How I got into hip hop part 1

I wish i could return to the days of college. Nothing but 40's and Phillie titans stuffed full of choice weed, all day every day. Somehow I found time to study, eat at the dining center, and play a wicked game of Time Pilot 84 on occasion. I also managed to perfect my DJ skills on my bootleg pair of Lineartech 1700's (the fake Technic 1200's of the early 90's along with Gemini's direct drive turntables). I was fascinated with music since childhood; my father was a disco/funk/reggae DJ who threw parties in our basement every weekend for as long as I can remember. I used to watch him spin but was NEVER allowed to touch his record or the turntables. When he would take a piss break or slink off plastered to bed, I would sneak over and gaze at the covers like a meteorologist trying to study weather patterns. The images were burned into my mind.....James Brown momentarily caught exuding sweaty funk perfection on Soul Power. Issac Hayes coming alive as Black Moses with shades. The black rock stylings of the Isley Brothers (boas and leopard skin gear, what??) The Ohio Players albums with that golden brown woman covered in honey, sparking a sense of arousal in my young mind for the very first time. The Funkadelic albums with their Picasso meets graffiti covers. I used to to stare at them for hours on end and be transported to a world beyond my 3 bedroom row house in what was then "the ghetto". Those artists covers were so creative they made you want to buy the album to hear what was inside even if you never heard it before, that's powerful. And my father had speakers that seemed 8 feet tall to me as a kid but were really about 5 and a half feet. Huge bass woofers, crisp tweeters. The highs crackled and the bass could literally stop your heart for a second; the faint of heart would actually leave the basement when he cranked it up to about 8 on the 1 to 10 scale. So before I was even exposed to what the wider world had to offer musically, I was being treated to the sounds of Bobby Womack, The Stylistics, Blue Magic, MFSB, Marvin Gaye, and so on. He had thousands of LPs and 45's of all the soul funk and disco greats, way too many to list. The education I received in that basement would inspire my taste in music as I grew into adulthood. To this day I love my classics, what I like to call Block party music becuase in the Philly we would run from grill to grill sampling neighbors foods while a DJ played funk, disco, and early hip hop on a system whose sound carried for blocks. Then when I was old enough to listen to the radio independently, WDAS was my station. At that time the number one black station in Philadelphia, they provided a steady diet of R&B staples such as Rick James, Prince, Kashif, Luther, Teddy, and Al Green plus disco funk like Rock Skate Roll Bounce, Instant Funk's Got My Mind Made Up, Diana Ross' Upside Down etc. I loved all of it and I often remind my children (who grew up on only rap) that the reason hip hop producers of my generation sampled so much was because we were paying homage to the brilliant music we were raised on. In any case I wasn't a fan of early rap. I accompanied my dad to Gola Electronics in downtown Philly on a record run when I was six, I'll never forget it because I saw a 45 that said Rappers Delight and had him buy it for me even though I knew nothing about rap except Kurtis Blow. My dad played The Breaks and Christmas Rappin, and I remember the album cover with Kurtis rocking an actual gold chain, not a rope but the shit you see attached to old school lamps. The shit that was used to lock up bikes. I dug that but it was more like disco to my young I barely separated it from, say, Thelma Houston or Vaughn Mason. Anyway, I got home and played Rappers Delight on my little record player, I danced my little body around and enjoyed it. I also loved the Philly Anthem, the Micstro by RC La Rock, and The Double Dutch Bus was goofy enough to catch my attention (plus he talked about Philly shit like trans passes and used the z language that Snoop would later appropriate e.g. "It's O-Kiz-ay") But outside those joints it would be two years before I enjoyed another rap song. I missed the Love Rap, which i would enjoy when I got older. But all the other Sugarhill Records, T Ski Valley, Captain Rock, Superrhymes and that ilk i just didn't dig for some reason. It wasnt until the double punch of Planet Rock and The Message in 1982 that I became a hip hop fan. Then in 1983, everything really changed. RUN DMC'S Its Like That dropped. I went from being a hip hop fan to a hip hopper. I was 9 years old and I was suddenly DMC. My best friend was suddenly RUN. Kids and teens all over the city were catching the fever, RUN DMC brought the Bronx flavor down to a level everyone could identify with and it was contagious. They were like you coolest big brother or friend and you wanted a to be a part of that. From there, all the pieces suddenly fell into place. That year me and my buddies started breaking out the cardboard and risking life and limb back spinning, windmilling, freezing, and popping. The local elementary school summer 83-84 left the gym open so the neighborhood kids could spin and centipede on the smooth wood floor instead of on top of asphalt. I started tagging every wall, house, sign and bus surface I could find along with my friend CRAZE DOE. As RUN and them bled into Whodini and the Fat Boys, my friends and I went from observers to savvy aficionados in the space of a year or so. By the time Slick Rick, Just Ice and Schooly D arrived on the scene in 1985 (along with Marley Marl and Shan's The Bridge, the first sampled beat which my cousin in Bushwick BK played to death) we judged, reviewed, and argued songs like professional music critics in the making. I was listening and taping mix shows off the radio by this time, Power 99 came out in 84 and toppled WDAS' dominance by playing rap, the highlight of which was their mix show Lady B's Street Beat. WDAS responded with The Rap Digest mix show hosted by Mimi Brown. I used to tape them both with my mid sized gray boom box I got three 100 test scores to earn. My allowance of $10 a week began going toward trips to Sound Of Upper Darby, King James Records on 52nd and Girard, and Funk O Mart in Center City to buy records and tapes of my favorite rappers. I was becoming the DJ my dad was and didn't even have two turntables yet. But the best was yet to come. In 1986, another explosion took placed which made hip-hop even more appealing and increased its creative output to unforeseen levels.

From Harcore to Thug Intro excerpt pt 2

As US society increased its liberal bent, conservatives set about attempting to reclaim some cultural ground.


Richard Nixon’s arrival at the White House in 1968 signaled the first steps by conservatives to address the profound changes wrought during the previous decade. Nixon appealed to what he termed “the silent majority”, a term that was a thinly veiled slap at the protesters of the era. Nixon’s supporters were those who did not feel they benefited from the 60’s revolution. Businessmen who loathed the idea of being told how and where to allocate funds, husbands forced to deal with their wives newfound career mobility, white males who felt threatened by competition from newly liberated minority groups, and housewives who dreaded the idea of their children intermingling with “Negroes” were among the groups of people who emphatically installed Nixon in office in 1968 and again in 1972. Nixon did not disappoint; while his presidency did not derail America’s push toward a more open society, he championed policies which would eventually embolden those hoping to roll back certain cultural changes. While the 1970’s
are seen historically as a time of post hippie hedonism and the entrenchment of modern liberal concerns in general society (diversity education, gay rights, busing, affirmative action), the forerunners of today’s neoconservatives were actively chipping away at the foundation of these ideas. A key critical to understanding the neoconservative ideology, however, is acknowledging the central role of race in defining political positions. The foundation of neoconservative philosophy was based around certain white Americans antipathy towards blacks and lingering resentment of changes wrought during the Civil Rights Movement; as a result, although the topic may fall outside of a racial discussion, the legacy of racial paranoia and animosity is often inextricably linked with what is supposedly objective thought or debate.

Nixon and his ideological cohorts first attempted to stop the Voting Rights Act of 1965 from being renewed in 1970, basically insinuating that black people did not deserve the right to have their vote protected. In 1974, conservatives successfully lobbied the Supreme Court to restrict busing practices meant to remedy the appalling education received by many urban black students by transporting them to predominantly white suburban schools. In 1978, the famous Bakke case registered the first in a long line of defeats for affirmative action policies implemented to address the lack employment and educational opportunities for blacks. In fact, the perception that America was “out of control” and needed to regain its pre 1960’s swagger (read: McCarthyism, segregation, laws against sodomy, fellatio, and interracial relationships, you know, the “good old days”) led directly to nice guy Jimmy Carter’s downfall in 1980. You see, while Nixon got the ball rolling as far as pushing back against civil rights, he was unable to be as successful as his constituency would have liked. Upon his infamous resignation from office in 1974, conservatism was given a black eye nationally but never in the eyes of its core supporters. If anything, Nixon’s dramatic and embarrassing fall made them more determined to eventually find someone who could effectively attack, contain, and if possible, erase most of the civil rights gains and other liberal programs. And, as luck would have it, there was a man in California who was more than up to the challenge.
Ronald Reagan would preside over a period of unprecedented drug use, violence, and accelerating economic disparity between the rich and poor with a penchant for gutting social programs (such as Medicare, Food Stamps, unemployment benefits, and public school music and art classes), disdain for the concerns of minority communities (besides relentlessly advancing a philosophy of benign neglect toward the poor and minorities throughout his presidential term, he placed an arch conservative ideologue as the chair of the EEOC, which is similar to allowing a Klansman to shape federal policy on whether segregation is right or wrong), and a tacit approval of a Machiavellian greed on the part of businessmen which defined the decade (ala the classic movie Wall Street). The “Gipper” was also the most successful (until George W Bush) at galvanizing the religious right into a cultural force strong enough to counterbalance, at least in the press and broad cultural realms, what conservatives often characterized as the perceived “supremacy” of liberal ideology. Before this movement, to support wholesale censorship of music and art was considered by many (particularly those under 35 back then) as a hopelessly outdated hallmark of the formerly morally repressive America lampooned daily on TV shows, movies, magazines, and in popular music. Once the “Moral Majority”, led by the formidable Rev. Jerry Falwell, movement gained momentum, however, their political strength was great enough to demand restrictions on the availability of media they deemed “unclean” or felt possessed an “evil message”. Although rock was an initial target, rap music’s rise in popularity (and the racial makeup of its performers and audience) made it a choice target for individuals seeking to make a statement about society becoming unraveled; young black men, dressed in street attire, making sexual gestures and speaking in menacing street tones (read: Black English) about whatever they wanted to speak on, vulgarity be damned, must have prompted many a religious father a reason to monitor his daughter’s listening habits more closely. Especially when it became evident that no amount of denigration, hand wringing, or fire and brimstone sermonizing could stop this music from selling and making stars out of inner city poets. While the lingering racism and backlash from the Civil Rights era which fueled neo-conservatism was effective at rolling back some of the political gains of the 1960’s (and made it fashionable in American popular discourse to 1) blame Blacks for racism and 2) deny the initial need for the Civil Rights Movement and its subsequent contributions), among youth there was no stopping the momentum of rap music’s takeover, in particular after it became exposed to a wider audience via RUN-DMC’s seminal rock/rap song “Walk This Way” and the arrival of groundbreaking White rap group The Beastie Boys. Ironically, the conditions created by Reagan’s benign neglect of poor and minority communities (the rise of crack and automatic weapons use and their related death and destruction, lax police response due to under funding) eventually spurred many rappers to write their stories in a more explicit fashion in response to the severity of the times, exactly the opposite of what the Moral Majority minded types wanted to hear from musicians. By the mid to late 1980s, some of the children of those who were living in the Bible Belt, wealthy and “inner ring” suburbs, segregated parts of cities and towns, and rural areas throughout America were craving something outside of what they knew. Whether they just trying to piss off their parents, bored with rock or simply seduced by the driving beats and rhythmic lyricism, the reaction of White youth was not exactly what their parents were anticipating. Having made gains in the broad cultural war (examples include Parental Advisory Stickers, implementation of the “No Rap Workday” at urban radio stations, the “Just Say No” campaign, Blacks being seen as responsible for racism, and a resurgence of the noxious “America Right Or Wrong” philosophy within political discourse), they were unaware they were losing the battle for their children. Rap’s entrenchment as a leading cultural influence in America was initiated (and is generally maintained) by the Black community but was accelerated and solidified by the massive infusion of young White fans during the mid to late 80s and throughout the 90s. The trend continues to the present day, which is why rap has practically overtaken rock as American’s youth music of choice, which was impossible to imagine 20 years ago. The increased popularity of rap among all youth demographics, while unable to curb prejudice, has led to more of a cultural hegemony which has spawned greater levels of tolerance regarding expression through music. It has also increased tolerance toward Black street culture and individuals who present themselves in such a manner; the concept is now ubiquitous within the American mainstream, with larger than life performers such as Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent embraced as national icons based on their unabashedly “gangsta” personas. Certain spiritual proselytizers continue to make unfavorable comments in the media about the moral deterioration these kinds of artists represent, but the fact many of their children have grown to love rap tends to neutralize the effectiveness of that argument on those they wish would heed it the most.

So, to the relief of many rap fans (myself included), it appears that at this point free speech is safe for now, even when it emanates from the lips of gangsta rappers. There will always be challenges, however, which is why rap would do well to move beyond its current stagnation and recycling of themes in order to best avoid calls for its dissolution. A truly creative art form cannot be denied its place in the pantheon of constitutionally protected art, but if an art form is perceived as lacking substance, it makes become an easy target for those wishing to see it disappear (even though its not right). The question this book will attempt to answer is: how did rap and Black underclass culture go from being “street” and “hardcore” to being “hood”, “gangsta”, and “thugged out”? What do these terms represent? I hope you find the journey of discovery as fun and enlightening as I did, peace to everyone reading this and thanks for taking the time out to support hip-hop in general.

The true origin of the transformer

I was speaking to my good friend Nate G today, and he broke down for me the real origin of transforming. He was the original rap partner for DJ Spinbad, who both Cash Money and Jazzy Jeff credit with introducing the transformer scratch. But what hasn't been told is how it happened. Apparently, Jeff and Cash Money used to work as a team in the early 80's called The Twins Of Spin. With their combined skills, they unbeatable in the various battles they took place in around Philadelphia. They basically had the city on lock. Until they ran into Spinbad. Spinbad unleashed the transformer in his set, stretching the famous break "It's Time" into "t--i--i--i--m--e", then brought it back the same way and the crowd lost it, awarding Spinbad the battle victory. The show was videotaped, and Jeff and Cash studied the videotape to master the scratch (can you imagine, the two best DJ's of that time being forced to go back to the lab and do research on another DJ?). Jeff disbanded the Twins of Spin when he signed to Word Up Records with Will Smith, forcing Cash Money to fend for himself. Fortunately for him, it turned out pretty well; he has earned international fame as a pioneering turntablist. Spinbad, however, is too often relegated to a footnote, and its an injustice. Jeff and Cash did not perfect the scratch, they borrowed it! They give credit, but don't tell the whole story. Spinbad should certainly be mentioned in the same breath as other DJ pioneers, alongside Jeff and Cash Money in my opinion.

A Commentary On Gangsta Rap and Society Pt 1

Gangsta rap. The term itself often provokes a less than favorable response from America’s traditional guardians of the mainstream. Since its inception, media, politicians, and community activists have at various points blamed virtually every societal ill on the rise of the genre, as if those problems were nonexistent in the US prior to the mid 1980’s. Gangsta rap exists at all, in fact, as a result of the aftereffects of heartless Reaganomics era cuts to education and the arts, the high unemployment rate in Black communities (still a fact of life for many of those communities), and the lack of an adequate outlet (outside of comedy) for Blacks to air their societal views in terms they were comfortable with. Remember, Black Americans were forced to express themselves in a conciliatory manner when addressing White Americans or face persecution or death until the 1960’s. In our formerly segregated society, the limited number of Blacks who were successful despite the pervasive violent racism of the era almost always spoke deferentially in the presence of Whites. Black churches, the main cultural template during slavery and still a major force in the Black community, reinforced the notion of Blacks speaking in docile tones and non threatening phrases by equating servility with “Christian virtue”. Keep in mind, in addition to those factors, American society in general was obviously more conservative in its definition of what was “acceptable”; persons of any stripe who enflamed certain passions (e.g. Socialists, Liberals, Alcohol Consumers, “Race Mixers”, and people who alluded to sex or cursing in print, speech, or on film, etc.) were guaranteed at least ridicule and at worst incarceration or vigilante violence.But, as with many other aspects of American life, response was swifter and endlessly more cruel for the minority offender, whose very post slavery existence was an affront to the South and certain interests in the North. In spite of the prevailing conditions, Black vernacular, which had at least since the 19th century has had the ribald elements familiar to any Black comedy listener, was a constant cultural influence but was construed as ignorant speech by Whites and elite Blacks. So not only were docility and servility emphasized as the only acceptable form of speech for Blacks, any element in the speech which alluded to their Southern origin (i.e. Africanisms such as ain’t) would lead to humiliation and as thus was also discouraged by the Black community’s “talented tenth”.In the wake of the 1960’s, however, finally began to loosen its cultural belt. Comedy, an American cultural staple, provided the platform upon which America first lurched towards finally fulfilling its free speech promises. Comedians such as Lenny Bruce (with his scatological brilliance) and Dick Gregory (one of the first political comedic geniuses and a pioneer of “non minstrel” Black entertainment) made their mark.JFK’s election seemed to signal a new day of bright possibilities; perhaps the old repressive ways could at last be set aside.The birth control pill allowed women the freedom to openly enjoy sex and their sexuality for the first time.Television was being dominated by real life scenes of carnage from Vietnam, images which likely would not have seen the light of day 10 years prior. Black Americans threw off the yoke of bigotry via protest, forcing the federal government to complete the job by legislating their freedom for the second time since slavery ended. Instead of saying “Yes sir”, Blacks were openly shouting“I’m Black and I’m proud”, a major achievement. The loosening of standards also led to Black vernacular’s elevation from derisive to “cool” speech in the mainstream. Movies like Shaft, Superfly, and The Mack were famous examples of Black vernacular’s “new” commercial viability. Whites, who aped Amos and Andy or minstrels in an earlier age to mock Blacks, were more likely to be listening to a Richard Pryor records and respecting the experience. The larger culture’s more liberal attitude was reflected in movies and television via directors like Norman Lear, whose shows tackled formerly taboo issues and Martin Scorsese, whose brutal Godfather arguably ushered in the modern action drama.Indeed, the open attitude of the 60’s carried into the 70’s and beyond as US society was irrevocably changed. But of course, such a societal sea change could not occur without immense resistance and an eventual backlash. Cultural conservatives, political and otherwise, were distressed at what they viewed as “their (read: repressive) America” being “torn asunder” by “bleeding heart liberals”. (to be continued)