State Champ Radio Hip-Hop @ 50
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HipHopWired got the chance to talk to the legendary Daddy-O of Stetsasonic about the new Stop Self-Destruction Movement that he and Chuck D have launched to help the community deal with the rising issues of drug use and gun violence.
An unfortunate fact as Hip-Hop celebrates its 50th anniversary, is that the ills of violence and substance abuse still claw at the community. The deaths of rappers such as Young Dolph and Takeoff have lent emphasis to the situation. In the past, Hip-Hop banded together with the Stop the Violence Movement which resulted in the classic 1990 song, “Self-Destruction.” One of the prominent artists on that track was Daddy-O of Stetsasonic.
Over 20 years later, Daddy-O and Chuck D of Public Enemy have teamed up again to create the Stop-Self Destruction Movement with the aim of addressing the younger generation as they struggle to combat issues such as gun violence, police brutality, suicide and substance abuse. We had a chance to talk to Daddy-O at length about the movement, its aims and its future projects.
HipHopWired: As a pioneering artist and figure in Hip-Hop culture and a historian of the culture, you have been witness to so many seismic changes in Hip-Hop. And I think it’s definitely not an understatement to say that you’ve been a pioneering figure. So with that said, how vital is it to you now for the Stop Self Destruction movement to be getting underway as Hip-Hop celebrates its 50th anniversary?
Daddy-O: I think it’s extremely vital. I think primarily because we’ve known music to be a mechanism for change. So that happened prior to our existence and that’s no disrespect to us as Hip-Hoppers, right? But we’ve known music to have catalytic changes in life. We could talk about Songs in the Key of Life. We could talk about Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. We could even talk about Millie Jackson’s records, in terms of music actually being elemental and change. We look at what these mayors and all these cities are going through. And so there’s a lot of people talking, but not a lot is being done. But we know that music can move levers, right? We know that music can move mountains. So for us, Stop Self- Destruction is an aid to attack the ills that we see.
In the very beginning, when we did the first record, it was just violence. We never thought that we would be saying Hip-Hop and suicide in the same sentence ever. It was always about life. We never thought we would be talking about that. So all of these things we call or label self-destructive or self-destruction, we want to be the soundtrack for the people that are doing the real work. If it’s Warnock, good. If it’s Mayor Adams, good, but if it ain’t you I’m calling you out. Because I know Do It All is in the community doing stuff. I know that’s a fact. I know Ras Baraka is in the community doing stuff. All we want to do is put a supercharger on that and do it the way that we did it with the original record with today’s popular artists. Because that’s who these kids listen to. They will not be listening to no KRS-One, no Daddy-O, straight out. Now, if you combine us with some folks, then that’s a different story. If I could put Chuck D and Rick Ross on the record together, then it’s a different story.
That ties into my second question. With the development of the Stop Self-Destruction movement, how has the feedback been with you reaching out to artists that are contemporary?
So, we just started and it’s been great. We do have a record done already with Tobe Nwigwe, who’s a contemporary artist and it’s great. West Side Boogie is on that record. And he’s already made a record called “Self-Destruction.” So the response has been good, but we’re just starting to reach out to folks and figuring out, like, who to combine on what record, because part of the effort is getting some of the classic artists with some of the new artists. I do want to get the art together. I want to establish the mentorship more than art. So do I care if the old cats rap? No. But do I care if the old cats are talking to the Kodak Blacks and the Tee Grizzleys? Yes.
As far as the planning with the movement, similar to what we saw with the original Self-Destruction movement, will there be things like panel discussions?
I think one of the things I’m most excited about are these roundtables I’m going to do in these neighborhoods called “Gangsters and Grandmas.” I’m gonna put five or six people from the neighborhood around the table and have a conversation. Part of this movement is very therapeutic for what’s going on in our communities. Our communities are disconnected from conversation. I’m not blaming the internet, but I am saying that part of that is that. Lessons affect people to say what they want to say about what they were and who these kids were and all of that. But the gangbanger used to talk to the grandmother, and that community was intertwined. Everybody knew what everybody was doing. Now, she might have been on her knees nine hours a day praying for him. But they did talk at this particular point.
So part of this movement is very therapeutic in terms of putting people together so much more interested in those types of discussions but not adverse to and not exclusive to that. There will be some panels and those types of discussions with artists as well. But the truth of the matter is, I need artists to rhyme. I got enough professors. I got enough people that are doing the real work, people that are keeping these soup kitchens open, people that are doing financial literacy. These neighborhoods, they’re the ones that we need to hear from.
We do that with teens, with pregnancy. We do that with suicide. I’m gonna have contemporary rappers talk about pain because one of the things about contemporary rappers is that they’re all young. And a lot of people don’t understand that they’re not demons, and they’re being demonized. I mean, they might be doing some demonic sh*t. But they’re not demons. Part of my effort here is to not demonize the Kodak Blacks of the world and show you that that same heart that you got, he got. But he may not have access to you to have that conversation with you. So what else is he gonna do? What else are the little girls from Memphis gonna do? You can’t sit there and blame them. But one of the things you’re gonna hear Daddy say over and over is: if Young Thug is not my son, whose son is he? Not Kenny Rogers’ son, Bob Marley’s son. Not Bon Jovi’s son. But we’re absentee parents.
What I’m trying to say, because that’s what happened in Hip-Hop, is our absence. There’s nothing wrong with Hip-Hop except us. The fathers of this thing are us. And so that’s why it’s me. Because I could speak as the ’80s dude that made classics, that spits fire today and bring it up to date.
And that brings me to my last question – you mentioned naming and practicing within these different issues within the Hip-Hop community and our community as a whole. So being someone who’s essentially done that within the culture as a whole, what would be the one thing that you would encourage anybody in the older generation, newer generation to do from this point forward, as Hip-Hop goes into the next 50 years?
Interestingly enough, my advice is not any different than it was in the ’80s. My advice in the ’80s to everybody was to learn how to do everything. It doesn’t mean you’re going to become an engineer, doesn’t mean you’re going to become a producer. But if you know how to do everything, then nobody can pull the wool over your eyes. So that in itself creates ownership. Because a lot of what we see now, is because of the lack of ownership, right? The lack of ownership is what creates a lot of that kind of vacuum kind of thing that I’m talking about.
And that’s my little area. I don’t really care about the other stuff. I care about Hip-Hop. I care about the fact that we started off as a non-violent mechanism. The gangs in the Bronx made a truce. They started break dancing against each other. They started graffiti writing against each other, they start DJing against other, and rapping wasn’t even around in the beginning. But the point of the matter is that out of not wanting to do violence, the Black space then became something else. The Zulu Kings actually were a gang and became guys that were rapping and carrying equipment for Bambataa and Jazzy J. Fast forward and we’re actually 180 degrees reversed. Ninety percent of the rappers on the radio are talking gang talk. And I’m not talking about just affiliates I’m talking about in it.
The way we’ve been looked at is the same way when KRS came to the Stop The Violence Movement the first time. His whole aim was, “How are we being looked at?” Like we’re the ones causing it to happen. Here’s the ugly part about my movement: We actually now are the ones causing it to happen. So I’m in the middle of a different conundrum than him. You know, he had the benefit of having a Stetsasonic, a Public Enemy. I got to talk to cats that are really in the streets. I’m explaining to them how it’s just not cool. A lot of it comes from them being able to express their pain. Because that has been something that they just haven’t been able to do. Kodak talks about it, but they don’t. Most people don’t get Kodak so you don’t hear it. So my whole issue is to get them to be able to bleed the pain. Trippie Redd does it. But they’re not hearing it. Especially the adults. I want these adults to know what’s going on with these kids. Because my peers are wrong.
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Source: iOne / iOne
On this episode of BackStory with Colby Colb, legendary radio host Colby ‘Colb’ Tyner chronicles the thriving Hip-Hop renaissance of the ‘90s—a time when Nas, the Wu-Tang Clan, Mary J. Blige, A Tribe Called Quest and Busta Rhymes, to name a few, were emerging on the scene representing East Coast Hip-Hop.’
This was the perfect environment for a young Christopher Wallace to break out on the scene. The young Biggie Smalls studied the Hip-Hop greats, growing up on Word Up! Magazine and listening to Rap Attack on the radio. His mother, Voletta Wallace, tells Colb that young Christopher excelled in English class. “So I wasn’t shocked that he was such a great writer,” she says.
Raised in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, bordering Bedford-Stuyvesant, young Christopher would pass the time between drug deals by performing verses on the street. In the video below, you can feel the undeniable presence that he had at just 17 years old, rapping on Fulton Street in Brooklyn.
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In 1991, Christopher was arrested and jailed for cocaine in North Carolina. While behind bars, he focused on writing and dropped his first demo tape upon his release. Biggie Smalls was born.
DJ Mister Cee is credited with discovering the young rapper, after being introduced through his first DJ, DJ 50 Grand. Biggie soon caught the eye of a young Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs, who was doing A&R for Uptown Records at the time. The two met up, and the rest is history.
Puff was the mastermind behind Biggie’s rise to fame. He was strategic in where he placed Biggie in features alongside artists like Super Cat, Mary J. Blige, and Craig Mack. Colb goes in-depth here, documenting in detail the progression of singles and collaborations that further propelled Biggie to stardom.
Biggie’s momentum continued to build upon the success of his song Party and Bullshit off the Who’s The Man? soundtrack in the spring of 1993. In this next video, Puff and Biggie perform at the OutKast picnic in Atlanta in 1994, just months prior to the release of Biggie’s iconic debut album Ready to Die.
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Colb plays a clip from his first interview with Biggie in July of 1994, two months leading up to the release of Ready to Die. By this point, Biggie had changed his stage name to The Notorious B.I.G. due to a lawsuit filed against him by actor Calvin Lockhart, whose character in the 1975 film Let’s Do It Again inspired the rapper to adopt the name Biggie Smalls.
Two months after the release of Ready to Die, Biggie tells Colb in a second interview that the album was a chance to showcase another side to his artistry, a darker side, following the release of the mainstream hit Juicy, which told his life story and introduced The Notorious B.I.G. to the world.
Colb delves into the series of unfortunate events that caused the friction between Biggie and Tupac, and led to their untimely deaths. Tupac was making his mark on the West Coast Hip-Hop scene at the time. The two rappers were successful and thriving, yet the tension between them grew, fueling the rivalry between East Coast and West Coast Hip-Hop.
The iconic MCs were fatally shot within six months of each other, following one of the greatest years of Hip-Hop (1996), as Colb tells it. Their deaths sent shockwaves throughout the music world, but their impact on Hip-Hop lives on.
Listen to BackStory with Colby Colb: The Notorious B.I.G. for exclusive clips of Colb’s past interviews with Biggie Smalls, his mother Voletta Wallace, DJ Mister Cee and Craig Mack.
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Source: Sylvester Zawadzki / Universal Hip-Hop Museum
Here’s a quick guide to some of the best exhibits and museums displaying fifty years of Hip-Hop culture that we feel you need to check out as soon as you can and more than once if possible.
Hip-Hop enters its fifth decade of existence this year, and celebrations far and wide are taking place. For those who are devotees of the culture, there will be multiple opportunities to honor and celebrate it thanks to exhibitions being held at various museums and other institutions. Here are a few that we feel are the greatest to see again and again.
Universal Hip-Hop Museum
The Universal Hip-Hop Museum was launched in 2015 to be a “permanent place to celebrate the music that has made the Bronx famous around the world”, located a short distance from its birthplace at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. The current public round of programming, the [R]Evolution of Hip Hop Experience, began in 2019 in its space at the Bronx Terminal Market. Visitors can partake in the sights and sounds of numerous artifacts from artists and those close to the culture spanning 50 years as the permanent home is currently being built at the Bronx Point development at 610 Exterior Street. Once completed, it will occupy 52,000 square feet as part of a residential complex. Recently, it received a grant of $5.5 million.
In an interview, UHHM Executive Director Rocky Bucano spoke about the exciting new developments the museum has in store. “We will be opening up a traveling museum that will start here in New York City. The traveling museum will debut in Manhattan, so we’re working on a location now,” he said.
The National Hip-Hop Museum
The National Hip-Hop Museum is located in Washington, D.C. in close proximity to Howard University. It launched from the Listen Video studios owned and operated by DJ BOOM, who has been a fixture of the culture there since the 1990s and was integral to helping launch the first satellite-broadcast radio station devoted to Hip-Hop, The Rhyme while serving as a Director of Production at XM Satellite Radio. The gallery space is located within the studio grounds and is home to one of the largest collections of Hip-Hop memorabilia and artifacts around. The museum holds periodic exhibits and sponsors major events featuring iconic and contemporary Hip-Hop artists.
HipHop: Conscious Unconscious
Fotografiska New York is the host of a sprawling exhibition featuring photography capturing Hip-Hop’s fifty years of existence. The exhibit, curated in part with Sacha Jenkins and Mass Appeal, features stunning photographs dating from the culture’s inception in the Bronx to now. It features photographs taken by renowned artists such as Jamel Shabazz, Campbell Addy, Ernie Paniccioli, and more detailing the strong role of women in the culture, and also contains never-before-seen artifacts.
The exhibit runs until May 21st.
The Culture: Hip-Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century
This exhibit is the fruit of a collaborative effort between the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum, with the aim of giving the public “an opportunity to celebrate the richness of creativity and innovation hip hop has catalyzed by exploring it through social, material, and art historical lenses,” according to the Baltimore museum’s Chief Education Officer Gamynne Guillotte. Covering Hip-Hop from the year 2000, it will feature artwork that shows how the culture has impacted society through changing and reforming narratives on race, sexuality and social justice among other subjects. It will run from April 5th until July 16th in Baltimore, then at the Saint Louis Art Museum from August 25th until January 1st, 2024.
Fresh, Fly, and Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip-Hop Style
As it is well-regarded how much of Hip-Hop culture has fashion embedded within it, this new exhibit which is at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City is a welcome addition to the anniversary calendar. Featuring over 100 items ranging from the lauded Adidas tracksuits worn by RUN-DMC to vintage Karl Kani pieces sported by the late Tupac Shakur, the exhibit will also pay homage to urban brands launched by Hip-Hop artists that rose to fame such as Rocawear. The exhibit is currently running until April 23rd.
