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!
