Soul Imperialist

"Reverse-Gentrification Of The Literary World"

2007-10-17T10:06:00.000-04:00

About seven years ago, Dawn invited me to a concert she was giving at Indigo Café, a small Black-owned café/bookstore in Ft. Greene that has since gone out of business (they still exist online though, and they carry my book, so you should buy it from them if you don’t already have it).

Upon arrival, I learned two things:

1) It was actually a concert-slash-reading with said reading to be provided by a local Jamaican ex-pat author by the name of Colin Channer; and

2) I was mad early. Dawn wasn’t even there yet.

Sociable as I am, I struck up a conversation with a woman sitting at the next table, who turned out to be a writing student of Channer’s. We had what I recall as a great conversation, although I suppose any conversation is going to seem vibrant and bohemian when you’re listening to jazz in a café/bookstore in Ft. Greene.

Anyway, after we had been talking for about an hour, Channer entered the café, strode over to us and affectionately rubbed my new friend’s (i.e. his student’s) head. Suddenly, he realized he had interrupted our conversation, looked slightly embarrassed, took a moment to ponder how to rectify the situation, and then, without uttering a word, reached out and rubbed my head as well. A complete stranger. It was a bold and hilarious gesture, particularly considering that – while I am in fact the world’s nicest guy – you wouldn’t necessarily know that to look at me.

So ever since then, I’ve always checked for his work, which turns out to be really good. In fact, from what I can tell, Channer has subsequently become one of Jamaica’s leading literary figures, founding the Calabash International Literary Festival and Writers’ Workshop, and publishing four novels, a book of short stories and an edited anthology.*

Anyway, I mention all of that because he’s hosting a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Brooklyn-based, Caribbean-friendly, independent publisher Akashic Books at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library tomorrow (Thursday). I mean, come on, their motto is "Reverse-Gentrification Of The Literary World":

10 Years of Akashic Press

October 18, 2007 7:00 PM

Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch

Novelist Colin Channer hosts an evening of readings by Akashic authors: Amiri Baraka [!], Arthur Nersesian, Preston Allen, T.Cooper, Felicia Luna Lemus, and Tim McLoughlin.

*This is kind of a side issue, but Channer was the first writer I’ve read to portray conversations that switch back and forth between Jamaican Patois (a/k/a Patwa) and Standard English, a phenomenon that has fascinated me since I moved to Brooklyn. Virtually everyone who speaks Patois also speaks Standard English, so when two West Indian people are talking to each other, they often switch back and forth for emphasis or to make various kinds of rhetorical points. Now if the people have Jamaican accents anyway, you almost wouldn’t notice that they were switching – it’s mainly a matter of grammar. But Brooklyn is home to many, many folks who speak Patois with a West Indian accent but Standard English with an American accent (usually because they were raised in New York and their parents came from the islands). The point is, if you didn’t understand that Patois was a separate language, it sounds like they’re just switching back and forth between an American accent and a Jamaican accent for no reason.

I hear people do this every day now, but when I first encountered it, I was amazed. Especially because of the way it actually works in conversation – one of the people will switch, then the other one will follow. Then one of them will switch back and the other will follow. And on and on. So their relationship to each other - and their perception of which aspects of the other person's identity are most important at that moment - is overtly encoded in the way they talk. So once I became familiar with the dynamic, I began to really appreciate the way Channer uses that dynamic to provide subtle clues about his characters' frame of mind.

Howl

2007-10-07T11:42:00.000-04:00

This past week marked the 50^th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl winning its 1957 obscenity trial, and WBAI had planned a 90-minute special commemorating the occasion. Unfortunately, they were informed by their lawyers that broadcasting the poem could result in FCC fines substantial enough to actually put the station out of business.

Call me crazy, but I think the fact that the single most influential work of twentieth century American poetry cannot be broadcast in America says something about our society.

Now, theoretically, it might be acceptable to broadcast it during the “safe harbor” hours of 10pm to 6am. I say “might” because, as a matter of policy, the FCC will not tell you whether something is OK or not until after you’ve already done it. So your only options are:

1) Try it and see if you get fined $350,000 per word per broadcast (conservatively, that would be around five million dollars to play the whole poem once); or

2) Don’t broadcast the poem.

Under that system, most people will simply not bother to broadcast material that they think even might be a problem. And, since it was their own decision, the FCC can claim that they didn’t censor anyone. And they’d be telling the truth. Sort of.

Ultimately, WBAI decided to produce the special anyway and just put it on the web. You can listen to or download it here.

From a hip-hop perspective, one of the most intriguing comments on the whole situation is made at 59:59 by Bob Holman, of the Nuyorican Poets Café:

“I was just thinking about…what this says about the vision of orality and literature. You know, that you can buy the book. And that it can be in a library…There’s no legal repercussions…for anyone to take this book out of the library, or to buy it, or to give it to anybody of any age.

And yet, nobody is allowed to hear it…

The idea that a written text somehow can pass a test, that there is a certain kind of intelligence inherent in one’s ability to read and decipher language versus - shall I just say it? – you know, “the animalistic immediacy and impact of orality must be stopped.” You know, if you start to think about it, it becomes a really damning piece of analysis of this country’s appreciation of different cultures.”

Ironically, I’m not sure if his point comes across as well in written form, but what he’s talking about is the fact that American society sees written literature as being so much more valuable than oral literature that the exact same work can be considered OK for a 12 year old to read, but worthy of a five million dollar fine if that same kid were allowed to hear it. His implication at the end is that this is because European cultures tend to value the written word, while African and Asian cultures have historically been more oriented toward oral literature, so the bias towards the written word basically amounts to racism.

If you disagree with that, a useful exercise would be to try to come up with a better explanation. I’ve had this conversation many times, and usually the best people can do is an argument about how written literature is just obviously, inherently better than oral literature, which is of course a tautology at best (“European culture is superior because European culture is superior”). Usually, this doesn’t stem from intentional racism, but from a lack of familiarity with the successes of oral literature (e.g. Vedas being passed down by word of mouth for 3500 years in India, Sundiata epic being passed down by word of mouth for 700 years in West Africa, Genghis Khan transmitting all military information throughout his empire in the form of songs, African American spirituals containing important information about Black history and escape strategies, etc., etc. etc.)

It’s also worth thinking about how this issue has affected the perception of hip-hop lyrics. I’m just saying.

The Table Manners of Black Folk: A Fair and Balanced Analysis

2007-09-27T15:44:00.000-04:00

By now you’ve heard about Bill O’Reilly’s ill-advised comments regarding Black people’s table manners. So you’ve probably also heard his unsurprising claim that his comments were taken out of context.

Believe it or not, I actually think that’s true.

But here’s the thing: if you take his comments in the spirit in which they were intended, they’re actually worse. And the fact that neither he nor anyone else seems to realize that tells you everything you need to know about the state of public discourse about race in America.

So let’s break it down. If you read the transcript, he makes four basic points:

1. “You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he's made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there. And we went to Sylvia's, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.

And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference. There's no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment -- people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you're gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody's skin.”

OK, first of all, any time you find yourself saying a phrase like, “even though it’s run by Blacks,” you need to just stop talking and go sit in a corner. That said, maybe I'm giving him too much credit here, but I think that what he was really trying to say is not so much that he was surprised by the fact that Black people were normal, but that he wanted to make sure that his audience knew that. He just happened to do it in a very awkward way, and in the process admitted that his own listeners were racist...And that's me giving him the benefit of the doubt.

2. "Now, how do we get to this point? Black people in this country understand that they've had a very, very tough go of it, and some of them can get past that, and some of them cannot. I don't think there's a black American who hasn't had a personal insult that they've had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don't think there's one in the country. So you've got to accept that as being the truth. People deal with that stuff in a variety of ways. Some get bitter. Some say, [unintelligible] "You call me that, I'm gonna be more successful." OK, it depends on the personality.

Look, he’s admitting right here that not only is there racism in America but that all Black people have been a victim of it! He’s a stand-up guy! Fair and balanced! What reasonable person could possibly have a problem with that?

Me, that’s who.

Because, if you’ll notice, in the process of making his generous admission, he defines racism as “a personal insult that they’ve had to deal with because of the color of their skin.” And this is important, because if that was actually what racism was, then a lot of the other things he has to say would actually make sense. I mean, you want reparations just because somebody once assumed you were good at basketball? Why, that’s crazy!

Except, of course, that’s not what racism is at all. Racism is housing discrimination, disproportionately high infant mortality rates, lack of political representation, difficulty in getting small business loans, lack of access to certain kinds of education, tokenism, lack of inherited wealth due to slavery, the totally nonsensical belief that the dialect of English spoken by white people is superior to the dialect of English spoken by Black people, and on and on and on…very little of which can reasonably be overcome by simply vowing to be “more successful”…

3. Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out: "Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it."

What he’s saying here is basically that the best way to fight racism is to ignore it. This, in and of itself, is not racist per se, although it is extremely stupid. The main reason is because it's based on the misunderstanding of racism that I mentioned above. If the problem is somebody calling you a bad word, then ignoring them may actually be a good way to deal with it (in certain circumstances, at least). But if the problem is a lack of access to medical care, then I really don't see how someone can just , in O'Reilly's words, "get past that."

But O'Reilly is also saying that if people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton didn’t make such a big deal about it, racism would have already gone away. In other words, the activists are actually encouraging white people to become more racist, by annoying them with their constant harping. This is of course a standard argument of anyone that wants to preserve the status quo. It's also frequently used to justify domestic abuse.

...And, by the way, the idea that Black people are just now starting to realize the importance of education may actually be the most offensive part of his whole rant. The first Historically Black Colleges and Universities were founded in the South less than 24 months after the end of slavery!

Just think about that for a minute. How seriously would you have to take education to go from not being considered human to actually starting a college in under 2 years? Pretty seriously, I would imagine.

4. You know, and I went to the concert by Anita Baker at Radio City Music Hall, and the crowd was 50/50, black/white, and the blacks were well-dressed. And she came out -- Anita Baker came out on the stage and said, "Look, this is a show for the family. We're not gonna have any profanity here. We're not gonna do any rapping here." The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedoes, and this is what white America doesn't know, particularly people who don't have a lot of interaction with black Americans. They think that the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg.

[Juan] WILLIAMS: Oh, and it's just so awful. It's just so awful because, I mean, it's literally the sewer come to the surface, and now people take it that the sewer is the whole story --

O'REILLY: That's right. That's right. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea."

WILLIAMS: Please --

O'REILLY: You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

This is the part that really has been taken out of context. He’s not saying that he expected people to be screaming “M-Fer, I want more iced tea,” he’s saying that people who learned about Black culture through hip-hop would expect that. And again, I have to admit, in a very, very, very narrow sense, there is some truth to that. But, unfortunately, he doesn’t mean it in a very, very, very narrow sense. He’s saying that if there were no hip-hop there would be no racism.

So there you have it, what Bill O’Reilly really meant:

Jesse Jackson, hip-hop and thin-skinned Black people are causing racism in America, especially the racism of O’Reilly’s own fans.

You’re welcome, Bill.

...Now I am being glib here, but this is really a "laugh to keep from crying" situation. The ONLY way you could honestly hold these positions is if you didn't know the actual, undisputed, brutal history of race in this country. That's the problem - that ignorance - and that's what we should be talking about.

If you disagree with me, I would only ask that you do one thing: Take a look at this website (not for the faint of heart) and then tell me again how Al Sharpton and hip-hop and uptight Black folks are to blame for racism in America.

Equinox

2007-09-23T17:15:00.000-04:00

The Earth is turning, and as a result I wish you a Happy Equinox, L'Shana Tova, and Ramadan Mubarak.

Don't forget to listen to Coltrane's "Equinox" and maybe even a little Organized Konfusion to balance things out...after all, the Equinox is all about balance. By the way, can anyone explain to me why we consider the solstices and equinoxes (equini?) to be the dividing lines between seasons? It just seems like the longest day of the year should be considered the exact middle of summer, not the beginning.

Is it just me?

While I may never know the answer to that question, or where people got the idea that it's OK to just stand in front of an open subway door and not let people on the damn train, at least I have had one of my longtime conundrums resolved, via the good offices of the one Jay Smooth, namely why it is that Bill O'Reilly seems so obsessed with the hip-hop. If you didn't just click on that, go back and do so immediately. You will not regret it.

West Indian Day Parade

2007-09-05T10:23:00.000-04:00

I was happy to see that not only was there an Obamamobile at the West Indian Day Parade this year, but also that Barack managed to pick up the Mighty Sparrow endorsement:

...which – as I had hoped – comes with a seven-minute Calypso about the candidate, "Barack the Magnificent".

Other noteworthy sights…

Death Takes a Holiday:

Blue Man Group A Yard:

I also went out for J’Ouvert which, in the Brooklyn context, is basically a parade/street party that starts around 3:30 AM the night before the main carnival. When the main parade began to increasingly feature flatbed trucks with sound systems and deejays and bands…

… the speakers started to drown out the steel pan groups. So the steel bands gradually moved to J’Ouvert (since it’s the middle of the night, amplification is banned). What they do is essentially tie together about seven or eight of those band risers with wheels on them, then hook that to the back of a U-Haul, put the band on top, and drive very slowly and play very loud. It’s quite funky. For some reason (possibly because it was 4 in the morning), they didn’t stop traffic on Eastern Parkway, so you had about 5,000 people in costumes jumping around in the street throwing flour on each other (did I mention that people throw flour on each other?), and a series of ill steel bands winding their way down the street, occasionally parted by a few extremely disoriented looking motorists.

I love Brooklyn.

Get Down On The Get Down

2007-08-18T10:42:00.000-04:00

About ½ hour ago I was coming back from the bagel shop when I passed a guy in a suit and eye-patch fixing a candle* for a woman in the street. I love that my neighborhood is home to freelance, door-to-door root doctors, and I expressed that sentiment by nodding and smiling as I passed. A few seconds later, he was yelling and running after me. "This is for you," he said, and handed me a stick of incense that had been dipped in oil.

So I’m burning it now and thinking about roots and history and culture and, of course, hip-hop.

Alien Ness, my b-boy guru, once told me:

"This is the only luxury that the slaves had, was the dance and the music…That’s all we had was the song and dance. ‘Cause they stripped us of the religion. And a big part of that religion was song and dance. So the only thing that they were able to really participate in without getting whupped or killed was the dance. Because anything else would look too much like worshipping the wrong god."

This is his new video, "Rusty Shank’s Operation Get Down". Now "spirituality" may not be the first word that comes to mind when you watch it, but then again maybe you just need to broaden your definition:

As you watch him do those sweep swipes at 00:50, keep in mind that Ness is 41 years old, and consider that there may be something beyond mere physical exertion at work here.

* from Luckymojo:
‘The ambiguous verb "fix" can refer to either harmful or benign magical operations. Generally speaking, when "fix" is applied to an inanimate object -- as in "fixing up a mojo," or "he makes fixed candles," or "she fixed some baths for him" -- the intention is helpful and the word is synonymous with "prepare," anoint," or "dress."’

Now that was...something.

2007-08-07T20:32:00.000-04:00

Last night’s free Lauryn Hill concert in Brooklyn was truly one of the strangest performances I’ve ever seen. And, judging by today’s blog response, the question of whether she’s half-crazy or half-sane will not be resolved any time soon…I guess we all see what we want to see…Here’s my view:

After digging Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s unfadeable crowd-stalling styles, hearing the longest and most incoherent spiritual invocation I’ve ever witnessed, hearing the staff of every Brooklyn Appleby's introduce themselves on stage for some reason, nodding through Sean Kingston rapping along to Jay-Z’s "Takeover" for some reason, and seeing one of our era’s leading young feminist intellectuals almost hit a cop, it was time to prepare for Ms. Hill’s entrance.

The band got it going. Now, people who know me know I take a hard line on band-vamping: Up to 3 minutes = excellent sense of showmanship; 3 minutes and over = artist locked in bathroom. No exceptions. OK, one exception: when I saw Willie Colon in downtown Brooklyn last summer, he drove his SUV right up to the stage and jumped out, trombone in hand, and joined the band, which had been playing for about 5 minutes. "Sorry I’m late," he explained after the song ended, "my cat fell off the couch."

Anyway, the band took solos for about ten minutes, all the while craning their necks toward stage right for any sign of L-Boogie. Eventually, Lauren hit the stage looking and acting like the love child of Liza Minelli and H.R. from Bad Brains, which is not necessarily a bad thing. They both know how to put on a show, after all.

I did not take this picture:

Basically, about seventy-five percent of her performance consisted of punk rock versions of Bob Marley songs, which would have been excellent...if that was what she intended. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. I mean, seriously, she spent the first 30 seconds of nearly every song urging the band to speed up, which suggests that what she was going for was not so much "fast" as "faster". When the band approached the desired tempo, she would then scream the lyrics as quickly as she could, as if to get them out of the way.

This is how the crowd reacted:

People started walking out almost immediately, which I thought was strange, considering that they had just spent three hours waiting for the show to start. But Brooklyn audiences know what they want, and they know when they’re not getting it.

But here’s the weird part: at several points in the show Lauryn caught a groove, slowed down, and just completely rocked the crowd. I’ve never seen anybody gain and lose and regain and re-lose an audience like that. It was like twenty minutes of folks walking out, followed by five minutes of absolute adoration, followed by another twenty minutes of people on the verge of booing, followed by another five minutes of transcendent bliss. I have no explanation, that’s just how it was.

She left the stage for a moment (Joe Twist rule #354: Roadies not dismantling equipment = encore), and soon returned for a nine-song encore that had us sprinting toward the stage. Two identically-dressed guys were standing on chairs in front of us, and when they turned to talk to each other, I realized it was the Twins, Keith and Kevin, who are considered to be the first b-boys ever. Ever. They just happened to be standing in front of me at the Lauryn Hill show.

Analyses and a songlist can be found at sherealcool. Analyses without songlist at Conny Kate.

Top five most hip-hop moments of the last week, presented for your convenience in outline form and reverse chronological order

2007-08-04T16:32:00.000-04:00

1. KRS-One free in Prospect Park last night.

I cannot deny that the Blastmaster knows how to rock a party:

A.
Kris(t)* invited all "b-boys, b-girls, poppers and lockers" up on the stage with him. He also at one point shouted, "YouTube this!" which is either very un-hip-hop or very hip-hop, depending on how you look at it.

B.
"In 1980, I used to sleep in this park! You can’t see it now, ‘cause it’s too dark, but I used to sleep right on this bandshell. And I used to say to myself, ‘One day, I’m gonna rock this park.’ So I’m actually in my dream right now! You wouldn’t even believe how this feels!"

C.
KRS: "Hold up your t-shirt and STRETCH it!"
Crowd: "Huh?"
KRS: "If you want me to sign your t-shirt you have to stretch it out, so I can write on it."
Crowd: "Oh."
[moves across stage signing various items that people hold out to him]
KRS: "You know signing money is a federal offense, right?"
KRS: "You know signing sneakers is insane, right?"

2. Harlem Hop, Jackie Robinson Park, 147th Street, Tuesday

What’s weird is that I routinely improvise multi-hour lectures on complex topics in front of hundreds of people without feeling the slightest bit nervous, but if I have to dance in front of 20 people, I’m a wreck! So at last week’s Harlem Hop (there’s still three left!), certain individuals who shall remain nameless were pushing me to get into the cypher so - against my better judgement - I gave into the peer pressure, and wound up falling. The Original Jazzy Jay tried to encourage me over the sound system, "That’s alright – keep going", which I probably should be embarrassed about, but, ethnographically speaking, I’m actually kind of honored by.

3. Wild Style Anniversary, Central Park Summerstage, last Sunday

In between the *ahem* more traditional old school performers, Rammellzee took the stage and basically hollered esoteric theorems for about 15 minutes. The crowd was nonplussed, but about 5 of us loved it. You can check his web site for a simple, easy-to-follow explanation of his approach.

In fact, here’s a sample paragraph to start you off:

M x A = N has been placed by this unplanned structure colony math to do the concentrating of friction-formation. The equation G x O = D has placed two prophetic universal (not according to this word-formation UNIVERSAL) gambles.

4. "Curfew Breakers" at Rock Steady Crew 30th Anniversary Crew Battle, Saturday

Best. Crew name. Ever. These were a bunch of little kids who entered the battle and no one said anything about it. They just battled like any other crew. Here’s some video that someone took from the night before:

The run that that little girl does (starting at around 2:00) is more hip-hop than 50 Cent’s entire catalog combined.

5. Riding home on the train. Saturday Night.

There was a baby who wouldn’t stop crying, and for some reason, the father felt that taunting it would help. It didn’t. People on the train were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the whole situation. Then a homeless guy, who was clearly mentally ill, boarded at the other end of the car. He began doing a little dance and reciting religious dogma in both English and Spanish as he moved down the aisle. Those of us in the middle were like getting squeezed between this mad prophet on the one side and the dysfunctional family on the other. Finally, the guy stopped right in front of the baby, who – in its fascination - immediately fell silent. The guy continued to dance in front of the quiet, enchanted baby until I got off the train. How is that hip-hop? Because two things that were totally out of place on their own came together and formed a perfect synergy.

*He’s actually calling himself "Krist Parker" now. You knew that, right?

I have to admit, I did not see this coming.

2007-07-26T14:34:00.000-04:00

Queen Guitarist to Complete Doctorate
Wednesday, Jul. 25, 2007 By AP

(LONDON)—Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen. The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.

May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful. Queen were one of Britain's biggest music groups in the 1970s, with hits including Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You.

After Mercury's death in 1991, May recorded several solo albums, including 1998's Another World. But his interest in astronomy continued, and he co-wrote Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, which was published last year. He was due to finish carrying out astronomical observations at an observatory on the island of La Palma, in Spain's Canary Islands, on Tuesday, the observatory said.

May told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had always wanted to complete his degree. "It was unfinished business," he said. "I didn't want an honorary Ph.D. I wanted the real thing that I worked for."

B-Boy Bonanza

2007-07-23T11:52:00.000-04:00

It's Rock Steady Week in NY! Check out this link for the full schedule of events, commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Rock Steady Crew.

As if that wasn't enough, the free Harlem Hop Series starts next week (see flyer above), put on by my pal, Christie Z. Pabon, whose Tools of War page you should already know about (but just in case you don't, it's the place to go to find out about hip-hop events that you would actually want to go to and/or can actually afford).

Even if you aren't particularly interested in b-girling/b-boying, you should try to attend at least a few of these events (if you're around NYC), for the following reasons:

1. Despite what Jamie Kennedy may think, b-girling/b-boying is not corny...it's just not. Trust me.

2. They always play really really really good music at breaking events.

3. I will be there, and I'm quite personable, if I do say so myself.

4. If you learn a few basic moves, you can do this at your wedding:

5. If you really devote yourself to it, you could do something like this (FYI: here's some background info on Nunavut):

Livin', Lovin', Overdubbin'

2007-07-17T20:10:00.000-04:00

Back in college, my friend Tex had a theory that James Brown was not a person, so much as an exalted state of being, fully consonant with the rhythms of the universe, and that the musician we knew as "James Brown" was just some guy that happened to have achieved that state. It didn’t really make any sense back then either, but it had an appeal, specifically that you could, on some extremely abstract level, divorce the qualities you admire about an artist from their mundane existence as a human being. And wouldn’t that be nice….

I was thinking about that when Jalylah sent me this video of Sly Stone performing this past Sunday, as part of his first concert tour in 25 years:

All things considered, it’s actually a pretty good performance, but I resent having to consider all things to enjoy Sly Stone. It would be nice to be able to think that Sly Stoneness exists eternally on some other plane and that this individual we see before us – who, after all, is still a pretty good singer - is accessing some of it, and that if he is never again able to access all of it, that doesn’t mean that all of it doesn’t still exist, just that it’s just somehow beyond our reach now.

As I’ve noted before, Sly Stone is/was one of the greatest singers, songwriters, arrangers, lyricists, performers and bandleaders of the last 50 years, and each independently of all the others. This is a guy who wrote some of the most profound lyrics of his era, played the guitar, bass, harmonica, keyboards, sang, wrote out the horn parts in formal musical notation, recorded and mixed the whole thing himself and (according to Joel Selvin’s book) still remembered to hand out W-4 forms to the musicians before they left the session! So the fact that he can still sing and kind of stand up is cold comfort, though it is comfort nevertheless.

Whatever it is that he’s been dealing with for the last quarter-century (and it is worth noting, in this ultra-confessional era, that both he and his family have gone out of their way not to tell us*) I hope he finds, or has found, peace. And, also, if there is any justice in the world, he will get his publishing rights back from Michael Jackson. Or at least some of the money.

*for the record, I personally do not believe it was drugs (or – more to the point- I suspect that whatever his issues were, drugs were the symptom and not the cause).

"Picture us coolin’ out on the Fourth of July..."

2007-07-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

I don’t know, it just feels like kind of a weird time to be proud of America…right after the president overturned the jail sentence of a guy who committed a felony for him and everything (Gary Tyler’s still in jail). I’m too young to remember what July 4, 1974, felt like, a little over a month before Nixon resigned, but it was probably something like this.

I spent the afternoon at Njeri’s barbeque, with her family and assorted friends. Last time I was there, Mae laughingly berated me for walking out the back door into the yard… "Can’t you read?" she said, and pointed to this sign:

Which was funny, but also kind of deep, since Mae actually grew up under segregation.

You know, a lot of people forget to sing the last two verses of "This Land is Your Land":

As I was walkin', I saw a sign there
And that sign said "No Trespassing"
But on the other side, it didn't say nothin’
And that side was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office, I saw my people
And they were hungry and I was wondering…
If this land was made for you and me.

Things that I've done or observed lately that there's really no reason you should care about but here we are nevertheless

2007-07-03T10:50:00.000-04:00

1. Strolled over to the Afropunk Block Party in Clinton Hill Sunday, where I ran into virtually everyone I know. One of the many great things about Brooklyn is that there is still a real neighborhood quality to it. At least 25% of the people there were people that I’ve seen before…somewhere. Actually, I recognized one guy from having seen him the day before doing Capoeira in front of the Brooklyn Museum. There’s something cool about having the same people just turn up in various places, even if you never actually meet them. For some reason, it seems to contribute to the sense of narrative. Jalylah’s pix can be found here. Oh, and if I didn’t mention it before, you should be reading her consistently excellent blog, Hello, Babar.

2. On the way over, I heard a guy end like five consecutive sentences with the word "son": "Nah, son. It ain’t even like that, son! I wasn’t even there, son! Well, it must have been somebody else, cause it wasn’t me, son!" And so forth. After a certain point, I began to mentally replace the word "son" with the word "stop" and pretend he was sending a very emphatic telegram.

3. Left the block party early to see "The French Evolution: Race, Politics & the French Riots: works by Alexis Peskine," at MOCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts), which I have to admit, I didn’t even know existed despite having lived next to it for several years.

4. Discussing their new instrumental funk album in the New York Times last week, Nate Chinnen referred to the Beastie Boys as "The Uncredible Bongo Band". Props.

5. On the way back from Boston the other day, I passed Albertus Magnus College…I’m no Latin scholar, but doesn’t "Albertus Magnus" mean "Fat Albert"?

Things are happenning

2007-06-21T19:38:00.000-04:00

The recently-big-upped Dr. Oliver Wang was deftly interviewed by America's Radio Sweetheart Jesse Thorn, an individual who has been known to read this very blog, so Hi Jesse, and also why don't you (not you, Jesse) check it out?

Oh and also I'm now rolling with Jay and the Family Smooth over at hiphopmusic.com. Still working out the particulars, but I figure that will be more hip-hop and politics and this will be more telling tales out of school about various social circumstances I would probably be better off keeping my mouth shut about. Stay tuned.

...and you thought he only wrote themes to Pixar movies...

2007-06-18T10:10:00.000-04:00

Randy Newman provides some perspective: "Now the leaders we have, while they're the worst that we've had, are hardly the worst this poor world has seen."

(credit: Maximum Fun)

Some Things That Have Happened Recently

2007-06-06T09:35:00.000-04:00

1. “Decency Ruling Thwarts F.C.C. on Vulgarities / If Bush Can Blurt Curse, So Can Network TV”, is one of my favorite New York Times headlines in a long time. The story behind it is that on Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York overturned insane FCC guidelines on the use of “fleeting expletives” (when someone accidentally swears on live TV).

The guidelines were mentally unstable for two reasons. First, they held TV stations responsible for indecency when anyone (including people that were not employed by the station) uttered a profanity on a live broadcast, which meant that, barring significant advances in time travel, it would not be possible to ever do a truly live broadcast*

Second, the guidelines assumed that all profanity was ipso facto indecent, which is a much more complicated question than I think many people realize. Specifically, the court pointed out that the FCC assumes that in all cases when someone says, for example, “f***ing awesome”, they literally mean – and are understood to mean – “sexual intercoursing awesome”. I’ve always been fascinated by these kinds of usage questions…How much meaning inheres in words after the speaker and listener have forgotten where they came from? How many people really mean “God be with ye”, when they say “Good‘b’ye”? And if they don’t, in what sense is it still in there?

2. Just Blaze got a blog. It’s good. He also seems to have colonized hiphopmusic.com.

3. An extremely weird b-boy battle took place between Steelo and Hella Hung.

4. KRS-One is slowly dissing all of my friends.

5. Last week, it was stealthily announced** that Astroland (the official name of the amusement park at Coney Island) had been sold to developers. After this season, it will be closed and dismantled and the land will be used for luxury apartments.

WHAT?!!!!!

Seriously. After this summer, Coney Island will no longer exist. That’s THE Coney Island. The one in Brooklyn. The idea that there is a single person in the world that thinks this is a good idea makes me sick. The fact that it is actually happening is shocking and heartbreaking.

Coney Island has been a place of refuge for generations of working class New Yorkers - including my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents - for over 150 years. It represents everything that is great about the city.

As I wrote last year:

“…There is no gate or fence around [Coney Island], which means there is no real entrance, which means you don’t have to pay or look acceptable to get in, which means there are always a lot of weird people hanging around and - being as it’s a boardwalk/beach/amusement park - they’re usually in a good mood.”

Weird people are one of this city's greatest resources and it pains me that we are being systematically driven out and erased from its history.

*I know, I know, seven-second delay, but they could still miss things and that’s a big deal if you’re getting fined $325,000 per instance…Not to mention the problems caused by trigger-happy censors when they have 3 ½ seconds to determine whether the *next* thing some drunk celebrity says on an awards show will be indecent…How many non-indecent things will get cut by mistake? And how many potentially indecent people will not get invited to appear on TV in the first place?

**One of the many valuable things that I learned from my undergraduate journalism classes is that you should always watch the news on Friday evening and read the paper Saturday morning. Why? Because 1) most people don’t, and 2) all media-savvy people know that. Which means that if someone wants to bury a story, they almost always make it public on a Friday afternoon.

Oliver Wang is very cool, but I couldn't think of a way to say that that didn't sound corny or pretentious, so I'm just saying it.

2007-05-25T11:23:00.000-04:00

Oliver Wang - scholar, DJ, NPR commentator and senior partner in the law firm of Chang, Wang, Cadogan & Schloss - gets love from the Village Voice. Check out Soul Sides for more information on how to get the album, which is sure to be "transplendent", if I may quote a fictional Rolling Stone writer, and who's to say I shouldn't?

By the way, just as an aside, Oliver's Ph.D. dissertation (Legions of Boom: Mobile Disc Jockeys of the San Franciso Bay Area) is a truly exemplary instance of what ethnographic research can contribute to the study of hip-hop.

One of the enduring mysteries of hip-hop scholarship has long been the question of why turntablism is dominated by Filipino Americans from Northern California. What Oliver shows through meticulous, yet highly readable, scholarship is that we've been asking the wrong questions.

Scholars in general have approached the issue by looking for aesthetic and social factors that may have drawn individual Pinoys to hip-hop culture. But what Oliver demonstrates is that, in the seventies, the Bay Area Filipino community housed an entire pre-existing deejay culture that had little or nothing to do with hip-hop. So it wasn't like Filipinos were coming to hip-hop ex-nihilo - they were raised in a culture where older brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and friends had deejay equipment, training and an economically supportive social network. It is thus not the least bit surprising that someone growing up in such an environment in the early eighties would become a hip-hop deejay in the late eighties.

Basically, Oliver looked at hip-hop in the context of Filipino culture in America rather than looking at Filipino culture in the context of hip-hop, which is a major paradigm shift. And the reason it occurred to him (and, apparently, no one else) to do that was that he was actually talking to the people, rather than looking at them through binoculars, something that - needless to say - I heartily recommend.

1520 Sedgwick

2007-05-21T11:40:00.000-04:00

In the past, I’ve made a distinction between what I’ve called "hip hip-hop" and "square hip-hop", which I find to be a much more useful and accurate way of addressing the issues I’m concerned with than, say, "mainstream vs. underground", "major label vs. independent" or "authentic vs. inauthentic".

Basically, "hip hip-hop" would be hip-hop that, in any given situation, chooses the less obvious option, in order to be more creative, daring, stylish, crazy, witty, funny, rebellious, critical or some combination thereof. And being able to make that choice in the first place also necessarily requires that the individual in question actually understand what the available options are, which is the true essence of hipness. In other words, a hip person is someone that understands all the possibilities in a given situation, and "hip hip-hop" is hip-hop made by such a person.

"Square hip-hop", by contrast, is hip-hop made by people who do not understand their options, or who choose to ignore them. That is, they accept the conventional wisdom, don’t take real risks, don’t seek insight, don’t provide insight, and have no particular desire to change things because they don’t really understand or care that things could be changed.

I mention all that because the New York Times reported this morning on a really interesting example of "hip hip-hop". Apparently, residents of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx – the building where Kool Herc invented hip-hop - are trying to have it declared a historic landmark. But they’re not doing it just to do it, they’re doing it so that the building – and specifically its status as low-income housing – cannot be altered. Now I have no idea whether or not there’s any legal validity at all to that approach, but it’s very hip.

Here are the first few paragraphs...for some reason, it won't let me link to the whole thing, but if you cut and paste the title into google, you should have no problem...

Will Gentrification Spoil the Birthplace of Hip-Hop?

By DAVID GONZALEZ
Published: May 21, 2007

Hip-hop was born in the west Bronx. Not the South Bronx, not Harlem and most definitely not Queens. Just ask anybody at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue — an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx and hard along the Major Deegan.

The community room, where Kool Herc presided over turntables at parties in the 1970s, has been closed for renovations since last year. Across the city, owners of buildings like the one at 1520 Sedgwick are leaving subsidy programs.

"This is where it came from," said Clive Campbell, pointing to the building’s first-floor community room. "This is it. The culture started here and went around the world. But this is where it came from. Not anyplace else."

O.K., Mr. Campbell is not just anybody — he is the alpha D.J. of hip-hop. As D.J. Kool Herc, he presided over the turntables at parties in that community room in 1973 that spilled into nearby parks before turning into a global assault. Playing snippets of the choicest beats from James Brown, Jimmy Castor, Babe Ruth and anything else that piqued his considerable musical curiosity, he provided the soundtrack savored by loose-limbed b-boys (a term he takes credit for creating, too).

Mr. Campbell thinks the building should be declared a landmark in recognition of its role in American popular culture. Its residents agree, but for more practical reasons. They want to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places so that it might be protected from any change that would affect its character — in this case, a building for poor and working-class families.

Throughout the city, housing advocates said, buildings like 1520 Sedgwick are becoming harder to find as owners opt out of subsidy programs so they can eventually charge higher rents on the open market.

The Sedgwick building is part of the state’s Mitchell-Lama program, in which private landlords who receive tax breaks and subsidized mortgages agree to limit their return on equity and rent to people who meet modest income limits. The contracts allow owners to leave the program and prepay their mortgage loan after 20 years. Rent regulations can protect tenants from increases, but not always.

While Mitchell-Lama buildings in parts of Manhattan, like the Lower East Side, were among the first to leave the program, housing experts say that the trend has spread far beyond, from the Rockaways to the west Bronx.

Tom Waters, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society of New York, said there are about 40,000 Mitchell-Lama units in the city, down from 66,000 in 1990. The rate of buildings leaving the program has accelerated since 2001, he said, as landlords find they can do better on the open market.

What the.....?!

2007-05-06T12:26:00.000-04:00

“In the turbulent world of hip-hop, where the line between art and criminality is sometimes blurred, an arrest for drunken driving would normally attract little attention.”

- lead sentence from an article in Friday’s New York Times, “More Troubles for Busta Rhymes”, by Thomas J. Lueck

OK, this is getting ridiculous.

I’m not saying hip-hop is perfect. And there has always been an outlaw mentality at the heart of the culture. But the implication that drunk driving is or could be part of hip-hop is just bizarre and insulting. But even more troubling is the apparent fact that, in the Post-Imusian Era, such an assertion does not even need to be supported with any kind of evidence. It’s just common knowledge: hip-hop people are criminals.

And maybe you think I’m deluded for focusing on the beautiful, the mythological, the iconoclastic, the progressive and liberating and life-giving elements of hip-hop. But I've been in hip-hop for twenty years, and in that time I’ve seen plenty of all of the above. Besides, as Brooklyn’s original MC Walt Whitman once said, “hip-hop is large, it contains multitudes.” Or words to that effect.

So I would like, just as a point of comparison, to describe some experiences I have had that represent what hip-hop means to me. And just to challenge myself, I will only draw from things that happened the day the article came out: Friday, May 4, 2007.

1. Met B-boy KwikStep and B-Girl Rokafella (a couple who – I am told – used breaking as part of their actual wedding ceremony).

2. Considered digitizing my copy of the Ensemble Al-Salaam’s classic spiritual jazz record The Sojourner (Strata East, 1974), then discovered it’s available as a free download. The Sojourner was one of the first records I bought when I started digging in the late eighties, and it’s stood the test of time….but don’t take my word for it, download it yourself.

3. Saw a guy on the train wearing Adidas in a color I had never seen before.

4. Uploaded Clinton Sparks’ free Pharoahe Monch mixtape the Awakening to my iPod.

5. Finally figured out a good bass line for this song I’m working on.

6. Was passed by a police van with its P.A. system on and noticed that the driver was using his microphone to beat out a perfect rumba clave on the steering wheel.

6. Had another in a long series of inspiring conversations with Mark Anthony Neal. By the way, in addition to his many public accomplishments, Mark has quietly and consistently been more supportive of young hip-hop scholars than any other individual at his level, and it’s about time he gets credit for that. I personally owe a lot of my success to him, and I know I’m not the only one.

7. Had dinner after the panel at Camarada’s in Spanish Harlem with Jeff Chang, Elizabeth Mendez-Berry, Garnette Cadogan, KET ONE, Danny Hoch, Christina Veran and several other people whose last names I don’t know, including a really cool Cuban MC named Julio and a public interest lawyer also named Christina. We had to shout to be heard over Cuban-Yoruba rhythms being pounded out onstage, but that just made the conversation that much more intense.*

8. Leaving Camarada’s, ran into excellent hip-hop scholar Raquel Z. Rivera on the street, totally randomly.

9. Had conversation with Jeff about our panel at this year's Experience Music Project Pop Music Conference, two weeks ago, which - much like Friday’s dinner conversation – was a perfect mix of academic and social impulses.

A big part of what makes EMP distinctive is that it really emphasizes the connection between social and intellectual influences on our perspectives. In other (more overtly academic) contexts, that may be viewed as slightly tawdry, but it is really nothing to be ashamed of, in my opinion.

For academics, the first part of any intellectual journey (from the “Hey, this [song/artist/social phenomenon] is cool!” stage to the “Here is an argument about a song/artist/social phenomenon that I am prepared to defend against any possible critique” stage) is usually made behind closed doors. And there are legitimate reasons for this. But there is still something to be said for being more public about the backstage stuff, and that something was well on display at EMP in general and in our panel in particular. I guess I would characterize it as the raw, unselfconscious kind of interactions that happen between friends, which ultimately give birth to new ideas. (I have written about this here in the past and still feel very strongly about it, as you can see).

So for example, UCLA Musicologist Robert Fink gave an enthralling presentation analyzing James Brown’s vocal performance on various live versions of the song “Soul Power” from 1971, casting them as implicit responses to the vocal performances – and by extension, the ideology – of Black Power advocates several years earlier. I know it sounds like a stretch, but that was the beauty of it – I sat up in my chair thinking, “how’s he gonna pull this off?” And then he did. In other words, it was precisely his intellectually daring that made the presentation exciting. Well, that and the live JB footage from 1971.**

Furthermore, two of my favorite papers were by the notorious Dr. Wayne N. Wax and Charles Everett Hughes, both of whom reconstructed historical connections between putatively separate traditions (In Wayne’s case, hip-hop and reggae; in Charles’s case soul and country). Both of their arguments were based on musical analyses that were both meticulous and creative. It’s a rare combination, but it really shouldn’t be. For some reason, meticulous scholars often seem to lack the courage to be creative and creative scholars lack the will to be meticulous. But people who are not afraid to love what they do, like Wayne and Charles, often do both and we are all the richer for it.

P.S. Wayne describes my paper very generously and with photos here.

* Although I do consider myself the Dick Cavett of hip-hop, I wasn’t trying to name-drop here. Most of those people were friends of Jeff’s anyway. I’m just trying to shout them out as intelligent, progressive, thoughtful people who are doing interesting things in hip-hop.

**Incidentally, in the final version that Fink played, Mr. Brown repeated the phrase “beep beep” four times before going into the chorus of the song. I mention it because, later on in the weekend, Oliver Wang played an excerpt from Joe Cuba’s Bugalu classic “Bang Bang”, which also contains a passage in which he sings several times in succession “Beep beep….awwww, beep beep”. Now I seem to remember that at some point in the late sixties there was a chant that went something along the lines of “Bang bang! Beep beep! Ungawa! Black Power!” So I guess my question is the following: if anyone of that generation is reading this, was “beep beep” actually a common slang term at the time, and if so, what did it mean? And why does it seem to have disappeared so completely from our consciousness?

This will be good

2007-05-03T20:17:00.000-04:00

Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop

Friday, May 4, 2007, 6 – 8 pm

FREE!

Bronx Museum of the Arts

www.bxma.org

1040 Grand Concourse @ 165th St. Bronx NY 10456

718.681.6000

In commemoration of the release of Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, edited by Jeff Chang and published by Basic Civitas Books, the Bronx Museum invites Cristina Verán, Kwikstep & Rokafella, and Mark Anthony Neal for an informal conversation on the development of the hip-hop arts movement and its impact on mainstream culture. This dialogue will be moderated by Jeff Chang. A reception and book signing for Total Chaos will follow.

If you haven't gotten the book already and/or you get your information about hip-hop from Fox News, you should really check it out. It's a nuanced look at the profundity and diversity of hip-hop arts around the world. And I'm not just saying that because I have a piece in the book. Ok, yes I am.

Timeless Genius

2007-04-29T16:25:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of Steinski, charter member of the Soulimperialist "Pantheon of Wiseguys"*, more evidence of the unique genius of Charlie Parker:

Bird jams with Miles Davis…in 1969…fourteen years after his death.

*an honor which I just created and which, also, for the record, is open to wiseguys of all genders.

To the Break of Dawn

2007-04-18T11:45:00.000-04:00

This just in: Dave Chappelle turned up unannounced at the Laugh Factory on Saturday, went onstage a little after 10:30, and performed a six-hour set. No breaks.
(Credit: A Special Thing)

See, now that's hip-hop.

In all seriousness, I think it's clear at this point that his supposed breakdown has actually ushered in the most creative period of his career. And, as singular as that experience was in many respects, there are clearly aspects of it that resonate with the struggles that many people deal with every day. Conveniently, Chapelle seems to have a unique ability to make those connections, and do it in a way that really brings out the best in people (cf: Dave Chappelle's Block Party). Can't wait to see what's next!

Happy Belated B-Day

2007-04-17T12:34:00.000-04:00

According to Jeff, yesterday was the birthday of the father of Hip-Hop, DJ Kool Herc.

I've been spending a lot of time this week trying to figure out exactly why the hip-hop I've been experiencing for the last twenty years is so different from the hip-hop that TV commentators seem to be familiar with. I'm not trying to be glib, coy or self-righteous about this - the phenomenon they are discussing (misogynistic, degrading pop music) really does exist. But it's just not what I think of when I think of hip-hop.

Am I creating romantic boundaries to protect an idealized notion of urban reality? Yeah, probably. But my hip-hop is real, too! And if I'm a hip-hop idealist, then so are Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc, Ken Swift, Grandmaster Caz, Fabel, Alien Ness, Professor X and many, many others, all of whom I've talked to about this very issue.

To reject or even downplay the beautiful aspects of hip-hop is not being realistic, it is being defeatist, and it is an insult to our elders and their work. Does that mean that we shouldn't criticize hip-hop's shortcomings? Not at all. In fact, if we are to be true to our ideals, we are required to. That's what battling is all about. And just as it would be an insult to refuse to battle someone, it would be an insult to refuse to criticize them. That is hip-hop's strength!

I, for one, thank the pioneers -Kool Herc very much included- for teaching me that lesson. Happy Birthday and many, many more.

I'm back, baby!

2007-03-29T17:22:00.000-04:00

1. Karl Rove raps while Washington burns. Interestingly, he lists his hobbies as quail hunting, stamp collecting and "tearing the [heads] off of small animals". I’m not kidding – watch the video. Far be it from me to draw any conclusions, but what a strange thing to joke about. (Credit: Soulstrut)

2. The National Review reviews a revue to which I contributed, the funky fresh anthology, Total Chaos.

I love the way the reviewer takes these very abstract notions about the relationship between art and identity and attempts to determine whether they are 100% true or 100% false. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something about that kind of simplistic mindset that I just find hilarious, e.g. "Tate sees the artistic voice of a downtrodden people as being necessarily political in nature, but this may not be true." Well, let me know when you find out - I’m on the edge of my seat!*

Second best line: "Chang’s attempt to mold hip-hop into a postmodern intellectual movement is utterly ineffective." Sorry Jeff, better luck next time!

3. Finally, to cleanse your palate, here are some previously unreleased tracks from Sly Stone.

* You see what I'm saying, though, right? When confronted with the question of how, and to what extent, politics is implicit in the art of the oppressed - a fascinating and complex question that has been debated by the world's great intellectuals for thousands of years without resolution - he feels confident that he'll be able to nail it down once and for all in his little hip-hop review.

Three Amigos, plus one dude I met once

2007-01-18T13:29:00.000-05:00

JAY SMOOTH
I have a lot to say about the arrest of DJ Drama, but as usual, my pal Jay Smooth gets it exactly right in every detail so I don't have to. I will say this, though: I have been researching the hip-hop mixtape phenomenon for over ten years (one of these days, I'll actually publish the paper), and every single person I have talked to has told me that record companies actively support mixtapes either by giving music directly to deejays or by actually paying them. Why would the record industry be for and against something at the same time? In all seriousness, it's a good question to ponder if you're interested in the way the music business really works...you may be surprised at the answers you come up with.

Edit 1/19/07: OK, four amigos: Jeff Chang has more information on the Drama drama.

MR.SUPREME
Mr. Supreme taught me a lot of what I know about digging and hip-hop production, as you might have figured based on the fact that my book begins with an extended quote from him. This is a short interview/documentary about him, produced by Current TV, and it's as informative and hilarious as he is.

Q: Can you tell the people a little bit about why you’re wearing a lumberjack [coat] with the hat to match?
A: Yeah: that’s hip-hop, man!

So it is.

BOB GEORGE
Bob is the Founder and Director of the ARChive of Popular Music, where I was the head archivist from 2001 – 2002. If you have any kind of opinion about records (or want some insight into that year of my life), this short interview/documentary about him, produced by Good magazine, will be well worth your time. My only regret is that they didn't ask him about the secret tunnels under the building, through which random strangers would periodically emerge into our basement. But I've said too much.

STRETCH ARMSTRONG
I don’t know him, but I met him once (at the ARChive, actually). In case you don’t know, his radio show (hosted by hip-hop renaissance man & Jay Smooth impersonator Bobbito Garcia) was arguable the most significant in the history of hip-hop. Somewhere I still have a t-shirt celebrating the show, which ran from 1-5 am Thursday nights on WKCR, the Columbia University radio station. It features a graffiti-style cartoon of a guy laying in bed, half-asleep with his hand on the record button of a tape deck, with a clock in the background reading, like, 3 AM, an image which perfectly captured my attitude and demeanor whenever I was in town on a Thursday night (I didn't live in NY at that time). Anyway, he now has a blog, via which you can listen to many of those old shows. You should do that.