The Soul of San Francisco
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January 2006
Rap is something you do
Hip-hop is something you live
---KRS-ONE, ?Get Yourself Up?, Hot 12?
Rap and hip-hop is over twenty-years old. It is legal and able to go the clubs and groove with the old folks. No longer the ing?nue with the chip on her shoulder, rap is now the old lady in the club with a tumbler of gin and tonic and too much jewelry. When Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five?s ?White Lines? comes on, she stands up with both hands in the air (tumbler in one) and hollers, ?That?s my song!? This is rap, the birth mother of hip-hop. Rap has nurtured me and grown with me ?the sibling I never had.
I won?t start this story with ??when I was kid?, but when I was a kid, I was introduced to rap in the 6th grade. I remember taking trips to Lake Tahoe with cousins, my mother, aunties and uncles. The cousins packed six deep into an orange Gremlin or green Pinto (unbelted and sitting in the back). To pass away the hours to Tahoe, we would try to remember every line to the Sugar Hill Gang?s ?Rapper?s Delight? Inevitably flubbing Master Gee?s part, I would be glared at and reduced to popping my fingers and mumbling the sound of the words ?like in church when I didn?t know the hymn. Back on the block, my cousins, school friends and I would play our records on our portable record players, and make up dance steps to rap songs like ?It?s Nasty (Genius of Love)? (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five), ?The Breaks? (Kurtis Blow), ?Wordy Rappinghood? (The Tom-Tom Club) and ?Numbers? (Kraftwerk). As a third generation San Franciscan, I was lucky enough to be exposed to all rap and all kinds of musicians that were brave enough to dabble in rap and rap beats and breaks. Everything from German electronica, New York rap, New Wave, punk and disco filled our household. Then the movie Breakin? happened. I was hooked.
I was already familiar with popping & locking breaking, and strutting (or Struttin?) ?which was more popular in San Francisco than the other two. It took Breakin? to truly get me hooked. I was already a weird child who loved musicals like Guys and Dolls and West Side Story, so when Breakin? incorporated a storyline, music and the forbidden club scene, that was all I needed. Two stars from the movie, Boogaloo Shrimp (Michael Chambers)and Shabba Doo (Anthony Qui?ones), stopped by Kezar Stadium in San Francisco for a promotional tour for the movie. Home Turf creator and host Dominique DiPrima introduced them and the basketball gym filled with high school and junior high students went mad.
Northern California was never the home of the body slamming acrobatics of east coast break dancing. (We were a bunch of poppers and lockers and strutters, and if you doubt it, just throw on ?Planet Rock? by Afrika Bambaataa or ?I?m Ready? by Kano. So when Shabba Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp brought ?it? to us ?and they had an entourage of breakers ? we were mesmerized. Even my mother (yes, I was escorted to this event) got into it. A modern dancer by profession, even my mother saw the mastery and magic of rap in its ?purest? form.
I loved the drama of rap, but I still wasn?t totally hooked. It was going to take something stronger than Rerun to pull me away from The Clash (Combat Rock), Prince (Dirty Mind), The Talking Heads and the Jacksons. Enter Run-DMC?s Raising Hell and the Beastie Boys License to Ill. I?d never heard so much bass in my life. This was ?it??really! I officially turned in my Flock of Seagulls bangs, fingerless lace gloves, duster, Bass Weejun penny loafers and mix-matched earrings. Leather showed up in my wardrobe, along with the colors red and black. Leather kufi hats from Crimes of Fashion on Haight Street ruled my world, and fake Nefertiti doorknocker earrings from the Pretty Things boutique on Fillmore at Haight Street.
Already a believer in the power of Run-DMC from their previous albums Run-DMC and the King of Rock all I needed was a slight push and I belonged to the throngs of rap addicts ?bi-level cut, bamboo earrings, and all. Boots were now a part of my domain, along with the b-girl and b-boy culture. High rollers were more attractive to me than the Sperry Topsider crowd that predominated my college preparatory school. Still a confirmed dork, I at least had enough street-cred to roll with the gangsters, but enough sense to leave party before somebody got cut. I was officially the shit. Rap was talking about my neighborhood, my friends, and even some of my family members. I was the usual bi-cultural freak of the ?hood: able to straddle the preppy, upper-middle class crowd of my exclusive college preparatory high school, with the ability to recite ?The King of Rock? by Run-DMC at any moment. Rap gave a voice to everything I was feeling, but no one in my generation was articulating.
Drenched in the excessive materialism of the Reagan-era ?80?s, everyone was about ?getting theirs?. No one ?at least on the west coast?wanted to talk about politics in the Black community, drive-bys, teen pregnancy, drug addiction, poverty or AIDS. Girls just wanted to have fun! What?s a vegemite sandwich? Let?s do the safety dance! We were in our own world in San Francisco.
It took Eric B. and Rakim, Run-DMC, Ice-T and Roxanne Shante to ?handle up? on the relevant issues. While I vibed on Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys, along came Public Enemy and Salt n? Pepa ! Revolution entered the mix. Black nationalism, self-determination, equal opportunity, consciousness and feminism and life shined through. I knew these rappers had to be good if the only place I could buy them was at an upstairs dj record store on Market and 14th Streets in San Francisco, or at T-Wauzi?s on Haight Street. ?My Uzi Weighs a Ton? (Public Enemy), ?Public Enemy #1? (Public Enemy), ?Showstopper? (Salt n? Pepa), and ?Push It? (Salt n? Pepa), mingled with ?Paul Revere? (The Beastie Boys), ?Little Red Corvette? (Prince), ?Din Da Da? (George Kranz), ?Slippery People? (The Talking Heads), ?Ant Music? (Adam and the Ants) and ?Generals and Majors? (XTC). With few places to hang out (I was under 21), one of the original hip-hop clubs was an underground disco in San Francisco?s seedy Broadway area ?a jewel in the porn industry?s crown. The Palladium brought 2 Live Crew Videos and beats to club goers who could dance until 6 a.m. ?which we did. My entry into the real hip-hop world was through djs and my eclectic list of friends and relatives who always seemed to date the latest and greatest in djs and neighborhood superstars!
With hip-hop deeply rooted in my life, it wasn?t until college when I truly saw a movement happening. It seemed as if hip-hop spurred a new student movement on campuses on the west coast. Political movements among African and African American students melted seamlessly with hip-hop. Rappers supported demonstrations, and demonstrators supported rap. The consciousness movement was rampant at San Francisco State University, and throughout other campuses in the Bay Area. Arguably, SFSU pushed the most radical movements and individuals because of its political history. The African American students at San Francisco State University were some of the fiercest organizers and thinkers of the movement ?men and women. San Francisco State University started the first Black Studies program in the world .
When I entered SFSU life, there was already a rich history of student demonstrations and organizing. Pan-Africanism was building up steam, and hip-hop reflected the new consciousness. Pride in being an ?African? ?no matter where you came from?was strong. Student publications, such as the San Francisco State University Black Studies department?s The Journal of African/Black Writing (Fall 1989) and The Black Studies Journal (Fall 1989), featured the growing, blurring lines between rap and politics. The Black Studies Journal featured my essay ?The African Three Step Method of Protest: Examples from South Africa to the United States? where I extensively quoted rappers Public Enemy alongside Malcolm X, a trend that was picked up across the country. (In 1988 and 1989, no one was quoting rappers in academic journals.) Being swept up in the burgeoning African consciousness movement, I felt there was no reason why rap shouldn?t be included in the political voices of African Americans. More students were listening to rap than to Jesse Jackson ?not that there?s anything wrong with that.
Many of my peers did not feel the same. The pseudo-intellectualism of some of the so-called pan-African students was nauseating and elitist. Rap was not viewed as a ?valid? and many of the students were still swimming in the rhetoric of the sixties, while ignoring many of the emerging Black leaders.
As I developed my career in writing I realized that the consciousness of rap was falling by the wayside. On the west coast, hardcore rap reigned supreme and consciousness was subjective, based on whatever clique you chose to hang with. After standing knee deep in the San Francisco music scene, I noticed that most of us (San Franciscans) were avoided like the plague at most east bay parties (other than Berkeley, California). Our hip-hop was avoided by most of the college media. We were not ?down? enough was the rationale. I guess we weren?t bustin? enough caps in each other?s asses in San Francisco. San Francisco hip-hop was viewed as ?soft? and ?multi-culti? with no real blackness to it. Artists like the Mo?Fessionals, Midnight Voices, Paris, Afrikan Identity, and others, were downgraded because they appeared at underground clubs that usually welcomed any artist who had a mic and music.
Clubs that fostered underground rap were places like the original Upper Room on Rose Street, Nikki?s Barbecue, the Justice League, the Sugar Shack, DV8, and others. The audiences at these shows were often reflective of San Francisco?s general population: diverse, though not overwhelming Black (in number) and unapologetically informal. However, many of these groups (regardless of the audience) had some powerful artists who have endured and are now some of the leading performance artists in the Bay Area, let alone the United States: Will Power of Midnight Voices, the Braids (former backup singers for the Mo?Fessionals), Paris, et al., were based in San Francisco, California. And regardless of their city of birth, some rap artists ?as well as east bay artists?went to San Francisco State University: ?Boots? Riley (The Coup), Will Power (Midnight Voices), Mad Mike (dj for Paris), et al. During this period San Francisco State University was actually brimming with movements, student organizing and some of the leading activists and educators in the Black consciousness movement. Former Black Panther and activist Dr. Angela Yvonne Davis was teaching on campus, as was Dr. Wade Noble, and feminist and Black activist Chinosole, and nationally recognized Dr. Mary R. Hoover (one of the leading proponents of ?Ebonics? ?the real study of Africanized English, not the debacle created by misinformed national leaders).
The downside to all this activism was the introduction of a bevy of unscrupulous characters who did their part to help destroy ?or at least slow down?the consciousness movement on campus. Students were spied on, lied about, undermined and sabotaged. The movement was seriously impeded. Everyone looked over their shoulder and new faces were scanned suspiciously by paranoid eyes. Camps set up and every friendship was suspect. The party was officially over, or at the least, relocated.
Another aspect of the growth of hip-hop in San Francisco was the Gavin Convention, an event that brings together radio programmers, music artists and the recording industry. Held in San Francisco in 1992, ?the Gavin? opened the city up to a wider variety of acts and rap artists. Though the Gavin was a showcase of music talent, the Bay Area could also brag of having some of the best underground radio stations that played rap. Everyone listened to college radio station KALX, especially to the east bay?s Sadiki and Tamu on Saturday mornings. In the city it was nonprofit, Black-owned radio station KPOO, located on Divisadero Street. KPOO play uncut rap ?the only way to listen to it! It was an exciting time for me and rap seemed to parallel my own growth process. I never got that feeling from the Thompson Twins, nasty-assed Prince, or Sade.
To further suppress the growing rap movement, the housing and ?dot-com? boom came to town. San Francisco?s rents rose exponentially, forcing out a large part of the working Black population of renters, especially families. My mother and I went through our own housing crunch! Just a year short of graduation, the housing boom hit Haight Street. Having been in the lower-Haight since I was nine years old, the area was a strong force in my development as a young adult. My childhood friends and family also grew up in the Western Addition. How could we no longer be welcomed? It was obvious that the lower-Haight was getting just a little too lucrative to be overlooked by the Internet crowd who needed a place to stay. Living with my mother in a modest two-bedroom flat that looked a whole lot like the flats my friends were living in with their mother?s, our time was slowly ticking down to eviction.
My mother was paying a little over $600 to live in a 2-bedroom Victorian flat on Haight Street in a high crime, working class, junkie/wino filled, predominantly African American neighborhood. $600 was the going rate until 1990-1993. First came the punk/new wave clubs, but we were used to them! We were only blocks from the Haight Ashbury district, and the MUNI bus lines were a common meeting ground for African Americans, punks, Asians, Latinos, new wavers, mods, ex-hippies, and Black white kids. But there was something a little different with this new group of young, fringe white kids. They turned their noses up at the local bars: Jimmie?s West Point, Tropical Haight and the Peacock Lounge. They snubbed the mainstay funky boutiques like Vickie?s Boutique, Pretty Things and Crimes of Fashion, in lieu of their own shops like Used Rubber. They rolled their eyes at neighborhood cafes and restaurants like Eddie?s Diner on Haight and Steiner, and Two Jack?s Fish, and they lined up for so-so food they could palate at new places like Spaghetti Western and the International Caf?. The new groups? taste didn?t cater to the neighborhood?s original tastes.
The new record stores avoided rap and R&B like the plague (pushing out T-Wauzi?s and transitioning into niche markets like Zebra Records ?a ?rap friendly?, dj-centered record store that was more oriented to college tastes than neighborhood tastes). With the new batch of upwardly mobile fringe groups and dot-commers, the original Haight was just a little too Road Warrior, so they decided to make it comfortable?for them. The neighborhood seemingly changed over night. There was less rap heard on the street, and the flea-infested head bangers down the block would put their speakers up to the windows and blast whatever they felt ?which was never rap or R&B. Yes sirree, there was a new sheriff in town.
Our landlady and her relatives pulled out every law they could think of to have us pushed out. Why should she continue to collect only $600 a month, when some tight-assed dot-commer from the mid-west would pay twice that much just to avoid having to travel six extra miles to work. The landlady renovated our flat (not for us), relocated us, and then brought us back in with the notice that we had only three months before we had to leave. The building had been sold to the landlady?s granddaughter ?who was now an owner-occupied landlady?and who raised the rent from $600 to $1,500 a month, a price they knew a student and single working mother could not afford. Harangued, embattled and undermined, my mother and I left San Francisco with a bad taste in our mouth ?like many Black residents during that time. It seemed as if rap was paralleling my community?s experience.
Like the city of my birth and residence, rap was growing wayward, seduced by the glitz and glam of what it could be; slowly turning into hip-hop ?an empty consumer-driven maze of vacuous rhymes and purposeless vision. Like San Francisco, I still love rap in its purest form. But I can?t handle the auctioning off of rap ?which is how I felt when I left San Francisco. Like the bad road rap was going down, I felt I had been sold out to the highest bidder. Also like rap music, I can still see the beauty, honesty and purity of what it means to be a true San Franciscan, and I remember every sparkling moment of what was and what can still be?
