Ill-literature with Skillz to Blaze

We All Have A Little Uncle Ruckus In Us

2010-11-27T14:32:00.007-05:00

My favorite TV show nowadays is The Boondocks. I don't know if there has ever been anything like it before. Me personally, I'm somewhere between the Militant Huey and the wise ass Riley. But to be honest, there are times when I get so mad at our folks that a lil Uncle Ruckus comes out.

Who's Uncle Ruckus you ask?

Uncle Ruckus, is the biggest Uncle Tom ever imagined in the history of Black America. I mean, name two Uncle Tom's, ok, Ward Connerly and Michael Steele. Ok, those two have nuttin on Uncle Ruckus. On the episode below, one of his neighbors says something to the effect of, "Alex Haley isn't the only one who knows his roots."

"Huh? Who's Alex Haley?"
"You know, he made ROOTS."
"Roots? What's that some kind of gardening show?"

Okay, I could never get to that extreme. But here me out.

Recently in Atlanta a young man was killed @ a party, he got stomped to death for no reason at all. It's times like that when I wholeheartedly support the death penalty. I don't care about the racial issues surrounding the death penalty, if your black, you are not my brother if you do some bullshit like that.

Anyway, this episode of the Boondocks deals with the criticisms aimed at BET in the last 10 years with Uncle Ruckus thrown in for good measure. This episode was banned and it is my first time seeing it.

I doubt even Elijah Muhammad imagined a black man with more self hatred than Uncle Ruckus, from his constant kudos to the white man for bringing us here from Africa and giving us jobs on his plantations where we were gainfully employed and happy to him telling a white man, "May I jus say mista white man suh, that yo dookie smells like sparkling water with a twist of lime." I don't care what we do, i could never hate us that much, but this shit sure is funny. Lord where does Aaron McGruder get this shit from?

Life Changing Moments

2010-10-29T23:03:00.002-04:00

I remember the day I graduated from high school, three weeks behind the rest of my class. You wanna talk about embarrassing, it was the first and only time, I had ever been to summer school. I should've dropped out in the 12th grade, cause basically, I rarely ever went.

All I had to do was show up and do four hours of work, which basically came out to something like six or eight pages of worksheets, it might have been less. I think I went to that class twice, I was done in two days. I turned in my work, the instructor stood up, shook my hand, and handed me my diploma. I don't think I ever looked at that diploma again.

Anyway, I've been going through a lot of changes, sorry I haven't updated this site siiiiiiiiiinnnnce, Bush was president. Now that I'm learning how to use my mytouch slide, I can do remote updates.

Keep it pimpin baby,

Mark Skillz

Miss Me Yet?

2010-03-25T23:30:00.002-04:00

2008-06-19T23:16:00.001-04:00

It was a cold December evening in 1979 when my next door neighbor Adrienne said, “Mark, you gotta hear this new record called Spoonin’ Rap.” In fact everyone in my building was blasting the shit out of it. Up and down Kissena Blvd and Colden Ave everybody with a box was playing the latest jams – but this one was different.

The white-sleeved yellow label said SOUND OF NEW YORK USA. It was the first rap record to have song title listings “I Don’t Drink, Smoke or Gamble Neither”, “I’m the Cold Crushing Lover” and “I Was Spanking and Freaking”. The record itself was called “Spoonin’ Rap” by a guy who called himself Spoonie Gee.

Spoonie was different from every other MC at that time. Whereas most guys had big golden voices, this guy rhymed in a laid back conversational tone. Spoonie was cool.

“I’m the one and plenty lover who gives the good sensations,
I’m the good and plenty kid
With all the qualifications.
Now if the girl is ugly,
And she looks like a dog,
I start to running like a cow,
And leaping like a frog.
No, I’m not conceited baby please don’t take me for a toy,
Just remember me as Spoonie Gee the baddest lover boy.
The rhyme sayin’, girl playing, drink a lot of juice,
And what God gave me baby,
I’m gonna put it to use…”

Nobody rhymed like that back then. Spoonie was a mack.

Christmas morning 1979 guess what was under the tree? ‘Spoonin Rap’. It was the first record I ever got. I sat in the living room with my eyes closed listening to every sound of the record, the reverb, the slick bass line, the whistles, all of it mesmerized me. For eight years Spoonie sporadically released one classic 12 inch after the other, and then nothing. Spoonie’s last stand as a recording artist was a Marley Marl produced cut called “The Godfather”…

“Let’s get this straight there’s no contest,
So now you people know and don’t have to guess,
I’m not the king of rap,
Not lord, nor prince,
I was a young kid rappin’
And I been rocking ever since,
I was just a young buck
I didn’t care what
MC’s were in my they never uttered a what…
Cause I’m the Godfather.”

It was then that he got the most publicity of his whole entire career. Spoonie appeared in Right On! Magazine, Black Beat and got a write up in Spin magazine as well. But there was never anything in depth about the man. As hot as he was at the time there were no videos and he only played spot dates here and there. After “The Godfather”, “Mighty Mike” and “You Ain’t Just A Fool” Spoonie disappeared.

Word on the street was that he was a prisoner of the crack monster. One guy told me he saw him sleeping on a park bench and there were other very sad stories out there about him. Fast forward to 2005. My man Jayquan contacted Spoonie and did the first real in depth interview with the man. Jay and Troy both told me how he was a real quiet dude. A couple of years later Allhiphop dot com held an online chat session with him, one of their writers got in touch with him and was able to interview him. His words would prove to be ominous to me: “Gabriel Jackson is a man of few words…”

Last year DJ Woody Wood did the first live radio interview I had heard Spoonie do in years. He was clearly different from what Jay and Troy had told me about. He laughed; he was more conversational than I was told he would be.

Then it was my turn.

In a sense I have been waiting since 1979 to interview him. After much back and forth with Tuff City Records I was able to get a phone interview with him. He was cordial and polite, but not exactly the most talkative person I have ever come across. Getting answers from him was pretty hard. The only time he really came to life and wanted to really volunteer answers was when I asked him about his previous activities with skeezers…

I was warned (not sternly but hints were dropped) that he doesn’t like to discuss his personal life. I wasn’t going to push him. The only thing he would openly discuss was his love of women. Beyond that, it was pretty tough to get him to open up. There was much he didn’t remember, but to his credit, he tried; in all honesty and in his defense I have to say, it is hard to recall things from twenty-five years ago – I know I have trouble doing so. And also in his defense, I think I woke him up from his afternoon snooze or something, because when I called him he sounded like he had fallen asleep and was awakened by the ring of the phone.

Me: Hello, Spoonie?
Him: (Yawn) Yeah man, what’s up?
Me: Hey, hope I didn’t disturb you, man
Him: (Yawn again) Nah, nah it’s cool…

It was three-way phone call with plenty of office noise in the background, half the time we couldn’t hear each other. There were plenty of times where Spoonie said, “Brother, your gonna have to speak up.”

I got what I needed from him though. In all of the interviews he has done, no one, not one person has ever asked a single question about his 1985 recording ‘Street Girl’. Everyone asks him about ‘Love Rap’, ‘The Godfather’, and ‘Spoonin’ Rap’. I thank God they didn’t because I wrote a classic for Wax Poetics that came out this week, my editor re-titled my story Streets Disciple and I ain’t mad at him for it either. Brian usually comes with some good titles, my favorite one is “Interstellar Transmission: The Birth of Planet Rock and it’s Electro Repercussions”.

But all in all I got some good information from him. My buddy freelance writer extraordinaire and master wordsmith Michael Gonzales suggested that I should re-interview him, but do it in person. If I had the loot I sure would’ve. Through Michael I got in touch with Barry Michael Cooper. Cooper is the godfather of hip-hop journalism. Period. Point blank. No questions will be accepted. He is the guy that wrote the groundbreaking classics New Jack City, Above the Rim and Sugar Hill. Currently he’s been hard at work producing movies for the web Blood On the Walls and Chief Rocker are two of his latest classics. Tuff City founder and CEO Aaron Fuchs told me how it was through Cooper that he had come into contact with Spoonie. At the time, Cooper was into music and had started making records; one of the people he hooked up with was Spoonie. Cooper was a huge help to me in this article because he painted a picture of Harlem for me and of his impressions of Spoonie.

Bum rush the door of your local record store and cop this joint here, Wax Poetics is also available at Barnes and Noble and Border books.

Date with the Rain

2008-03-22T22:55:00.003-04:00

I’ve got a date with the rain,
Gotta go walking in the rain,
The clouds that gather in the skies
Gather in my eyes every time it rains
On such a day you’ll let me go
And as the raindrops begin to flow
I’ll go walking in the rain.
Hiding my tears in the rain.
I’ll grab my coat and leather shoes,
Walk out the door with a bag full of blues
No one notices at all the way my teardrops fall
Walking in the rain…

Eddie Kendrick’s ‘Date with the Rain’

Some of my favorite songs are by guys who go for long walks in the rain hoping that the raindrops will disguise their tears.

Oran ‘Juice’ Jones was gonna ‘do a Rambo and whip out the jammy and flat blast’ his girl and the dude he caught her cheating with while walking in ‘The Rain’.

Eddie Kendricks rocked the house with his dance floor phenom ‘Date with the Rain’ and while I’m at it, I can’t forget that The Dramatics had a huge hit in the early 70’s with ‘In the Rain’. Now I’m going to tell you the reason why all three of those songs have meaning to me. Life does imitate art.

The first time I really heard ‘In the Rain’ by the Dramatics, I was seventeen years old. Mind you, I had heard it in the 70’s when I was a little boy, but I couldn’t feel it when I was a little kid, you know what I’m sayin’? I had to fall in love to really hear it, know what I mean?

In the mid to late 80’s, Bay Area radio was at its best. I say that because back then, if you wanted to hear some hip-hop, you had to wait for the weekends which was when college and community stations would play all of the latest hip-hop records. Sunday's were a big deal back then because KALX, KPOO, KZSU and KPFA were gonna hit you upside the head with all of the latest jams. I don’t care where you lived back then (except for LA and New York) commercial radio was not playing hip-hop like that.

Sundays on KALX featured a brother named Natty Prep (God Bless him) who had a show called 360 degrees or something like that. He used to open his show with the phrase: Three hundred and sixty degrees of muuuusic…Three hundred and sixxxttttyyy degreeeees of mussssicccc. Anyway, every once in a while the brother would take you back in time and play some eight-track-flashback-type ish, nah I mean? One of the records he broke out on one of these Sunday mornings was ‘In the Rain’ by the Dramatics. I heard that record, man, it blew my mind. The song opens with a thunderstorm and then transitions into a lone guitar lick which echoes off into the distance as its being plucked. And then the first verse starts…

I wanna go outside in the rain, It may sound crazy, But I wanna go outside (go outside) in the rain Now I, I think I'm gonna cry, And I, I don't want you to see me cry, I wanna go outside in the rain, It may sound crazy, But I wanna go outside in the rain

A little background information would be useful here: At this time I was getting over my first real heartbreak.

I had been dumped by my first real girlfriend, her name was Stephanie she was my first real love. Yeah ok, I had other girlfriends before her, but she was the first real chick like that, nah I mean?

I’ll never forget the first time I saw her. I was working at Mickey D’s at the time, I can’t remember why I was there on my off day, but as I was leaving when I looked in the lobby I saw a bright pair of pony eyes looking dead at me.We couldn’t stop looking at each other. It was almost as if time stood still for that moment and we were the only ones in the room. She was a caramel colored cutie with a mushroom style hair doo with a red ribbon that matched her shirt. Her high cheek bones were accentuated by her bright pony eyes, but the icing on the cake was the fact that she was a short skinny chick with 36 D’s!

For four months she and I were inseparable. We went everywhere together. And ya boy hit that in some of the craziest places. But I don’t tell those kinds of stories in such a public setting. Needless to say, I really got into the habit of cutting school once she and I got together.

I remember her mother invited me over for Thanksgiving, it was the first time I went over to a girl’s house for a holiday. I remember walking up Hillside Avenue in East Oakland on the way to her house. Guys driving Cougars, Mustangs and Caprice Classics raced up and down the Ave blasting Toddy Tee’s ‘Batterram’ and RUN-DMC’s ‘King of Rock’.

I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone like her mother again. She was the rudest, meanest, nastiest mouthed woman, I have ever met. For some reason she liked me. Well somewhat. She referred to me as ‘Church Mark’. I don’t know where she got that impression from – at that time, I had only been to church ten times in my life maybe. Maybe ten times in my life. I didn’t tell her that I didn’t go to church, she just assumed that I did. I guess it’s something about my baby face and laid back demeanor. I’ve been told by many women over the years that my looks are deceiving, I’ve heard the phrase wolf in sheep’s clothing one too many times in my life. Ain’t my fault. Anyway, her mother would vacillate between calling me ‘Church Mark’ to nigga. As I walked in the door and greeted her she introduced me as ‘Church Mark’ to the family. Five minutes later when I said I don’t eat chitlin’s she said, “Fuck you nigga, eat my pussy… nigga, my chitlins are good!”

For real she did.

I was embarrassed and so was Stephanie. But the rest of the family wasn’t. They just went on passing a joint between each other.

Later that night Stephanie and I sat and talked about our future together and how much we wanted to be with each other. I was so happy that night I swear ain’t nuttin’ like new love! We bought matching Addidas jackets and spent every second of every weekend together.

As I left her house to catch the 40B I heard Eddie Kendrick’s ‘Date with the Rain’ playing from an open window as I walking up the street. I didn’t pay that damn song any mind, it didn’t have anything to do with me. I was in love.

Anyway, a few months later she dissed ya boy. It was the birth of the crack era. Jimmy Crackcorn was on and poppin’. Dudes were making money off of that white rock on the block everywhere you went. If you were getting your money like that back then, you could’ve had any girl you wanted. But ya man Skillz couldn’t do that. Nope, it was something about my Black Nationalist upbringing that wouldn’t allow me to push that crap.

So…if you ain’t have cash for clothes, cars and jewels you had a hard time keeping a girl. And that’s how I lost her.

And then along came Angelic.

It was one hot summer day when me and my two best friends in life: Mark and Rodney, were driving down the street, when we saw a chick in some pink stretch pants. The ass was off the hook. I think we spotted her from a block away.

My boy Rodney was the one that rolled up on her that day. But nothing ever came of it.

And then a couple of months later school started back. And guess who was in my class?
From the first time I met her the little voice in my head said Don’t trust her. But I liked her even though I knew I shouldn’t. We had typing class together. She sat directly in front of me. I’ll never forget that first day of class, I waited for her to turn around, but she didn’t. When class ended she got in the wind. Quick.

The next day in class I tapped her on the shoulder, and asked her if I met her over the summer? She didn’t really even look at me when she responded “Yeah,” and then turned around and went back to work. A week went by and she hadn’t been in school, I figured she dropped out or something. But then she re-appeared.

Angelic was a short Mexican chick with a light brown Jheri Curl, and the prettiest pair of light brown eyes I have ever seen. She was a quiet girl who popped her Spearmint gum incessantly. For a whole week, she did her best to avoid me. But whenever we saw each other we couldn’t take our eyes off of each other. I knew she dug me because not only could she not stop looking at me but she would blush. One day I cornered her on the lunch line, she didn’t have any choice but to talk to me. I walked her home that day. I heard something deep inside of me say, “Mark, this is your girl.”

I had to have her and she knew it. We were inseparable. We shared a locker together. We went to school together. All of that kind of stuff. One day on the way home on BART she said to me “Mark, I consider us engaged.” I laughed. She didn’t find it funny. She told her mother about me. I told her we’d see after we got out of school.

It was one thing about her though: her jealousy quickly became an issue. I couldn’t look at another broad, I couldn’t talk to another broad and all kinds of other shit. I wasn’t going for that. Hell, I was seventeen years old, it wasn’t happening. That’s when the arguments started.

At this time a song came out called ‘The Rain’ by an obscure Harlem singer who called himself Oran ‘Juice’ Jones. That dude was for real. He talked like a hustler. “I saw you and him walking in the rain. You were holding hands and I’ll never be the same.”

I dug that song.

One day I was late for school. As I was sitting on the train I noticed this guy who was wearing a white and red sweatsuit and a Kangol hat with a big silver chain. I didn’t think anything of him I just seen him.

I got to school at damn near eleven o’clock. As I left my last class before lunch I found Angelic. We usually ate lunch together. As we were sitting there talking I noticed the guy from the train earlier that morning walking through the court yard. I turned to her and said without thinking about it: “There goes your man right there.”

I have often thought back on that moment many times over the last twenty-one years. I don’t know why I said that, and I don’t know why I saw that guy that morning on the train. The only thing I am sure of is this: The Creator has a master plan.

As soon as I said those words, Angelic turned and looked and said, ‘Oh shit, there goes Michael!” She grabbed me by the hand and said, “We gotta go!” It was all surreal. "What the fuck is going on? You know him?" I asked her. "Yeah," she said in a hurried panic, 'he thinks I go with him." What the fuck? "Mark, we have to go," she said, 'you don't know him and what he'll do." I walked her to the bus stop, as the bus was coming, here he came running up the hill. He got there just as the bus got there. He said, “Angelic, where you been? I been looking for you!” She told him that she didn’t want to be with him and that she was with me.

Dude was upset – understandably. I later found out that she had told him to bring her some money for lunch. She didn’t think he would really do it. But surprise.

Heartbroken I wanted nothing to do with her. I remembered that little voice in my head saying ‘Don’t trust her’. Foolish me.

Somehow or another the situation was resolved, and she and I got back together a couple of weeks later. But I just couldn’t trust her. I loved her but I couldn’t trust her. I tried to break up with her several times, but she didn’t want to let me go. I remember one night as I walking her to BART I told her, ‘Yo, we can’t be together anymore.”

Her eyes mirrored in the phosphorent glow of the moonlight as tears slowly dripped down her face. She sat on a bench staring at me quietly with tears falling out of her eyes like a leaky faucet. She pleaded with me to stay with her. My soft heart wouldn’t allow me to let her go. This went on several more times until Christmas break. I decided to stay with her.

Christmas time rolled around. She was suspiciously quiet. I called her and asked her if everything was all right. She said she was cool. But she wasn’t calling me like she had been. One day at the mall, when my godfather was in town, I saw her with her friends. She told me that she was going to be someplace entirely different. Even my godfather could tell that something wasn’t right. He must’ve seen my jaw get tight as I approached her. He pulled me away from her. He told me to let her go. I didn’t want to.

School started back, first period, this big mouthed clown asked me, “Hey, where’s your girl?”

“I dunno.”
“Who was that she was with during Christmas?”
“I dunno.”
“Oh”, big mouth said with a shit eating grin.

That’s when I knew something was really wrong.

For whatever reason Angelic stopped coming to school. She was staying with her friend, who’s house I would call her at. One day she showed up at school.

“Yo I need to talk to you.” I said to her.
“About what?” She asked.
“Come on let’s talk.” I said as we walked to a secluded spot.

“So what do you want to talk to me about?” She asked when we got to our destination.
“Where you been?”
“No where.”
“Come on man, I don’t see you anymore, I don’t talk to you anymore… I think this is over.”
“It don’t have to be over.”
“Nah, it is.”
After some back and forth she agreed, but for whatever reason, she felt like we shouldn’t break all the way up. I was fed up with her and was like, “Nah, this is it.” And I pushed her, not hard, but I pushed her away from me. I didn’t want to keep going back and forth. She got upset with me about that. I apologized for pushing her.

For whatever reason I started hearing from her more after we broke up than when we were together. I thought that there was a chance that we could get back together. One day I called her from school at her friends house, she was really quiet on the phone. Much more quieter than normal. All of a sudden she said, “I can’t talk to you anymore.” Shocked, I asked her why not. She couldn’t tell me why. And then I heard: “Give me that goddamn phone…I told you I was going to break up with him…fuck that shit you said that last time…”

“Who’s this? Is this Mark? Stay away from her I’m tired of this shit she’s with me nigga…”

Angelic grabbed the phone crying and said, “I’m with Michael now I can’t talk to you anymore.” And hung up the phone. I was in disbelief. Later that night she called me and said that she wanted to work things out with me.

The next day a fierce storm drenched the city, the raindrops were hitting the ground like a zillion dancing diamond feet. As the storm subsided I went out with my friend Mark, I told him I just needed to clear my head because of all the drama that was happening with Angelic. I’ll never forget Mark asking me, “Man, you really love her, huh?” “Yeah I guess I do.” I said.

As we were driving down the street, Mark said, “Who are them niggas…” And in another surreal moment I turned my head and looked…It was Angelic and her new boyfriend holding hands walking in the rain. Just like the song.

Mark, looked at me and I looked at him, I was helpless, powerless almost as if all of my strength had been zapped from me. To this day, Mark will tell you, he had never seen me come that close to crying before. I wanted to. I just couldn’t though. Mark dropped me off at home. I sat silently outside on a park bench across the street from my building and let the raindrops caress my face.

The next day who should call me but Angelic’s friend, I don’t know what she was up to, I guess she was feeling me out while Angelic was running her game. I told her to forget it, I didn’t want to talk to her, I saw her with him.

A few months later on a bright sunny day Mark called me up and in a quiet voice asked me, “Man, when’s the last time you spoke with Angelic?”

“I dunno, it’s been a couple of weeks or something like that.”

“Man, I don’t know how to tell you this but…she’s pregnant.” This was the ultimate heartbreak. I had been feeling like at some point she and I were going to find our way back to each other. Like the day would come when we would find that vibe together like we originally had when we first got together. But that was it. It wasn't gonna happen.

She called me an hour after Mark did, “Have you spoken to Mark?”
“Yeah…”
“What did he tell you?”
“Is it true? That’s all I wanna know.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. Oh boy. I didn’t want you to find out this way…”
I hung up on her.

Ironically, that bright sunny day slowly dissolved in the ether as grey clouds overtook the sky and the force of a rolling thunder bolt shook the city. I grabbed my Addidas jacket and headed outside… I had a date to keep with lady rain.

Mark Skillz is losing it

2007-09-03T20:33:00.000-04:00

Maybe it’s the start of a nervous breakdown or something, I dunno. I used to be a cat who was always in control of himself. But lately I don’t know… Before the guys in white jackets come and take me away maybe I should tell you what’s going on.

I can’t put my finger on it I’m not sure when it started. But lately whenever I hear the music of my youth I get misty eyed and lose control. I don’t know why it keeps happening to me. I’ve noticed slow subtle changes around me. The hair on my chin ain’t black anymore it’s salt and pepper. I’m getting heavier and my muscles stay sore longer than they used to.

I know, I know I’m getting older, yeah, but I think the reality of it is catching up with me. And that sucks.

I can't rhyme along to RUN-DMC records without breaking down from remembering the Fresh Fest tours, Def Jam Tours, Dope Jam tours and a whole bunch of others. I can't rhyme along to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five records without crying thinking about the first time I heard 'Freedom' and how hyped me and my friends got hearing it.

Everytime I hear the song 'Peter Piper' awww man, "Then like all fairy tales end you'll see Jay again my friend!'

The other day I was sitting in a conference room at Verizon Wireless for an evaluation test one of the questions was: At this point in your life are personal pursuits more important than a career?

I’ve always worked. Jobs have been just that for me: J-O-B’s. Just something to pay the bills nothing to build my life around. When I went back to school at 34 years old I made up my mind that writing was going to be my career. And it’s a hard field to make a living in – especially when your niche writer. So I’ve had to do what I’ve had to do to provide for my family.

It sucks to be damn near 40 and having to apply to jobs that don't pay a whole lot. I'm really focused on writing I guess you can call that my salvation if you will. If it wasn't for the fact that i have this gift I'd truly be up sh-- creek without a paddle in a sinking boat.

When I look at what I've accomplished story wise I feel better about myself, but financially, oh it sucks to be me right now. The Eddie Cheba article has finally been published I'll be posting that on Hip Hop 101A in a week or so. I'm trying to cut the word count of my Iceberg Slim article down, my editor says he wants it but, 6300 words is too many, 'How about 5,000?" He asked me. I thought cutting 1300 words would be easy - it ain't!

I've sent in enough articles to Wax that 2008 should be a good year for me there. I wrote a piece about the rise of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Disco Bee, EZ Mike, Rahiem and Mele Mel gave me some really good stories for it too.

I bumped my writing skills up exponentially when I wrote this really great piece called 'Street Girl: Spoonie Gee's tale of a Doom Fox'. Spoonie is still one of my favorite MC's of all time, he's been getting his life together in the last couple of years.

My man Sammy Bee over at Tuff City hooked me up with Spoonie for a phone interview, Spoonie doesn't talk much, but I got a little something out of him.

The real highlight for me though was I reached out to Barry Michael Cooper, the guy that wrote New Jack City, Above the Rim and Sugar Hill - basically this is the dude who's stories helped shape my generation. Barry gave me some insights into Harlem and Spoonie that I have never read anywhere. I don't know when the article will be published but please believe me it is ghetto red hot!

My next assignment is going to be a monster feature about Kurtis Blow, needless to say I am pulling out all stops for this one!

But with all of that going on I still have trouble paying my rent and providing for my kids. And it hurts. It wasn't supposed to be like this at this point in my life. I have to do this writing thing now - I don't have the time to do it 'later', anything can happen to me later. My aunt Zelma just passed the other day from a brain aneurism. Just like that, bam...If I should die tomorrow at least i have contributed some great work about my generation. And i have more to say, I ain't just some guy who knows nothing but old school hip hop, i have more interests and things to add man, but I gotta do it now, cause tomorrow ain't promised!

But here’s what constantly goes through my mind: What happened to the 18 year old guy with the world at his feet? Where did that go to? Where did the guy run off to? But more importantly will he come back?

Not likely.

It’s been a stressful time: I’m finishing up my first book which, by the way is called ‘When the Music’s Over’ and of course (I don’t want to mention the name of the company) I had to quit my job recently because I can’t work for a crazy person.

For a year and a half I worked for a person who is the mental and emotional equivalent of Jim Jones. No for real. I wish I was lying. I have never been in a situation before where a person manages their company through manipulation, paranoia and other mind games that would make a psychiatrist like Frazier Crane say ‘Take a seat.’ She really had no idea how to run a company or manage people it is the worse example of mis-management that I have ever seen in my life, this story almost has Ken Lay-like overtones, for real.

The person I worked for has a Napoleon complex as well other inferiority issues, the only way she knows how to make herself feel better is if others aren’t doing well, she constantly talks about what that person has done wrong, but what I’ve learned is that she is merely deflecting attention away from her many faults. Someday I’m going to write about it, but I need more distance. The perspective title for the book is ‘The Sinking Ship’.

I hope I don’t crack up in the meantime.

'Borat' and 'The Other Hollywood'

2007-07-01T21:43:00.000-04:00

I’ve been broke lately so I’ve been staying indoors mostly reading books and watching movies. I finally got to watch ‘Borat’. I fell on the floor laughing at that movie. Now I know I’m late seeing the movie ‘Borat’, but I ain’t late to the party. I’ve been hip to Sasha Baron Cohen for a few years now.

It all started for me, with some damn Madonna video. I saw this guy with a red sweat suit and a red doo rag, I’m thinking to myself ‘look at this idiot’. I didn’t who he was or nothing. I just thought he was some funny looking guy in a Madonna video. And then HBO premiered something called ‘Da Ali G Show’. It was bugged out. My wife couldn’t stand it. As a matter of fact I’m the only person I know that liked it. I called Davey D and was like “Yo D, yo D, man, you gotta see ‘Da Ali G Show’ kid”. He said, “hell no, that show is full of stereotypes and shit, man.” What did I expect from a liberal Berkeley activist, huh?

Anyway, this guy Sasha Cohen is a genius. He’s a lot like Andy Kaufmann. I mean he’s really on the edge. You couldn’t really call him a comedian in the classic sense, because it’s not like the guy could get onstage and do a routine, I mean he could, but like Kaufmann, what makes him funny is how far he takes his characters. He plays jokes on unsuspecting people and gets the funniest results. His comedy is really a commentary about how cynical and xenophobic our culture really is. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m not a cynic or that I’m not xenophobic or homophobic or any of that stuff. If some guy walked up to me and tried to kiss me, I’m putting my hands up. For real. I don’t care what your culture is – I ain’t kissing no man.

But as funny as ‘Borat’ is…right now, somewhere in America there is a guy named ‘Bruno’ playing the same kind of jokes on unsuspecting people. The ‘Bruno’ jokes will definitely be played on people in the south and the Midwest. God that shit is going to be funny.

I’ve been reading – nah, that’s not the right word, I’ve been engrossed in a book called ‘The Other Hollywood’. I’ve never read anything like it. It tells the story of the rise of the porn industry. I know, I know, I know: the porn industry? Yes. It is a shocking and funny story. The book is by Legs McNeil. It tells the story of John Holmes’ rise and fall. For those that don’t know who John Holmes is…. well, google him and you’ll see. Ironically enough I’ve never seen a John Holmes movie. I’ve seen pictures of the guy, but never seen a movie. Anyway, he was an interesting guy. Not the smartest guy you’d ever meet. Nor was he the nicest guy for that matter. It would be safe to say that he was a sleazy kind of guy. He seemed to have at least two part time jobs and two full time jobs: he was a part time porn actor and sometime batty man. Full time? He was a drug addict and an idiot.

My favorite stories are the ones that detail how the Feds were trying to build a case against the Mob – who were the one’s profiting from the porn business. The most shocking story was when there was a HIV epidemic in the industry. Wow. That’s all I can tell you.

No...We're Not

2007-06-29T10:06:00.000-04:00

If you've read this blog over the years you've probably heard my thoughts on homosexuality...well, here we go again...

Today I was reading what this guy said http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/06/28/were-all-gay-the-only-question-is-how-much/ ...

Recently there was a poll that asked Americans if we think that homosexuals can change. For the record: I don't think they can. And why should they? If your gay your gay, right?

According to the previously mentioned article "We're all gay" in some form or another. To that I say: "Oh no we're not."

Over the years I've heard 'stories' about people who 'wake up' one day and discover their gay. To which I say: Yeah right.

You know good and goddamn well that your 35 year old ass didn't just wake up at seven o'clock Thursday morning and say "Wow, hmmmm I think I'm gay..."

It doesn't work like that. You were gay the whole time.

I've heard people say that P-Diddy, Russell and others are (allegedly) gay because of all of the money they make and the circles they run in. To which I say: Yeah right.

It doesn't matter how much money you make. I can win a 100 million dollars tomorrow and I don't care what, I am not going to be 'experimenting' with my sexuality. I don't want to see, hear or read about two dudes pounding each other in the ass. Nope, don't wanna know about it. I used to love the HBO show 'OZ', but I used to have to watch it with my hands over my eyes on certain parts. 'Pulp Fiction' is my favorite movie but I don't watch that part where they rape Marcellus Wallace. Iceberg Slim is one of my favorite writers but I still haven't read - and refuse to read "Momma Black Widow', nope won't do it. I don't wanna know.

I don't care what the Christian Right says people can be born gay. And it didn't just start happening 30 years ago, hell no, it's been going on since we evolved from whatever and where ever. When I was in junior high school there was a kid named (for legal reasons I will not divulge his real name, I'm going to be rich one day and I don't want that guy suing me) Andre, it was the seventh grade, I kept seeing this kid that looked like a boy sometimes and a girl other times. I remember asking some of the fellas, "Yo, is that a dude or a broad?" To which they said, "a little bit of both."

So, many years later I run into a guy from the old neighborhood and we're talking about people from back in the day and I ask about that kid Andre to which this guy said, "Oh he's a pimp now. He pimps dudes and broads."

Was I surprised? Hell no, I seen it way back then.

When I was a crazy teenager I used to subscribe to the belief that homosexuals should all be sent to live on an isolated island somewhere with a chain link fence and ...so forth and so on. I don't believe in that kind of garbage anymore.

However, I still disagree with the homosexual lifestyle. What a person does in the privacy of their home is their business. I have no problem with it. I'm glad that there are gay clubs and parades and proms, they have the right to express themselves.

However, I don't agree with gay marriage. Nah duke, you knew once you came out of the closet that that wasn't cool. I don't doubt for one second that you all love each other and all, but, marriage is between a man and a woman. For me God has nothing to do with it. In every society since time began (at least for human beings) marriage has been between a man and a woman. Without a doubt men and men did what they did, however, there has always been an understanding that, yo, no-no-no-no-no our civillization can't be built on the union of two men as married partners. And besides that shit doesn't sound right.

Iceberg Slim, Sidewalk Justice

2007-06-22T10:58:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time I shouldn't have left you...I know, I know, I keep letting you down. Sorry but there's been one too many things happening in this crazy thing called my life. Please believe I been working real hard on bringing you high powered, super-charged up, ultra-magnetic articles to read for the future.

It all began when I started doing research about one of my heroes Robert 'Iceberg Slim' Beck. I've never seen an article, or a book about the man who inspired a movement. Gangsta lit/ghetto lit whatever you wanna call it, started with him way back in 1967. Beck wrote seven books, three of which were autobiographical. Of those three books: "Pimp: The Story of My Life", "Naked Soul" and "Airtight Willie and Me" he was loose with certain facts about his life. I thought to myself that it would be cool if someone - using journalistic techniques, told the story of the man behind the books.

Nice idea, right?

It is the hardest project I have ever undertaken. For one thing his widow refuses to do interviews. His first wife - well, common-law wife, is too sick to talk. His daughters? Oh my God, they are hard to find. I reached out to them through a lawyer and two publishers, to which I got no response. Which means, that they too don't wanna talk.

Which is ashamed. We're talking about a man that started a movement. We're talking about a man that is said to be one of the best selling African American writers ever. He sold somewhere near six million books that have been translated into four different languages in forty years. So we're not talking about some obscure guy. We're talking about someone that has had an impact on our culture... And his family doesn't want to talk publicly about him? That doesn't sound right.

If it was my dad that had a major impact on American culture I would share anything I could about him. But I guess, not everyone thinks like I do. Shame.

I pitched the story around to magazines and newspapers, all of whom passed...they don't get it.

But all is not lost true believer.

I told my editor Andre Torres at Wax Poetics what I had been working on and he's interested in it, so all I gotta do is find an angle and edit what I have and we'll take it from there. Stay tuned on that front...

I was talking with my home boy Ronin Ro last night and we got to talking about the 'Stop Snitchin' movement that is plaguing our communities. Here's my take on 'Stop Snitchin'...

If you and I are both doing grimy ass, illegal ass s%#!t together and I get busted...I can't rollover on you and tell the cops what your doing. I have to do my time like a man. If I tell on you - then I'm a snitch.

There are certain occasions when it is necessary to go to the cops. For instance: Your next door neighbor sits in front of his window (curtains open) all day jacking off looking at little kids. What do you do?

Me, I'm knocking on his door first. He'll have his dick in his hand, I'll have a baseball bat or a hammer (which oddly are both phallic symbols, but the similarities end there) in mine. He will quickly get the point that if he doesn't...

A) Close his fu$&kin window.
B) Stay the hell away from my kids and everybody else's kids

He will see that a baseball bat and or a hammer are harder - and more deadly, than his dick. After that I'd go to the property management and tell them that I promised to discombobulate and do some real primitive ish to the retard in 4E.

Let's say I knew that the guys next door were bank robbers - would I call the cops? Hell no. Robbing banks is a victim less crime (for the most part) the insurance pays the bank off.

But let's say, the idiots next door to me are bank robbers who have gone on a violent bank robbing spree. Would I tell?

Hell yeah. Now they've involved innocent people. What if that was your kid? Or your grandmother or moms cashing a check when Wally Gator and crew come in and stick the bank up and start pistol whipping customers. They deserve the wrath of the law.

Here's where it gets more interesting.

Let's say my son saw a robbery take place. He saw first hand the whole thing and even knew the guys that did it. Do you know what I'd tell him to do? Keep quiet.

Why?

Kids are in a different social structure than we are. I'd tell my son: Look, you saw what you saw, you know what you know, but for your own safety, you didn't see nothing. Kids can get to other kids real quick. Kids roll in large groups. Your average thirty and forty year old doesn't roll like that. The best way for a kid to protect himself is to be quiet and to stay out of the game.

However, if it is a violent crime that my son has witnessed ie; rape or murder, then we are both going to the cops. After that Smith and Wesson will be actively protecting my residence.

As adults we have different responsibilities. If I see a violent crime ie; rape, murder, carjacking, molestation I'm going to the cops. I'm a regular dude. I ain't a gangster. Gangsters have it to where they can exact their own revenge, your regular average ordinary pedestrian doesn't have it like that. We have to go to the cops for justice.

"Stop Snitchin" has turned our communities into places where justice rarely ever gets served because no one wants to be involved and no one wants to do do anything. So the sense of community is non-existent because our homes and stores have become havens for criminals.

Didn't see it coming

2007-05-18T15:12:00.001-04:00

There were just certain things that I knew were going to happen on my favorite TV shows this season.

Let’s start with ‘The Sopranos’, I just knew that Chris was going to get caught up with drugs and dealing with the two Arab guys that had been coming around buying weapons, that he’d get busted for it, and then turn rat for the Feds. Damn, was I wrong…

I didn’t see that coming.

Nor did I see Melinda Doolittle losing to one of the weakest and weirdest American Idol contestants yet.

I didn’t see that coming.

The problem with American Idol isn’t a matter of racial conspiracies or a flawed voting system. No, it’s none of that. It’s a flawed American youth culture.

What we’re seeing are a bunch of 13-18 year-olds who have every access to modern technology, but sorely lacking in judgment. We’re seeing kids who basically don’t know how to judge talent based on the necessary components that come with it: craftsmanship, skill level, technical ability and originality. When you see a talented singer like Melinda voted off, you have to wonder.

Inside and Out

2007-05-09T13:46:00.000-04:00

Once again I’ve been away too long. I know, I know. Life is has been pretty rough nowadays. You know the saying: “When life throws you lemons…make lemonade, right?” Well, what do you do when life throws you shit? Throw shit back, right?

I’ve been busy trying to write proposals and articles and deal with my family and work, that I get very little time to talk to you.

Someday soon Wax Poetics will run my Eddie Cheba article; I can’t wait to see it in print. You have to understand something, I hounded Eddie for two years for that article. I stepped my pen game up 200% for that piece, I put my heart into it. I can’t wait for you to see it, you’ll know what I mean. No one has ever told the story of that side of hip hop history like that before. Trust me its well worth the wait.

I also handed in an article about the rise of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, considering their nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame it is a timely piece, and it too is some of my best work. I checked all of the major publications and none of them, not one of them, covered the story like I did. But, I have no idea when that article will see the light of day.

I know I have an idea you should contact Wax and tell them “Hey run them Mark Skillz joints…”

The Virginia Tech shooting was horrifying to me. It made me stop and think about all of the potential wacko’s I could’ve offended over the years. You never know what goes through some people’s heads, man. One day, you’re in class minding your business and then some wack job is in the back of the class taking pictures of people not saying anything. You have no idea what the pictures are for or nothing. For all you know he’s using them to jack off to. You never know.

The scariest thing – it was all scary, but the part that bugged me out was he stopped what he was doing to record a video and take pictures of himself. That tells you something about the impact that the media has on wacko’s. One day, someone else is going to imitate what this nut job did, except in his video he’s gonna stop talking and pull down his pants and start wacking off. I’m telling you its coming. Sorry, no pun intended. But it’s true.

I’ve been hooked on American Idol lately I don’t care what, I hope Melinda Doolittle wins. Her performance last night was dope to me. I don’t care what Simon and Randy say.

Speaking of American Idol, that dude Blake is kinda corny yo. I mean he’s a talented dude and all, but on the real, all that shit he’s doing to them songs is kinda corny kid. When he makes them sound effects he makes the songs sound like you’re in some weird club somewhere where you need to be taking some kind of mind altering drug in order to dance. His last song last night was aiiight, but he killed – and I mean killed not in a good way, ‘You should be dancing’ – wack, wack, wack, totally corny.

I know you like LaKisha but, on the real she ain’t gonna win, yo. A lot of black women I know are rooting for LaKisha because she in a way represents them. Stay with me on this. LaKisha looks like an ordinary sister, she can sing, but she’s a big girl. And a lot of women can identify with a big girl easier because she is non- threatening to them. She is one of them.

Check this out, bring up the subject of ‘Dreamgirls’ and watch what happens. Most Black women are rooting for Jennifer Hudson’s character because they just ‘ain’t feeling Beyonce’. Not Beyonce’s character – but Beyonce the person. See what I mean? Beyonce is threatening to them; her beauty makes her someone they don’t want to relate to. Check that out then get back with me and we’ll compare notes.

Men, we don’t have those hang ups. We have other hang ups, but we won’t knock the next dude because he looks better than us…nah, nah, nah, nah, we’ll knock the next dude if he tries to play like he’s better than us. He can think whatever he wants – we don’t care, but if he tries to play like he’s king of the castle then there will be probs. Most dudes who knock the next dude do it out of insecurity. Same as women. But for men, at least most men I know, so long as homie isn’t throwing shit in your face its all good. Get back at me on that we need to talk about it.

A Shot of Viagra for the Movement

2007-04-01T22:18:00.000-04:00

Last weeks incident with Tony Yayo and Jimmy Rosemond’s 14-year-old son has sparked outrage in New York. Which is a good thing. But when will we confront the real enemy?

Who’s the real enemy you ask?

The real enemies are the ignorant ass jack offs, who – of their own free will, continue to perpetuate the worse stereotypes of Black men. And guess what? They too are Black men.

You know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about the so-called brothers and sisters that who – through their own actions, have shown that they don’t hold the same values as the rest of Black America. These people choose to be niggas. Or niggers. Or if you really want to keep it real niggaz.

I’m not going to insult your intelligence and run down for you what a nigga is. I think you know.

But what of this planned rally? Is it going to be more sermons and freedom songs or is it going to spark real meaningful dialogue amongst Black people? Bill Cosby has been touring the country for the last couple of years speaking his peace. Stanley Crouch has been on his stepladder condemning our generation for so long, I’m starting to think the brother is glued there or something. We haven’t given him reason to stop because he’s right. Especially when you think about recent events. Anyone remember NBA All Star weekend for starters?

If the Hip Hop Action Network really wants to make a difference here’s what they can do. They can march all right. They can find out where that brother Tony Yayo is going to be that day and march to that building or house and hold their protest there. Bring drummers, conga players and a several thousand pissed off people. Be sure to beat the drums loud so that people know you mean business.

And when you get to his location break out the stepladder and turn on the bullhorn and say the following: “Marvin Bernard (that’s his real name) this is the Black community. Bring your black ass out here nigga! It’s time for you to answer to the people!”

Back in the 60’s they identified the enemy and made an example of him. Anyone remember the name Bull Connor? Hearing his name today wouldn’t cause a normal sane Black person to feel warm and fuzzy now does it? That’s because we know he’s the enemy.

Same for the people like Marvin Bernard.
If we don’t confront them our movement will continue to be as limp as a bad case of Erectile Dysfunction. Russell Simmons and Ben Chavis have decided to not take part in the planned rally. Hmmmmm…I wonder what they really think about the subject? I smell poverty pimpin’ goin’ on. What do you think?

Deep In the Heart of Texas

2007-03-28T23:35:00.000-04:00

I always heard that Texas wasn’t a place to go fuckin around at. I remember my first trip there, I was stunned by the signs on the doors of just about any business you went in: “NO GUNS ALLOWED” or this one: “No Concealed Weapons Allowed At All”.

“What the fuck?” I thought to myself. At first I thought it was a joke of some kind. After a while I realized these mofo’s weren’t playing. I remember tapping someone on the shoulder and asking them about the signs. They told me that it was legal to carry a gun in Texas it just couldn’t be concealed. As a matter of fact you can shoot a person in Texas as long as you can prove that it was in self-defense.

Now imagine something like that in New York or California.
“Pow! Pow!”
“Hands up ni----“
“Hey, hey, hey, it was self-defense that asshole stepped on my sneakers!”
“Oh yeah? Tell it to the judge Tupac!”

See couldn’t have that kind of shit anywhere else but Texas.

It all goes way back deep in this countrys history. Back when the English started settling here. And in fact even further than that. When one dude had a beef with another dude they’d settle it with a duel. Yeah for real. Here’s how it would go down.

One guy would write another guy a letter.

“Dear Sir,

You hath offended me and my honor sir. I challenge you to a duel to the death. You may choose whatever weapon of your choice. If you don’t have a weapon I shall be happy to provide one for you. I say we meet at daybreak two mornings from now. Where we will turn our backs to each other and count off twenty paces out loud and then turn and shoot at each other, until one of us is dead.

If you don’t show you will provide further proof that you are of dubious character and will hath offended me more.

May the better man be the victor.

Cheers…

That’s some wild shit ain’t it? You see these guys had ‘gentlemen agreements’ and stuff like that. There was a code these cats went by. So ok, the one dude who was challenged to the duel would respond by letter as well.

“Dear Sir,

I accept your challenge and I am ready to defend my honor sir.

Cheers…

These idiots would meet out in the open with a referee of sorts, it would be someone who made sure these things were carried out in an honorable fashion. So dig it, they’d meet and turn their backs against each other and count off an agreed upon number of steps and then turn, and in some cases would take turns shooting at each other.

After a while guys who were a little less scrupulous did things like instead of taking the agreed upon 20 paces would turn around and shoot after five steps or some shit like that. Me myself, shit, I would set that shit up so that my tenth step was behind a tree or something. Or better yet, when the letter came demanding the duel, I would have acted like it was a bill collector and refused that shit.

“Fuck you” I’d write back.

But as the country moved west things degenerated. The kind of people that moved to settle the west weren’t blue bloods or aristocrats or nothing like that. Nah, these guys didn’t mind going days or weeks or hell months on end without a bath or a shave. They were much more rugged than the guys back East.

So that dueling shit had to change.

Since these guys weren’t abiding by ‘gentlemen agreements’ in the wild, wild west - in came the showdowns. The quicker you were on the draw the more likely you were to live.

So as the wind blew the old dried up tumbleweeds around and the old broken down doors frantically open and shut as people fled the street, two desperadoes would meet in the middle of the dirt road. Neither one of them had bathed in months and you probably smelled a mixture of piss, shit, whiskey and fear from both of them from all the way back in the saloon. They probably chewed so much tobaccee that their teeth were rotted and brown. But it was alright because you were only gonna be smelling one of them after it was all said and done.

Nowadays nobody waits for another person to draw before they shoot, if you can get your shot off first your lucky.

Texas is a real law and order kind of place now. Since the death penalty was re-established some years back, they have executed more people than any other state. They’ve executed some 386 people in ten years. In California, you could’ve gotten sentenced to death row in 1978 and your ass might be up for execution this year.

In Texas there’s no waiting period buddy. There have been times when they have had three executions in one day! Now that’s law and order for your ass.

Now they amended the law to where you no longer have to retreat if someone is attacking you. You can just pull your shit out and shoot. “Boo-Yaa!” that’s right. You can take them out right on the spot if they threaten you on your property, in your car or at work.

Ain’t that some shit.

Habitual Line Steppin' in the Age of Beef

2007-03-28T10:06:00.000-04:00

Word on the street is Jimmy Rosemond is not a guy to be messed with. His nickname is “Henchmen”. He earned that rep that hard way on the streets of New York in the 70’s, ‘80’s and 90’s. Since I don’t know the man personally, I won’t be the one to be spreading half truths and rumors. Let’s just say I wouldn’t wanna be Tony Yayo right about now.

According to this from Allhiphop.com Tony Yayo allegedly put his hands on Jimmy’s son.

Where I come from that means war.

To hell with beef…when a grown ass man slaps a kid – that ain’t his, oh that ni--- got an ass whuppin’ comin! There are consequences and repercussions for shit like that. Walls shake and furniture moves when someone crosses that line.

Ordinarily I am against violence. But on an occasion like this: I understand.

Should a pile of rocks happen to suddenly fall out of the sky and onto Tony Yayo’s head – I’d understand.

Should he be sitting in his prison cell and suddenly and mysteriously find himself hanging from whatever objects are attached to the ceiling of his cell – I’d understand.

There are a few immovable laws of the streets that everyone abides by. Well, they should abide by. And at the top of that list after ‘don’t talk about nobody’s moms’ is: ‘don’t touch another mans kids’.

If you have beef with somebody keep it to that man, don’t cross the line and take it to the kids.

But let’s just say, and I’m sure of this, he didn’t know that that was Jimmy’s son. Ok, but why would a 29 year old man hit a 14 year old boy?

Regardless if the kid had a big mouth or not, you don’t hit a 14 year old. What’s that prove?

“Yo man, I just slapped this lil’ ni----“…
“Oh word?”
“Yeah, man this lil’ ni---- was wearing a Czar Entertainment t-shirt and shit man.”

Sounds ignorant to me.

Now on the other hand let’s say hypothetically that the kid is lying, because he said 50 Cent was there as well. It would be ashamed if these brothers went to war over a lie. One member of G-Unit has manned up and said if it did go down it wasn’t cool. Let’s see what kind of man 50 Cent is.

That’s 50’s home boy from way back. But home boys or not. You can’t back your mans when they get out of line like that.

We’ll see how it breaks down later.

An Important Life Lesson

2007-03-24T11:48:00.000-04:00

Of all of the people I remember from third grade there will be one person that I will never forget. Her name was Miriam. We went to PS 24 in Flushing, Queens. Don't ask me what year it was cause I damn sure don't remember. Let's just be safe and say it was in the mid to late 70's.

Anyway, everybody in my class used to run away from this skinny Puerto Rican girl named Miriam. I never knew the reason. At the very sight of her mother fuckers would start bookin'. "Ill Miriam's coming..." And they would dash away like roaches. The rumor was she threw up in a water fountain and contaminated the drinking water for the whole entire school or something like that.

Well, after a while stupid me joined in on it too.

"Ill, Miriam!" I said as I ran as fast as I could.

That went on for about a year.

Fourth grade rolled around and we did the same thing to her. That was until one day in March or April I think it was. Had to be one of those months cause it wasn't cold anymore.

There was Miriam walking across the schoolyard. 'Ill Miriam", I said as I started jettin' the hell out of the way. Word was she had 'cooties'. Whatever in the hell 'cooties' were I sure as shit didn't want them.

But this day wasn't gonna go down like any other day.

Just as I was reaching top speed lo and behold Miriam was hot on my tracks. 'Oh shit the cootie girl is gonna get me!' I accelerated more, I looked back, "Goddamn, she's closing in!"

I juked to the left and then a quick right, then I made another quick juke to the left, surely she'd be in the dust by now.

Hell no, her hand was damn near on the back of my shirt. "No, don't touch me please!' I shouted.

'Gotcha!' She said.

'Oh no, I'm gonna start throwing up or something like that" I thought.

But it didn't happen.

"See, I touched you and nothing happened to you." She said looking me square in the eyes.

"Yeah, huh" I said surprised.

"Why do you run from me? I don't even know you."

"I dunno." Stupid me responded.

"See, you run from me because everyone else does. That's not right."

'It isn't?' Stupid me responded back.

'No, how would you like it if I did the same thing to you?"

'I don't think I'd like it."

"So how do you think I feel?'

"Hey, you're right."

"When you see me just wave and say hi, I'm not a bad person."

'Ok, you got it."

After that whenever she and I saw each other we always smiled and said hi to each other. Not a day goes by that I don't think about that girl. She taught me to never follow the crowd. Just because one person doesn't like somebody doesn't mean that i have to dislike them too.

Conspiracy theories and different agendas @ the Rock Hall of Fame

2007-03-19T01:15:00.000-04:00

On the streets of New York City in the 1970’s the name Grandmaster Flash rung louder than a fire engine siren. He had the rep. He was definitely the man back then. I heard the name before I heard the man.

One day at the Jamaica Alden – an old movie theatre in Jamaica, Queens – this was a ghetto ass theatre on Jamaica Ave, if memory serves me right. My pops took me and my brother to see the ‘Fish That Saved Pittsburgh’. To show you just how rowdy this theatre was, you had dudes walking in there playin’ their box as if they were outside. Cats were smokin’ weed and passin’ 40’s as if they were at a party. I mean it was some real nig- type shit.

Anyway, the song ‘Good Times’ by Chic was the hottest record out at the time. Deejays loved to cut the shit out of that record. Everywhere you went you heard it. Right before the movie started up someone was playing a Flash tape on their box. I now know that it was Mele Mel on the mic at that party, back then I had no idea who was talking on the mic for Flash, but it was just before ‘Rapper’s Delight’ came out. This rap shit was at a fever pitch on the streets.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard ‘Superrappin’. To this day that is one of my favorite songs from that group. It was the first time that I heard a group of five MC’s literally sound like one. And their rap skills were head, shoulders, knees and toes above the Sugar Hill Gangs.

Now that the group has finally been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it feels kind of like the movement has been validated in some ways. Way back in the day, rap music was definitely not respected, in fact, for many years it was the ugly stepchild of the music industry. No one really respected the music. They didn’t value it because guys were ‘just talking over a beat’. Many people – right until today, don’t think that it takes talent. And if they do think it takes talent, they don’t put it on the same level as singing or playing an instrument. It’s really not a respected art form.

While I was watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on TV, I was sitting on the edge of my seat, because the group that electrified the movement – the movement that I have been apart of for my whole life, the same movement that I grew up with, was finally taking its place alongside the greats of Rock history.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are to me and my generation what Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Ike Turner and the Beatles are to previous generations. They were the group with the biggest influence, hell; they were the first rap group.

The thing that disappointed me the most watching the broadcast was Jay Z’s introduction of them. And here’s why…

Jay Z is definitely one of the greatest rappers ever. I’ve followed dudes career from ’85 to now. And that’s just it. Jay and I are the same age, we’re both damn near 40’s year old. How can he get up in front of any camera or any audience anywhere on a night as historical as that and not talk about what impact that group had on him personally? It defies any logical explanation I can think of.

Like I said Jay ain’t no 22 year old from Boise, Idaho or someplace like that, he knows how important that group is to hip-hop. None of us would be doing what we’re doing now, had it not been for them. And that’s real.

Over the years I have interviewed just about all of the major hip hop pioneers for various articles I’ve written in print and online. Many of them have mentioned a conspiracy of sorts that is meant to downplay their contributions to the culture. Many of have said that there is a stigma attached to being a hip-hop pioneer that is difficult to live with. Part of that conspiracy that the brothers have talked about is that anyone prior to RUN-DMC, it’s almost as if they didn’t exist or weren’t as important as Run and them.

At first I didn’t believe it. I thought it was the remnants of the coke some of them had been sniffin’ in the 80’s.

That was until one night when LL Cool J accepted a Soul Train Award – I think for lifetime achievement or something like that. LL credited Run DMC as being “the creators of rap as we know it today”.

That statement struck me in between the eyes and has stayed with me to this day. “How can Run and them be that?” I asked myself. That’s impossible. It’s physically, mathematically and historically impossible. I could see someone 21 years old and from Butte, Montana or somewhere like that, saying something like that, because they wouldn’t know.

But not James Todd Smith from Hollis, Queens a guy who like myself and Jay Z is also damn near 40. Ain’t no way.

Someone damn near 40 – and or over 40 and from New York has a different perspective of the music and the culture than someone who is damn near 40 and from Shreveport, Louisiana. They aren’t going to know about the block parties, the jam tapes, the weekend jams at parks, rec centers, gyms, parking lots, parking garages, roller rinks and anywhere else a crew of guys could set up a sound system and jam. A person from outside of New York is not going to understand certain things that were apart of the culture back then. They just wouldn’t.

So when I hear these guys who are my age and whom I know grew up on the music the same way I did, not personalize their experience and omit the contributions of guys like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, I reflect on those conspiracy theories and they gain more credibility day by day.

But why would anyone work to discredit them?

The theory is is that Russell Simmons is behind it. For some reason allegedly, Russell doesn’t want anyone or any group to overshadow RUN-DMC.

And to be honest there is some credibility there. Check this out.

In 1985 the movie ‘Krush Groove’ came out. This was a movie that featured just about all of the Rush Artist Management groups. From what I understand, originally, the movie wasn’t even going to be about Russell, it was going to be called ‘The King of Rap’ or something like that and was going to be about Kurtis Blow.

Somehow or another that got changed.

When the movie was released Right On magazine did a full feature on the movie and its stars. This was big back then. By the way Right On Magazine was the only publication covering hip-hop back then, Spin Magazine would come along in the late 80’s and do it, they were the first to seriously cover the music. Anyway, in this issue they described Kurtis Blow’s character as an “aging over the hill rapper who’s career was over.”

From what I understand Kurtis was born in 1959 in 1985 he would’ve been 23 years old when that movie came out. Now you tell me, how is a dude washed up at 23 years old?

It wouldn’t be until years later when I learned about the industry that I learned that an artist’s management are the ones that protect his image in the press. They work with fan magazines on articles and whatnot – those articles were advertisement, so I imagine RUSH Artist Management paid for that write up.

Hmmmmmm….why would an artists manager dare let one of his acts be seen as ‘washed up and over the hill?”

Unless they had another agenda.

From what I understand the first rap group with a platinum album is not RUN-DMC, it’s Whodini’s ‘Escape’. Not only that, but Run and them have been credited for having been the first rap group on Soul Train and American Bandstand. How is that possible when Kurtis Blow was the first rap artist on Soul Train and the Sugar Hill Gang were the first rap group on American Bandstand.

Unless someone has another agenda.

Looking For Mr. Untouchable

2007-03-16T12:25:00.000-04:00

At some point this summer in some obscure town somewhere in Middle America, an old unassuming Black man is going to have an acute interest in two movies. One of them is called ‘American Gangster’ and the other is a documentary called ‘Mr. Untouchable’. To the people in some quiet suburban section of the heartland, neither movie will matter to them.

For nine years this old, bald, bespectacled Black man, has lived quietly amongst them, far removed from the life he once lead a lifetime ago.

If for some reason, by some twist of fate, the old man would stumble upon someone over 60 years of age from Harlem, New York – he’d feel the kind of sense of danger that he’d hadn’t felt in many years.

Once upon a time a long time ago, in a different life, his name was Nicky Barnes. He was New York’s biggest drug lord. That was until he was bought down by the Feds and incarcerated for life. And then he flipped on his people and turned informant. That’s why he isn’t Nicky Barnes anymore. He’s been in the Federal Witness Protection Program and has been quiet.

Until now.

In March of this year Rugged Land Publishing released “Mr. Untouchable: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Heroin’s Teflon Don”. ‘Mr. Untouchable’ captured Barnes in all of his arrogance, cunning and shrewdness.

Barnes lived well. He had the best of everything: Rolex watches, mink coats, custom made Italian suits, platinum rings with huge diamonds and all the ‘zings’ he could smoke.

What is a ‘zing’? According to Barnes it was a joint rolled with hash oil, Jamaican Motah weed, angel dust and crystal cocaine sprinkled in for good measure. The high gave you an ‘Arabian floating feeling’ he said.

The 1970’s were a helluva time to be Black. The Civil Rights Movement, the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party emboldened African Americans like at no time before. Tremendous strides were made on many fronts. But if you were an African American drug lord in the ‘70’s, well, the world was yours as they say.

It was the first time in the history of organized crime that so many Black men were able to stand up and free themselves from being under the feet of the Italian Mob. There had always been organized crime in Black communities; the problem was Black racketeers were dependant upon the Italians.

This summer when the movie ‘American Gangster’ starring Denzel Washington hits the theatres, it will be very difficult for Barnes, now 74 to stop himself from going to see the movie. ‘American Gangster’ is about one of Barnes old rivals Frank Lucas. In his day, the North Carolina born Lucas was as ruthless as they come. Barnes and Lucas didn’t care for one another at all. Cuba Gooding, Jr. will be playing Barnes on the screen.

The other movie Barnes – or whatever his name is nowadays, will be hard pressed to avoid is a documentary about his life called ‘Mr. Untouchable’. For the first time in years Barnes will get to hear from his former associates, and get their take on his rise and fall.

I’ve known about Nicky Barnes since the 80’s, I had heard he was a snitch. I never understood why a man of his supposed stature would turn on his people. After reading the book, I understand why.

The book ‘Mr. Untouchable’ is about loyalty, greed and revenge.

Hip Hop's Death and Music Evolution

2007-02-04T14:10:00.000-05:00

It is said that in the last days of disco record companies were losing their shirts left and right. They had sunken millions of dollars into a dying art form and everyone was crying. There were signs everywhere “Disco Sucks”.

Some of everybody recorded a disco record Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, Phyllis Diller, Rick Dees (gotdamned Disco Duck) and too many others. It was a cash cow in the 70’s. White folks danced off beat in discothèques, had orgies in stairways, openly snorted cocaine, drank champagne – like the shit really tasted good, it was the time of their lives. That was until the ‘Disco Sucks’ movement caught momentum and people stopped buying Donna Summers records. And oh yeah, all those nights of bingeing on cocaine and sex led to things like herpes and then AIDS.

Now that sucks.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about hip-hop being dead. I’m not sure if it is or not, but let’s go back to my disco example first.

If you wanna see if Tommy Mottola is really a connected guy – you know some Italian cats like to say that they “know a guy who knows a guy that knows a guy that is connected…” well, Tommy’s allegedly one of those guys who knows some guys who can plant your ass in Giant Stadium. Anyway, if you want to piss him off try going into his office and getting a deal for a disco act. Just mention words like “fever”, “boogie” and uh while you’re at it wear a white suit a`la Johnny Travolta in Saturday Night Fever style. Then look out because some 400-pound guy in shades with a baseball bat is going to escort you to the parking lot the Jimmy Hoffa way.

Tommy was one of those record execs who lost his shirt during the disco days. Disco is a bad word in record industry circles.

But is disco really dead? I mean how can a style of music die? Well disco morphed into house, techno and you also hear elements of it in acid jazz.

For the record they also say that Jazz is dead too…

Well if you ask any trained jazz musician he might say two things, one of them being: “No, it’s not dead”, then he might say something like “it isn’t appreciated like it should be.” And he would be right.

What about rock? What about the rock n roll of Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis and all of those guys is that dead?

Well no one is recording new records in that style anymore. What is difficult for me to believe is that once upon a time – a very long time ago, those acts (minus Jerry Lee Lewis) were supported by African Americans. But if you go to see Chuck Berry, Little Richard or anyone else of that genre now, you will be hard pressed to find a black face in the crowd.

Do you know why? Because we abandoned that style of music 50 years ago.

I have a test for you put an ad in a Minneapolis newspaper say something like “Producer with a million dollar budget looking for excitingly, fresh band in the vein of Prince and The Time” and see who responds. Do you know what you’ll get? Five fat guys in their late 40’s who have just dusted off their guitars and keyboards for one last shot. Do you know why? Because the youngsters around those parts are too young to remember Prince in his heyday. But hey, with a million dollar budget you can get the five fat, balding, 40 year- old guys in the gym for six months and with a diet program and plenty of Pilates you can make one hell of an attempt at resurrecting a sound of a bygone era.

What about Rhythm and Blues is that dead? Hell, Nelson George proved that twenty years ago with his groundbreaking classic “The Death of Rhythm and Blues”. When Rhythm and Blues died it supposedly morphed into R&B. I know your scratching your head asking yourself if you read that right – you did. Yes R&B stands for Rhythm and Blues, so let me ask you this…do you hear any “Blues” in R&B music today? Ok let’s take a look at the top ten R&B songs of last year. Hold on let me get situated. Ok here were go:

Let’s put it like this: John Legend, Anthony Hamilton and Leela James come damn close! But you can’t get a Cuban cigar for it. Maybe a five dollar one…But uh…Mariah Carey, Nina Sky, Gwen Stefani, Pussycat Dolls, Faith Evans, Fantasia and Destiny’s Child? Can you honestly with a straight face tell me that those acts sound like they have been inspired by the blues? I'll wait...

Whatever happened to Grunge, Modern Rock, Acid Rock, Industrial rock and all those other styles is the same thing that happened to the Do Do Bird and other extinct species – they got swallowed up. Whether or not you believe in evolution is on you, but one thing that is a fact of nature is that only the strong survive. The same applies in music.

So now is hip-hop dead?

Well, using my current line of thought I’ll say this: The hip-hop I grew up on is dead. And it had to die to make way for a new generation to interpret the music their way.

In a recent interview with Tommy Boy Records founder and CEO Tom Silverman, I asked him what was the music industry doing wrong today?

He told me that the majors are pouring 1.5 to 3 million dollars into their acts and the records aren’t selling. In other words record companies are losing their shirts with hip-hop and R&B, kind of like the last days of disco.

I asked some friends writers I respect “Is Hyphy Hip-Hop or a cousin?”

They all said, “Yeah it’s Hip-Hop.”

In all fairness I was supposed to call Adisa but I caught the flu, shit has had me out of business until today. Yo Adisa I’m gonna call home boy.

Anyway after some of the usual back and forth with this guy I say, ok, it’s a sub genre just like Grunge and all those other styles are to Rock. But never the less it is Hip-Hop as are Snap, Bounce, Krunk and Chopped and Screwed. It ain’t the hip-hop I grew up on, but it is hip-hop. One day in a couple of years from now all of those sub genres will give way for a new style of hip- hop. Speaking of which what happened to ‘Miami Bass’ is that still being done?

There Will Never Be Another

2006-12-29T11:10:00.000-05:00

From what I’ve heard from those that knew him: he was mean, ornery, arrogant, stubborn, nasty-tempered, competitive and strong-willed, but most everyone agrees that the man was a genius.

Now that the GFOS (that’s Godfather of Soul to you) has left us we can say good-bye not just to a man, but to a tradition of musicians, whose talents and contributions will never be equaled again.

Quincy Jones said it best: “There will never be another Earth, Wind and Fire, James Brown, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Parliament-Funkadelic all of those great talents, once they’re gone we’ll never see anything like it again.”

And he’s right.

But before I talk about why Mr. Jones is right let’s first take a look at James Brown.

Mr. Brown (as he liked to be called) was the first Black musician to not only demand his independence, but goddamn it the brother emancipated his damn self! He pressed up his own records and dictated to Syd Nathan (owner of King Records) what his singles were going to be.

This was in the 50’s and 60’s; this was at a time when Black men didn’t tell White men anything. From what I hear, Syd Nathan was no one to fuck with either. He was the kind of guy who, well, if he wanted your legs broken he didn’t need to ask twice.

We talk about the evils of payola today, in Mr. Brown’s day it was just the way things were done. When he gave a deejay money to play his songs he did it with the understanding that you were going to always play his songs and like Don Corleone when he asked for a favor you were not going to refuse him.

Before James Brown we were Colored or Negro – after “Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” we became Black and Afro American. That’s deep cause, from what I hear, in the 50’s if you called somebody Black – you had to fight. It was the equivalent of talking about someone’s mother.

According to Fred Wesley and many others Mr. Brown was very hard to work for. “He’d come walking up to me humming something – it made no sense at all – and would say, ‘Ya hear that?’ I’d say “What’s that Mr. Brown?” “That’s the new tune we’re gonna cut”, he’d say. Now what he would be humming would make no musical sense. He’d holler out chords and keys that would just be wrong, and I’d tell him “Mr. Brown, you can’t do it like this.” And he would say very adamantly “It will work if I say it will work.”

That was James Brown. Many of his classic recordings came together just like that. He was a genius.

Now here’s why Mr. Quincy Jones is right. Record companies today will not allow a genius like a James Brown or a Ray Charles or a Billy Joel, or a Barry White to fully blossom under their rosters. You see record companies and radio stations are run by corporations who have hundreds of investors who are there for the bottom line. Not for art. Record companies will not let an artist make a thirteen minute song like “I Can’t Stand It” or a nine minute jam like ‘Poppa Don’t Take No Mess’. Because radio won’t play a song that ebbs and flows and builds up and breaks down, nah, nah, nah the machine ain’t going for it! Three minutes: hook, verse, hook, verse, hook, verse and that’s it. We’ve been conditioned for: 30 commercials and three minute songs – that’s because of our dwindling attention spans.

So take one good last look at the genius who inspired disco, soul, rap and funk. Take a look at the genius who captivated not one but five generations of people around the world. Take a look at the genius who on one hand made us proud to be Black and stood firmly behind the Civil Rights Movement but also embraced Republicans like Nixon, Ford and Strom Thurmond and sang patriotic songs like “America is my Home’ and ‘Living in America’ and owned his own radio stations. Take a look at the man who bought a city a night of peace at the height of some of the ugliest racial tensions this country has known. Take a look at the man who changed music.

Support Your Favorite Rapper - No Matter How Old He Is

2006-12-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

So ok you’ve noticed that I haven’t been bloggin’ much, please believe that it isn’t because I’ve had nothing to say – on the contrary, I’ve got all kinds of stuff to talk about.

My time is being taken up by home, work and research for an upcoming article. This is the first time in my career as a writer that I am having a hard time to get people to sit down and talk to me. But it’s alright, Mark Skillz is a warrior ‘No matter how hard you try you can’t stop me now…”

Check this out I found it online just the other day. I wasn’t shocked I’ve been saying stuff like that for years.

The first part of the problem is that record companies have to get behind those projects and promote them just like any other act. While it is surprising to hear that Public Enemy’s landmark classic “It Takes a Nation of Millions…” has only sold 400 copies this year and that RUN-DMC’s groundbreaking album ‘Raising Hell” only sold 100 copies, is sadly only mere evidence of the dismal state affairs in not just hip-hop but I bet in R&B as well. I wonder what sales are like for Keith Sweat, New Edition, GUY and other 80’s R&B singers.

In defense of that twenty-two year old who knows nothing about Whodini or Kurtis Blow, I can say this. When I was twenty years old I had no idea that Marvin Gaye had material before “What’s Going On?” After all, it was the first thing I had ever heard from the man, and I had no reason to believe that he had done anything before it. Shit, that stuff was made before I was born. How would I know?

Now, once I learned about ‘Heard it Through the Grapevine’, ‘Stubborn Kind of Fella’, ‘Hitchhike’ and others I took upon myself to get up on that material. You all should do the same as far as learning your hip hop history. With all of the information available online there is no reason for cats to be calling Big Daddy Kane and Rakim ‘pioneers’. That is physically and mathematically impossible. A pioneer is: One who ventures into unknown or unclaimed territory to settle. Therefore it is impossible for people like Kane, G Rap, LL or KRS to be pioneers because the trail had already been blazed many years before they started by the Funky Four, the Cold Crush, the Treacherous Three, Spoonie Gee and many others!

Some years back I went to a Fresh Fest reunion concert RUN-DMC, Whodini, Kurtis Blow and the Sugar Hill Gang were there. The amphitheatre was virtually all black when Whodini, Kurtis Blow and the Sugar Hill Gang were there, but out of nowhere the immigration floodgates opened once RUN-DMC came on. I swear I don’t know where all of those white folks came from! Most white folks back in the day weren’t hip to Whodini by the way. And oh yeah, did you know that it was Whodini who have the distinction of having the first gold rap album – even before Run and them. No shit…and look folks don’t support them today!

Everyone Loves A Gangster

2006-12-05T17:46:00.000-05:00

Everyone loves an outlaw and 1.6 million people proved it when they tuned into BET’s premiere episode of ‘American Gangster’.

Just like the upcoming movie with the same name the series highlights the careers of the truly infamous: Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams, Freeway Ricky Ross, Nicky Barnes, Frank Lucas and the Chamber Brothers.

Now you’re probably saying to yourself: “Why does everything about Black people have to be about gangs and drugs?”

I dunno. But I can say this: if white people get to romanticize Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and Billy the Kid. And Italians (and everyone else) get to make heroes out of Al Capone, John Gotti and movies like “The Godfather” and the TV show ‘The Sopranos”, then African Americans can tell stories about gangsters (real gangsters – not studio made, record company inspired wanna be’s) from our neighborhoods.

There is a common mis-perception that there were never any major Black gangsters. White people don’t know about them, because no one outside of the Black community has really written about these people. Until now.

Hopefully we’ll see stories about racketeers like Casper Holstein the brother that created the numbers game as we know it today. The Jones Brothers of Chicago, Eddie Jones was so rich and stayed freshly dipped everyday. They owned one of the biggest furniture stores on the Southside of Chicago ‘Jones Brothers Furniture’; they literally owned the town as far as the numbers game went.

Ellsworth ‘Bumpy’ Johnson was called ‘The Godfather of Harlem’.

Frank Matthews, one time East Coast drug lord had spots in Brooklyn, North Carolina, Atlanta, Ohio and all parts in between, was also somehow connected with the French Connection case. He is one of the most successful bail jumpers ever, he split town in 1973 after posting $325, 000 to get out of jail and then disappeared like a wisp of smoke with more than 25 million dollars. For many years it was believed that the Mob rubbed him out, but the DEA and ATF don’t believe that, in fact, he was spotted a few years back in Philly. For the record Matthews was from North Carolina.

All of these stories deserve to be told in the same way we talk about white gangsters. If you don’t like those kinds of stories, don’t blame writers and producers – blame society for creating the conditions that gave birth to these kinds of people.

Reverend Al versus Colonel Sanders

2006-12-02T10:16:00.000-05:00

Lord help a rich Black man with too much time on his hands. And by all means, Lord, don’t strike Reverend Al Sharpton down for what he’s doing now. I never thought I’d see the day when a rich, fat, Black preacher would lead the boycott against Kentucky Fried Chicken.

You know you’ve seen it all when a fat Black man starts crying over the cruelty done to chickens!

And just think about all of those Sunday dinners and lunches he’s had over the years where he devoured big pieces of chicken wings, and breastes and thighs…Lawdy lawdy.

Good Writing

2006-11-28T11:05:00.000-05:00

I don't rememeber having a favorite book when I was growing up... although I read alot, there wasn't anything that stood out. In all honesty it wasn't until I was a teenager when I got my hands on three books that I found something that I really liked. The first one was called "Bloods" by Wallace Terry, and the other was 'Pimp: The Story of my Life by Iceberg Slim", and of course "The Autobiography of Malcolm X".

Other than that I read magazines.

I'll never forget my journalism teacher Bill Parks telling us "If your going to write, you gotta read, and read the good stuff..."

That is a statement that has perplexed me for years.

What is the good stuff?

I've tried to read all kinds of different authors, but in the end you know what, I can't get into it, because to me, it's just layers and layers of language that doesn't speak to me. Maybe it's a cultural thing. I remember this guy I used to work with a long time ago named William Lo, I used to go on and on about Malcolm X's books, one day I showed it to him, and after one page he said, "This is garbage, this is awful."

I couldn't understand how he could say such a thing. After all, it was the best thing I had ever read.

He pulled out one of his favorite books - don't ask me what it was, I can't remember, but he read a little bit of it out loud. I couldn't understand what in the hell the writer was saying. It was English, but he went into too many descriptions and poetic like language that it didn't appeal to me.

I use that example because I believe that writing - like music, is an art, what is trash to me may possibly be beautiful to you. I like Fela Ransom Kuti, you might like Justin Timberlake. My God may be your devil. I was clearly over 25 years old before I could appreciate Jimi Hendrix, hell I'm damn near 40 now and don't have the slightest bit of appreciation for Bob Dylan. I hate his voice.

All that to say if you like what you read then it's good writing. If it speaks to you and resonates with you - it's good.

The Real World

2006-11-28T11:02:00.000-05:00

This season of HBO's ground breaking series“The Wire” was good but slower than usual. Don’t get me wrong though I’m still a fan of the show, but they took too long building the story up this year.

For instance, the Major Crimes Unit, which is the crew of cops that bug the drug dealers and all that other stuff, was just re-instated, and this is the second to last episode of the season! That’s too long, that’s what…15 episodes to sit through before the shit hits the fan. I love the show, but I can see why people with short attention spans don’t.

But pushing my gripes aside, it is one of the best written shows out there. The things that happen to these kids are truly sad. I’m not sure whose story is sadder, but the one that stands out with me is the kid Namon, whose father Wee Bey was in the first season of ‘The Wire”, as one of Avon Barksdale’s soldiers. Bey was a cold-hearted killer – loyal to the end, but was a stone cold soldier. This season his wife is trying to push their 14 year old son to follow in his fathers footsteps, but there’s one problem: The kid ain’t cut out for the game like that. He doesn’t have that kind of heart, which would be a good thing in a different environment. In a better setting he’d have access to more positive role models so that a kid like that could possibly blossom.

After being busted for drug possession his mother tells him, “Motherfucker you mean to tell me, you ain’t got the heart for Baby Lock up? Nigga, I’ve kept your ass in NIKE since you was a baby. You gonna get out there and push that package…”

That is a shocking thing to see and hear on television. But not in the Baltimore of “The Wire”.

It’s a place where kids who snitch pay the price, drug addicted parents sell their groceries for a hit, drug addicted families steal each others clothes – and sell them, school systems warehouse kids who can’t read and do math, crooked cops steal, lie and harass citizens, city hall is over wrought with corrupt politicians who are more interested in protecting their own interests versus those of their constituents, teachers are forced to teach the path test versus real meaningful lessons and drug dealers employ neighbor kids who feel they have no other options.

That’s the world of “The Wire” the real world.

Do You Remember OJ?

2006-11-17T12:07:00.000-05:00

Of all of the most popular cases of the last thirty to forty years the Manson family trial, Rodney King, the Menendez Brothers and Paula Jones vs. President Bill Clinton, there was nothing that could surpass one case: The OJ Simpson murder trial. It was truly the trial of the century.

To a person of 17 or 18 years old today, the significance of the case, but more so the verdict probably has no meaning to them. I can dare say that like that day in November of 1963, very few Americans can forget where they were the day of the OJ Simpson verdict.

I know I won’t.

Word came out that the verdict was going to be announced at 10:00 am. This was a case that some of everyone had an opinion about. I remember being on a bus when I asked a chick “So what do you think of the OJ trial so far?” The next thing I knew everybody on the bus had an opinion, it was the damnest thing I had ever seen.

If you wanted to see two people argue in the mid 90’s all you had to do was invoke the name of OJ Simpson and then kick back and watch the battles begin. I worked at the James River Corp. and every morning these two guys named Charlie and Ted would go toe to toe over the case.

But what was the big deal about OJ?

In his heyday Orenthal James Simpson was one of the most recognizable figures of his era. He was a football star, a movie star, a sportscaster and if you didn’t know him for all of those things then you probably saw him on TV commercials running through airports for Hertz Rent a car.

He was the first black athlete to truly transcend race. He was polished, intelligent, articulate, good looking and knew how to present himself. He was accepted into circles that the average black athlete couldn’t get into.

And he had his pick of white women.

So here it is 1994 Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson Brown were found dead in her walkway.

The media reports said, “OJ Simpson’s ex-wife and her friend have been found murdered.” No one suspected OJ of anything at that point. But as the days went by, media speculation began to grow as to who could’ve committed these murders. And then slowly, very slowly you started to hear OJ’s name mentioned one too many times. And then all fingers started pointing directly his way.

Everybody had a theory as to how and why OJ would kill his wife and her friend. One guy said, "Hey man, I hear he was paying thousands of dollars a month in child support. That alone would be reason enough for me to kill her." Another guy said, "OJ saw Nicole having sex with one of his home boys...hell I'd wanna kill her too!"

And I can't forget the infamous scuba diving suit that OJ was supposed to have worn during the murders. Like someone is gonna miss a big black guy in a scuba diving suit?

Yeah right.

When the announcement was made that OJ Simpson was a fugitive the world went into shock. Because after all, if you run, you must be guilty, right? Hours later TV cameras picked up OJ in the infamous white Bronco in the slow speed chase down the 405 freeway. Every station in America tuned into that slow speed chase! Hell, they interrupted the NBA finals to follow the chase.

As the months went by speculation went back and forth as to whether Simpson was innocent or guilty.

But there was one day in the trial that will always stand out with me. From the very beginning I thought he was guilty, but when he tried that glove on…hmmmm…it doesn’t fit.

The late Johnny Cochran said it best: “If it doesn’t fit – you must acquit!”

That resonated with me, because that was the only physical evidence they really had, the bloody glove and the drops of blood in the Bronco.

So there it was October 3rd 1995 at 10:00. The TV cameras were zeroed in on the courtroom clock. I worked on the third floor at 300 Lakeside Dr. There was a TV in my break area. I had no idea until that day as to how many people in that building knew that there was a TV in my break area. Everyone came running in.

Judge Lance Ito took the stand and had the jurors led into the court. Turns out the jurors had only deliberated for three hours the day before. There was a sense that if the verdict went the wrong way that the shit was going to hit the fan.

OJ was asked to stand and fact the jury before the verdict was read. I bet he could’ve shit in his pants at that moment.

The counts were read: Not guilty on all counts.

There was shock all over the country

Damn near everyone in my break room cheered. Those that didn’t cheer were upset.

The same scene was played out all over the country.

For years the debate would rage: How did OJ get off?

Now OJ is releasing a book called “If I Did it…” in which he doesn’t admit guilt but he says, “Nobody knows this case like I do. I’m going to tell you a story that you’ve never heard before.”

His publisher Judith Regan considers this book a confession.

What on Earth would make this man who has denied any knowledge or involvement in those murders write something like this now? Maybe he’s toying with us. Or maybe he really did do it.

A Good Man Ain't Too Hard To Find

2006-11-10T12:28:00.000-05:00

With all of the talk about disintegrating Black families I figured that I'd drop my two cents in.

Ok, it is apparent that Black men are missing in action, hell, Stevie Wonder can see that. There are some statistics that say 1 in every 4 is in jail and there are others that say something like 1 in every 4 is on the 'dl' or just out right gay. I don't know if I believe those statistics or not. For the sake of this article - I don't.

Statistics aside, let's cut to the chase, these statistics are bought up whenever the subject of single Black women is raised. Black women say they can't find a good brother because way too many of us are either in jail, on the dl, out of work, or with a white woman.

Hmmmmm...there are 24 million African Americans in this country, for arguments sake let's just say there are something like 12 million Black men. Okay, there are somewhere near 2 million people incarcerated in some kind of penal institution; last I heard there were something like 400-600 thousand brothers doing time. Big number but not a nail in the coffin.

So that leaves something over 11 million Black men. Ok, now for the gay thing...If we believe the whole 1 in every 4 thing that means go walk to the corner, pick out 4 brothers and tell them your conducting a test. Tell them to be honest, ask them the following questions: Are you a homosexual? Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual? Have you ever engaged in sexual activity with another man?

Without a doubt there are a whole lot of dudes out there sneaking around with other dudes. I don't know the number but let's just say there are somewhere near a million brothers who are engaging in either bi-sexual or homosexual relations.

That leaves 10 million men may be more, may be less.

Now, brothers with white women...I can't front about that one, a whole lot of my boys are with white girls. I think just about every dude I came up with is married to either a white woman or someone who isn't Black.

I don't know how it happened.

All I can tell you is that my wife is Black. I wanted someone who shared the same culture that I do. Alot of these cats notice the difference on holidays when there is something not exactly right about their cornbread. They ask for sweet potato pie and get - well, it's close. Collard greens? Oh no, them niggas ain't gettin' the collards cooked in fatback or like my wife does with smoked turkey. And Charles Brown and King Pleasure are not playing in the background when they go visit in-laws.

So no number will be given let's just say it's alot.

All of this to say there are about 8 to 9 million available black men - and if you tally in the statistics of Black women in jail (which is high and getting higher, but not as high as brothers) and bi-sexual/lesbian women (my money says the numbers would be about the same) the numbers of available black women and available black men are somewhere near each other. Now what tips the scale is inter-racial dating/marriage.

But still. My bone of contention with the 'I can't find a good Black man' crowd is with all of the available brothers left, you all have your asses on your shoulders. Alot of women have their eyes glued to Essence magazine and have soap opera like fantasies of what romance and relationships should be like. If their honest, a whole lot of sisters are buying into the 'Essence Magazine/Shemar Moore ideal image of Black men, that when a good man does come along they turn him away because 'he isn't what I'm looking for.'

And when you ask them what they are looking for they say things that are so off the wall, you have to wonder what planet their from. "I want somebody that makes a hundred grand a year, and drives this kind of car, and vacations here, and can cook, and will massage my back and is buffed and blah, blah, blah..." And let's just say they do come across a brother like that, well, unless your ass is off the hook and you too are balling out of control like he is - you ain't nuttin' but another ass to tap.

The funny thing is is that there is often another brother who occasionally calls and asks her out, he's a nice guy but she don't want him cause he doesn't fit that soap opera conceived image in her head. She shits on him and puts him off and puts him off, meanwhile in the loneliness of her house she's griping about how she can't find anybody...

Wow. Like Flavor Flav would say: 'Woooooooow!'

Alot of women under 40 will not give a brother in the post office a shot. Nor a bus driver. Or a sanitiation worker. Or anyone else who isn't 'on their level'. And it's a shame because these dudes may know how to make them happy - in and out of bed. But nope they want that twisted fantasy in their minds. Shame. Damn shame.

See what happens is once they get to 40 they start looking around and getting desperate - and its then that they want a regular dude because they don't want to be lonely. They see that they ain't got it goin' on like they did when they were 25.

Wooooooow!

All that time they spent chasing losers and now they want a good man. I feel you. I guess you wake up and learn when you do right?

Vote Republican and Die

2006-11-07T09:51:00.000-05:00

Anyone who believes that voting Republican will make them safer is a fool.

Believe it or not, we are in more danger now than at any time prior to September 11th 2001. With the recent verdict to hang Sadaam Hussein and all, please believe, in the end, it spells trouble for us. Not only that, but killing Sadaam further infuriates the Sunni’s, and it will not help to bring that country closer together.

In fact it will drive them further apart.

Just last week a report came out that said ‘Iraq is on the brink of chaos’. When translated into plain English, it means: We can’t handle this shit anymore.

In all honesty though, and this is from a guy who is against the war, we have to stay there and finish the job. What does that mean finish the job? I dunno. But I know it means we are going to be there a long ass time. I mean real long. Like Korea long. In case you don’t know long that is, let’s put it like this. We fought the Korean War way back in the 50’s and we still have troops over there now; 50 years later!

Before we invaded Iraq Colin Powell warned President Retard, ‘If you break it; you own it.’

President Retard and the Evil Sith Lord said, “No problem, not a problem, we’ll be done over there in …what…90 days, ya think?’

Look where we are now.

I remember when the Evil Sith Lord went on Larry King and said, “the Iraqi’s can’t wait for us to get there. They will be dancing in the streets, singing songs and throwing chocolates at the feet of our soldiers.” I guess the words ‘chocolates’ and ‘bombs’ got twisted in translation somehow….ooops!

And oh yeah, he said we’d be looked at as ‘liberators’. Hmmmm…then why are we called ‘infidels’ and ‘invaders’? I guess those words got lost in translation too.

We have to stay there because there are terrorists there now – they weren’t there before, but they are there now. Those guys that are fighting against us over there are getting some of the best kind of training – on the job training. And you can’t beat on the job training. Instruction goes something like this: ‘Hey Bashid, go blow up that tank of Americans with that empty soda can.’

The terrorists are more Westernized than you think. Don’t be surprised if they come up with books that are packaged with special mix tapes and DVD’s like “How to Rid Your Country of Fat, Lazy Americans in Four Years (I Did it and So Can You)’ and ‘Ridding the World of Infidels One American at a Time’. They will be able to write guerilla warfare manuals pretty soon. And what do you think they are going to do with all of that on the job training, huh?

They are going to bring their asses over here that’s what. They don’t fight wars and shit like we do. They have their own timetable and shit; those dudes may hang out here for a few years before they do anything.

Anyone who falls for Karl Rove’s election year distraction plan deserves what they get. What is Rove’s distraction plan you ask? The one that says to harp on issues like gay marriage and family values.

Ok, ok, ok you’ve read my blog, you know I ain’t for gay marriage, but let’s be real here. What do gay marriages have to do with what’s currently going on now? Na da. Not a got damn thing. It is a distraction from the real issues: a fucked up foreign policy, a stagnant economy, a dismal education agenda, their idiotic fumbling of Hurricane Katrina and a war we can’t win.

I’ll tell you what, if gay guys want the same misery as married straight guys, go ahead. It’s your sanity. You’re stupid if you do it, look at all of the straight divorce rates…and you want that kind of misery too? Well, may God help ya.

I’m no presidential historian, but I can safely say that, at least in my lifetime (when I got here Nixon was boss) George Bush, Jr. is the absolute worse president this nation has ever seen. Clinton was the smartest; Bush One (his dad) knew how to corral the troops; Ford – hell he wasn’t around long enough to matter – he was like a caretaker or something while the real president was away; Carter was the most caring; Nixon was the toughest – and the scariest, while Reagan was a really skilled politician.

This guy we have now. Ok let’s see, he is shrewd and strong-willed, however on top of that is retarded. He sees nothing but what he sees and knows nothing beyond what he learned 25 years ago. There is a saying: “God protects fools and babies…” Well, may God help any idiot that votes Republican.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

2006-10-21T00:56:00.000-04:00

“...Why not you?”
-Wallace McCoy

Willie Dixon’s Uptown Bar and Grill has been a neighborhood mainstay for as long as anyone can remember. It’s been said that the Dixon family has owned it for at least 4 generations. People come and go in the neighborhood, but Willie’s remains.

On Tuesday nights they have an all you can eat crab feed that could knock your socks off with well drinks starting at $1.50. Wednesday and Thursday nights are cards and darts. If you’re lucky, you can catch old man Willie on the rare occasion when he comes out of retirement and kicks asses in a fierce game of Bid Whisk. The fried chicken and catfish are so good that if you get there after nine o’clock – you’re shit out of luck. Fridays and Saturdays are for karaoke. Locals line the walls and fill the bar stools waiting to watch friends and family entertain, and in some cases make total fools of themselves. But it’s all right if they do, because everybody knows everybody and knows things far worse about each other than who can or can’t sing.

It was on one of these Friday nights that the lives of two men would cross one another again and would forever seal the fates of both of them.

It was on this night that the crowd was entranced by the voice of a middle-aged light-skinned man with salt and pepper hair. Slight in build and short on teeth, the man sang in one of the smoothest falsettos anyone had heard in those parts in a long time. No one had sung like that in their neighborhood since LJ Reynolds of the Dramatics had dropped by in 1975 and sang Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones’ to a star-struck crowd. The man on stage this night sang a rendition of Eddie Holman’s 1960’s classic “Hey There Lonely Girl”. Note for note it was dead on the original.

At the end of the song the bar patrons dropped their drinks and gave the man a standing ovation. Humbled, the man silently nodded in thanks to the crowd. With a raspy voice stained with a shot of Hennessy and scarred by cigarette smoke the man thanked the crowd, “Thank you brothers and sisters. You make me feel so good inside, the Lord has blessed me this evening to be able to spend time with you, I hope you don’t mind if I sing another song for you. Do you mind if I take you back in time again?”

Enthusiastically the crowd yelled back ‘Yeah’ as the man turned to the deejay to request his next song. Just then the familiar drum roll of the Motown classic ‘Ooh Baby, Baby’ by Smokey Robinson exploded through the speakers. Everyone was smiling as the man closed his eyes while slipping into his smooth falsetto. Everyone but one troubled man seated at the bar.

The Hennessy-stained voice sounded so eerily familiar to the man at the bar, that immediately upon hearing it he was jolted from his seat like it had been shook by an earthquake. Slowly he rose up from his bar stool to get a better look at the face of the owner of the Hennessy-stained voice. Bobbing and weaving side to side he was able to see his way through the crowd of heads while getting a better look at the man. Half way to the front he was stopped dead in his tracks by the man’s face. His heart sped up to a full gallop.

At that instant his body was overcome by feelings of shock and anger. He knew exactly who that man was. As he looked in the bar mirror at his own face and remembered how smooth his youthful and boyish- looking face had been some 22 years before, his fingers ran along the scar that stretched from his left eyebrow, to the bridge of his nose, under his right eye, across his high cheekbone to his right ear.

Somberly he recalled the events to himself that had disfigured him in his youth. His wounds had healed; yes, but some wounds never go away. Like the one in your heart from missing your best friend because you know he isn’t coming back. The warmth of a lonely tear caressed his cheek and dripped into his mouth, where the salt from the teardrop dissolved onto his tongue.

He knew the man as McCoy – McCoy Wallace, but at that time McCoy had been an angry Vietnam veteran home from the war with an axe to grind with the world. He was an alcoholic. A drug addict. An abusive father and husband, and was known to rob drug dealers.

He, Deon McLove, was an aspiring teen-aged rapper at the time that was on his way to becoming a neighborhood hero. Word back then was that Bobby Robinson from Enjoy Records wanted to sign him. His slim build and boyish face caught the attention of many girls in the area. He had a reputation for being a ‘pretty boy’, this, would help to earn him the wrath of the many jealous ‘hard rocks’ in the area, if not for his best friend Vincent Sotolongo.

Vincent or Vicente` as his mother liked to call him, was a stocky kid with a gap-toothed smile, and fists that were big and battle scarred. He always made it a point to rock a baseball hat slightly tilted to the side to show off his wavy hair. The two of them had been best friends since elementary school and were hard to separate.

The ghostly image across the room awakened a skeleton that had been hiding in the darkest closet of his mind for far too long.

As Deon became the top rapper in his neighborhood, Vincent would be his protection from the crab-asses around the way.

On a cool October night in 1982 they went to check Busy Bee out at the neighborhood Boys and Girls Club. Every rap crew and wannabe knucklehead from within a 15- block radius was there as well. When they got to the jam, the air in the gym was thick and filled with the smell of underarm funk and the pungent aroma of weed smoke. The room was dark except for the lone light that came from the little lamp on the deejay table.

Making their way through the crowd Deon and Vincent headed to the stage. Massive crews of steely-eyed 5 Percenters encircled the gym floor like competing warriors. Stepping through the crowd Deon accidentally bumped into a 5 Percenter wearing a dark hat with big white bold letters that read ‘B GOD’. As the man slowly exhaled the cigarette he was smoking, the cloud of smoke mushroomed above the gym floor. As B God turned to confront him, Vincent stepped between the two to counteract any hostility. Once they approached the ropes they checked out the Bronx’s best, Chief Rocker Busy Bee, who was rocking the crowd while his man, Kool DJ AJ was cutting “Cavern, Cavern” on the wheels of steel.

“Come on shout it out…shout it out, come on 1, 2, 3 uhhh, ya go bom with the bom da bang da bang boogie boogie then you shake your booty to the bang bang boogie. And then ya bom with the bom da bang da bang boogie boogie then ya shake ya booty to the bang bang boogie. I want y’all to say this with me, come on…I’m DJ Bust-a-nut where? (The crowd yelled) In your face and in your butt! At the Alps we work out, at the Alps we work out…

As AJ kept the beat going he would backspin on the thunderous cymbal crash repeating it over and over. Crash…and then cut into the beat using the cymbal c-c-c-c-c-c Crash! The low end of the bass-line vibrated the gym windows and sent the b-boys into a sweat-drenched frenzy.

Stepping out of the hot and funk-filled gym into the cool October night the two laughed about some of the girls they had seen that night. Feeling hungry they headed in the direction of a local liquor store for some snacks and a couple of bottles of Wild Irish Rose. On their way up the block they ran into a local drug dealer named Stevie Dash. Dash, was a brown- skinned skinny guy with a neck full of gold chains and a Caesar haircut. He wasn’t an especially dangerous guy for someone of his trade, but his nervous disposition kind of kept people at bay.

“Yo what it be like fellas?” Dash said as he greeted them both. The two young men explained to him that they were on the way to get a drink and then would be calling it a night. Dash told the pair that he had a tape of a jam that Deon had done two weeks before and that he’d give it to him. The two followed Dash to one his ‘spots’. Uneasy about going to a known drug spot, Deon and Vincent said that they would catch up with him the next day.

“Yo y’all dudes buggin’, ain’t nuttin’ gonna happen to y’all out here. I’ll be right back; all y’all gotta do is stand here just like this.” Dash said as he mockingly folded his arms into a b-boy stance. “Ain’t nobody gonna mess with y’all if y’all just standing here in a b-boy stance.” Dash convinced them.

Clearly uncomfortable about being out of their neighborhood and in front of a known dope spot, Vincent yelled out to Dash. “Yo hurry up in there! I don’t want to be out here all night mother fucker!”

As Dash ran up the stoop into the house he dismissively said, “Yo ski boss, I’ll be right back just chill, goddamnit!”

“Yo man, this nigga here is buggin’,” Deon said as he sucked his teeth and folded his arms. “I mean, I want my tape and shit, but damn, look what a nigga gotta go through for this shit. Standing in front of dope houses and shit…yo wasn’t this one of them spots Frank Matthews or somebody like that had back in the day?”
“Yo shut the fuck up man, you don’t know who’s listening out here.”
“I’m just sayin’ yo man, look at all this shit though.”

Out the corner of his eye he could see a dark figure lurking in the shadows. The figure would peek out periodically from behind a lamppost and then wander over to a house on the corner. Deon wasn’t sure of what he was seeing but he didn’t want to over-react either. The two men continued their conversation all the while Deon kept a lookout for the shadowy figure.

As he sat back down on the stoop Deon adjusted his hat and rubbed his head, when he remembered a new tape he copped, “Hey, I was checking out the Force MC’s the other night at Broadway International right, and they got this new kid on the cut for them named Dr. Shock. Word up man, this kid was nice.”

‘Yo I seen them kids at the Parrot they was all right.”

Just then both men saw the tiny amber glow of a cigarette drop in the dark. Jumping off of the stoop and on to their feet the men were prepared for whatever came their way. The figure that stepped out of the dark was a slim black man in his late 30’s. He wouldn’t have been worth the passing thought if not for the fact that he was wearing dark sunglasses in the middle of the night and an Army fatigue jacket and blue jeans that had seen better days.

The men instantly recognized him as McCoy Wallace a known stick up man and dope-fiend. In a Hennessy and cigarette-smoke stained voice McCoy asked them, “So what y’all doin’ out here?”

Both men shrugged their shoulders and nodded their heads as if to say nothing, but McCoy was having none of that.

“Come on what y’all got for me?” McCoy said while looking at both men with a steely gaze.

“Yo check this out man, we ain’t got nothing to do with nothing you looking for”, said Deon.

“Bullshit, y’all niggas wouldn’t be out here for nothing. Where’s that mother fucker Dash at?”

“Yo man we just hanging out here, why don’t you just move on, you fucking dope-fiend,” said Vincent.

This earned the consternation of the older man. Suddenly he pulled a banana knife out of his jacket pocket and stuck it up to Vincent’s face. “Y’all some suckers, give me the dope AND your money,” yelled the sweating dope fiend.

Deon pleaded with the man to stop, “Ay we got nothing to do with none of this shit, for real, we’re just out here waiting on my man.”

“Empty your pockets, turn them mother fuckers inside out”, commanded McCoy.

Both men emptied the contents of their pockets onto the street: they had a total of $45 between them, two packs of Newport’s and a pair of dice.

“So where y’all hiding the dope?” McCoy quizzed them with the knife still pointed at Vincent’s face.

Scared the two young men protested that they had nothing to do with drugs and that they wanted to leave.

McCoy looked both men in their eyes and with glassy eyes said, “Y’all niggas think ya fooling somebody, but that ain’t working here. Not tonight. See, I seen y’all out here before and you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t belong here.”

A feeling of desperation rushed over the two men; instinctively they lunged at the man going for the hand with the knife. McCoy, a former combat veteran stepped back and kicked at Deon and caught Vincent in the throat as he continued to lunge forward. A gush of blood leaped out of Vincent’s neck splashing all over McCoy and Deon. Stunned, Deon paused to look at his friend; it was at that second that McCoy swung the blade in Deon’s direction slashing the young man across the left eyebrow to his right ear.

Crashing to the ground with a deep burning sensation across his face Deon let out a scream that could’ve awakened the dead. Suddenly, a resident across the street started to go for her window. McCoy hearing the stirring around him kicked Deon in the ribs with the force of a bucking horse.

Between the stinging of the cut on his face and the throbbing pain in his ribs he gasped, “Damn man, what the fuck, why me?”

McCoy dropped down to one knee droplets of blood were dripping from the blade on to the concrete like slow running water from a faucet, looking him dead in the face with rose-colored blood shot eyes and with that gravely voice as low as a whisper he said, “Why not you?”

And with that he walked into the cool midnight and disappeared like a shadow on the sun.

The morning headlines in the New York Post read:

ONE KILLED, ONE SLASHED IN QUEENS

Queens, NY – One man was killed and another slashed in a violent attack near a known drug spot on 178th and Jackson Ave.

Vincent Sotolongo, 19 of Flushing, was found dead in a puddle of blood, the apparent victim of a throat slashing. Also found at the scene was Deon McLove, also 19 and of Flushing, was found a few feet away with a severe slash to the face. Though his injuries are serious he is expected to survive.

A witness who chooses to remain anonymous gave police a description of the alleged perpetrator and an arrest is imminent.

Residents reported hearing an argument at about 1:30 a.m. and then heard a loud scuffle ensue before they heard the sound of “loud footsteps running away from the scene.”

The Sotolongo killing stayed in the papers for the next few weeks.

VIETNAM VET ARRESTED IN QUEENS SLAYING

VIETNAM VET PLEADS GUILTY IN QUEENS SLAYING

No member of the McCoy family was present at the trial. His wife of 9 years released this statement through her pastor:

To the Sotolongo and McLove families,

My family and I deeply regret your loss. The man that committed these acts was not the same man I knew before the war. The man I knew before the war was kind and loving and cared about humanity. The man that came home from the war is distant, abusive – both physically and verbally. I hardly know the man that came home from Vietnam, as he would not open up to me, my pastor or any other member of our family.

Once again I deeply regret your loss, my family and I deeply grieve for you.

Yours truly,
Ellen Wallace

The judge handed down a sentence of 10 to 20 years to be served at the Danemora Correctional Facility. To the astonishment of the Sotolongo family he could be paroled in 15 years.

Adjusting to prison life was not hard for McCoy Wallace as he had done two tours of duty in Vietnam and had been a guest at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, the notorious prison camp in Vietnam that broke the soul of many American soldiers.

What was difficult for Wallace to adjust to was not seeing his kid’s everyday. Though, emotionally distant from them, there was still a part of him, the loving, caring father buried somewhere deep inside of him that needed to see his children. The first few years of his incarceration he cried himself to sleep at night.

Seven years into his sentence Wallace decided to make peace with his inner-demons and Vietnam. He joined a Christians Men Group in Danemora and became an active participant in the group.

As he came to grips with his inner struggle; the images of the atrocities in Vietnam, the images of the faces of Sotolongo and McLove that fateful night, Wallace McCoy got down on his knees daily and begged the Lord for forgiveness.

Very often he would hold pep talks in his cell for other recovering addicts and vets; as he had become an encouraging force to both groups. He continually advised them to stay away from drugs and all other forms of foolishness that they could engage in behind bars. He constantly told them, “Look man, if you shuffle…you deal.”

He would accompany many of them to the prison psychiatrist’s office to discuss their problems. It was during one of these visits that the psychiatrist asked to see Wallace privately. Closing the door and taking a seat the psychiatrist looked at Wallace and said, “So McCoy how long have you been here?”

“I’d say it’s been 15 years now, sir.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about you, and your progress and I want you to know that I have noticed how far you have come. I wanted to tell you to your face that when it’s time for you to go before the board, I’m going to recommend your release. Now, you better not disappoint me McCoy, I don’t believe you belong here anymore. I find it highly unlikely that you’ll re-offend again. Do you understand?”

In shock McCoy said he understood.

The doctor continued, “McCoy when you leave here I want you to do me one favor.”

“What’s that?” McCoy answered.

“McCoy I want you to promise me that you’ll never come back to this place or any other places like this again. Okay?”

McCoy still in shock nodded in agreement and shook the doctor’s hand. Upon exiting the doctor’s office the euphoria of the moment was swept away when the faces of Sotolongo and McLove flashed in his head. Leaning against the wall to catch his balance, he quietly said a prayer to himself begging the Lord to forgive him for his sins.

When the prison gates were opened the beaming sun blinded him. It was the first time in years that he had smelled air that didn’t have a hint of prison funk. No one greeted him as he left the institution and entered into a new world.

Life for Deon McLove hadn’t fared well. As a youth he was known as a nice kid, but because of his pretty boy looks he was known to be arrogant and cocky. The slash across his face that McCoy had made left both a physical and emotional scar on his psyche. Whereas he was once good-looking and cocky, he was now disfigured and extremely insecure. The rap career he had worked hard to attain disintegrated before his eyes like dust in the wind. He worked two dead-end jobs 6 days a week that barely kept his head above water. Friends and family over the years silently remarked among one another about how much Deon drank. His insecurity about his looks made approaching women very difficult for him so he would often seek the company of prostitutes.

On this night at Willie’s just as he had recognized McCoy Wallace, one of his favorite companions came walking through the door. Her name was Exxxtacy Love; a hustler by trade, she was a stripper, a hair-stylist, massage therapist, mixtape distributor, internet model and escort. Caramel brown and stunningly sexy with arched eyebrows and full lips she carried herself with the confidant demeanor that only a pro could have. With carefully color co-ordinated manicured fingernails and toes, there wasn’t anything about her that was out of place. The tattoos on her arms made the loudest statements about her. On her left arm in big bold letters was her name ‘EXXXTACY LOVE’. On the right shoulder it said ‘Shut Up Bitch’. Inscribed on her neck: ‘The Path I’ve Chosen’.

Walking up on him and planting a light kiss on his cheek, she greeted him with a honey-inflected “Hey baby what’s up?” as she gently maneuvered his arm in the direction of the bar. As she seated herself on the bar stool she opened up her purse to at once drop her cell phone in and take a small mirror out. Looking at herself in the mirror and primping her hair and lips without looking in his direction she said, “Baby, buy me drink.”

Throwing five dollars on the bar he told her to get whatever she wanted as he re-located McCoy in the bar mirror. Grabbing his hat off the counter he pulled it down real low to hide his face.

“So where are we going tonight, baby?” Exxxtacy asked.

Briefly distracted from stalking his prey he said, “I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere.”

Exxxtacy let it all hang out, “Well why not? Shit, I had a lot to do tonight, there was other shit I could’ve been doing instead of coming out here to see your drunk ass.”

“Hey not right now, I got something else to do at the moment,” Deon said as he focused back in on his prey.

Without missing a beat Exxxtacy whirled around on the bar stool and snatched her cell phone out of her purse, flipping it open while walking away saying, “Yeah girl this mark-ass, trick-ass bitch think I got time for games and shit…”

Deon dismissed Exxxtacy and focused in on McCoy. He watched him as he laughed it up with his buddies. Drinking. Laughing. It looked like he had been living well. While Vincent was a decomposed lump of bones 6 feet in the ground.

The jukebox was serenading the crowd with the sweet sounds of R Kelly’s hit ‘Happy People’. Couples young and old danced in the small area, spinning and twirling each other around. He eyed Wallace at a table with a group of friends eating fish and telling loud stories. He decided to wait for him outside. He grabbed an empty bottle of MGD off the bar and headed into the night air. Once outside his heart raced around his chest. He looked around the corner to see if anyone was looking. No one was there. He silently waited in the shadows for McCoy to come outside. Hours passed by before McCoy would leave. In the shadows he wrestled with his conscious. He had never done anything like this before.

When McCoy stepped in to the night air after a night of merriment he had no idea of the fate that awaited him. Smiling to himself while looking for his keys he looked up the block for his car. Walking in the direction of a lone Honda Civic parked under a tree, Deon followed McCoy in the shadows.

When McCoy made it to within feet of his car he heard the loud music from a passing car, and a voice say, “There goes that mother fucker right there, bitch stop the fuckin’ car!”

Turning in the direction of the voice he saw a short, caramel- skinned woman jump out of a shiny black Toyota Camry that came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street. He vaguely recognized the young woman from earlier in the evening. Had it not been for the fact that she was walking really fast and in his general direction, he would’ve dismissed her and minded his own business, but he sensed some type of threat was about to occur.

“Every mother fuckin’ time I see your ass, it’s always some bullshit!” Exxxtacy shouted.

In a panic Deon frantically reached down to his ankle for his holstered .45 caliber gun. As he lifted the gun out of its holster and straightened his body up to take aim, Wallace saw the shadow of the young man that the loud mouth woman was shouting at.

“Ay yo!” The figure said stepping out of the shadow and into the light.

Squinting at first to focus in on the person, McCoy didn’t easily recognize the young man until he got a little closer and saw the scar across his face.

“Oh no!” he said as he was caught in the bulls eye of the barrel.

Throwing himself over the car Wallace slid across the hood as the first shot cracked through the silence of the midnight air. The first shot grazed his back, the second shot missed; the third shot hit him in the ankle. There was a second of silence and then a fourth shot rang out.

Desperately he crawled to the rear passenger tire in an effort to somehow shield himself from the bullets. Looking in the direction of the shooter from underneath the car he saw the young man sprawled out on the asphalt. Somebody shot him.

With his heart pumping a ferocious mix of fear and anger, Deon reached for the gun he dropped after being blasted by one of the people in the car. Fumbling around for his weapon he noticed a bloody faced Exxxtacy Love. One of his shots missed Wallace and hit Exxxtacy in the face. Somebody in the car fired at Deon striking him in the shoulder.

The street was a mass of mayhem. The screeching tires of the shiny black Toyota couldn’t muffle the screams of the injured young woman.

Slowly limping his way to Deon, Wallace scrambled for the gun angrily kicking it away from him. By the laws he learned in the street and his tours in Vietnam, he had every reason to blast this punk’s head all over the sidewalk. Reaching for the gun he felt the cold steel in his sweaty palms. Raising the gun up he had Deon’s face in the crosshair. Every instinct told him to pull the trigger, to end this here and now on this street corner, and disappear to some foreign country somewhere. But regret kicked in. The memory of what he had done before and the promise he made to himself to never cross that line again took precedence over anything he learned on the street. Looking from side to side he took a couple of steps and dropped the gun into the sewer. With his back turned he said, “If you know what’s best for you young blood, you better get in the wind.”

He stared back over his shoulder at the angry young man whose eyes were a blaze of fire while remembering that night. “I’ll never be able to undo the wrong I did to you, and we’ll never be even…but…”

His words were broken by the distant sound of the oncoming police cars.

“Fuck you you fuckin’ piece of shit!”

“Listen to me”, McCoy said quietly while looking in the direction of the sirens, ‘you can spend the rest of your life being mad at me if you wanna. But if you want what’s left of your life to be spent with even an iota of peace – at some point, get the fuck off your ass and into the wind, like I’m about to do.”

As the seconds went by the sirens went from being distant sounds to being a matter of seconds away.

When the patrol cars pulled up the corner was empty. The officers knew they were at the right place because there were puddles of blood all over the asphalt.

VH1 Does It Again

2006-10-18T11:01:00.000-04:00

Last years show has a slight edge over this years, the stand out performance for me was the Afrika Bambaataa tribute. Erykah Badu, Fat Joe, Q Tip, The Roots, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins all paid tribute to Afrika Bam and that shit was funky! My only problem with the Bam tribute was the absence of the Soul Sonic Force. Yes, Bam was the visionary of the group, but, ah, the lyrics were written by GLOBE, Pow Wow and Biggs, who were the actual MC's on the records. I gotta reach out to GLOBE and find out what happened.

Speaking of which, what the fuck happened to Tracy Morgan? Did you see duke on stage last night? How in the hell did that shit happen? That dude looked fruitier than a box of Fruit Loops. He walked out on stage looking extremely gay... Did you see that shit?

And Lil Kim what the fuck happened to her? She used to be a real cute girl. Somebody give her her nose back!

The Rakim tribute was hot.

On a different note why is it that the Beastie Boys not only look old but rhyme the same exact way after all of these years and no one not a one person says anything about them sounding old school?

The Sons of Sly

2006-10-06T16:46:00.000-04:00

Anyone who came of age in the 80’s will tell you that the music that pre-dominated Black radio back then was funk. Hearing a rap record on the radio at that time was a treat. And you best believe that everyone from the on air personality to the program director detested the airing of the song.

In the 1980's Michael Jackson was the most popular thing in music. His fame eclipsed that of Elvis and the Beatles. He was like a 500 ton elephant sitting on the recording industry.

But the world of funk was dominated by two forces: Rick James and Prince. Both men were undisputedly funky and although they were rivals, their common influence was Sly and the Family Stone.

Prince Rogers Nelson had his own sound. He took a whole heaping of Sly, a fistful of James Brown, a chunk of Parliament-Funkadelic and a dash of Jimi Hendrix and created what can only be called the ‘Minneapolis’ sound. With his androgynous looks and all around eccentricity he started a movement whose true believers included: The Time, Vanity 6 (later to be called Appollonia 6), Sheena Easton, Sheila E, Ready for the World and many others.

Artistically the man was on island all to himself. Though most of his albums stayed on the charts his commercial endeavors were mostly enjoyed by his die-hard fans.

In the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’ the question is asked: “Are you a Beatles fan or a Rolling Stones fan?” It’s a straight forward question, because depending on which group you liked or identified with it said something about who you were. But you couldn’t be both; you were either one or the other.

The 80’s equivalent of that argument (before hip hop took over) was you were either a Rick James fan or a Prince fan. You could love them both, and many did and still do, but more than likely you were feeling one more than the other.

From my own personal observations Prince fans tended to be just as eccentric as he was. This was the era where it was pretty common to see dudes wearing long Jheri Curls, eye liner and rocking long leather boots. I couldn’t get down like that. I liked some of his records but I wasn’t about to be walking around looking like that.

So I dug the other guys music more…

Born the son of a numbers running, Mob connected mother James Ambrose Johnson, Jr. was born in Buffalo, NY in 1948. According to published reports as a teenager he was shy and reserved. But young James’ quietness shielded a burning determination that would drive him to the top of the charts. But it was a long, hard windy road to the pinnacle of fame whose heights he’d bask in before falling off into a pit of drug abuse and a five year stretch in prison.

According to published reports when young James Johnson popped up in Toronto, Canada sometime in the mid 1960’s his name was Ricky James Matthews, how he came up with that name is not known, but a good guess would be that it was probably to keep the law off his tracks. You see, young Ricky was a wanted man; he was wanted by the FBI for being AWOL from the Navy. Friends and colleagues from that time say that James was a talented and charismatic performer who was heavily influenced by Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones.

In the mid 70’s Ricky James Matthews changed his name to Rick James and single handedly saved Motown from the brink of extinction. It was also at Motown that James, whose influences were rock, jazz, salsa and funk – but more so rock, was introduced to a young white female singer who loved the hell out of Rhythm and Blues. It is said that they were an odd pairing, but a good pairing. Her name was Teena Marie.

Being a young New Yorker transplanted to the West Coast I was enthralled with the emerging sound from the NY streets: Hip-hop. I had neither the auditory attention nor musical taste for anything that didn’t match the break-beat style that predominated New York rap at that time.

That was until I fully got to dig Rick James.

“Standing on the Top”, “Mary Jane’, ‘Cold Blooded’, ‘Dance with Me’, ‘17’, ‘Pimp Simp’, ‘Ghetto Life’ and many others captured my imagination.

The first concert I ever went to was at the now gone Circle Star Theatre in San Mateo, Ca. I had to beg and plead with my mother for 2 weeks to allow me to go.
“Mark, do you know what kind of people go to Rick James concerts?”
“Nah, what?”
“Pimps, prostitutes and gangsters!”
“So”, I said, ‘they ain’t gonna bother me!”
“Well, who are you gonna go with cause I’m not taking you?”

There was no doubt about that, because there was no way on God’s green Earth or in the hell below, that I was going to go see Rick James with my moms, that was out of the question. I wanted to go with my home boys: Mark and Rodney.

“What, the three of you at a Rick James concert?” My mother yelled.
“Yeah, well, Damina’s going too.” I said.
“Oh hell no!” she said, ‘you’re right the pimps and gangsters won’t want you guys – they’ll want her!”

She had a point there.

Damina, my home boy Mark’s older sister, who was 19 years old at the time, had men all over the Bay Area falling over each other trying to get with her. Gangsters included. But to her credit she didn’t let any of them dudes play her out.

We sat in the front row at the Circle Star Theatre that night. I don’t know how Rodney’s mother pulled that one off, but she did. After the Mary Jane Girls did their set, the Stone City Band did theirs.

At the end of their set the lights were dimmed and Rick James was introduced. Rick came strolling down the aisle in a white outfit sporting a captain’s hat, wearing dark shades while holding his guitar in one hand and smoking a joint with the other. Rick was cool.

I felt Rick’s brand of funk more than I could Prince’s. Rick, if you close your eyes and listen to his songs comes off like a p-i-m-p in a lot of his records. From the sound of things he smoked a lot of good herb, snorted the best cocaine and regularly took 4 or 5 girls to bed a night. To my teenage ears… that dude was God.

On the other hand I could hardly understand what in the hell Prince was talking about in most of his songs. I knew the dude was deep but…sleeping with your sister? Come on hops, you gots to come better than that. And all of these years later I still don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about on “When Doves Cry”, which is one of my favorite recordings from the man, that and “Lady Cab Driver”, but I don’t know what in the hell he’s singing about.

Rick James was much more straight forward: ‘Give it to me Baby”, ‘Super Freak’, ‘I Love you 69 Times’ – real pimp shit. And that's pimp spelled the way Black folks say it 'p-e-e-i-i-i-m-p'.

Speaking of pimps, yes, their were plenty of pimps, prostitutes, players, gangsters and all kinds of other underworld types at the Circle Star that night. The pungent smell of marijuana hung over the theatre like a rain cloud.

Damina bought her best friend Perdita with her that night and we ended up trailing the groups back to some hotel somewhere in San Mateo. We were hoping to meet Rick, instead we met Monty of the Stone City Band, who just so happened to be hanging out at Denny’s.

Rick James’ bodyguard and brother, a short, bald- headed dude with a red rag tied around his head threatened to beat anyone down who went near Rick. Let’s put it like this: We must’ve gotten pretty close that night, because as I turned a corner down a lone corridor in the hotel, the bodyguard jumped to attention and yelled: ‘Hey lil nigga!”

I took off running down the hall yelling “Yo, the big dude is coming, the big dude is coming!"

Nowadays Rick James has been become notorious for a phrase, one which I think will live on just as long as his music: "I'm Rick James, bitch!"

MOVIES THAT CHANGED BLACK AMERICA

2006-10-02T21:59:00.000-04:00

Movies impact us in different ways. They make us cry, they make us think and they make us cheer. Every once in a while a movie will come along and it will capture current attitudes and energies in a way that, more or less, crystallizes a movement so to speak.

There have been thousands of films made about the lives and souls of Black folks. There have been stories told about brothers in everything from the slave ships to rocket ships.

I remember when I was a little boy in the early 70’s and Kung Fu movies were the rage. I recall looking at the screen and seeing a bunch of Chinese folks practicing moves in Shaolin temples. Seeing images like that made me (and many others) think that all Chinese people knew Kung Fu. As a little boy I used to walk up to Chinese people on the street and yell ‘Hiiiii-ya!’ As I was jumping in the air doing a karate kick.

That was the power of films like ‘Master Killer’ and the ‘Five Deadly Venoms.’ I bet I wasn’t the only young brother at that time who took up karate because he wanted to learn how to defy gravity like the “Kid With the Golden Arms.”

I don’t believe that art makes anyone do anything, be it a rap song, rock song, book, movie or whatever. But art does articulate certain energies that awaken people to things going on around them, and entice them to want to join in.

For instance, when I was a little boy there was a movie called ‘Super Fly’ which starred the late Ron O’Neil. From what I understand, before ‘Super Fly’ came out brothers were into the civil rights movement and were about getting their acts together. That was until O’Neil popped up on screen as the ‘Mac-a-lack drivin’, coke- sniffin’, fine white woman-fuckin’, fur coat wearin’, big time money makin’, cocaine dealer Priest.

“Brothers weren’t the same after that”; my pops and his friends tell me.

‘Super Fly’ wasn’t the only movie to have that kind of effect; there have been others in more recent times.

But back to ‘Super Fly’; let’s start there.

Tale of a Pusher Man: Super Fly

According to published reports and interviews Ron O’Neil was a classically trained stage actor. He had all of the chops to make it as a first-class artist. But the trouble was - work wasn’t plentiful.

And then he was offered the role that would change his life.

What should’ve been his shining moment soon dissolved into a curse. You see the character he was portraying was a cocaine dealer named Priest who wanted to get out of the game. He wanted to do one last number (as he called it) and then retire young and rich with a million dollars under the mattress.

Only one problem for our hero: Very few drug dealers ever see retirement. His partner Eddie, played by the late actor Carl Lee, didn’t share the same dreams.

“Nigga, what you gonna do besides what you doin’ now, besides pimp, and to be honest with you I don’t think you got the heart for that…” Somewhere in that same monologue Eddie would say the words that would be echoed by New Jack crack dealers some twenty years later …”Why do you think they call it dope?”

Our hero’s problems aside Ron O’Neil had some bigger problems knocking on his door: the NAACP. They wanted to boycott his ass.

Before crack, heroin and the people that dealt it was the scourge of the Black community. Needles were everywhere as were junkies with arms that looked like railroad tracks. So a movie about a Black drug dealer in Harlem was not going to be a good look.

In his own defense O’Neil countered: “The heroin pusher is the scourge of the black community. But we’re talking about coke, which is basically a white drug. Since coke is not physically addictive, people do not steal and rob to get it. There are no coke junkies.”

That’s what they didn’t know back then.

So back to the Civil Rights movement, folks had been protesting and getting hit upside the head for equal access into the society for so long that they couldn’t take it anymore. On the film front, Black folks wanted to see images that truthfully portrayed us. No one wanted to see Sambo, Rochester and brothers with mops and buckets any more. They wanted to see some real brothers.

Enter Melvin Van Peebles. ‘Sweet Sweetback and his Baaaadaaaassss Song’ premiered in 1971. So many people were elated to see a film where a brother not only got to kick some ass but got to get some ass on film too.

Say what you want about the movie but it is a pivotal point in Black cinema.

‘Super Fly’ opened and was heralded by brothers on street corners, nightclubs and pool halls as being the equivalent of the return of Sweet Daddy Grace. Brothers flocked to get long fur coats with hats to match, and had Rolls Royce grills installed on the front of their cars. I bet more than a few went out and got themselves a white woman too.

According to the civil rights crowd, brothers forgot about the movement. They threw away their dashikis for sharkskin suits and multi-colored shirts and jump suits. And of course, white women.

Many a brother whose hair is more salt than pepper now, looks back on that moment in time as an event that changed our culture. Never mind the fact that drug dealers and pimps had been dressing the same way for years in Black communities all over the country. Frank Lucas, Frank Matthews, Nicky Barnes and many others were ghetto celebs at a time when the phrase wasn’t popular.

The World is Yours: Scarface

There is nothing new about cocaine it has been around for a long time. The 70’s and early 80’s have been called the ‘champagne and cocaine’ era. Only the ‘beautiful people’ did it.

When the film ‘Scarface’ debuted in 1983 it was a blockbuster. Some of everybody loved it. Here’s the story: Cuban immigrant lands on these shores in search of the mythical American dream. The criminal past he seems to have had back in his homeland has been bought here with him. He wants to be rich like a Rockefeller. His ‘balls- out- go- for- mine’ attitude and determination elicits ‘Amen brother-like’ responses from brothers from all the way in New York to LA.

Monologues like: “…I only got two things in this world: my balls and my word, and I don’t break them for nobody, man…” Or this one: “Who put this thing together? Me, that’s who. Who do I trust? Who do I trust? Me, that’s who…” Were recited on street corners in Black neighborhoods everywhere. There was something about the protagonists ‘fuck you I’m a get mine’ that resonated with brothers all over. It was the perfect primer for the oncoming plague called crack.

Long established rules of the street were thrown by the wayside when crack hit the scene. At one time cocaine dealers weren’t known for violence; after all they catered to a more upstanding clientele. Crack cocaine was made cheap, no longer did you have to be a member of the beautiful one’s to get high. For 20 dollars or less, you could get as high as apple pie in the sky.

But with it being cheap came the violence.

Crack also made people paranoid. No one trusted anyone anymore. Unlike heroin or cocaine dealers, crack was dealt by people as young as 15. So there it was 1985, 1986 when crack hit the streets, BMW’s, Ferrari’s and Benz’s were all over and being driven by teenagers. Teens, who by the way had wholeheartedly absorbed the Tony Montana mantra: Fuck you the world is mine.

As a result semi-automatic weapons and drive by shootings became more and more the norm.

Psychopaths on the Warpath: Colors

Crips and Bloods originated in Los Angeles in the early 70’s. The only other big city that had a gang problem that matched LA’s was Chicago.

That was until the late 80’s.

Crack and the crime that came with it was in every city throughout the country by 1987. At the same time gang violence in LA was at an all time high. It was like a mini-Vietnam.

One of the fathers of the crack movement was an ill literate tennis pro named Freeway Ricky Ross. He supplied cocaine to dealers all over LA. At some point he got into his head that he needed to expand his business and set up shop in other states.

Taking a page from the ‘Freeway Rick’ book gang members did the same thing: they expanded their turfs to other states. Later DJ Quik would remark in his classic recording “Just Like Compton” about how Bloods and Crips were in places like Denver and have “never even seen the ‘Shaw.”

At the same time that that was happening a movie called ‘Colors’ hit the big screen. ‘Colors’ told the story that the rest of America had only seen in: 30 news clips. After it came out, Crips and Bloods were everywhere. They were turning up in cities that up to that point hadn’t had a gang problem.

When Are You Too Old To Be A B-Boy?

2006-10-02T18:14:00.000-04:00

I got the biggest kick out of watching everyone’s favorite guilty pleasure ‘The Flavor of Love” this weekend.

I won’t lie I am of that small minority of people who thinks that Ms. New York a/k/a Tiffany Patterson is a cute girl. For real she is. At least last season she was. Granted her attitude makes her unattractive.

Now me, personally, I don’t like anybody to over talk me in conversation. And as far as talkin’ about people’s moms and shit -- that ain't cool.

But you know, other than that, ya boy would slide her the bozack real quick. She would get it and so would Deelishis, Beautiful and Bootz, oh, please believe that ya man would be on some Lex Steele type shit.

The thing that I found interesting was the relationship between Flav-zell and New York’s Moms who is a total MIWWF (Mom I Wouldn’t Wanna Fuck). If they do end up hookin’ up, somebody should keep a camera crew on hand for weekends and holidays. Dust will fly, clocks will get smashed and weaves/wigs will get burnt up.

To tell the truth, I felt for both Flav and New York’s Moms. I felt for Flav because I’ve kind of been in his shoes before.

When you get to be over 30 years of age people look at hip-hoppers real funny. Questions are asked like: “When are you going to stop wearing baggy pants?” “Why are you still saying “Yo” at your age?” “When are you going to stop wearing your hat like that?” “Why do you still walk that way?” In other words folks are looking for you to act and look more like a ‘grown up’.

Nothing disturbs me more than those types of questions. Never mind the fact that I have been on my own since I was 19. Never mind the fact that I have never done drugs or have seen the inside of a jail cell. Never mind the fact that for all of my adult life I have always held down a job.

What happens when you get to be an over- 30 hip-hopper is you get locked into a little box, a stereotype: Only listens to rap music, only drinks malt liquor or Hennessey and has no education or skills beyond hip-hop.

Tell you what, I ain’t called Mark ‘Skillz’ for nuttin’. And as far as my musical tastes go they run a wide range from rock (the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Living Color, Hendrix, the Police) to soft rock (Elton John, Andy Gibb, Billy Joel) to jazz (Coltrane, Donald Byrd and the Crusaders) to reggae, afro beat and a whole lot of other stuff. And just for the record: Henny and any type of Malt Liquor repulse me, give me a glass of red wine and I’m straight. Besides hard liquor will make you look 10 years older than you really are.

The responses you get once people get to really know you is something like, “Oh, you’re different”, to “no way”. Like a hip hop cat couldn't possibly know anything beyond hip-hop and the hood.

Gimme a break.

A while back I was watching “Waiting to Exhale”, I sat there looking at the characters that the actors were portraying and said to myself, ‘Damn, how come I can’t be like them?”

Don’t get it twisted I like who I am, but I sat there wondering to myself about how the life decisions I made a very long time ago affected my life today. I’ve never been comfortable wearing a suit and tie everyday.

A long time ago my dad taught me that a Black man has to know how to walk both sides of Black culture: the street and work. You talk one way at work and another on the street. I’m glad he taught me that because it’s been key to my survival for the last 20 years. I’ve never had the ambition to be in corporate management, that shit is not in my DNA. And more importantly, I have never been comfortable in corporate settings. That's just not who I am.

Which brings to me what New York’s moms was talking about: “When is he going to start acting like a man? Who wants to be seen in public with a man wearing a big clock?” Show me the man…”

In her defense, I can say that I would be a little concerned about my 26 year-old daughter dating a 47 year- old man like Flavor. But I don’t have any daughters (thank God), I have nuttin’ but sons. Come to think about it, Flav is probably her mother’s age.

By 47 years of age there are certain things that are expected of you: mastery of professional type talk, success and a more mature presentation. Of which Flavor only has one of the criteria met. But don’t get it twisted, home chick and her daughter are on some gold-diggin’ shit for real.

“Tiffany”, her moms said to her with concern, ‘You want a man that’s wealthy and successful and who loves Jesus and knows how to treat a woman.”

Let’s start with this: As a parent I can feel where she’s coming from because you want the best for your children. But on the real, once your kids are grown there ain’t but so much you can really do but protest. But why is her moms so repulsed by the very sight of Flavor?

Believe it or not, it ain't so much about the way he looks.

I can tell you for my own personal experience that Flavor Flav is one of the coolest cats, and he is more mature than he lets on. What you see on screen is him, but what gets lost or not seen at all is the sensitive, thoughtful, insightful guy that William Drayton really is. Yes, he is a class clown, no doubt or argument about that from me. But to have such a reaction to him (for those that don’t know Flav and NY’s Moms almost came to blows) isn’t called for.

I suspect that Moms has been with quite a few Flav-esqe type characters in her life. And judging by the way she treats her man, Alex (I dunno about you but furniture would’ve been moving if she would’ve come at me like she did him) she’s been in quite a few physically abusive relationships. I say that because usually, women of that age get to a point where they want to be the controlling/manipulative one in a relationship and they know that they can’t do it with an Ike Turner type, so they get a dude who’s basically glad to be fuckin’.

But back to Flavor, I think he spoke for all of us old school hip-hop cats when he said to NY’s moms: “If you give me a chance, I’ll show you something else [other than the clock-wearin’, ‘Yeaaaah boyeeeee’ yellin’ immature thug that you perceive me to be].

What's Your Name?

2006-09-29T09:56:00.000-04:00

Sept. 21, 2006 — Studies of resumes have found that people with 'black-sounding' names are less likely to get callbacks.

"20/20" put 22 pairs of names to the test, posting identical resumes except for the names at the top.

The resumes with the 'white-sounding' names were actually downloaded 17 percent more often by job recruiters than the resumes with 'black-sounding' names.

What are some of those names?

Here's a list from the book "Freakonomics," by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, showing the top 20 whitest- and blackest-sounding girl and boy names.

20 "Whitest" Girl Names:

Molly, Amy, Claire, Emily, Katie, Madeline, Katelyn, Emma, Abigail, Carly, Jenna, Heather, Katherine, Caitlin, Kaitlin, Holly, Allison, Kaitlyn, Hannah, Kathryn

For the record they forgot: Susie, Jill, Julie, Colleen and Sara

20 "Blackest" Girl Names:

Imani, Ebony, Shanice, Aaliyah, Precious, Nia, Deja, Diamond, Asia, Aliyah, Jada, Tierra, Tiara, Kiara, Jazmine, Jasmin, Jazmin, Jasmine, Alexus, Raven

For the record: Raven is not a 'Black sounding' name. I bugged the fuck out one day when I met a white chick named Shanice, that shit blew my mind. And oh yes, can't forget the name Nicole which is usually reserved for girls who are mixed with black and white.

20 "Whitest" Boy Names

For the record these are with the exception of the names Scott, Jacob and Garrett undoubtedly, unquestionably the most 'whitest sounding' names in this country, hit it:

Jake, Connor, Tanner, Wyatt, Cody, Dustin, Luke, Jack, Scott, Logan, Cole, Lucas, Bradley, Jacob, Garrett, Dylan, Maxwell, Hunter, Brett, Colin

20 "Blackest" Boy Names

For the record these are with the exception of Willie and Reginald undoubtedly, unquestionably the 'Blackest sounding' names in this country, there is no doubt whatsoever about these names, hit it:

DeShawn, DeAndre, Marquis, Darnell, Terrell, Malik, Trevon, Tyrone, Willie, Dominique, Demetrius, Reginald, Jamal, Maurice, Jalen, Darius, Xavier, Terrance, Andre, Darryl

Now depending on where you live I have to add the following names: Shameek, Melquan, Bilal, Jovani - you get the picture.

An Open Letter to Moazzam Begg

2006-09-27T21:33:00.000-04:00

Dear Moazzam,

I just read an interview that detailed your account of your imprisonment and torture at the hands of my government. As an American citizen I sincerely apologize for your treatment. I will not be as so ignorant and apologize to you on behalf of all Americans because of alot of us are more ignorant today than we were at any time prior to 9/11. http://www.alternet.org/story/42182/

I fully agree with your assessment that my government has made the world less safe since 9/11, your account is but the tip of the iceberg as to why.

When I was a little boy I wrote to political prisoners in this country, one of them was a man named Martin Sostre, as I recall he was framed for a robbery he didn't committ, he was incarcerated more so for his political views (and actions) during the early 70's.

But your account is far scarier: to take you from your family and deprive you of your human rights is demonic. Especially considering the fact that they had no evidence of you having any ties to Al Qaeda.

In the news I've read that there were no terrorists in Iraq prior to 9/11 - but they've found their way there now. When 9/11 first happened I remember the headline in Newsweek magazine said: "Why do they hate us?'

George Bush said, "they hate us because we love freedom..."

If anyone believes that then I have one thousand acres of prime real estate for sale in Florida, forget about any story you've ever heard about the Everglades, this is prime real estate!

Age Ain't Nuttin But a Number

2006-09-27T15:26:00.000-04:00

Finding someone to hook up with at any age is hard to do, from my own experiences and others around me, the older you get the harder it gets.

Believe it or not as an 18 year old my dating opportunities were pretty limited. You see I didn’t have a car and I worked at Mickey D’s, so opportunities for me were limited by my meager finances.

Back then Jimmy Crackcorn was on and poppin’, we’re talking about the era of the big drug dealers, people blingin’ back then were into some illegal shit. It wasn’t unusual to see a guy 18, 19 years old driving a BMW. Dealers back then were everywhere; some of everyone had a package on the street and crews of people working for them. These guys had pockets that literally looked like they had the mumps. Big rope chains, beepers and fresh Fila gear was everywhere. If you had all of that and a car – you could get any girl you wanted. And it seemed like all of the pretty girls wanted drug dealers back then.

If you (like me) didn’t have all of that then you had to run your game someplace else. White girls were never my thing I couldn’t rock like that. Not that there is anything wrong with white women, I just prefer black women. All of my home boys were into white girls but I couldn’t do it. So that left me with girls who ranged in age from 15 - 17.

It has taken me almost twenty years to figure out why that was. Now I know why.

Believe it or not there isn’t a whole lot of difference (maturity wise) between a 15 year old girl and an 18 year old boy. Although we’d like to think there is, there isn’t. Especially if that young man is not in college (like I wasn’t). Without the presence of girls his own age, an 18 year old has no choice but to go with young girls. Girls of 18 are more mature than boys of 18, and they are usually trying to get with older guys. Think about it, an 18 year old girl can easily get into places that an 18 year old guy can’t, like clubs. For whatever reason fake ID’s are readily available to girls of that age.

Guys at 18 aren’t usually ready to dress up and go out – but girls of that age are. To a 15 year old girl an 18 year old boy is mysterious because he is more mature than the boys at school.

My home boy Babyface told me something back then that has stuck with me to this day, Face, who was 22 at the time used to say, ‘Pussy doesn’t have an age.”

I thought (and still think) that is one of the most retarded statements ever made. But it was necessary for him to believe that because women his own age weren’t interested in him, because he didn’t have the things that a 22 year old man should have: his own place, a nice car, and a decent paying job.

I told him something like, “Sure it does, 18 months in county jail if you’re caught with the wrong girl.”

He didn’t care.

When it comes to sex we’ll make ourselves believe all kinds of crazy shit.

By the time I was in my twenties I was no longer interested in younger girls, I had more options available to me (I had a car). I wanted someone who could relate to the things I was interested in and had similar experiences (time wise) to mine.

One hot ghetto day at the long forgotten Festival at the Lake in Oakland, a girl caught my eye. She had long curly hair, chinky eyes and big hoop earrings (I don’t care what you say about big hoop earrings I like them on women, so go jump off a bridge) she would remind you of Ice T’s ex wife Darlene, yeah man, she looked like that!

Our eyes met for a couple of seconds, she looked at me and said, ‘Whassup you wanna holla or what?’

By this time I was 26 years old I was catching women left and right and to be honest with you I still liked hood rats back then.

As I got closer to her I noticed a joint in her mouth, it was so small that you couldn’t call it a joint anymore, because it was smoked down to about the size of a finger nail, it was what you would call a ‘roach’. This thing was somehow lodged into the crack of her mouth; I mean this sucker was barely holding on to the corner of her lips. She must’ve been smoking that shit all day!

Anyway I sat down beside her and started talking to her, every other word was ‘nigga this’ and ‘bitches that’. “Damn”, I thought to myself, ‘what in the hell am I doing here?”
“Yo, how old are you sweetheart?” I finally asked.
‘17’, she said with confidence.
I sat there and thought about it for a second. This girl looks good as hell. But this girl has the worst attitude. And not only that she is entirely too young for me to be around.

My thoughts were interrupted by her asking me, “What, you have a problem with that or somethin’?”
“Yeah”, I told her, “no disrespect though, you got it goin’ on but…”
“It’s all good”, she said, ‘if I ain’t what you looking for then agitate the premises.”

Caught off guard by her remark I wanted to break her down with my mastery of the art and science of that other English language: Cuss words. But I refrained from that because I didn’t want to carry myself that way at 26 years old. A little voice in my head told me that not only was I too old for her, but I was too old to be there.

Open for Interpretation

2006-09-22T11:33:00.000-04:00

Art is open to interpretation; whatever you see is what you see. There are many different ways to interpret a piece of art. For instance, the painting you see above is open to interpretation.

What do you see?

I’ll tell you what I see. I see a runaway slave in danger. It looks like that brother escaped from a plantation and hijacked a boat to get back to Africa, but it ain’t gonna happen cause the sharks are gonna eat his ass alive! Looking at this makes me wanna yell: Row nigga, row!

Ok that is one way to look at it. Here’s another.

The brother is lost at sea and is in immediate danger. There is blood in the water, the waves are high, the sharks are circling, and it looks like there is a storm coming his way. It looks like the brother doesn’t have a chicken’s chance in Colonel Sander’s backyard of making it. His rickety boat has no sail and it looks like he has nothing to steer with either. In other words: the brothers in trouble. The phrase up a creek without a paddle takes on a whole new meaning when looking at this painting.

But if you look at the painting again look off to the left and in the horizon you’ll see what looks like a boat. The picture doesn’t look as bleak now. Maybe if the brother stays focused on surviving and if he has something to steer with, maybe, just maybe he can steer his way to that ship. All that to say the brother needs to stay aware of the immediate danger and concentrate on how he can get out of it, a’la get to that ship somehow someway.

You can apply that to your life anyway you want.

How about this photo, what do you see?

Easy answer: two guys named JDL and Master Rob posing hard, chillin' out.

Ok, but let’s look deeper.

First of all let’s start with this, who are these two guys? The gentleman on the left with the short afro and pork chop sideburns is JDL (Jerry Dee Lewis) of the pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers. The man next to him with the bald head and shiny white sneakers is Master Rob of another pioneering rap group called the Fantastic Romantic Five.

In their heyday the Cold Crush and the Fantastic were the hottest groups on the streets of New York. Tapes of their infamous battle circulate the streets to this day. Ask anyone who was around back then and they’ll tell you: The Cold Crush won. But then someone else with salt and pepper hair and an expanding waistline will counter: Yeah, but Fantastic took the trophy home.

In their heyday their battle was the equivalent of Jay Z vs. Nas or Kool Mo Dee vs. LL Cool J. It was a heated rivalry, they argued on the streets and in the clubs. But never once did these guys exchange blows or fire shots at each other. Their battle stayed on the stage.

But let’s look a little deeper.

Both of these men are now middle aged and judging by their clothes are incarcerated. Dig on that for a minute. Here are two men in the prime of their lives, locked up. It doesn’t really matter what they are in there for. What matters is that they are there.

Their plight is no different from the hundreds of thousands of other brothers who are incarcerated today. But what’s the root cause? I’m no sociologist or psychologist so don’t get me to talking.

But I can say this: Jail is the place that people go to when they lose sight of what’s important. When we lose focus on what really matters, much like the brother in the painting, who, it seems is focused on the impending doom rather than his salvation. In all honesty, it is much easier to focus on immediate threats than possible hope.

When I see guys like them in that situation I think of three things: One: it is good to see their alive and the others are dead dreams and unrealized potential.

Many young brothers and sisters are in pursuit of that golden dream of a career in music. That is good. But, if you have no marketable skills and education, what happens is without the hope of an opportunity to make real money; you’ll get lost drifting from menial job to menial job without any hope of doing better. When hope is lost is when we tend to lose focus. And that’s when you see grown cats behind bars for some bullshit.

Photo of Master Rob and Hut Maker JDL is from the archives of http://www.jayquan.com

Let Your Soul Glo

2006-09-21T00:30:00.000-04:00

Here’s a trivia question for you: What do Luther Vandross, the Jackson’s, Kurtis Blow, all of the members of the groups Full Force and Ready for the World along with Eazy E, Ice Cube, Ola Ray, Babyface, Lionel Ritchie, actor Eric LaSalle and Little Richard have in common?

Answer: the ‘Jheri Curl’.

Depending on what part of the country you lived in, if you didn’t have a curl – you couldn’t a girl. I got my shit relaxed so I was alright.

Back then there wasn't a hair style more popular in Black America than the Jheri Curl. Back in those days the Jheri Curl was king, and damn near every celebrity wore one.

No one wore dreadlocks in the 80's but them 'crazy ass Rastafarians' (as we used to call them). Put it like this, if you wore dreadlocks in the early 80’s you were an oddity. I don’t know who would’ve gotten more attention back then: E.T. or a brother walking down the street wearing dreads.

"Look at that nigga, he's crazy...I never would wear my hair like that..." is what you heard when Rastas came around with their dreads and ganja smoke.

But back to the Jheri Curl.

From my own estimation there were at least a dozen different variations of the doo that a Chicago hair-stylist named Jheri Redding concocted sometime in the mid to late 70’s. Redding, is said to also be the inventor of hair conditioning. From Jheri Redding’s infamous ‘Jheri Curl’ came: the ‘Carefree Curl’, the ‘S Curl’ and the ‘California Curl’. In Black neighborhoods in damn every part of the country on Friday and Saturday morning’s barber shops were packed with people getting their hair done.

First the chemical was applied, then washed out of the hair, after which came the rollers. Although it was a good look (at least at the time) it was trouble to maintain. First of all you could bet a barbecue lunch on the fact that the collar of any shirt or jacket you wore was gonna be messed up by all of the grease – that much was a given. Pillow cases forget about it, they were fucked up by that shit too. Hats throw em out. But mostly forget about washing your hair, that was a challenge. Shampoo made your doo brittle and it would take at least 4 days of moisturizing your stuff to get back into shape.

The first time I experienced culture shock was when I moved from New York to California in the early 80’s. New Yorkers were simple about hair back then: short with a part on the side or a Caesar. Californian’s were on some other shit: finger waves, perms, texturizers, Shirley Temple Curls and a style called the ‘Lord Jesus’ were all over the place. But it was the Jheri Curl and its entire offspring that was the most popular.

Like I say it depended upon where you lived if the Jheri Curl was popular or not. For instance: California and anywhere in the Mid-West and the South, the curl was everywhere. However, DC, NY, NJ, PA Connecticut, Boston and anywhere else in the northeast, if you wore a curl, you stood out - way out. And not in a good way either.

Sometime in the late 80’s the Curl rapidly became un-cool. Northeastern tastes started taking over and the first thing people took aim at was the Jheri Curl. Quickly you saw the transformation happen; Jheri Curls were being replaced by fades and flat tops. It was as if someone said: "...And no more pretty mother fuckers with curly hair."

However, it is hard to separate some brothers from their doo. Eazy E was the perfect example, that dude died in ’96 still wearing a Jheri Curl. And he wasn’t alone.

I just recently found out about a gang of Dominicans called the ‘Jheri Curls’, these idiots had fades with Jheri Curls on top. They were a ruthless gang from what I hear. And oh yeah, what about that baseball player from the Dominican Republic, what kind of time warp is he caught in?Every one of us has a relative or friend somewhere that represents that tiny minority of holdouts, in mine, it’s my brother in-law Michael, I love him to death, but he ain’t lettin’ that curl go!

I'm All Late and Shit

2006-09-19T12:35:00.000-04:00

I dunno maybe I've been sleeping under a rock for a few years or somethin', but I never heard of this Katt Williams guy until this weekend when he did his HBO special: "The Pimp Chronicles Part One".

I laughed my ass off. This dude has got pimps down pat. I mean, if you've ever been around a pimp and listened to them talk, you'll see that, these brothers aren't dumb, it's just the way they express themselves is 100% street. Every sentence is 'bitch this', 'hoe that', 'mother fucker this', 'nigga that', shit, shit, shit with a few regular words of English thrown in for good measure.

I hear he's been in one of the 'Fridays' movies, see that's one reason I wouldn't know who he is because those movies annoy me. They are more buffoonish than Flavor Flav could ever be. Those movies and those damn gospel plays that tour the country every year like: "Baby Momma Drama', 'Young Man, Older Woman', 'Is that Man Your Husband' or 'He Say...She Say...But What Does God Say..." Those plays are buffoonish - nice messages though, but buffoonish!

I also hear he's on Nick Cannon's show 'Wild and Out', since I ain't a 19 year old I haven't watched that show. Nick Cannon is probably a good dude and all, it's just that his show doesn't appeal to me.

Katt Williams is a smart guy though. I say that, because when you compare him with the rest of the bunch (pick damn near any comic from BET), forget it. He's an original like Paul Mooney, Rodney Dangerfield, Robin Harris, Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison.

What really makes me feel bad about not being up on duke is that he lived in Oakland for quite some time, hell he performed in clubs I've been in - just not on the nights I was there.

Only In Oakland

2006-09-14T01:05:00.000-04:00

Everything I will tell you in this story is the truth. Even the parts that are hard to believe are the truth – the gospel truth.

Right up the street from the Oakland airport is Hegenberger Ave. it’s a long street that runs right into the heart of East Oakland. One side of Hegenberger is dotted with restaurants, banks, hotels, gas stations, fast food spots and the entrance to the Oakland Coliseum. Just over the hill is where things get residential. That’s where the hood starts.

But back down toward the airport on the corner of Hegenberger and Edgewater is a motel that has seen better days.

In the 70’s and ‘80’s the Lucky Lion was a notorious underworld hangout spot. Every pimp, player, mack, hustler, drug dealer and anyone else into something crooked could be found in there right beside the hard working everyday man. Jheri Curls, finger waves and ‘Lord Jesus’ hairstyles dotted the clubs interior, while the flashing lights from the disco ball illuminated the shadows of people sipping champagne and secretly snorting cocaine.

At one table could be the gentlemen drug kingpin Felix Mitchell, head of the then infamous 69 Mob, surrounded by his people. Somewhere else in the house on the same night seated at another table could be Rhythm and Blues musician turned cocaine cowboy Mickey Mo, head of a rival organization called ‘The Family’. Across from them could be members of the notorious Ward Brothers (Ted, Frank and Jimmy) ever see the 70’s flick ‘The Mack’? All three of the brothers were in it – they were pimps. Somewhere in between the clouds of cigar smoke and whatever else would no doubt be undercover law enforcement.

Besides cocaine Oakland was more so famous at that time for being the birthplace of the Black Panther Party. But by the ‘70’s and 80’s the Panther Party was over. Huey Newton had a raging cocaine addiction. Sometime during the fall of the Panthers, Huey took to extorting drug dealers. Pushers had to pay a tax to the party in order to operate in the city. However, like any other group of Americans, Black drug dealers took serious exception to paying tax to anyone. Therefore they went to war.

According to legend, Huey Newton, high or sober didn’t mind a good fight. In fact from what I hear he went looking for fights. As crowded as the Lucky Lion would be with pimps and drug dealers (who couldn’t stand him) Huey would go there with a gentleman in tow named Big Hurd – 6’8 and strong. So dig this atmosphere: Felix Mitchell at one table, Mickey Mo at another and Huey across from them.

Now like I said, Huey was extorting drug dealers back then, not just any drug dealers mind you, but those drug dealers. Guns were pulled, tables were turned over, shots were fired it was like the Wild West.

Right next door to the Lucky Lion was an establishment called the Edgewater Motel. Now you can only imagine with all the pimps, drug dealers and gangsters right next door what was going on at the Edgewater, right?

Oh really.

Fast forward to late October early November of 1989. I was a twenty-year-old security guard. One night I got a call from the company I worked for – ABC Security, to go work at the Edgewater.

“What does a motel need security for?” I asked.
“I don’t know but their regular guard Muhammad is unable to make it, can you go?”

When I got there I thought the place looked familiar. At that time there was a Crab Shack restaurant in place of the Lucky Lion. When I opened the front door there was a lobby full of impatient East Indians.

“Where is Muhammad?” Asked a man with a thick Punjabi accent.
“I dunno.” I responded. ‘Who’s Muhammad?”
“Go away we only want Muhammad.” They said.
“Hey, Muhammad couldn’t make it so you get me. Mind you, I don’t want to be here either, so let me do my job.”

They congregated for a minute and then came back to me with a beeper and a key.

“Here is a key to a room, you can take your breaks there, please patrol the pool area and make sure no one breaks into the rooms.”

“Ok you got it.”

I walked out into the night air. Mind you I’m wearing a thick jacket. I hear the music from the Crab Shack. I was too young to go to the Lucky Lion when it was open, so I got my stories about the place second and third hand. There is a sliding glass door in the back of every room that faces the pool area. From what I could see all of the lights were on in every room. They told me to patrol the pool area so I did. Mind you there wasn’t that much to patrol.

I sat there listening to the music for a while thinking about the stories I heard about the fights and champagne and cocaine. I remember the pictures in people’s houses of groups of guys with finger waves and heavy-lidded eyes, posing while flashing their jewelry and fat stacks of money. Photos of Felix Mitchell and his crew of lieutenants seated at a table smiling for the camera while holding up glasses of bubbly. It must’ve been a good life.

Now all of that is over.

While rounding the corner on my first patrol I heard some finger snaps: pop, pop, pop to the beat of the music. As I’m approaching the room I notice the lights are on and the curtains are open. As I get to where I can see into the room I notice a light- skinned black woman somewhere in her mid-30’s, she wasn’t obese, she was plump, or as they like to say she had some 'meat on her bones'. She was dancing in front of a mirror in the center of the room wearing a mans dress shirt. Well, as I get to where I’m parallel with the mirror I notice that the shirt she is wearing is open. And not only that but she ain’t wearing a bra or drawers. I quickly looked away, because I didn’t want to be accused of peeping in anyone’s room.

So there I was bewildered by what I saw, when just then as I’m approaching the sauna area, I see a brother standing there with a towel around his neck. As custom I greet the brother with ‘Hey what’s happenin’ bro…”

As I’m passing the brother I notice something…this fool ain’t got on no drawers!

It was damn near winter, I was wearing a heavy jacket and this guy was standing outside at night while the cool breeze was blowing with nothing on! “What the hell is going on here?” I thought to myself.

I immediately went to the management office, but gone was the East Indian family and there in the lobby behind the desk was an Asian gentleman – watching a porno with the volume on full blast.

‘What the fuck?” I thought.

Now you and I when we watch porn we ain’t trying to have that shit so loud that anyone could hear it. You wanna be discrete when you view that shit. But not this guy. Here he was – at work mind you, watching porn, this chick had a mouthful of dick and all the sounds and whatever have you, and he acted like I disturbed him!

“Hey man, what kind of place is this?” I yelled.
“What do you mean?’ He replied without turning his back to see who I was.
‘Hey man, I’ve been seeing people walk around out here without clothes on and shit man, what the fuck are y’all doing out here?’

He turned around and looked at me while grabbing his remote control.

“You don’t understand”, he said to me calmly while only slightly adjusting the volume, ‘this is an adult motel, we let our patrons do as they please.”

‘Huh?’

“Tell you what this what I want you to do. Go sit by the pool and watch. Just make sure no one breaks into the rooms.”

“Ok.” Outside I went. And back to full blast the porn went as the door swung open.

I took a seat by the pool and was shocked by what I saw that night. It turns out the Edgewater Motel was a swingers motel. People had sex in the rooms with the lights on and curtains open. There were mirrors on the walls and on the ceilings. People would gather round and watch couples engaged in the act. Often times the people would join in. That was the craziest shit I ever saw in my life.

To be honest with you after that experience, I could never be involved in swinging. First of all your typical ‘swinging couple’ – for the most part, ain’t the most attractive people. Like people in nude beaches, it’s never someone that looks like Buffie the Body; they usually look like Broom Hilda or something like that. And besides the idea of having sex while a bunch of morons stand and watch just doesn’t sit right with me.

Sometime around three in the morning I called into the headquarters and told them what was going on there. They had no idea what kind of establishment this place had been. Thirty minutes later a lieutenant and two field sergeants showed up, they couldn’t believe what they had heard over the walkie-talkie. They needed to see for themselves.

I went back there a few more times, I finally stopped going when on one slow night this dude decided he wanted somebody to watch him wack off. ‘Oh hell no’ I said to myself, this fool would start wacking off everytime I walked by. Nope, I ain’t into no homo shit. To make matters worse there was these two guys hanging outside their room in their bath robes – I dunno about you, but that wasn’t a good sign to me. I left there and never went back.

Why Is He the Most Hated Man in Black America?

2006-09-12T13:40:00.000-04:00

He's been called a hip-hop version of Stepin Fetchit and a buffoon. Paul Mooney said that Briggette Nielson traded in Rambo for Sambo (in reference to Flav). His show has been called the most ghetto series ever broadcast on television. Is he just doing his thing? Why is his show so compelling to watch? And what does it say about us as a culture?

THE MOST POWERFUL SEASON YET

2006-09-12T12:48:00.000-04:00

HBO's hard- to- top-can't-be-stopped drama 'The Wire' returned on September 10th. As usual it started off slow. But that's ok, I have HBO on DEMAND and have already seen episode 39, and I can tell you that this season is gonna be the best yet.

This season they not only follow the cops and drug dealers but they examine the roles that the school system and local politicians play in nurturing kids.

If only these stories were the works of someone's imagination, we all would be able to rest comfortably in our beds at night. But these are real stories, well written and well acted by both professional actors and real street people.

The character that most people are trippin off of is is a hit woman named 'Snoop'. At first glance 'Snoop' looks like a young boy. She has short braids, wears baggy jeans, and over-sized white T Shirts, and boots. But she is rock hard! She really is from the street. Just listen to her talk and you immediately know: That ain't no actor!

Marlo the new cocaine cowboy on the scene is ruthless and smart. Can't wait to see how he and Omar (a hard core stick up man who happens to also be a homo thug) get along. Slim Charles - the last of Avon Barksdale's crew to be on the street, I wonder what will become of his character.

The Prophet

2006-08-31T16:21:00.000-04:00

The Prophet

During the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s I saw the signs advertising the shows all over Oakland, but didn’t know who in the hell the groups were:

ALL THE WAY LIVE FROM LAGOS:
FELA RANSOM KUTI
KING SUNNY ADE

Being African American I had no idea who those people were, as a matter of fact I really didn’t know where Lagos was.

I started deejaying for a dancehall sound system in the late 90’s. My uncle and friend DJ Ibi Judah recruited me to spin with him. He spun early rockers, ska, rock steady and roots and culture. I spun R&B and hip hop. I had fun doing it too. One night at a bar called the Oasis in downtown Oakland I went into my thing. I broke out the Mary Jane Girls, Rick James and Michael Jackson, stuff we call classics. Anyway, the club was half empty (as usual) except for some brothers from Nigeria. These guys were really diggin’ those records. One brother asked me ‘Hey brudda, ya got any Fela?’

“Fe what, who?”
‘Fela” He said, as if I should know.
“No, what’s that?”

Come to find out Fela was the king of Afro beat, he was to African funk what James Brown is to American funk: the be all to end all.

I made a mental note to keep an eye and ear out for this Fela character.

One night at a club called Island Paradise in Alameda it was Nigerian Independence Day. Let me tell you something about this spot first. At a reggae club other black ethnic groups will come out and drink and soak up the vibe. So of course dancehall/reggae nights the crowd will be predominately West Indian: Jamaican, Barbadian, Trinidadian and African American. If there a lot of Trinidadians and Barbadians in the house you better play some soca.

Now of course Africans come out too Nigerians, Ghanians, Senegalese they come out and soak up the vibes, if there are a lot of Africans in the house, you’d better play some zouk.

Now the funny thing is each of these groups of people will front on the others music if it is played too much. West Indians will suck their teeth “Mi na wanna hear any bumbleclot zouk, mi youth, now gwan an kill dat ya know.”

Let’s put it like this on this particular Nigerian Independence Day, there was a lot of teeth suckin. I went to the club with my Uncle Mark from Belize and my Uncle Ibi. There is a cloud of herb smoke above my head and it is hot and crowded like a slave ship. All of a sudden the deejay puts on a record that didn’t sound African to me. Nor did it sound like any reggae I had ever heard. I turned around to my Uncle Ibi and asked him, ‘Yo what is this?’

“This is Fela”, he said, “In Nigeria he is Malcolm X, Bob Marley and James Brown all wrapped up in one.”

It sounded like James Brown but with more of a jazz influence. The funky chicken like scratch sound of the guitars gave hint of the fact that this was a man that liked American soul music in the 70’s. But the percussion was straight up African.

Ibi, who is from Nigeria, translated every word of a song called ‘Lady’. I was hooked.

I later found plenty of Fela records at Dusty Groove Records. The saddest thing for me as an African American is that I feel like I should’ve been hipped to Fela a long time ago. But I was failed. I was failed by the music and cultural institutions of my community, namely black radio. Black radio virtually ignored the first 5 years of rap music. It’s the same black radio that never gave Bob Marley a break. And is the same institution that never gave Jimi Hendrix any love at all. And is the same institution that damn sure never whispered the name Fela on the radio. They failed the Black community.

2006-08-29T23:26:00.000-04:00

THE BOOGIE MAN IS GONNA GET YOU
By Mark Skillz

Black on black crime, drug abuse, HIV, promiscuity, materialism, greed and ignorance, what do these things have in common: Hip-hop. Or so they say.

It looks as if the boogieman for the first part of the 21st century will be hip-hop. Why is HIV spreading so fast in the black community? Blame hip-hop. Teen-age pregnancy is out of control…Blame hip-hop. Hurricane Katrina. Blame hip-hop. Those guys are killing each other…Blame hip-hop. You can almost blame hip-hop for anything you want.

Here I have another one: Erectile dysfunction. What? You mean you can blame that on hip-hop too? Sure. Use this as the reason: Because of the proliferation of pornographic based material that draws an indirect and oftentimes direct influence from the hip-hop culture, it is reasonable to presume that the viewing of such material over a period of time can cause the viewer to distort reality and to manipulate his male sex organ more frequently than is recommended by the office of the surgeon general.

Ghetto translation: Son you been wackin off so much to them Trina videos that yo shit won’t move no mo.

It’s a liberating feeling to be able to blame something for our problems. Violence in schools…Goddamn rappers, they did it. Somebody shot up a church. Lawd Jesus help us, look at what the rappers have made our kids do. You can blame hip-hop for almost anything now.

Like this person…

Dear Mark Skillz,
I am writing to you because you are the only person that I feel I can talk to. I am short and was born Black and poor. If it wasn’t for the rappers I feel like I would have had a better life. Maybe I could’ve done something really meaningful with my life if it wasn’t for rap music.

Signed,
Po and Ugly.

Here’s my response:

Dear Po and Ugly,

Tough break bro.

Signed
Your pal,
Mark Skillz

George Bush had Willie Horton, remember that goddamn nigga? I say it like that because everywhere you went during that election year, every brother was some sort of equivalent of Willie Horton. He was what was wrong with the ‘criminal justice’ system. And as I recall the first George Bush promised to deal with those ‘types’ with a much heavier hand than the previous administration (of which he was a part of). Nowadays every politician and preacher has a new scapegoat: Hip-hop.

My son is on the DL…umm, ummm, ummm. Lord it’s the music these kids listen to. My daughter is a stripper. All them rap videos made your daughter want to be a stripper.

Let’s get real here: Black on black crime – who shot Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba? That was Black on Black crime and there was no hip-hop to blame for that. The reasons brothers are killing each other are a lot bigger than hip-hop. Like: Lack of education, lack of home training, lack of direction, lack of love and respect for self and others, poor job prospects and no motivation to see beyond the block they live on.

Drug abuse: Hmmmm, what were y’all doing in the 60’s and 70’s? I know I know, smoking grass (as you like to call it). Real innocent ‘Leave it to Beaver’ type shit, huh? Nah, y’all weren’t all up in clubs til the break of dawn doing reckless shit, nah, not y’all. Y’all was on some real wholesome, family-friendly Mike Brady type shit back then, right?

HIV: Hmmmm, that shit has been around for twenty-five years.

Promiscuity: What? White folks don’t swap partners, have multiple partners and engage in bi-sexuality? Hmmmm… Men (and not just Black men either) have been sleeping with multiple partners (and enjoying the hell out of it) since that first warm summer breeze first blew across his naked Johnson hundreds and thousands of years ago.

Materialism: Hmmmm…ever watch ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’? What’s that all about?

Greed and ignorance: Hip-hop does not make people ignorant – you either are or you’re not.

Has hip-hop as a culture helped to elevate our civilization? Since we’re keeping it real. No, not really. Like any other movement or culture it’s had its moments of beauty, but as a whole, nah. Is it supposed to? I thought it was music.

If your daughter would rather buy a thong than a book, don’t blame hip-hop: Blame yourself. If your daughter believes her destiny is to be bent over on stage at 3 o’clock in the morning making her ass clap, don’t blame hip-hop: BLAME YOURSELF.

A Stalker in the Age of the 24 Hour News Cycle

2006-08-22T15:14:00.000-04:00

John Mark Karr is either really guilty or really weird. I'm leaning more so toward the latter - really weird.

Here's a guy who has publicly apologized for the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, has related an account of the killing and corresponded for 4 years with a journalism professor regarding the case. The professor alarmed at what he was reading contacted the cops. As well he should've. At first they dismissed him and then they changed their minds.

I don't doubt that this guy did something to some child - but I doubt it was Jon Benet.

Ya know in the age of a twenty four hour news cycle weird people will do all kinds of weird shit for attention.

His ex-wife says that on December 25th 1996 he was at home with her - in Georgia. The murder took place in Colorado. He said he drugged her and raped her. There were no signs of drugs found in her body during the autopsy.

On the way back to America, flying business class and sipping champagne all the while under the watchful eye of FBI agents but more importantly the media, Karr posed for pictures and supposedly clinked glasses of champagne with passengers. Homicide experts think the guy is enjoying the attention. I think everyone wants to be famous for something.

Night Falls on the Black Athlete

2006-08-22T12:34:00.000-04:00

Jack Johnson is turning in his grave now, and so are Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis. For at least four decades the heavyweight championship had been held by a brother. But not any more.

Oleg Maskaev stopped Hasim Rahman in the 12th round of their rematch Saturday night. Hasim could’ve done better. Could’ve. Should’ve. But didn’t. But hey, really, two big 250 pound dudes slugging it out for 12 rounds - that's some hard shit.

Now all four belts are being held by Eastern Europeans. So, basically, Communists – or should I say former Communists, own the division now. How did this happen? Used to be a time when you could put a pair of gloves on a brother, put him in the ring and say “Go get him…” And a mother fucker was done. But not no mo. Night has fallen on the Black athlete.

And we can’t blame Don King for the current state of affairs either; one man did not wreck a whole division. Hell, La Cosa Nostra did worse by boxers in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s than Don King ever did. You wanna talk about fight fixing…? Them mother fuckers did some shit!

What we need now is a new energy in the heavyweight division. We need a brother with the speed of Ali, the heart and determination of Evander Holyfield (when he was much younger), the sheer knockout power of Mike Tyson, who is a gentleman like Joe Louis and Lennox Lewis, has a jab like Larry Holmes (1980 Larry Holmes not that old fat dude that gets in the ring nowadays) but at the same time can a scare a mother fucker like George Foreman (1972 George Foreman not the hamburger salesman now) or Sonny Liston.

So in essence brothers and sister and anyone else reading this: We need a new Black champion.

The Executive Playhouse: Revisited

2006-08-20T14:21:00.000-04:00

So while I was doing research for my article about the 1977 battle between Kool Herc and Pete Jones, a piece by the way which was about the clash of two mighty titans in the dawn before rap records, no one remembered who owned the club.

I always assumed places like the Hevalo and the Executive Playhouse were formally “social clubs” that were owned by Italian and or Irish residents of those neighborhoods.

Before I go any further, you have to understand that way back in the day; neighborhoods that are now African American/Latino at one time had been strongholds of Italian-Americans or Irish Americans. They rented out little spots and put a jukebox in it, a refrigerator, some tables and chairs to play cards on and called it a social club. Except one thing smack dab on the door or in the window would read a sign: MEMBERS ONLY. Meaning if you weren’t white – you’d better get out of there.

As Blacks and Latinos moved into these neighborhoods ‘white flight’ was in effect. Meaning: Let the niggers have it.

So that’s what I thought those early clubs had been. How wrong I was.

After the article was published a gentleman named Dave contacted me, turns out he had been one of eight guys that owned the Executive Playhouse. Check this out.

So these Eight Executives who were in their mid’ 30’s at the time all worked at the GM plant in New Jersey, all went in on the club, they named after their organization or group and called it the Executive Playhouse.

According to Dave the house capacity was 600 people. They served food and drinks and had bands come out to play for entertainment. One of the bands that performed there was called the New York Players, who would later gain fame as Cameo – yes, the group that would later do Shake Your Pants, Flirt, Alligator Woman, She’s Strange and the list goes on, yes, they played at the Executive Playhouse. But according to Dave “Running the business like this was costly and profit was at a minimum.”

That was until a gentleman named Kool Herc came by with his loyal following. But before Kool Herc, spun there a guy named the Amazing Dr. Burt was the house deejay. He spun disco and R&B and according to Dave had a system even Kool Herc envied. That must’ve been some sound system.

Anyway Kool Herc pops up and at first the older crowd loved him that was until more of Herc’s crowd started coming around. “Kool Herc rocked the older crowd and they loved him, but on the nights that Herc collected and ran the door the older crowd was not aware and didn't like hanging out with the younger folks. We eventually gave up on Live Entertainment and went completely Disco which the younger people loved, the older crowd loved it also, but when Kool Herc played the older folks were out numbered 5 to 1. That was not a pretty picture. The 25 and above crowd came dressed up and mostly couples, while the 20 and below came as packs of young men and young girls sometimes causing problems.”

Which means we couldn’t have shit back then either.

The biggest name on the deejay scene at that time was Pete DJ Jones; this guys name was on WBLS all the time, he spun at whatever events they had. For the 25 and over crowd Pete DJ Jones was El Negro.

Anyway back to the story…

“We didn't have a dress code at the Playhouse but our crowd for the most part wore Jackets and/or nice shirts from Mel Greens and shoes. No one ever came with their pants below their butts with underwear showing.”

That came later. Much later.

“Pete DJ Jones was well known in the mid town disco's and we always heard his name mentioned on WBLS. We knew it would be a sell out if we could hook these two DJ's up, we did. Kool Herc and Pete decided to split the money made from the door and we would again keep the Bar and Kitchen. Our club held Max Cap was 600; we broke the law that night. This was a night I will never forget.”

Five Things I Miss About the Bay Area

2006-08-15T15:16:00.000-04:00

YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YA GOT TIL IT’S GONE

Ok so I’m diggin’ the South and all but there are certain things I miss about Oakland and the Bay Area in general:

First: 76 degree temperatures all year round – you really can’t beat that. This is the first time in my adult life that I have ever NEEDED air conditioning.

Second: Downtown Oakland – the skyline, when you come into downtown from off 880 the first big structure you see is the courthouse. I spent a lot of time there for traffic cases. The other place down the street and around the corner is the Alameda County Courthouse that is the place where that legendary picture of the Black Panthers was taken at.

Jack London Square has some good clubs and restaraunts, heading in the other direction is where I worked for many years, places like the Kaiser Center which is right across from Lake Merritt. The SBC buildiing on 14th and Franklin (used to hit up a spot called Pat's after work sometimes - when there wasn't a shootout. The Black Muslim Bakery - Honey Carrot Pie is off the hook. I've taken many people in there who were very skeptical about honey carrot pie, after one taste - they were believers.

Lake Merrit was the place that the Festival at the Lake was held for many years, until folks forgot how to act! Now its the Art and Soul Festival which is held more so downtown near the Federal Buidling.

Third: Thanh Long – I love the South but I sure do miss Vietnamese food. I knew before moving out here that I would be giving up certain things for a more affordable lifestyle, but man, giving up places like Pho 84 and Thanh Long is giving up a lot!

If you have never had Vietnamese food, by all means man, the next time you are in a major city, seek some out. Thanh Long is expensive but it is truly worth every dollar you spend. They are world famous for roasted crab and garlic noodles. Lemme tell you something about this place, it is the only place I have ever been where you can find couples on dates, families, pimps, playas, gangsters and business executives all in one place and ain’t nobody concerned with anybody else. The food is so Goddamn good people go there just to enjoy themselves. For real.

And oh yeah one more thing, they are a family owned business, their recipes are their lifeblood, so they don’t give out any info on that tip. They have two kitchens: one that the waiting staff gets the food from, and the other is where the family prepares the food. Waiters, waitresses, hosts and hostesses are not allowed in the family kitchen!

Fourth: I love the food in South Carolina, but ain’t no barbecue like Everett and Jones out here. I can safely say that I haven’t come across a barbecue spot yet, that gets down like Everett and Jones – and I’ve looked! I miss Everett and Jones, man.

I'll never forget the time when I worked for the James River Corp on 300 Lakeside Dr, every holiday we'd have food catered it was always Chinese food. One day someone said, "Hey, we're having some Black peoples food this year!" We got a place called 'Soul Brothers Kitchen' to cater our Christmas lunch. Boy, was that funny! White folks will eat Chinese food, Japanese food, Korean food, Italian food, and Greek food but when you put a plate of grits in front of them: HA HA HA HA AH HA, they ain't goin' for it. At least not any white folks in New York and California! Southern Whites are a different story, they will pile their plates UP.

Fifth: Real Hip Hop radio: College and Community radio the Bay Area has plenty of it, like: KZSU – my man and fellow Queens native, Kevvy Kev Cool Breeze has been holding things down at Stanford U since the summer of 1984, thank God for the internet cause I get to listen online sometimes. He has the longest running hip hop show in the known universe and anywhere else! Sundays 6-9 for 22 years…

KPFA: Peja Peja rockin’ reggae late into the twilight, Lawd o Mercy!
Hard Knock Radio: Community issues and world issue from a progressive POV.

And last but not least…
Record Stores: My man Joe Quixx is the hip hop buyer for Amoeba in Berkeley, whether its crate digging music, independent hip hop, old school, whatever they have it there.
Rasputin Records: Good place to go get up on DVD’s and local acts as well as used records.

Funky Soul Stop: My man Ed digs everywhere for the funk, he used to have a small space in an office building and you had to set an appointment with him to buy records, now he has a full store.

Cue’s: For serious deejays

Groove Yard, Record Man, Record Finder and Groove Merchant: Strictly for serious beat diggers and producers

THE WIRE: NO CORNER LEFT BEHIND

2006-08-11T17:29:00.000-04:00

'The Wire' returns on September 10th - it is by far one of the best dramatic shows ever produced for television. This season they take a look at the way the school system has failed our kids.

My four year old starts pre-Kindergarten next week, as a parent, nothing concerns me more than the quality of my children's education. I can give a damn about my sons wearing brand new Nike's or Sean John or any of that other garbage, I'm concerned about what happens in the classroom and schoolyard.

Earlier this week I took my son TJ to get tested for a pre-K program, one of the little boys (he couldn't have been older than 5) had a gold chain with a Jesus medallion! I sat there and saw that and said to myself: 'Getdafuckouttahere'. What kind of values are being passed down to that child?

Although there were only 20 spots available my son got in. I couldn't be happier. They made the program available to the neediest children: Those on Medicaid, welfare, etc - of which my family does not receive. We got the call today that he will be in one of the best Montessouri programs in the city! I love it - it's FREE. The school has an orchestra from what I understand.

The other day I was thinking about Christmas time: My sons have more toys and DVD's than I ever had. I'm going to buy them musical instruments. One day I took them to Sam Ash with me, they had a field day messing with the drums and keyboards. After twenty years of buying equipment and records guess what? I'm going to buy my sons drums, drum machines, keyboards and if they want them, guitars. They are going to start off with keyboards cause I don't have a room for them to practice drums in. When we buy a house all of their instruments will go in the garage!

Culture Shock: Southern Style

2006-08-08T18:02:00.000-04:00

So here I am: Damn near 40 years old and a product of New York and California, now living in the Deep South. Never would’ve thought I would’ve ended up here, but hey, I’m not complaining. It’s been a real cool experience.

Now to be honest with you the biggest shock to my system ain’t the slow pace. Nah, I’m damn near 40 with a wife and kids. What the hell do I look like hanging out every night going to clubs and shit like that? Nah, that ain’t my style no more.

Nightclubs are no big thang on me. But do you wanna know what really shocks me out here? Every time I go to a restaurant or I’m in a hotel or an office building, do you know what I see? I see Black and White people doing menial labor. Yep, uh huh, I sure do. Whether it’s McDonald’s, Burger King, I Hop, Denny’s – you name it, you see Black and White waiters and waitresses. No shit. Bugs me the fuck out every time I see it.

Now you ask, “Why do such things bug you out, Mark?”
Well now, where I do I start?

Before I go there let me take you back to a moment of revelation, if you will. The year was 1992. I was working as a security officer for Pacific Bell (yes, that’s how long ago it was, they were called Pacific Bell and not SBC) in Oakland on 14th and Franklin St. There I was doing my usual thing at work: talking on the phone, sleeping, reading the paper, etc., when the janitorial staff arrived. Now, I had been working there for probably a year by this time. So I’m standing there watching the janitorial staff sign in when it dawns on me to look at the names. Hernandez, Mendez, Gomez and Rodriguez. And that’s when it hit me: ‘Hey what happened to all of the black janitors?”

When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, all of the janitors I ever saw were Black. If you saw a mop and a bucket, you could count on a cat named Roscoe or Jessie or something like that to be the one pushing it. But here it was 1992 and I hadn’t seen a brother with a mop and a bucket in a minute.

So I asked the owner of the janitorial company, ‘Hey, how come you don’t have any brothers working for you?”

“I don’t know”, he said shrugging his shoulders.

It perplexed me that brothers weren’t janitors anymore. You know for the longest time in this country, if a brother was out of a job and he needed a gig, he could always do janitorial work to make ends meet.

But not, no mo.

So fast-forward the tape to 2005, the scene changes this time it’s Columbia, South Carolina. I’m working in a building that houses a janitorial company. All of a sudden I see a large group of White folks enter the building. “Hmmmmm”, I wonder out loud, “What are they doing here?’
“Those are the janitors.”
“The what?”
“The janitors.”
“Say what? Those people are janitors?”
“Yes.”
“Getdafuckouttahere!”
“What’s wrong?’
“They’re White, that’s what’s wrong.”
“And?”
“And? And White folks aren’t janitors!”

You have to understand something – where I’ve been I have never, ever, not once in damn near 40 years, seen a White janitor. Since 1992 I have seen nothing but Mexicans doing janitorial work. But there they were clear as day: White janitors.

The second thing that shocked the shit outta me was one morning at work, I heard a leaf-blower roaring away. I thought to myself, ok, now I’m gonna see some Mexicans. I was shocked. I had to stand there and stare out the window and watch for myself cause I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was a White man with a leaf-blowing machine. I couldn’t believe it.

“Where are the Mexicans?” I asked.
“On the other side of town”, someone shouted from an office.

In California when you go to restaurants, car washes, motels and places like that – odds are that the person that is going to help you will be Latino. I don’t know how it happened.
In California if you go into a McDonald’s, there is a pretty good chance that the person behind the counter doesn’t speak English. It’s happened to me a number of times. Out here ain’t nuttin’ but Whites and Blacks working fast food.

I wonder how long that will last.

Take A Toke

2006-08-08T11:20:00.000-04:00

To hell with 'Desperate Housewives' the shit you wanna see is "Weeds".

Here's the story: Widowed suburban soccer mom becomes the Weed Baronness of a fictional Southern California town called Agrestic.

It is hard to not like this show, there's the suburban housewife Celia Hodes: Queen of gossip, cancer survivor and bitch you don't want for a mother; Andy Botwin: Slacker brother in-law with nowhere else to go; Conrad and Halia: Halia is Conrad's aunt (and like my aunt) is the loud mouth, gotta have the last word, always be right and gotta let a nigga know it too type. They are the suppliers (and also the only Black people on the show).

Since there ain't sugar, honey, ice tea on TV nowadays do yourself a favor and check Weeds out.

The Return of Flavor Flav

2006-08-08T10:08:00.000-04:00

Tune into VH1 for an hour of fist-fights, cuss out sessions, booty-clappin' and cat fights - no Jerry Springer hasn't moved to VH1, Flavor of Love is back for its second season and this time they're keepin' it really real. How real you ask? Doo-doo on the floor real, is that real enough for your ass?

Yes, some ugly child named 'Somethin' dropped somethin' out of her ass and onto the floor. Yep, it happened. I don't know about you, but I would've quit the show right then and there, BAM, I'm gone. I would've left the country for good after that and became a preacher of the gospel somewhere in Antigua. It would be my luck that someone would recognize me: 'Hey mon, aren't you da one dat shit pon da floor?"

Within one minute of the new season there was a fight in the mansion - over a bed! Now you all can talk all the shit you want about me for my next statement, but, fuck it: I would've kept that big-titty havin', $800 weave wearin', 54th and Crenshaw hood rat over that skinny White chick! If he wants to get rid of someone start with the 'Wigga'; then get 'Somethin' a free plane ticket back to somewhere and then settle down with 'Deelicious' who has an azz like ....

Oops, I've gotten too far ahead of myself.

This season 20 more girls vie for the affections of the greatest hype man ever. Some of them are good looking girls. But, beware, there are some others that make Broom Hilda look like Janet Jackson. But let's be honest here, Flav is no catch either.

I recently ran into fellow PE alum Professor Griff of Public Enemy, let's just say he isn't exactly pleased with Flavor nowadays. He says Flavor has done a dis-service to the legacy of Public Enemy with his reality show antics, ie; his buffoonery and his extra-cirrucular activities with White women.

I hear where he's coming from, but its as I told him: If it was Chuck or Griff on those shows messing with White women and clowning around and whatnot, I would be shocked. But, it's Flavor, he's always been the class clown.

Here's a guy that showed up to the American Music Awards waaaaaaaaaay back in the day wearing a top hat and tails - everyone else in the group was wearing their FOI uniform. Here's a guy that did a video shoot in a devil costume. Here's guy who has always had a grill, that nigro has been wearing gold teeth for 20 years! We don't expect much from Flav.

Is Flavor Flav a buffoon? Yeah. Is he a sell out? No. Flavor is being himself, he isn't trying to represent himself as something other than what he is: class clown.

Pound for Pound

2006-07-31T12:10:00.000-04:00

In his time he was called 'pound for pound the best boxer ever'. He had the speed of fighters twenty pounds lighter and the strength of fighters twenty pounds heavier. But it was his technical boxing skills that earned him the right to rank himself with the immortals of boxing: Sugar Ray Robinson, Marvin Hagler, Muhammad Ali, Pernell Whitaker and Floyd Patterson.

He was the first middleweight champion in over one hundred years to capture the heavyweight title. He beat John Ruiz for the heavyweight crown - not with his strength, but with his mastery of the fine art of the sweet science. "Every time I saw him lean forward to throw that big right, I used my left jab to keep him off balance", he said after winning an unanimous decision over Ruiz, "He had to get on the ball of his foot in order to throw that punch, and I knew a jab to his forehead every time he started to get on that toe would be the perfect punch."

Roy Jones was lightning fast, arrogant and supremely talented. He fought at a time when there were no fighters of his division with equal talent. In order for a champ to really be called the best he has to fight the best - in his defense there were no great fighters in the light heavyweight division. He walked through Virgil Hill, David Telesco, Montell Griffin, James Toney and many others.

So bored was he with his competition that he joined a semi-pro basketball team and played basketball games the same day as a fight.

And then there were the forays into music: He should've stuck with boxing, but you know how rich men are, they believe they can do anything and be successful at it. Whatever.

So bored was Roy Jones with his competition that he took on any fight he could just to make a buck and show his skills. He fought bartenders, garbage men, phone guys, cops and mechanics. Jones wanted to give the people their monies worth. He'd lay on the ropes and invite his opponent to hit him. He'd dance in the ring. He took rounds off to allow his opponents to catch up with him. He'd have a concert before the fight and once, he rapped his way down the aisle to the ring.

That all changed one night when a man that many thought didn't have a snowballs chance in Satan's kitchen, of really beating Roy. But this man wasn't like any opponent Roy had ever faced: He was the same age and from the same state as Roy, but had been overlooked for all of his professional career.

Referee: Do you have any questions before the fight starts?
Tarver: Yeah, I have one. What excuse are you gonna use tonight, Roy?

And with that said, the Titan was about to be revealed as a mere mortal. BAM to the canvas Jones went in their second fight. The world of boxing was flipped on its axis. The giant is no more.

And then the same thing happened again with a man named Glenn Johnson: BAM to the canvas he went again, this time he was out like a pair of parachute pants.

What happened to Roy Jones Jr? Was it age? Or was it an accumulation of lackluster ambition and performances that dulled his sharp skillz? Roy Jones will go down in the history books as technically the greatest boxer ever. Not the greatest boxer ever, or one of the greatest boxers ever , but the greatest technical boxer ever.

Why?

He had no great fights to measure him by. Ali had Frazier, Foreman, Liston, Patterson, Shavers and Norton. Sugar Ray Robinson had more epic battles with Jake Lamotta than most fighters have in a lifetime. Joe Louis had Schmelling and Baer. Hagler had Hearns, Leonard and Mugabe. Who did Jones fight?

The Greatest Rock and Roll Story Ever

2006-07-24T15:50:00.000-04:00

THE GREATEST ROCK AND ROLL STORY EVER TOLD

He was an embattled rock star whose record company no longer believed in him. To make matters worse his wife left him and the woman he really loved didn't want him. In his life he fought two good fights with depression and drug addiction. But there he was backstage before his concert at Folsom Prison staring back at his past with an unknown future ahead of him.

"Mr. Cash", the warden said, "we're really honored to have you here." The warden said as nervous as a cat burglar hyped up on speed and caught on high definition video. "But if you don't mind sir, could you refrain from singing any song that would remind the inmates about their current situation."

With a cool smirk and a touch of sarcasm the man in black said, "Do you think they can forget?"

"If you and your wife could stick to the more spiritual stuff that you sing..."

"First of all, warden, she's not my wife", Cash said coolly and with a glint of regret, in reference to his background singer and all around best friend June Carter. “I’ve asked her all kinds of ways, but she ain’t goin’ for it.”

"By the way warden, when was the last time you drank the water here?"

The warden didn't answer that question.

Inside the prison cafeteria the inmates were on edge clamoring for the arrival of the outlaw guitar man in black. Carrying his guitar in one hand and holding a glass of water in the other, Johnny Cash the man who straddled the line between Country, Rock and Gospel, the man who sang and damn near rapped stories to his audience (30 years before Ice Cube was born) about the outlaw lifestyle: sniffin' coke, drinkin' Jack, shooting lovers and enemies down in cold blood and just plain ol' fuckin' around in general. Here was the man Cash about to record one of the best albums in American music history.

In the tension filled cafeteria Cash yelled into the mic: "I'm glad to be here", he told the crowd of about 2,000 inmates on a Sunday afternoon. Surrounding the inmates were dozens of guards armed to the teeth, ready to put down any act of foolishness. Since the mid-50's Johnny Cash worked night and day at cultivating his outlaw bad ass image. "I'm not saying I've done as much time as you have, but I've found myself behind bars a time or two." A statement which received a huge chair-standing, at-a-boy kind of thunderous applause from the room full of thieves, liars, bullies, addicts, drunks and God knows what else – but one thing is for sure, he was definitely connecting with his audience in a way few in pop music would ever be able to do.

It’s a damn shame we grew up on R&B, Jazz and Hip Hop because had we been exposed to rockers like Johnny Cash or Blues men like Muddy Waters, rap music would have a deeper well to drink from. Cash was a gifted songwriter and singer, but it’s the stories he told, that like Tupac and Ice Cube, really endeared him to his audience. He told the stories of the everyday troubled man. Check ‘Cocaine Blues’ out…

Early one mornin' while makin' the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down
I went right home and I went to bedI stuck that lovin' .44 beneath my head
Got up next mornin' and I grabbed that gun
Took a shot of cocaine and away I run
Made a good run but I ran too slow
They overtook me down in Juarez, Mexico
Late in the hot joints takin' the pills
In walked the sheriff from Jericho Hill
He said Willy Lee your name is not Jack Brown
You're the dirty heck that shot your woman down
Said yes, oh yes my name is Willy Lee
If you've got the warrant just a-read it to me
Shot her down because she made me sore
I thought I was her daddy but she had five more
When I was arrested I was dressed in black
They put me on a train and they took me back
Had no friend for to go my bail
They slapped my dried up carcass in that county jail

There he told the story of the outlaw Willie Lee, who, because of troubles with his woman, cocaine and having all round bad disposition finds himself on the run from the law. Kind of reminds you of Eazy E’s classic ‘The Boyz in the Hood”. He simultaneously told the story without preaching against anybody, but the last line of the song says it best: “Come on you've gotta listen unto me, Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

MARK SKILLZ: UNLIMITED

2006-07-24T15:28:00.000-04:00

I know I'm building a rep as an old school hip hop historian and writer and that's cool, but that's not all I'm trying to be. A while back my friend and colleague Ronin Ro told me how he no longer wanted to just be known as a 'hip hop writer'. He told me "Hey man, with your talent, I can see you too, not just writing about hip hop but about anything." And he's right.

I don't want to be pigeon-holed into this one little box called hip-hop. There are other subjects that interest me as well. There are dozens and dozens of stories I'd like to write: Like about the Dinner Time Bandits: a couple of guys who, for 40 years were the top cat burglars in the country; Frank Matthews: one of the biggest drug dealers of the early 70's, that was until the Feds cracked down on him and he was either killed by the Mob or he jumped bail; Iceberg Slim: the man that put the pimp game on paper; Nat Turner: I hate reading books about slavery that talk about us getting our asses whupped by massa, I wanna tell the story of the brother that fought back!"

I have always spoken out about how we as a people are not a monolithic being, that speaks with one mouth and one brain. Hell no, we have a vast ocean of experiences to tap into.

Car Wash Cool Breeze Ed

2006-07-08T19:02:00.000-04:00

For legal reasons I won’t reveal Ed’s full name nor will I reveal the name of the car wash or the city it’s in. But it’s safe to say that Cool Breeze Ed was a lovable guy.

Back in the day when I was a wayward youth of 19 years old I thought it would be cool to work in a car wash. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up watching too much television. This is a true story though. I’ll never forget when I went to go talk to the manager for my impromptu “interview”.

Him: “So, why do you wanna work in a car wash?”
Stupid me: “I dunno, I guess cause I always liked that movie.”
Him: “Bullshit nigga.”
Stupid me: “No for real man, I really liked that movie. I guess you’ll be kind of like Lonnie, the dude that supervised everybody.”
Him: “Are you for real?”
Stupid me: “Yeah. Somebody else around here can be ‘The Fly’ bizzzzzzz.”
Him: “You can’t be serious…”
Stupid me: “Nah, it’ll be fun.”

The manager wasn’t exactly a stranger to me I knew his brother Jason from my previous employer: Mc Donald’s.

Needless to say it wasn’t that much fun working there. To start with, I washed windows for what seemed like forever. Don’t get me wrong though, it was ok at first - in the summertime. The cars would go through some kind of conveyor system and blower and then they would roll into my section. It would be like four or five us that would jump in there and clean the windows.

There were some interesting guys that worked there – well, sort of. There was a guy named Warren, who was like 40 something years old, and a shade darker than Wesley Snipes. To make matters worse he always seemed to like to wear these extremely dark sunglasses. On a hot day, duke would be so tired from working hard in the sun that when he took his shades off, his eyes would be beet-red. He looked like a really hard-core dude, but he had one of the highest, non-gay sounding voices I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Oh, what’s up dude?” He’d say to me with that high pitched voice that had a touch of a southern drawl. I liked Warren he was a cool guy. He and I would be so busy jumping in and out of cars washing windows that we would accidentally slam each other’s hands in the car doors sometimes.

“Aaaagh! Goddamn!” I heard as one car door slammed.
“Oh shit, yo Warren, you aiight?” I’d say.
“Goddamn man, that’s the third time today!”
“Yo, man I’m sorry bout that, I ain’t see you man!”
“Do it again lil’ nigga and it’s gonna be me and you!”

When I know I’m in the wrong, I’m the type of dude that cops to it and apologizes, ain’t no sense in playing bad ass when you know your wrong. “Yo my man, I’m sorry bout that, yo go ahead and take a break, I’ll cover for you.” I said.

“Nah, that’s alright.” He said to me still holding his hand. “Just be careful.”

And back to work we’d go.

I was washing the window on the front passenger side, not paying attention to my surroundings when I tried to get out of the car. I tried to step away but I couldn’t. It seemed like my foot was stuck. I looked down on the ground and looked, my foot was stuck underneath the tire of a big ass truck. The tire rolled onto my foot in such a manner that the side of my foot was stuck underneath it. In order to avoid the pain of having the whole weight of the truck on my foot, I’d have to pull it out. But I couldn’t because the conveyor and had been stopped at the same moment as the trucks tire had rolled on my foot. “Yo!” I yelled out. “Somebody start the belt!”

And there was Warren with a bottle of water in his hand and a smile on his face. “That’s for my hand, lil’ nigga!”

Just then the whole weight of the truck was on my foot. “Yo! You win, move that shit, yo!”

That was one fond memory of that place. But the rest of my experiences there weren’t funny like that. In fact they were pretty sad. Not for me, but for the older guys that worked there. Here I was at 19 years old wayward, directionless, aimless and all that other stuff that goes with being 19. But I was in the prime of my life. On the other hand, there I was working with grown ass men my parent’s age. These dudes were in their 40’s with nothing going for themselves. They were there working for minimum wage just like I was. I couldn’t understand it back then. These brothers were down on their luck. Quite a few of them were drunks, ex-cons, drug addicts and God knows what else.

Like this guy named Mike from somewhere deep in Arkansas, he was 39 years old at the time and probably had 27 of his 32 teeth. This was problematic for everyone but Mike, you see, he was missing his front teeth, so when you combine that with his southern accent, I guess you can say the guy pretty much spoke mush mouth. “Hey, I’m a be boopin’ da car, man – wa ou now!”

The most mysterious guy there was an older white guy who looked like somebody from off of the 'Andy Griffith Show'. Go find a picture of the Kennedy assasination from 1963 - he could easily have fit into that picture. Hell, he was probably a part of the conspiracy. He wore coke bottle glasses and baggy slacks and he wore his hair slicked just like Lee Harvey Oswald. He never said a word to anyone. I used to look at him and wonder, what in the hell he was doing working there around so many black guys.

There was a down on his luck, sho nuff fo real drunk (who was also named Mike as well) that worked with us. He was a white guy that was hard to look at. He had tattoos on his arms and looked like he slept in a Meth lab day and night. I think he too, had 27 of his 32 teeth. But mostly he stank.

And there was a fat older guy named Otis - the shoeshine guy. He wore a captains hat everyday and could pick out the instances of on the job related racism faster than you could spit. Now here was an angry dude. He was quiet but he was angry. He’d say things like this: ‘You see that there, Youngblood. Look at the way the white man stands over the brother while he’s working. Do you see it? You know why he’s comfortable doing that don’t ya?”

“Slavery?” I’d say.

“Damn right. He’s trying to catch up on what he missed out on back then. But he better not bring that shit to me.” I tried to steer clear of him.

I suspected most of the brothers there had done some kind of time in prison. But the one dude whom I knew for a fact that had done a whole heap of time I avoided. He had all of his front teeth, but I suspected that he was missing his back teeth, cause I could never understand a word the brother said. His name was Duane. He had a heavy voice, on the rare occasions that he did speak it sounded like a low mumble, no words could be understood. I would just nod my head in agreement whenever he talked.

But without a doubt the most interesting guy there was a gentleman named Ed. At 46 years of age he was hardly ever seen without a bottle of ‘Cool Breeze’. Of the thirty-two teeth that a normal adult has Ed probably had 22. And they were stained yellow and brown. His uneven reddish-brown Afro was misshapen from always wearing a hat. I think he slept with that hat on because the hair on the back of his head would be flat while the sides always stuck out. He had joke about everything and everyone. And the man had no shame.

“Say Youngblood, why don’t you gimme a dollar!” He’d say to me with that squeal of an alcohol and cigarette smoke-stained voice.

“No prob, my brother.” I’d say to him as I’d extend a dollar to him.
“I’ll get you back on pay day, Youngblood.”

Of which would never happen. But I didn’t mind. After a while it got to the point where he owed everyone in the place at least twenty dollars. If you went to him to get your money he’d laugh you off.

“Yo Ed man, what’s up with my money?”
“HA HA HA HA”, he’d laugh with his mouth wide open revealing his twenty-two yellow stained teeth.
“I ain’t laughing Ed, gimme my money!”
“Eha, he he he ha”
“Yo Ed, you gonna be short mo teeth if you don’t gimme my money!”
“AAAAA HA HA AH AHA HA AH HA!”

The circumstances of my co-workers living conditions was bought home one evening at a company meeting, well, I guess you could call it a meeting, mostly the management hollered and cussed at us.

“Goddamn it, I try to help y’all out, but none of y’all appreciate shit!” The manager yelled.

“I give you a little extra money every week and you’d think that some of you would wanna do something for yourselves besides smoke that shit or drink Cool Breeze. But nah, y’all just want to act like your grown asses weren’t taught shit! I found a pair of somebody’s dirty drawers in the washing machine. Now what kind of shit is that?”

All I could think about was somebody washing their drawers there. Just then in mid-thought, Ed tapped me on my shoulder.

“Hey, Youngblood”, he whispered. “Give me a ride home.”

On the way to his house Ed told me about his newfound girlfriend and that he was gonna “hook” me up with her.

“Ok, Ed no prob.”

“Man, you gotta see her Youngblood, she sucked my dick last night.”

Just then the thought of some woman blowing his crusty ass popped into my head. I needed to change the subject. Quick.

“Yo man I’m gonna watch the Tyson fight, wanna come?’

“Nah, I’m getting’ my dick sucked tonight.”

Once again the thought of some woman with feet so dirty that the bottom of her feet were charcoal black and ashy popped into my head. I gotta find a way to keep him off of this subject.

“Yeah, I think he’s gonna take Michael Spinks out tonight.”

“I don’t care”, he said, “I’m fuckin’ tonight.”

“Isn’t this your place right here, Ed?”

“Come on Youngblood, you gotta see her.”

I guess the saying is right: curiosity is a motherfucker. I had to see what kind of broken down, old, dirty-feet havin’, snaggle-tooth, wig wearing, forest creature would be blowing him.

“Oh shit, hell naw, Ed, you’ve been fuckin’ her?”
“Yep.”

I couldn’t believe it that ol snaggle-tooth, Cool Breeze drinkin’, quarter- stealin’, dope- fiendin’, no good money grubbin', crusty drawer wearin’ coot was fucking a broad I wouldn’t mind fuckin my damn self. For starters she had all of her teeth and was somewhere near 25 years old, she wasn’t fat and sloppy like I imagined, but thick and fit. How in the hell did this falling down drunk –

“See ya later Youngblood, enjoy the fight.” Ed said as he shut the door.
I hopped in my car and did 80 mph on the freeway laughing to myself thinking about that old lucky snaggle-toothed bastard Cool Breeze Ed.

One Night At the Executive Playhouse

2006-07-04T19:35:00.000-04:00

Pete DJ Jones vs. Kool DJ Herc:
One Night At the Executive Playhouse

By Mark Skillz

Back in the good old days of 1977 when gas lines were long and unemployment was high, there were two schools of deejays competing for Black and Latino audiences in New York City: the Pete D.J. Jones crowd and the devout followers of Kool D.J. Herc. One group played the popular music of the day for party-going adult audiences in clubs in downtown Manhattan. The other played raw funk and break-beats for a rapidly growing, fanatic – almost cult-like following of teenagers in rec centers and parks. Both sides had their devotees. One night the two-masters of the separate tribes clashed in a dark and crowded club on Mount Eden and Jerome Avenue called the Executive Playhouse.

The First Master: The Wise Teacher

You can’t miss Pete D.J. Jones at a party – or anywhere else for that matter, he is somewhere near seven feet tall and bespectacled, today at 64 years old he is a retired school teacher from the Bronx, but if you listen to him speak you immediately know he ain’t from New York – he’s from ‘down home’ as they say in Durham, North Carolina. But no matter where he was from, back in the ‘70’s, Pete Jones was the man.

“I played everywhere”, Mr. Jones says in a voice that sounds like your uncle or grandfather from somewhere down deep in the south, even though he’s been in New York for more than thirty years. “I played Smalls Paradise, Leviticus, Justine’s, Nells – everywhere.”

“Looky here”, he says to me in the coolest southern drawl before he asks me a question, “You ever heard of Charles Gallery?”

“Yes”, I said, as I tell him that I’m only 36 years old and I had only heard about the place through stories from people who had been there. “Oh”, he says in response, “that was one helluva club. Tell you what, you know that club, Wilt’s ‘Small’s Paradise’?”

“Yep”, I said, “that place is internationally known – but I never went there either.”

“That’s ok”, he says still as cool as a North Carolina summer breeze, “When I played there GQ and the Fatback Band opened for me.”

“No way – are you talking about ‘Rock-Freak’ GQ, the same people that did ‘Disco Nights?’

“One and the same”, he says. He suspects that I don’t believe him so he says, “Hey, we can call Rahiem right now and he’ll tell ya.” As much as I would love to speak with Rahiem LeBlanc I pass, I believe him.

In his heyday Pete DJ Jones was to adult African- American partygoers what Kool Herc was to West Bronx proto- type hip-hoppers, he was the be all to end all. He played jams all over the city for the number one black radio station at the time: WBLS. At these jams is where he blasted away the competition with his four Bose 901 speakers and two Macintosh 100’s – which were very powerful amps. At certain venues he’d position his Bose speakers facing toward the wall, so that when they played the sound would deflect off of the wall and out to the crowd. The results were stunning to say the least. His system, complete with two belt drive Technic SL-23’s (which were way before 1200’s) and a light and screen show, which he says he’d make by: “Taking a white sheet and hanging it on the wall, and aiming a projector that had slides in it from some of the clubs I played at.” These effects wowed audiences all over the city. He went head to head with the biggest names of that era: the Smith Brothers, Ron Plummer, Maboya, Grandmaster Flowers, the Disco Twins, “Oh yeah”, he says, “I took them all on.”

On the black club circuit in Manhattan at that time – much like the Bronx scene – deejays spun records and had guys rap on the mike. “I ran a club called Superstar 33, ask anyone and they will tell you: That was the first place that Kurtis Blow got on the mic at”, says a gruff voiced gentlemen who, back then, called himself JT Hollywood – not to be confused with D.J. Hollywood, whom JT remembers as, “An arrogant ass who always wanted shit to go his way.”

“I wouldn’t call what we did rappin’ – I used to say some ol’ slick and sophisticated shit on the mike”, said a proud JT.

“We spun breaks back then too”, Pete Jones says, “I played “Do it anyway you wanna,” ‘Scorpio’, ‘Bongo Rock’, BT Express, Crown Heights Affair, Kool and the Gang, we played all of that stuff – and we’d keep the break going too. I played it all, disco, it didn’t matter, there was no hip-hop per se back then, except for the parts we made up by spinning it over and over again.”

There have been so many stories written about hip-hop’s early days that have not reported on the guys that spun in Manhattan and Brooklyn in the early and mid ‘70’s, that many crucial deejays of that time feel left out.

“Kool Herc and guys like that didn’t have a big reputation back then”, explains Jones, “they were in the Bronx – we, meaning guys like myself and Flowers, we played everywhere, so we were known. Their crowd was anywhere between 4 to 70. Mine was 18-22. They played in parks – where anybody could go, no matter how old you are you could go to a park. We played in clubs.”

With a sense of urgency Mr. Jones says, “I have to clear something up, many people think that we played disco – that’s not true. There were two things happening in black music at that time: there was the “Hustle” type music being played – which was stuff like Van McCoy’s “Do the Hustle” – I couldn’t stand that record. And then there were the funky type records that mixed the Blues and jazz with Latin percussion that would later be called funk. Well, hip-hop emerged from that.”

He places special emphasis on the word ‘emerged’. He says that because “If you know anything about the history of music, you know, no one person created anything, it ‘emerges’ from different things.

The Second Master: The Cult Leader

There must have been a height requirement for deejays in the ‘70’s, because like Pete DJ Jones, Kool DJ Herc is a giant among men. In fact, with his gargantuan sized sound system and 6’5, 200 plus pound frame, the man is probably the closest thing hip-hop has ever seen to the Biblical Goliath. Today, some thirty years since his first party in the West Bronx, Kool Herc is still larger than life. His long reddish-brown dreads hang on his shoulders giving him a regal look – sort of like a lion. His hands – which are big enough to crush soda cans and walnuts, reveal scarred knuckles, which are evidence of a rough life. During our conversation, Kool Herc, whose street hardened voice peppered with the speech patterns of his homeland Jamaica and his adopted city of New York made several references to ‘lock up’, ‘the precinct’ and the ‘bullpen’, all in a manner that showed that he had more than a passing familiarity with those types of situations.

As the tale goes Kool Herc planted the seeds for hip-hop in 1973 in the West Bronx. Along with his friends Timmy Tim and Coke La Rock, and with the backing of his family – in particular his sister Cindy, the parties he threw back then are the food of urban legend. In the 1984 BBC documentary “The History of Hip Hop” an eight-millimeter movie is shown – it is perhaps the only piece of physical evidence of those historic parties. In the film, teenagers of anywhere between 17-20 years old are grooving to the sounds of James Brown’s “Give It Up or Turn It Loose”. Young men wearing sunglasses and sporting fishermen hats with doo rags underneath them, are seen dancing with excited young women, all while crowded into the rec room of hip-hop’s birthplace: 1520 Sedgwick Ave.

As the camera pans to the right, the large hulking figure of Kool Herc takes the forefront. Sporting dark sunglasses and wearing a large medallion around his neck, Kool Herc is decked out in an AJ Lester’s suit. He isn’t just an imposing figure over his set; he looms large over his audience as well. His sound system – a monstrous assemblage of technology, was large and intimidating too, so awesome was it that his speakers were dubbed the ‘Herculords’. When Kool Herc played his gargantuan sized sound system – the ground shook. And so did his competition.

Legend has it that with his twin tower Shure columns and his powerful Macintosh amplifiers, he is said to have drowned the mighty Afrika Bambaataa at a sound clash. “Bambaataa”, Herc said with the volume of his echo plex turned up and in his cool Jamaica meets the Bronx voice, ‘Turn your system down…”

But the mighty Zulu chief was unbowed.

So once again Herc spoke into the mike, “Ahem, Bambaataa…turn your system down!” And with that, Herc turned the volume of the echo plex up, and bought in the notorious break-beat classic ‘The Mexican’ all the while drowning Bambaataa in a wall of reverberated bass and funk drumming. According to Disco Bee, “That was typical of Herc – if you went over your time, hell yeah, he’d drown you out.”

In his arsenal Herc had the mighty twin speakers dubbed the ‘Herculords’ and his crew, a mixture of high school friends and neighborhood kids called the ‘Herculoids’. The squad consisted of the Imperial Jay Cee, LaBrew, Sweet and Sour, Clark Kent, Timmy Tim, Pebblee Poo, Coke La Rock, Eldorado Mike and the Nigger Twins. According to Herc, “Coke and Tim were friends of mine, it’s like I got the Chevy, and I’m driving. You my man, so you roll too. So when Coke wanted to play – he play, you know what I mean?”

Although the core crew was Herc, Timmy Tim and Coke La Rock, many of the people that frequented these parties could also be dubbed Herculoids as well. Even though they weren’t members of the crew, many of these people would become disciples of a new musical gospel. They would help spread the musical message and further build upon the foundation that Herc had laid down. Much like the early Christians, who endured all manner of harassment, the early followers of Kool Herc, would lead what would later be called hip-hop, through the parks and rec centers of New York and then onto the international stage. These devotees’s would be active figures in this new genre from the late 70’s into the mid-80’s.

“Man, Herc was a monster”, remembers D.J. AJ Scratch, who Kurtis Blow paid homage to on the classic record “AJ”. “I wasn’t even on back then – I was trying to get in the game back then”, reminisced AJ, “I was a nobody, I was like a regular dude, you know what I’m saying? I was a Kool Herc follower – I was a loyal follower, I would’ve followed Kool Herc to the edge of the Earth.”

“Yo, Herc was unstoppable back then”, said D.J. EZ Mike – who alongside Disco Bee, were Grandmaster Flash’s left and right hand men, they helped Flash develop his quick-mix theories and rock shows back in the day. “Back then, no one could touch Herc and his system – it was just that powerful.”

Disco Bee concurs, “The first time I heard Kool Herc, I used to always hear his music, I used to live in these apartments and I would hear this loud ass music. We used to go to the park and we would hear his shit from three or four blocks away! We would hear this sound coming out of the park. You’d be like ‘what is that sound?’ You’d hear (Disco Bee imitates the sound of the drums) ‘shoooop, shoooop, donk, donk, shooooop. You wouldn’t hear any bass until you started getting closer. But you could hear his music from very far. And you’d know that Kool Herc was in the park. We used to go to Grant Ave. where Kool Herc would be giving block parties. We’d hear him while we’re coming up the street, we’re coming up from the 9 and we’d be coming up the steps and you’d hear his music on Grant Ave. It used to be crazy.”

“Herc had the recognition, he was the big name in the Bronx back then”, explains AJ. “Back then the guys with the big names were: Kool D, Disco King Mario, Smokey and the Smoke-a-trons, Pete DJ Jones, Grandmaster Flowers and Kool Herc. Not even Bambaataa had a big name at that time, you know what I’m sayin?”

According to Herc’s own account, he was the man back then. “Hands down the ‘70’s were mine”, he said. “Timmy Tim is the one that bought me ‘Bongo Rock’, and I made it more popular. He bought me that album, and after I heard that album I said to Coke “Listen to this shit here man! We used that record and that was what kicked off my format called the ‘merry go round”.

“Pete D.J. Jones was basically a whole other level”, says AJ. “He played disco music, and Herc played b-boy music, you know what I’m sayin?”

Mark Skillz: “So, when you say he played ‘disco’ music what do you mean? Give me an example of a record that Pete Jones might play.

AJ: Ok, he played things like ‘Love is the Message’ and ‘Got to Be Real’ – stuff like that; he played stuff with that disco pop to it. He didn’t play original break-beats like what Kool Herc was on. He played like a lot of radio stuff. That’s what Pete D.J. Jones did – that’s what made him good. I mean he had a sound system but he played a lot of radio stuff. Kool Herc played the hardcore shit you ain’t ever hear: Yellow Sunshine, Bongo Rock and Babe Ruth – a whole variety of stuff; James Brown ‘Sex Machine’, you know the version with the ‘Clap your hands, stomp your feet?’

Before hip-hop was a multi-billion dollar a year industry, it was a sub-culture. All of the elements were coming into place, sort of being cooked like a stew, in a melting pot: a spoonful of funk, a fistful of bass, a heap of raw energy, all cut up on a platter with a dash of angel dust.

The Battleground

Deep in the heart of the Bronx located on Mt. Eden and Jerome was one of the first indoor hip hop spots. The owners of the venue probably gave it other names over the years but the two most popular ones were the Sparkle and the Executive Playhouse.

“It was real dark [in the Executive Playhouse]”, remembers AJ, “it wasn’t really like put together, it had a little stage, it had like a little miniature light show, you know what I’m sayin’, it was like a low budget venue. Right around the corner from the Executive Playhouse was the Parkside Plaza – that was a disco. The Executive Playhouse was something that maybe the guys went into the Parkside Plaza and got the idea to open up a club. So they went right around the corner on Mt. Eden and Jerome and opened up the Executive Playhouse - maybe they had the idea, but it wasn’t comparable with the Parkside Plaza. You go in there [the Executive Playhouse] and would be looking around, and you probably wouldn’t wanna go to the bathroom, because of the lighting, you know what I’m saying? There were lights but it was dim. That was hip-hop back then everything was dimmed out.”

The drug of choice back then was weed sprinkled with PCP – the ‘dust heads’ and the stick-up kids were all over the place, “That was the vibe back then”, declared AJ “and you wanted to be a part of that. The lights, the breaks, the dancing, them talking on the mike with the echo – that was hip-hop back then. You would go through anything just to hear Kool Herc’s performance. Kool Herc was special back then. It didn’t matter what the venue was like. It was what he displayed the night of the show; he did his thing.”

The Protégé

By day Pete Jones was an English teacher in the Bronx. However, at night, Pete taught another set of students a whole other set of skills.

“I had several young guys that came around me trying to learn the deejay business”, explains Mr. Jones, “Magic Mike, Herby Herb and a lot of others, but none of them could figure out how to hook my system up. Except for one guy: Lovebug Starski. He went everywhere with me.”

Lovebug Starski was one of the few deejays of that time that could play for either a hard-core hip-hop crowd with an underground deejay like Kool DJ AJ or for the adult audience’s downtown with Pete Jones or in Harlem with D.J. Hollywood. His original mentor was his stepfather Thunderbird Johnny, a man who ran after hour spots uptown in Harlem. Starski was one of the few cats that could rock the mike and the wheels of steel at the same time.

But Pete had another protégé whose talent was immeasurable. In fact, he would forever change the skill set necessary to be a deejay. He was one-part scientist another part electronics wizard who possessed a sense of timing that was not of this world.

“One of the baddest deejays I ever saw was Grandmaster Flowers”, Jones says, “He could blend. He was a mixer. The things he did with records were incredible. He could hold a blend like you wouldn’t believe. He was the baddest thing I had ever saw.” That was until he saw a young man that had grown up in the Hoe Ave section of the South Bronx.

He was named Joseph at birth, called Joey in the neighborhood but would later gain fame under another name, a name which was partly inspired by a comic book hero. E-Z Mike, his best friend since childhood remembers it like this, “He got the name Flash because he was fast at everything he did. When we played basketball as kids, none of us could keep up with him. No matter what we did, he was always faster than the rest of us. He could outrun us all.” Later a local guy named Joe Kidd gave him the title of Grandmaster.

Before he became the Grandmaster Flash of legend, he was a student of Pete DJ Jones’. Friends described him as being intense, “When that guy caught the deejay bug real bad around 1973, we didn’t know what was happening”, said E-Z Mike, “He had a messenger job”, Mike continues, “He would get paid and by the next day – he would be broke. We’d be like, ‘Yo, where’s all of your money?’ He spent it all on records.”

From 1973 to 1977 Flash and his crew which first consisted of Mean Gene, Disco Bee and E-Z Mike and then later Cowboy, Mele Mel, Creole and Scorpio, were struggling to gain a foothold in the Bronx scene. But they could not get around Kool Herc. He was a giant.

“We’d try and get on Herc’s system”, Mike recalls, “But Herc wasn’t going for it. Flash would ask, “Could I get on?” and Herc would be like ‘Not”. You see back then”, Mike explains, “Nobody wanted Flash to touch their system. They’d be like, “Hell no, you be messing up needles and records and shit.” Both Disco Bee and E-Z Mike agree that Herc used to publicly embarrass Flash on the mike by talking ‘really greasy’ about him.

There have been many stories told about Flash’s early sound system, both EZ Mike and Disco Bee confirm that although Flash was an electronic wizard (E-Z Mike says, “Flash could build a TV from scratch”), his first system was the technological equivalent of a ’75 hoopty.

Disco Bee recalls that, “Flash built his own cueing system. Anything he could think of Flash would try to invent it”, Disco Bee laughs, “His system looked so raggedy, awww man, we had some raggedy junk. We were soldering stuff together right before we’d get ready to play, because he just built this thing, and he didn’t finish it. We used to get to a spot early and set up everything and he would be soldering stuff trying to get it to work. Man, we had some raggedy stuff.”

“Awww man this is gonna make you laugh”, E-Z Mike says, “Flash had these two speakers that he built from scratch, they were about six and a half feet tall, they were wood, he had three speakers in each one and on the top he put a piece of plastic with Christmas lights on the inside of it, so that when he deejayed the top of the speaker would be lighting up. Then he took white plastic and wrapped it around the wood – so that the speakers wouldn’t look like they were wood. We didn’t have any bass – there was no bass whatsoever. Just mids and highs”, Mike remembers.

The only person willing to give Flash a break was Pete Jones.

“The first time I met Pete was when I went with Flash to ‘Pete’s Lounge’. Like I said, Flash had gotten real serious about this deejay stuff and he would hook up with Pete and learn a lot of shit from him.”

It must’ve been on one of these meetings at Pete’s Lounge that Flash and Pete plotted against Kool Herc.

A Sound Clash on the West Side of Jerome Ave.

“When I battled Pete, it wasn’t even a battle, it was telling my audience, what you think you gettin’? And you tried disrespectin’ and all that; let’s see what the other side of the spectrum sound like by a guy by the name of Pete DJ Jones”, said Herc.

Jones remembers it a little differently, “I guess he was somehow down with the club, he was like the resident deejay [at the Executive Playhouse] and they wanted to get a big crowd, so I guess it was his idea to battle me.”

It was inevitable that the two masters would clash.

The way Herc describes Pete’s audience is as “The bourgeoisie, the ones that graduated from the little house parties, you grown now you out your momma’s house. You puttin’ on Pierre Cardin now, you wearing Halston, you getting’ into the Jordache and Sassoon era, you down there where Frankie Crocker hangs out at, places like Nell Gwynn’s, or the big spot, whadda ya call it? Oh yeah, Leviticus, you down there. ”

“I’d say it was a week before the battle”, Pete remembers, “When I was out one night, and I ran into the twins. They must’ve had some kind of falling out with Herc, cause they were real mad at him. They said, “I’ll tell you all of the records he’s gonna play”. And he wrote all of them out for me, right there on the street.”

The twins he was referring to were the Nigger Twins, a couple of dancers who were a part of Herc’s crew. “When they wrote out his playlist for me, they said, “He’s gonna play them in this order”, Pete recalls.

The night of the battle Pete had a few cards up his sleeve so he went on first. ‘I broke out all of the records that the twins told me about, and I played them in the order that he would play them in. The next thing I knew I saw him walking around talking on the mike saying, “It sounds like I’m listening to a tape of myself.” He sounded real frustrated. I figured if I went first and played what he was gonna play, it would look like to the crowd he wasn’t doing anything different. That was the edge I had over him that night.”

But Herc’s followers were a devoted bunch.

After Pete played Herc went on and he dug deep into his playlist for the rarest of records.

“That was Kool Herc’s venue, the Executive Playhouse was a place that he played at constantly, so maybe they was using Pete to get a little extra audience. But Pete had notoriety. Kool Herc was big back then, he was probably number one in the Bronx.” Remembers AJ. “No matter if he took his playlist or not that doesn’t matter.”

AJ – a man who is well into his 40’s is still a devout practitioner of the ‘keep it real’ mentality. “Nah, Pete didn’t get the edge over Kool Herc”, AJ says, “You know why I think he got the edge over Kool Herc to be honest with you. This is only my opinion: Pete DJ Jones was a deejay but he was mad lazy yo. Pete DJ Jones used to hire dudes to come and play for him. The Executive Playhouse was not Pete’s kind of crowd. It wasn’t that he was a lazy dude it just wasn’t his crowd. It wasn’t Nell Gwynn’s or Nemo’s, it wasn’t downtown, so he wasn’t comfortable, so he put on the people that could rock that kind of crowd.”

After Herc played it was Pete’s turn again, this time he played his R&B and funk records – but the crowd wasn’t feeling it. So he pulled out a couple of ringers, in the form of his protégés: Lovebug Starski and Grandmaster Flash.

“Flash tore Herc’s ass up that night”, remembers E-Z Mike. “When it came crunch time to see what was what: Pete put Grandmaster Flash on”, remembers AJ. That was the first time I ever saw Flash play. The people were amazed. You see, Flash was a deejay, he was doing all that quick-mixing and spinning around and stuff – the Bronx lost its mind that night because we had never seen anything like that before.”

To the crowd of hundreds it looked like Pete Jones was winning. No one knew who Grandmaster Flash was that night. He was an unknown deejay playing on the set of one of the most popular jocks of that time. People yelled and screamed because it was the first time that they had seen a deejay with a magician’s flair for showmanship. Nobody played like that before. Kool Herc would haphazardly drop the needle on the record – sometimes the break was there, often times it wasn’t. Pete Jones could mix his ass off – but he wasn’t entertaining to watch. Both men had huge sound systems, but they weren’t charismatic spinners. Flash was.

On this night, the crowd at the Executive Playhouse was entranced with Flash’s spinning techniques, which were really revolutionary at this time. He had perfected a new technique called the ‘backspin’.

E-Z Mike remembers the first time Flash did the backspin: “He spent the night at my house, he woke up out of his sleep and turned the equipment on, it was like 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. The first record he did it with was Karen Young’s “Hotshot” and he backspun it a bunch of times, and then turned to me and said “Yo, remember that and remind me about it when I wake up.” And he jumped back in his bed. When he woke up the next morning, he did it again.”

One could only imagine that night at the Executive Playhouse in front of hundreds of stunned spectators Flash cutting ‘Hotshot’ to pieces:
“Hot shot, hot shot, hot…hot shot hot shot hot…hot shot. Hot shot. Hot shot…hot...hot…hot.

“You know what at that battle, Flash showed the Bronx that he was for real”, said AJ. By Herc’s own admission by 1977 he was on the decline. Whether or not it had anything to do with him getting stabbed at the Executive Playhouse is open to speculation. What is a fact though, is that after this battle between two of the biggest stars of the era the name Grandmaster Flash was no longer relegated to a small section of the Bronx. His fame spread like wildfire throughout the city. According to more than just one person interviewed for this story, the long-term effects of the battle on Kool Herc were not good. In the weeks proceeding the battle Herc’s audience got smaller and smaller. They were leaving the Executive Playhouse for another hotspot: The Dixie, which was the home of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Four.

Soon The Dixie would become so crowded that by 4 a.m. when the house was still packed the only way they could get people out of there was by playing Jackie Wilson’s “Work Out”, but the fly girls and b-boys would still want to party, “We’d put that record on”, said Disco Bee, “And you’d look out on the floor and folks would be doing the Twist”.

The battle between Kool Herc and Pete Jones was also a pivotal moment in time because previous to it battles were all about equipment, records and who moved the crowd – Grandmaster Flash added the next dimension: showmanship. This was at a time when the sound system was king. Breakout and Baron had Sasquatch. D.J. Divine had the Infinity Machine, Kool Herc had the Herculords and Grandmaster Flash would later have a system called the Gladiator. Today’s deejays know nothing of sound systems; even fewer know how to hook one up.

Mark Skillz says peace, respect and special thanks to Jeff Chang, Davey D, Christie Z Pabon, Cindy Campbell, Kool Herc, Kool DJ AJ, E-Z Mike, KC the Prince of Soul, JT Hollywood, Pete Jones, Charlie Ahearn for the photos and Disco Bee.

"I Shook Up the World"

2006-06-28T14:39:00.000-04:00

"I Shook Up the World...I'm a bad man", the young man from Louisville, Ky said. "I must be pretty", he yelled at the reporters and anyone else in the auditorium with his mouth wide open. "I'm only 22 years old, I fought Sonny Liston and I don't have a mark on my face!" He said amazed at the feat he had accomplished and the fact that he survived a clash with a titan. "I must be pretty! I'm a bad man!"

And he had every reason to be scared of the man he had knocked out in the first round of their second fight.

In his day, Sonny Liston was more feared than Mike Tyson and more trouble than George Foreman. He was built like a gladiator and his face looked like it was made to scowl. Thunder roared and lightning struck, on the rare occasions when he did manage to smile. It seemed like there was nothing in the world that could scare Sonny Liston. The one time heavyweight champ had been an ex-con and a known leg breaker for the Outfit (that's the Chicago arm of the Mob to you). He had more run-ins with the cops than DMX and probably served more time in prison than any two rappers you can name. He truly was a bad man.

On the other hand his opponent Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr, was a talented light heavyweight, with lightning quick speed and an awkward boxing style. He did everything wrong: he kept his hands down low instead of in a defensive position and he ran - alot, a whole lot. But mostly reporters and fight fans didn't like him because he ran his mouth. A lot. A whole lot. They nicknamed him the "Louisville Lip". He was just a kid they felt that needed a good butt whuppin'. And Sonny Liston would be the right guy to do it.

When they met for the second time in an auditorium in Lewiston, Maine (in a place that was normally an ice hockey rink) Clay, who had just changed his name to Muhammad Ali was not as scared as he was the first time they met. But he was nervous, for Liston was not a man to take lightly. One minute and some change into the fight, Ali hit Liston with a punch that very few ringside observers (or anyone else for that matter) saw. He called the punch 'the anchor punch' - which scientifically, isn't the greatest punch in the world. He learned it from the old black vaudeville performer Sambo. But nevertheless, it worked.

When Liston caught that punch square on his jaw, BAM, to the canvas he went. And, into history they went as well. Ali is now acknowledged as one of the greatest fighters ever and Liston...one of the scariest opponents a man could face.

One of the Best to Ever Do it

2006-06-23T22:00:00.000-04:00

One of the first female MC's on the mic was from the Zulu Nation, her name was Queen Kenya. She rhymed on the mic in combination with Mr. Biggs and a guy by the name of Cowboy. According to Mr. Biggs, "It wasn't rappin like we know it now, but it was just little phrases."

But the old school chick who gets major props as being one of the first to do it - and do it extremely well is Sha Rock of the Funky Four Plus One More. Sha Rock had the voice and the rhymes.

"See if the sun don't shine and the rain won't stop,
We got a style called punk rock,
Just get up the chairs and just have some fun,
Cause there's two deejays the Funky 4 Plus One.
To the people out there we want you to know,
We are the ones with the magic controll.
Cause theres two deejays and five MC's,
Four of the fellas plus one is me..."

The other stand outs from this period are Lisa Lee, Debbie Deb, Pebblee Poo and the Mercedes Ladies - big ups to DJ Flame b/k/a La Spank.

In 1984 the script got flipped as far as female MC's went when two chicks battled on wax: Roxanne Shante and Sparky D

Roxanne had the punchlines but Sparky had the fire. She was strong and aggressive on the mic. Shante's voice was thin but her punchlines were damn funny.

In the late 80's and early 90's a new crop of female MC's hit the scene: Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Sweet Tee, MC Lyte and Antoinnette. Queen Latifah back in the days had the skillz - no doubt, she was top notch witness cuts: 'Wrath of My Madness and "Inside Out". She was raw. Monie Love - who is currently an on air radio personality in New York, was the another top rank contender.

But it was the fierce gangstress from Queens who was the real underdog here. Dubbed the "female Rakim" Antoinnette rhymed in a low monotone that insinuated a cold crushing death to her competition. First premiering on a Hurby Azor produced compilation her songs "I Got An Attitude" and "Hit Em Wit This" were official boom box classic material. But it was the classic 'Who's the Boss" that cemented her forever.

Unfortunately her career would go nowhere due to poor management advice. Somehow someway she got caught up in a lyrical war with MC Lyte, a Brooklynite whose actual technical rhyming skills could not match Antoinnette's, however her raw voice and punchlines made her a quality opponent. Lyte's manager and father told me himself that Antoinnette was actually better than Lyte.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SX318Aa5X40&search=antoinette

Things You Can Buy

2006-06-22T10:10:00.000-04:00

SOMETHING YOU CAN"T ...

CLASS

How Can I Be Down?

2006-06-21T17:08:00.000-04:00

I'm always happy to see people go for their dreams, it's what separates us from the animals. The fact that we can dream, but more importantly work to achieve our dreams, is what makes us the higher species.

With that said, I don't know about you, but why have we lowered expectations for our kids? Case in point here's something from AllHipHop.Com:

“[V-103’s] Ryan Cameron will host a live remote from there along with Greg Street. It’s important that we let the ‘hood know that we know where we come from.”Block will also be giving away prizes such as studio time and the opportunity to record a demo. The block parties are being put on as part of a community initiative of Block Enterprises’ Turning Pennies to Dollaz Foundation. "

It seems like every other event I go to somebody is either giving away studio time or telling folks how they can get a deal. What's wrong with this picture?

If you know anything about the music industry you know one thing: Very few artists get rich selling records. I am not going to go into the mechanics behind getting a record played and all that but I will say this...it is hard to truly make money in the record business. No one talks about life after you stop selling records (should you ever sell a substantial amount), no one talks about the need for you to have some other skills besides rap, singing, beatmaking, deejaying, remixing and so forth and so on; without a marketable skill outside of the music industry you can find yourself at 35 flat broke and busted with very few options left in a still young life.

Nothing Talks Louder Than Green Money

2006-06-16T14:03:00.000-04:00

The Real Reason Real Hip Hop Doesn't Sell

Before digital downloads and mixtape exclusives, eager hip hop fans sat by their boom boxes with blank cassette tapes set to "pause" and "record", so that they could record the newest jams to hit the streets.

Mind you it costed nothing to record songs off of the radio, except for the cost of the tape. At that time the best MC's and DJ's of the 80's and 90's could be heard on late night mix shows on radio stations all throughout the country. Name a group...The Juice Crew - played on WBLS, WBAU, KZSU, KPOO, KDAY and many other stations; Main Source - same thing. The records were played everywhere, except there was one problem: People didn't buy the records because they taped them off of the radio.

At the same time the gangsta movement was rearing its head. These guys were selling records without radio play. In fact, they were selling more records than the guys who were getting some serious spins. Why was that?

It was because their fans talked with their dollars rather than their voices.

Soon the major corporations caught onto the buzz. The rule of business is: Go with what sells. Real hip hop (as we like to call it) didn't have the numbers that the gangsta's were getting. Do you see where I'm going with this?

If ya like real hip hop (and I know you do) you gotta support it. If you don't like Source Magazine that's fine. Buy Wax Poetics or Elemental. If you don't like your local radio station tune into Spinderella's 'Back Spin' or Davey D's "Breakdown FM". But for God's sake man, spend your money so that the people who make the kind of stuff we like can continue to bring it to us.

Recently the head of Cristal Champagne said that the attention that hip hoppers have given his beverage is 'unwelcomed'. Jay Z, one of the people who has long championed that brand is leading a boycott against them. What's wrong with this picture?

Let's start with this, Cristal is some of the MOST expensive stuff out there. I remember one night my cousin Gian and I were at a bar and G turned to me and said, "Yo cuz, let's get a couple of glasses of Cristal." Out of curiousity, I asked the bartender how much a glass of Cristal was, to which she responded $75.

My mouth hit the bar top. 75 dollars? I asked.
"Yes", she said.
'For one glass?"
"Yes".
"Get da fuck outta here!"

Now Jay, Diddy, Russell Simmons, Dame Dash and many others have been walking around name checking that crap everywhere they have gone for years. It is only fitting that those gentlemen lead the boycott. What the head of Cristal did was the equivalent of a pimp slap.

SMACK! Bitch where's my fuckin' trap?

(Pick any of the previously mentioned names) "Oh no daddy, I'm sorry I won't hold out no mo."

At industry events you would see those types walking around the party sipping Cristal out of the bottle with a straw. Yep, you sure would. Now look someone has said to them: "Get you and nigger friends and your nonsense and leave my company alone. Gone now. Shoo, you you you you porch monkies. Oh yeah, leave your money on the table. Got dam nigger."

He might as well have said all that when he made that statement.

It's the power of the dollar that will make that company get on its knees and beg for forgiveness.

The same kind of thing is happening right now in radio. The foolishness of the few has harmed the perception of the many. Meaning advertisers (fuck what ya heard about requests and all that the real Gods of radio are the ADVERTISERS) are backing away from certain Urban brands; namely hip hop radio. It is not working. Low ratings means low listenership equalling no interest but ultimately no advertising dollars. Thus, stations like KKBT having to change formats!

The winds of change are upon us, if you want real hip hop to come back - buy it.

THE ORIGINATOR

2006-06-15T15:21:00.000-04:00

DJ HOLLYWOOD: STRAIGHT NO CHASER
by Mark Skillz

Every musical genre has its folk hero. In the tradition of the Delta blues men, it is said that the great Robert Johnson made a deal with the devil to give him the power to be the best blues man ever. In the early days of the rap scene, there was one name that was constantly evoked as the prime creator of the new sound of the street called rap, and that name was D.J. Hollywood.
For party-going New Yorkers in the '70's there were certain spots you had to hit, like The Loft, Paradise Garage, Justine's, and Zanzibar's. But for those that wanted to party in Harlem and the Bronx there were places like Charles Gallery, the Hotel Diplomat, Smalls Paradise, and Club 371. If you frequented places like these, you know doubt came upon a young man with crates of records and a golden voice.

Today at 50 years old, the original rhyme king is still doing his thing; he was recently honored on VH1's: "Hip Hop Honors Show". On his latest mixtape he will be spinning house and reggae as well as classics.

"I first made my name in Harlem because of a dance called the "Bus Stop"; I could "Bus Stop" and I could "Hustle". I was nasty at it. I wasn't Puerto Rican nasty at it- but I was good at it. I was making moves - looking good- I was really good at it. Every party I would go to people would say, "Let me see you Bus Stop! Before that, I had a rep as an entertainer; everything I did back then was theatrical. That's how I got the name Hollywood.

I was 14 years old when I left home, my mother and I just didn't see eye to eye. She had a lot of rules. My drive to go to school wasn't there. I wanted to breathe. I used to see the hustlers man, and I would just marvel at the hustlers. That was the world I wanted to be in.

I lived in the after hours clubs around Harlem. It was a whole lot of fun back then too. What they use to do in these places was: they'd cover the windows with big dark sheets, so that it would be dark as hell in there. I mean it was completely dark. You could go in there at night and not leave until like 3 o'clock in the afternoon the next day. Hustlers used to be in there playing cards, getting' high, drinking - whatever…it was an after hours spot.

I used to run errands for them, at 8 o'clock in the morning everybody in the spot would give me their keys to move their cars, they'd be like, "Here kid, go get me some cigarettes, and while you're at it, here's my keys go move my car." I was moving and parking Cadillac's at 14 years old.

When I was 14, maybe 15 years old, I went to a spot on 167th and Amsterdam where this guy named W.T. used to play at. He was my first real inspiration to be a deejay. He had the two turntables and a mike mixer; with no cueing; see, what he would do was, between the records, as one went off and another came on, he would talk - I really liked his delivery.

I started playing at a couple of spots around Harlem; one was called Jet Set it was on 132nd St. and the other was called Lovely's it was on 148th St. I played at these spots 6 nights a week. I was partying all I wanted, and had all the "get high" I wanted too. That stuff later ruined my life.
A guy named Bojangles taught me how to mix. He played soul and disco stuff. Stuff like "Knock, Knock on Wood", "Melting Pot", and Sam and Dave's "Who's Making Love to Your Old Lady", stuff like that.

One of the greatest guys in Harlem though was named "Thunderbird Johnny", he was the greatest guy in existence, and he owned one of the after-hours spots I played at. I learned a lot from him.

I was a singer before I ever became a deejay. I had a natural flair for talking over the records. Before me everybody was just announcing. I had a voice. I used to like the way Frankie Crocker would ride a track, but he wasn't syncopated to the track though. I liked Hank Spann too, but he wasn't on the one. Guys back then weren't concerned with being musical. I wanted to flow with the record. As a singer that's what you're supposed to do. I guess I had a natural awareness of when to start talking and when to stop talking over a record.

Around 1972 I started making tapes of what I was doing in the after-hours spots. I would record them onto 8-track tapes, and sell them for like 12 bucks a pop. I went around to barber shops, restaurants anyplace where there was a bunch of brothers with money- I was there selling my tapes. Back then though; there was no dubbing, so I had to record each individual tape. It got to the point where, as soon as I would come outside, and say "I got tapes!" brothers would roll up and be like, "Yeah gimme one of those!"My tapes would be gone in a flash. People would rush me for them tapes. That was the real start of the mixtape game.

When the Rooftop was hot back in the day, man all them cats that had money was bidding on my tapes right there in the booth; I'm talking about your AZ's, and Rich Porters, and Alpo's and people like that, those brothers were buying the tapes for 150 - 200 bucks right out the booth - and I'm talking about cassette tapes."

People talk about me not being hip hop, well, it's because I spun the whole record, when the "get down" part would come on, I would keep it going. They practiced playing the obscure parts of records. I played stuff like "Paradise" and "Mambo Number Five" and "Scorpio"; but that wasn't a big part of what I did. I played for hustlers. I played for people that came sharp to the party. You really had to come correct at the spots I was playing at. Harlem was on some smooth shit way before the Bronx.

I had heard of Kool Herc and his partner Coke LaRock from a couple of friends of mine named Al and Coop, they used to play at the Hevalo on the nights that Herc wasn't playing there. They would come back and tell me about the obscure records they were playing and people diving on the floor and @#%$.

In 1975 I went to the Bronx and started playing at a spot called Club 371. That's when the Bronx got hip to what I was doing.

Around the time that I first started playing in the Bronx, there was this kid that used to hear my tapes. There was this friend of mine named Gary, he had a 98 Oldsmobile, he used to buy a whole lot of my tapes. I mean he had a lot of them. One day, I can't remember where right now, but there was this kid who was sitting in Gary's car listening to one of my tapes while Gary's car was parked in front of a basketball court. Later, I started hearing about this kid, people would come up to me and be like "Yo, Wood man, there's this kid named Starski, man he gets down just like you do, he sounds just like you and everything!" I call that an indirect influence.

Now there were two guys that I can say that I did teach. One was D.J. Smalls and the other was Junebug, God bless him. Junebug was the baddest deejay I ever saw. Period. He was a Puerto Rican cat that guy could blend his ass off, he could cut, he was the baddest deejay ever, and I taught him.

DJ Smalls kind of reminded me of myself. He was a kid who had a whole of determination; he just wanted to shine. I put a lot of cats down. I guess it was because people like Huey Newton influenced me. I always had a strong sense of black awareness. I was always about unity you know what I'm sayin'?

One day in 1975, I was at home playing records, and one of the records I pulled out was the "Black Moses" album. It was not popular at the time. So, there I was listening to this album, and I put on a song called "Good Love 6969". Isaac Hayes was singing this part that went "I'm listed in the yellow pages, all around the world; I got 30 years experience in loving sweet young girls." That record stopped me dead in my tracks. You see, before that record I had been doing nursery rhymes. But after that record: I was doing rhymes.And not only was I doing rhymes but I was talking about love. This was another level.

I thought to myself, what if I take what he's doing and put it with this? What would I get? I got fame, that's what I got. I got more famous than I could ever imagine. Everybody bit that rhyme. I would go to jams and people would be saying that rhyme, and none of them, not one of them, knew where it came from. It blew my mind.

Had I known that this was gonna be a billion dollar thing - I don't think that I would've been as good at it. God sent someone to show black kids a different way. I never knew saying rhymes over a phat beat would lead to all of this. But God knew it. God used me as a vehicle. It was something for everybody to have. When a lot of people are thinking on the same wavelength, you get a multitude of sounds. It says in the Bible "Let's make a joyful noise unto the Lord", well my joyful noise came as a James Brown record".

Be Careful What You Ask For

2006-06-15T12:02:00.000-04:00

The last couple of weeks have been really tough - FYE has stepped up their game with more work - of which I am happy to get. The voice over business is a hard one to get in and even harder one to stay in.

So far this year only three of my spots have been rejected by record labels: LL Cool J ( they wanted a sexy female voice I ain't mad at that), Ice Cube and the Dogg Pound. Now the last two concern me because they said I sound like I'm from "the islands". Yeah right, which islands? Try Long Island! Yeah ok, I'm from Jamaica - Jamaica, New York. They need to getdafuckon with that shit. Honestly, i think its some petty ass shit they on, ain't no way in the world I sound like I'm from the islands, 99% of the time when people hear me speak whether it is on the phone, in person, on the radio they say, "Hey what part of New York are you from?" I haven't once in damn near 40 years heard I sound like I'm carribean. Except if I walk up to someone and say, "Hey mon, wha gwon and ting" - and that's rare. You gotta be a rasta for all that.

Almost lost the chance to do the Shawnna spot for FYE, the label wanted more music featured in the spot and felt my voice wasn't right for it. I have cut and recut that spot so many times - it is crazy. The record comapany people are buggin- I don't blame em though, they wanna sell the records. I have been getting off work and going home to cut spots every night this week, I am so tired. With all of the work that i have done on that spot in particular I can't stop now.

The thing about me is this: Unlike alot of other cats that do voicing for hip hop I don't shout nor do I exaggerate the 'Street quality" of my voice - alot of dudes do, and i ain't mad at em, you use what you got to get where you tryin to be. I want to be able to sell anything urban: Hip hop, smoothed out R&B, classic soul, grown folks music, hell, sneakers, cologne, cars whatever... When your doing voice over work you don't want to get thrown into a box - SHOUTING gets you thrown into that one box. It sounds good when selling a hyped up song, it speaks to that audience - but will you be able to sell a car with that type of delivery? Or advertise a Patti LaBelle concert? I don't think so. I could be wrong though.

Anyway, I re-cut the Shawnna spot, my man re equ'd my voice, we got approved, the spot starts playing sometime around June 27th. And all is right with the force.

I gotta find a way to upload video and audio so you can see and hear what i do. So far this year I have cut spots for Ne -Yo, Ghostface Killah, Pastor Troy, Busta Rhymes, Field Mobb, Christian Milian, Jagged Edge, Black Buddafly, Shawnna and so many others that I can't remember right now.

I Believe In God Too But...

2006-06-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

KIEV (Reuters) - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.

"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.
"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."
The incident, Sunday evening when the zoo was packed with visitors, was the first of its kind at the attraction. Lions and tigers are kept in an "animal island" protected by thick concrete blocks.

Don't Miss the Train

2006-06-03T18:11:00.000-04:00

Climb Aboard the Train

With one sponsor, a small television studio space and a vision; radio jock Don Cornelius scrapped up the money to produce what would become a Saturday morning staple in millions of African American homes: Soul Train.

Starting out in August 1970 with one sponsor – Sears and Roebuck, in the television studio of Chicago’s WCIU, Soul Train caught the Windy City like a hurricane. Through word of mouth the black community climbed aboard the train five days a week for an hour of peace, love and soul. It was the first time that black folks were depicted on television as young and hip – they wore whatever the latest styles were in the hood. Long Afro’s and bell-bottom jeans, hip huggers, thigh high boots, cornrows, t-shirts worn with multi-colored jeans, and jumpsuits (there was once a line called “The Boogie on Down Suit”) were all on display.

By the time the show went national Johnson and Johnson were sponsors. Commercials hawking the benefits of using Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen were beamed all across the country. And hey why not, we had to have some kind of hair products to keep out fro’s right.

The real highlights of the show were the music and dancing. Those were the days when folks would ‘get loose’. No posing allowed. If you weren’t feeling the funk you weren’t allowed aboard the train. Dances like ‘the stop and go’, ‘the bump’, ‘the hustle’ and ‘the bus stop’ were done with so much energetic soul that you would think the dancers were made out of rubber. Couples danced together – not all over each other, but with each other. Their moves accommodated their partners.

And then there was the infamous Soul Train line that introduced us to Soul Train dancers like Damita Jo Freeman, Big Lou (you couldn’t tell that brother nothin’) Jeffrey Daniels, Fred “Rerun” Berry and later the Puerto Rican chick with the devastating body (and moves to match) Rosie Perez.

At the end of the day the musical performances were what people tuned in for. The immortal Marvin Gaye sang to the crowd like he was one of the gang. Wearing a rolled up beanie cap and sweater to match Marvin sang to the ladies – not performed, but sang. He held hands and looked into their eyes as he sang the lyrics “My body wants ya…”

The untouchable Al Green, with band and all, poured his soul out as he sang ‘Love and Happiness’. And did a moving rendition of “For the Good Times” (Lawd have mercy!).

When the Jackson 5 were on Soul Train it was a done deal. Michael – before he became God’s strangest child, danced like a miniature version of James Brown or Jackie Wilson. The whole place was in a frenzy when they performed ‘ABC’.

But we can’t forget when the Godfather of Soul James Brown performed there. Fuggetaboutit. The Godfather took the whole show over. He’d even go so far as to change the name of the sign from reading “Soul Train’ to it reading ‘The JB’s”. Most people would go on the show and do one or two songs – not James Brown; he broke out his whole revue: Sweet Charles, Lynn Collins, Vicky Anderson all of them got camera time.

The show captured a special time when the community determined what was fly. There was no one trying to sell a lifestyle to anyone. It was what it was. Self-expression. If you look back you’ll see images of musicians who didn’t care what in the hell they were wearing, it wasn’t about that for them. It was about playing the music and being real about it. There were no fashion model artists or dancers – that shit isn’t soulful or real. How real could a drummer be if he’s worrying about his hair while he’s playing? Soul is the essence within – it has nothing to do with the outer person. That is a shell.

Turn on Soul Train today and you’ll see that, like yesterday, it reflects the times were living in now. Nobody dances with reckless abandonment anymore. There are no bands. The music isn’t soulful – even though the theme song is based on the shows original theme, there is something missing, the music doesn’t inspire the dancers like it did back then.

Don’t believe me check for yourself.