1. Memorial Gathering for Jerry Fuchs in Brooklyn This Thursday
2. 10 Things You Should See for FotoWeek DC
3. Meet New Moon Cast Members at Fair Oaks Mall
4. Wale Watch: The “Support The Movement” Movement
5. Arts Morning Roundup: RIP Jerry Fuchs

Wale’s Attention Deficit is in stores today. For those not paying attention to rap buzz or this blog the DC/MD MC has emerged in recent years as the great hope of the area’s rap community. And, by my count, his debut marks the first major label release from a local rapper in nearly a decade.

I considered penning a post about how DC should unify and support Wale’s effort. I wouldn’t be the only person on the internet to do so. Even more than usual, the local rap bloggers and twitterers have been abuzz with well meaning but mostly empty words like support and movement.

But I decided against such a gesture. Instead let us step back and ask ourselves what a major label album release means in 2009. Not just to Wale or the greater DC area but to the world at large: nothing. As Dwayne Johnson once eloquently told Clef, it doesn’t matter.

Albums are completely irrelevant, especially in hip hop. Neither of this years most popular (relative) newcomers – Gucci Mane & Drake – have released albums. They make mixtapes and, occasionally, hit singles. Wale managed to do the former but then lost the track when he put all his eggs into Attention Deficit and the accompanying non-hits. For all his talents, Wale has never seemed like a natural hitmaker and his attempts to be one stand as the some of the album’s weakest moments.

And yes, his signing has done wonders for the DMV hip hop movement, but indirectly so. The attention (npi) he’s been getting over the past few years was a spark. He created a tangible end goal for the DC rapper and many kids either picked up a mic or got serious about their craft in the wake of his buzz. But that doesn’t mean that the success of the scene should (or can) hinge on his.

Best case and very unlikely scenario: Wale becomes a huge star and a dozen more DC rappers sign deals in the wake of this. All this does is narrows the goals for the scene. The talent (very few of whom I would describe as potential hitmakers themselves) are distracted as they scramble to create hits and build buzz in much the same way Wale has been. Maybe two or three of them actually succeed and manage to release their own albums. Maybe an even smaller fraction of them are able to turn that attention into a long term national career. The rest come back to DC and get back to doing what they’ve been doing or just disappear completely.

Cities don’t get put on, not in the long term. Consider all too brief success of recently hot rap regions: Houston and the Bay Area. Sure, their respective major label ambassadors have expanded national awareness. Many more Americans now know the names Chamillionaire and E-40, but these days just as few are interested in their work or that of their peers. These guys were legitimate stars in their cities prior to blowing up. Now the best of them they are back to being just that, the worst of them are virtual unknowns (where’s Mike Jones at?)

And, to put things in greater perspective, the label only shipped 30k copies of Attention Deficit, a pretty sure sign that this is not an album that is going to leave a permanent Nike Boot shaped footprint in the collective consciousness of the music world. Sure, it could slowly grow into something larger, but that seems unlikely given the industry’s tendency to end a press cycle as soon as first week sales come in. That’s unfortunate situation for Wale, but it is reality.

By all means buy the Wale album if you are interested in Wale or enjoy his music. But don’t do so simply because you think his success will put the DMV on. Because it will not. A single release cannot sustain a scene. Support must be continuous. If you truly want to see DMV hip hop succeed you must continue to attend concerts, spread positive word about underground artists and support their projects. (And not blindly, mind you. put your money behind the music that you feel is worthy. Indiscretion and blind “support” does as much damage to a scene as indifference. Talentless hacks getting money on the strength of their zip code only makes it harder for the cream to rise.) Today is not the day to support the DMV, everyday is.

UCB’s “Pat Your Weave” (formerly “Sweatin’ Out Weaves”) is one of the more ambitious studio/go-go integrations of recent years, the energy of the go-go folded neatly into a three minute single. Polished, certainly, but not stripped of its charater. Superficially it feels like one of many post-”Crazy In Love” Beyonce records (which, of course, feel like go-go records, word to Rich Harrison and the biters that followed) but it has better drums and slowly builds into something distinct as the heavy synth stabs come into play. Wale’s involvement is close to negligible on a musical level, but his few bars are the reason UCB is getting burn on otherwise homogeneous rap blogs.

Other recent Wale sightings in the rap blogosphere: an awkward freestyle at the BET, a remix of Kanye’s “Grammy Family,” a Chrisette Michelle cameo, a radio rip of an unreleased Travis Barker, and a new push on his pre-buzz video “Uptown Roamers.” If getting your artist on aggregation blogs still qualifies as doing something right, then it is safe to say that his team is doing something right. Attention Deficit drops tomorrow. None of the aforementioned songs appear on it.

Tittsworth:

-A man has our elevator filled to the brim w/plants. Its like a 2 acre jungle crammed into a cubicle. he’s complaining the door won’t shut.

-i think i just discovered the malkovich floor of my building? what exactly is going on the 3rd floor? :-)

-Mother fucker, I’m trying to watch the lost boys!!

Wale:

-dear ucb..i will go to breakfast w/ yall but i am NOT goin to eat a Dinosaur sized pancake at “The Griddle”

-everybody askin what kinda shoes im wearin…haa

-09 airmaxes http://pic.gd/38d0d6

Casper Bangs:

-is listening to some old songs he wrote and thinking that they are not that good.

-The Whitespace 7″ should in stores soon, but it’s available now here: http://www.dischord.com/release/ws01/whitspace

Tabi Bonney:

-My bookbag smells like it’s been eatin chicken behind my back…literally

-Somebody somewhere has candy paint…on their house though.

-I think I’m just gonna say “Jordan!” after I have sex or something from now on.

Rapper 20 Bello; Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

Thanks to the hard work of both hip-hop pioneers and young upstarts throughout D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, the DMV is now officially on the map. It’s also in the dictionary. The Urban Dictionary—but still.

Most regions with thriving hip-hop scenes have catchy nicknames, but before the whole DMV acronym caught on in the mid-aughts, the greater nation’s capital lacked one. Chocolate City, popularized decades ago, was starting to get a little moldy, and it ignores both the all-important suburbs and the fact that D.C. is becoming more cream-filled by the day. There have been valiant efforts to make “The Middle East” (for middle East Coast, get it?) stick, but it didn’t happen. Ditto for “Tri-State,” which failed not only because it’s already taken but because, technically, only two states are involved.

So where’d the acronym come from? In an informal poll of area hip-hop luminaries—from Judah to Kokayi, Head-Roc to Overok—the same three names came up over and over: Wale, DJ Rob AKA Mista DMV, and 20Bello.

Actually, there was one other contender, too: MC-turntablist-producer DJ Eurok maintains the first use of the DMV to mean D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (rather than a certain dysfunctional city agency), was on local corner store phone cards emblazoned with phrases such as “Excellent DMV local access.” He may be right, but in terms of making the term hot, credit definitely goes to the hip-hop community.

“Since I was a kid we always said ‘DC, Maryland, Virginia’ area in that order,” writes Tyrone Norris of Rosetta Stoned in an e-mail. “I think I hear DMV used most when describing the hip-hop scene in the area. If anyone really pushed that phrase, it was the rappers.”

Wale certainly took “DMV” global—thanks to his major-label deal and increasingly high profile, he has been able to sprinkle the term in countless interviews and performances all over the country, but his manager says he didn’t coin the term and doesn’t claim to. “When I started managing him in 06 it was already becoming ubiquitous in the area,” Dan Weisman writes in an e-mail.

DJ Rob has the distinction of being the first person to use the term on national TV: He was on MTV’s Sucka Free in 2006 and said he was representing “the DMV.” And when host DJ Cipha Sounds made a dumb joke about long lines, DJ Rob quickly checked him: “Naw, D.C., Maryland, and V-A—get it right,” he said.

Rich, the owner of the Target Squad empire, says his crew, and Rob in particular, are the originators of the DMV movement—he recalls that DJ Rob and Target Squad introduced the term to former WKYS radio jock II Face the Wild Boy, who in turn popularized it with on-air personalities. “After II Face started saying it on the radio hard, then [WPGC] 95 started jumping on it,” he says. “And then it was like domino effect, it started jumping, jumping—everybody started saying it.”

But Rich stops just short of saying Target Squad actually made up the acronym: “DMV is Department of Motor Vehicles, so of course we didn’t invent it. We wanted to copyright it, but our lawyers said, ‘No, are you crazy? That’s the Department of Motor Vehicles.’”

Rapper 20Bello, on the other hand, says he was the first to call this area the DMV and has been using the term since 2003. He offers compelling evidence. 20 possesses a flier from that year, and although a date isn’t listed, he can convincingly authenticate it.

“At the end of ’03, I started letting hair grow,” he says. “That’s when me and [fellow rapper] Hevewae did the promo flier. In ’04, ’05 I had cornrows—that was before I started growing my ’locks in ’06, when I was on the cover of City Paper. Before ’04, ’05, my hair wasn’t long, and that’s my picture on the DMV fliers.”

In fact, 20 says his former partner Katt Galloway coined the abbreviation during a recording session for a song they did back in ’03, and from then on, 20 decided to put it on everything he did: T-shirts, Web sites such as DMV Undaground, open mic nights. He also recorded a track called “DMV” back in ’05. “I never wanted nothing out of it—I did it because I loved the music, the whole scene. If I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t waste my time saying I did—I don’t get no royalty check every time somebody says ‘DMV’—I get no benefit.”

Both the Target Squad camp and 20Bello and crew have people to back up their claims; both also agree that while there are certain bragging rights that come with christening this area the “DMV,” the most important thing is that it has brought some unity to a formerly fragmented region and music scene.

“Now you can’t rep D.C. without repping V-A or MD,” says Rich. “This area will be like the bext ATL, the next MIA—we can go platinum in this area,” says Rich.

“The main reason I did it was because of unity,” says 20.  “Nobody was supporting nobody, people weren’t coming out to the open mics…D.C. wouldn’t support V-A, Baltimore wouldn’t support D.C.…we had to get it under one banner. Now, if you’re rappin’, you’re part of the DMV.”

After a very promising (and very free) test release of the clean version several months ago, Diamond District’s In Da Ruff is officially available in stores today, with cuss words restored and bonus tracks. Though it isn’t getting the national acclaim that Wale is, the trio of emcees XO, yU and rapper/producer Oddisee have cut what is certainly the most complete D.C. rap album of the year. And it might just be the best in many years.

In The Ruff was also released on nice double vinyl, a huge look for a contemporary rap album. Whether that vinyl can actually be purchased within the city limits is yet to be seen—not one of the remaining boutique-y record stores in this city actively stocks new hip hop vinyl. (Shame on you, Smash, Som, Red Onion & Crooked Beat. Oh yes, we’re naming names.)

We at Arts Desk have mentioned before that the DMV’s own Wale is maybe probably kind of dating Beyonce’s little sister Solange. Now, the gossip site Mediatakeout.com, (say what you want about ‘em, but they very often get these things right) is reporting that Solange and Wale are house-hunting in Brooklyn. Or at least that Solange is house-hunting and Wale is tagging along. Or he’s been spotted in the general area of her house hunt or something. Whatever—the couple has been seen together in Brooklyn and apparently some kind of real estate is involved, and it sounds like things between them are getting serious.

This is a very troubling turn of events.

Solange is a nice enough woman, and we’re sure Wale would feel at home in Brooklyn, a borough awash in tight jeans and nerd raps. But as he gets closer to Solange, it’s almost inevitable that he’ll become chummy with Jay-Z and, as many young rappers on the cusp of stardom know, that is not the move.

So, Wale, if you’re reading this, here are a few reasons why you should stay far, far away from one Shawn Carter. (Hanging out with Bun B is still perfectly acceptable, though).

• You don’t want to become the next Memph Bleek

Yes, your album Attention Deficit is finally coming out on Nov. 10 and everyone is very excited about it! Right now. But we were also excited about Memphis Bleek’s debut album Coming of Age. For some reason, being associated with Jay-Z is deadly for up-and-coming rappers.  So much as brush up against Jay at a club and you can kiss your rap aspirations goodbye.  And it’s even worse if Jay actually decides to have a hand in your career development. Remember Diamonds in Da Rough? Peedi Peedi? Amil? Yeah, neither do we.

• He will outshine you

You could go from D.C.’s  “hip-hop break-out star” to “brother-in-law of Jay-Z and Beyonce” in the blink of an eye, and no one wants that to happen. No matter how dope you are or how great your debut album turns out to be (fingers-crossed), Jay-Z’s star power will extinguish yours. If you befriend him, you are totally on your way to being listed as an “unidentified friend of Jay-Z” in some candid picture in Us Weekly.

• If you mess over Solange, you could be the next victim on that Summer Jam stage

Jay-Z is known for calling people out during Hot 97’s annual Summer Jam concert, and if you don’t treat his wife’s sister right, I imagine he’d make it his business to similarly humiliate you. If there are any unflattering pictures from your past, hide them NOW.

• He’s going to make you an outlet for his umlaut fetish

Jay-Z loves a good piece of unnecessary punctuation—see the umlauts over the “y” in his name on the cover of the CD single for “Dead Presidents.” Wale, you have managed to teach an entire nation—an entire planet!—of hip-hop lovers to pronounce your name without resorting to so much as an accent, but there’s a chance Jay-Z could convince you to use one. Don’t do it.

Yesterday the Washington Post ran a large feature on DC hip hop.* Chris Richards’ piece offers a cursory “why hasn’t DC rap blown up?” history and intro as well as short profiles of Wale, XO, Kingpen Slim, Tabi Bonney, Phil Ade and producers Best Kept Secret. It’s a well meaning and pretty efficient overview, but it’s also predictably been causing some debate within the DC hip hop community as well as some concern about the orientation of Wale’s hat amongst WaPo readers.

And perhaps some concern is warranted (err… within the hip hop community, not about Wale’s hat). The easiest way to critique an article like this is to point out artist omissions. I understand the need for space in a newspaper column so I’ll mostly try to avoid such trivial complaints here.** But there are some larger holes in the story that deserve to be addressed.

Mainly Richards’ piece oversimplifies the scene(s), painting a picture that every rapper pre-Wale was either rocking the go-go or desperately chasing a major deal. The narrative that go-go music has permanently squashed rap aspirations for the past two decades is a tidy one, but not entirely accurate. For one, it almost completely writes artists of the U st./Freestyle Union/Kaffa House open mic lineage and aesthetic out of the story. Sure, this scene was closely tied to the transient population at Howard and other colleges and as such owed more to Tribe Called Quest or the burgeoning Rawkus movement than they did go-go heroes like Fat Rodney or street favorites like Section 8 Mob. But it actually was a pretty prominent and distinctly hip hop scene that was jumping off in DC during the 90s.

More than that, acts like Unspoken Heard, Storm The Unpredictable and Priest Da Nomad were gaining a minor rep throughout the Northeast. These guys weren’t signing major deals (or necessarily even gunning for them) but still held a certain amount of clout outside of the city. Their records were available up and down 95 at legendary Manhattan vinyl outlets like Fat Beats and major web distributors like Sandbox Automatic in an era where it wasn’t uncommon for indie rap 12″s to move 5-10k with ease. Before blogs, this sort of underground buzz was less measurable but 12″/college radio burn was not all that different from the sort of attention Wale is getting right now. None of these acts became national mainstream stars (it’s unlikely that Wale will either), but many serious hip hop heads were at least aware of their existence. I mean I was buying Unspoken 12″s as a teen in New Jersey so they must have been doing something right.

But I suspect that the local success of that community can partially account for its relative failure nationally. These indie, dare I say “backpack,” rappers were so self sufficient that they could afford to remain somewhat insulated, separate from the go-go rappers and the Scarface-inspired street dudes. Other cities with similar demographics – Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta – have found success nationally because the streets were forced to merge with the campuses organically. The scenes were so small that the d-boys mingled with the conscious rappers until you couldn’t tell the difference anymore. And that’s usually when things get interesting.*** But in DC there was less of a need for that sort of explicit unity or overlap because both the the go-gos and the uptown open mics were doing so well independently of one another.

The success of DC’s current wave of rappers is probably tied to the blurring of these lines. In recent years both communities have been so ingrained within in DC culture that the current wave of rappers have no choice but to adopt hand me down reverence for both. Take XO for example, who came up rhyming at the decidedly post-Union Tru Skool open mics but is also practically a descendant of go-go royalty, his parents being managers for the genre’s unheralded progenitors the Young Senators. Hopefully these types of blends can catch on nationally. If not it’s already resulted in plenty of great music.

* In the interest of full disclosure: I, too, have written about hip hop for the Post.
** But really no mention of Section 8 Mob or Questionmark Asylum at all?! Along with Nonchalant, those are literally the only DC rappers that casual national rap fans could name drop prior to Wale.
*** Ask Kanye West.

It’s been a minute, but I’m back with another round up of recent local rapps. (I’ve also officially christened the column, partially in tribute to the great Mr. Magic.)

Likeblood f/ Bobby Valentino – “Money Over Here“
As of late it seems like there are too many rappers and not enough rap groups. Mbea, Young E & Dre Strong, collectively Likeblood, are wise to pool their resources and create a strong hip hop trio. For their most recent single the trio has linked with A-Town crooner Bobby Valentino (whose name I cannot mentioned without a nod to Mista) to cut “Money Over Here,” which notably sounds like popular hip hop. It could comfortably be programmed into a PGC playlist without sounding like an obvious local concession.

Bear Witnez! – Bear Season Mixtape
Bear Wit lives up to his name by rapping like a bear does. He’s hungry and growling. Also he spits lots of metaphors about hibernation and such. Dude sounds best on post-MOP/Freeway style bombastic soul production and the tape does start to lose some steam when he steps out of that comfort zone. Still I’m really looking forward to some sort of cage match battle between him and Big Bear. Standout cut: “DC United” f/ Wale & Kingpen Slim

Wale f/ Colin Munroe – “Bittersweet“
Wait. How the hell did they clear the “Bittersweet Symphony” sample? “Bittersweet Symphony” barely cleared the “Bittersweet Symphony” sample. Anyway, for those not keeping score, DJ Toomp originally passed this beat to Atlanta’s Born Wit It for last years underground favorite “Stack My Paper Up.” Obviously Born Wit It didn’t have the Jimmy Iovine stacks necessary to get the song a proper release, so Wale got their table scraps. What made the Born Wit It record so compelling was how disconnected it was. They took this totally emotional beat and rhymed about gettin money to it. And in turn they made stacking paper seem like a grand, emotive event. Wale takes the more predictable approach by making a record about how bittersweet life is. Then he raps about cortisone or something. The dude Colin Munroe looks a little like the guy from The Verve.

Don Juan – Twit Tape Mixtape
Another new tape from recent Jive signee Don Juan, intended as a more “lyrical” counterpart to his previous Lookie Looky tape, the Twit Tape sees him mostly kicking a string of short form freestyles over popular beats. Beyond that the concept of the tape is vague at best. Is it a mixtape you are supposed to twitter about? Or a mixtape about twitter? I don’t even know. But like most twitterers, Don Juan keeps his raps brief and to the point. Enjoyable and forgettable. Standout cut: “Crispy” f/Fever, Tyme & Skware.

More recent DC Rapps: Kingpen Slim & Whitefolkz – “Big Bills,” T-2 & Kingpen Slim – “These N***az,” J-Scrilla – Culture Of Honor, X.O. – “Do It,” Jazz In The Diamond District Soundtrack.

A minor Wale-related scandal hit the web this week, surrounding a 93.9 ad campaign. On the radio commercial, someone claiming to be Wale’s cousin makes a sound-alike parody of Wale’s seemingly aborted lead single “Chillin,” and tries to push it to the station. He is swiftly rejected in favor of Birdman and Alicia Keys records.

Wale fans didn’t take to kindly to this, blowing up message boards and station managers inboxes about their unwillingness to support local music.

Sure, the ad probably wouldn’t sting so hard if the station did make an effort to throw a little more in the way of local music into regular rotation. But the Wale fanboys and girls might be waving their DMV flag a little too hard in this case. It’s pretty clear from the audio that the butt of the joke was the guy who was trying to get on by creating a fake Wale record and not Wale himself. And even if they were, in fact, clowning “Chillin,” it was deserved. That record is atrocious, as shameless as any pop rap that WKYS would be playing in its place. Aesthetically, it has very little to do with Washington, D.C.

Predictably, Wale has taken to twitter. Not to complain about the perceived diss, but to complain about how he didn’t complain about the perceived diss: