New Projects and The Passion of the ’88: What’s a West Coast?
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
I’m working on two new projects, sort of. Two cats that wanted to get something but don’t have the time to go full steam just yet. So I took two projects I’ve been sitting on and pulled 10-page stories from them that can be a pitch for an OGN oh a stand-alone story for an anthology. One of them is a new version of my Esau story, about a cowboy that gets trapped in prehistoric Utah and finds he has nothing left to live for but to kill his brother before the dinosaurs do. The other one is a retelling of the Yoruban creation myth except with mystical animals and African ninjas. It’s sort of smart blacksploitation meets the old kung-fu serials. I already sent the Esau 10-pager off and got a tentative “let’s do it,” Mantis is proving to be a bit harder to pull a ten page story from. But, I figure I can get those 10-pagers out before November and still have the month free to do my novel.
I wonder what the logistics would be of packaging those ten-pagers up with a ten-page sample of the baseball story and sending them off to retailers/diamond reps for free. Maybe even five per retailer or so they can sneak some in their customers’ boxes. Then just self publish them. I’d have to time it so the free comics go out during solicitation month, just something to get people excited and then drop the full projects on them. I wonder if Diamond would be willing to do something like that with a no-name like myself (simple answer is "yes, if you pay them enough"). Just wondering – not like I have that kind of money (yet).
_____________________
1988 comes, take a moment to appreciate it:
Public Enemy releases there second and most pivotal album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” NWA releases there second and most infamous album “Straight Outta Compton.” Eric B. & Rakim releases their second and illest album “Follow the Leader.” EPMD releases their first album “Strictly Business.” Big Daddy Kane releases his first album “Long Live the Kane.” Rob Base releases “It Takes Two.” Boogie Down Productions releases their second album, the first without DJ Scott La Rock, “By Any Means Necessary.”
Pretty good year, right? Not done. Biz Markee’s first album. Kool Moe Dee’s second album. MC Shan’s second album. Jungle Brothers’ first album. Slick Rick’s first album. Ultramagnetic MC’s first album. Kid & Play’s first album. Eazy E’s first album. Heavy D’s second album. 2 Live Crew’s second album. Salt & Peppa’s second album. I’m not even naming all the acts that dropped albums, just the ones that are considered to be some of the most influential (or simply memorable) hip-hop records ever recorded.
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince release hip-hop’s first double album.
De la Sol and Special Ed release their first singles. Their follow-up albums come out in early 1989. Q-Tip from a Tribe Called Quest appears for the first time on the Jungle Brother’s album.
“Yo! MTV Raps” makes it debut.
Source Magazine has its roots as a newsletter distributed throughout Boston.
It’s not fair to say that hip-hip exploded in 1988, it was born again. It was a different sound – a different message. It was no longer Adidas and battle-raps – cats are no longer break-dancing. There’s no longer this Brooklyn/Bronx/Queens/Manhattan divide. There’s the East Coast and West Coast. All of a sudden we get roped in with Floridian novelty acts like 2 Live Crew only because it isn’t thug-life from Compton. It isn’t Eazy, Dre, Cube, Yella, Arabian Prince and Ren telling people to fuck the police.
It’s East Coast rap.
Even the New York scene became more global but in a completely different way. DJ Scott La Rock from Boogie Down Productions gets shot and killed trying to break up a fight – I remember seeing it on the news as a kid and being heartbroken. KRS-One teams up with Public Enemy and starts this stop the violence movement. Their rhymes become responsible, calling for the people to band together and rise up, not to kill each other. While people on the west coast were bragging about gun violence, promoting drugs and pimping the talents on the east coast were calling for more socially aware and politically active communities.
I’d sit down to watch Yo! MTV Raps and see Chuck D and Flava Flav rhyming on Rebel Without a Pause followed immediately by Straight Outta Compton. It was a weird time; people didn’t know what to make of rap. Us kids, we were listening to both sides, not really getting much out of either. We weren’t gangbanging or protesting, we just liked the rebellious feel they both had.
My father took away my NWA tapes because of all the bad press they were getting. He didn’t want me wearing certain colors because the paper said they were gang colors (the media had a habit of irresponsibly assuming that everyone who listened to rap had the west coast blood/crip mentality). Here I am, ten years old, a fan of the music and my father’s taking precautions to keep me out of gang troubles.
The media in New York treated West Coast hip-hop like we treat terrorism today. A threat capable of tearing down society – creeping into the cities and into the lives of our youth. If we don’t watch out, if our parent’s are diligent – we’re going to end up just like Compton. It wasn’t a movement or a lifestyle – it wasn’t an expression or a protest - it was a threat.
And my parents bought into it. So did my friends’ parents. A year earlier my mom was buying me Run DMC tapes on Fulton Street. Now my father’s trying to introduce me to Led Zeppelin. And all this did was make us want it more. Sneaking bootleg tapes of west coast rap. Walking around the house rapping, bleeping the nasty parts but letting our parents know it was there.
We bought it and bought it and bought it. We fueled the rebirth of hip-hop with our dollars, killing what we loved about it in the process. I went from idolizing break-dancing and dissing the Bronx to idolizing gats and dissing mark-ass-tricks. A bunch of white executives were getting rich of the shit and they attributed it to the controversy – they wanted more. And as the years passed hip-hop got more and more ridiculous. My friends and I continued to eat it up sight unseen (or sound unheard, I suppose) and we didn’t even look back.
My old mix tapes got put in the shoe box under the bed. Only cassettes from 1988 and up were readily accessible. All the shit from 1987 was too soft – it wasn’t real enough. It didn’t “speak” to me.
I wonder what the logistics would be of packaging those ten-pagers up with a ten-page sample of the baseball story and sending them off to retailers/diamond reps for free. Maybe even five per retailer or so they can sneak some in their customers’ boxes. Then just self publish them. I’d have to time it so the free comics go out during solicitation month, just something to get people excited and then drop the full projects on them. I wonder if Diamond would be willing to do something like that with a no-name like myself (simple answer is "yes, if you pay them enough"). Just wondering – not like I have that kind of money (yet).
_____________________
1988 comes, take a moment to appreciate it:
Public Enemy releases there second and most pivotal album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” NWA releases there second and most infamous album “Straight Outta Compton.” Eric B. & Rakim releases their second and illest album “Follow the Leader.” EPMD releases their first album “Strictly Business.” Big Daddy Kane releases his first album “Long Live the Kane.” Rob Base releases “It Takes Two.” Boogie Down Productions releases their second album, the first without DJ Scott La Rock, “By Any Means Necessary.”
Pretty good year, right? Not done. Biz Markee’s first album. Kool Moe Dee’s second album. MC Shan’s second album. Jungle Brothers’ first album. Slick Rick’s first album. Ultramagnetic MC’s first album. Kid & Play’s first album. Eazy E’s first album. Heavy D’s second album. 2 Live Crew’s second album. Salt & Peppa’s second album. I’m not even naming all the acts that dropped albums, just the ones that are considered to be some of the most influential (or simply memorable) hip-hop records ever recorded.
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince release hip-hop’s first double album.
De la Sol and Special Ed release their first singles. Their follow-up albums come out in early 1989. Q-Tip from a Tribe Called Quest appears for the first time on the Jungle Brother’s album.
“Yo! MTV Raps” makes it debut.
Source Magazine has its roots as a newsletter distributed throughout Boston.
It’s not fair to say that hip-hip exploded in 1988, it was born again. It was a different sound – a different message. It was no longer Adidas and battle-raps – cats are no longer break-dancing. There’s no longer this Brooklyn/Bronx/Queens/Manhattan divide. There’s the East Coast and West Coast. All of a sudden we get roped in with Floridian novelty acts like 2 Live Crew only because it isn’t thug-life from Compton. It isn’t Eazy, Dre, Cube, Yella, Arabian Prince and Ren telling people to fuck the police.
It’s East Coast rap.
Even the New York scene became more global but in a completely different way. DJ Scott La Rock from Boogie Down Productions gets shot and killed trying to break up a fight – I remember seeing it on the news as a kid and being heartbroken. KRS-One teams up with Public Enemy and starts this stop the violence movement. Their rhymes become responsible, calling for the people to band together and rise up, not to kill each other. While people on the west coast were bragging about gun violence, promoting drugs and pimping the talents on the east coast were calling for more socially aware and politically active communities.
I’d sit down to watch Yo! MTV Raps and see Chuck D and Flava Flav rhyming on Rebel Without a Pause followed immediately by Straight Outta Compton. It was a weird time; people didn’t know what to make of rap. Us kids, we were listening to both sides, not really getting much out of either. We weren’t gangbanging or protesting, we just liked the rebellious feel they both had.
My father took away my NWA tapes because of all the bad press they were getting. He didn’t want me wearing certain colors because the paper said they were gang colors (the media had a habit of irresponsibly assuming that everyone who listened to rap had the west coast blood/crip mentality). Here I am, ten years old, a fan of the music and my father’s taking precautions to keep me out of gang troubles.
The media in New York treated West Coast hip-hop like we treat terrorism today. A threat capable of tearing down society – creeping into the cities and into the lives of our youth. If we don’t watch out, if our parent’s are diligent – we’re going to end up just like Compton. It wasn’t a movement or a lifestyle – it wasn’t an expression or a protest - it was a threat.
And my parents bought into it. So did my friends’ parents. A year earlier my mom was buying me Run DMC tapes on Fulton Street. Now my father’s trying to introduce me to Led Zeppelin. And all this did was make us want it more. Sneaking bootleg tapes of west coast rap. Walking around the house rapping, bleeping the nasty parts but letting our parents know it was there.
We bought it and bought it and bought it. We fueled the rebirth of hip-hop with our dollars, killing what we loved about it in the process. I went from idolizing break-dancing and dissing the Bronx to idolizing gats and dissing mark-ass-tricks. A bunch of white executives were getting rich of the shit and they attributed it to the controversy – they wanted more. And as the years passed hip-hop got more and more ridiculous. My friends and I continued to eat it up sight unseen (or sound unheard, I suppose) and we didn’t even look back.
My old mix tapes got put in the shoe box under the bed. Only cassettes from 1988 and up were readily accessible. All the shit from 1987 was too soft – it wasn’t real enough. It didn’t “speak” to me.
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posted by Jason at
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