Something 2 dance 2
Local heroes and new acts rewind to the ’80s and the ecstatic sound of danceable hip-hop
By Alfred Lee
Moby's 'Night' Out
The Circus Stays in Town
Running the Voodoo Down
Life in the Fast Lane
Too Much Junkie Business
The Cool Kids Are Alright
Kazell
Arabian Prince says he’s retired. Or, at least, he does “not have to work anymore.” And why not? He’s already enjoyed legendary success, starting one musical movement as the ground zero (alongside old-friend Egyptian Lover) of L.A.’s electro-hop in the mid-’80s, and ushering in another as an original member of N.W.A. The guy who was once on the cover of Straight Outta Compton half-jokingly now only agrees to interviews on the condition that they don’t interfere with viewings of SpongeBob SquarePants and golf practice. Yet Arabian – and many of his fellow ’80s hip-hop icons – can’t seem to stop playing shows these days.
“I’m getting calls all the time,” he says. “I just got off the phone with Egyptian Lover – and this is the first time for me to even hear about this – they’re doing a show out in Spotlight 29 Casino at Coachella, an old school reunion with Tone Loc. You would never see anything like that before … . And a lot of the clubs now are calling and wanting us to come in and do old school sets.” Locally, Arabian has recently performed at the Echo, the Do-Over at Crane’s, and the Roxy, where just last month old-school heavyweight Afrika Bambaataa manned the decks. And he hopes to capitalize on that renewed interest when a greatest hits album drops on L.A.’s Stones Throw Records in the coming months.
Within the music and spirit of 1980s hip-hop, both veterans and fledgling hip-hop artists on the local scene have found common ground with an L.A. music crowd that’s increasingly headed toward dance and indie pastures.
“The big movement in L.A. is electronic music, it’s electro, it’s not necessarily hip-hop,” explains Matthew Goldman, co-founder and promoter of PYT nights at Jimmy’s Lounge, which has booked the likes of Arabian Prince along with newer hip-hop acts. He says the current club climate has opened a crack to hip-hop acts palatable to, well, dancing. “We’re in between popular styles – I think the French disco- electro stuff is kind of fading in the favor of more trendsetting hipster kids,” Goldman says. “Meanwhile, those who are booking these talents are looking for people who are still relevant and good and interesting and reachable … . Maybe that’s the next thing, finding older hip-hop acts or hip-hop DJs who are still interested in being relevant.”
On the other hand, up-and-coming hip-hop artists are tapping into that audience by reworking old-school sensibilities that fall in line with the current demand for discerning fun, a tendency reflected both nationally – with the likes of the Cool Kids, Spank Rock, and Kid Sister – and locally. L.A.’s The 87 Stick Up Kids are a throwback foursome – rappers Nash, The Deacon, Squish, and DJ Rockwell – who seem to feel most at home referencing Rakim lyrics over consciously old-school beats. They’ve been linked with the likes of other local acts such as Brother Reade and Pacific Division, who, though less directly influenced, have found success by at least partly harkening back to the spirit and enthusiasm of an older, less pretentious form of hip-hop.
“We’re not genre specific you know, we’re kind of in between genres in what we do,” says the Stick Up Kids’ DJ Rockwell. “We don’t really do like hip-hop hip-hop shows, you won’t see us billed with Tha Alkaholiks probably for a while.”
The group formed about a year ago when members recognized the oncoming sea change, according to rapper The Deacon.
“Specifically for me, I remember I went and saw Brother Reade and Spank Rock at Safari Sam’s, and when I got out of that show I was very much in that mindset. I’d been a solo MC before, I’d done other projects, but I was like, you know what, there’s no reason why if this is what is coming back right now, that we shouldn’t be a part of what’s happening,” he says. “I couldn’t remember the last time that I’d been to a hip-hop show where it was like, everybody had their hands in the air, was dancing, wildin’ out, having a good time. I remember when that was the norm, as opposed to now when you go and everybody kind of stands around with their arms crossed and it’s like you’ve got somebody lording over you on stage.”
Jet Set Jay of Silverlake rap trio Time Machine agrees. “The idea of the dude, or the dude and all his friends, standing on stage and standing still and rapping, or walking back and forth across the stage, and a bunch of kids just standing on the floor and looking up at him – it’s a wrap, it’s over. The most beautiful thing to me about the direction that nightlife is going right now is that it’s cool to be enthusiastic again,” he says. “You see kids walking around dressed like they just melted a pack of Skittles and put it in a bucket and poured it over their heads.”
Time Machine, which played one of Goldman’s PYT nights just last week, is moving away from its origins as a more explicitly throwback group – its members are even changing their stage names in time for a new album, Life is Expensive, due out in May – while at the same time attempting to acknowledge those influences in a newer context. Jay and his two partners, Biscuit and Mekalek, found some recent crossover success after mashing Kid Sister’s “Control” with Janet Jackson’s 1986 hit of the same name.
“Maybe it’s not cool to be glorifying the golden age of rap right now,” Jay says, “but it is cool to have something that people might compare to an Arabian Prince or an Egyptian Lover, or freestyle music, or any of the ’80s electronic music that you might say had some soul to it.”
This intersection of both ’80s and modern hip-hop with dance music and hipster nightlife itself recalls the ’80s L.A. scene.
“Now you got guys in there who look like gang bangers hanging out with nerds and hippies and stuff like that— man, it’s a beautiful thing,” says Arabian Prince. “It’s going back to the fact that in the ’80s, there was no such thing as urban music, or this music, or that music. When we went to a club, no one came in with an expectation of what you were going to play, whether it be Cyndi Lauper, ABC, Parliament-Funkadelic, Prince, Sugarhill Gang, it was all one music, it all worked together.”
Published: 03/26/2008
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