Comments on: DMV Rap Attack: Washington Post Weigh In

By: DMV Rap Attack: Likeblood Orgins - Arts Desk - Washington City Paper

DMV Rap Attack: Likeblood Orgins - Arts Desk - Washington City Paper — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:16:55 +0000

[...] been said before but the DC hip hop history books go back much further than most recent press tells. It’s [...]

By: word life

word life — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:05:32 +0000

wale not main stream? wasn't he the mc for MtV VMA's house band? right now is the best time for dc hip hop since the days you could hit Power Moves (kaffa house)on Tue, Skool Yard(the cage) on Wed, Soul Camp (hung jury pub)on Thur, Hip Hop Forum (erico's) on Fri, and some random show on sat. Not to mention parties/shows at State of the Union...

By: DJStylus

DJStylus — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:13:09 +0000

Just to amend your analysis of the Freestyle Union scene, most of the artists involved were DC natives. Toni wasn't but Priest, Kokayi, Storm, Sub-Z and Rub the MC were all original locals, as well as most of the younger cats who went on to become The Amphibians, Dirty Water, Heron Gibran, etc. The audiences were pretty transient though, I'll give you that. And WaPo did a feature story on the scene as well as a DC great rap hope story a few years later. I won't split hairs on omissions either since the piece was about right now. I will agree with cozy that you can't talk about DC hip-hop history without mentioning Team Demolition. I had records from their crew (Optical the Visionary comes to mind) before I even knew they were from here. Same for 3LG. Their Live from State of the Union album is critically important. They were The Roots before I heard Organix.

By: DQ

DQ — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:20:24 +0000

I don't see why Northwestern wouldn't be a market for a more bohemian sort of rap. There's also the Chicago State that Kanye famously dropped out of. (Though there's no question that U of C is a very un-hip hop place made up of white, foreign and Asian students, i can't help note that its very unofficial motto is a punchline straight out of the dozens: "If it was easy, it'd be your mother!")

By: JacketFan

JacketFan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:41:33 +0000

The comment by the article writer "Other cities with similar demographics – Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta – have found success nationally because the streets were forced to merge with the campuses organically." That doesn't make any sense at at! First of all, the major colleges in Chicago at U of Chicago and Northwestern, hardly bastions of "conscious rappers" Now Atlanta and DC have huge black colleges. So the merging of the d-boy crowds and backpackers kind of/sort of makes sense "conceptually" but has no correlation to why DC doesn't have a break out rapper. I'm based in Atlanta and I've always wondered that - LA, New Orleans, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, and even St. Louis have generated crossover mega rap stars. But DC has never really done it. I'm sure it's very complex reason why that's true. I don't know enough about the DC scene to even guess. But I do know it has nothing with the college and d-boy mixing or not mixing together. It's something WAY deeper than that. Most of the cities with breakout artists don't have a "significant" black college scene, including blacks that go to white colleges.

By: DQ

DQ — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:13:47 +0000

jj, it's really just the commentators like me that are playing the lazy "exclusions" game, the post itself is pretty explicitly about a subtler point: that a "go-go vs. major deal" history leaves out a past bohemian independent scene, and the phenomena of regional acts quietly doing numbers over a wide area. The insight is that for hip hop elsewhere different strains have necessarily bled into each other in a way that perhaps has taken 'til now to happen in DC. For me that's an interesting idea, so this commentary adds to and expands on the original article in a valuable way.

By: jj

jj — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:00:23 +0000

man, you read that story all wrong. It was not a piece on DMV rap history. It was about the now with a nod towards the then. Sure, he could have listed EVERY DC artist in the past, but for the sake of the story, he just needed to list a few. If I were his editor, I would have looked at listing anymore than what he did as overkill. Your blog post just comes across as typical City Paper bitching. We are all thrilled you know a lot about this subject, but you missed the forest for the trees on this one.

By: cozy

cozy — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:56:44 +0000

yea an in the 90 team demo ran shit ran shit the 1st group from dmv to put out a full length lp independent the 1st group from dmv to be in the source, an what about infinite loop 3LG, IF YOU GONNA DO A PEICE ON d.c hip hop history an you want to call another writer out know it all an tell it right! Peace to the HIP HOP FEDERATIN! An Storm ,Preist , AN Opuis all sold over sea but so did Team Demo, TD was also the 1st D,C group to be on the Stretch an Bobbito show, so get the history right

By: DQ

DQ — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:38:33 +0000

I woulda thought that Kev Brown and Oddisee woulda been two names that rap fans would be aware of nationally pretty much pre-Wale through The Magnificent, Port Authority, Starr Status etc. but maybe that's just the internet backpacker/okayplayer/producer ghetto telescoping that perception. As for Wale, still think it's true that Interscope should get their mitts on "W on the Fitted" and release it as a single while the weather's still decent. That chorus has really grown on me and the track bangs.

By: Shelliano

Shelliano — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:56:23 +0000

Wow... No mention of the Oy Boyz??? I mean. seriously? Like they weren't on BET a few years ago with Paul Wall (when he was on FIRE) in "Lockdown"... Asylum squashed that bid for mainstream acceptance, but the Oy movement has continued to be strong. I have seen them SHUT CLUBS DOWN with major label artists getting BOOED off stage (Young Buck--pre phone call-- at Love is just one example)... It amazing how they continued to be over looked in the "outside" DC populace.... Outside being that same "college, transient crowd" you were talking about...