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Feature: Some brief and inconclusive reflections on essence: my hip hop week in London
Writer: Damian Platt
My hip hop week: Monday - poems, books, and theories. Thinking.
Bookslam is a spoken word event at Cherry Jam in West London. Hosted by Whitbread prize winning author Patrick Neate, it's
a night where people can enjoy a drink, listen to some music and hear live performances from poets. The sort of spoken
word nights I have been used to have always involved some MC dribbling on about nothing in particular. And so this wasn’t
like any sort of night I have ever been to before, and I will definitely try to make an appearance again. It is a
courageous thing to stand in front of an audience and bare some of you innermost thoughts. But Patrick Neate did this with
aplomb, reciting from memory a poem about the nature of love, which made his sister wriggle with embarrassment. So that
doesn't sound very street does it? So where does the hip hop connection be, G, I hear you ask?
Patrick Neate is also the author of a recent book about hip hop around the world called Where You're At - a journey around
the globe in investigation of how hip hop has been "appropriated and subsumed by both international capital and local
cultures to create a unique and fascinating form of globalism". The book is a fascinating ride indeed, and we share the
author's experiences and thoughts as he jets across the world from the USA to Japan through South Africa to Brazil. Five
chapters deal with five cities - New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. The journal begins in the
Big Apple where he has a frustrating time interviewing "underground" hip hop label honchos who inform him that the main
market for their records are European white folk, and makes some depressing observations about the enormous business
potential of dead rappers.
But eventually Neate catches up with the "essence" of hip hop at an event called The Real Live Show at
the Izzy bar in the Lower East Side, where MCs freestyle and battle over a live band. He says that he wishes that he could
package the experience up, take it home and show it to his mum so that she can understand what it he has been talking about
for so long. In Japan he comes across a culture where hip hop seems to be skin deep and superficial: "Hip hop in Japan
may have more to do with style than substance but there is a remarkable substance to the style". As one local hip hop head
puts it, "Japanese society doesn't like uniqueness". The chapters where the "essence" of hip hop seems strongest are the
Brazilian and South African legs of his trip - the 3rd world countries. In South Africa ghetto kids ape US acts and attempt
to rap their way out of violence, where in Rio hip hop provides the favela youth with a glimmer of hope.
Patrick Neate bites off a huge chunk with this book using the lens of hip hop to question notions of race, culture,
identity, nationhood, globalisation and "glocalisation". A large chunk, indeed, and sometimes during the reading I felt
like I was choking on academia. The problem is that there is just so much squeezed in that I felt that the hip hop suffers
as a result. It was a long time wading through social and racial history, hip hop factlists and cultural analysis before
he mentioned two of the fundamental elements that make hip hop so attractive to youth around the world. Participation and
belonging. Fun does not really get too much of a look in. Beefs aside, this is an impressive, thought provoking and
stimulating work, if perhaps a little over ambitious.
My hip hop week - Saturday: breakers, beatboxers, and crutches. Fun.
I had been to the Brixton Academy twice before in my life. The first time was 1987, when I went to see Big Daddy Kane, who bounded around the
stage in a pair of bloomers performing ridiculous choreographed dances with Scrap and Scoob Lover. The other time was in
1991 for a New Year's all-nighter involving the consumption of copious amounts of pink pills and listening to Jumping Jack
Frost (one of the few hardcore DJs that used to scratch, incidentally) and the Prodigy. So the same week that began at a
spoken word event hosted by a man who had just written a book about the state of hip hop in the world saw me the following
Saturday night at the 3rd UK B-Boy Championships at the Brixton Academy. I didn't know much about it in advance, other than
that it was a breakdance competition. But it turned out to be one of those evenings that turns out to be a real treat.
I was informed that the guy doing the announcements was someone called Crazy Legs. "You mean THE Crazy Legs?!?".
Yes, the original Rocksteady Crew, boogie down Bronx champion backspinner, thriller from Manila. And on crutches. There he
was hopping around, Fila jumpsuit ‘n’ all, telling the assembled battling breakers in a nasal phoney teacher falsetto
"No fighting! Just dancing!". This was funny. This was more than funny, this was brilliant, and the breakers shocked,
rocked, thrilled and amazed. Crazy Legs and Afrika Islam bounced around chucking "Free Shit" to the throngs of
b-boys-girls-and-toys. Crazy Legs made us all crack up, telling the crowd that they didn't look FRESH enough, a bit rich
coming from a hobbling guy wearing what looked like a jump suit from K-Mart. And then Killa Kela came on, and that was it,
because he was unreal. Beatbox? This was not Beatbox, this was the human
orchestra, the one that Biz Markie used to bang on about, and a homegrown talent to boot! Oh my days, he did beatbox,
broken beatbox, drum and bass box and everything else box. Damn.
Even though this was a PS2 event, there was a minimal
amount of corporate intervention. And as an event that in my mind was due to have been some sort of "You kids - check
out this spinning around", it actually turned out to be a brilliant display of hip hop at its best; pure creativity,
competitiveness, fun, and tough, tough breaks.
My hip hop week - Sunday: giants, cavasses, and Eric Clapton. Subversives on parade.
My hip hop week adventures drew to something of a surreal close on Sunday, when I chanced upon an occasion at a new gallery
round the corner from my house - the Eclectic Gallery, W11. I poked my head into a room that had Warp posters in the window, and some graffiti
canvasses caught my eye. Stepping inside I find myself in the company of some trendy looking fashion people and some
individuals who can only be described as Giants Of The Graffiti World. The canvasses are 3-D wildstyle ("wildstyle taken
one step further") by the original Dutch artist Delta. Looking on are the legendary Londoner-turned-Parisian Mode
2, Pride of the Trailblazers crew, and two of the most prolific London underground bombers of the Nineties, namely
Elk and Teach. What's going on? Apparently Warp is promoting some graffiti artists as part of a new clothing line. Or
something like that. However I'm not taking much in, I’m just agog at these Graffiti Giants hanging in West London on a
Sunday afternoon, a Sunday afternoon that follows a Saturday evening where I have watched breakdancing for hours and
listened to beatbox wizardry. My jaw hangs as I am informed that Eric Clapton has crammed his country mansion full of
graff canvasses, and that architectural plans for the first graffiti house have been drawn up.
Some observations
So what's it all about? I couldn't tell you. Just that in 2003 hip hop is still right there and everywhere, and that no
amount of sponsorship, corporate intervention, and cutural theorizing has managed to steal its soul, yet. Seeing a whole
load of graff artists in a gallery rubbing shoulders with sycophantic trendies, something I have always found a bit
distasteful (check the Art Gallery scene in Henry Chalfant's Style Wars) didn't matter. Because these are some of
the writers, in Europe anyway, that made graffiti what it is, and if someone needs to be "on it", then it’s them. If the
UK B-Boy Championships in 2003 are going to be sponsored by PS2, then who better to host it than Crazy Legs? Again, this
is the man. As long as these people continue to get their dues, and strive to pass on the spirit of hip hop as it always
has been, then there is hope. So where is hip hop at? Shit, it might just be around the corner from you. Now, might that be what they call
“glocalisation”?
And in case you think I've romanticised it all, here's beans for your head - a paragraph from the outro to Mr Neate's book:
"Hip hop negotiates 'experiences of marginalisation, brutally truncated opportunity and oppression'. That's its politics.
Hip hop is four, five or six key elements. That's its politics too. Hip hop means participation, it 'comes through you not
from you'. Participation is always political. Hip hop is a popular identity consumed by young people worldwide. In the era
of globalised super-brands, consumption is more political than ever. Hip hop could capitalise on its reputation. That
could be its politics. Hip hop should mean acting locally, connecting globally, thinking glocally. Surely that should be
its first political manifesto."
Phew.
Thanks to Rebecca P for the inspiration, and to the one like Elk for the information.
RELATED LINKS:
Patrick Neate
UK B-Boy Championships
2003
UK B-Boy Championships 2002 - Know The Ledge's review.
Killa Kela
Warp graff exhibition at the Eclectic Gallery
Mode in Belfast
Mode Gallery
Buy Patrick Neate's Where You're At book at Amazon
UK
PUBLISHED: Saturday 18 October 2003
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::: RELATED LINKS
Patrick Neate
UK B-Boy Championships
2003
UK B-Boy Championships 2002 - Know The Ledge's
review.
Killa Kela
Warp graff exhibition at the Eclectic Gallery
Mode in Belfast
Mode Gallery
Buy Patrick Neate's Where You're At book at Amazon
UK
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