Open Mics

Complex Magazine has compiled the 50 best hip hop radio freestyles.

While some might argue that radio is now a dying medium, it's undeniable that the AM/FM dial was the first outlet to bring hip-hop to the masses. Starting in the early 1980s, pioneering DJs like Mr. Magic, Red Alert, the Awesome Two, and Lady B gave a voiceless community the chance to be heard, and inspired future generations to pursue rapping as their full-time occupation.

Since that time, many legendary hip-hop radio shows have sprung up around the world, and during those late-night or early-morning time slots a new art form was born: the radio freestyle.

Many of hip-hop's greatest beefs were spawned live and direct over the airwaves. In the pre-MP3 era, cassette copies of these one-of-a-kind performances passed hand to hand, cementing reputations, and becoming the stuff of legend. Nowadays it's all done digitally, but the objective remains the same-total domination, no mistakes allowed.

Read more here.

I'm usually not a fan of these lists ranking artists or performances, but this one seems uniquely appropriate. During the years when I began to discover my place within hip hop culture, the music was moving through an period of creative and cultural uncertainty. We were a few years removed from the golden era, caught in the spectacle of East Coast vs. West Coast, and witnessing a surge of material emerging from southern artists like OutKast and Goodie Mob. As I explored hip hop more and more, these freestyle sessions served to maintain hip hop's artistic underpinnings; freestyles are the roots that fend off the erosion of rap music's relevance.

There are plenty of stand out performances on this list. However, for me the most impressive clip is #47, Q-Tip and Black Thought's "Dilla Dedication" freestyles. Perhaps it due to this month's featured emcee, but I was especially taken by this performance. Additionally, Black Thought freestyles are less frequent than you may think, so it's great to hear him rhyme in this forum. And on that day, Tariq went absolutely berserk!

peace.

'Fest and 'Ye Love the Kids

This looks promising.

I supposed it wouldn't be long before Kanye got himself involved in something like this, and from what I know of Rhymefest's sense of artistry and musical exploration, it doesn't surprise me he's ideas like this in his head.

We'll see how things turn out. But I know one thing. The theme music is gonna be hot!

Update:

Apparently, the pilot for Alligator Boots was to air on Comedy Central way back in 2008, but was never shown.

From Huff Post:

Dear Comedy Central: Why did you never air "Alligator Boots"?!

In this video discovered by The Vine, we take an extensive look behind the scenes at a 2008 pilot for "Alligator Boots," a sketch/puppet show pilot created by rapper Rhymefest in collaboration with Kanye West and Daniel Ellison of Jackhole Productions, who also produced "Crank Yankers."

The show had almost the exact same concept as "The Muppet Show" -- the puppets, which interact with live action celebrities, even were created by Jim Henson's Muppet Workshop -- but with a decidedly hip-hop flavor. For instance, Rhymefest describes a sketch in which a literal pig is touted as the next big thing in rap, but nobody notices that he's just a pig "except for smart people."

Read more here.

Well that just sucks. I was looking forward to this. I guess I should have known by the video. Kanye was in his "Cosby sweater" phase back then. I just figured he was being retro.

peace.

Watch The Throne: Not For Beginners

I was supposed to write this review two nights ago, but I had to decompress for a couple days after watching this. Go see it and you'll understand.

I've read comments and reviews from all over the map about this album. Some praise Jay and 'Ye's chemistry, some claim there is none. Half say Jay's lyrics were better, the other half claim Kanye got the nod. The Monday-morning quarterbacking goes on and on with no real consensus as to what we actually have on our hands here. After listening to this album for pretty much an entire week, all I have left to offer is one question and one observation. Let's take them in turn.

Question: What did you expect?

Did you expect Kanye's ear for production and composition to be anything less than stellar? If you did, then I'm very sorry to disappoint you. Because the production on this album is, quite simply, some of the best I've heard since OutKast released Stankonia. Given what I've been able to gather about their respective creatives processes, I have to assume Kanye took the reigns with most of the instrumental/accompaniment aspects of the project. And yes there was input from a laundry-list of great hip hop sound men like Q-Tip, Swizz Beats, The Neptunes, 88-Keys, RZA, and Pete Rock. But ultimately, the orchestration of this album's luscious and dense sonic landscapes feels much more like a continuation of Kanye's trajectory on "...Dark Fantasy" than Jay's on "Blueprint 3". There is a clear sense of experimentation on many of the tunes on the album, but that's to be expected. What's not experimental about two powerhouses of hip hop attempting to building cohesion from substantially dichotomous individual aesthetics?

Did you expect Jay not to rhyme about being rich? Did you expect 'Ye not to rhyme about being a genius? Have you been listening at all?

Jay's been rhyming about being rich since he was broke in 1995. The name of the record label he helped begin is called Roc-A-Fella Records. Like he said on "Jockin Jay-Z":

Haters like, "Hov, why you still talkin' money sh*t?"

'Cause I like money, b*tch!

And Kanye's had a high opinion of his brilliance since the beginning, even before his career firmly began. One of the emcees at the epicenter of Kanye's birth as a full-fledged artist is Talib Kweli. Last summer, Kweli was interviewed by hardknock.tv discussing the early stages of Kanye's thrust into hip hop stardom. Have a look here. This pretty much sums it up.

Having said that, the lyrical diversity on this album is much more than I expected. With tracks like "New Day", "Murder to Excellence", and "Made in America" Jay and 'Ye are exploring parts of their thoughts and experiences that could only be revealed with exceptional attention paid to their personal ethics and journeys through life. And it's not like these are throw away tracks. They embody all the energy, commitment, and engagement heard throughout the entire record.

'Ye is rhyming like the government is about to cut off his oxygen.

Jay is rhyming like he's speaking to the United Nations.

These cats are writing as boldly and aggressively as they ever have.

Did you expect a ton of guest artists? I know I did. I'm happy their were few, and employed for specific effect. Kudos to them for not going overboard here.

Did you expect this to instantly be a classic record? Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. I'm not quite sure yet. While I certainly believe ...Throne to be a wonderful work, I'm still having trouble putting all the pieces together. Right now the album feels to me like a collection of two or three brilliant individual projects, like Jay and 'Ye could have released three EPs over the course of a year rather than one LP all at once. And as I mentioned earlier, this is most certainly an experimental album. However, I will say this; I expect many great things to be born from their efforts; videos, tour dates, follow up albums. The more these two work, the more refined their focus. This is certainly a good beginning.

As for my observation...

I've been walking and riding around listening to this album for almost a week now. It's been a gorgeous summer in Philadelphia, beautiful people are jogging along the river, and the general feeling of August is quite palpable. However, as I've experienced this past week with ...Throne as my soundtrack, something simply didn't feel right.

At first I couldn't put my finger on it. I mean, beautiful summer weather and good hip hop music have always seemed to fit hand in hand. But somehow, this particular album struggled to fit the pace and rhythms of the season. It was as if I was driving on the interstate all alone in perfect comfort, but with some jackass riding in my blind spot. It must have taken me four days to figure it out, but I think I finally have a fix on it.

Summertime hip hop releases are usually reserved for the party rockin', licence plate-rattlin' mega-hit singles that pulsate through the community. Fat Joe had one with "Lean Back". Sean Paul sneaked up on us with "Gimme the Light". And do you remember Lumidee? I'll bet you don't. But do you remember this? I'll bet you do.

And that's just it. Summertime hip hop has always been pleasantly youthful and, honestly, a tad bit disposable. It's supposed to be. It's designed to expire in September, making room for the more controversial and introspective releases of the fall, winter, and spring. It's the parts of the year between summers where I feel classic albums best work their magic.

To illustrate this, I randomly picked 20 albums that have all been considered some of the best music to emerge from hip hop culture. Then I looked up the release date of each album, ignoring the year. I will list them all here.

The Fugees The Score - February 13

Boogie Down Productions Criminal Minded - March 3

The Notorious B.I.G. Life After Death - March 25

Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - April 14

Nas Illmatic - April 19

Ice Cube AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted - May 16

Pete Rock and CL Smooth Mecca and the Soul Brother - June 9

Jay-Z Reasonable Doubt - June 25

Eric B and Rakim Paid in Full - July 7

N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton - August 8

Lauryn Hill The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - August 25

Black Star Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star - August 26

The Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die - September 13

A Tribe Called Quest The Low End Theory - September 24

Common Resurrection - October 25

OutKast Stankonia - October 31

Wu-Tang Clan 36 Chambers (Enter the Wu-Tang) - November 9

Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill - November 15

Snoop Dogg Doggystyle - November 23

Dr. Dre The Chronic - December 15

Out of 20 albums, only four of them were truly released during the summer. I'm not counting Miseducation and ...Black Star due to being released so late into August. Those are really autumn albums; that's the season in which they made their greatest impact.

Of course, I felt as if this could have been a fluke. How could it be that so few of the albums hip hop considers timeless are released in the summer? Additionally, the number of summer albums on this list equals 20%. So am I just fooling myself because the year can be equally divided into four parts? Would the next count add up to 25% and debunk my finding? So I picked twenty more classic albums, but I won't bother posting the list because my findings were exactly the same. Four out of 20 were summer releases, with the other 16 heavily weighted in the late fall and early spring. And yes, they were random. You're just gonna have to trust me.

Why am I saying all of this? Well, I believe Jay and 'Ye could have done themselves a favor and waited to release this album later in the year, perhaps mid-November or so. It's just not a summer album. Their risks are too large, the orchestration too rich, and the lyrics are too well crafted for the simple-minded feeling of summer. Watch The Throne is not an album for beginners, dummies, or folks with no sense of humor. Textually and aurally, there's simply too much to digest while the sun's out. No one's really going to turn on their brains until kids go back to school and the first blast of Arctic air comes rolling in from our neighbors to the north. And I feel the disparity and conflict seen in the various responses and reviews reflects this. No one knows what to make of it because they're all just thinking about getting out to the beach (including me!).

Personally, I'm just going to put this one away for a while and come back to it after I bleed my radiator. It's too dope for me right now.

peace.

Jay and 'Ye Body Shop

I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't post this tonight.

I was going to do a quick thought on the imaginations of hip hop fans. But as soon as I saw this, I had to throw it up here.

My two favorite things about this video are 1) Jay and 'Ye seem to be having a ton 'o fun desecrating Mercedes' ultra-upscale, ultra-luxury Maybach sedan and 2) I can only imagine how the Germans must feel that two rappers absolutely defiled their stuffy, handmade, über-exclusive work of automotive art. I think it's fantastic.

I wonder what the starting bid on the Maybach's gonna be?

I'll be back tomorrow with my full Watch The Throne review.

peace.

Watch The Throne: Re-view Preview

I'll get you primed with this:

from The Huffington Post:

I'm absolutely not a music critic. Absolutely not. I'm a film person who loves music. I've directed four music docs, two about hip hop. Still I have no real appropriate skills for what I'm about to do, which is write about an album. With that said, I'm inspired by this beautiful thing entitled Watch the Throne and I must jot something down. However amateur.

It's past 1 a.m. and I've now listened to Watch the Throne four full times, with very necessary repeats of my new personal anthem "Murder to Excellence." Actually, "listened" might not be the right word. Bumped. Bumped is a word that'll be appreciated by patrons of the new Huffington Post Black Voices, right? We can speak freely here, right?

So if I submit that this thing -- Watch the Throne -- is a Black Nationalist Masterpiece for the New Millenium. Too Much? Because that's how I feel right now. That's what I hear. I hear Black Rich Militance, in the best definition of such a term. I hear the audacity of black gazillionaires saying wonderfully black things like, "I arrived/When Fred Hampton died." Whaa-at?! You did? Okay. Damn.

Catch the rest of the article here.

Without a doubt this is the most anticipated hip hop album of the year, and for good reason. Everyone has been wondering what Jay and 'Ye cooked up in their self-imposed recording exile. Many reports put them in Hawaii and Australia for large chunks of the recording process, cutting themselves off from much of the world. That level of obsessive dedication to secrecy and isolation always leads to intrigue and speculation, especially with artists at this level of visibility.

One thing I can give you for certain: I think they should have waited until the fall to release this record. It simply doesn't work as a summertime album for me.

But I will expand on that in the full review later in the week.

peace.

Emcee of the Month: Joell Ortiz

So I'm here at Mariana's crib in Brooklyn and the party's been over for about an hour now. And as I'm doing a quick glance through the youtubes(!) for Joell Ortiz material, I came upon this.

Man, this cat is the realest.

The somber and unapologetic reality of this track is one of the most unique and invaluable aspects of hip hop music. This music has always been about voicing the stories of the less fortunate and down-trodden; perhaps more so than any other musical form in history. Joell's commitment to exposing the immediacy of addiction is both refreshing and disturbing, especially considering the relative complacency of more popular hip hop artists when tackling these matters. His choice to use the instrumental from Kanye West's "Devil in a New Dress" is especially fitting for the subject as it undulates underneath the verse with soaring melancholy.

Joell can't be judged by his freestyles. He's actually way doper than that. This track is a real gem.

peace.

Who You Callin' Hip Hop?

Last night as I was looking through tracks for Mariana's album, I came upon this KRS-One interview from outside the VH1 Hip Hop Honors. Check out what he says about Kanye's Graduation album from around 1:36 to 2:15.

You know, this is such a fine line. On the one hand, Kris has been rhyming since before I was born. His world view is acutely viewed through the lens of hip hop culture, perhaps with more purity and vigilance than anyone else. In many ways, he has acquired the privilege to profess the values, beliefs, and thoughts of the entire community.

But in many ways, he hasn't.

Even with as influential KRS has been in solidifying hip hop's foundations, he cannot determine the definition of hip hop for an entire community. No one can. That responsibility is solely the duty of the collective and not a select few individuals, no matter their importance. So when Kris says, "We don't wear white shades around here," my first response is, "Who's included in 'we'?"

In 1998 Lauryn Hill won five Grammy Awards for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, including the top prize of Album of the Year. In her acceptance speech, Lauryn said, "This is crazy, because this is hip hop music." (I found it here!!!) And even though more than half her album was sung, she is absolutely right. That's the lens through which she views her world.

Six years later in the same category there were two hip hop albums nominated, Missy Elliot's Under Construction and OutKast's Speakerboxx/The Love Below. OutKast won the Grammy that year, with Dre's half of the project consisting of 95% singing, narration, and other types of musical explorations. In over two hours of music he only kicked two actual hip hop verses. But if I go to the record store to buy Speakerboxx/The Love Below, it's in the hip hop section. And that's right, because that's the lens through which they view their world.

So back to Kanye. If there could be any question of Kanye not having done a hip hop album it would most likely involve 808s and Heartbreaks, which was released in 2008. Kanye's almost exclusive use of the Roland TR-808 drum machine and Auto-Tune voice processing evolved into a minimalist and introspective journey of love, loneliness, and heartache. The sound was very electronica-inspired, Kanye sung on every track, and there was only one actual rap verse on the entire album (see "Amazing" feat Young Jeezy). Yet, even though this album is probably considered more of a crossover effort by most critics, at its core the heart of hip hop music still pulses. It won't be found in the "Pop" section of the Virgin Megastore. Kanye is hip hop through and through, and ultimately that's the lens through which he views his world. I think My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has served to solidify this.

So, I humbly disagree with KRS-One. His opinion of what's hip hop is not a deciding factor. It's only his opinion, albeit an experienced and educated one. Nevertheless, the forces of hip hop are much, much greater than that.

"Hip hop started out in the heart." Lauryn Hill

"I met a critic. I made her shit her drawers/

She said she thought hip hop was only guns and alcohol/

I said, 'Oh, hell naw! But yet it's that too.'" Dre

"What the hell do I know/

I'm just a Chi-town nigga wit' a Nas flow." Kanye West

I think if KRS would have used "I" instead of "we", I wouldn't have had anything to write about tonight. Thanks Kris!

peace.

The First Hip Hop?

A few nights ago I stumbled upon this.

These cats were named The Jubalaires. They were a gospel group active during the '40s and '50s. You can look up some their information here.

Who knows the first instance of someone performing in a way we recognize as rapping. It was probably way before we had the ability to record it. However, I'm still fascinated by the similarity between what these cats were doing and the way hip hop is performed today. Concepts of syncopation, meter, addition and subtraction of syllables are all very much on display in this video. In fact, other than the subject matter, this sense of hip hop performance communicates an almost identical feel to early hip hop artists like Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Kurtis Blow.

All we need now is Kanye to sample it. I mean, he did do "Jesus Walks."

peace.

Hey Kanye! Guinness Says You're a Punk!

Yo, Kanye. You think you could chime in on this one? You know, give us one of your Hurricane Katrina telethon moments?

Currently, the world's oldest "verified" living person is a lady named Besse Cooper who lives in Monroe, Georgia. She was born on August 26, 1896 and is 114 years old.

Mrs. Cooper is recognized as such because she's able to provide a birth certificate, among other required material, to qualify as the oldest living person in the world.

However, Mrs. Rebecca Lanier was born black in Mississippi 119 years ago, during a time when black people weren't provided birth certificates. Remember, 1892 is only 27 years after the end of the American Civil War. So laws and practices designed to oppress and control black people were very much in supply.

So here's what we have; a woman who has lived through three centuries and witnessed virtually every great event of the 1900s, but can't be officially recognized for her experience due to a political technicality that has been universally admonished by the global community.

Hey Guinness. Mitigating circumstances much?

Here's a text version of the story just to be thorough.

peace.

Do the Bus a Bus

I was too young and too busy tinkering with my bicycle to notice when Leaders of the New School practically broke up on camera during an episode of "Yo! MTV Raps" in 1993. But I wasn't too young to be completely spellbound and ignited with primal exuberance when I first heard "Woo Hah! Got You All in Check" on the radio in 1996. Everyone I knew was going out of their minds over this track! I don't think hip hoppers had shouted and jumped around that much since 3rd Base dropped "The Gas Face". It wasn't long after that when Busta Rhymes solidified his place in my top 10 favorite emcees.

Busta is one of the most unapologetic, relentless, aggressive, amplified, and explosive voices in hip hop. His characteristic vocal abrasion matched with his ability to rattle off lines like a roofer with a nail gun allows him to rhyme with a cannonball-like impact. He purposely throws the listener of balance; it's not supposed to be comfortable listening to him rap. It's supposed to incite a riot.

Over the years, Busta Rhymes has found more range and variety in his performance. He discovered a sense of delicacy and sophistication with his collaboration with Janet Jackson on "What's It Gonna Be?!" in 1998. On the 1997 single "Dangerous" he explored some of his more playful impulses. But throughout all of his work his edge has remains, which will always be the most enduring and dynamic element of his music.

Here's a clip of Busta's recent collaboration with Kanye West and Jay-Z called "H.A.M."

peace.

Drivin' 'Round the City at Night Music

Last night I was on my way home from work and thumbed my way to 808s and Heartbreak on my iPod. For the uninitiated, 808s and Heartbreak is the fourth studio album by Kanye West. Released in 2008, its prominent musical element was Kanye's extensive use of Auto-Tune added to a minimalist production style centered around the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

Skipping through the playlist, I landed on the eighth track on the album called "Street Lights". And as I listened, it was almost as if the song became the soundtrack of my ride home. The lyrics, the production, the atmosphere, everything about the song seemed specifically arranged for a midnight ride through the cold and quiet Philadelphia streets. It was so perfect in fact, that I set my iPod to single-song repeat and took the long(er) way home. I almost didn't want it to end.

This got me thinking. What makes a song good for riding through the city at night?

So I went through my catalog on iTunes and made a playlist with every song I could remember playing in my car to enhance my nighttime excursions. Here's what I came up with. I'm sure I'm missing something, so don't scold me:

Kanye West - Street Lights

Digable Planets - Pacifics

k-os - Heaven Only Knows

Mariah Carey - Fourth Of July

Common - A Filim Called (Pimp)

Lauryn Hill - Tell Him

Ladysmith Black Mambazo - Iyahlonipha Lengane

Lee Moses - California Dreaming

Gnarls Barkley - Who's Gonna Save My Soul

Little Brother - Nighttime Maneuvers

Outkast - Slum Beautiful

Common - The Game

Cee-Lo - Bass Head Jazz

Sade - Love is Stronger Than Pride

Buckshot LeFonque - Phoenix

Amel Larrieux - Infinite Possibilities

Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight

Daft Punk - Something About Us

Jeff Buckley - Lover, You Should've Come Over

Erykah Badu - Drama

Mos Def - Sex, Love And Money

Jamiroquai - Didjital Vibrations

Black Star - Respiration

There are a few common themes that I imagined would be prevalent; references to the night, dreams, the passage of time, and emerging or fading lights are abundant. There is also a general sense of introspection and reflecting upon past times or encounters. However, there were some aspects of the list that varied greatly. Tracks like Sade's "Love is Stronger Than Pride" and the aforementioned "Street Lights" by Kanye West feel very vaporous, very ethereal. Others, such as Cee-lo's "Bass Head Jazz" or Lee Moses' "California Dreaming" seem to carry considerably more weight and, at least to me, feel very dense and viscous. There's also quite a range of tempos here, from the soulful jazz ballad "Phoenix" by Buckshot LeFonque to the dark and penetrating Common cut "The Game".

So I offer these to you. If you get a chance, give them a try on your next evening automotive venture. What songs work best at stoplights? On highways and interstates? Surface streets? Do some feel better under a starry night? How about in rain? Or even snow? You may have limitless discoveries, or you may not dig any of them at all. Either way, it's all good! If you have some others you've found inspire you, feel free to share them in the comments of this post. I'm all about new music!

peace.

Emcee of the Month: Asher Roth

I was bouncing around youtube tonight looking for some performance footage of Asher Roth and happened upon this video of Ash doing a cover of "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas for BBC Radio 1. It's good. Ash and his crew, The Roth Boys (hmmm...), seem to be having a good time and making things fun for the listeners.

But more than that, Asher has allowed someone to record him and his crew doing a cover of another hip hop song. That got me thinking. I've seen artists like The Roots, Common, and Talib Kweli do bits of other artists' tracks in their live performances, but rarely do I see those bits recorded. Why is that? Why is it hip hop artists don't do recorded covers? I mean, there's this video, the In Tha Beginning...There Was Rap compilation album, Snoop's "Paper'd Up" (which was Eric B and Rakim's "Paid in Full"), and that's about all I can think of.

Perhaps it's due to the fear in the hip hop community of being criticized for borrowing and re-imagining a new idea, which is ironic because that's what hip hop beat makers have been doing since around 1974.

Or maybe it's simply a case of hip hop not having enough historical source material from which to sufficiently revisit an idea. But honestly, that would be a really lame excuse. There are dozens of memorable artists and memorable tracks from hip hop's past that I would love to hear rediscovered and reworked. Imagine OutKast doing their take on "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" or Kanye West taking on a new "Planet Rock" project. How incredible would that be?

Best of all, projects like these would allow younger generations in the culture to continually be exposed to hip hop history in way that's more digestible. They won't feel they're being scolded for "not knowing their roots". They would have the opportunity to enjoy these songs with the same sense of discovery and excitement as those who were so fortunate to experience them at their inception.

I vote more covers in hip hop!

peace.

A Journey to the Broken Angel

As it progresses, any developing cultural or social movement invariably discovers its own identity through a variety of unique and distinguishing characteristics. Most of these developments include inventions and evolutions in apparel and fashion, language and lexicon, dietary patterns, musical styles, and so on. For me however, the most enduring, most compelling, and most tangible cultural symbols involve the landmarks and locations of pivotal and momentous events in a culture’s history.

There's nothing like being there; and it's just that. Being. There.

If you're a rock n' roll junkie, then it's The Dakota or the Riot House. If it's jazz that turns you on, there's nothing like the Cotton Club. For the gearheads of the world, the Bonneville Salt Flats or the Nürburgring is your Mecca. And political aficionados should never turn down a trip to The Watergate Hotel or Dealey Plaza. It's about seeing, touching, feeling it for ourselves or else it will only exist in theory.

Hip hop culture has a few of these places as well, like D&D Studios (although you ain't NEVER gettin' in there) or Rucker Park. And a few months ago I took the chance to visit what I feel is arguably the newest on the list of hip hop cultural landmarks, The Broken Angel.

It is one erie place.

The Broken Angel was the home of Cynthia and Arthur Wood from 1972 through 2006. It's located at the intersection of Downing Street and Quincy Street in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. Its legacy in hip hop history was cemented in 2004 when it became the backdrop of a concert/block party that was organized and hosted by Dave Chappelle, and documented by Michel Gondry in the 2006 film Dave Chappelle's Block Party. In the film, Cynthia and Arthur invite Dave and his camera crew into their home to show them the inner workings of the building. It's one of the most entertaining parts of the film as we witness the couple's compassionate, albeit slightly eccentric, quality and demeanor. Towards the end of the film, there's even a shot of Cynthia in the window of the Broken Angel waving a peace sign to the crowd, which I've always felt was one of the indelible images of solidarity in the movie.

So I'll leave it to you to look up more on Cynthia, Arthur, and the Broken Angel. This is the story of how I got there.

Mariana had to leave. The needle on her record player had broken and we needed to head over to J&R Audio by the WTC because that was the only place she thought we could pick up a new one. So by the time I reached her brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant she was perched on the stoop, demanding me to hurry my a$$ up because the bank was about to close. So I shuffled into her place to set down my bag, she locked the door, and we hustled our way to Fulton Street.

After handling her business at the bank and "politely" assisting a young lady find her destination on Fulton St., we got on the C train to Manhattan. We got off at Chambers Street a few blocks north of Ground Zero and made our way down to J&R, which is situated at what's essentially Park Row and Broadway.

Everything is huge in New York, including this audio store. It took us two or three tries to enter the correct section of the building, and even then we really didn't find it without help. And one would think an audio store in New York would and SHOULD have everything under the sun, but alas Mariana's needle was not in stock. So dejectedly, we exited the store and decided it was time to eat.

Now, Mari had a pregnant-woman's craving for cheese fries right about now, even though she hasn't had a boyfriend in a while. However, I would assume this is purely by choice because a woman as beautiful as Mariana can be in a relationship almost anytime she wants. I can only deduce all the men she's encountered recently have been woefully sub-par. C'mon NY...

She suggested we head to Madison Square Park to get burgers and cheese fries at a well-known spot called The Shake Shack. While standing in the quarter-mile long line (it moved fairly quickly, so don't be discouraged) we continued our usual discussions on all things hip hop. We're both huge fans of artists like The Roots, Black Star, Common, J Dilla, and Kanye West. And as we sat to enjoy our slightly overpriced but incredibly delicious burgers, our conversation shifted to Block Party. As is the nature of these exchanges, one thing led to another and we mutually agreed to seek out the location of this magnificent day in hip hop history. We finished our food, scared off the giant attack squirrels, and hopped back onto the subway.

We got off at the N/Q/R stop at DeKalb Avenue and opted to take the bus down Fulton towards Downing Street. It seemed we were on the bus for an unreasonably long time and we worried that we had missed our stop. So we got off somewhere between St. James Place and Grand Avenue to hoof it from there. We approached a huge laundromat with some cool-a$$ middle-aged cats hangin' outside and asked them if they knew the way to Downing Street. Personally, I was hoping we didn't get the same "politeness" that Mari had offered the young lady from earlier in the day. But they were truly friendly and pointed us in the right direction. We got to the block about 10 minutes later.

There are very few places in New York as quiet as the corner of Quincy and Downing in Brooklyn. It's one of those spots that seems to exist solely on its own; as if arriving there means departing the rest of the city. We walked up to the impressive red door of the Broken Angel, with the name of the building and the address adorning it in a grayish-white hue. There was very little traffic. I don't think we saw one car round the corner the whole time we were there. We read the sign on the bulletin board just to the right of the Angel's door and discovered Cynthia Wood had unfortunately passed away due to complications with cancer. We stood by the daycare center where Dave and the others had visited, using the roof as an observation area. We took turns imagining the stage and quoting unforgettable lines and verses from the documentary. We made sure to take some time making fun of Common's role in the show, because we've always been puzzled as to why he seemed only to serve as everybody's hype man. Weird...

I've often wondered if the people that live on that block are getting tired of folks showing up and doing that type of stuff. But in the moment, we didn't care about any of that. We were just a little late to the party, that's all. We wanted to have our fun, too.

We left just before the streetlights starting coming on and walked the almost-two miles back to Mari's apartment in Bed-Sty. We were glowing. We touched the history of our own culture, and it was a really good feeling. Somehow, we felt more firmly connected to the inspirations that have been fueling our lives for quite some time now. When we got back, we threw in Block Party and watched a bit of the concert footage. I suppose it was our way of "double-checking."

But really, there wasn't any need. We knew what it looked like.

Due to the fading light, these were the only pictures that were decent. We took these with Mari's iPhone.

peace.