Bastard Swordsman

Back in January 1999, I’d just been recently promoted to manager @ Tower Records & Video in Boston. Within two weeks, I’d become the senior manager of the 1st floor. Within a month’s time I was in charge of the entire video & magazine floor. After 6 weeks past 6 PM every night I was second in authority to only the store’s key supervisor. This meant that I was in charge of all three floors if he was off premises or busy.

In six short weeks I’d become the “Right Hand Of God” as they called it in the store. Not only was I charge of the store but I also was trained extensively in loss prevention and apprehension techniques. I was essentially trained in everything but camera work so when they were going to take down thieves, I usually got the call to help out.

Being that I worked mostly at night I had to be trained in everything so I learned the ins and outs of that store in record time. Six weeks on that job felt like six months. It was physically, mentally and emotionally draining. I immediately started looking for a way out. I hated the overly corporate get money at any cost approach @ Tower. The employees loved music but the management? They only loved profit. It is possible to have a job doing what you love, right?

One of my co-workers, Oscar Melendez was thinking the exact same thing I was. He was a DJ, producer and a student taking studio engineering. His heroes were Ivan “DJ Doc” Rodriguez & Eddie Sancho and he began telling me about a storefront he’d recently seen available in a great location. He told me that the rent wasn’t exorbitant in the area, either. We had a discussion with fellow employees and ex Tower workers about the possibility of opening a Fat Beats in Boston there. We began to dream.

We’d always had discussions in the past about how we didn’t understand how come Boston didn’t have a Fat Beats location but Oscar said “Maybe we should put together a proposal and try to get one here”. Word? We decided to go around the store and see if we could round up some people that knew some people. If we could get a Fat Beats made, we could run it ourselves and finally escape the tyrannical grip of MTS Inc.

At the time we were in an area full of quality record stores that included Tower Records, Newbury Comics, UndergroundHipHop.com Store, Biscuithead Records, CD Spins, Boston Beat, Mystery Train II, Satellite Records, Nuggets, Looney Tunes and a Kenmore Square Strawberries. We had a location in mind that was a fair distance away from the competition but not hard to reach by the T (MBTA) with decent foot traffic from potential heads.

We began doing research to figure out exactly what we needed to do in order to make this thing actually come to fruition. We had around 20 people with connections in the store alone all down to help us any way possible. Oscar told me that he had a contact at Bobbito’s Footwork in Philadelphia so we could pick their brain on the matter. Repeated attempts to get them on the horn proved fruitless (was it Stef Tataz?). Later on, we discovered that Bobbito’s Footwork was in danger of shuttting down. Bad omen?

In any event, if we were going to actually try to get a Fat Beats location in Boston we had to have no room for error and every single base covered. This meant that we had to talk to as many record store owners as we could to weigh the pros and cons plus figure out what we needed to get the job done. Once we had all of the facts we could take it from there. The first person on our list was DJ Bruno of Biscuithead Records. Luckily for us, he was directly across the street.

The next day, myself, Oscar & our co-worker Shaka Ramsay (who would later run Sun Moon Records & open the Achilles Project with yet another former co-worker Mike Krupp who’d recently left Tower for a position @ Landspeed Records) went over to Biscuithead to talk with Bruno about possibly opening a Fat Beats in Boston and what it takes to keep a vinyl based Hip Hop shop afloat. What a sobering experience that was.

We all went to 93 Mass Ave, piled into the infamous elevator and pressed 3. We got off and walked right into Suite 9 where Yeshua & DapoED’s “The Visualz” was playing. All I could think about was running my own spot like that one day. We saw Bruno behind the decks and told him all about our idea. Before we could finish Bruno cut me off and said “Don’t do it! Nah, don’t even think about it”. I asked why and Bruno began to break it ALL the way down for us. Ouch.

If I recorded that conversation and released it commercially it’d be called “Funcrusher Plus Infinity”. Bruno told us all about the headaches he faced daily and the shaky nature of the business including diminishing returns and shrinking profits in an age where the internet was becoming more and more of a factor. “I don’t know how much longer THIS place will last” he confided in us. He had a girl, a home & a kid on the way back then so something had to give.

I brought up Fat Beats recent expansion into Atlanta, Japan and Amsterdam and a customer in the store piped up “I heard the Atlanta store isn’t doing that well and the Shibuya Fat Beats is doing even worse. Who knows how long the Amsterdam location will survive”. I wish you all could’ve seen the look on Oscar and Shaka’s face after hearing that. Bruno might as well thrown Soul II Soul’s “Back II Life” on the decks at that point.

We continued to chop it up with Bruno and he told us about conversations he had with other local vinyl spot owners including the owners of Boston Beat and Satellite Records  about various pitfalls of running a vinyl based record store at the time. It was becoming painfully obvious that trying to get a Boston location for Fat Beats would be a bad gamble and more trouble than it was worth.

The final nail in the coffin came after talking to Dave Piekoz, an electronic music buyer for Tower who was friends with the owners of Satellite Records. “Don’t do it unless one of you happens to be Bill Gates. I’m looking directly at you guys. None of you are Bill Gates”. Keisha? Dead. Duh Duh Duh Man? Dead. My dream of bringing a Fat Beats to Boston and perhaps even running it? Dead. Back then the dot com bubble hadn’t even burst yet (it was still a year away) so it looked like the internet was taking the entire world over.

My final day at Tower Records/Video in Boston @ the corner of Mass Ave & Newbury St. was March 15th, 1999. St. Patrick’s Day. Back then the economy was so good that I wasn’t worried about getting another job. I had my choice of any record store, video store or retail store between Boston or Cambridge and damn near all of them were hiring. In a year’s time there would be a gang of record store closings announced.

By 2001, only half of the record stores we regularly frequented in 1999 were still in existence. I remember an Other Music location opening at Harvard Square in Cambridge around late 2000. I think that location only lasted a year before it was a wrap. The HMV at Downtown Crossing vacated it’s space and several CD Spins locations closed a short year after the franchise’s expansion.

By 2002 only the UGHH.com store, Nuggets, Looney Tunes, Satellite Records, CD Spins and Newbury Comics were still standing. The New York, LA & Amsterdam Fat Beats locations were still staying afloat even post 9/11 (though I heard things were shaky during that stretch). Tower had become a Virgin Megastore but it was always empty. Record stores were going bankrupt and closing left and right. The Backpack Era (1997-2002) was coming to a close and time machines had yet to be invented.

Fat Beats was the end all be all of Hip Hop stores/venues. Fat Beats was at the center of the entire movement we were all a part of then. When you went online a fair amount of the footage you saw of your favorite artist or groups whether it be interviews or performances was done at Fat Beats. I have numerous VHS tapes full of defunct Hip Hop shows that have in store footage of some of the best in the game back then, all from Fat Beats.

When MTV did it’s You Hear It First feature on Massinfluence guess where it was shot? Fat Beats Atlanta. When MTV did a feature on Non Phixion they shot it at Fat Beats NY. When I read interviews or features about many of my favorite underground acts they were either conducted @ Fat Beats NY or LA. Fat Beats made it a point to showcase and support Hip Hop and in the end we all failed Fat Beats. This wasn’t a new situation, though. Far from it.

Let’s recap, shall we? Back in 1999, a group of my friends and I were looking to bring a Fat Beats location to Boston at the HEIGHT OF THE INDEPENDENT HIP HOP ERA and were told NOT TO because Fat Beats retail stores weren’t doing well. The following years were a constant fight to keep things going but Fat Beats did what it had done since 1994: Survive. The Fat Beats name was prestigious. The Fat Beats logo was iconic. Anytime one of my people went to New York they tried to make it a point to visit Fat Beats so they could have their own personal “shopping at Fat Beats” story when they got back to Boston.

Hearing that Fat Beats will be closing it’s New York & Los Angeles locations hurts me deeply even though I never personally stepped foot in either spot in my life. It actually brings back the pain of seeing all my favorite local vinyl spots disappear slowly one by one. As I frequent the remaining spots it’s akin to going to see one of your favorite relatives in the hospital weak and on life support. You hope against hope you don’t lose them but all signs point to an upcoming funeral.

After I finish this paragraph and press publish it will be official. It’s the end of an era. ANOTHER end of an era. At 35, it’s starting to get weird seeing so many institutions that helped to shape the person I am today cease to exist in the physical sense. In this placeless society there are fewer and fewer places where people can visit and experience certain things firsthand.

Hip Hop was meant to be lived and you need to actually get your hands dirty in order to truly appreciate it. Fat Beats was the last stop for Hip Hop and now it’s a wrap. We’re facing a crisis, people. We are in serious danger of becoming the last generation of Hip Hop record store frequenters. I never got a chance to go to Fat Beats and it looks like I need to get my ass on a Bolt Bus to New York soon, huh? At least there’s still the Sound Library and the Record Exchange…

One.

I got a call from the homegirl TeLisa D on the first of the month (no Bone Thugz N’ Harmony). She told me that she was going to do a special edition of her online radio show (“The B Word”) about the 15th anniversary of the release of Raekwon’s “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx” and wondered if I could share some of my memories. Of course, I said yes.

As I called to leave the just under 2 minute voice message, all the memories of that summer day I first heard “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2” came rushing back to me. I’d just graduated high school a few months prior and I was less than 3 weeks away from my 20th birthday (I’ll explain why in the book).

Most of my high school class was getting ready to go to college. I, on the other hand, was working with the Boston Public School and the Office Of The Attorney General doing mediation trainings for $25 an hour. I was saving up to go to college as I was accepted at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. I wouldn’t leave Boston until January for the spring semester.

We’d been waiting for “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx” to drop for a minute already. Wu Tang Clan’s music was essentially the soundtrack to my time @ English High. From the opening bars of “Protect Ya Neck” and the flipside “Method Man” to the release of “Enter The 36 Chambers”, it was as if they were was a group that incorporated all of the things I was immersed in from birth in their music.

They used audio from old Shaw Brothers Ku Fung films, referenced John Woo flicks, namedropped Marvel comic book characters and even incorporated traditional Chinese legends in their music. These were all things I was well versed in growing up in South End Boston right next to Chinatown. Growing up, we had Kung Fu Theater come on every Saturday afternoon and comic books were only a quarter back then.

My senior year of high school was bananas musicwise. The Roots “Do You Want More??!”, Smif N’ Wessun’s “Dah Shinin”, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version”, Big L’s “Lifestyles Ov Da Poor & Dangerous”, Masta Ace’s “Sittin’ On Chrome” and Mobb Deep’s “The Infamous” were the shit up until the end of the school year. Then Show & AG’s “Goodfellas” dropped right around graduation. We were enjoying a Hip Hop Golden Era.

Following the “Fresh” soundtrack featuring the GZA single “I Got Cha Back” and Raekwon’s “Heaven & Hell” anticipation was high for both albums all throughout the year. When the single and videos for “Criminology” and “Glaciers Of Ice” dropped it was a foregone conclusion the album would be ill. We just had no idea how ill or influential it would become in such a short time.

The album dropped back on August 1st, 1995 and I remember being with my boys in a car that one of their girlfriend’s owned. We went to the Tower Records down the street from our old apartment on Mass. Ave and we decided to cop the CD. Our logic was to go for sound quality and not to take a chance on the tape deck eating it. We stuck that CD in and cruised around Boston and Cambridge all damn day with “OB4CL” as our personal theme music.

We copped the album on a Tuesday yet we rarely (if ever) discussed Soundscan numbers. When we copped the album, none of us ever speculated on how much the jawn would sell or where it would be on the Billboard charts the following week. All we cared about was the overall quality of said album. Keep in mind that we were a bunch of dudes that were aware of the industry as we were actually on the radars of many record labels ourselves. It was all about the music and we were fans.

Keep in mind that “Heaven & Hell” (which dropped the previous summer) was still getting played on the radio and in June 1995 both sides of the “Criminology”/”Glaciers Of Ice” single began getting played on the radio in addition to “Heaven & Hell”. This meant that three different singles were getting constant burn from an album (“Only Built For Cuban Linx…”) that dropped 5 weeks after the official release of the intended lead single (“Criminology”/”Glaciers Of Ice”).

Once the album dropped, I remember heads at radio stations would make their OWN edits of album tracks so they could play them on the air. This was all before the Telecommunications Act Of 1996, back then stations still had the freedom and leeway to play what they felt like. They weren’t part of a monolithic entity where they were tied in a set playlist yet. I’d hear ‘Wu Gambinos” or “Verbal Intercourse” at noon ON THE RADIO less than a week later. Regular shit then. Completely incomprehensible now.

Here we are, 3/4ths through one of the greatest years in recent Hip Hop memory. We’re deep in yet another Hip Hop Golden Age. We still have a disgusting amount of classic albums yet to drop this same year (GZA’s “Liquid Swords”, AZ’s “Doe Or Die” and Cypress Hill’s “Temples Of Boom” among them). Son, the world is still 5 months from even hearing “Fu Gee La” yet!. The Purple Tape is in decks all over this great nation of ours but MTV will be airing the final episode of “Yo! MTV Raps” on August 17th, 1995. My 20th birthday. Say word?

It’s completely unthinkable that when Hip Hop was at it’s zenith MTV would remove it’s flagship Rap video show from the airwaves. I didn’t comprehend it then and I never will. Showbiz & AG’s “Next Level”, Junior M.A.F.I.A’s “Player’s Anthem”, Big L’s “Street Stuck”, Mobb Deep’s “Right Back At You” and Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” were blasting out of everyone’s cars. It’s akin to the Los Angeles Lakers trading away Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Andrew Bynum & Ron Artest for cash & draft picks before the 2010 NBA Playoffs.

This meant that by the time GZA dropped “Cold World” there was no more “Yo! MTV Raps”. Fat Joe’s “Success” premiered on BET’s “Rap City” instead.  The videos for Mobb Deep’s “Give Up The Goods (Just Step)” and Cypress Hill’s “Throw Your Set In The Air”, Erick Sermon’s “Bomdigi”, Jamal’s “Fades ‘Em All”, AZ’s “Sugar Hill” and Dogg Pound’s “Let’s Play House” would never have a chance to air on the show either. BET’s “Rap City” won by default. Problem is, BET wasn’t available in every market yet and the internet was in it’s infancy.

Here’s where the real tragedy lies. Def Jam’s 1995 documentary film “The Show” dropped it’s soundtrack on August 15th, 1995 and the film itself hit theaters on August 20th. Without having MTV in it’s corner to help promote it to a larger audience the film did dreadfully at the box office while the soundtrack itself went platinum in two months.

The soundtrack was powered by the lead single “How High” from Redman & Method Man which I don’t think ever aired on “Yo! MTV Raps” either. How crazy is it to think MTV removed one of it’s most influential shows at one of the worst possible times to do so? On the positive side, Hip Hop videos were stuck into the regular rotation alongside music of other genres.

The first time I ever saw GZA’s “Cold World” video on MTV it was sandwiched between a Veruca Salt, Tricky and a Nine Inch Nails video. I miss those days. Mainstream music didn’t suck EITHER. I’ll never for the life of me forget watching the final episode of “Yo! MTV Raps” and the cipher that occurred. I knew that I was watching history but I had no grasp of how huge that moment really was at the time. None.

In 17 days, we went from the release of one of the most influential albums of the past 15 years regardless of genre to the final episode of one of the most influential shows in the 25+ year history of MTV. A sort of irony occurred where Raekwon and Ghostface did the knowledge to biters and subliminally dissed Biggie. After this album dropped, the entire Hip Hop world bit the Wu. Everyone had aliases. Everyone was a mafioso. Everyone decided to form their own fake Wu Gambino crew.

Eventually, Nas, AZ, Cormega & Foxy Brown would become The Firm (Nature who?). Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z & Charli Baltimore would become The Commission. Even Common Sense would become Petey Wheatstrow then Willie Stargell. The Wu had already drawn from “Once Upon A Time In America” so the rest of the Rap world would have to seek their own source materials. Groups were running up in labels asking for “Wu Tang deals” for God’s sake!

It turns out that the interlude “Shark Niggas (Biters)” became a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. Not only did people in the Hip Hop world fall under the spell of “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” but so did R&B artists as well. The Purple Tape soon became the gold standard of modern Hip Hop albums. Back in 1997, I decided to start an online Hip Hop magazine called Purple Tape. It didn’t go very well.

The true legacy of “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” was that it created a benchmark that made it extremely tough for any of Raekwon’s subsequent albums to live up to. “Immobilarity” and the scrapped “Blood On The Chef’s Apron” project that became “The Lex Diamonds Story” both disappointed. It took four years to make and the project moved to three different labels before it finally dropped on September 8th, 2009.

It was hailed as a modern classic and fans were finally fully satisfied with a Raekwon album again and it took 14 years for that to happen. Of course, when Raekwon and the Wu decide to do something, the entire Hip Hop world follows their lead. Why am I not surprised at that fact in the least? Nothing changes but the year. Let that marinate.

One.

I’ve had several small ideas in the past that have grown to become very large and very real over time. My father once told me that anything Man dreams up, either he or another man will then set out to create and make it real. One idea often inspires another and sets in motion a chain of events that leads to either a historic breakthrough or a major innovation.

One creation can influence or inspire a person to make another piece of art related to it without the author or creator even realizing their original inspiration at first. Life is crazy that way.

A song can inspire the creation of a film. A film can inspire a song. A film can inspire someone to create music to accompany it as well. One song can be used to create another completely different composition comprised of the original song’s elements.

The concept of inception is based on an idea being implanted in another person’s mind through their subconscious. Why? Because in order for it to take effect they must believe it’s their own idea and in the conscious, real world our minds can always trace back the origin or inspiration of an idea to an external source.

Perfect example, the creation of our site Bloggerhouse began with a joke. A joke I made on Twitter. I used the Joe Budden/Method Man/Vibe Magazine fiasco as a parallel and created an elaborate hypothetical parody situation where Eskay was picked in a Vibe list in a bracket against me for “Greatest Blogger Ever”.

I said some unintentionally sideways slick shit on Twitter in this fantasy scenario which then resulted in Eskay showing up @ Hot 97 with Angie Martinez on the air dissing me the next day. Then Nation (of Nah Right) jumps into the fray and I call in to the show & we all begin to argue.

Then the entire NMC is heated @ me and hurling insults so I created a supergroup of Hip Hop bloggers consisting of myself, Eric of When They Reminisce, Travis of Wake Your Daughter Up & Brandon Soderberg of No Trivia called Bloggerhouse.

This was a parody of the supergroup Slaughterhouse that Joe Budden is a member of as well as a parallel between the real life events that occurred at the time of the writing of said internet parody via Twitter all in 140 character increments.

We then went back & forth with a ridiculous & humorous hypothetical beef that I used to parody the real life one between Method Man, Busta Rhymes, the Wu Tang Clan & Slaughterhouse. If I had the resources of Aaron McGruder & Rebel Base it would have been epic.

Needless to say, the entire parody became pretty popular & got me 100 new followers on Twitter in May 2009. I even made jokes about which one of us would get a tattoo that said “BLOGERHOUSE” on our arm. Bloggerhouse. It was a joke. An elaborate joke I started on Twitter last Spring. There’s the real origin of Bloggerhouse, people.

More than a year later, now Wake Your Daughter Up, When They Reminisce & Poisonous Paragraphs have been merged into one major blog. We have an online radio show, an independent artist Wikipedia page & soon? Bloggerhouse Recordings. Imagine if Joe Budden and Joell Ortiz never posted that video online last year. How different would things be right now for us (myself, Eric & Travis)? Insane, right?

This is the gift (and curse) of the internet and technological advances in communications and media. Whereas once it took significant time & effort to get in contact with someone across the globe but now? It’s instantaneous.

I can chop it up with a producer from the Netherlands in real time. I can exchange ideas with a writer from London via Skype right now. I can carry on an iChat session while I write this sentence with someone in Brooklyn. Before, the flow of information had breaks in it. Now? It’s all immediate.

What does this all mean? That we are currently in the Information Age of data and media, thus inspiration is merely a mouse click away. Uploading it and sharing it with the world? Just one mouse click away. Possible instant fame or becoming infamous worldwide? Also, one mouse click away.

When Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were playing their back and forth intellectual game of chess throughout the 1880’s and 1890’s (why has no one made a film about this yet?) there were major breaks in the transmission of information and ideas (which ironically Tesla was dangerously close to eliminating altogether). Two minds of their stature would’ve had a field day in this exponential world and it’s digital climate.

Can you imagine the rate of exchange of ideas that happened then versus now? Back in the mid to late 1990’s communication technology reportedly doubled every 6-9 months. Imagine where we’re at now? We exist in an exponential existence and many of us are too young to realize exactly how much has changed in such a short time.

In 1993, I first encountered the text only internet. By 1995, my school English High was the first in Boston to have full internet and I was one of the students who demonstrated it to the media & Boston Public School board. By 1996, I had a 33.6K modem and a 66 MHz computer and the internet was widespread. Nowadays, you’d laugh at those specs but back then? That was fast as hell.

I remember what new worlds were uncovered back then and how quickly everything began to change around me. Back in the days, I had to go to the theater to see a new feature film. I can find damn near anything I want online if I know how and where to look for it now. Long out of print books have been scanned and uploaded.

Obscure albums, 45’s & 78’s have been recorded digitally then uploaded online for others to peruse and share. Old films on VHS have been ripped, digitally enhanced then uploaded as well. It’s a brave new world, indeed. One where net neutrality is a major issue.

One where we live in a customizable, on demand world with free flowing information and media where communication technology is growing by leaps and bounds yearly. We simply MUST rethink all of these archaic copyright laws and piracy statutes as they don’t fit the world they’re intended to regulate.

The law simply isn’t growing as quickly as the technology it’s trying to police .You can’t kill the transmission of ideas. You simply can’t effectively rein in, govern and completely control the free flow of information. Especially not with laws that don’t readily adapt to the current times.

In the time it took me to write this piece, hundreds of thousands of ideas, thoughts and plans were exchanged via the internet. Hundreds of thousands of songs were heard that inspired the creation of thousands of more songs. Of those songs heard, many were shared with others that will, in turn, do the same.

Hundreds of thousands of films were streamed (legally and illegally). Hundreds of thousands more were downloaded. Thousands of pieces will be written and posted for others to read because of them. Thousands of treatments, specs scripts, plays and films will also be written because by people that viewed said films.

Someone will create something completely original that will spark thousands worldwide to do the same. Every innovation was followed by someone who either improved on it or created other advancements in that very same field. Church music begat the Blues which begat Jazz which begat Rhythm & Blues which begat Rock & Roll and so on.

We can always trace back to when things changed or the people whose innovations ignited new ideas and blazed new trails. Even with this frenetic flow of information, our minds can still trace back to where we got our initial inspiration or ideas from. It’s in our biology as humans and no amount of technological advancement can change that fact.

A few questions before I finish. When you watched “Inception” did you notice all of the parallels and similarities to themes from “The Matrix” in it? Were the action scenes and special effects at all reminiscent of any other films you’d seen before but just improved on? Or did we all just happen share the same lucid dream?

One.