 Pimpette, 406 Pimpin’ Ain’t Dead (Do or Die), 328 Pimpin Ain’t Easy (Big Daddy Kane), 55 pimps, 560 Pink, xxxv, 98, 202 Pinkston, Raynard, 328; See also B-Dog ‘‘Pipe Dreams’’ (Choice), 457 Pipeline (club), 192 ‘‘Piss on Your Grave,’’ 272 Pitbull, 580, 601 ‘‘Pittbull’s Cuban Rideout’’ (Pitbull), 601 Pitts, Karnail, 416; See also Bugz place references, xxiii–xiv, 14 ‘‘Place Where We Dwell’’ (Invincible), 406 Planet Asia, 293, 301 Planet Crucon (Crucial Conflict), 327 Planet Patrol, 197 ‘‘Planet Rock’’ (Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force), 24, 197, 233, 593 The Plastic Constellation, 382 ‘‘Plastic Silverware’’ (Interlock Records), 370 Plastikman, 417 The Platform (Dilated Peoples), 247 Platinum Pied Pipers, 406, 415, 423 Play (Doug E. Fresh), 37 Playa Fly, 564, 566 ‘‘Playa Like Me and You’’ (Do or Die), 328 Playa Poncho, 487 Playaz ’N the Game (J.T.), 279 Playboy Mikey D, 59 ‘‘Player’s Anthem’’(Biggie Smalls), 89

Index ‘‘Player’s Ball’’ (Outkast), xlii, 482 Players (Sir Too $hort), 262 Plies, 337, 577, 599, 600, 602 Plourde, Peter, 217; See also Lyrical Lord Plourde Plush Brothers, 158 Plush Club, 561 P.M. Dawn, 17 PMW, 470 PNC (Partners‘N’Crime), 527 PNS, 190 ‘‘Po Pimp’’ (Doe or Die), 328 ‘‘The Pocket’’ (Tabi Bonney), xlix Poe Boy Records, 601 Poetic Justice (film), 96 The Point CDC, l Poison Clan, 589 ‘‘Poison Ivy’’ (Young & Restless), 596 Poisonous Mentality (Devastator), 589 politicization, 16 Politics (Obama Is Here) (Ludacris), 490 P.O.L.O. Dynaztee, 598 Polygraph Records, 350 Polynesian Underground, 609, 614 ‘‘Poor Georgie’’ (MC Lyte), 84 Poor Righteous Teachers, xl, xlix ‘‘Pop Champagne’’ (Ron Browz), 42 pop-crossover, 16 ‘‘Pop, Lock and Drop It’’ (Huey), 347, 355, 357 Pop N’ Taco, 227, 228 ‘‘Pop that Pussy’’ (2 Live Crew), 591 Pope, Greg, xxxii; See also Campbellock Jr. Popeye, 200, 201 Poppa LQ, 303 ‘‘popping’’ (dance), xxxiv, 198, 228 Popular Demand (Black Milk), 415 Porn Theater Ushers, 220 Port of Miami (Rick Ross), xlviii, 600 Porter, Denaun, 416; See also Kon Artis Porter, Richard, 37 Portland (Oregon): hip hop in, 287,

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303–306; population, 288; radio shows, 306 P.O.S., 370, 382 Poschardt, Ulf, 4, 8 Posdnous, xvi, 157 The Posies, 290 Positive Black Soul, 18 ‘‘Positive Life’’ (Lovebug Starski), xxxiv posse cuts, xxiii ‘‘Posse on Broadway’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 292, 295, 298, 299, 300 Posta Boy, 42 Pough, Gwendolyn D., 377 Pough, Thomas, 55; See also DJ Polo Pour’ Me Cafe´, 402 ‘‘Powdered Water Too’’ (Eyedea and Abilities), 371 Powell, Kevin, 77 Power, 132 Power in Numbers (Jurassic 5), 247 The Power of Rhyme (Kid Sensation), 301 ‘‘The Power of Speech’’ (Jerome XL), xlix The Power Plant (club), 318 Powercore, 297 ‘‘The Powers in the Words’’ (Top Choice Clique), 207 Pras, 189 Prather, Kawan, 484; See also KP Pray, Doug, 152 precuing, 9 Preem. See DJ Premier ‘‘Pregnant Pussy’’ (UGK), 443 Prelitique & MC Sweet, 158 The Presidents of the United States of America, 290, 300 Pressiano, John, 201; See also Jawn P Pretty Tony, 580, 583, 598 ‘‘Pretty Woman’’ (2 Live Crew), 591– 592 The Pride of Indiana: Mix Tape Vol. 2 (Ric Jilla), 332

701

702

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Index

The Pride of Indiana Pt. 2 (Ric Jilla), 332 Primo. See DJ Premier Prince, 370, 375, 386, 418 Prince Charles, 17, 198 Prince Johnny C, 438 Prince Markee D, 81 Prince Paul, 55 Prince Raheim, 595 Prince Rakeem, xxxix, 124, 125; See also RZA Prince Vince, xxxix, 395, 396 ‘‘Princess of the Posse’’ (Queen Latifah), xxxviii, 182 Princess Superstar, 145 Priority Records, xxxix, 450 prison, 433, 434 Prodigy, 68 The Professor, 124; See also Ason Unique; Ol’ Dirty Bastard Professor Griff, xl, 147, 589 Profile Records, xxxv Profound & Single Minded Pros, 332 Project: Funk the World (P. Diddy), 39 Project 13, 376 Project Blowed, 248, 250 Project H.E.A.L., 17 Project Pat, 549, 564, 566 Project English (UNLV), 533 Promatic (Dogmatic), 416 promethazine, 436 Proof, 398, 402, 406, 408, 410, 415, 416, 418, 421, 422 Prophet Records, 567 Prophetix, xlvi Prospect, 22 ‘‘Protect Ya Nek’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 111, 127, 129, 130 Proving Ground Records, 407 ‘‘P.S.K. (What Does it Mean?)’’ (Schoolly D), xx, 153, 154, 231 Psycho, 376 ‘‘psycho’’ character, 447 Psychopathic Records, 412–413

Psychotic Neurotics, xli Public Enemy, xxi, xxxviii, xl, 13, 147, 156, 274, 306, 345, 350, 386, 408, 477, 589 Puerto Ricans, xlv, 384 Puff Daddy (Puffy). See P. Diddy Puffy, 512 Pull It All the Way Down (Clay D), 595 Punch, 220 Punch Spiked Wit Poison, 214 ‘‘Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down’’ (Brand Nubian), 113 ‘‘pure’’ bounce, 530–531 ‘‘Purple Punch’’ (Three 6 Mafia), 437 Purple Rain (Prince), 370, 386 Push Play Records, 408 Pusha-T, 14, 515, 516 Pussycat Dolls, 300 ‘‘Put ’Em on the Glass’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 299 Put Yo Hood Up (Lil Jon), 487 ‘‘Put Your Lighters Up’’ (Bahamadia), 160 Q-Tip, viii, 61, 62, 64, 185, 400, 414, 500 QPSL, 110 Quadralyrical, 305 Quality Control (Jurassic 5), 247 Quannum Records, 305 Queen Ivy, 601 Queen Latifah, xvii, xxxviii, xl, 61, 81, 96, 147, 181–184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 507; photo, 182 Queens (New York): Bridge Wars, xix, xx, xxxvii, xlix, 15, 56–57, 110, 114, 158; gangs in, 50; hip hop in, xii, xx, xxiii, 47–68, 110, 114; history of hip hop in, 48–54; Jamaica Ave. Shopping Center, 61; Queensbridge Houses, 63; Queensbridge Park, 63 ‘‘Queens Get the Money’’ (Daily Plannet), 332

Index Queensryche, 290 Quest, Deric, 220 Quest, Rob, 445 Quest Eons, 619 Questlove, 144, 159, 160, 161, 414 Quick Hit Boyz, 580 Quik, xx, xxiii, xlvii Quinones, Adolfo, 228; See also Shabba Doo Quintessential (Kanser), 379 R. Kain Blaze, 246 R. Kelly, 22, 166, 328, 508 R. Prophet, x, xliv ‘‘R U Ready 2 Change the World?’’ (The I.R.M. Crew), 374 R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece (Snoop Dogg & The Neptunes), xlvii RA Scion, xlvii ‘‘race music,’’ 289 Rachi, 569 Radigan, Junior, 217 Radio (LL Cool J), xxxvi, 59, 230, 237 Radio Club, 226, 227, 239 Radio Crew, 226 Radio Free Brooklyn (Pete Miser), 305 radio shows: xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvi, xliv; Atlanta, 471–472; Boston, 197, 198, 203–207, 216, 221; Chicago, 319; Detroit, 394–395; Hawai’i, 609, 611, 620; Lady B, 153; Los Angeles, 226, 230; Memphis, 563, 565; Miami, 578, 582; Minneapolis, 365; Monie Love, 147; Portland, 306; rap song banned from radio, xxxvi, 154; San Francisco, 319; Seattle, 290, 293, 295, 296, 297, 307; St. Louis, 344–345 ‘‘Radio Song’’ (R.E.M.), 17 radio stations, pirate radio stations, 578, 582, 597 Radiotron (club), 226, 227, 228

Raekwon, 130, 131 Raekwon the Chef, 21, 126–127, 129, 137, 138 Rage Against the Machine, 167 ragga, 15 Raggamuffin hip hop sound, 217 Rah Digga, 86, 185–186, 189, 191 Raheem, 430, 436–437 Raheem, Jarvis, 477 Raheem, Miciah, 476; See also Raheem the Dream Raheem the Dream, 476–477 Rahman, Ahmad, 408 Rahming, Derrick, 589 Rahzel, 160 Raices, 384 ‘‘The Rain’’ (Missy Elliot), 509 Rainbow Flava, 385 Rakeem. See Prince Rakeem Rakim, xxxviii, 21, 37, 55, 110, 186, 381, 443 Rally Rap, 143 Ralph M, xliii Ramist, Rachel, 377 Rampage, 86 rap. See gangsta rap; hip hop ‘‘Rap-A-Dance’’ (radio show segment), 395 Rap-A-Lot Records, xxxvii, 365, 376, 429–431, 441, 447, 457 rap artists. See hip hop artists Rap Attack (radio show), xxxv, 55, 121 ‘‘The Rap Blast’’ (DJ Billy T), 396 Rap Coalition, 214 ‘‘Rap Explosion’’ (radio show), 206 Rap Mafia, 396 Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Krims), x–xi RapAttackLives.com, 308 ‘‘The Rape Over’’ (Mos Def), 95 Rapid Fire (Young Gunz), 165 ‘‘Rapp Will Never Die’’ (MC Shy D), xxxvi, 476, 583 Rappa Ternt Sanga (T-Pain), xlviii

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703

704

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Index

Rapper J., 396 Rapper J. to the D., 396, 397 ‘‘Rapper’s Convention’’ (Harlem World Crew), 39 ‘‘Rapper’s Delight’’ (Sugar Hill Gang), xii. xiii, xiv, xxxiii, 1, 33, 34, 76, 109, 143, 196, 246, 318, 343, 359, 364, 365 Rappin’ 4-Tay, 267, 279 Rappin’ Black in a White World (Watts Prophets), xxxii ‘‘Rappin’ with Mr. Magic’’ (Mr. Magic), xxxiii ‘‘Rapping and Rocking the House’’ (Funky Four Plus More), xxxiii ‘‘Raps New Generation’’ (Classical II), 38 ‘‘Rapture’’ (Blondie), 18 Ras Maboya, xxxii Rasaq, 455 Rasheeda, 488 Rasta, 377, 378 ‘‘Ratatattat’’ (Twista), 320, 322 Raven-Symone´, 407 Ravipops (The Substance) (C-Rayz Walz), xlvi, 24 Raw Rusion, 147 Raw, Uncut, and X-Rated (Sir Too $hort), 262, 263 Rawkus Records, 406 Ray, Anthony, 297; See also Sir Mix-A-Lot Ray, Kyle, 365 Ray Dog, 200, 211 Rayes, Matt, 201 Razor, 125; See also RZA Razor Sharp Records, 132 Razor & Tie Records, 380 RBL Posse, 279 RBX, 242 RBX Files (RBX), 242 RCC, 205 RDM, 377, 378 Re-Up Gang, xlvii, 516, 517 Rea, Shirani, 524

Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (Back2Basics), 169 ‘‘Read These Nikes’’ (Geto Boys), 439 Ready & Willin,’ 291 Ready Rock C, 145 Ready to Die (P. Diddy), 39, 87 Reagan, Ronald, xxxiv, 1, 2 Real Chill, xxxvii, 447 ‘‘Real Love’’ (Mary J. Blige), 87 ‘‘Real N***a Roll Call’’ (Lil Jon), 350 Real Roxanne, 230 The Real Testament (Plies), 600 Reality Check (radio show), xliv, 442–443 reality-rap, 231 The Reason (Beanie Siegel), 163 Reasonable Doubt (Jay-Z), 91 Rebel Alliance (DJ Papa D & Truth Elemental), 219 Rebellion (Muja Messiah), 382 Rebirth Brass Band, 526 Rebirth of a Nation (Public Enemy), 274 ‘‘Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)’’ (Back2Basics), 169 ‘‘Recipe for a Hoe’’ (Boss), 405 ‘‘Reckless’’ (Chris Taylor), 226, 230, 231 Red Alert, l, 57, 62, 121 Red Cafe´, 81 Red Eye Jedi, 550, 569 Red Eyezz, 598 Red Flag, 306 The Red Light District (Ludacris), 489 Red Star First (Los Nativos), 385 Redding, Otis, 551 Redhead Kingpin, 497 Redman, xli, 137, 179–181, 184, 185, 228, 509; photo, 180 Reed, Antoine ‘‘Mikey,’’ 338 Reed, Darryl, 259; See also Lil D Reed, Lou, 62 Reef the Lost Cauze, 144, 145, 168 Reese, Barry Adrian, 165; See also Cassidy

Index Reeves, David, 48; See also Davy DMX Reflection Eternal, xxiii reggae, 15, 76, 85, 205, 214, 217, 619 regional conflict, xix regional logic, 23 Regulate. . .G-funk Era (Warren G), 242 ‘‘regulating,’’ 586 Reid, Antonio M., 480; See also L.A. Reid, Clarence, 583 Reid, Duke, 4 Reid, L.A., 481 Reid, Shaheem, 498 Rek the Heavyweight, 372 ‘‘Relax Your Mind’’ (T-Max), 215 Release Therapy (Ludacris), 489 R.E.M., 17 ‘‘The Remedy’’ (radio show), 345 ‘‘Reminding Me (of ‘Sef’)’’ (Common), 325 Remy, 22 The Renaissance (club), 49, 51 Renard with no Regard, 583 Replacements, 386 Repo, 314 ‘‘The Repo Man Sings for You’’ (The Coup), 272 ‘‘Represent’’ (Chingy), 351 Represent (Fat Joe), xliii, 18, 191 Res-Sa-Rec-Shun (Blac Haze), 598 respect, 21 ‘‘Respect Mine’’ (Fat Joe & Raekwon), 21 Respect the Game (Legit Ballin’ Vol. 3) (Twista), 322 Respect the Life (Musab), 378 response songs, 15 Restless (Xzibit), 18, 249 Resurrection (Common), xliii, 324 Resurrection (film), 90 Resurrection (Twista), 322 Return of the Boom Bap (KRS-One), 17 Return of the Bumpasaurus (Sir

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Mix-A-Lot), 293, 299–300 ‘‘Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers’’ (Chubb Rock, Jery da Damaja & O.C.), 83 Return of the Travellahs (I Self Divine & Akiem), 375 Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), 131 ‘‘Reunited’’ (Wu Tang Clan), 134 Rev Shines, 304 ‘‘Revelation’’ (2 Live Crew), xxxvi Reverend Run, 67 ‘‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’’ (Gil Scott-Heron), xxxii Revolutionary Vol. 1 (Immortal Technique), 96 Revolutionary Vol. 2 (Immortal Technique), 96 Rhapsody (Aaliyah), 406 Rhazel, 64 Rhome, Tony, 200 rhyme, xvii–xviii Rhyme Cartel, 300 Rhyme Pays (Ice-T), 231 Rhyme Syndicate Comin’ Through (Rhyme Syndicate), 231–232 Rhyme Syndicate Records, xvii, xl, 231 Rhymefest, 314, 315, 330, 331, 335, 336 Rhymesayers, xlii, 366, 367, 370, 373, 381, 387 ‘‘Rhymin’ and Rappin’’’ (Paul Winley), 34 ‘‘Rhymin’ and Rappin’’’ (Paulette & Tanya Winley), xxxiii, 34 Rhythm Kitchen, 399, 400, 408, 414, 416, 418 ‘‘Rhythm Talk’’ (Jocko Henderson), xxxiii, 144, 149 Ric Jilla, 322, 332 Riccio, Ray, 5 Rice, Mark, 589 Rice, R.J., 406 Rich Boy, xiii, xlix, 337

705

706

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Index

Richards, Caleb, 612 Richie, Lionel, 90 Richie Rich, 274 Rick Ross. See Ross, Rick Ricky B, 540 Rico Law, 569 Rico Love, 347, 348 Rico Wade, 481 ‘‘Ride Out Dip’’ (Crucial Conflict), 327 ‘‘Ride Out Dip’’ (video), 327 ‘‘Ride Wit Me’’ (City Spud), 352 ‘‘Ridin’ Dirty’’ (Chamillionaire), 455 Ridin’ Dirty (UGK), 433, 434, 444 Ries, Christopher F., 165; See also Young Chris Riff Raff, 618 ‘‘Right Thurr’’ (Chingy), 355 Rigormirtiz (DMG), 376 Rihanna, 336, 490 Riley, Raymond ‘‘Boots,’’ 272, 274– 275, 276, 277, 278 Riley, Teddy, xvi, 38, 39, 55, 430, 431, 497–498, 515, 518, 519 Riley, Terry, 512 Rincon, Uriel ‘‘Tony,’’ 66 Rip 66, 314 Rip Shop, 214 Risk, 314 Rita J., 332 Ritchie, Robert, 409; See also Kid Rock Rites of Passage (Brother Ali), 380– 381, 383 Ritual Promotion, 417 Rivera, Lance, 40 Rizzo, Mayor Frank, 150 RKCNDY (club), 294 Roawear (apparel label), 93 Rob Base, xxxix Rob Storm, 565 Robbie Rob, 197 Roberts, Andrea, 177 Roberts, Dave, 302

Roberts, John W., 148 Roberts, William, 600; See also Ross, Rick Robertson, Robert, xviii Robinson, Jackie, 83 Robinson, Joe, 196 Robinson, Nat, 80 Robinson, Sylvia, xxxiii Robinson, Zandria F., 549 Roc-a-fella Records, 41, 42, 91, 92, 145, 162, 165, 410 ‘‘Rock & Roll’’ (Led Zeppelin), 406 ‘‘Rock Co. Kane Flow’’ (De La Soul), 168 ‘‘Rock Dis Funky Joint’’ (Poor Righteous Teachers), xl Rock Force, 594 Rock Hard Delegation, 158 ‘‘Rock Ice’’ (Creed Chameleon), 617 ‘‘Rock the Bells’’ (LL Cool J), 59, 60 ‘‘Rock the House’’ (Magic Mike & Beat Master Clay D), xxxix, 595 Rock This Planet (Bass Patrol), 594 rockers, 78 ‘‘Rockin’ It’’ (Real Chill), xxxvii, 447 Rocks, Mikey, xxiv The Rocksteady Crew, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxvi Rockwell, 143 Rocky V (film), 155 Rodriguez, Nestor, 290; See also DJ Nasty Nes Roger and Me (film), 397 Rogers, Andrell, 477; See also Kilo Rogers, Christopher, 211 Rogow, Bruce, 591 Rojas, Kristofer, 615; See also Creed Chameleon ‘‘Roll It Up My Nigger’’ (Success-N-Effect), 477 ‘‘Roll Out (My Business)’’ (Ludacris), 489

Index Rollin with Number One (Kid Sensation), 301 Romeo, 64 ‘‘Romper Room’’ (Mac Dre), 280 Ronin Ro, 240 Ronnie Ron, xl The Rooftop, xxiv Rookie of the Year (Ya Boy), 280 ‘‘Room With a View’’ (Brother Ali), 370 The Roots, xlii, 107, 143, 144, 145, 157, 158, 159–162, 196, 294, 386, 415, 611; photo, 159 Roper, Deirdre, 60 ‘‘Rosa Parks’’ (OutKast), 482 Rosario, Ralphie, 318 Rose, Tricia, 91, 405 Rosenblatt, Roger, 432, 433 Ross, Diana, 90 Ross, Mark, 476, 584, 592; See also Brother Marquis Ross, Rick, xxiii, xlviii, xlix, 165, 577, 582, 599, 600, 602 Rosy, 314 Roth, Asher, xxv, l, 148 Rough Ryders, 145, 220 Round, Anthony, 328; See also Nard Round, Dennis, 328; See also AK47 Rowdy Records, 479, 484 ‘‘Roxanne, Roxanne’’ (UTFO), xx, xxxvi, 56 ‘‘Roxanne’s Revenge’’ (Roxanne Shante), xx, xxxvi, 56 Royal Flush, 430, 447 Royce, 421 Rubberband, 78 ‘‘Rubberband Man’’ (T.I.), 490 Rubin, Rick, xxiii, xxxvi, xxxix, xlvii, 52, 54, 58, 59, 145, 200, 204, 299, 431, 440, 593 Rucker, Ursula, 377 Ruff Draft (J Dilla), 415 Ruff Ryders, 22, 147, 162 Ruffhouse Records, 480 RuffNation Records, 166

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‘‘Ruffneck’’ (MC Lyte), 83, 84 The Ruler. See Slick Rick ‘‘Rump Shaker’’ (Wrecks-N-Effect), 512 Run, 52, 66 Run DMC, xii, xxxv, xxxvii, xlii, xlvi, 16, 35, 48–54, 55, 65, 66, 77, 110, 202, 204, 226, 230, 237, 386, 409, 412, 438, 584; photo, 48 ‘‘Run for It’’ (Juvenile), 526 Runnin’ Off at Da Mouth (Tung Twista), xli, 320 ‘‘Running Away’’ (Amphibeus Tung), 619 rural themes, x Rush Communications, 52 Rush Management, 51 Rush Productions, 49 Rushin, Jerry, 582 Rushkoff, Douglas, 403 Russell, Bernard, 416; See also Thyme Russoul, 330 Rusty the ‘‘Toe Jammer,’’ 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 205, 207, 214–215, 216, 221 Ruthless: A Memoir (Heller), 235–236 Ruthless By Law (Ruthless By Law), 279 Ruthless By Law Posse, 279 Ruthless Records, 213, 235, 237, 238, 240, 245, 247, 250 Rx Lord, 594 Rybak, Mayor R.T., 387 RZA, xlvii, 112, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 167, 387; See also Prince Rakeem S&M (2 Live Crew), 588 Saadiq, 423 ‘‘Sabrosa,’’ 384 Sabzi, xlvii ‘‘Sack Chaser’’ (Rapper J to the D.’s), 396

707

708

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Index

Sad Clown/Bad Dub series, 372 Saddler, Joseph, xv, xxxi, 6; See also Grandmaster Flash Safe and Sound (DJ Quik), 243 Sage Francis, xlv, 24, 374, 380, 381, 387 S’aid, Musab Ali, 369; See also Beyond Saigon, 81, 337 Saints Roller Rink, 360 ‘‘Sally Got a One-Track Mind,’’ 113 Salsoul Records, 409 Salt, 60 Salt-N-Pepa, 48, 60, 156, 197; photo, 60 Samo, 98 Sample Records, 216 San Francisco (California), xvii, 273, 277–280; The Bay Bridge, 278; The Fillmore, 278–279; Hunter’s Point, 279; radio, 319; See also Oakland San Quinn, 279–280 Sandman, xlvii, 516 ‘‘Sandwhiches’’ (Detroit Grand Pubah), 404 Santana, Julez, 347 ‘‘Santa’s Rap’’ (The Treacherous Three), 35 SAR label, 431 Sarig, Roni, 432, 435, 451, 452, 495 ‘‘Saturday Night Fresh’’ (radio show), 230 ‘‘Saturday Night Jams’’ (radio show), 226 Saturday Night (Schoolly D), 154 Saturn Records, 229 Sauce Money, 90, 91 Savage Skulls (gang), 50 Say It to Me (Pete Miser), 305 ‘‘Say No’’ (Raheem), 437 Sayers, Brent, 366; See also Siddiq; Stress Scarface, 365, 376, 430, 432, 434, 435, 438, 439, 440, 441–442, 449, 456, 489

‘‘Scarred’’ (Luther Campbell), 592, 599 ‘‘Scenario’’ (Busta Rhymes), 85, 86 ‘‘The Scene’’ (radio show), 395 Scha Dara Parr, xlii Schechter, Jonathan, 421 Schecter, John, xxxix, 206, 211, 216 Schell, Justin, xvi, 363 ‘‘School’’ (Masta Killa), xxi School of Thought, 366 Schoolly D, xx, xxxv, 144, 145, 153, 154, 155, 157, 196, 231; photo, 153 Schoolly D (Schoolly D), 154 Science of Synonym (Pete Miser), 305 Scientifik, 219 The Score (The Fugees), 189 Scorpio, 314 Scorpion (Eve), 162 Scott, Jill, 145, 160, 162, 337 Scott, Terrance, 303; See also Cool Nutz Scott, Raymond, 195, 200, 211, 218, 421, 582; See also Benzino; Ray Dog Scott-Heron, Gil, xxxii Scott La Rock, xxxviii, 13, 16, 57, 117 Scratch (film), 82 scratching, 226 Scratchmaster T, 279 ‘‘Screwed and Chopped’’ (DJ Screw), 429 ‘‘Screwed in Houston’’ (documentary), 448 screwed time, 450 Screwed Up Click, 436, 447, 449, 451, 452 Scrilla, Will, 332 ‘‘Scummy’’ (Crucial Conflict), 327 ‘‘Scummy’’ (video), 327 SDE (Cam’ron), 42 Seale, Bobby, 258 Seals, Scott, 318; See also Smokin’ Sean G, 146 Searching for Jerry Garcia (Proof), 416

Index Searcy, Dwayne, 469; See also Emperor ‘‘Seasons’’ (CunninLynguists), x, xii ‘‘SeaTown Ballers’’ (Kid Sensation), 301 Seatown Funk (Kid Sensation), 301 Seattle (Washington): area codes, 309; ‘‘The Ave,’’ 304; Central District, 294, 295, 297, 309; Dick’s Drive-In, 22; hip hop in, xxxiv, xxxvi, 291– 303, 308; jazz music, 288–289; population, 287, 288; radio shows, 290, 293, 295, 296, 297, 307; rhythm and blues, 289; The Seattle Circuit Breakers, 296 Second Comin’ (MCGz), 330 Second Lines, 526 Sedgwick & Cedar (fashion line), 5 Seff the Gaffla, 279 ‘‘Self Construction’’ movement/tour, 192 Self-Destruction (I Self Divine), 375 ‘‘Self Destruction’’ (MC Lyte), 84 Self Jupiter, 247 Self One, 365, 366 Self-Titled (Kanser), 379 ‘‘Sell My Dope’’ (Yo Gotti), 567 Seminar (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 291, 299, 301 Sen Dog, 239 Senegal, 81 Sensations (club), 192 The Sense of Sound (Carnage), 376 Sentences: The Life of MF Grimm (Carey), xvi, 155 Seriki, Hakeem, 453; See also Chamillionaire Sermon, Eric, 180, 405 Sess, 377, 378 Set it Off (film), 183 ‘‘Set It Off’’ (UNLV), 533 7-11 (DJ), xix, xxxvii Seven Immortals (gang), 50, 51

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7L, 195, 214, 218, 219, 220 702 (group), 507 Seven’s Travels (Atmosphere), 370, 372 7th Street (club), 386 75 Girls Records, 262 ‘‘Sex Machine’’ (Herc Kool), 6 ‘‘Sex Machine’’ (James Brown), 78 Sex Packets (Digital Underground), 267, 268 Sexton, Luke, 550; See also Red Eye Jedi Sexy Lady, xxxvi, 583 Shabba Doo, 228 Shadesradio.com, 192 Shadows on the Sun (Brother Ali), 381 Shady Records, 416 Shadyville DJs, 307 Shafer, Matthew, 421; See also Uncle Kracker ‘‘Shake It’’ (MC Shy D), 476 ‘‘Shake It for Ya Hood’’ (Ricky B), 540 ‘‘Shake Whatcha’ Mama Gave Ya’’’ (Poison Clan), 589 ‘‘Shake Ya Ass’’ (Mystikal), 513 Shakim Compare, 183, 187 Shakir, Amir, 200; See also MC Spice Shakir, Anthony, 406 Shakur, Tupac. See Tupac Shakur Shanks, David, xxiii, 31; See also Traum Diggs Shante, Roxanne, xx, xxxvi, 15, 55, 56, 57, 63, 377 Shantoniques Records, 419, 423 Shaolin and Wu Tang (film), 128 Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang (Wu-Tang Clan), 138 Shape of Broad Minds, 145 Shapeshifters (Invincible), 406 Sharpshooter (Mr. Supreme), 293 Sharpshooters, 296 Sharpton, Kim, 123; See also Hassan; Kool Kim

709

710

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Index

Shaw, Carl, 402 Shaw, Cyrus, 402 Shawnna, 333 ‘‘Shawty’’ (Plies), 600 ‘‘Shawty Freak a Lil Sumtin’’’ (Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz), 476 Shayman, David, 404; See also Disco D She’kspere, 478 Shentgart, Gary, 404 Sherman, Larry, 318 ‘‘She’s a B’’ (Sir Too $hort), 266 ‘‘She’s a Bitch’’ (video), 506 She’s Gotta Have It (film), 81 ‘‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’’ (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), 131 Shinin’ N’ Grindin’ (ESG), 452 The Shining (J Dilla), 415 Shiny Suit Man. See P. Diddy ‘‘The Shipment’’ (The Coup), 276 ‘‘The Shit Is Real’’ (Fat Joe), 21 ‘‘Shit Pit’’ (Devin the Dude), 446 Shock G, xvii, 266–268, 272 ‘‘Shock Shock the House’’ (Kurtis Blow), 33 Shock Value (Timbaland), 503–504 Shocklee, Doug, 374; See also Devastating Dee Shockmaster, 308 Shondells, 584 ‘‘Shook Ones’’ (Video), 63 ‘‘Shooter’’ (Lil Wayne), 538 Short Dog’s in the House (Sir Too $hort), 264, 265, 350 ‘‘Short Rap’’ (Sir Too $hort), 262, 263 Short Stop Records, 435, 438 Shortell, Ryan, 304; See also Rev Shines Shorty B, 264, 266 Shorty the Pimp (Sir Too $hort), 264, 266 shout-outs, xix ‘‘The Show’’ (Slick Rick), 36, 60 Show Biz & AG, 40

The Show Boys, xxxvii, 529, 550 ‘‘The Showstopper’’ (Salt-N-Pepa), 60 Showtime at the Apollo (TV show), 32 Shurfine Records, xxxiv, 474 ‘‘Shut the Eff Up! (Hoe)’’ (MC Lyte), 83 ‘‘Shut Up’’ (Trick Daddy), 600 Shy D, xvi, xxxvi, xxxix, 419, 470, 471, 474, 476, 485, 583, 588, 589, 592, 597 ‘‘Shy D Is Back’’ (MC Shy D), 476 Shyne, 67 Shyran’s Showcase (club), 471 Sick of Waiting (Sage Francis), xlv Sicknotes, 416 Siddiq, 366 sideshows, 273–274 signifyin,’ xv The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (Gates), xv Silk City (club), 167, 169 Silkk the Shocker, 531 Silkworm, 169 Silverman, Tom, 120–122 ‘‘Simmer Down’’ (Spider Man & E-Spect), 598 Simmons, Daniel, Sr., 50 Simmons, Danny, 49, 51 Simmons, Evelyn, 50 Simmons, Joe, 35, 49, 204; See also DJ Run Simmons, Russell, ix, xxxiii, xxxvi, 34, 35, 49, 51–52, 54, 59, 63, 64, 96, 230, 442 Simmons, Tyree, 491; See also DJ Drama Simon, Dwayne, 230; See also Muffla Sims, 382 ‘‘Sincerely’’ (Juice and the Machine), 330, 331 Singleton, Anthony, 408; See also Ant-Live Singleton, Marcus, 332; See also Iomos Marad

Index ‘‘Sippin’ on Some Sizzurp’’ (Three 6 Mafia), 444 SIQ Records, 611, 617 Sir Coxsone, xv Sir Mix-a-Lot, xxxvi, xxxvii, 233, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 297– 300, 302, 308, 309; photo, 297 Sir Too $hort, xvi, xvii, xxi, xxxiv, xliii, xlv, 259, 261–266, 281, 350, 442, 470; photo, 262 sissy rappers, 531 Sista, 505 Sittin’ on Chrome (Masta Ace), xxi ‘‘Sittin’ on Top of the World’’ (Da Brat), 326 ‘‘Sittin’ Sideways’’ (Paul Wall), 455 Six Feet Deep (Gravediggaz), 131 ‘‘Six N The Morning’’ (Ice T), xx, xxxviii, 154, 231, 232, 234 16 Blocks (film), 97 ‘‘16s Wit Me’’ (Ya Boy), 280 Sixth Sense, 366, 379 ‘‘The 6th Sense’’ (Common), 325 69 Boyz, xxii 69 Mob, 259 ‘‘Size 13’s’’ (Da Hater & Empee), 569 ‘‘Size ’Em Up’’ (Big L), 40 Skateboard P, 511 Skee-lo, 248 Skeeter, 198 ‘‘Ski Mask Way’’ (Disco D), 404 The Skillet Lickers, x Skinny DeVille, xliv Skinny Pimp, 569 Skippy Whites Records, 216 Skitz, 190 The Skitzophreniks, 220 Skoob, xxxviii Skratch Makanics, 168 Skull and Bones, 525 Skye, 314 Skyywalker Records. See Luke Skyywalker Records Slaine, 221 Slap me 5 (Five Fingers of Funk), 305

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Slaughtahouse (Masta Ace), xxi, xlii ‘‘Slave for You’’ (Brittney Spears), 513 Slayton, Paul, 453; See also Paul Wall Sleepy, 482 ‘‘Slice’’ (World Class Wreckin’ Cru), 233 Slice of da Pie EP (Monie Love), 147 Slick Rick, xv, xxxiii, l, 15, 36, 37, 60, 387, 480 Slick Vic, 583 Slicks Box (Musab), 378 Slim, 422 Slim Shady, 419; See also Eminem Slim Shady LP (Eminem), 249 Slim the Robot, xxxii Slim Thug, 451, 452, 453, 458 Slip-N-Slide Records, xliii, 577, 579, 599, 601, 602 ‘‘Slo Down’’ (Jacki-O), 601 ‘‘Slow Jamz’’ (Kanye West), 335 ‘‘Slow Jamz’’ (Twista), 322 Slug, 366, 370, 371, 372–374, 376, 381, 383; photo, 373 Slum Village, 394, 401, 414–415, 423 Slum Village (Slum Village), 415 ‘‘Slumpin’’’ (MCGz), 330 Sly and the Family Stone, 267, 276, 280 Small, Carl, 407; See also Butch Small, Michael, 62; See also Mike Gee Small Steps (Heiruspecs), 380 Small Talk at 125th & Lenox (Gil Scott-Heron), xxxii Smash Rockwell (Casual), 272 Smif-N-Wessun, 82, 107, 113 The Smile Gets Wild (Smiley), 405 ‘‘Smile’’ (Scarface), 442 Smiley, 396, 397, 405, 411 ‘‘Smiley But Not Friendly’’ (Smiley), 396, 405 Smith, Brian, 420 Smith, Che, 335; See also Rhymefest Smith, Chris, 480

711

712

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Index

Smith, Clifford, 125; See also Method Man Smith, Danyel, 266 Smith, Darnell, 328; See also Belo Smith, James, 59 Smith, James Todd, 58, 59; See also LL Cool J Smith, Jonathan, 582; See also Lil’ Jon Smith, Larry, 48, 51 Smith, Lil Jon. See Lil Jon Smith, Ondrea, 59 Smith, Premro, 560; See also Eightball Smith, Rashaam, 411; See also Esham Smith, Tim, 529 Smith, Trevor, 84; See also Busta Rhyme Smith, Will, 143, 144, 156–157, 158; See also The Fresh Prince Smith, Zana, 402 Smoke Bulga, 220 ‘‘Smoked Out, Loc’ed Out’’ (mixtape), 565 Smokey D, 597 Smokin,’ 318 Smokin’ Aces (Common), 325 Smooth, 214 ‘‘Smurf Rock’’ (Gigolo Tony), 583 snap crunk, 552, 553 ‘‘snap’’ style, 480, 491 The Sneak Attack (KRS-One), 18 S.N.I.P.E.R., 214 snitching, 435 Snoop Doggy Dogg, xvi, xxi, xxii, xxxvii, xliii, xlvii, 62, 159, 241, 242, 250, 265, 513, 532, 535; photo, 241 Snow Goons, xxiii, xlix, 168 ‘‘So Hood’’ (Bullys wit Fullys), 280 So So Def Bass Allstars, 485, 487 So So Def Music, 40, 479, 480, 485, 487 Social Aid and Pleasure clubs, 526 social consciousness, 323 The Society Hill Civic Association, 150

‘‘Sock It To Me’’ (Missy Elliot), 509 Solaar, xlv S.O.L.A.R. Records, 241 ‘‘Soldier’’ (Destiny’s Child & Lil Wayne), 538 Solja Rags (Juvenile), xlv, 534 The Solution (Beanie Siegel), 163, 164 ‘‘Somebody’s Crying’’ (The Force MDs), 122 ‘‘Somethin’ to Ride to (Fonky Expedition)’’ (Conscious Daughters), 273, 274 Something Nasty (Luther Campbell), 593 Something Random (Cheap Cologne), 382 Something the Lord Made (film), 97 Something to Get You Hyped (Young & Restless), 596 Son Doobie, xliii Son of Sam, 39 ‘‘Song Cry’’ (Jay-Z), 93 Sonny Cheeba, 23 Sons of the P (Digital Underground), 268, 273 Sonzala, Matt, 449, 456 Soope, 332 SOSAD, 408 Soul Clique, 410 Soul Finger, 400 ‘‘Soul Food’’ (Goodie Mob), 469 Soul Food (Goodie Mob), xxii ‘‘Soul Food’’ (OutKast), 483 Soul Food (OutKast), 483 Soul Intent, 420 Soul Purpose, 365 Soul Searchers, 206 The Soul Sonic Force, 24 Soul Train (TV show), 149 Soulja Boy Tell Em, 492 Soulja Slim, 528, 532 Soulquarians, 81, 414

Index Souls of Mischief, xliv, 270 Soulsonic Forced, 11 Sound and Vision: Volume One (U-Krew), 306 ‘‘Sound Is Vibration’’ (Atmosphere), 369 ‘‘Sound of Philadelphia’’ (Reef the Lost Cauze), 144–145 Sound of Revenge (Chamillionaire), 455 Soundgarden, 287, 290 Soundmen, 168 The Source, xxxix, xliii, 206, 211, 216, 220, 421 Source Awards (1995), xxii, xliii Source of Labor, 294, 301 ‘‘The South’’ (ESG), 446 The South, x, xxi–xxiii ‘‘South Bronx’’ (BDP), xx, 15, 18, 25, 57, 158, 298 South Bronx (New York), 31, 245; See also Bronx ‘‘South Bronx 2002’’ (KRS-One), 18 South Central (film), 571 South Central Cartel, 237 South Park Coalition, 447, 452 The South Park Psycho (Gangsta N-I-P), 447 ‘‘South Side’’ (Musab), 378 Southern Gothic tradition, 432 ‘‘Southern Hospitality’’ (Ludacris), 244, 489, 513 Southern Smoke 18 (Three 6 Mafia), 567 Southern speech, in hip hop, xvi, xxii, 356 The Southern Way (UGK), xli, 443 Southernplayalisticcadillacmuzik (Outkast), xxii, xliii, 244, 482 ‘‘Southside’’ (Common), 315, 325, 335 ‘‘Space Cowboy’’ (Michael Jonzun), 197 Space Funk DJs, 586, 598

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‘‘Space Rap’’ (Danny Renee & the Charisma Crew), xxxiv, 474 Spade, 166 Spady, Dick, 292 Sparkle (club), 6 Sparks, Clifford, 181; See also Method Man Sparks, Clinton, xlvii, 220, 516 Sparks, Omillion, 164, 165; See also O & Sparks Sparky D, 409 Spawn, 366, 372 Speakeasy Records, 375 Speakerboxxx (OutKast), 483 Speakin upon a Million (Cool Nutz), 303 Spears, Brittney, 403, 513 Special Ed, xliii, 82, 110 Special K, 16, 35 Special Teamz, 221 Spectacles (club), 402 Speech, 348; Missouri speech pattern, 356; New Orleans slang and dialect, 536–537; Southern speech in hip hop, xvi, xxii, 356 Speed, Nick, 415, 419 SpeedKnot Mobstaz, 322 Spence, Steve, 301; See also Kid Sensation; Xola Malik Spencer, Kel, 79, 81 Spezializtz, xi Spice 1, 265, 278, 350 Spice Regime, 272 Spicy T, 143 Spider Man, 598 Spin City Rockers, 198, 207 Spinach, 201 Spinderella, 60, 197 Spirit in the Stone (Lifesavas), 305 Spiritual Minded (KRS-One), 18 Spliff Star, 86 Split Personality (Cassidy), 166 Spoon, 387 Spoonie Gee, 16, 35 Sports Weekend: As Nasty as THey

713

714

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Index

Wanna Be, Pt. 2 (2 Live Crew), 591 Spotlite the Big Idea with Status, 332 ‘‘Spottieottiedopaliscious’’ (OutKast), 486 spray painting. See graffiti Spring Records, 409 Springsteen, Bruce, 591 Spyder D, xix, xxxiv, 394 Spyderman, 565 ‘‘Square Dance Rap’’ (Sir Mix-A-Lot), xxxvii, 297–298, 301 SS Express Phase II, 586 St. Andrews, Jeff, 257 St. Louis (Missouri): blues and jazz, 354; DJs, 345; fashion, 358; gangs and violence, 351–354; Gateway Arch, 357; hip hop in, xxxv, xliv, xlv, 343–361; Mason-Dixon Line, 350–351; nicknames, 343, 349; overview, 349; radio, 344–345; record companies, 357–359; Saints Roller Rink, 360; speech pattern, 355–356; Vintage Vinyl, 347, 348 ‘‘St. Louis Niggaz’’ (Chingy), 351, 357 St. Lunatics, 349, 352, 356 St. Paul (Minnesota): hip hop in, 365, 367, 369, 370, 374, 376, 377, 380, 384, 385, 387; overview, 363; Studio 4/The High School for Recording Arts, 375 St. Paul Slim, 383 Stagolee, 244 Stagolee Shot Billy (Brown), 229 ‘‘Stakes Is High’’ (De La Soul), 414–415 ‘‘Stand Up’’ Ludacris, 333 Stankonia (OutKast), xlv, 482 The Staple Singers, 551 Starks, Tony, 135; See also Ghostface Killah Starr, Arnell, 472 Starr, Maurice, 197–198, 202, 203, 207

‘‘Start Peace’’ (4Peace), 220–221 Start Peace movement, 220 State Property, 145, 162, 164, 168 State Property (film), 164 State Proprty III (State Property), 165 Staten Island (New York): Gambino crime family, 131, 135; hip hop in, ix, 117–138; Park Hill, 126, 127; post Wu-Tang era, 118, 134–138; pre Wu-Tang era, 117, 118–123, 124; Stapleton, 126; Staten Island ferry, 119; Wu-Tang era, 117, 125–134 Static Major, xxiii, l Staton, Casey, 215; See also MC Polecat Stax Records, 76, 550, 551, 555, 556– 557, 558 Steady B, 146, 158 Steal This Album (The Coup), 276 ‘‘Steelo’’ (702), 507, 508 Stefani, Gwen, 162 ‘‘Step into a World’’ (KRS-One), 18 Step to Me (The Force MDs), 118, 122, 245 Sterling, Scott, 13, 57; See also DJ Scott La Rock Stetsasonic, 79 Stevens, Derrek, 366; See also Spawn Stevens, Derrick, 365; See also Delite Stevie D, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124, 128, 130 Still Da Badest (Trina), 600 ‘‘Still Not a Player’’ (Big Pun), 22 ‘‘Still Po Pimpin’’ (Do or Die), 328 Still Standing (OutKast), 483 ‘‘S.T.L.’’ (St. Lunatics), 356 Stolen Lives (Source of Labor), 294, 301 ‘‘Stomp N’ Grind’’ (Half Pint), 595 Stone, Henry, 595, 596 Stone, Jim, 399 Stones Throw Records, xliv, xlviii, 403, 422

Index Stop Snitchin Stop Lyin (The Game), 249 ‘‘Stop Snitching’’ T-shirts, 220 ‘‘Stop the Violence’’ (BDP), 16, 94 Stop the Violence movement, 17, 37, 84 Storch, Scott, 22, 328 Storm, Rob, 565 Stormy, 314 Stoyanoff-Williams, Maxx, xvii, 159 Straight Outta Cashville (Young Buck), xlviii Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A.), xx, xxxviii, 61, 237, 238, 250, 298 The Strategist, 332 Strauss, Neil, 531 ‘‘Street Beat’’ (radio show), 153, 206, 319 street gang culture, viii, ix, 12, 78, 239 street habitus, 240 street hustlers, 37 Street Kingz, 370 ‘‘Street Life’’ (CCA), 329 Street Military, 449 Street Sounds (radio show), 296 ‘‘Street Vibes’’ (radio show), 345 Streetlife, 138 ‘‘The Streets’’ (Dub C), 249 Stress, 169, 366 Stretch Monkey, 423 Strickland, 348 Stricklin, xlvi Strike, 421 strip clubs, 582 ‘‘Stronger’’ (Kanye West), 335 Studio 4/The High School for Recording Arts, 375 Studio G (club), 561 ‘‘Stunts, Blunts, and Hip Hop’’ (Diamond D & the Psychotic Neurotics), xli, 113 Sturgis, Edward, 33; See also Eddie Cheeba Style Posse, 365

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Style Wars (film), xii, xxxv, 151 Suave House, 453 Suave Records, 560 Suave Tre, 345 Sub, 151 Sub Pop Records, 296 Subliminal Freedom! Recordings, 619 Subject (Dwele), 402 Subset, 300 Subterranean Pop (SUBPOP) (fanzine), 290 suburban background, xxv Subway City: Riding the Trains, Reading New York (Brooks), xi ‘‘Success Is the Word’’ (KRS-One & Scott La Rock), 57 Success-N-Effect, xl, xli, 477–478, 594 ‘‘Sucka MCs’’ (Run DMC), 409 Sucker DJ’s (Marley Marl), 55 ‘‘Sucker MCs’’ (Run DMC), 47, 51, 55 Sudden Rush, xlii, 605, 606, 607, 609, 612–615, 621, 623 Suga T, 281 SugaPop, xxxiv Sugar Bear, 300, 301 Sugar Hill Gang, xii, xiv, xv, xxxiii, 1, 33, 34, 35, 76, 143, 196, 318 Sugar Rae Dinky, 317, 318 Suge, xxii, xli, 240, 245 Suggs, Bobby, 329 Suggs, Sentai, 329 ‘‘Summer in Da City’’ (video), 357 Sunnyview Records, 583 Suns of Infinite Thought, 301 ‘‘The Suns of James Brown’’ (documentary), 228 Sunset Park Soundtrack (MC Lyte), 83 ‘‘Sunshine’’ (Twista), 323 Sunshine, Tony, 22 Suntown Records, 596 Sunz of Man, 133–134

715

716

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Index

Supa Dupa Fly (Missy Elliot), xliv, 509, 510 Super Cat, 87 Super Disco Brakes (Afrika Bambaataa), 34 Super MCs, 168 ‘‘Super Shock Body Rock’’ (Groove), 317 Super Tight (UGK), 444 Superman, 565 Supernatural: Mix Tape Vol. 3 (Ric Jilla), 332 ‘‘Superrappin’’’ (Grandmaster Flash & Furious Five), 318 ‘‘Supersonic’’ (JJ Fad), 240 ‘‘Superstar’’ (Lupe Fiasco), 337 ‘‘Superthug’’ (Pharrel), 512 Supreme, 51, 64 Supreme Clientele (Ghostface Killah), 135 Supreme Team, 64 SupremeEx, 271 The Sure Shot 4, 202 Sureshot Crew, 54 surf-hop, 620, 621 ‘‘Surgery’’ (Dr. Dre), 233 Surround By Idiots, 511 Sutcliffe, Jim, 161, 162 Suzuki, Ichiro, 302 ‘‘Swangin and Bangin’’’ (ESG), 450 Swass (Sir Mix-A-Lot), 298, 299, 301 Sweat, Keith, 39, 497 Sweat Band, 407 ‘‘Sweat It Off’’ (Kevin Fleetwood & the Cadillacs), xxxv, 197 ‘‘Sweaty’’ (Jodeci), 505 S.W.E.E.P.S., 376 Sweet G, 48 Sweet T, xxxvii Sweetland, Theresa, 377 Swift, 416 Swing Mob Records, 500 Swisha House (Michael ‘‘5000’’ Watts), xliv, 451, 452, 458

Sylk Smoov, 350 Sylver, Jerry, 365 Sylvester, 381 ‘‘The Symphony’’ (The Juice Crew), 81 syrup, 436, 437, 451 T-Boz, 481, 486 T-K.A.S.H., 274 T La Rock, xxxvi, 35, 58, 59, 593 T-Max, 214, 215, 218 T-Mo, 483, 486 T-Pain, xlviii, 492, 600, 601 T3, 413, 415 Tabi Bonney, xlix Table Manners (Vitamin D), 301 Table Manners 2 (Vitamin D), 301 Tag Team, 485, 597 ‘‘tagging’’. See graffiti ‘‘Tainted’’ (Slum Village), 415 Tajai, 270 Takagi Kan, xlii Take 2, 314 Take Fo’ Records, 530 ‘‘Take It Off’’ (The Dogs), 594 ‘‘The Take Over’’ (Jay-Z), 95 ‘‘Takeover’’ (Jay-Z), 93 Taki 183, xxxii, 98 The Talented Timothy Taylor (Wise Intelligent), xlix Talib Kweli, xxiii, 81, 94 ‘‘talk story,’’ 620 ‘‘Tambourine’’ (Eve), 162 Tame One, 184, 185 Tangg the Juice, 218 Tangy B, 182 Tanya Morgan, xxiv, l Tapp, James, Jr., 528; See also Soulja Slim Tarantino, Quentin, 137 Tarsha Vega, 80 Tash, xlii Taste of Chocolate (Big Daddy Kane), xxxii Tate, Mayor James, 149–150 Tatem, Charles, 486

Index Taylor, Chris, 226, 228, 230; See also The Glove Taylor, Jayceon Terrell, 249; See also The Game Taylor, Johnnie, 566 Taylor, Katrina, 600; See also Trina Taylor, Malik, 55; See also Phife Dawg Taylor, Richard, 580, 594; See also Disco Rick Tayster Records, 39 T.C., 365, 370, 375 TCD, 118, 119, 120, 123 TCK (Till Chicago’s Killed), 314 Tda Pimp, 414, 415 TDS Mob, 206, 218 The Teacher, 13, 16; See also KRS-One Team Daily (Daily Plannet), 332 Tear Da Club Up (Three 6 Mafia), 552, 553 Tear Da Club Up ’97 (Three 6 Mafia), 566 ‘‘Tear It Up’’ (Hot Boys), 598 ‘‘Tears’’ (The Force MDs), 121 Tec-9, 533 Tech N9ne, xlv, 349 Techno!: The New Dance Sound from Detroit, 397 techno-bass, 596, 597 Techno-Hop, 231, 419 Teddy Riley: The Man Behind the Music (MTV documentary), 497 Teen Dance Ordinance, 308 Tekaptl, 385 television shows, xxxvi, xliii, 79 ‘‘Tell Me Something Good’’ (UGK), 443 ‘‘Tell Me When to Go (Dumb)’’ (E-40), 281 Temple, Jerome, 530; See also DJ Jubilee Temple of Boom (Cypress Hill), 239 Tempo Valley, 611 Ten Tray, 317

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10 Years Strong (Heiruspecs), 380 ‘‘Tender Love’’ (The Force MDs), 118, 121, 122 ‘‘Tennessee’’ (Arrested Development), xli, 478 Tennman Records, 569 ‘‘10Dis’’ (MC Lyte), 83 Terminator X, 386 territorialism, viii–ix Terror Squad, 22 ‘‘Terror Squadians’’ (Terror Squad), 22 Terry, Kenneth, 589; See also Devastator ‘‘Testify’’ (Common), 325 Tha Alkaholiks, xvii, xlii, 242, 243 Tha Block Is Hot (Lil Wayne), 537 ‘‘Tha Bunny Hop,’’ 524 Tha Carter (Lil Wayne), 537 Tha Carter II (Lil Wayne), 537 Tha Carter III (Lil Wayne), 537 Tha Dogg Pound, xxii, xliii, 147, 242 Tha Playaz Circle, 437 Tha Rhythm, 476 ‘‘That Night’’ (Slug), 373 ‘‘That’s Life’’ (Breed), 397 That’s Them (The Artifacts), 185 ‘‘That’s What I’m Looking for’’ (Da Brat), 326–327 ‘‘That’s What Little Girls Are Made of’’ (Missy Elliot), 507 ‘‘The Greatest Show on Earth’’ (Almight RSO), 202 ‘‘The Hook Up,’’ 368 The Show, The After Party, The Hotel (Jodeci), 500 ‘‘The Way I Are’’ (Timbaland), 503 Theater of the Mind (Ludacris), 489 Them Firewater Boyz Vol. 1 (David Banner), xlvi ‘‘Them Murdaz’’ (CCA), 329 Theodore Unit, 138 Thermilus, Jacques Evens, 598 ‘‘These Are the Tales’’ (Sir Too $hort), 265

717

718

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Index

‘‘They Don’t Dance No Mo’’ (OutKast), 483 ‘‘They Don’t Know’’ (Mike Jones), viii Thicke, Robin, 538 ‘‘The Things You Do’’ (Missy Elliot & Gina Thompson), 508 Third Coast: OutKast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing (Sarig), 432 The Third Unheard: Connecticut Hip Hop, 1979–1983(Stones Throw Records), xlviii Third World Records, 471 3rd Bass, 63–64 3rd Dynasty, 158 3rd Eye Vision (Souls of Mischief), 271 The 3rd World (Immortal Technique), 96 The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (film), 127 ‘‘30 Something’’ (Jay-Z), 92 ‘‘This Beat Is Hard’’ (U.S.A. Breakers), 583 This Is an EP Release (Digital Underground), 268 ‘‘This is Brooklyn’’ (Kel Spencer), 81 ‘‘This is Brooklyn (#6)’’ (Kel Spencer), 79 This Is How It Should Be Done (Magic Mike), 596 This Is Not a Test (Missy Elliot), 510 Thizz Entertainment, 279, 280 ‘‘thizzle dance,’’ 293 ‘‘Thizzle Dance’’ (Mac Dre), 282 ‘‘Tho Dem Wrappas’’ (Matt Diehl), 353 Thomas, Andy, 198 Thomas, Byron O., 529; See also Manny Fresh Thomas, Demaine, 218; See also The Master Criminal

Thomas, Dr. B.O.A., 292 Thomas, Raheim, 595; See also Prince Raheim Thomas, Rozonda, 481; See also Chilli Thomas, Stayve, 452; See also Slim Thug Thomas, Todd ‘‘Speech,’’ xli Thompkins, Jeffrey, 589; See also JT Money Thompson, Ahmir Khalib, 159; See also Questlove Thompson, Gina, 508 Thompson, Jack, 590 Thornton, Gene, 515; See also Malice Thornton, Terrence, 515; See also Pusha T ‘‘3 Card Molly’’ (C-Rayz Walz), 24 3 Feet High and Rising (De La Soul), xxxix 300 (film), 81 ‘‘314’’ (J-Kwon), 357 Three 6 Mafia, xliv, xlviii, 437, 549, 552, 553, 560, 564, 566–567, 570, 573; photo, 570 Three Times Dope, 158 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of . . . (Arrested Development), 478 ‘‘Through the Wire’’ (Kanye West), 335 Throw Records, 404 ‘‘Throw the D’’ (2 Life Crew), 588 ‘‘throw the dick’’ (dance), 587 ‘‘Throw the P’’ (Anquette), 588 ‘‘Thug Angels’’ (Wyclef), 17 Thug Holiday (Trick Daddy), 600 Thug Matrimony: Married to the Streets (Trick Daddy), 600 thug rap, 490 ‘‘Thug Walkin’’’ (Ying Yang Twins), 488 Thugs Are Us (Trick Daddy), 600 Thurston, Kevin, 218; See also 1-MP Thyme, 416

Index T.I., xxiii, xlviii, xlix, 148, 467, 469, 490, 491, 492, 525, 573, 602 T.I. vs. T.I.P. (T.I.), 490 Tical (Wu-Tang Clan), 130 A Tiger Dancing (Heiruspecs), 380 Till Chicago’s Killed (TCK), 314 ‘‘Till the World Blows Up’’ (Vakill), 331 Tim Dog, xx, xli, xlii, 244–245 Tim Wilson, 364 Timbaland, xvii, xxii, xxiii, xliv, xlv, xlvii, xlviii, 165, 498–504, 505, 519; photo, 499 Timberlake, Justin, 499, 503, 513, 569 ‘‘Time Square Show,’’ 98 ‘‘Time to Get Ill’’ (Beastie Boys), 154 ‘‘Time Travel’’ (radio show), 319 Timmy Tim, 7 Tiny, 186 Tip, 484 Tip of the Iceberg (Juice), 330 ‘‘Tipsy’’ (J-Kwon), 357 TK Records, 565, 595, 596 TLC, 374, 480, 481 TMC, 198 T.N.T., 412 To the 5 Boroughs: 2002–2006 (Beastie Boys), 79 ‘‘To The Beat, Ya’ll’’ (Lady B), xxxiii, 34, 144, 153 To Whom in My Concern (The Freestyle Fellowship), 247 Todd 1, 158 Toddy Tee, 231 Toe Jam Music, 469 The Toe Jammer, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 205, 207, 214–215, 216 Toll Track Productions, 350 ‘‘Tom Green Show’’ (MTV), 403 Tom Servo, 382 Tomahawk Funk, xliii Tommy Boy Records, 56, 119, 120, 121, 124, 182, 183, 195, 210, 211, 213, 273, 485, 488 Tommy James and the Shondells, 584

Ton Def, 406 Tone Love, 158 Tongues (Esham), 412 Tony M, 370 Tony M.F. Rock, 474, 476, 589 Too $hort. See Sir Too $hort Too Brown, 158 Too Hard to Swallow (UGK), 444 Too $hort, 410 Toop, David, 3 ‘‘Top Billin’’’ (Audio Two), xxxviii, 79, 80 TOP CAT, xi, 152 Top Choice Clique, 201, 206, 211, 216 Toppin, Antonio, 332; See also The Strategist Tosh, Peter, 85 Total, 87, 508, 512 Totally Krossed Out (Kris Kross), 480 Toth, Andy, 404 Touch and Go (The Force MDs), 122 ‘‘Touch It’’ (Busta Rhymes), 85 ‘‘Touch It Remix Part 5’’ (Busta Rhymes), 85 Touch of Jazz, 147, 157 Touch of Rock, 78 ‘‘Touch the Sky’’ (Kanye West), 334, 337 ‘‘Touched’’ (UGK), 433 Tough Love (Young Gunz), 165 Toussaint (film), 97 Tower of Power, 267 Townes, Jeff, 143; See also DJ Jazzy Jeff Toxic, 328 ‘‘toxic twins,’’ 202, 204 T.R. Love, 15 Trac Byrd, 400 ‘‘Trading Cards’’ (video), 357 Trae te Truth, 435, 451 Traffic Entertainment, 219 ‘‘Traffic Jams’’ (radio show), 226 Tragedy, xlvi, 63 Trahan, Charles, 596

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719

720

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Index

transform scratch, 144 The Translators, 189 Trap House (Gucci Mane), 491 Trap Muzik (T.I.), 490 Trap or Die (DJ Drama), 490 ‘‘trapping,’’ 490 Traum Diggs, xxiii, 168 Travitron, xvi, xxxv, xxxvi, 364, 365 Trax Records, 318 Traxter, 328 Tre +6, 599 Treach, 186, 187, 188, 584 Treacherous Three, 16, 31, 47 The Treacherous Three, xxxiv, 35, 39, 53 Trenton (New Jersey), xiv ‘‘Tres Equis’’ (Cypress Hill), 239 Trey Songz, 323 ‘‘Tri-borough’’ (De La Soul), 23 Triangle Offense, 331 Tribe Called Quest. See A Tribe Called Quest Trice, Obie, 348, 421 Trick Daddy, 573, 577, 599, 600, 602; photo, 599 Trick Daddy Dollars, xliv, 599 Trick Trick, 421 Tricks of the Shade (The Goats), 159 Tricks of the Trade Volume 2 (Detroit’s Most Wanted), 411 ‘‘Trigga Happy Nigga’’ (J Prince), 440 ‘‘triggaman beat,’’xxxvii, 529–530, 540 ‘‘Triggerman’’ (Showboys), 550 Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap (Cohn), 528, 532 Trilla (Rick Ross), 600 Trina, 577, 580, 600, 601 Trinere, 583 Trinity—Past, Present and Future (Slum Village), 415 ‘‘Triple Bitch Mafia’’ (Playa Fly), 566–567 Triple M DJs, 586, 596

Triple P (Platinum Pied Pipers), 406, 423 Triple Seis, 22 ‘‘Triplets’’ (Big Pun), 22 Tripped Out Danny, 51 Trisco, 120, 122 ‘‘Triumph’’ (Inspectah Deck), 134 Trixter, 314 Trotter, Tariq Luqmaan, 159; See also MC Black Thought Trouble Funk, 59 Troutman, Robert, 407 ‘‘Trow [sic] the D’’ (2 Live Crew), 587 TRU, 531 Tru´ Ru´ts, 375 True (TRU), 531 True Confessions (T.C.), 375 True Crime: New York City (video Game), 181 True Dawgs (Ying Yang Twins), 488 ‘‘True Hawaiian’’ (Sudden Rush), 614 True Master, 134 ‘‘True OG’’ (Lil Whit), 357 True Story (Terror Squad), 22 Trunk Music (Do or Die), 328 The Truth (Beanie Siegel), 163 The Truth (Belo), 328 Truth Elemental, 219 ‘‘The Truth’’ (Melle Mel), 47 Truth Universal, 274 TruthMaze, 365, 366, 374–375 Tsikata, Kwame, 370; See also M.anifest Tucker, C. Delores, 523 Tucker, T.T., 529 Tuff Crew, xix, xxxviii, 157, 158, 168 The Tuff Crew, 205 Tull, Jethro, 617 Tung Twista, xli, 320; See also Twista Tunnel Clones, 550, 569 Tupac Shakur, xvii, xxi, xxii, xxxviii, xxxix, xliv, 90, 96, 147, 242, 243, 268, 273, 448, 523, 566; photo, 243 Turbo, 228 Turbo Nemesis, 382

Index Turf Talk, 281 ‘‘Turn off the Lights’’ (World Class Wreckin’ Cru), 233–234 Turner, Darwin, 533; See also Choppa Turner, Elgin, 127; See also Masta Killa Turner, Ike and Tina, 354 Turner, Khary, 395, 402, 410, 418 T.V.T., 412 TVT Records, 192, 487, 488, 567, 601 Tweedy Bird Loc, xx, xli, 245 ‘‘12’’ (Paradine), 406 24 Karat Lovers, 346 ‘‘24’s’’ (T.I.), 490, 492 21 and Over (Tha Alkaholiks), xlii, 243 20/20 (Dilated Peoples), 247 24/7 Studios, 66 Twice the Flava, 185 Twilight 76, 404 The Twilight Zone (club), 7 Twin Cities: racial identities in, 371; See also Minneapolis; St. Paul ‘‘Twin Cities Rapp’’ (T.C.), 365, 375 Twinkie Jiggles, 380 Twista, xli, 314, 317, 319, 320, 321, 322–323, 326, 328, 335, 338, 347, 349; photo, 320 Twiztid, 416 Two-Fifths Down, 50 ‘‘2 Hard 4 the Fuckin’ Radio’’ (Mac Dre), 280 2 Live Crew, xxi–xxii, xxxii, xxxvi, xxxvii, xl, xli, 195, 211, 299, 405, 418–419, 440, 476, 502, 577, 584– 593; photo, 585 2 Live Is What We Are (2 Live Crew), 587 2 Low Life Muthas (Poison Clan), 589 2 Nazty, 476, 597 ‘‘219 in the Building’’ (Ric Jilla), 322

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2Pac, 293, 442 Two/Three (Dabrye), 406, 422, 423 2Pacalypse Now (Tupac Shakur), 268, 273 Tyler, Michael, 531; See also Mystikal Tyler, Stephen, 202, 204 Tyson, Mike, 37, 83 U-God, 123, 126, 137 U-Krew, 305–306, 308 The U-Krew (U-Krew), 306 U-Phi-U, 316 UAC (United Artists Crew), 314 Uebel, Thomas, 205 UGK, xli, xlv, xlix, 433–434, 443– 444, 445 ‘‘Ugly’’ (U-Krew), 306 ‘‘Uh Baby’’ (The I.R.M. Crew), 365, 374 Uh Oh! (Royal Flush), 430 Uhuru Maggot, 267 ‘‘The Ultimate Drive-By’’ (Success-N-Effect), xli, 477 Ultramagnetic MCs, xxxviii, 15, 156 The UMCs, xli, 117, 123–124, 137 UMCs, 137 ‘‘Umi Says’’ (Mos Def), 94, 96 Ummah, 414 UMMF (Us Making Moves Forever), 213–214 Uncle Al, 577, 580, 582, 595, 597 Uncle Jamms Army, 226, 230, 232, 234, 239 Uncle Kracker, 421 Uncle Luke, xxxvii Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell), 592 Uncle Sam’s Curse (Above the Law), 242 Undeniable (Phat Kat), 419 Under Construction (Missy Elliot), xliv, 509, 510 Underground Kingz, xxiii Underground Nation, 400 Underground Productions, 215 Underground Resistance, 406

721

722

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Index

Underground Soundz (magazine), 422 Underground Thug Shit Mixes Vol. 1 (CCA), 329 Underground Volume 3: Kings of Memphis (Three 6 Mafia), 567 ‘‘Underwater Rimes’’ (Digital Underground), xxxviii ‘‘Underwater Rimes’’ (Shock G & Chopmaster J), 267 The Undisputed Truth (Brother Ali), 381 Unfadeable (Kenny P), xliv ‘‘Unh Baby, and Let’s Dance’’ (The I.R.M. Crew), 374 Unicus, 368, 370, 379 The Unikue Dominoes, 198, 201, 220 Unique Dream Entertainment, xxxiii, 230 Unique Studios, 54 United Artists Crew (UAC), 314 United Sound, 411 Universal MC’s. See UMCs Universal Music Group, 566 Universal Records, 303, 438, 488, 534 ‘‘Universal Shout Outs’’ (Micranots), 375 Universal Soldier (Pastor Troy), 488 Universal Sounds, 110 Universal Stepping Strong, 123 Universal Vibe Squad, 366 Universal Zulu Nation, xxxii UNK, 538, 543 The Unknown DJ, 229 Unknown Prophets, 368, 379 Unleashed (UMCs), 124 UNLV, 533 Uno the Prophet, 274 ‘‘Unpretty’’ (TLC), 481 Unrestricted (Da Brat), 326 Untertainment, 40 Untouchable (Gene David), 407 The Untouchable Krew, 305

Untouchables, 306 ‘‘Up Jumps Da Boogie’’ (Timbaland & Magoo), 501–502 Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Countryman), 148 Upgrade (Ric Jilla), 332 uprocking, 78 Uptown Records, 39, 87 Uptown Saturday Night (Camp Lo), xliv, 22–23 Urban Atmosphere, 366, 372 Urban Dance Squad, xxxix Urban Legend (T.I.), 490 ‘‘Urban Legend’’ (Vakill), 331 Urban Suburban, 405 Urban X-pressions (TV show), xliii, 167 ‘‘Urrbody in da Club’’ (Da Hol’ 9), 357 Us Making Moves Forever. See UMMF US2 Records, 385 U.S.A. Breakers, 583 USA (United State of Atlanta) (Ying Yang Twins), 488 ‘‘Use Them Hoes’’ (Scarface), 456 Usher, 90, 480, 489 Usher (Usher), 90 U.T.F.O., xx, xxxvi, 110 ‘‘Utha Side’’ (Matt Diehl), 353 ‘‘Uzi (Pinky Ring)’’ (Wu-Tang Clan), 135 Vaird, Lauretha, 146 Vakill, 314, 330, 331 Vallejo (California), 267, 277, 280 Van Damme, Jean Claude, 228 Van Winkle, Barrick, 351 Van Winkle, Rob, 158; See also Vanilla Ice Vanilla Ice, xxv, 158, 398, 410, 597 ‘‘Vapors’’ (Big Daddy Kane), 56 Vasquez, Oschino, 165 Vaughn, David, 198

Index Vaughn, Marqui, 410; See also Boogie Mack Vega, Maria Isabelle Perez, 369; See also Maria Isa Vega-Perez, Elsa, 384 Veincent, Shane, 612 Velez, Jesse, 318 Verb X, 364 Verbal Porn (Cool Nutz), 303 Versatyles (DJ Smurf), 485 The Vibe History of Hip Hop, xvii– xviii, 152 ‘‘Vibin Remix’’ (Busta Rhymes), 86 ‘‘Vibrate’’ (Rasheeda), 488 V.I.C., 185, 475, 491 Victory (Do or Die), 328 Video Music Box (television show), xxxvi Vielot, Yuri, 584; See also Amazing Vee Vieria, Mary Ann, 169; See also Ladybug Mecca The Vigilante (Raheem), 430, 436 Vincent, Rickey, 266, 267; See also Uhuru Maggot Vinnie, 186, 187 Vintage Vinyl, 347, 348 Vinylbreakers.com, 307 violence: in Boston, 208–210, 218, 220; bounce, 540; in Bronx ghettoes, 1–3, 11–12; in dance, 540–541; in Queens, 65 Virgin Records, 397, 480 Virginia: high school bands, 496, 497; hip hop in, xvi–xvii, xxii, 495–520 Virginia Beach (Virginia), 501 ‘‘Virginia Is for Lovers’’ (Missy Elliot), 510 Virtuoso, 168, 220 Vision Records, 595 Vital Vinyl, 364 Vitamin D, 293, 294, 300–301 Vokal Clothing Company, 358 Von Love, 158 Von Pea, xxiv

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Voodoo (D’Angelo), 414 Vursatyl, 303, 304, 305 The W (Wu-Tang Clan), 135, 136 Waajeed, 403, 406, 415, 423 ‘‘Wack MCs’’ (Del tha Funkee Homosapien), 270 ‘‘The Wacky World of Public Transit,’’ 272 Wacquant, Loic, 2, 240 Wade, Rico, 481 Wahlberg, Mark Robert Michael, 212; See also Marky Mark The Wailers, 289 ‘‘Wait (the Whisper Song)’’ (Ying Yang Twins), 488 Waits, Tom, 374 The Wake Up Team, 565 Wale, l Walidah Imarisha, 96 ‘‘Walk It Out’’ (UNK), 538, 543 ‘‘Walk on the Wild Side’’ (Lou Reed), 62 ‘‘Walk this Way’’ (Aerosmith), 202 ‘‘Walk this Way’’ (Run DMC & Aerosmith), xxxvii, 54, 204 ‘‘Walk with It’’ (DJ Jubilee), 538 Walker, Curtis, 34; See also Kool DJ Kurt Wall, Paul, viii, 165, 435, 453–454 Wallace, Christopher, 86; See also Biggie Smalls; The Notorious B.I.G. Wallace, Saladine, 23; See also Geechi Suede Walters, Ricky, xxxiii, 15; See also Slick Rick Waltz Records, 207 Wander, Dessa, 382; See also Dessa ‘‘Wanna Be a Baller’’ (Lil’ Troy), 438 The War LP (Waajeed), 406, 423 Ward, Frank, 260, 261 Wardrick, Al’terik, 190; See also Mr. Funky

723

724

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Index

The Warehouse (club), 318 Warlock Records, 528, 598 Warp, 314 Warren, Meyer, 383; See also St. Paul Slim Warren G, 242, 245 Was, Don, 395 Washington, Algernod Lanier, 600; See also Plies Washington, Curtis, 374; See also TLC Washington, Denzel, 97 Washington Square Park (New York), 20 Wassup Rockers (movie), 239 ‘‘Waterfalls’’ (TLC), 481 Watermelon, Chicken, and Gritz (Nappy Roots), xlvi Waters, Shawn, 122 Waterworld (Binary Star), xlv Watkins, R.J., 395 Watkins, S. Craig, 91, 403, 421 Watkins, Tionne, 481, 486; See also T-Boz Watts, Eric, 96 Watts, Michael ‘‘5000’’, xliv, 451, 452, 458 Watts, Ronald, 418; See also Phat Kat Watts Prophets, xxxii, 247 Wax-Tax-N-Dre, 404 Way, DeAndre, 492; See also Soulja Boy Tell Em ‘‘Way 2 Fonky’’ (Quik), xx ‘‘Way I Be Leanin’’’ (Juvenile), 300 ‘‘The Way I Swing’’ (Xola Malik), 302 ‘‘The Way It Is’’ (Bruce Hornsby & the Range), 90 The Way Things Should Be (Muja Messiah), 382 ‘‘The Way You Move’’ (OutKast), 483 WBBOY Sessions (Headshots), 366 WC (Dub C), 237 WC& The Maad Circle, 237

We are Hip Hop. Me. You. Everybody (Mos Def), 95 ‘‘We Are Your Friends’’ (Justice and Simeon), 334 We B* Girlz, 377 We Can’t Be Stopped (Geto Boys), 432 ‘‘We Fly High’’ (Jim Jones), 81 We Funk Deejays, 586 We Global (DJ Khaled), 602 We Got it 4 Cheap: Volume I (Re-Up), xlvii, 516 ‘‘We Got Our Own Thang’’ (Heavy D & Boyz), 431 ‘‘We Like to Party’’ (Daily Plannet), 332 ‘‘We Live in Brooklyn, Baby’’ (Roy Akers), 79 ‘‘We Made It’’ (Busta Rhymes), 86 We Ready: I Declare War (Pastor Troy), 488 ‘‘We Takin Over’’ (Khaled), xxiii, xlix We the Best (DJ Khaled), 601, 602 ‘‘We Thuggin’’ (R. Kelly), 22 ‘‘We Want Some Pussy’’ (2 Live Crew), 587 ‘‘We Will Always B’’ (Desdamona), 383 ‘‘Weapon of Choice’’ (Creed Chameleon), 617 Weaver, Jesse B., 153; See also Schoolly D Webb, Dwayne, 598; See also Spider Man Webb, Lavell, 352; See also City Spud Wedgeworth, Lawrence, 202; See also Wu Weekley, Chad, 569 Weinberger, Joe, 592 Weis, Gary, 2 Weiss, Jeff, 131 Welcome to Our World (Timbaland & Magoo), 501 ‘‘Welcome to the Bricks’’ (Redman), 181

Index ‘‘Welcome to the Hood’’ (J-Kwon), 353 ‘‘We’ll Remember You’’ (Almight RSO), 202 Wells, Eddie, 300; See also Sugar Bear Wells, Ida B., 555, 556 ‘‘We’re Goin’ Off’’ (Clay D), 595 West, Donda C., 335–336 West, Kanye, xvi, xvii, xxiii, xxxii, xxxiv, xlvi, xlvii, 65, 67, 111, 137, 165, 168, 248, 314, 315, 322, 323, 325, 328, 333–336, 337, 338, 339, 348, 492; photo, 333 ‘‘West Bubblefuck,’’ 19 West Coast Bad Boyz I & II (Master P), 531 ‘‘West Coast Poplock’’ (Dr. Dre), 237 West Coast Resurrection (The Game), 249 West Indian culture, Brooklyn, 85 The Western Front (club), 214 Westside Connection, xxi, 237 ‘‘Westside Slaughterhouse’’ (Mack 10), xxi ‘‘What if It’s True’’ (Lifesavas), 305 What It Be Like (A.W.O.L.), 410 ‘‘What U Workin Wit?’’ (MCGz), 330 ‘‘What You Gonna Do? (You Can’t Get Wit The BombShell)’’ (BombShell), 406 What You Know (T.I.), 492 ‘‘Whatcha Got’’ (Brother Ali), 374 ‘‘Whatchu’ Like’’ (Da Brat), 327 ‘‘Whatever You Like’’ (T.I.), 490 Whatever You Say I Am (Bozza), 419 ‘‘What’s Happenin’’’ (video), xlviii ‘‘What’s Love’’ (Ashanti), 22 What’s My Name (Joey Boy), 595 ‘‘What’s the 411?’’ (Mary J. Blige), 87 ‘‘What’s the Haps’’ (Lil’ Buddy), 366 Wheedle’s Grove: Seattle’s Finest in Funk and Soul (Mr. Supreme), 296

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‘‘When Boy Meets Girl’’ (The Neptunes), 512 ‘‘When Da Hum Plays’’ (Ronnie Ron), xl ‘‘When Doves Cry’’ (Prince), 370 ‘‘When I Hear Busic’’ (Debbie Deb), 583 ‘‘When in Love’’ (MC Lyte), 83 ‘‘When Jaguars Cry’’ (Los Nativos), 370 ‘‘Where Are They Now’’ (Nas), 190 ‘‘Where Dem Dollars At?’’ (Gangsta Boo), 567 ‘‘Where-U-At’’ (Blac Haze), 598 Which Doobie U B? (Funkdoobiest), xliii ‘‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’’ (Beatles), 135, 137 ‘‘Whip It’’ (The Treacherous Three), 35 Whipper Whip, xlvi ‘‘Whistle While You Twurk’’ (Ying Yang Twins), 472, 488 White, Skippy, xiv The White Boy Crew, 201, 202, 206 White Jesus (Big Zach), 379 ‘‘White Lines (The Message)’’ (Furious Five), xix White Magic, 201 ‘‘White Tee’’ (Dem Franchize Boyz), 491 Whitehead, Colson, 88 ‘‘Who Got Da Props?’’ (Black Moon), 107, 113 Who Is Mike Jones (Mike Jones), 458 ‘‘Who Said Our Dee Jay Couldn’t Cut?’’ (The I.R.M. Crew), 374 ‘‘Who Said St. Louis A’int Hip Hop?’’ (Murphy Lee), 356–357, 361 Whodini, xxi, 110, 230, 479–480 ‘‘Whoomp! (There It Is)’’ (Tony Mercedes), 485, 597 Whut? Thee Album (Redman), xli, 181 Wicked Crickett, 448

725

726

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Index

Wide Angle Records, 365 ‘‘Wiggle Wiggle’’ (Disco Rick and the Wolf Pack), 592 Wilbourn, Christopher, 380; See also Felix ‘‘Wild Hunneds’’ (Vakill), 331 ‘‘The Wild Life’’ (Xzibit), 22 Wild Pitch Records, 123, 124 Wild Style (film), xi, xii, xxxv, 78, 151, 202 ‘‘Wild Wild West’’ (Kool Moe Dee), 16 ‘‘Wildflower’’ (Ghostface Killah), 132 Wilds, Salahadeen, 23; See also Sonny Cheeba Wildstyle, 327 Will Rap for Food (CunninLynguists), xlvi Williams, Alonzo, xxxiv, 232–233, 235 Williams, Brian ‘‘Baby,’’ xl, xlv, 533, 534, 537, 602 Williams, Dietrick, 377; See also Eklipz Williams, Gerard, 150 Williams, Gloria, xxxv, 202; See also Heart Williams, H.C., 9 Williams, Marlon, 54; See also Marley Marl Williams, Pharrell, xvi, xli, xlvii, 61, 323, 510; See also Pharrell Williams, Robert, 318 Williams, Robert F., 258–259 Williams, Shelly, 167 Williams, Vanessa, 306 Williams, William Elliot, 184 Willie D, xliv, 17, 430, 432, 439, 440, 441, 442, 442–443, 446, 449, 456 Willrich, Darrius, 294 Wilson, Billy, xxxiv, 394; See also Motley Wilson, J., 409; See also Maji Wilson, Jackie, 411 Wilson, Jason, 407; See also Mystro

Wilson, Nathaniel, 55, 57; See also Kool G. Rap Wilson, William Julius, 2 Winky, 183 Winley, Paul, xxxv, 33, 34 Winley, Paulette, xxxiii, 34 Winley, Tanya, xxxiii, 34 The Wire (HBO drama), 137 Wired Frog (club), 401 Wise Intelligent, xiv, xlix Wiseguys, 218 Witchdoctor, 483 WithOut Rezervation, xliii The Wizard, 394, 395, 396, 402, 404, 409, 419 Wizitron Records, 345 ‘‘WND’’ (Slug), 373 Wolf, Peter, 198, 207 The Wolf Pack, 592, 595 Women Records, 374 Wonder, Stevie, 376 Wongwon, Chris, 584, 590; See also Fresh Kid Ice ‘‘Woo-Hah! Got You All in Check!’’ (Busta Rhymes), 86, 415 ‘‘Wood’’. See DJ Hollywood Woodley, Gerard, 41 Woods, Corey, 126; See also Raekwon the Chef Woods, Terrell, 376; See also Carnage Woody Easter, 395 Word of Mouf (Ludacris), xxxvi, 489 Word, Sound, and Power, 294, 301 Words from the Genius (Genius), 124 Wordsayer, 294 ‘‘Work It’’ (Missy Elliot), 509–510 ‘‘Work that Sucka’’ (Urban Suburban), 405 Works of Mart, 82 The World According to RZA (RZA), xlvii World Class (World Class Wreckin’ Cru), 233 The World Class Wreckin’ Cru, xxxiv, 231, 232–233, 236

Index World (D-12), 416 ‘‘World Hustle’’ (Esham), 413 world music, 384 World One Records, 405, 407 World Party (OutKast), 483 ‘‘World Party’’ (radio show), 487 World Wide Open (Tunnel Clones), 569 The World’s Greatest Entertainer (Get Fresh Creew), 36 Worst Fears Confirmed (Vakill), 331 Worth tha Weight (Shawnna), 333 Wrainwright, Frankie, 221 WRAP, 477 ‘‘The Wrath of Kane’’ (Big Daddy Kane), xxxix, 32 ‘‘Wrath of My Madness’’ (Queen Latifah), 182, 183 Wrecking Crew, 346 Wrecks-N-Effect, 497, 512 The Wreckshop Philly Golden Era Vol. 1 (mixtape), 157–158, 168 Wreckx ’N’ Effect, 38 Wright, Betty, 583 Wright, Edward, 598; See also E-Spect Wright, Eric, 236, 238, 240; See also Eazy-E Wright, Richard, 88, 555 Wright, Toki, 363, 376, 381–382 ‘‘Writer’s Delight’’ (Tracie Morris), 82 Writtenhouse, 145, 168 ‘‘Wrong Side of Da Tracks’’ (The Artifacts), 184 Wu, 202 Wu-Chess (online chess program), 138 Wu-Tang Clan, ix-x, xxi, xlii, xlvii, 17, 61, 111, 112, 117, 124, 125– 134, 168, 345, 386, 400; business ventures of, 132–133; growth of, 125–128; photo, 133 Wu-Tang Forever (Wu-Tang Clan), 134, 135

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‘‘Wu-Tang Revealed’’ (documentary), 138 www.thug.com (album, Trick Daddy), 599 Wyclef Jean, xv, 17, 160, 189, 190, 597 X-Caliber, 217, 376 X-Clan, 345 Xola Malik, 302 Xscape, 480 Xzibit, 18, 22, 242, 249, 250, 406 Ya Boy, 280 ‘‘Ya Don’t Quit’’ (Roger Clayton), 231 ‘‘Y’All Ain’t Ready Yet’’ (Mystikal), 473 ‘‘Ya’ll Don’t Wanna’’ (MCGz), 330 ‘‘Y’all Should Get Lynched’’ (NYOIL), 138 Yancey, James, 413; See also J Dilla; Jay Dee ‘‘Yeah’’ (Usher), 489 ‘‘Yeah That’s Us’’ (Major Figgas), 166 Year-Round Records, 82 Yeats, W.E.B., xiv Yella Boy, 533 ‘‘Yes We Can’’ (The Treacherous Three), 35 ‘‘Yes You May’’ (Lord Finesse), 40 Ying Yang Twins, 467, 469, 472, 488, 569 Yo! Bum Rush the Show (Public Enemy), xxxviii Yo Gotti, 567, 573 Yo! MTV Raps (music video show), 37, 156, 291 Yo! Records, 529 Yo! The Movement, 381, 387 Yo-Yo, 183 ‘‘Yodelin’ in the Valley’’ (Kid Rock), 410 ‘‘You Ain’t Know’’ (Lil Wayne), 538

727

728

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Index

You Be You and I Be Me (Clay D), 595 ‘‘You Betcha’’ (St. Paul Slim), 383 You Can’t Ban the Snowman (DJ Drama), 490 ‘‘You Can’t Hold Me Back’’ (Awesome Dre & the Hardcore Commmittee), 396 You Can’t Imagine How Much Fun We’re Having (Atmosphere), 372 ‘‘You Can’t Play wit’ my Yo-Yo’’ (Yo-Yo), 183 ‘‘You Don’t Know My Name’’ (Kanye West), 335 ‘‘You Don’t Want None of This’’ (A.W.O.L.), 410 ‘‘You Got Me’’ (Erykah Badu), 160 ‘‘You Gotta Let a Ho Be a Ho’’ (Geto Boys), 405 ‘‘You Never Knew’’ (Souls of Mischief), 271 ‘‘You Won’t See Me Tonight’’ (Aaliyah), 503 Young, Andre, 236; See also Dr. Dre Young, Brad, 215 Young, Carlos, 485; See also Kizzy Rock Young, Ibn, 564; See also Playa Fly Young, Jennifer R., 75 Young, Maurice, 599; See also Trick Daddy Young, Melissa, 338; See also Kid Sister Young, Mia, 531; See also Mia X Young & Restless, 596, 598 Young Buck, xlviii Young Cellski, 278 Young Chris, 164, 165

Young Chris-mas (Young Chris), 165 Young Comrades, 276 Young Dro, 338 Young Gunz, 145, 162, 164, 165 Young Gunz Media, 165 Young Jeezy, 147, 423, 467, 470, 490, 491 Young Neef, 164, 165 Young RJ, 419 Young Zee, 189, 190 The YoungbloodZ, 471, 484 Younger, Ben, 542 ‘‘Your Pussy’s like Dope’’ (Odd Squad), 446 ‘‘You’re Nobody ’til Somebody Kills You’’ (Biggie Smalls), 89 Yukmouth, 266, 303 Yung Joc, 475 Yungstar, 438 Yunion (ministry), 409 Z-Man, 271 Z-Ro, 440, 451, 452 Zach De La Rocha, 18 Zapp, 404, 407 Zayas, Pedro, 15 ‘‘Zealots’’ (The Fugees), 189 Zhane, 188 Zoe Ministries, 67 Zoe Pound, 598 ‘‘Zoe Pound, Get Down’’ (Zoe Pound), 598 Zulu, 526 ‘‘Zulu Beats’’ (Afrika Islam), xxxv Zulu Nation, xxxii, 11, 226, 227, 246, 309 ‘‘Zulu Nation Throwdown’’ (Afrika Bambaataa), xxxv, 34

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I thank the contributors who put in countless hours of research and writing to make this book happen. Thanks to Danielle Hess for her terrific regional playlist and for reading my Philadelphia drafts along the way. Thanks to D. Shanks for coming through in the clutch with the Harlem chapter, and for bouncing ideas back and forth after readings in Philly. Thanks to Mr. Walt and DJ Evil Dee for inviting me into your home for the fantastic interview about hip hop in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and to Rev Run, DMC, Danny Simmons, DATKID, Stevie D of The Force MDs, Phat Kat, Skippy White, DJ Remix, MC Spice, Ke’ala of Sudden Rush, and all the other artists and hip hop icons for participating in interviews for the book. Thanks to Joe Meno and Sean Carswell for long conversations about hip hop as we drove from city to city on book tours. Koren Zelek, Bilquis Zaka, Nnamdi Osuwagwu, Charles Weatherspoon, Mike Faloon, Shamika Ann Mitchell, Luke and Kelly Buckman, Will and Kirsten Armstrong, Mike Smith, Jason Jordan, Kyle Herman and Jana Morgan, David Atwood, Andy Sturdevant, Ryan Stearman, Chad and Abigail Willenborg, Michael Pollock, Nathalie Shapiro, Jon Shaw, Hillary Frank, and Jonathan Menjivar, thanks for all your support. I could not have completed this book without the support of a Rider University Summer Faculty Fellowship, and the support and encouragement of the Rider University English Department and all the terrific students in my Hip Hop and American Culture classes. The best thing about compiling this book was discovering rap artists from around the country who never hit the national mainstream. Thanks again to the contributors for giving me a new list of rap artists to listen to, and for their diligence in digging into the obscure rap histories of their cities.

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Finally, thanks to my mom, Wanda Hess, for looking past the parental advisory stickers and buying me all those Ice Cube and Geto Boys cassettes when I was under 18, and to my family—my sisters, Mindy and Magan, my wife, Danielle, and my new daughter, Helena Coco, for listening with me. Mickey Hess

About the Editor and Contributors

EDITOR Mickey Hess is Assistant Professor of English at Rider University and the author of Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory (Garrett County Press, 2008) and Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music (Praeger, 2007), and the editor of Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Music, Movement, and Culture (Greenwood, 2007). He lives in Philadelphia.

CONTRIBUTORS Dr. Laurie Cannady is an Assistant Professor of English at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania. Her specialty is African American women’s literature, with a focus on the depiction and reception of children in adult literature. Her book, Innocents Lost: An Examination of Child Sexual Abuse in Three African American Texts will be released in 2009. Warren Scott Cheney is a Ph.D. candidate in Modern Literature and Culture at Loyola University Chicago. His research focuses on such diverse subjects as 50 Cent, Facebook, Robert Frost, and contemporary African American poetry. He plans to write a dissertation on the poetry of American Modernism. George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Theory at UC Berkeley, with previous degrees from Cambridge University and St. Lawrence University. His work has appeared in Monthly Review, Journal of Black Studies, Radical Philosophy Review, The Commoner, Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self Knowledge, and

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Qui Parle, and he is a regular contributor to Counterpunch. He currently lives somewhere between Oakland and Caracas, Venezuela. Matthew Brian Cohen lives and writes in New Jersey. He writes music reviews for the online magazine Delusions of Adequacy at www.adequacy.net, and blogs at www.munchmagazine.com. Rich Paul Cooper is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Literature at Louisiana State University, and working on hip hop is a labor of love. This is his first significant publication: NOLA first, forever and always. Ericka Blount Danois is a lecturer in the Telecommunications Department at Morgan State University and a graduate of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has written about the arts and music for a variety of publications including; The Source, Vibe, The City Sun, JazzTimes, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among others. She has profiled and interviewed artists and musicians such as Nas, Olu Dara, Quincy Jones, James Mtume, and Horace Silver. David Diallo is an Assistant Professor at L’Universite´ Bordeaux IV Montesquieu (France). His research interests focus on African American expressive forms, sociology of art, and contemporary social theory. He has been a Visiting Research Scholar in Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania and at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and contributed to the Journal of American Folklore and Ethnologies. He is the author the Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg article in Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Music, Movement, and Culture (Greenwood, 2007). Pacey C. Foster is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research explores the social and structural factors that help members of creative industries manage in markets characterized risk, uncertainty and complex combinations of social, cultural, and commercial interests. His research on sample citation networks in rap music has been presented internationally and his research on the social networks of nightclub booking agents received a best paper nomination from the Academy of Management. A Boston native, Foster is an avid record collector and has been DJing and producing since 1994. Carleton S. Gholz is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests center around the cultural politics of America’s Rustbelt. Danielle Hess is a Department Manager in Drexel University’s LeBow School of Business. Her music writing has appeared in Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Music, Movement, and Culture (Greenwood, 2007).

About the Editor and Contributors Rohan Kalyan is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. His research interests include cultures of politics, political identities, particularly in the United States and in South Asia. He has published previously on hip hop in Hawai’i and Bolivia, and is currently working on the politics of globalization and national identity in India. Rachel Key is a Professor of English at Grayson County College in Dennison, Texas. Her areas of research include Latin American literature, Sociolinguistics, specifically dialects, and composition strategies. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University and is working on her dissertation involving code-switching in Latin American literature. Amanda Lawson is Student Vice President at Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Jamie Lynch is a writer living in Boston. He is a recent graduate of Bates College, where he wrote an Honors Thesis titled ‘‘Regulating the Fleuve: Codifying the Verse of Rap Music.’’ He is an avid collector of break beats and has been archiving them for the past three years. Matt Miller grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and currently lives in Atlanta. He is completing his Ph.D. dissertation, ‘‘Bounce: Rap Music and Local Cultural Identity in New Orleans, 1980–2005,’’ at Emory University’s Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts. He is co-director of Ya Heard Me? (2007), a feature-length documentary on rap music in New Orleans. Andrea Roberts is a recent graduate of Rider University and works as a licensed realtor in New Jersey. Having lived in Newark for a number of years, she maintains a love of the city even though she has relocated to South Jersey with her husband and son. She hopes that under the direction of the new administration the transformation that is needed to restore Brick City to its past greatness is underway. Zandria F. Robinson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University. Her research interests include urban and regional sociology, race, class, gender, and epistemology. Her dissertation research chronicles the demographic and economic changes that have affected black cultures in the urban South since the 1970s. Robinson has been a Fellow in the American Sociological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program since 2006. Justin Schell is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota’s Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society program, as well a free-lance music writer for various publications in the Twin Cities. He has written for MNArtists.org, the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and NewMusicBox. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, he

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received a BFA in Music History and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work at Minnesota focuses on the cultural and historical stakes of hip hop, both in the Twin Cities and around the globe. David Shanks (D. Shanks) is a journalist/writer/MC and self-professed hip hop junkie. Much of his love of the music and culture can be attributed to his upbringing in Brooklyn, New York. He began writing rhymes at 10 years old and continued to sharpen his talents throughout high school and college. After graduating from Temple University with a degree in Journalism, Public Relations and Advertising, D. Shanks decided to take a friend’s suggestion and try his hand in hip hop journalism. He began writing articles and joined the staff of a small newsletter named HHN (Hip Hop News) in 2005. That newsletter has since grown to become HHNLIVE.COM, a premier hip hop source on the Web. In addition to HHNLIVE.COM and his other free-lance endeavors, D. Shanks serves as music correspondent and host for the internet podcasts, The Draft Pick Mixshow and The 623 Show, and is currently a contributing writer for Streetcred.com. He still writes and performs music under the moniker Traum Diggs. Jeff St. Andrews is a producer and photographer who lives in Oakland, California. He studied at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and has been a free-lance photographer for seven years. He has produced beats for Reef the Lost Cauze and Taj the Infinite. Jennifer R. Young is an Assistant Professor at Hope College where she teaches African American Literature, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, and Women’s Studies. She earned her Ph.D. from Howard University in 2004. Recent publications include a contributing chapter on MC Lyte in Icons of Hip Hop (edited by Mickey Hess; Greenwood, 2007); ‘‘The Multicultural Cast of Spies in Alias’’ in Investigating Alias: Secrets and Spies (UK: JCS Publishing, 2007); and ‘‘Marketing a Sable Muse: The Cultural Circulation of Phillis Wheatley, 1767–1865’’ in New Essays on Phillis Wheatley (U of Tennessee Press, 2008). She is also the editor of Hip Hop Criticism (Paul Daniels Press, 2008), a volume that celebrates lyricism as scholarship, interpreted by visual artists, writers, musicians, poets, critics, and film documentarians.