meanwhile, over at riffs & revolutions

http://blogs.uptownlife.net/michaelagonzales

Memories of '88

This afternoon on WFMU, I will join dj Billy Jam to celebrate and discuss the year 1988. A few of our guests will include film producer Lisa Cortes (who I first met in ’88), novelist Todd Craig (tor’cha”), bloggers Invisible-cinema.blogspot.com and Steve Flemming from Auralexamination.wordpress.com, authors Marcus Reeves (Somebody Scream) and Donnell Alexander (Rollin’ With Dre), journalist Serena Kim, writer Chris Chambers, singer Maiysha (whose debut disc This Much is True is doper than dynamite) and my man fifty-grand Bill Adler.

Please join us at: http://www.wfmu.org

***

Besides being a landmark year for emerging new jack swingers and soon to be classic hip-hop acts like the underrated Stetasonic, newcomers EPMD, Long Island sound warriors Public Enemy and Brit-voiced rapper Slick Rick, what made the year complete for me was the release of Living Colour’s stunning debut Vivid.

Though I can barely comprehend what the rest of Planet Pop must had thought about a black rock band blaring electric mojo, sporting Mohawks and questioning the status quo, I was more than ready to embrace the feedback.

Indeed, having grown-up playing a mean air guitar as Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and other (white) guitar gods, hearing Vernon Reid create beauty and chaos on his ax was amazing.

As a wild sonic child in the city, I had gone to countless Living Colour performances, but being able to blare in my bedroom favorite bangers like “Funny Vibe,” which featured guest appearances from Chuck D. and Flav, “Cult of Personality,” “Middle Man” and “Glamour Boys” was a treat.

Though my Initia thought they were corny, that didn’t stop her from standing by her man at every venue where I had gone to see the group at CBGB’s, the Kitchen and various other grimy joints. Still, though I followed them around as though they were my version of the Grateful Dead, it still shocked me when these NYC super freaks signed with Epic Records in ’87; hell, not only did Living Colour get a contract, but they were also label-mates with Michael Jackson and Luther Vandross.

Yet, while Vernon Reid was hotter than July with his Keith Haring designed Stratocaster, it was also the wonderful voice of singer Cory Glover that took listeners church and the mosh pit simultaneously. Standing at the tip of the stage, Cory was a powerhouse vocalist who could command attention of the audience even at his most gentle.

Perhaps because interviewing Living Colour was one of my first professional gigs or the fact that these cats rocked the foundations of Black music, but twenty years later a brother is still nodding his head to the roar of Reid, Glover and the talents that constructed such a monumental sound.

Still Notorious

Friday night I went to see the thrilling Jay-Z show at Madison Square Garden. Sitting next to writer/commentator Michael Eric Dyson, he tapped me on the shoulder and asked, "If Biggie had lived, do you think Jay would be the number one answer."

Though I was unable to answer that question, I will say that Biggie was always my favorite, with Jay coming in a close second. Indeed, since I had Biggie on the brain, I thought I'd reprint one of my favorite essays about the man we called Big Poppa...

***

"Life can change in the instant," essayist Joan Didion declared in a recent New York Times article, and nobody understands these words better than a die-hard hip-hop fan. Indeed, in the ever-expanding universe of rap, one blink of the eye and the entire landscape can be different. From street styles to microphone flows to the rappers themselves, nothing lasts forever.

Still, in the case of the Brooklyn boy whose mama named him Christopher, and the rest of the world simply called Biggie, the final change came much too soon. Like the proverbial "gun shot heard around the world", the fatal bullet that killed the Notorious B.I.G. on 8 March 1997 (eight years later, the killer is still on the loose) also transformed the lives of his family, friends, and fans.

A black Buddha of a man born to a 25 year-old schoolteacher mother on 21 May 1972, young Christopher grew up in a time when the city was crumbling in financial decline. From his bedroom window, the husky only child witnessed the grave ills of a community with seemingly no future. It was on these crime-ridden streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, littered with nodding junkies and abandoned buildings, that the future B.I.G. first witnessed the hard-knock lives that would later lace his street-hardened poetics.

Yet, as B.I.G. went from bubbly baby to sullen teenager to badass man-child surviving in the city of ambition, two things came along that would change his life forever: rap and crack. While the former would make the notorious brother rich and famous, it was the latter — which he sold from his building stoop, but never smoked — that fuelled his witty imagination. The wildstyled "do or die" world of Bed-Stuy ("the place where my head rest") that B.I.G. observed while snapping and squatting on the stoop of his St. James Place apartment would soon become world-renown.

With a deep voice that was gritty as a crack rock and urgent as a siren, B.I.G.'s streetwise poetics and cinematic eye for detail helped a then-stumbling N.Y.C. (having been shoved aside by MCs representing the West coast) get back into the game it had invented in the first place.

Eight years after his death, the master's memory is more alive than ever, evidenced by a recent Rolling Stone magazine feature exploring his unsolved murder and the new Bad Boy Records release The Notorious B.I.G. Duets: The Final Chapter.

On the two studio albums that the Notorious B.I.G. recorded before his untimely death, Ready to Die (1994) and Life After Death (1997), he crafted lyrics that depicted Bed-Stuy as a continuing cycle of chaos, paranoia, and violence. Still, unlike the tales of drugs, guns, and pussy celebrated by West Coast gang-bangers down with the "thug life" (so read the tattoo across the stomach of Biggie's former best friend Tupac Shakur), Biggie's lyrics were simultaneously laced with laughter and tears.

Like the classic ghetto scribes Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, whose black pulp fiction books were once on every hoodrat's reading list, Big wasn't afraid of showing his human side. In a short, but stellar career that propelled Biggie Smalls "from ashy to nasty to classy", the former Bed-Stuy bully reshaped the sound of New York City rap in a way that hadn't been heard since KRS-One first kicked out the jams in the South Bronx, LL was rockin' bells in Queens, and Kool Moe Dee stomped through the "wild, wild west" of Harlem.

Following in the giant steps of rhythmic '80s icons Rakim and Big Daddy Kane, two of his favorite rappers, the Notorious B.I.G. was determined to stay true to his block and become famous at the same time. After winning the Unsigned Hype competition (March 1992) in the pages of the hip-hop magazine The Source by rapping over an old Kane beat courtesy of his homeboy (and former Big Daddy DJ) Mister Cee, a tape of the massive rapper was sent to A&R rebel and chief conceptualist Sean "Puffy" Combs at Uptown Records.

Having shaped the ghetto fabulous style and grooves of early '90s new jacks Heavy D., Mary J. Blige, Jodeci, and Soul for Real while he was still an intern at Uptown, Puffy dug the dangerous visions on the demo of the 6'3", 200-plus-pound wordsmith. In his article "The Legacy of Big Poppa", Carlito Rodriguez, a former Source Editor-in-Chief and avid rap fan, wrote: "Puffy, liking what he heard though not necessarily what he saw in the dark-skinned, heavy-set young man, decided he could transform him from a raw, thuggish street type into a bona fide class act. Maybe, even a sex symbol."

Taking Biggie from Brooklyn rock slinger to worldwide rock star was not the easiest job on the planet, but Puffy was anxious. After whetting the public's appetite with the club banger "Party & Bullshit" in 1992, a track from the Who's the Man soundtrack, Biggie and Puff's shared vision of bringing Biggie's music to the masses damn near collapsed when Uptown Records CEO Andre Harrell fired Puffy, his former intern.

Harrell later told VH1 about the firing of Sean "Puffy" Combs: "Puffy was a genius in the studio, but outside of it, he was just fast and reckless. With Puffy around, sooner or later something always got broke."

As someone close to the scene, cultural writer Dream Hampton wrote of Puffy's positive spin on the possible setback in The Vibe History of Hip-Hop: "Puff made one of his rare trips to Brooklyn one night. Over strawberry cheesecake, he assured Big that things were going to happen. That their dreams were going to come true. That setbacks are mere challenges and together they would be unstoppable."

Teaming up with veteran music man Clive Davis at Arista Records, the prophetic Puffy officially launched Bad Boy Records, a label that would come to mean as much to hip-hop in the '90s as Def Jam, Tommy Boy, Sleeping Bag, or Cold Chillin' had meant the decade before. Though folks on the street laughed when the lanky man with the master plan had not signed the most attractive MC in history, as usual, Puff would have the last laugh with the signing of Craig Mack and B.I.G.

While Craig's disc Project: Funk da World would be the first released, spawning the dope "Flava in Ya Ear" remix, it wasn't until the following month that Bad Boy truly arrived. Released on 1 September 1994, the Notorious B.I.G.'s revolutionary record, Ready to Die, would become a milestone in hip-hop history.

Biggie and his producers (which included Puffy, Easy Moe Bee, and DJ Premier, among others) crafted an unforgettably brave soul record that was as important to its time as Marvin Gaye's classic What's Going On and Curtis Mayfield's brilliant soundtrack to the classic film Superfly were to theirs.

With an Afro'ed baby on the cover that many fans still believe came from Biggie's mom's photo album, Ready to Die opened with crazy intro of Big's birth and ended with the madness of "Suicidal Thoughts". Separating the game from the truth and everything in between was pure butter.

In the minds of many, listening to Ready to Die was like roaring through the streets of the black metropolis of Bed-Stuy with Biggie as the tour guide. Following in Big Poppa's footsteps, he showed us former gangster days on "Gimmie the Loot" and "Everyday Struggle", shared his "Word Up!" aspirations on "Juicy", verbally screened his personal woman dramas on "One More Chance" and "Me & My Bitch" and revealed raw vulnerability on "Suicidal Thoughts", as well as the title track.

Champagne flowed through his veins; the abyss that separated the Notorious B.I.G. from other rappers (and Bad Boy from other labels) went beyond simply being the best. Incorporated with the "style and grace" of his Hype Williams-directed videos, countless magazine covers and awards, and a hypnotic stage style, Biggie's steady rise from streets to suites caused envy to blister the bitter hearts of his rap rivals.

A storyteller with a unique vision, a wild sense of humor, and a sharp eye for detail, Biggie proved himself special. Even a jaded journalist like myself was sprung; I can clearly remember my late girlfriend Lesley threatening to break-up with me on our Jamaican vacation if I played Ready to Die "one more time".

Nevertheless, in 1995, heated words on records and interviews between B.I.G (and Bad Boy) and his former homie Tupac (and label Death Row) were branded by the mainstream media as an "East Coast/West Coast Rap War". There was enough gasoline thrown on a small flame to start a raging bonfire. Before it was over, both of these talented urban poets were dead.

Assigned by The Source magazine in the spring of '97 (back in the day when the magazine still meant something) to review B.I.G.'s then forthcoming Life After Death, I can still remember the excitement I felt when I put the cassette into the stereo. Sitting in my book-cluttered office early on a Sunday morning wearing headphones and nodding my dome, I was startled when Lesley knocked on the door. With an eerie look in her eyes, I knew there was a problem.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Havelock just called," Lesley answered, referring to my former writing partner and friend. "He said Biggie was killed in California."

For a sick moment, I thought she might be joking, but in my heart I knew she wasn't. Shortly, folks began calling the house, and for the remainder of the day voices cursed and cried as our small community of hip-hop culture watchers mourned another fallen rapper.

Crawling into bed that night I was still shocked and saddened. Before slipping into slumberland, a few tears dripped on my pillow. Only a few weeks prior, when a pack of wild and excited New York music writers crowded into Daddy's House recording studios for an early preview of his sophomore disc, we watched Biggie and Puffy crack jokes, snap pictures with journalists, and show nothing but a lust for life. To hell with being ready to die — at 24 years old, Biggie was just beginning to live. The light in his eyes and the broad smile on his face attested to that fact.

While some folks claim, by evidence of death-tempting tracks like "What's Beef", "Going Back to Cali", and "You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)", that Biggie had a death wish, nothing could have been further from the truth. Shortly after his death, a naïve fan asked me, "Does this mean rap is dead?"

"Hell no!" I screamed. "Jazz didn't die with Charlie Parker, rock didn't die with Jimi Hendrix, and lounge didn't die with Frank Sinatra. Hip-hop might last forever, but all I can think about right now is: Biggie's gone."

I Was a Teenage Comic Book Writer

House of Mystery #174, cover by Berni Wrightson
copyright (c) DC Comics, All Rights Reserved

Unlike most uptown boys in the ‘70s who had stacks of Marvel Comics, I was a DC kid who couldn’t get enough of creepy horror books. Indeed, it was the powerful pages drawn by Berni Wrightson, Alex Nino, Michael Wm. Kaluta, E.R. Cruz, Frank Robbins and others that kept me coming back.

Walking uptown to Washington Heights in the years when it was still a majority Jewish neighborhood, I had stumbled across a wonderful comic book store on 172^nd and Broadway. Run by a cranky middle-aged dude who seemed to hate kids (though, the more I started hanging around there, the more he softened), the store was packed with comics.

Hardly the neatest place in the world, it was paradise to me.

Digging through the countless stacks of comics, which the dealer sold for a fraction of the cover price, I started experimenting with other comic brands including Harvey, Warren and Charlton.

Back home, lying in the middle of the living-room floor, I tumbled head first into those four-color wonderlands and escaped from the real world for hours. Since I had always thought of comics as a visual medium, I had never thought much about who wrote the blasted things until I saw an ad in a copy of Joe Staton’s wonderful E-Man comic. In bold letters, it proclaimed that Charlton had put together a booklet about how to draw and write comic books.

After mailing in postage stamps to an address in Derby, Connecticut and waiting for what seemed like forever, the booklet finally arrived. Written by my future pen-pal Nick Cuti (who had once worked as an assistant to Wally Wood and a few years later penned some great short pieces for Warren), the booklet reproduced comic book script pages.

Although there were credits on the splash pages (even I knew who Stan Lee was), Charlton’s guide made me realize just how important the writers were on a particular book.

Within the next few months guys like Denny O’Neil, Len Wein, Steve Englehart, Bruce Jones, Archie Goodwin and others became my new comic book heroes; hell, by that time I was even grooving to Marvel scribes like Steve Gerber and Roy Thomas. Tapping away on my little gray Olivetti typewriter, I was convinced (at the ripe old age of fourteen) that I was about to launch my career as a comic book writer.

Though I still don’t know where I got the nerve, one day called DC Comics from the rotary phone in the kitchen. Much to my surprise, I was turned over to a young editor named Paul Levitz. At some point in our conversation, I had confessed that my favorite books were House of Secrets and House of Mystery.

After giving me an appointment to visit the office, Levitz politely thanked me for calling and hung-up. “What now?” I thought, and spent the next two weeks knocking out plotlines (most ripped-off from too many viewings of Outer Limits, Twilight Zone and Creature Features) to present at our meeting.

A freshman at Rice High School, a famous Catholic school in Harlem, I was nervous all afternoon. I had gotten my mother to retype the plot pages, which she had put in a yellow envelope for me; two years before, she had Xeroxed my first student paper when I was in 7^th grade. Between periods I kept checking my locker to make sure the plots hadn’t escaped from their chamber.

When the final bell rang at 2:45, I was out of there quicker than the Flash.

Arriving at DC Comics still wearing my Catholic school uniform (except, in midtown I thought it had transformed into a business suit), I was shown the reception area. Since this was over thirty-years ago I can’t remember much about the décor, but I did get into a long chat with artist Romeo Tanghal. He had recently arrived from the Philippines, and had just started drawing for the horror books.

“That’s the stuff I want to write,” I said excited. I remember him smiling warmly as he balanced a black portfolio case between his legs. “That would be nice,” he answered, his English not the best in those early years. In my mind, Romeo and I had already been partnered to produce the best horror comic since Swamp Thing. Years later, Tanghal inked George Perez for eight-years on Teen Titans.

After Romeo left, I remember watching cartoonist Sergio Aragonés limp into the office on crutches; I suppose I had recognized him from a comic book convention, because he reminded me of one of those “wild and crazy guys” from Saturday Night Live. I recall him joking with the receptionist, and laughing a lot.

When Paul Levitz came out to greet me, I was surprised by his youthful appearance. All of twenty at the time, he was a kid, but he was still older than I was. Escorting me into his small office (funny now, considering dude is now the President of the company), he was quite nice.

After listening to my fanboy chatter for a while, Levitz introduced me to former EC artist Joe Orlando. Since I had read a lot about the early days of EC and glanced at some of the reprints, I knew Joe’s work well. In addition, he was the editor on Swamp Thing, which made him a genius in my eyes. Joe looked at me, grunted something, and walked away.

Minutes later, Paul and I were interrupted by a jovial by Dick Giordano, who seemed like the coolest man in the world. “Nice to meet yaw,” he said in his heavy New York accent. Unlike the other old-school comic guys, Giordano looked like those sharp advertising guys in Doris Day movies.

Before leaving the DC offices high off fumes of India ink and what I assumed would be my destiny as a horror comic writer, Mr. Levitz (as I insisted on calling him) gave me a real life horror script by writer Bob Toomey and told me to study it. “Use it as a guide, and call me back when you have a few scripts.”

If I’m not mistaken, he also suggested that I start reading other types of books as well.

“All right,” I mumbled, still hardly believing I had made it through the door in the first place. We shook hands and I was gone. Walking out of the building that lovely fall afternoon in 1976, I wanted to twirl around like Mary Tyler Moore and throw by book-bag into the air.

While I never did sell DC Comics one of my brilliant scripts, I’ve always given props to a twenty-year-old comic book editor for giving me his time and encouraging my writing. Recently when I submitted the short story “The Whores of Onyx City” (featuring wild girl Sage Steele) to the upcoming collection The Darker Mask: Heroes From the Shadows, I knew without a doubt that it would be dedicated to a man named Levitz.

The Darker Mask:

http://www.amazon.com/Darker-Mask-Gary-Phillips/dp/0765318504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202768772&sr=1-1

Interview with Bob Toomey:

http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Richard%20Arndt/The%20Warren%20Magazines%20Interviews.htm

Nick Cuti:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Cuti

The Darker Mask:

http://www.amazon.com/Darker-Mask-Gary-Phillips/dp/0765318504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202768772&sr=1-1

Interview with Bob Toomey:

http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Richard%20Arndt/The%20Warren%20Magazines%20Interviews.htm

Nick Cuti:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Cuti

Invisible Woman Asks 7 Questions

Since I've started blogging, I've met some pretty interesting folks. The latest is a Cali lady who blogs about films and politics, and refers to herself as the Invisible Woman. What really attracted my attention was Invisible's statement that the negative reviews directed at the 2005 film "Shadowboxer," which my friend Lisa Cortes produced, was the reason she started the blog in the first place. Well, one thing led to another and next thing she's offering to interview me for the site. Below, you'll find a link to the site...thank you, Invisible Woman.

http://invisible-cinema.blogspot.com/search/label/new%20york%20love

White Boy Music

Growing-up in the seventies, me and my baby brother Carlos had more differences than just our musical tastes. While he was a small boned boy, I was squeezing into husky sized pants; while he played stickball in the street, I devoured Jack Kirby comics; by high school, while ‘Los pumped iron and marched with R.O.T.C., I was puffing reefer and scribbling poems (“…like some kind of sissy,” he teased) in my notepad.

Living in the concrete circus of New York City, we were surrounded by an array of cultural rhythms that soared like soft winged birds throughout the neighborhood. From the open window of our shapely Rican neighbor Miss. Soto, the frantic salsa sound of Ray Barretto, Celia Cruz and Eddie Palmieri blared; up the block, hard knock hustlers parked their ornate rides and chilled to the chocolate bubble bath splash of the Isley Brothers, Barry White or Issac Hayes that sloshed from their speakers.

Across Broadway, the flour-covered men behind the Formica counter at Tony’s Pizzeria digested a steady diet of ballroom ballads sung by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin or Tony Bennett; while around the corner, the old black man who worked in Leo’s Laundromat listened to sacred gospel songs, contentedly nodding his head to the hallowed hymns.

While Carlos listened to wah-wah funk bands and strobe light disco singles, I had somehow tripped into a wonderland of screaming guitars, blaring banshee vocals and thunderous drums. Beginning with sneaking peeks at Elvis Presley flicks on the CBS Late Movie when I was seven, I had a serious jones in rock-n-roll.

One humid summer evening, hanging-out with our neighborhood crew playing the dozens in front of a flickering street light on 151^st Street and Riverside Drive, my brother snapped, “At least ya’ll don’t have to listen to that white boy music Michael be playing. Those loud ass guitars and screaming drives me crazy.”

Brooding like a baby, I ran into the crib, and drowned my sorrow in Freddy Mercury’s falsetto. Indeed, the rock acts that attracted me were the flamboyant glam of Kiss, David Bowie and Elton John. My “Bennie & the Jets”/”Pinball Wizard”/”Someone Saved My Life Tonight” obsession got so bad, I had started scribbling “Elton” as my middle name on school papers.

In class, handing me back a yet another history test I had failed, beefy Mr. Waters snidely screamed, “I’m sure Elton John managed to pass history, but, at the rate you’re going, you may never get out of sixth grade.”

The entire class snickered as I visualized myself bedazzled in neon boots and a mohair suit as electric music and solid walls of sound crumbled at my feet.

***

For me, television was yet another passion. Forget about the former Tom Verlaine/Richard Lloyd band, I’m talking about the glowing glass teat that hypnotized my generation with its Technicolor gamma rays: Schoolhouse Rock shorts, nappy-headed Fred Sanford heart attacks, pictures of Patty Hearst robbing banks, soulful Fat Albert playing funk tunes in a Philly junkyard and ivory picket fence Brady Bunch images was my thing.

Still, it wasn’t until a few months past my twelfth birthday that I got my first peek at punk rock, and realized there was a universe beyond Elton’s radiant rhinestone eyeglass, Freddy Mercury’s spandex jumpsuits and Ziggy Stardust partying with spiders on Mars.

One Saturday night, lying on the pudding brown linoleum in the living room, ‘Los and I watched a NBC news show called Weekend. Hosted by Lloyd Dobbins and Linda Ellerbee, a groundbreaking program came on as a replacement to Saturday Night Live once a month.

With subjects that ranged from comic book collectors to incest, one could never predict the topics that would be featured. Still, it was quite a surprise that winter night in ‘77 when Weekend aired a segment on “the punk phenomenon in England.” Open-mouthed, I gazed at the television screen with a glee as The Sex Pistols wreaked havoc in countless unsuspecting households through out America.

Broadcasted “in living color,” this crew of wild Brit boys clad in worn jeans, ripped t-shirts, chunky black boots and numerous piercings stalked the stage of a tattered venue in brutish abandon. “That’s disgusting,” Carlos mumbled sleepily as lead “singer” (screamer, shouter, shrieker) Johnny Rotten lobbed gobs of spit into the frenzied folks in the front jumped up and down. It was as though they were being baptized “You would never see The Jackson Five spitting at their fans.”

The more these “self-styled barbarians,” as Brit writer Nigel Williamson later described The Sex Pistols, taunted their fans, the more maniacal the crowd became. These crazed scenes inside the club were edited with shots of the band’s infamous boat ride on the Thames to promote the single “God Save the Queen,” an interview with their trickster manager Malcolm McLaren and footage from their demented appearance (pre-Sid Vicious) on a BBC talk show.

Until that night, I had never of thought of rebelling against the system or my mother, but one glimpse of The Sex Pistols changed my perspective on the world, which at the time was limited to my Harlem hood, a massive comic book collection and more than a few pop records.

For months after watching the broadcast about the social revolution of punk, I worried about the fragile state of civilization and badgered my mother with inane requests to be sent to an English boarding school like my cousin Calais, who upon returning to the states spoke incisively in her affected accent and gushed about seeing the Sex Pistols in person.

Next to the poof pop of Elton and Queen, punk rockers were a bunch of rowdy kids who could barely play their instruments, but perfect pitch and harmony hardly seemed the point.

Enraptured by the sheer emotion, vibrant energy and defiant anger directed at the plastic people populating our world, the Pistols planted a germ of creative discontent that encouraged me to write angst ridden poems overflowing with images of anarchy and sorrow, question the teachings of my Catholic education as I strived to survive in a no-future (a slogan the non-punk Black folks in my hood could well understand) world of posers and squares.

Change the Game (On Newsstands Now)

Jay Z: On Racism, Violence & the N Word

Written by Michael A. Gonzales

December 2007
Jay-Z Cover Story
Stop Smiling Magazine #33
Interview by Michael A. Gonzales

http://www.stopsmilingstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=49

On October 2nd, veteran music journalist Michael A. Gonzales met with Jay-Z to discuss life, hip-hop and American Gangster for the cover of the second-annual 20 Interviews issue of STOP SMILING magazine. Below are excerpts from that interview.

ON RACISM IN GANGSTER MOVIES

SS: Black people love Italian gangster movies, but many of these films are blatant in their racism. One of the very first words Jack Nicholson says in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed is ‘niggers.’ Why are people willing to overlook this?

JZ: There are certain things the audience hooks on to. Yes, the character might be racist, but he’s still against the odds as he struggles against the world. However brief his rein might be, he’s living the good life and that’s what Black kids hone in on. They don’t pay attention to the racism, because racism is everywhere. We’ve learned to look past that.

SS: What about the word using the word ‘nigger’ in rhymes?

JZ: For me, it’s all about the intention. I could call you an ‘apple tree,’ but if I say it with venom and hate, that is what it’s about. It’s not the word that has the power, it’s the person. All of this came about because the Imus discussion turned into a hip-hop discussion.

Imus couldn’t name three rappers; well, maybe he could, but he couldn’t name their songs. Imus doesn’t listen to rap, so he’s not influenced by it. He didn’t get that from us. I missed the point the discussion stopped being about Imus.

ON VIOLENCE IN FILMS

SS: Do you think violent films or songs have an affect on teens?

JZ: The world wants to think that that people are drawn to violence, but when you live in the ghetto you see violence all the time, so that’s not the real excitement. If they want to see violence, all they have to do is go home. A lot of kids have never been out of their own neighborhoods, so they go to see movies where guys have big houses and is traveling around the world.

ON THE DECLINE OF NYC HIP-HOP

SS: Listening to the American Gangster, I kept thinking that this is also a great New York City album. Do you think the city has fallen off in terms of rap music?

JZ: Of course, but it was bound to happen, because we were spoiled. Not only did we own rap music since its inception, we also invented it. But, like anything else if you take it for granted, it will leave you. It will absolutely go to where the freshness is. New York started making robotic records. Down south, rap music is a celebration. They put their heart and soul into it.

ON FRANK LUCAS

SS: Why do you think people romanticize guys like Frank Lucas?

JZ: You know, there’s this hope that we can make it out of bad situations and become important, maybe live like rock stars. For many of us, society is oppressive—our schools are the worse, our roads are the worse. So, when somebody goes against that oppression, it’s impressive.

ON DEALING DRUGS

SS: It’s common knowledge that you dealt drugs when you were younger.

JZ: I’m not condoning it, but everyone chooses their path. I make no apologies for the path that I chose. People think that kids who become drug dealers are monsters. They’re not monsters, they’re just regular kids who are pushed up against the odds; and the odds keep putting the lights out on their hopes.

Look at the staggering number of Black and Latino youth who go to prison. That alone has to do something to your self-esteem, and that affects the entire community. Kids understand the dangers of dealing drugs or being a gangster, but often it’s better than what they already have in their lives. In their minds, even danger is better than that.

It’s very sad, and what’s sadder is there are some people in the hood who are very intelligent, but they have no outlets. It kind of makes you think that keeping poor people down was done by design; these areas haven’t gotten so out of hand by mistake.

SS: How were you able to choose a different path?

JZ: I guess because I was able to look towards the future. Most people wake-up and just deal with today. I realized that I couldn’t keep doing the same things and not have something bad happen to me. I knew I was going to go to jail or I was going to die. If you keep rolling the dice for ten years, it’s bound to catch-up to you.

I also realized that I had a remarkable talent and I was letting it go to waste. I didn’t have one foot in rap and the other in the drug game, I literally changed my life. You just can’t hold on to the branches like Donkey Kong.

ON RAP CENSORSHIP

SS: It doesn’t seem fair that Martin Scorsese or Denzel Washington are considered true artists when they portray gangsters, but if you or one of your contemporaries talks about street life then you’re dealing with Bill O’Reilly, Oparh Winfrey, Stanly Crouch and congressional hearings?

JZ: Of course, there is an imbalance, but I understand where it comes from. In hip-hop, the whole ‘keep it real’ has become more than a phrase. Scorsese and Denzel are not tied to the films they make, so people see the separation between art and life. Unfortunately, they don’t see that separation between Shawn Carter and Jay-Z. As far as they’re concerned, everything I talk about is happening for real. To them, at no point is it entertainment.

Rappers in general THEY ARE the guys telling their story. To me, real is just the basis for a great fantasy. Not everything I say in a song is true. I’ll take a small thing from life and build upon it, and usually it becomes a fantastic story.

SS: The song ‘Ignorant Shit’ touches on this subject. There are more curses and crime in a Tarantino movie, but nobody is dragging him off to a congressional hearing.

JZ: If rappers stop cursing tomorrow, is that going to fix the ghetto or the fact that our schools are fucked-up and the living-conditions are terrible. You can’t tell me not to say nigger or shit, that’s ridiculous to me. Is that really the problem? Are you serious?

Some people don’t understand the things people who live in these urban areas see in one day; and, that’s every single day.

ON CRACK & THE ‘80s

SS: On American Gangster, you talk about coming of age in the 1980s. Talk a little bit how being a gangster during Frank Lucas’ rein changed once crack was introduced to the hood.

JZ: Being a gangster changed from being a gentlemen’s game to a vicious young man’s game. In the ‘80s, there were no more rules—teenagers had automatic weapons, the money was bigger and it just got out of control. There was no hiding it, no shame. There wasn’t even shame from the addicts. People were just standing around smoking crack outside like it was normal; that’s not normal. People in those communities just lost control.

SS: And, some of those same communities in Harlem, the Lower East Side and Brooklyn are now the biggest gentrified neighborhoods in New York City.

JZ: Wherever there is anarchy, there is also opportunity; where there is chaos, there is opportunity. Look at DUMBO (in Brooklyn), right around the corner from the projects. That neighborhood was bleak back in the day.

SS: Being a businessman, do you see much of gangster aesthetics in music or sports?

JZ: It’s worse in business, because there is no fear of retribution. If somebody fucks me on a deal, then later I’ll fuck them on a deal. But, other than that, nothing happens. On the streets, you have to have integrity or you won’t be there long. You can’t give your word and then do the opposite. In business, people just run all over each other; it’s unpoliced.

A Love From Outer Space: Why Greg Tate Matters

This morning, I couldn’t write. Though I’m on deadline to finish a Village Voice critique about my favorite band Apollo Heights (whose disc White Music for Black People should be blasting from your boombox right now, since its the perfect soundtrack for the forthcoming narrative), I can’t wrap my mind around a review at this moment.

Instead, I sat down at the keyboard and chopped-up a textual testimonial to one of my favorite writers, once known as Ironman.

Last Friday evening at the Studio Museum of Harlem on a 125th Street, a bunch of the New York Niggerati (and a few palefaces) gathered to pay homage to cultural critic, short story writer, musician and Black aesthetic lighting rod Greg Tate. Looking as young as the day I first met him more than two decades before (black don’t crack), it was amazing that the brother was turning fifty years old.

With familiar folks like Vernon Reid, Dream Hampton, Kevin Powell, Maureen McMahon (whose 2004 tome Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race is a must buy), Charles Stone III, Trey Ellis, Bruce Mack, Karen R. Good, Arthur Jafa, Nicole Moore and others in attendance, all were gathered to celebrate the birthday and legacy of the Afro-American king of funky critical bop.

Though I try not to spend too much time around other writers (their mood swings and ego trips are often unpredictable), I was more than happy to troop from Crown Heights, Brooklyn to Harlem, U.S.A. to pay tribute to the man that “set it off” for a generation of “freaky-deke cult-nat” journalists, essayists, painters, screenwriters, directors, et al.

For better or worse, if it were not for Greg Tate, there would be no Bonz Malone, Harry Allen, Joan Morgan, Kris Ex, Scott Poulson Bryant, Toure, Danyel Smith, Michael Eric Dyson, Karen R. Goode, Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, Smokey Fontaine, John Caramanica, Jeff Chang, Amy Linden, Tom Terrell, Mark Anthony Neal, Tricia Rose, Sasha Jenkins, DJ Spooky (aka Paul Miller), Dream Hampton, Miles Marshall Lewis, Aliya King, SekouWrites, Kenji Jasper, Oliver Wang, Cheo Hodari Coker, Keith Murphy or myself.

Not to say that we wouldn’t be writing for somebody (perhaps medical journals or antique mags), but it was from studying Tate’s music writing mojo like cold lampin’ graduate students that helped give us form different options. Like Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis, the Beatles and Oasis, Grandmaster Flash and DJ Shadow, it was Tate and all of us.

On that dreary evening last week, as the sky outside cried Mary, I strolled downstairs during the middle of former Village Voice music poobah Robert Christgau tumbling over Tate’s Tyrannosaurus sized word play as he read an essay that he had edited years ago. Please don’t ask me the title, but I know it was one of those funky joints that Tate had scribbled when he was still calling himself “Ironman” back in the early ‘80s.

One brief aside: Greg’s guitar strumming homie Vernon Reid later commented, “I always loved Greg because he had named himself after my second favorite Marvel Comics character.” Truthfully, I always thought the “Ironman” moniker was swiped from the esteemed Eric Dolphy disc. Who knows, maybe we’re both right.

While I never shared the same enthusiasm for the writing style of the so-called “Dean of American Rock Critics” that editors/writers Joe Levy, Ann Powers, Eric Weisbard, RJ Smith, among others have for Christgau, I will always be thankful to the man for being unafraid to be, as Tate himself once described him, “a one-man affirmative action committee in the 1980s…all because he believed Afro-diasporic musics should on occasion be covered by people who weren't strangers to those communities.”

In other words, it took more than a few youngbloods wielding fine-point pens, hostile attitudes and boogaloo styles to scare Bob. My homie Barry Michael Cooper, who would later become a great writer himself, told me how when he was a novice he called Christgau at home one night out the blue. In an interview we did for Stop Smiling magazine earlier this year, Cooper related this funny anecdote.

“I called him up at 12:00 midnight and said, ‘May I speak to Robert Christgau please?’ He said, ‘Who the fuck is this?’ I said, ‘My name is Barry Cooper.’ And he said, ‘Who the fuck is Barry Cooper?’ ‘Well, I’m a writer,” I said. ‘I just wanna tell you I love the newspaper. I love the music criticism, but that piece on Bootsy’s Rubber Band was bullshit. I used to get high to this in college and I can write about it.’ He said, “I’ll tell you what, do you have anything?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I wanna do something on Parliament- Funkadelic.’ At the time, they had an album called Glory A la Stupid. And he said, ‘Bring it to me. Let me take a look at it. If it’s any good, I’ll run it. If it’s not, if you call me again I’ll have you arrested for harassment.’”

Despite the fact that I never worked with Christgau, I clearly remember when he contacted former Set to Run publicity honcho Leyla Turkkan in 1992 (who at the time, handled most of the Def Jam acts, the Delicious Vinyl artists and Ice Cube), and he was on a serious mission to recruit more “urban writers” to vote in the annual Pazz & Jop poll; it might not seem like such a big deal today, but back then…”

Hell, that was during the same period that one prominent Caucasian music editor (who is still in a position of editorial power today) told the same publicist something along the lines of, “…black music writers don’t write that well.” It’s crazy what some people believe. However, if you’ve taken a glance at Rolling Stone, Blender, GQ, Esquire and New York magazines lately, that opinion still seems prevalent in 2007.

Though I haven’t looked at Spin thoroughly in recent months (with the exception of their cool ass “Punk ‘77” issue last month), I can honestly say that former editors John Leland, Frank Owen, Simon Reynolds, Sia Michel and Charles Aaron (who still slaves there) were more down with the Negroes (Barry Michael Cooper, Bonz Malone, Quincy Troupe, and Sasha Jenkins) than any other music glossies. Hey, I’m just saying.

But, rewinding back to the subject at hand: in the early ‘80s, when crack first emerged in Washington Heights and I still lived uptown in my grandma’s 151st crib, I chanced upon Tate’s byline in the Village Voice. Though I had wanted to be a writer since I was a one-finger typing kid ripping-off Twilight Zone plots and, later, hoping to sell scripts to DC Comics when I was thirteen (oh, the wonders of youth), I was a voracious reader who at the time was addicted to the so-called New Journalism posse.

A geek college dropout, I went to the library everyday after my midtown messenger gig and devoured old magazine stories by my lit heroes Nik Cohn, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin and Orde Coombs. At the time, between delivering packages to random Broadway actresses on the upper west side and superstar designers in the garment district, I wrote small stories for random magazines, but nothing major.

Truth of it was, there weren’t many options for a young Black writer who hadn’t grazed through the ivy of Yale, Brown or Harvard; or, so I thought. Truth of it was, there was no such thing as The Source, Vibe or XXL, and being a hip-hop writer meant either tagging subway walls or writing rhymes in your notebook. Truth of it was, none of us had any idea how big this monster called rap would grow before it started to eat itself, but we loved it (I’ve never thought of hip-hop as HER, but maybe that’s my own lack of sensitivity) with a serious passion.

As my Brooklyn bred homeboy, acclaimed journalist and director Nelson George once said on some N.Y.U. symposium in 2004, “I remember receiving hostile reactions from many editors when I tried to write about it [hip-hop]…as if hip-hop were an infection that could be cured by simply ignoring it.”

While my mind is now slightly weary and more than a few brain cells have been blunted away in project staircases, I’ll guess it was sometime in late early ’85 when I plucked down my single dollar at a shabby newsstand and picked up that weeks Village Voice. Yes kids, we actually had to BUY it back then—there were no free lunches or free Voice.

Boarding the subway at 145th and Broadway, I copped a squat on the #1 train. “I love the smell of ink in the morning,” I thought, opening the paper. God, how I wish I could remember what was the first Tate piece I devoured, but that’s not the point at all. What I’m really trying to say is, “Dat nigga changed my life!” The last time that had happened was when I heard Mile's Water Babies in 10th grade, flipped the fuck out.

In a few years other folks of color (as opposed to, er, colored folks) like Nelson George, Lisa Jones, Barry Michael Cooper, Carol Cooper (no relation), Pablo Guzman and Harry Allen would also bum rush the post-soul/hot funk/hip-hop journalism show in the Village Voice, but it was big brother Tate who led the way.

“Mommy, what’s a semiotic?” I wanted to scream after reading that first piece. Yet, since this was a time before computers, aspiring writers actually had to leave the crib to do research. It wasn’t long before I was buying old James Brown and Funkadelic albums at the Music Factory in Times Square (where cranky, cigar smoking Stanley Platzer reined supreme), reading dusty paperbacks by Samuel R. Delany and Ishmael Reed, tripping through the post-structuralism weirdness of Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida and having my mind blown by Clement Greenberg as well as a mothership of other musical and literary others.

Though some stuff I still don’t get (“…yo Kidd, what’s up wit dat bugged mofo Cecil Taylor shit anyway?”), I am more than happy that Greg Tate had put up the signposts for this black boy to follow. In fact, one of those signs might have read: Enter At Your Own Risk…This Means You!

Unlike today, (I say as I shake my big daddy cane at the kids throwing rocks at my window) where one can rant opinions on a blog until they’re red, black and green in the face, that luxury wasn’t an option in our yesteryear.

It wasn’t until almost a year later that I wrote two music reviews for a friend’s punk zine called Misspent Sonics that I finally got a chance to test the waters of my future profession. Since I wasn’t that much of a punk since hanging-out at the Marble Bar in Baltimore (hell, even David Byrne and The Clash had discovered Africa by 1986), I offered to review Fishbone’s self-titled EP and the Beastie Boys debut Licensed to Ill .

Written in a fog of reefer smoke and malt liquor (by that that point I had discovered Hunter Thompson and Lester Bangs too), I sat in front of a black, electric Smith Corona and banged to the boogie. Once the pieces were printed, it didn’t take long for someone to point out that I had Xeroxed Greg Tate’s mau-mau/voodoo/ post-bop/pirate-radio/hoo-doo style.

“That’s not true,” I lied. “We’ve just been both influenced by the same writers.” Yeah, right. True, I too drank from the well of wild stylists like Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange and Clarence Major, but it was Tate who had guided me to that black water in the first place.

After joining the Black Rock Coalition in 1985 at the urging of guitarist Vernon Reid (whom I met by chance in Sounds Records over on St. Marks Place), I would see Greg on a regular. Yet, much to my dismay he didn’t talk much; at least not to me. That is, not until I had penned a story about Living Colour in a now defunct East Village rag called Cover when I was twenty-three.

One night, as I stood in line at the long gone Lone Star Café, I saw Tate in front of the door. “Yo, Michael,” he said. I looked at him, shocked that he even knew my name. “I read your story in Cover. It was pretty good.”

Staring at him, baffled by the compliment, I simply mumbled, “Thank you,” as I thought my head might explode. Stepping out of the line with my then girlfriend Fran, I ducked around the corner, breathing deeply.

“Are you all right?” Fran asked. "You have an asthma attack or something?"

“He liked it,” I muttered, still unbelieving. “The nigga liked my story.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Greg Tate. I can’t believe it, he liked my article.” Fran stared at me as though I was nuts. Grinning like a fool, I hoped that nobody saw my silly ass losing my mind. It was crazy, but for at that exact moment that I felt like a true writer.

Twenty-one years later, as the ever-lovely writer/director Dream Hampton stood in front of the Studio Museum podium sprinkling accolades on Greg Tate’s formerly dread-locked head, I thought about the few real times I had spent within the presence of the master: can’t forget the nigga’s party in ’88 when he played an advance of Public Enemy’s instant classic It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back all night long; can’t forget the night he first played guitar in public at the old Houston Street version of the Knitting Factory, while a few “real” musicians talked shit in the back of the joint; can’t forget the night we shared a cab back uptown one ‘80s night, with guitar extraordinaire Jean Paul Bourelly and future wunderkind producer Craig Street; can’t forget that recent night this past July, when a bunch of the Bronx Biannual literary magazine crew including editor Miles Marshall Lewis, Sun Singleton, Carol Taylor, Reginald Lewis (& his wonderful wife Melinda) and brilliant singer Stephanie McKay hung—out all night long, talking mad shit at NoHo Star until last call.

Though I won’t front that Greg Tate and I had ever became real friends (sure we know each other, slap five on occasion and talk much smack when we’re standing next to one another at an event), I can honestly say, if it wasn’t for his early writings in the Village Voice (as well as the Musician, Record, Down Beat and other magazines), who knows where I might be right now.

To paraphrase a line from the gangster rappers interview handbook, if it wasn’t for Greg "Ironman" Tate, I might be robbing your house right now.