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One of the culture’s most preeminent pioneers was celebrated in his hometown this week. Grandmaster Flash has received an honorary degree from Lehman College.
As per HipHopDX, the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame member graced the stage at the educational intuition but not behind the turntables. On Thursday, June 1 he attended Lehman College’s 2023 Spring Commencement Ceremony. He was joined by former New York State Rep. José Rivera where both of them received honorary degrees; the DJ received his honorary doctorate in Music.
See an Instagram post here.
Grandmaster Flash spoke to the graduating class and made sure to credit the Bronx for placing him at the birthplace of Hip-Hop.
“We from the Bronx — we are starters, we are finishers, we are very, very important” he stated. “And I must tell you, young people, as you go out into the world, you will probably do what I did… [and] [make] mistakes. I cannot tell you how many mistakes I made before the technique finally came into fruition. I say to young people, as you leave here, you will scrape your knees, [that’s] guaranteed, but we Bronx people, we go hard.”
He closed his speech by saying that this degree is his most special accolade because it was bestowed to him in the Bronx and from a Bronx institution. You can see the ceremony below.
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Photo: Daniel Knighton / Getty
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A new movie set in the Bronx, featuring rising young star Asante Blackk, turned heads at the SXSW festival this past week.
This year’s edition of the South By Southwest Festival (SXSW) held in Austin, Texas was a stage for a slew of new films to make their debut. One film, Story Ave, became a favorite of those who got to see the drama set in The Bronx. The film stars Asante Blackk, who recently captivated audiences with his role in Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us dramatic series for Netflix on the exonerated Central Park Five.
Story Ave is the debut film from writer-director Aristotle Torres based on an award-winning short film of his and counts Jamie Foxx as one of its producers. The movie shows Kadir (Blackk), a young high-school student with a striking talent for art who’s part of a crew of taggers known as Outside The Lines along with his friend Moe (Alex Hibbert from Showtime’s The CHI). The crew is run by Skemes (Melvin Gregg from FX’s Snowfall) who puts Kadir in a position to rob an MTA conductor named Luis (Luís Guzmán). But Luis and Kadir wind up befriending each other, setting off a chain of events that pushes Kadir to fight to see if there is a life for him outside of the streets.
Blackk spoke about his experience in filming Story Ave in a recent interview. “I didn’t realize at the time that my life was changed after reading [the script for ‘Story Ave’],” Blackk said. “But once the [filming] process started and we really became a family, I understood exactly what those words on that page were making me feel. And it was connection, it was love, it was fear, guilt — it was all of these emotions that I wrestled with my whole life wrapped so beautifully into this portrayal of a young man.”
The film was co-written by Bonsu Thompson, a veteran journalist who has produced digital series for BET and the feature-length documentary Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story in addition to serving as the Editor-In-Chief of The Source magazine and as Music Editor for XXL magazine [Ed. Note: he penned a Cassius cover story on Bel Air star Jabar Banks, too]. Chuck Inglish, one-half of The Cool Kids, serves as a composer on the film along with Pierre Charles.
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The city of New York is poised to settle a lawsuit brought against them by protesters in the Bronx over the New York Police Department tactics involving “kettling” at a protest for George Floyd in 2020.
According to reports, the city is preparing to pay a large sum of money to settle a class action suit brought on by individuals who were part of a racial justice protest in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the Bronx on June 4, 2020. In the documents filed in federal court, the sum ranges between $4 million and $6 million. Each person of the hundreds involved could receive $21,500. Those who were issued desk appearance summons could net an additional $2,500, and the plaintiffs named who brought the suit could get another $21,500.
The city will also shell out $2,550,000 to pay the fees of the attorneys involved. Amali Sierra, one of the lead plaintiffs, spoke about the settlement in a statement: “This settlement serves as testimony of the wrongdoing by the hands of the NYPD. It is a reminder that this institution is not built to protect Black and Brown communities.”
Sierra and her sister, Samira, were among the group of over 300 people protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the direction of then-Chief of Department Terence Monahan in coordination with the NYPD’s legal team, officers on the scene at E.136th Street cornered the protesters preventing them from leaving until after the imposed 8 p.m. curfew that was in effect at the time.
NYPD officers then proceeded to pepper spray the protesters and strike them with batons before arresting them en masse. Legal observers from the Legal Aid Society and the National Lawyers Guild were also detained and handcuffed along with those passing by. The Legal Aid Society sent out word of the incident via Twitter at the time, which was responded to with video footage.
A spokesperson for the NYPD issued a statement denying any wrongdoing by the department: “It was a challenging moment for the department as officers who themselves were suffering under the strains of a global pandemic did their utmost to help facilitate people’s rights to peaceful expression while addressing acts of lawlessness including wide-scale rioting, mass chaos, violence, and destruction.”
The spokesperson followed up by adding that they’ve “re-envisioned” their policies since 2020. The news comes as the city is currently seeking to settle more lawsuits over the department’s behavior that year.
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Kay Flock was one of eight individuals indicted with racketeering and murder charges among two Bronx, N.Y. gangs. The list of charges for Kay Flock has the potential to land him in prison for life or the death penalty.
Kay Flock, real name Kevin Perez, shot and killed a man in broad daylight in December 2021, just as the budding NY Drill rapper was finding some success as a musical artist. According to the press release released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York, Perez was a member of the Sev Side or DOA gang in the Bronx borough and was involved in several crimes with his codefendants dating back to 2019.
From the press release:
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Keechant L. Sewell, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”), announced the unsealing today of an Indictment charging KEVIN PEREZ, a/k/a “Kay Flock,” a/k/a “Kay,” a/k/a “KK,” DEVON MASON, a/k/a “BJ,” ERVIN BEAMON, a/k/a “EJ,” NICHOLAS JOHNSON, a/k/a “Nick,” SEAN SMITH, a/k/a “Sticky,” and JOSSI CASTRO, a/k/a “Jesse,” with racketeering conspiracy and other crimes related to their membership in “Sev Side,” or “DOA,” a street gang based in the Bronx, New York.
In a superseding indictment from January, the office named two other men, Iszayah Rowson and Michael Gant in the charges and noted their membership in the Third Slide gang, which maintained close ties to the Sev Side group.
The charges the 19-year-old Perez faces are Racketeering Conspiracy, Murder in Aid of Racketeering, Use of a Firearm Resulting in Death, Attempted Murder and Assault with a Dangerous Weapon in Aid of Racketeering, Use of a Firearm for Attempted Murder, and Assault with a Dangerous Weapon.
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Photo: Kay Flock / @officialkayflock
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