Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

The Past and Future of Hip-Hop Dance :: Me on Rennie Harris


Illadelph Legend :: Rennie Harris Puremovement celebrate their 15th anniversary next month.

Ah it’s great to be writing again. Here’s a piece I’m particularly proud of. It’s on Philadelphia hip-hop dancer/choreographer Rennie Harris.

Folks in hip-hop’s dance community know who he is and how important he’s been to the culture, from his work with Magnificent Force back in the day to the pinnacle of the global dance theatre with his company Puremovement to his founding of the Illadelph Legends Festival, probably one of the central events in the hip-hop dance revival.

Hip-hop dance remains the least well documented of all the original hip-hop arts. But the dancers retain that one-to-one folkloric tradition-passing much more than any of the other arts. The dance community is close-knit and well organized, and often presents a unified front on questions of its own history. That itself is a situation that Rennie has played an important role in helping make happen.

So, for me, Rennie’s story helps shed a lot of light on the story of hip-hop dance. Let alone the fact that he’s an incredible storyteller, and his journey has been a truly amazing one.

(If you find yourself jonesing for more of the real deal, get with someone like FABEL or Mr. Wiggles or the Rock Steady Crew or any of the many pioneers who are still around. Plus, check Rennie’s site for info about this summer’s Legends Festival.)

Rennie has been the Rakim of hip-hop dance and hip-hop theatre. His impact can be seen in the rise of the new generation of brilliant hip-hop dance companies and solo artists who are making noise all around the world, like Rubberbandance Group, or Compagnie Kafig, or Jonzi D and Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

If you’re luck enough to be in Philadelphia in 2 weeks, Rennie and Puremovement will be presenting a rare retrospective of their body of work over the course of three nights at the Kimmel Center. Those tickets won’t last long…

You can download the article here or preview it here. An edited transcript of the interview with Rennie is included in Total Chaos.

posted by @ 10:52 am | 3 Comments

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

DJ Drama, Major Labels & The New Rap Distribution Game

By now, it’s probably old news that DJ Drama and Don Cannon have been arrested. (24 hours, damn, welcome to the wired world.)

I think Noz is on point when he says: “As far as I know, it is the first time they have cracked down on an artist rather than a store. In case you were wondering the RIAA is not a government agency. They are a private sector trade group that represents many of the larger record labels and distributors. But they will use your tax dollars to kick in your door if they think you’re fucking with their money.” Emphasis on “fucking with their money.”

But what I find most interesting is how the situation actually reflects a larger change in the distribution of rap music. It all starts with the inability of major labels to meet the demands of the rap market.

Mixtapes have surged in popularity over the past 5 years because they meet the demand for rap that the major labels can no longer fulfill. As media monopolies have grown bigger and labels have consolidated (look for EMI to be sold very soon), there are fewer hip-hop artists receiving major distribution and release dates come fewer and further between.

But hip-hop will always find a way to get to its audiences with the newness, major labels and their big clunky distribution be damned. So mixtape masters like Drama fill the void by keeping up the excitement amongst the hardcore heads. (As often as not, they’re funded either directly or indirectly out of major label promotional budgets.) Mixtape DJs can work as fast as the artists want to get the stuff out, which is about as fast as the kids want it.

At the same time, indie distribution companies are stepping into the breach–getting mixtapes some decent placement in stores and through digital download spots like iTunes and eMusic. For major labels, it brings back bad memories of the period through the early 90s when indie labels controlled the rap business (an intolerable situation that caused majors to go on a crazed buying spree in the mid 90s). This is new, and it’s an important development. Not a few years ago, when you asked about mixtape distribution, folks stammered.

As for the question of demand, since production has sped up again via mixtapes and distribution is more and more viable, we as fans have now conditioned ourselves to pick up and rip the mixtapes, or download them as opposed to sitting around and waiting for the major label product. Why wait on this corner forever when there’s another one open up the street? The product eventually isn’t too different.

And then everyone goes home wondering why the rap industry has come off one of its worse years since the 80s.

That’s even more of a reason that major labels don’t want to go back to a time when they didn’t dominate the rap game and have a hand in most of all the dollars being made. So whether or not the artists approved the music on the mixtapes, whether or not the majors’ own funds made them possible, and despite the fact that the whole mess is one of the major’s own failures to meet the demand in the first place, the main issue at stake here is that the labels still aren’t getting their cut.

The RIAA had to move on someone making mixtape money. DJ Drama has become the first casualty of the new hip-hop distribution game.

It will be interesting to see in the coming months how the major labels try to move on:

1) the big mixtape distributors to either shut them down or cut a deal, and
2) their own artists to enforce the exclusivity and copyright clauses in their contracts…

Mixtapes won’t die. But 2007 may be the year that the mixtape begins to really be absorbed into the machine, which may be a kind of a slower death.

UPDATE 1 :: RIAA: “We don’t consider this being against mixtapes as some sort of class of product. We enforce our rights…”

UPDATE 2 :: Chief James Baker of the Morrow Police Department said this is the second raid in an effort to stop pirated CD sales. “Our first raid also happened in Atlanta on Metropolitan Parkway on Oct. 11, 2006,” says Baker. “It was run by a bunch of immigrants, the majority here illegally, from West Africa. We seized over $14 million of counterfeit CDs, five vehicles, cocaine and marijuana.”

UPDATE 3 :: Davey D breaks down an industry insider perspective + Aishah Simmons, acclaimed filmmaker and the sister of DJ Drama, brings the context…this is a must-read.

posted by @ 10:27 am | 10 Comments

Sunday, January 7th, 2007

Moving On Up: Me on Jay-Z


How good is it to be king?

Better late than never: me on Old Hov in The Nation. Holla.

posted by @ 11:16 pm | 8 Comments

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

Best Books of 2006


The best hip-hop scholarship book of 2006 (& maybe 2007?)

More roundup lists for ya. This one’s for the books. Most, if not all, were originally published in 2006…

Zen’s Favorite Books of 2006 With More Pictures Than Words
* Jessica Abel :: La Perdida (Pantheon)
* Robert “Wisk” Alva and Robert “Relax” Reiling :: The History of Los Angeles Graffiti Art (Volume 1, 1983-1988) (Alva & Reiling)
* Banksy :: Wall and Piece (Century)
* Boogie :: It’s All Good (powerHouse)
* Charles Burns :: Black Hole (Pantheon)
* C100 :: The Art of Rebellion 2: World of Urban Art Activism (Publikart)
* Martha Cooper :: Street Play (From Here To Fame)
* Per Englund & Mlamli Figlan :: The Beautiful Struggle (Dokument)
* Vincent Fedorchak :: Fuzz One: A Bronx Childhood (Testify)
* Zaha Hadid: Thirty Years of Architecture (Guggenheim Museum)
* James and Karla Murray :: Burning New York (Ginkgo)
* The Nasty Terrible T-kid 170 (powerHouse)
* Murray Walding :: Blue Heaven: The Story of Australian Surfing (HGB)

Zen’s Favorite Books of 2006 With More Words Than Pictures
* Paul Beatty, ed. :: Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor (Bloomsbury)
* Will Blythe :: To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry (HarperCollins)
* Taylor Branch :: At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (America in the King Years) (Simon & Schuster)
* T. Cooper & Adam Mansbach :: A Fictional History of the United States (with Huge Chunks Missing) (Akashic)
* Mike Davis :: Planet of Slums (Verso)
* Ewen + Ewen :: Typecasting: On the Arts & Sciences of Human Inequality (Seven Stories Press)
* Amde Hamilton :: Me Today You Tomorrow: Journey of A Street Poet (Classic Cut Musiz)
* Marlon James :: John Crow’s Devil (Akashic)
* Rattawut Lapcharoensap :: Sightseeing (Grove Press)
* Michael Pollan :: The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press)
* Simon Reynolds :: Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 (Penguin)
* RJ Smith :: The Great Black Way: L.A. in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance (Public Affairs)
* James G. Spady, H. Samy Alim, and Samir Meghelli :: Tha Global Cipha: Hip-Hop Culture and Consciousness (UMUM Press)

A special note on this last book, because it came out really late in the year, and I think it’s a really important one.

Philly journalist James Spady’s works–including Nation Conscious Rap (1991) and Street Conscious Rap (1999)–have been an essential resource and reference for serious hip-hop scholars for years. I used his books heavily in Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. (I was also very honored to lecture at one of UCLA professor Samy Alim’s classes last year.)

Spady, Alim, and Meghelli’s Global Cipha picks up where those classics left off. All the books in this series are eclectic collections of interviews that span a wide range of artists, from pioneers to of-the-moment rappers, DJs, and b-boys. They’re also critical snapshots of key moments in hip-hop history. The arc of this trilogy moves from the Afrocentric American rap of the late 80s and early 90s toward the rise of African rap in the diaspora at the turn of the millennium.

Spady is an unsung hero of hip-hop studies. For me, he’s up there with Davey D as one of the finest hip-hop journalists in the world. Like Davey, he knows the culture up down and sideways, and he’s a fine, probing interviewer. (When Spady interviewed me, I think I learned more about myself than he did about me!)

And, like B+ in It’s Not About A Salary, Spady, Alim and Meghelli are keenly concerned with letting the artists speak for themselves, not mediating their voices. There is an essay at the beginning of Tha Global Cipha that provides a context for the decentered hip-hop being produced now–the hip-hop of a thousand local scenes, all with potential global audiences, a network of infinite creativity and possibility. But then the authors mostly stand back and fire questions to their subjects, some of whom people like me have always wanted to but never been able to track down. Now, these books tend to be over 500 pages each–this one is 700+. So some interviews are more compelling than others. But overall the words are truer and more enduring than a lot of the hip-hop scholarship that is out there.

To get the first two books, you may have to hand over a small big fortune to an internet seller. But to cop Tha Global Cipha, head over here right now or contact the authors directly at Black History Museum Publishers, P.O. Box 15057, Philadelphia, Pa. 19130. They tell me they’ll knock off 10% off the $25 list if you note that you read about it here. (You still gotta add $5 for postage and handling.)

Fam, trust that I wouldn’t plug it if it wasn’t worth it.

posted by @ 7:05 pm | 1 Comment

Tuesday, December 26th, 2006

RIP JB

From Davey D:

“He delivered the drum front and center. Vincent noted that James Brown brought out a more prominent rhythmic foundation for the music and introduced the important concept of ‘Hitting on the One’. James Brown focused his entire band including the complex horn, rhythm guitar and keyboard arrangements of his band mate Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis and Nat Jones to ‘deliver on the one’. James Brown punctuated his efforts by using his voice with his vintage grunts, groans and screams as a binding force which also drew everything ‘on the one’. It seems so simple and commonplace today, but back then it was groundbreaking.”

posted by @ 12:09 am | 3 Comments

Sunday, December 17th, 2006

Best Music of 2006

Ten is not enough. Especially this year, which sucked for sales, but has been a well above average year for enjoyment. It’s possible this may even be looked at in the future as a historic year for a few reasons.

1) Dubstep. Check back with me in 2008 to tell me if I was wrong. In the meantime, get Mary Ann Hobbs’ epochal January 2006 Breezeblock set and see what we mean.

2) Youth movement. Lupe Fiasco, The Pack, Skream, JME, Cassie, Pigeon John, Arctic Monkeys, the list goes on. It’s true that for old gunz like us everything gets younger every year. Still it seemed like young artists this year sounded very new. 30 isn’t the new 20, as much as many of us would like it to be. But maybe 19 is. See what happens by the time they all hit their mid-20s.

3) The ongoing disintegration of the album as a profit center and as an artistic end. Soon, if not already, the only folks who will care about albums will be thirty-plus-somethings and critics. (Guilty of both, but please note that I didn’t say mixtapes or DJ sets.) Some of my favorite records this year–like the homie Shadow’s misunderstood “The Outsider”–were less great high-concept albums than great works of taste and craft and passion and concision.

You can find me Tuesday on WNYC’s Soundcheck talking about all this, if you’re interested. (Podcast will be here.)

So here we go. I don’t rank, I just list. Post or link yours or comment, too, fam.

Toppa Di Top

Albums Extended Mix

Matt Africa & B-Cause :: Soul Boulders
Aloe Blacc :: Shine Through
Arctic Monkeys :: I Do Not Want Whatever You Say I Am If I Wasn’t Then Why Would You Call Me That You (or whatever it’s called…)
The Bamboos :: Step It Up
Burial :: Burial
Cham :: Ghetto Story
The Coup :: Pick A Bigger Weapon
Cut Chemist :: The Audience’s Listening
DJ Shadow :: The Outsider
E-40 :: My Ghetto Report Card
Ghostface Killah :: Fishscale
Honeycut :: The Day I Turned To Glass
Kode9 + Spaceape :: Memories Of The Future
Lupe Fiasco :: Food and Liquor
Pigeon John :: …And The Summertime Pool Party
Scritti Politti :: White Bread Black Beer
Skream :: Skream!
Youngsta & Hatcha :: Dubstep Allstars, Volume 4

Singles

Alaine :: “Deeper”
The Bamboos feat. Alice Russell :: “Step It Up”
Buju Banton :: “Driver A”
Cassie :: “Me & U”
Clearlake :: “You Can’t Have Me”
The Clipse :: “Mr. Me Too”
Digital Mystikz (Coki) vs. Richie Spice :: “Burnin'” remix
Digital Mystikz (Coki) :: “Tortured”
Digital Mystikz (Mala) :: “Anti-War Dub”
DJ Zinc, Makoto + Stamina :: “Thinking Back”
Fat Freddy’s Drop :: “Cays Crays” (Digital Mystikz remix)
The Federation :: “18 Dummy”
Lady Sovereign :: “Love Me Or Hate Me”
Lupe Fiasco :: “Kick Push”
Jay-Z :: “Show Me Whatcha Got”
JME :: “Serious”
Juvenile :: “Get Ya Hustle On”
The Pack :: “Vans”
Pearl Jam :: “Worldwide Suicide”
Perfect :: “No Badda Mi”
Redeyes :: “Pusherman”
George Rrumbarru + Birdwave :: “Gating”
The Team :: “Just Go”

Reissues

Ammunition & Blackdown Present :: The Roots of Dubstep
Big Apple Rappin’
The Celluloid Years
DJ Spooky Presents :: In Fine Style 50,000 Volts of Trojan
The Fania Catalog!
History of Hip-Hop Radio, Volume 1: 1986-1991
Incredible Bongo Band :: Bongo Rock
Jackie Mittoo :: Wishbone
Jamaica To Toronto, 1967-1974
Soul Sides, Volume 1
Tortoise :: A Lazarus Taxon
What It Is!
Greg Wilson :: Credit To The Edit

Also Nice

Long and Short and Mixed, Players

4 Hero Presents Brasilika
120 Days :: 120 Days
Beck :: The Nymphormation
Benji B :: T5 Soul Sessions No. 5
Black Milk :: Broken Wax
Blue Scholars :: The Long March EP
Booka Shade :: Movements
Boxcutter :: Oneiric
Buju Banton :: Too Bad
The Clipse :: Heaven Hath No Bloggers
Congotronics 2
Dabrye :: Two/Three
The Decemberists :: The Crane Wife
J Dilla :: Donuts
J Dilla :: The Shining
The Eternals :: Heavy International
Los Abandoned :: Mixtape
Lyrics Born :: Overnight Encore
Nas :: Hip-Hop Used To Be Dead
Public Enemy :: Bring That Beat Back
Quantic :: Announcement To An Answer
Rhymefest :: Blue Collar
Spank Rock :: YoYoYoYoYoYoYoYoYoYo Yes!
Tommy Guerrero :: From The Soil To The Soul
Traxamillion :: The Slapp Addict
TV On The Radio :: Me Want Cooookie Mountain Ahhmnumnumnumnum!
Vex’D :: DeGenerate
Mary Anne Hobbs Presents Warrior Dubz

posted by @ 2:23 pm | 6 Comments

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

Boots Riley on Their Tour Bus Crash

The Coup and Mr. Lif’s tour was suddenly ended last Saturday morning when their tour bus plunged 30 feet over a cliff and exploded.

They lost everything in the crash and some sustained serious injuries.

If you were planning to see them on the road or if the artists have ever given you enjoyment, please consider making a Paypal donation to support the hospital costs and recovery of the band members. A Paypal button is here, below “About The Coup”.

Here is Boots’ own account of what happened:

The Crash

So, we got on the bus after doing a show at The House of Blues San Diego as part of The Coup/Mr. Lif tour. As the bus took off, I thought that I would go lay in my bunk, listen to my Ipod, and write. But then Zhara, Mr. Lif’s friend and the tour’s merchandise seller, announced that she had “Anchorman” on DVD. Oh Shit. Will Ferrell or writing? Hot 16s would have to wait tonight…Good Night San Diego! So I stayed up in the front lounge of the bus and, even though I’ve seen this movie twice, commenced to laugh my ass off. Almost literally, because of what happened next.

Shortly after the acapella singing of “Afternoon Delight” by Ferrell et al., a big bump, then another, then plummeting down as we tipped over to the left. I was sitting in the diner-like booth that many of these buses have in the front. I held on to the table with one hand and tried to guard my head with the other, all the while thinking that I was probably about to die. I don’t remember seeing everyone flying and flipping around me as it was happening, but Carter’s (the road manager) and Wiz’s face were covered in blood, and everybody seemed to be laying around hurt. The bus was on it’s side, with the entrance door up.

I called for people to say there names so we could get a head count of who was conscious or not. Silk E, Q (drums), Riccol (bass), and Metro (Lif’s hype man) were trapped in the back lounge because the doors connecting the front and back lounges to the bunks were electrically powered and didn’t move with no power on. They ended up ripping and squeezing their way out of a tiny little window and jumped down off the bus as the rest of us got out the front. I was the third person to jump off the front of the bus, as I hung down to make the jump shorter, I saw that the front of the bus was on fire.

I yelled to everyone, saying to get off the bus immediately because the bus was on fire and it could blow up. We all did. No one was killed. The bus was totally engulfed in flames. For a while no one stopped to help, supposedly because they thought we were “illegal aliens” crossing the border. Eventually some great folks stopped and helped.

Silk E has two broken ribs and a punctured lung. Wiz has a broken nose, two deep lacerations to the head, and a shattered knee. Zhara has injuries to her hand and had to undergo surgery. Carter had to get stitches to his head and lip. The driver, Glenn, has a broken jaw. All the first three will be in need of follow-up treatments. We all have aching backs, legs, heads etc. Many of us are on pain killers.

We lost everything in that crash and fire.

We were packed to live and do shows on that bus for a month. Most of us had every stitch of clothing we owned on there. We lost clothes, computers, recording equipment, cameras, IDs, phones, keys to cars and homes. We lost cash.We lost all our damn instruments and equipment to perform with. We were and are happy to walk away with our lives. But now we’re home.

Most of the band touring with The Coup has kids, rent that won’t quit, bills, and holiday expenses coming. We need money, because like I said the band doesn’t have the tools that they make a living with. Not only did we lose cash and material things on the bus, but we also were depending on this tour for money to make it through. It may take a year for us to see any money from the insurance company.

I have set up a Paypal account so people can make donations for The Coup. The money will be split between Me (Boots Riley), Silk E, Q, Steve Wyreman (guitar), and Riccol. Mr. Lif is setting one up on his site and when I have that info, we’ll let you know.

There should be a button right below this that allows you to donate even without a paypal account.

If you have an account, ours is thecoupbuscrash@gmail.com.

Thank you in advance to anyone who does this, this is a really crazy situation. I never thought I would would be doing something like this. I also never thought that we would almost die like like that.

We’re grateful for anything you can do.

Thank you,
Boots Riley

P.S. Thank you for the messages of love and warmth we’ve been receiving. It makes a difference.

There’s a Pay Pal button to make a donation at The Coup’s MySpace page (under: ‘About The Coup’). Every cent will go towards the recovery of the band.

posted by @ 5:18 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006

Critics Rate The Critics


U can dance if u want 2, all the critics luv u in New York…
(Photo ganked from the Gawker profile of above star)

Today’s Time Out NY critiques the critics. If you just want the music list, go here.

I largely agree with assessments of Sasha, K, and Jody. But they’re out to lunch on Xgau and Pareles–which I think reflects upon how limited pop critics consider their landscape to be…both Xgau and Pareles have been leading lights in taking African and non-English-language pop seriously. (Although the day someone begins to take non-Japanese-girl Asian pop seriously in a New York paper on an ongoing basis is the day I catch religion.)

A serious question: Why, amidst one of the greatest ongoing immigration waves in history, a wave that overwhelmingly trends young, is “world music” still considered old music for old people? Have at that one, friends, please.

Also: Ben Ratliff, highly underrated. Is there a bias also against critics who know chops? Then again, I’ve just outlined the top 6 so maybe I complain too much. (Not a serious question: Can a critic complain too much?)

Finally, I wish the TONYites had gone deeper than the dailies and weeklies. Perhaps there’s a way to develop a rate-a-critic website, in the same way folks rate professors or whether you’re hot or not. That might be the ultimate slapback of the bloggers against the terrestrial establishment.

But hey, why can’t we continue that discussion here? How would you rate the music critics you read?

posted by @ 7:33 pm | 1 Comment

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006

Give Thanks


Changing the game ’til the Hall of Fame.

The Clash w/ Mikey Dread :: One More Anti-War Dub (Zentronix Edit)

An exclusive one-night mix just to give thanks.

Much respect to Mala, Digital Mystikz, Skream, and the dubstep massive for inspiration.

One.

posted by @ 11:03 pm | 1 Comment

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006

My Man Danny Hoch On Seinfeld and Kramer

From Jails, Hospitals, and Hip-Hop, my man Danny Hoch and the back story on “Seinfeld”, Seinfeld, Kramer and race–with a diversion into Tarantinoland.

KARMA LIKE A MUH…

posted by @ 10:56 am | 6 Comments



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