One of my goals for this summer is to work on my music more. I was overjoyed to find a DJ up here that wanted to do the same with his music. Well, actually, he found me…at the regular Cafe Nine open mic on Monday in New Haven, CT. The question “have you ever worked with a DJ before?” started a collaboration and a friendship. Much like the weekly Wednesday night I had in DC with DJ v:shal kanwar at Science Club (who now hosts electroganic in DC), with DJ Zoloft I rap or sing over instrumental tracks from Mobb Deep to Thievery to DJ Shadow. He is one of the most eclectic DJs I’ve ever heard and can satisfy crowds of all ages without going into the deep end of cheese. We had our first night of collaboration on Friday.
So we’re going to do it again this Friday and see if we can keep it up every Friday at The Blue Pearl in New Haven at 130 Court St. DJ Zoloft starts his set at 10:30 pm, and I intermittently do my thing on the mic starting at 11:30 pm-12 am, when the last of the dinner tables clear out. Love The Pearl, love the atmosphere and the people who work there, and it’s great that I was already a frequent customer before becoming part of the entertainment. Hope to see you out.
June 2nd, 2008
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Last weekend, the long three-day Memorial Day weekend, I went down to Miami with some friends to celebrate another friend’s graduation. I’ve have never seen South Beach so full (and, no, I’ve never been there during the winter music conference). The reason for the fullness?…Hip-hop Festival.
Now, I’m a child of the older-school hip-hop…Tribe Called Quest, De La, Nas’s Illmatic (nothing of his since), Dr. Dre, Digable Planets, Public Enemy, old Wu–all the stuff that I was boppin’ to around my bedroom in high school cerca ‘92-’95. So when an advertisement truck rolled by a few times with Lil’ Wayne, I believe, as a baby with a tear drop tattoo or two, or when the advertising plane flew above the water at the beach with a Rick Ross plug, I realized I was out of date and out of touch.
I gave up listening to the radio right around the time I graduated high school, because they just didn’t seem to play the good hip-hop anymore. Now you have to own a satellite radio to even get that stuff. I usually cringe when I do listen to most mainstream radio stations that play hip-hop nowadays, and I constantly say things like, “If they could be paid to write that crap, I should just start writing my own shit. It’d be ten times more insightful.” I know it’s not easy to rap or even write, but what was at one point an enlightening genre now seems to just go to the butts.
That’s right, the butts. Hip-hop weekend in Miami is a booty fest. I’m not really shocked by that–I’m all for women’s lib–but I was taken aback by some of the outfits. If you got it, flaunt it, I guess, but I was a afraid that some of the girls who were just wearing string bikini bottoms with their tiny tie on tops and high heels were going get more than a mild groping as they pushed through the crowds. And in the crowds, most often on the beach, were hordes of horny guys holding video cameras and taping every little young thing that strutted by or stuck her ass out in the splashing waves. I felt like I was witnessing the making of a tit-zoomin’, butt-jigglin’ music video…and perhaps I was.
So turned off by sheer number of people piling out of every club, we were, that we didn’t even bother hitting any of the scene. We were five good friends who really wanted to share each other’s company without having to shout over the music and buy $12 drinks. But looking back, I feel like a bit of a wuss for not at least giving the whole scene one shot. Sure, we walked around a gawked at others as much as they gawked at each other, but there’s nothing like being in a sweaty mess of people humping on the dance floor and listening to bad rap to make you feel alive, or confirm that staying away from the crowds is really the best decision. These thoughts have a vein running through them that I am almost afraid to say, but here goes…
Am I getting old?
I mean, when I hear myself talk like our parents did about “how music was so much better in our day,” I have to maybe say, “yeah, you seem to be getting old, Jess.” What happens when the mainstream is really just sucking in terms of quality rap, if what is deemed as quality has changed? It’s a matter of personal opinion and extreme ability to measure degrees of change over time in the industry to say, “this is good and that is bad.” I fear the years in which I gave up listening to mainstream anything greatly harmed my ability to fairly judge the clips of mainstream I hear today, because I don’t have a full set of baselines of each year going back to ‘95. It’s almost like I stopped studying, and now I’m going to have to go way back behind the times just to get on top of today’s music.
If I’m so inclined, that is.
Another theme that sticks out in my mind about the yearly festival is the local fear of and annoyance with the pilgrims that flock there. I don’t know what it is like to live in a beach town, and I suppose I’d be exhausted with the yearly mutli-bombardments of visitors, but the thread of racism or stereotyping that comes along with the hip-hop weekend bothered me. Now there’s the whole saying, “what came first, the chicken or the egg?”…which is to say, do the statistics about increased violence, skipped bills, and property damage during that weekend mean that a certain group of people are wholly to blame, or does the constant presence of police and the underlying racism of part of the Miami community set a tone of mistrust and disrespect that insights bad behavior? In the end, I think it may be the classic case of trying not to let a few bad apples spoil the barrel, and keeping it in mind when equally brandishing racial thoughts (downright ugly slurs) are flung from the windows of rental cars. Always being a visitor there myself, it’s hard convince some locals to be more tolerant. This whole festival phenomenon merits a sociological study.
Miami weekend was, in the end, great. No better way to kick off a late-blooming New England summer than with a trip to sunny hot and wild South Beach. Let’s see, to sum up…I ate a lot of good food, laughed at a lot of stupid jokes, soaked up enough sun in just a few hours to thoroughly singe my rack; talked about life and what the hell we’re doing with ours; played with a little hairy sausage…
…and re-frickin’-laxed.
May 27th, 2008
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