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T.I. Is A Married Man, Weds Tiny

May 27, 2009 By

daveydbanner

T.I., real name Clifford Harris, and Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, were married in a secret wedding ceremony last Friday on an island that was on the outskirts of Miami.

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T.I. Is A Married Man, Weds Tiny

By Houston Williams

T.I.-redhat-225T.I. and longtime girlfriend Tiny are now man and wife, according to recent reports.

T.I., real name Clifford Harris, and Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, were married in a secret wedding ceremony last Friday on an island that was on the outskirts of Miami.

Cottle is the mother of two of T.I.’s kids and been the rapper’s companion since 2001.

“It’s been a crazy situation around here with all that has been taking place. In regards to Tiny and T.I., yes they are officially husband and wife. It recently took place in a very private ceremony with only members of the immediate family and certain members of the Grand Hustle family,” an unnamed source told The Urban Daily.

The wedding was positioned as a family trip to the media, but doubled as a wedding.

Rapper T.I. checked into a federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas on Tuesday (May 26).

 The rapper is serving a 366-day federal prison sentence for attempting to by illegal machine guns and silencers from undercover agents in October of 2007.

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Who Killed Black Radio-A Journalist Roundtable

May 26, 2009 By

daveydbanner

As word spreads about John Conyer’s Bill HR 848 conversations around the state of Black radio continue to emerge..many are feeling Conyer’s bill is some sort of savior because they hate the way radio has been sounding these days. Well bad news folks it isn’t.. Tune into the show jared ball put together and you’ll hear why..
-Davey D-

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Who Killed {Black} Radio?

A Journalists Roundtable

May 25, 2009 by freemixradio 

JaredBallbeigh-225This week’s “redux” featured a journalist roundtable discussion of HR 848 and the impact of payola, advertising and the politics of domination on media – Black radio in particular.

Bruce Dixon from BlackAgendaReport.com, DaveyD from DaveyD.com and Paul Porter from IndustryEars.com comprised the panel all offering the insight of nearly 100 years of journalistic/radio experience.

This was an extension of previous coverage of the issue which can be found here.

Part 2, below, included the return of Dr. Mark “Hate” Bolden for a discussion of The Fanon Project and an interview with Mrs. Tyra Simpkins of MS Y.A.N.A. (You Are Not Alone) – an African American multiple sclerosis empowerment group.

If you wish to stream this radio show head on over to Jared ball’s site Vox Union to get the feed there..

 http://www.voxunion.com/?p=1217

Download MP3!

Download MP3!

Below is an article from Bruce Dixon on this topic

Black Radio and the “Performance Rights” Toll Booth

by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon

Will Saving Black Radio Save Local News And Public Service?

A few weeks ago Radio One founder Cathy Hughes, echoed by Tom Joyner and dozens of other radio personalities, sounded the alarm. HR 848 they cried, a bill to make stations pay a “performance rights” fee for every song played, was a mortal threat to black radio. In a widely circulated blog post which was echo-blasted to everybody on any Radio One email list, Hughes cited black radio’s stellar contributions of news, diversity and local content as reasons why African American communities should rally to protect it. She even claimed black talk and gospel were “money losing formats” as if these were public services and tithes offered out of Radio One’s bottomless reservoir of corporate good will.

The laughter was pretty hard to suppress. Commentators like Paul Scott and Mark Anthony Neal ran columns titled “Should We Save Black Radio?” and “Should Black Radio Die?” to which they answered “probably not” and “maybe.”

The widely known fact, as BAR’s Glen Ford pointed out six years ago in “Who Killed Black Radio News” is that Radio One led the industry in purging news, public service and local content of all kinds from its airwaves in favor of cheap, syndicated, uninformed talk, mostly about celebrities and relationships. Radio One’s payola-influenced playlists are indistinguishable from its white-owned black radio competitors. Perhaps to protect their audiences from too many confusing facts, Tom Joyner, Cathy Hughes and the rest of the “save black radio” posse never mention that white broadcasters, the National Association of Broadcasters in fact, are just as opposed to HR 848 as they are, for most of the same reasons. So the truth is surely more complicated than Cathy Hughes and her posse would have us believe.

HR 848, the so-called Performance Rights Act, which Hughes says may be the death knell of black radio is sponsored by Detroit congressman John Conyers. It has dozens of high-profile celebrity boosters. The legislation will supposedly compensate performing artists – authors, composers and copyright holders are already taken care of by other intellectual property laws – when their work is played on the radio. Putting aside for the moment the economics of radio stations, it doesn’t sound like an inherently bad idea. Artistry is work, and work ought to be paid, right?

Will Revenue From the Performance Rights Act Actually Reach Performers?

The answers here are: not much and not likely. Given the historic business practices of the industry, and the provisions of HR 848, it’s safe to say artists won’t see much of this money. It will be extracted from radio stations,and collected and disbursed by Sound Exchange or other representatives of the same suits who have made an industry out of stealing from artists since the dawn of time, or at least since recording business managed to make the recorded product it distributed and controlled, instead of the artists’ live performances which it did not control, the music industry’s main revenue stream. HR 848 also guarantees industry execs the right to rake an unspecified portion off the top for handling charges.

Section 6(1)(1)(a) of the law says that entitlement of the artist to these payments is “…in accordance with the terms of the artist’s contract,” rather than in addition to or outside of and not subject to the contract. In plain English that means a cleverly written or dishonestly administered contract can easily divert these new “performance royalties” to pockets other than those of the performers.

As Mark Anthony Neal put it:

“Record companies are simply disingenuous when they suggest that artists will benefit from the passing of HR 848, when their own business practices guarantee the average artist less than 10-percent of profits generated from the sale of their recordings and the companies will themselves take part of the proceeds generated from the collection of a “performance tax.” If the RIAA and Record companies were really so concerned with the plight of artist, they would create less exploitive relationships with artists. ”

The representatives of RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, clearly wrote this law for their own benefit, not that of artists. It’s no secret that CD sales, and recording industry profits have been on the downtourn for years. The RIAA blames this on digital technologies and downloading, and it has used its lobbying muscle in Congress to pass one law after another against what it calls digital “piracy.”.

According to Lawrence Lessig, RIAA has aided the Department of Justice in prosecuting 25,000 people over the last few years for downloading songs over the internet without paying license fees. As far as anybody knows not a penny recovered has gone to artists. Two years ago RIAA imposed a similar fee structure on internet radio, making it prohibitively expensive for many of those stations to incorporate any sort of music in their programming. The defenders of internet radio saw the handwriting on the wall; they predicted that broadcast radio would be next. Tom Joyner, Cathy Hughes and the rest did nothing, and now the wolf is at their door.

How HR 848 Will Work in the Real World: More Payola and the Same Old Songs

In the real world, there are two economies. There’s a real economy where goods and services are produced, and where wealth is created by labor of one kind or another. There is also a fake economy, a parasite on the real one comprised mostly of the FIRE sector, (finance, insurance and real estate) along with the intellectual property racket. This fake economy lives on rents, interest payments, user fees and government subsidies. Its agents are always on the lookout for places in the real economy where they can plant toll booths to extract revenue without the bother of providing any service or adding any value.

The so-called Performance Rights bill is a toll booth the recording industry wants to place in the middle of radio broadcasting. It creates a new class of “intellectual property” supposedly for the benefit of performing artists, but subject to the artist’s contract, administered, and easily tapped by the record labels and their reps. The possibilities for abuse by labels and the recording industry are mind boggling, and include the outright legalization of longstanding industry practices of payola and reverse payola. While standard fees will be set, rates are open to bargaining between broadcasters and labels who supposedly represent artists. Labels will be able to offer one station or chain of them a lower rate on the songs of preferred artists if they take less preferred ones as part of the package. Labels already pay for remotes, contest premiums, and the personal appearances of station personalities with their artists. The “performance rights” revenue stream will be just one more channel they can adjust upward or downward in their bargaining with broadcasters.

They can offer a station or chain a lower rate for reducing the airplay of a competitor’s music or scrubbing it from the playlists altogether. Labels can demand a higher compensation rate than that offered to other artists, and where they have the bargaining power, some stations can demand lower rates than other stations. The largest chains, like Clear Channel, will be in a better bargaining position than smaller ones like Radio One. Just as Cathy Hughes and the “save black radio” crowd are saying, smaller chains, smaller stations, and the relative few minority station owners will be disproportionately endangered. Black radio as we know it truly is in mortal danger.

Will HR 848 Put More Money in the Pockets of Up and Coming Artists?

No way. Beyond the fact that the suits will intercept most of the funds before artists ever see them, you have to get radio airplay to get paid. Most artists can’t get played on the radio now, and HR 848 doesn’t change that. Labels will have little incentive to press lesser known and new artists onto the stations, since they’ll make more money on the higher fees established artists will command.

If Cathy Hughes and black broadcasters wanted to call the bluff of RIAA and the pro “performance rights” people on showcasing new artists, they could garner unprecedented public support and look like real heroes in this. All it would take, one industry insider told BAR, would be for them to throw away their payola-influenced playlists for a couple days each week and play nothing but new, unknown, up-and-coming artists. “That’s what they’d do if they really wanted to be the good guys in this, if they had the imagination and the nerve,” we were told. But don’t look for that to happen.

Where Will the Recording Industry Plant its Next Revenue- Extracting Toll Booth?

Two years ago it was internet radio. This season broadcast radio is in the crosshairs. Once the “performance rights” toll booth is planted in broadcast radio, it won’t be long before the RIAA demands payments from nightclub disk jockeys, who unlike radio broadcasters, do not have their own paid lobbyists, or from the guy down the street you hired to spin records at a birthday party last week. Think about it. What if innovators like DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambatta were forced to pay a “performance rights” fee?

Ultimately, this is where the creation and expansion of new and old “intellectual property” rights leads us: to the place where artistic innovation and simple truth telling are squashed by the need to maximize the profit of somebody who doesn’t do the creating, the labor and the performing in the first place.

Runaway “intellectual property” rights are the problem, not the solution

Eyes On The Prize, the award winning 14-hour documentary first aired on PBS in 1987 and 1990 is a great example of how intellectual property rights are used to strangle free expression in the public interest. When the work was produced in the 1990s, its authors could only raise the money to get time-limited rights to the archival news footage and music used in this thirty-year chronicle of the Freedom Movement and its aftermath. When the rights to the music and news footage ran out in the 1990s, the program could no longer be broadcast anywhere in the U.S. Copies were pulled from shelves no DVDs of it were produced. By 2005 the asking price for copies of Eyes On The Prize was $1,500 on ebay, and the only publicly viewable copies were on the shelves of public libraries. This invaluable history was lost to a new generation. Why?

Because major news organizations like CBS and NBC claimed they had to get a cut every time it was broadcast since pieces of their news footage was in it. The authors and composers of songs played in the documentary insisted their “rights” were violated if the show was broadcast and they were not reimbursed. There’s a scene in which Dr. martin Luther King’s aides surprise him with a birthday cake and sing a verse of “Happy Birthday.” The multinational firm which owned the rights to the song demanded $20,000 to keep the scene intact. It’s all a perfectly legal part of the intellectual property racket.

Another example of the absurdly parasitic nature of the intellectual property regime, is the classic 1942 movie Casablanca. Since it was made almost seventy years ago, every human being involved in writing, producing, performing, and editing it, those who catered the food, mixed the sound, worked the cameras, sets, costumes and makeup and the rest have all passed away, most of them decades ago. We don’t have to worry about the movie’s revenues encouraging these people to keep up their creative work because they are long dead.

Still, Casablanca remains the private intellectual property of its vampire owners, who had nothing to do with creating it. You cannot broadcast, perform, duplicate or sell a DVD of it without paying them. This is precisely what the Performance Rights Bill will do for radio; it will set up another deathless toll booth to extract payments, mostly for works decades old, on behalf of investors who had nothing to do with creating or performing it, but supposedly in the name of the performing artists themselves.

Two wrongs are just twice as wrong: oppose HR 848

HR 848 is bad news, no doubt about it, and should be defeated. Cathy Hughes and her posse dare not tell us exactly why, because the more we understand about the recording and radio industries the guiltier she and her colleagues look for helping construct and profit from this system which has now turned upon them. Black commercial radio is very much corporate radio and every bit as much the enemy as the corrupt recording industry. Commercial black radio does not deliver news or public service or local content. It doesn’t showcase new talent. Black radio as we know it has never defended nonprofit community radio stations, or low power FM radio. Like the black business class itself, black radio has become incapable of defending itself by painting an accurate picture and simply telling the truth – black radio refused to step up when the performance rights toll booth was imposed on internet radio, by which time any fool could see they were the next target.

Where Do We Go From Here?

We have to look beyond old John Conyers, his celebrity spokespeople and the lobbyists who pull their strings. We have to ignore the hypocritical squeals of Cathy Hughes and corporate black radio. The broadcast radio and intellectual property regimes are both in need of deep and thorough reform.

Corporate actors need to be held responsible directly by the people. Black audiences need to demand that the corporations who aim their broadcasts at black communities:

Support HR 1147, the Community Low Power Radio Act

This law enables nonprofit community broadcasters to operate low power radio stations with three to six mile footprints in thousands of urban, suburban and rural communities. Low power nonprofit broadcasters will provide news and public service and access to audiences for local artists.

Support community radio and nonprofit broadcasting

Hundreds of community radio stations already exist to provide cultural and news programming that corporate outlets refuse to. They too will be adversely affected by the performance rights toll booth.

Remove the “performance rights” toll booth from internet radio, and prevent its extension to deejays and others

The proliferation of “intellectual property” toll booth is virtually strangling the new medium of communication in its cradle, and the reach of the intellectual property rackets threaten film, video, the internet and the emergence of new art, artists and means of expression. Ways must be found to compensate artists, not investors.

Allow CDs and DVD mixtapes and videos to be sent through the mail at no cost

For most of the 19th century, newspaper postage was free. When Frederick Douglass and others started anti-slavery newspapers they paid no postage, and newspapers were most of the post office’s traffic. Technological advances have placed audio and video production within the reach of many, but corporate lobbyists have rigged the postal code to prevent the sharing of CDs and DVDs with mass audiences.

Demand that the FCC conduct real inquiries into payola

This is the dead dog in the room that neither the “save black radio” crowd nor the recording industry will talk about. But it’s real, and it’s the main barrier to new and diverse artists being heard on the airwaves.

Shorten the broadcast license term to three years

Under Ronald Reagan broadcast licenses were extended to eight years, making broadcasters much less responsible to the public and thwarting the public accountability at renewal times. Acting FCC Commissioner Michael Kopps has already suggested this reform, though he says it will be up to his successor appointed by the Obama administration to carry it out. That means it’s up to us to demand it.

Demand that black radio employ journalists and a newsgathering operation or lose the good will of black communities.

This is a demand communities can make directly upon the corporate license holders. A generation ago black radio did exactly that, and provided news and public service to its audience, something we will not see again without a demand.

Use the transition to digital radio as the occasion to redistribute broadcast licenses.

Like the transition to digital TV, the switch to digital radio broadcasting means that many more frequencies will be available. But instead of the time for voices to be heard, a corrupt deal gave all the new digital TV channels to existing holders of broadcast TV licenses. That must not happen with digital radio.

BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon can be contacted at Bruce.Dixon(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

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Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee

May 26, 2009 By

daveydbanner

Its a good move by Obama to nominate a Latina as his choice for Supreme Court justice. It adds to the diversity. Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be the nations first Latina on the Highest Court. However, as anti-latino sentiment grows particularly amongst the far right it will be interesting to see how things unfold if the GOP follows through with their threat to filibuster

-Davey D-

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Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee

By Jeff Zeleny
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/obama-makes-decision-on-supreme-court-nominee/

soniaSatamayor-225President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the court, officials said Tuesday, and has scheduled an announcement for 10:15 a.m. at the White House.

Ms. Sotomayor, 54, will be the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court if her nomination is approved by the Senate.

The president reached his decision over the long Memorial Day weekend, aides said, but it was not disclosed until Tuesday morning when he informed his advisers of his choice less than three hours before the announcement was scheduled to take place.

The president narrowed his list to four, according to people close to the selection process, including Federal Appeals Judge Diane P. Wood of Chicago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

In what may be her best-known ruling, Judge Sotomayor issued an injunction against major league baseball owners in April 1995, effectively ending a baseball strike of nearly eight months, the longest work stoppage in professional sports history, which had led to the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years. 

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Bun B Says Only 6 Rappers Making Money During Recession

May 26, 2009 By

daveydbanner

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bun-bchain-225Bun B is busy. Between hopping on your favorite rapper’s songs and a year-round touring schedule, the surviving half of UGK hasn’t even had time to work on his third solo effort yet. Since the release of his legendary duo’s booming last album, 4 Life (Jive), Bun’s featured on the year’s best mixtape, and will show up on a gang of upcoming cuts. Right before he jumped on a plane to Toronto to perform with Drake, Bernard “Bun B” Freeman, 36, dialed up VIBE to talk about why Houston isn’t the only city with a rap problem, why hip hop of the future won’t be labeled, and spilled the beans on the songs he’ll feature on this summer—if he can remember all of them.

VIBE: Texas had a hot streak a while back with Slim Thug, Mike Jones, and Paul Wall. It’s slowed down a bit since then. How do you feel about Texas’ place in rap?

Bun B: I wonder if people who ask Southern artists that [also] ask West coast artists or Midwest artists or New York artists that, because all those regions are falling off. Hip hop, in general, doesn’t have the demand power it used to in any region. We had a good run in Houston, but every region’s in trouble. There are really only six people making money off rap music. Everybody knows that.

Who is the artist most likely to bring the light back to Houston?

I definitely think that Z-Ro is on the brink of becoming a national superstar. It’s pretty much up to him to decide whether he goes as far as he wants to go. The only thing holding Z-Ro back is Z-Ro.

You were on the year’s hottest mixtape—Drake’s So Far Gone. What do you think he brings to hip hop?

with Drake, I think the best thing he’s doing is that he’s taking away a lot of the labels that we tend to put on people. Chamillionaire and I had a discussion after his show in Houston as to how you would really classify him. He was like, “Well, you can’t call it hip hop, because he sings. And you can’t call it R&B, because he raps.” That’s the problem. I think labeling it kind of takes away from it. It just is what it is. It just feels good and feels right to people. Drake’s saying: “Life isn’t perfect. I’m going through a lot of different things. The world doesn’t work the way I thought it does, but I’m still going to move forward.” That’s the plight of the everyday person.

Why do you think rappers are more open about their lives today?

I think that YouTube and camera phones have made the everyday lives of artists more accessible to the consumer. So there’s really no need for you to build this façade about what you’re doing like you’re balling everyday because if it’s not true, people are going to find [out].

You were on Wale’s The Mixtape About Nothing. What do you enjoy about him?

I like his wordplay. I dig his point of view. It’s refreshing. His passion is something that you really don’t see. You hear a lot of people talking about how they’re grinding and all of that. It’s an easy thing to say, but it’s a different thing when you do. I’ve really seen him get out there and work hard and stand up for himself, the D.M.V. area [Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia], and especially his music. With the D.C. area, I want to help their movement in any way I can. They’ve always supported UGK.

VIBE caused a bit of a ruckus with our 50 Hottest Rap Blogs list. What are your top five blogs?

1. AustinSurreal and HoustonSoReal
2.Nah Right
3. illRoots
4.2DopeBoyz
5. RapRadar

Do you have an idea of when your next album will come out?

Yeah. Be on the look out for my third album, Trill O.G. aka The Trilogy. That’ll be coming in August. I haven’t even started [it] yet.

Like Lil Wayne, you’re always featured on a lot of tracks. What are some others we should look out for?
Um, let me think…I’ve got so much. It’s almost getting ridiculous now. Let me pull out my iPod and see. I have stuff that I did with people months ago and it still hasn’t come out. I’m on [Raekwon’s] Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II. I’m on Wale’s album, a track called “Mirrors” produced by Mark Ronson. I have a great song with Uncle Murda that hasn’t come out yet. And I’m really happy about the remix to [The Cool Kids’] “Pennies.” I’m on Shawty Lo’s album. I got a song with Ginuwine on his new album. I got a song with Case. You’d be surprised at how much music I do. There’s no count on my discography. We’ve all lost count.

http://www.vibe.com/news/interviews/60rappers/2009/05/60_rappers_in_60_days_bun_b/

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The Culture of Bling is Losing Its Ring Amongst Rappers

May 26, 2009 By

daveydbanner

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After years of starring in rap-music lyrics and videos, “bling” is losing its ring.The recession is cramping the style of hip-hop artists and wannabes — many of whom are finding it difficult to afford the diamond-encrusted pendants and heavy gold chains they have long used to project an aura of outsized wealth.

 

Culture of Bling Clangs to Earth as the

 Recession Melts Rappers’ Ice

By MIGUEL BUSTILLO

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329128994052323.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

After years of starring in rap-music lyrics and videos, “bling” is losing its ring.

The recession is cramping the style of hip-hop artists and wannabes — many of whom are finding it difficult to afford the diamond-encrusted pendants and heavy gold chains they have long used to project an aura of outsized wealth.

In an attempt to keep up appearances, celebrity jewelers say rappers are asking them to make medallions with less-precious stones and metals. Some even whisper that the artists have begun requesting cubic zirconia, the synthetic diamond stand-in and QVC staple.

Hip-hop luminaries with the cash to keep it real are appalled. Bling aficionados fret that the art of “ice” is being watered down.

Culture of Bling Clangs to Earth

New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne is often credited with coining the term ‘bling’ to refer to outrageous jewelry.

Rapper  50 Cent has relished the chance to accuse his musical adversaries of not glittering like gold. During a radio interview, the artist, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, taunted rapper Rick Ross for wearing faux and rented jewelry. “Everything that you see has to absolutely be fake,” said Mr. Jackson. Rick Ross, whose real name is William Leonard Roberts II, has denied the claims. Mr. Jackson didn’t return requests for comment.

“A lot of these rappers simply don’t have the money for real stuff anymore,” says Jason Arasheben, who crafts custom jewelry for wealthy clientele, including Saudi royals and Hollywood movie stars, at his California boutique called Jason of Beverly Hills. “It’s to the point where they are wearing imitation jewelry, and that’s ridiculous.”

Mr. Arasheben designed the colossus of hip-hop jewels three years ago for rapper Lil Jon: an enormous gold necklace that spells out “CRUNK AIN’T DEAD” with 3,756 round-cut white diamonds (Crunk is a southern rap subgenre that Lil Jon — real name, Jonathan Mortimer Smith — has struggled to keep alive). The neck-straining piece, which weighs more than five pounds, was recognized in 2007 by Guinness World Records as the largest diamond pendant on Earth.

‘Big, Chintzy Junk’

He also fashioned a pendant in the image of headphones bedecked in black and white diamonds a few years ago for rapper Biz Markie, whose whimsical jewelry hailed from a less self-conscious era in rap. The rapper — whose real name is Marcel Theo Hall — says he is saddened to see newer rappers favor big, chintzy junk over smaller jewels that illuminate personality.

“When I was wearing a big rope, it was a symbol that I was one of the elite,” says Mr. Hall, whose 1990 hit “Just a Friend” is enjoying a renaissance on iTunes after being featured in a Heineken beer television ad. “These kids think size matters, but they be lyin’. It just makes them look silly.”

Both Mr. Smith and Mr. Hall had planned to sell their pieces for charity last fall in an auction titled “Hip Hop’s Crown Jewels.” But in a sign of bling’s fading shine, Phillips de Pury & Co. postponed the auction to March and then canceled it altogether due partly to insufficient interest from buyers.

From the dawn of rap music three decades ago, hip-hop artists have festooned themselves with gaudy ornaments to signify that they have risen above humble origins to become ghetto royalty.

English-American trailblazer Slick Rick sported a diamond-studded eye patch, portraying himself as the “Black Liberace,” while the three members of Queens, N.Y.-based Run-D.M.C. rocked gold rope chains that seemed thick enough to hold a real anchor.

To be sure, phony or inferior ice has been around as long as rappers’ traditional standard gear of two-turntables-and-a-microphone. But with Internet piracy cutting into musicians’ record sales and the recession shrinking attendance for live shows, jewelers say the ersatz stuff has never been more widespread.

Culture of Bling Clangs to Earth

Rapper Lil Jon with his record pendant

“Times are hard, ain’t nobody rocking it like that anymore,” says rapper and record executive Bryan “Birdman” Williams, who co-founded Cash Money Records in New Orleans in the early 1990s with his brother, Ronald “Slim” Williams. The independent label has sold more than 45 million albums.

The founders of the record label claim that its most famous artist, Lil Wayne, coined the term “bling” during a recording session to give a sound to blinding opulence. The word entered popular usage after the hit “Bling Bling” by then Cash Money artist B.G. and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003.

‘D-Quality Diamonds’

“People think these big pieces are blindin’ but they be like D-quality diamonds, and when you try and sell them you learn they ain’t worth a thing,” says Slim Williams. “You can’t be doing it like we did it no more.”

In humid Houston, a Southern rap capital renowned as a mecca of ice, jeweler Johnny Dang says he is adapting to the changing climate by giving customers the less-expensive jewelry they want.

“The look is still big, it is still bling, but people are going with smaller diamonds and lower-karat gold,” trading down from 18- and 14-karat alloys to 12k, which is only 50% gold, or less, says Mr. Dang. A Vietnamese immigrant, he started out at flea markets and now has a shop in the tony Galleria mall next to Neiman Marcus.

To survive, Mr. Dang is relying more often on machine-made versions of his jewelry that can cut the cost of a $10,000 handcrafted pendant in half.

Mr. Dang’s “grillz” sales also have fallen off 60% in the recession. He and his business partner, the rapper Paul Wall, helped popularize the bejeweled dental retainers earlier this decade, when diamond-laced varieties molded with platinum were selling for tens of thousands of dollars.

Melting Down Grillz

Now the recession has so damped the extravagance that a Web site called sellyourgoldteeth.com is doing brisk business buying grillz for meltdown value. “It’s a sign of the times,” says Mark Porcello of Porcello Estate Buyers, which runs the site.

Hip-hop artists aren’t eager to admit to thrift, and numerous rappers rumored to be trading down declined to talk about the trend.

“You gotta understand, it is every rapper’s fear to be exposed as a fraud,” said Gregory Lewis of Brooklyn, who posts conversations with artists on the Internet under the alias “Doggie Diamonds, the interview king.” “If you admit you wear fake jewelry, it is over for you. It’s like bragging you drive a Lamborghini when you really drive a Toyota.”

Write to Miguel Bustillo at miguel.bustillo@wsj.com

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Oakland Police Harrass & Intimidate West Oakland Organizer

May 26, 2009 By

daveydbanner

 
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As you read this story keep in mind that Marcel Diallo is a major property owner and organizer in West Oakland.. He’s a cat who saw what was going on during the housing boom which was gentrifying people and he decided to get some money together and buy up his entire block. One of his  properties-The Black Dot cafe has been a place where people seeking justice for Oscar Grant have been regularly meeting… Its interesting to note that Diallo was hemmed up last night with everyone knowing that the Oscar grant trial is continuing today…mmmmm Looks like OPD wants this to be along hot summer..

D 

I was just harassed and bogusly detained by Oakland Police in front of my house at 12 midnight
Today at 3:27am
Good People-

MarcelDiallosideMAY 26, 2009 – 1AM —– I was just arrested and detained with unnecessary force right in front of my house at 924 Pine Street by a Sargent D. Ming, badge number 10825 for about an hour. He called four additional squad cars to back him up. After driving my truck around the corner from my house to pick up a folding table from in front of my friend’s house at 10th & Wood Street that we used to play dominoes earlier, I drove back around the corner to my house at 10th & Pine Street one short block away. As I drove off from 10th & Wood, I saw a police car driving up and down the street looking for trouble as they had been doing all day. By the time I got back to my house and got out the truck, this officer had rolled up behind me, flashed his lights and ordered me back into the vehicle.

I told him that I was in front of MY house where my partner and 4 children lay asleep inside, in MY neighborhood that I live and work in, on MY block that I am the majority property owner on, and asked him if I was under arrest, and if I am not under arrest, then why do I have to get back into the car. He persisted on ordering me back into the car without answering my questions, as I continued questioning him, he approached me, twisted my arm and slapped the hand cuffs on me as he attempted to de-humanize me, I told him that he was harassing the wrong person and that I would be filing a full complaint against him and OPD, he then applied more unnecessary pressure to my wrists causing the hand cuffs to dig into my wrists. Before he could stuff me into the back of the car I yelled out for my partner and my neighbors to come out side and witness the harassment. My partner came out the house as well as two of my neighbors from a few houses down the street. Their was another officer present who recognized me, as I was telling officer Ming who I was, this other officer said yeah I know who you are, you drive the white Mustang, just get in the back of the car. As I sat in the back of the squad car damn near suffocating for about an hour with the heat full blast, Officer Ming called for back up, they came and did an illegal search of my truck, and a unnecessary questioning of my partner.

By this time there were about six officers and five squad cars in front of my house at 12:30 am in the morning. After searching my truck and keeping me detained for an unnecessary amount of time Ming came back to the back of the squad car and continued to play this “who’s nuts is bigger” game with me. But I am not the type to bow down, so I kept answering him the same way. I told him he had no right to detain me, no right to search my vehicle and no cause to use such excessive force with me and that he was just trying to make bow down to him by threatening to take me to jail and bending my arms. Since I didn’t see it his way, he excuse me of resisting arrest, and threatening him…two pieces of bullshit that did even hold enough weight to make it onto the bogus ticket he wrote me for not having two licenses plates and driving against traffic.

I told him that he could see with his own eyes that the truck had the temporary moving permit with the big number 7 on it right there totally visible in the window. I paid the registration and obtained all the necessary permits to move the truck the day after I purchased it at the auction last wednesday. I just bought the truck for the Village Bottoms Farm Project we are doing on Pine Street. I told him that DMV gave me the permit to get it smogged and handle a few other things before they’ll give me license plates and that the permit takes care of that so why is he still trying to stick me with something. He told me that these were just fix it tickets that he was giving me. Yeah, fix it tickets to attempt to cover his own ass because he knows he messed up and harassed the wrong person. After stalling and wasting hell of my time, he came and took the hand cuffs off of me one at a time, right hand first so that he could make sure I signed his bogus ticket before he let me go. Then he tells me that all of this could have been avoided if I would have followed his direct orders because he has never seen me before and had know way of knowing who I was. I told him that following his bogus commands, would be fine if I was a police dog, but I’m a citizen of Oakland and a human being in front of my house, and as far as I’m concerned he is the intruder who is unlawfully encroaching upon my right to be free and live a peaceful stress free life. Good People do you think it’s okay to get harassed and bogusly detained by the Police in front of your House? The question I have is, are they here to serve and protect, or to break our necks?

I am calling on all of you who know me to write into the city attorney’s office, the office of the mayor, and the chief of police to let them know that this type of harassment of public citizens will not be tolerated in the city of Oakland. I will be filing a complaint with the city attorney against the police department and seeking damages for this one, I would appreciate your support on this because too often, things like this happen and we never follow through with the complaint process.

Here is the contact info:
MAYOR’S OFFICE: 510-238-3141/fax: 510-238-4731

Or you could email city council (scroll down to email all at once)

LaTonda Simmons
City Clerk
cityclerk@oaklandnet.com

Dan Lindheim: Acting City Administrator
citymanager@oaklandnet.com

Ron Dellums: Mayor
officeofthemayor@oaklandnet.com

Courtney Ruby: City Auditor
cruby@oaklandnet.com

John Russo: City Attorney
jrusso@oaklandcityattorney.org

Jane Brunner: District 1
jbrunner@oaklandnet.com

Patricia Kernighan: District 2
pkernighan@oaklandnet.com

Nancy Nadel: District 3
nnadel@oaklandnet.com

Jean Quan: District 4
jquan@oaklandnet.com

Ignacio De La Fuente: District 5
idelafuente@oaklandnet.com

Desley Brooks: District 6
dbrooks@oaklandnet.com

Larry Reid: District 7
lreid@oaklandnet.com

Rebecca Kaplan: At-Large
atlarge@oaklandnet.com

Or all together!
atlarge@oaklandnet.com, lreid@oaklandnet.com, dbrooks@oaklandnet.com, idelafuente@oaklandnet.com, jquan@oaklandnet.com, nnadel@oaklandnet.com, pkernighan@oaklandnet.com, jbrunner@oaklandnet.com, jbrunner@oaklandnet.com, jrusso@oaklandcityattorney.org, cruby@oaklandnet.com, officeofthemayor@oaklandnet.com, citymanager@oaklandnet.com, cityclerk@oaklandnet.com

Marcel Diallo
Chief Creative Officer
Black Dot Artists, Inc.
diallo@blackdotcafe.com
510-451-4661

“Together We Must Sustain The Institutions That Sustain Us”

Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Political articles Tagged With: , ,

MLK vs the Radio-Historic 1967 Speech about the Importance of Black Radio

May 25, 2009 By

daveydbanner

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MLK vs the Radio
(Historic 1967 Speech to National Association of Radio Announcers )

by Davey D

MLK-brown-leanAs we talk about the plight of Black Radio and the bill proposed by Congressman John Conyers HR 848.. We thought we’d take a walk down memory lane and listen to what Dr Martin Luther King had to say about the role BLACK RADIO played in furthering the Civil Rights struggle..It was a speech given in August of 1967 in Atlanta, Ga.

We included in this video, remarks made by freedom fighter H Rap Brown who talks about the role of entertainers and how they are often manipulated and used against the community by the White Power structure.

We also have excerpts from Minister Farrakhan talking about BLACK RADIO in his historic 1980 speech given to radio deejays at the Jack the Rapper Convention in Atlanta. He talked about how Black Radio deejays are used as agents to dumb down our thinking. What’s interesting to note is that Farrakhan’s speech came 13 years after King in the same month and to a similar body of attendess. The time between King’s speech and Farrkhan’s speech we saw so much of Black radio dismantled and so many of the disc jockeys silences and depoliticized. Farrakhan talks about how station owners went out of their way to hire deejays who would talk jive to the people and do very little to upfift them. Its a trend that many say still exist today.

We round it out with remarks on radio by Hip Hop activists Rosa Clemente made during the historic protest against Hot 97 in spring 2005 and Chuck D during 2Pac‘s Birthday celebration in June of 2005 also in Atlanta. Rosa notes how the people who control NY’s number one Hip Hop station are 7 executives all over 40 who are white men. She accusses them and their deejays of peddling a type of mind drug to the community.

Chuck’s remarks are telling as he notes how elders who are heading up these stations are afarid to grow up and be adults and how they’ve become frightened to speak to their own offspring.

Enjoy.. all these people drop some serious jewels.

Return to Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner

Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Essential videos to peep Tagged With: , ,

Rapper Charles Hamilton Gets Punched out in a Battle

May 23, 2009 By

daveydbanner

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Somethings are always off limits even in a battle and a true man is a gentleman even under the most embarassing and worst of circumstances.  Not sure what Mr Hamilton was thinking but he obvious was out of pocket… Battles is Battles and personals is personals especially when its on tape..A smart brother would’ve picked up the signals, diffused the situation and kept it moving.. He could’ve asked ‘What could I do to redeem myself  versus pushing buttons..

Return to Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner

Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Essential videos to peep Tagged With: ,

When the Fever Was Mecca-The Legacy of Disco Fever

May 22, 2009 By

daveydbanner

As we celebrate Hip Hop Appreciation week we wanted to help people get a slice of history by reading about the legendary night club Disco Fever. back in the pioneering days of Hip Hop this was the club of clubs where all the ballers went…

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When the Fever Was Mecca-The Legacy of Disco Fever

by Mark Skillz

Markskillzbrown-225If Hip Hop was your thing in the early 80’s there were a few things you understood: The hottest spot in the city at that time was Studio 54 in Manhattan, and you weren’t getting in there; but the club Disco Fever was in the Bronx; and if you wanted to be a legend in hip hop at that time, your ass had to play the Fever.

The Fever wasn’t just a club; it was the club, not only was it the place to be but it was an experience, if you performed at the Fever, and you rocked it, that meant that you were somebody. You were among the elite. For legions of rap fans at that time it was the Mecca of the South Bronx. It was a star- studded time for many in the 80’s. It was a time when fly girls, b-boys, stick-up kids, coke dealers, hookers, thugs, gamblers, home boys and the everyday man could party in style with the ghetto celebs of that period.

The wall behind the stage, emblazoned big red and black with big bold gold graffiti lettering displaying the names of the legends of that time: DISCO FEVER THE HOME OF: Lovebug Starski, Junebug, Grandmaster Flash, Sweet Gee, D.J. Hollywood, Sugar Hill Gang, Eddie Cheba, Kurtis Blow, Sequence, Brucie Bee, Furious 5, Reggie Wells, Kool Kyle, Disco Bee, and Star Child. Those were the names of some of the immortals that blessed the mikes and the deejay booth; that’s where you wanted your name to be.

“When I went there, the vibe was definitely celebratory”, says Fab 5 Freddy, who at the time was the Ambassador between the hard-core underground hip-hop scene and the downtown art and punk rock scenes. “You definitely got hit with the aroma of cocaine burning with cigarettes or weed; you smelled angel dust being smoked once you got in the club. It wasn’t like going to the Dixie or somewhere like the Smith Projects, although that hard-core element was there, the vibe was different. It was more of a celebration.”

“The Fever was way different from Krush Groove” proclaimed Grandmaster Caz, “There wasn’t no Fat Boys and RUN-DMC and LL all in the Fever, it was mother fuckin’ drug dealers man, all they showed was the front room, they didn’t show the back room!”

“We played whatever was hot at that time”, boasts George “Sweet Gee” Godfrey, who was the clubs manager as well as a deejay, and later recorded the classic 12-inch “Games People Play”. “On any given night seven days a week, you’d come in there and hear something like “Catch the Beat” by T Ski Valley, or “All Night Long” by the Mary Jane Girls; “Catch the Beat” was definitely a club classic!”

In the Beginning

“When the Fever first opened up, we couldn’t get in, because we were too young, only Flash and Lovebug Starski were able to get in”, so says rap pioneer Mele Mel of the Furious Five, who, once he was able to get in, was treated like royalty.

sal-abbatiello-225Mel couldn’t get in because initially, the club catered to an older audience. In the 60’s and early 70’s the Abbatiello family owned a jazz bar in the Bronx called the Salt and Pepper Lounge that catered to a mostly adult black clientele.

“Sal’s dad, Ally, was a musician, and he used to have all kinds of people come down to that bar for jam sessions, people like George Benson for instance, he used to come in and jam 3 or 4 nights a week”, said Sweet Gee.

“Every once in awhile, my dad would sit in with the band and play his trumpet”, said Sal Abbatiello who owns and operates Fever Enterprises.

In the movie ‘Casablanca‘ Humphrey Bogart played a smooth, tuxedo-jacketed, cigar- smoking, tough-talking yet sensitive character named Rick, who’s connections with the underworld and cops alike made him the man to go to in Morocco; Sal Abbatiello was the Rick character of the South Bronx.

“People used to come around the clubs and say to each other “Who’s the white kid?” Like I came from somewhere else, when, I didn’t. I’m from the South Bronx; I was born and raised in the Bronx. My family is from the Bronx. We have been involved and owned nightclubs here for years. So all of my dealings have been with black people. At my dinner table, during holidays, there were black people at the table with us. So, you see, I was no stranger to Black culture’, said Abbatiello.

“In 1978, my dad decided to buy a bar down the block from the “Salt and Pepper Lounge”, said Abbatiello.

“When Ally bought that bar, I was there when it was being built, I’m talking literally, I mean I had a hammer and nails and was helping them build that place”, said Sweet Gee.

“So one night we were out at Sal’s dad’s house in New Jersey and a commercial came on for a new movie called “Saturday Night Fever“, and it came on while we were trying to think of a name for the club, and all of a sudden Sal’s mom said, “Hey, why not call it “Disco Fever“? And we all looked at each other and said: “Hey that’s it!” said Sweet Gee.

“So the club is up and going, we had a white deejay there at first playing Top 40, cause you gotta remember, we were still catering to an older clientele”, said Abbatiello.

“Well, this white guy, he used to get tired and want to quit early, it would be 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning and he’d be ready to go”, said Sweet Gee adding, “So when he would leave or take a break I would take over. Now, I’m not a great deejay or nothing, but I had watched Flash and all of those guys and knew all of the hot break records from that time like Cheryl Lynn‘s “Got to Be Real“; I would turn down the music and talk between her singing like she would sing: “What you find…I’d say: “Sweet Gee”, she’d sing… “What you feel,” I’d say: “D.J. Junebug”; what you know: “Disco Fever”, and that was my routine”, said Sweet Gee.

grandflashlogbaseyellow-225“Well, one night I’m there at the club and I see Gee go into this routine, and I’m saying, “What in the fuck is Gee doing? He was saying things like “Throw your hands in the air and wave ’em like you just don’t care” and all of this other stuff and I’m looking at the crowd and I’m noticing that he’s bringing people together, and then it clicked: This is what the club needs. So I talked my dad into letting me have a night and after a while he agreed. He wasn’t sure about this rap stuff, but he let me try, so I went out to find the best: and that was a guy named Grandmaster Flash“.

“I tried to promote other nights there before I got Flash, I even had Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes there, but people didn’t come, you know why? Because no one believed that Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes would be in some club in the South Bronx. So when I got Flash to play, we charged a dollar and there were only four of us working the whole club – 600 people showed up that night. I was calling home and the Salt and Pepper Lounge pleading with my dad, “Dad, Dad please, send more people; we’re swamped in here.”

The Place to Be

Flash-Sal_kurtisBlowTo be sure, hip-hop was not born in the Disco Fever, its birthplace is said to have been 1520 Sdgwick Ave. in the West Bronx. What the Fever was was the hot spot where the stars of that era went to chill and be seen in high fashion.

Hip-hop fashion at that time was different from what it is today; there was no specialized hip-hop designer gear, because people in general didn’t have a lot of money back then. Party-goers wore leather bomber jackets, sweaters, mock necks, Polo shirts, leather pants, British Walkers, Calvin Klein or Lee jeans, and Kangol hats; hip-hop fashion has come a long way since then.

Even though it has been said that the Fever had a dress code, according to promoter Van Silk, then known as R.C., “Yeah right the Fever had a dress code. Do you know what the dress code was? It was money. If you had enough money in your pocket then you could get in there regardless how you were dressed. But you knew you were going out that night and you wanted to look right, so you wore your leather pants.”

According to Silk, “I was one of the first promoters Sal let in there do his own night. As a matter of fact, me and Sal were trying to start a video show out of the Fever; it was going to be called ‘Video Fever‘. This was before MTV. We had Nyobe and some other people on that show. Sal has it to this day on a beta tape”, said Silk.

MelleMelbat“The Fever was like a second home to us”, said Mele Mel, “We could be overseas in Italy or Germany or somewhere like that and we would be calling the Fever, right into the deejay booth, and would be talking to Junebug on the phone, we would be like, “Yeah yeah, so what’s going on over there, who’s there tonight? If we were in New York, like say, the Roxy, we would hang out at the Roxy and then leave there at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning and then go to the Fever when we were done. No matter where we were we always ended up back at the Fever.”

“People that went there regularly they were called “believers” – “Fever believers”, said Grandmaster Caz adding, “And then the girls that used to come all the time but they ain’t look all that hot, we used to call them “Fever blisters”.

As hot as the Fever was there were certain pioneers that didn’t play there, most notably: Afrika Bambaataa. “Bambaataa did not play the Fever, nor did he play Harlem World,” said Van Silk, “You have to understand something, 125th St. was Harlem, and Bam came from the gang days, there were still groups out there with that kind of mentality. Bam is not a violent man. Now, the people around Bam were violent. So Bam didn’t travel everywhere, anything beyond 225th was Uptown, and that’s when you get into some ‘Warriors’ type shit.”

Unlike other hip hop spots at that time like the Ecstasy Garage, The Dixie, and the T Connection; the Fever had the style of a downtown club – uptown.

“Yo there were three kinds of cats in the Fever: there was the rappers – the emcee’s the hip hop cats, the drug dealers and then there was the regular pedestrians I like to call them”, said Grandmaster Caz, “They would be in there with their eyes wide open, but there weren’t that many of them in there because everybody was pretty much somebody. The Fever wasn’t like a big, big, club – you know what I mean? The regular crowd of people would pack the club alone, it wasn’t about any outside people coming from out of town and shit like that, they wasn’t fitting in in the Fever.”

“The Fever crowd were the type of crowd that liked to sing a long with the record”, said D.J. Rockwell who spun there from 1980 – 1985, “I would mix something like “Do You Wanna Rock” by the Funky 4, and the crowd would be singing along and then I would go into “Before I Let Go” by Frankie Beverly, from there I would go into “I Found Love” by the Fatback Band and the crowd would lose their minds. That’s the way the Fever crowd was.”

“I held down a night, Brucie Bee had a night and Disco Bee had a night too. A lot of times when people thought that it was Flash spinning there – it was really me, because Flash would spin for an hour or so and then stop, and when he stopped, that’s when I would come on”, said Rockwell.

For Sal, the one night that stands out for him that made him see just how popular the club was. “One night, I’m outside looking at the line and there’s this guy out there who wants to get in, he’s a young guy, good-looking guy, somebody taps me on the shoulder and said, “Yo that’s the guy with the hot record out”, I said “Let him in”, turns out, it was Kurtis Blow.”

Junebug the Baddest Deejay Ever

“I could be at the bar sipping a drink or whatever, and all of a sudden Junebug would play the Philadelphia Orchestra’s version of McFadden and Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”; and that would be my cue for us to get into our thing”, said Sweet Gee.

Out of all of the deejays from that era, the name Junebug is mentioned with reverence. He was a young Puerto Rican deejay from Manhattan, who had a bearded face and a long Afro with a neck full of gold chains and the sort of playful smile that only a mother could love. “Nobody could do what Junebug did. He was the absolute best. Flash was bad, but Junebug was better.”

“I agree”, Sal added, “all the other deejays scratched or just threw a record in, Junebug, mixed records in, and he did it extremely well. He didn’t really need headphones. I used to go to Club 371 and check the deejays out, and Junebug, was one hell of a deejay. He was D.J. Hollywood’s deejay. I stole him from them [Club 371], and made him the main house deejay along with Sweet Gee.”

grandmastercaz-old-225“As far as a club deejay – Junebug was a really nice”, says Grandmaster Caz, “But really, when I went there, I thought all of the disco deejays were the best there: Junebug, Starski, Starchild, but yeah, I have to say Junebug stood out. Sweet Gee was the host, he’d be the voice, he’d be biggin’ up everybody in the spot.”

But that wasn’t all that Junebug was best at; he also made his money on the street. According to Sweet Gee, “Junebug had two apartments: one for where he lived; the other, was where he kept his stash.”

“He was a nice guy,” Mele Mel says. “He would give you the shirt off his back, he was a stand up dude, he just happened to be a deejay who also sold cocaine. You know, he, like the rest of us, we all got caught up in something that was bigger than what we could deal with at the time”, said Mele Mel.

The Other Bronx Disco

“When the Fever opened up there was an immediate rivalry with Club 371, I’m talking about a heated rivalry,” said Sweet Gee, “You have to understand, once the Fever opened the owners of the place started looking around and they noticed that most of their black clientele was disappearing, this became a major problem.”

Club 371 was the spot where four deejays from Manhattan bought Harlem’s smooth style to the Bronx. Deejays: Reggie Wells, Hollywood, Junebug and Eddie Cheeba had all been spinning R&B since at least the early 70’s; two of them: D.J.’s Hollywood and Eddie Cheeba were godfathers of rap.

djhollywood-225“When I was first investigating the rap scene, Club 371 was one of the places I went to. When I went there I was in awe of this big fat guy, with this golden voice and he had absolute control over the crowd. He was the best entertainer ever; this guy rapped and sang, he mixed, he was a star, I mean a real star, even back then: his name was D.J. Hollywood. He had a Spanish deejay that used to spin for him named Junebug; I wanted both of them at my club. At first, only Junebug came over, but Hollywood didn’t; it took a long time to get him [Hollywood] to come over. He didn’t think the Fever was the right spot for him, I guess it was because he was used to playing for older adults who listened to a more R&B type music, he used to tell me “I don’t know man, I don’t think that’s my kinda crowd; but I’d tell him “Yo, all you gotta do is come on down and play for them. They’ll love you”, said Sal.

“When I first got to Club 371 in 1978, the owners were looking to expand the place, Hollywood was so popular at the time, and they needed somebody just as good as he was”, said Eddie Cheba, “So they built an upstairs – but nobody was going upstairs – Hollywood was so good nobody wanted to leave that part of the club, so they got me. So, upstairs it was me and my deejay EZ Gee and Reggie Wells, and downstairs it was Hollywood and Junebug; people were running downstairs and upstairs all night.”

“But eventually I got Hollywood”, Sal says. “I got all of them: Eddie Cheeba, Reggie Wells, Junebug, and Hollywood; we were doing it then.”

“It got to the point where the fire department would show up and we’d have to empty the place out because somebody called and said that there was a fire. After this happened a few times, we figured out what was going on, we found out it was the guy’s that owned Club 371 that were calling the fire department on us, and it was on from then on. For a while there, we played a game of one upmanship with them meaning: they called in and said we had a fire, we’d call the cops and say that there was a bomb in their place. This went on for a while, and got even worse when Sal stole Junebug”, remembers Sweet Gee.

“After a while the two owners made a truce and the beef was over. Their owner came over to our place for drinks; Sal went over there for drinks, everything was good.”

Chillin’ V.I.P. Style

“You have to understand the neighborhood; I’d have a pimp here, a doctor here, a lawyer here, a hooker here and gangsters all over. So, once we started frisking people – as a matter of fact, we were the first with the metal detectors, once we started frisking people, we started turning up guns. People thought I was crazy, they were saying things like, “Sal, what kind of club are you running? Come on, metal detectors?” Now in this neighborhood, certain people needed guns. There were just certain people whose guns you couldn’t take away. So, we started a gun-check policy. Our thing was: Ok, you have a gun. However, you may not bring that gun in the club. So, we would take the gun and lock it – and the ammunition – up in the office”, said Abbatiello.

“People were getting high snorting coke out in the open and shit, so we created a room, the “get high room” for them to do that in, it wasn’t like we could really stop them.”

“This was the cocaine era”, Grandmaster Caz reminds us. “Girls would come in from Connecticut cause they knew all the rap cats was gonna be there, they knew that the drug dealers were gonna be in there, this was the cocaine years baby – pre crack.”

Patterned after the speakeasies of the 1920’s, the VIP areas were an elaborate set of walls enclosed in walls. They also set up red alarm lights behind the bar, in the deejay booth, and in the offices in case the cops raided the place. “When the red light went off, the deejay would make an announcement: Code Red. That meant hide the blow. Code Blue meant the cops were gone, go back to doing what you were doing”, Sweet Gee recalls.

“All kinds of stuff went on back there”, said Mele Mel, “If you were back there, you were royalty. You got the best that the club had to offer. I would leave that place at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning with 2 or 3 females and depending on what was going on: if we were gonna do our thing locally there was the Alps, which was a little roach motel. Or there was the Courtesy in Jersey which had rooms with Jacuzzi’s and mirror’s on the ceilings and all that kind of stuff”, said Mele Mel.

“Things were going so well that after awhile, there was this place around the corner from the club on Burnside Ave. that I made into an after hours spot I named it “Games People Play”, we had gambling and all that kinds of stuff going on over there. That’s where the name of the record that Gee did came from”, said Sal.

“The V.I.P areas were strictly for celebs, we had one room for the artists, where they would be sniffing coke out of dollar bills; or they had a gram of blow or something and they had a female with them, that was the spot for them for all that”, said Sweet Gee, “Now, in the other room we reserved that for the high rollers, I’m talking about guys that were dealing with more than a 8 ball of blow, they were the one’s dealing in some serious weight.”

Sal puts it bluntly, “You’d go back there and everybody would be back there, I’m talking about your Russell Simmons, your Lyor Cohen’s; everybody that was in the rap business back then was who you could find back there with their noses open – including me.”

RUN-DMC LIVE AT THE FEVER

For close to a decade The Fever had been the Mecca of Hip Hop, it was the place where Mele Mel was king, Kurtis Blow was a star, Flash was a legend and Lovebug Starski, made you a believer. But there was something new on the horizon.

“I was with Run and them all that day when we performed at the Fever”, said Spyder D, whose hit record “Smerphies Dance” was a Fever classic. “I was there every step of the way that day. It was me, Run and D and Larry Smith. It was just like the song said: “Larry put me inside his Cadillac”, that literally happened that day.”

Spyder continues, “To be from Queens and to perform at the Fever was the highest honor. You have to understand, Uptown cats didn’t respect Queens cats, and so for us to be performing there, that was a big deal, because, previous to that, if you were from Queens, you got no love.”

When the three ambitious MC’s from Queens stepped into the Fever at 2 o’clock in the morning, they were immediately in awe of the club, the mystique of the Fever had more than met their expectations. They had all probably secretly dreamed and privately whispered to friends what that moment would be like, and they weren’t disappointed.

They had all performed earlier that day at gigs around the city; their first show had been a disaster: While he was performing, DMC’s glasses fell off of his face and fell flat on to the stage. Run, full of nervous energy could hardly control himself. According to Spyder, RUN DMC’s producer and mentor Larry Smith screamed at them on the way to the Bronx, “If y’all niggas are anything like that tonight at the Fever, you’re gonna get shot. New Edition performed there last week and niggas were turning over tables shooting at them. You mother fucker’s better get it together. I was like, “Yo, yo Larry man iksnae on the guns man.”

Spyder remembers that night like it had happened last week, “”So we get there, and Starchild was the deejay that night, we stepped in there and it was like, “Yo, this is about to go down.”

Performing after a “Smerph dancing” Spyder D, Run and D, were not quite yet the black leather-jacketed, Stetson hat b-boys yet. “You should’ve seen them in those checkered jackets and turtle-neck sweaters”, laughs Spyder, “It was a far cry from the RUN DMC of the future.”

RunDMC“I watched them from early that afternoon when they were like, these two total amateurs who were too scared to be on stage, to that night at the Fever, when they turned that place out. I saw D and Joey become: RUN-DMC, right before my eyes, and I’ll never forget it. They were rookies coming into that night but they were superstars by the end of the night – that’s how fast they transformed”, said an emphatic Spyder D.

Performing “It’s Like That” and “Sucker MC’s” before a stunned late-night, coked- up Bronx audience, Run and D were laughed at by a couple, fronted on by a few, but warmly received by everyone else. A few coked-out Bronx veterans that were there that night peeked out of the VIP section and dismissively said: “Who’s them niggas?”

They were the future. The days of the Bronx being the Mecca were coming to an end.

The Party is Over

As the 80’s progressed the record industry machine rolled closer and closer toward the tiny sub-culture from the Bronx. Deals were being made and labels were being born at a dizzying pace. A new breed of hip hoppers was coming into being. The older crowd was slowly being phased out.

“One night me, Junebug and Mr. Magic were supposed to go to the movies together”, recounts Sweet Gee, “I called Bug’s house all that day, and got nothing. I called Sal and told him, “Man, something ain’t right, I’m worried, I haven’t heard from Bug all day, this ain’t like him. So the next day somebody went around to his stash house to go and check on him and there he was, somebody had killed him.”

“When I was writing ‘White Lines” I was thinking about Junebug”, Mele Mel says, “This was before I got hooked on cocaine. I used to buy it; I used to buy it more than I actually used it. I think I was just hooked on buying it. When I wrote the song I was thinking about Junebug, he wasn’t the inspiration for the song, I was thinking of him because even though he was a deejay he was our little connect. He was the dude that we used to get our little packages from. I remember thinking to myself “Yeah we gonna have some fun when this comes out.” But, a couple of weeks after “White Lines” dropped Junebug had gotten killed”, Mele Mel remembers somberly.

“I grew up around wise guys all of my life, they were in our clubs and everything, so I was no stranger to that kind of element. There was this notorious gangster in the Bronx named Crazy Eddie who used to come around to the club, he had my back against this guy Tommy for a while, and then, Eddie and I had a falling out. Oh man, shit was hectic”, Sal remembers remorsefully.

“I was having problems with this gangster named Tommy; he was trying to shake me down for a whole lot of money. For a year and a half I was walking around wearing a bulletproof vest. It was crazy. I wasn’t able to be around everyday to run the businesses, so things started to go bad. Everybody that worked for me was strung out on coke. Things were really going bad”, remembers Sal.

Things eventually worked themselves out: Eddie shot Tommy, Tommy shot Eddie, and things went back and forth until eventually they both ended up going to jail.

As bad as things were looking, it looked like the Fever was about to get a second life, the movie Krush Groove was being shot there. Hollywood had aimed their cameras at the Bronx. Things were looking up. That was, until the last day of filming.

“We were celebrating Mele Mel’s birthday party at the club, when all of a sudden I get in trouble for not having a cabaret license. It was all a result of that year and a half of being on the run; my paperwork wasn’t being kept up. We finished Mel’s party in the street that night. The cops put a lock on the front door, but that didn’t stop somebody from coming along later and breaking in through the roof and stealing everything. All I did for the neighborhood, and that happened.”

“You gotta understand, there were many nights that people came to me and asked for help paying rent. I’m talking about people from the neighborhood that attended the club, they would come to me and say, “Sal, Sal we’re about to be evicted, can you help us? And I would. I can’t tell you how many abortions I paid for – that I had nothing to do with – young girls would come up to me crying and shit talking about they’re pregnant, and how their mother was gonna kill them. I’d reach in my pocket and give them the money. I cared about the neighborhood. I really did”, Sal says.

fever-discofeverBetween 1976 and 1983, guys like Mele Mel and Lovebug Starski were the toast of the streets. They ruled in the period before trunk jewels and the bling era. They were ghetto celebs at a moment when hip-hop wasn’t fabulous. Time and circumstance cheated them out of the pot of gold that is said to over the rainbow. When their reign came to an end, so did the Fever’s. Every generation has that moment in time when their youth is celebrated, when their child-like innocence becomes the food of legend, before grown-up realities create jaded adults. Today, men well into their forties get misty-eyed when they recall their heyday of twenty-five years before. They weren’t ready to leave the scene, but time dictated that they must.

Mele Mel breaks it down like this: “You know people don’t understand that we came through a rough era back then. Yeah, ok, we would be in the V.I.P. section of the Fever, but we would be back there with cats like Corley and Supreme and Fat Cat and them from Queens. Now these were some thorough brothers back then. We’d be back there with gangsters like that. A lot of us got lost in that era. A lot of people didn’t survive from all that went on back then. If you survived all that and you got it together now, you a strong cat. Because you had to be strong to come through all of that.”

By Mark Skillz
This feature originally ran in Wax Poetics Journal

 

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Filed Under: 2009-Daily Hip Hop News, Essential Hip Hop Articles, Hip Hop Pioneers Tagged With: , ,

7 White Rappers Way Better Than Eminem and Asher Roth

May 22, 2009 By

daveydbanner

Hip-hop was born of racial consciousness. You can’t divide hip-hop from the social and political circumstances from which it came. There may be new occupants in this house called hip-hop. Most of the people who built this house of hip-hop would say, everybody is welcome in this house, but the people who built it were people of color…

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7 White Rappers Way Better Than Eminem and Asher Roth
Posted by Ansel Herz at 9:00AM

Hip-hop was born of racial consciousness. You can’t divide hip-hop from the social and political circumstances from which it came. There may be new occupants in this house called hip-hop. Most of the people who built this house of hip-hop would say, everybody is welcome in this house, but the people who built it were people of color… you go into somebody’s house, then you gotta respect that. If you don’t have that [racial] humility, you won’t have the foundation that provides.

I’m not sure that Eminem and Asher Roth occupy a healthy space in the “house of hip-hop,” as Dan Charnas calls it in Jay Smooth’s latest video.

Eminem’s new album, rehashing his ‘Slim Shady’ persona, is another narcissistic ode to hyper-violence shot through with a strong dose of misogyny (he calls Mariah Carey a ‘cunt’). Roth’s debut “Asleep in the Bread Aisle” is a celebration of the apathetic college slacker lifestyle. He recently joked about Don Imus’ racist tirade against the Rutgers women’s basketball team before performing there, then made some asinine comments criticizing “black rappers.” I think both of their albums suck, frankly.

Charnas is right. White folks need to have, at the very least, some humility before they claim space in hip-hop. Creative talent ought to be a requirement too. Unfortunately, a lot of people are talking about Eminem and Asher Roth, who arguably aren’t showing much of either right now, as if they’re the only white emcees in the game. Here are a few white (male) rappers I’ve been listening to (and broadcasting on KVRX) for a while – each producing positive, quality hip-hop. I’m from the West Coast, which I guess explains the bias to that part of the country in this selection.

Can-U

This guy from Tacoma, Washington put out an incredible mixtape two years ago with DJ Reign (go download it now!). I don’t know much more about him beyond that. He says on his Myspace that he’s hard at work on his debut album. “Dirty Clean,” his tribute to street artists everywhere, is one of my all-time favorite songs.

BrotherAli-225Brother Ali

Brother Ali is probably the best known out of this bunch. He’s an albino, nearly blind Muslim born and raised in the Midwest. His critically-acclaimed 2007 album, “The Undisputed Truth,” is an in-your-face mix of political and personal declarations about life in America. It reached #69 on the Billboard charts. Here’s “Uncle Sam Goddamn.”

Toby

Toby, with Tunji (who is black), make up the Los Angeles group Inverse. I caught an interview with them on KUBE 93’s Sound Session earlier this year and was struck by how down-to-earth they both were. Their latest EP (download!) has a deep, rich sound, with the two of them showing love for L.A. and the Cali sun. Here’s “Spark My Soul” featuring Substantial.

R.A. Scion

They might talk slow in the Southern heartlands, but R.A. Scion, who grew up in Kentucky, has the fastest and densest flow here. I honestly can’t follow him half the time, so I visit his blog to read through his complex and profound lyrics. With DJ Sabzi he forms ‘Common Market.” Here’s their latest song, “Tobacco and Snow Covered Roads,” produced seemingly on a whim during an especially snowy day this past winter in Seattle. He’s a far easier to follow on this track than usual.

Grynch

Grynch quotes Langston Hughes In the first line of the first song I ever heard from him. So I knew immediately this 23-year-old rapper, also from Seattle, was on point. Apparently Dr. Dre’s ‘The Chronic’ hooked him on hip-hop at age 10 and he released his first album during his senior year in high school. Here’s the song I mentioned, called “I’m A Dreamer” featuring Geologic and Thig Natural, off his recent ‘Something More’ EP (download!).

Braille

“Helping people understand the things they can’t see” is his motto. Portland-based Braille spits what’s on his mind and you can tell he really means ever word he says. His latest project involves raising money to donate 30,000 copies of his latest record to at-risk and incarcerated youth. “That Feeling,” which describes his ever-changing but always strong relationship with hip-hop, is below.

Move.meant

These guys are also from Los Angeles. Don’t know much about ‘em except that they met in college and make smooth, accessible music. Here’s “Higher (Breathe).”

Made it this far? Here’s a mix to download of the tracks listed above.

Addendum

I want to mention that I hesitated to publish this post at all. Jay Smooth interviewed a white guy for his thoughts about Asher Roth, now I’ve published a list of white guys as an alternative to Roth, Eminem and their ilk. What started as a conversation about whiteness in hip-hop is now… a conversation by white guys about other white guys in hip-hop, at least on this part of the Internet. The voices of people of color should to be central here and they’re not.

So I’m not saying you should listen to the guys listed above instead of Roth and Eminem. Listen to whoever you want, and if you like good hip-hop, odds are those artists will be people of color. I don’t think the house of hip-hop needs white people at all, in fact it would probably be better off without us. POC built the house and they’re keeping it strong, despite what Nas said a few years ago.

On the other hand, the reality is there are probably more white consumers of hip-hop now than ever before. I’m one of them. And I feel like it’s important for me and Jay Smooth and anyone else to say to other (white) folks, “If white people are going to be a part of hip-hop at all, they ought to be humble about it and play a positive role.” I think the guys above are generally doing that, so they deserve the spotlight more than Em and Roth – but not necessarily more than anyone else.

 
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