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HIPHOP

                                                 November 18, 2018
                                                 May      11, 2021

I thought it's about time I said
something about hip-hop.  Or course,
I can't say I know that much about
it, but when has that ever?

     ENGINE_OF_CULTURE
                               PUNK
                                                           WBAI
  I was born in Brooklyn, and grew up
  in the vicinity of New York back in     I grew up on WBAI though, so
  the 70s (though unfortunately I was     you'd have to say the first
  not inside it as much as I'd like),     hip-hop I heard was some of the
  but hip-hop was not at all My Thing,    first ever: Gil Scott Heron's
  I was more of a punk rock guy (to the   "The Revolution Will Not Be
  extent that I was anything).            Televised" was a big hit at 'BAI.

  I've had some pretensions of                And I've heard it argued that
  Keeping Up With Music for much              Debbie Harry had been rapping
  of my life, but never-the-less              back before most black kids had
  I gave hip-hop a pass until                 ever heard of it: there was, of
  the early 90s, when I signed on             course that "Man From Mars"
  as a DJ at KZSU.                            silliness in my life.

                  KZSU

  KZSU had a strong presence in           BRAND_ECLECTICS
  hip-hop, having been home to one of
  the first hip-hop radio shows, "The
  Drum", which early on was inherited
  by Kevy Kev, who continued on with it
  for decades, concurrently with doing
  a commercial radio show at KMEL.  So
  KZSU had always gotten some pretty         Unfortunately the survival rate
  good hip-hop servicing, and there was      of hip-hop in the library was not
  always a lot of new stuff in the           good-- and the Gil Scott Heron
  A-file worth checking out.                 started disapearing after I made
                                             the mistake of pointing it out to
                                             some hip-hop DJs.

                                             Other things got stolen besides
                                             hip-hop of course-- I think there
                                             was a pattern of dance music 12"
                                             records ending up in the hands of
                                             DJs who were telling themselves
                                             they are Professionals.

                                                   Particularly galling to me
                                                   was losing a really great
                                                   disk by "Del the Funky
                                                   Homosapiens" that actually
                                                   had Chom Nimol on vocals,
                                                   back in the days before she
                                                   was in "Dengue Fever".




        Some idiosyncratic          Paris            DAYS_OF_OLD
        hip-hop music picks:        Aztlan Nation
                                    Gravediggaz
                                    Cypress Hill                  CYPRESS_HILL
                                    MC Solar

                                                     Ta-Nehisi Coates vs Paris:

                                                         SILVER_HEART


  Well... I still haven't said much,
  but then you wouldn't expect much
  from me on this one.

  An outline of other things I might
  touch on some day:

     The b-boys of cellspace.
                                                     SNEAKER_CULTURE
     The Oakland Museum exhibition.
                                               There's a thing about chess
     Gangsta Rap and the problems of           in black culture which I'd
                                               been unaware of, despite the
        authenticity                           fact that I've known a lot
        art and morality                       of chess-playing hip-hop DJs.
                                               I thought that was a Kevy
                                               Kev thing not a black thing.

                        TA-NEHISI_HOP
                        NAS_ONE_LOVE

                        TA-NEHISI_JOY



     Then I've been engaging in some recent
     musical international explorations via
     youtube, via the search strategy:

     "<country name> hiphop official music video"




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