TRIBES 7th Anniversary Issue: Editor’s Intro

I sat at the kitchen table with my spouse, ears glued to Democracy Now on 90.7 WNCU. “Just five nations in the world are responsible for 90% of all executions- China, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.” The phone rings. It’s my mother calling simply to call out. “We’re so busy trying to keep our heads above water, we can’t focus our attention on social change.” (“Some would say that’s the point,” is my only response).
Amy Goodman continues her broadcast of the vigil and sorrowful countdown outside of the Georgia Diagnostic Prison where Troy Anthony Davis is scheduled for execution tonight, Wednesday September 21 at 7 pm while NAACP banners and Rev. Al shout “Too much doubt!” and the anti-death penalty activists cry at the horror of state-sponsored murder, death-on-schedule by lethal injection, and pockets in the crowd begging us all to “give peace a chance.”

I cry too, listening to the fear and sorrow in the voices of the family, the citizens, activists, mentors, ministers, and neighbors that have become a part of the Davis family community, and all of the world citizens listening to the broadcast and praying for our collective soul.
The crowd cheers at 7:04 as word spreads that Mr. Davis is still alive. The Supreme Court will postpone the execution in order to reconsider a stay for Mr. Davis. However, the celebration in the crowd and on CNN is short-lived as the Court comes to a quick vote and Justice Clarence Thomas is granted the last word.

The life of a man perhaps wrongfully accused of murder will end tonight at the hands of government executioners in spite of worldwide protests and I wonder if the labor we invest in every issue of TRIBES Magazine and all of our creative endeavors has done anything to prevent this tragedy.
As we place a cap on this 7th Anniversary edition commemorating seven wonderful years of challenging but rewarding production, we at TRIBES Magazine reevaluate our mission and seek to offer you, in this latest issue, artists and culture-makers that tackle some of the larger questions and seek to re-motivate us all on our creative journey to change the world through the arts.

How do we value individuals? In what terms and through which processes? How do we value ourselves and where is our place in society? Coupled with a hard look at ourselves in the present moment, this is an exciting point of departure and we challenge you, TRIBES family and readers, to engage in this discourse- make a statement about the bigger questions and in an unexpected medium; teach someone something about a better way to see, think, and live along the way.

Erykah Badu chants in my favorite monday motivational anthem “What if there were no niggers [and] there were only teachers?” The answer, “I’d stay woke.” Let us wake everyone up.

 

Vision Revisited

“The whole conversation of my work has to do with power and who has it,” explains New York based visual artist Kehinde Wiley. Incredibly prolific, versed in the history of figurative painting, and, himself, the most recent inheriter of the portraiture tradition, Wiley, in collection after collection “…engages the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, majestic, and sublime in his representation of urban, black and brown men found throughout the world,” (from www.kehindewiley.com). With a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, an MFA from Yale University, works on display internationally and in permanent collections across the U.S., a line of sport apparel by Puma, and a growing fan-base that transgresses the boundaries of street/pop culture and high art, Wiley is perhaps the most relevant artist of the moment, tackling the sociopolitical in global contexts, reimagining the golden age of western imperialism in the ascetics of the new-millennium African diaspora.

Renowned in recent years for his rendering of skin, his larger-than-life figures, and his irreverent commentary on culture and identity, Wiley offers black and brown men unprecedented subjectivity to enter identity discourse as complex and multi-layered individuals with the social value afforded those that posed originally for Diego Velazquez and other classical portraitists referenced in much of Wiley’s work.

The collapsing of historical periods and locales births something uniquely modern at the same time interrogating the paradoxically “critical and complicit” role of the artists. Homoeroticism, a part of the western tradition of portrait, becomes a springboard for unpacking contemporary notions of black and brown masculinity and considering performance of “machismo” across the African-diaspora. The substitution of black for white faces, ‘low’ or street ascetics and symbology for high art and culture, the props and poses of the imperial wealthy and noble minority redressed in track suits, athletic jerseys, African prints, and brown bodies generate new perspectives in discourses on race and place, the well-worn term of which threaten to become cliché in our so-called “post-racial,” global society.

While Wiley has been criticized for owing a large debt to other artists dealing with identity and celebrity in modern portraiture including Barkley Hendricks, Andy Worhal, John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres (NY Times online Aug. 27, 2009, Roberta Smith), there is growing concensus among art critics that in Wiley’s recent works, most notably the World Stage collections rendering figures from the streets of Sao Paola to Lagos and Dakar, the artist’s technical prowess and ability to express his ideas on canvas has finally met his critical voice to generate increasingly nuanced and meaningful works that grab the spirit and challenge the intellect simultaneously.

In 2010, Wiley began designs for Puma’s “Africa Lifestyle” line of sneakers and sports apparel in honor of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa; born of his partnership with the brand that commissioned paintings of African footballers Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, John Mensah of Ghana, and Emmanuel Eboue of Ivory Coast. The Africa collection taps into Wiley’s use of abstraction and prints, his growing interest in west African art and fabrics from Dakar and Lagos to further unsettle the relationship between high art and pop culture on the bodies of the living, breathing youth that will wear the clothing and, like Wiley himself, will generate their own era of contemporary culture.

The young brothers we encounter everyday, rendered in the style of gods and kings, hold an unheralded humanity and dignity in their limbs and tattooed on their bodies and clothing as they hang on gallery walls, within their gilded frames. Breathtaking, one must get to know this artist’s work in person and hear the call of its stature and photo-realism then let it become a demand to rethink one’s notions of society and our place within the hierarchy of value and power.

Now on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art (as part of the 30 Americans.exhibit), visit www.kehindewiley.com to check out more of the artists work and link to current and upcoming exhibitions.

 

The Legend of TRIBES

Born out of necessity, one dreary evening in Durham some seven years ago, TRIBES Magazine came to life as citizen artists of The Triangle were calling out for a voice. Already the voice-giver, delivering rags and bullhorns to poets and social activist in the nation’s capital, Leslie Cunningham, once again, answered their call.

By day, from her desk on the tech floor of the marketing world, Cunningham watched a network of artists- musicians, painters, poets, and MCs-collect around her. Her creative force drew their work and it flew into her lap, poems and rhymes, photographs and songs, cartoons and sketches and collages and dancing and essays and more…until Cunningham, overtaken by the collective power of the independent arts in the Triangle, burst from her tethers in the corporate world of market advertising, to become the QUEEN of TRIBES!

Pen in hand, bobbing eagerly in a sea of blank storyboards, the Queen of TRIBES sketched an outline for the first issue and tapping into her own force while reaching across the channels of connection to local artists, The Queen gave creative birth to TRIBES Magazine, volume I, issue I.

There was no money! And the Queen blazed a trail across the city and state to secure advertising funds for this fresh, young, free publication. She even burned about the foothills of Greensboro and the Triad, Charlotte to Fayetteville, Atlanta to DC to shine a fiery light on the bright future of TRIBES and convince investors to join the family.

And for some time the magazine grew in her satchel, held up by the loving hands of friends and artists, fundraisers and contributors, that became the TRIBES Family as the years passed and the family grew.

Armed with the power to sniff out creative talent and star-making spirit, the Queen of TRIBES continues to shine the TRIBES light on up-and-coming stars, in the dense urban landscape of self-produced arts. Robbing from the commercial rich and giving to the media-starved, the Queen and her scepter, TRIBES Magazine, gave and continue to give those determined to share something of themselves and their experience, a platform- a page from which to speak their ideas, an opportunity that for some artists may never come again.

“It’s all about giving a voice to urban expression,” the Queen shouts from rooftops that have overlooked TRIBES newsstands on every street corner in the Triangle and now reach across the southern corridor, and up and down the east coast, where the Queen has reinvented her mission as TRIBES Creative Group, now including TRIBES Entertainment Films, TRIBES Entertainment Television and, for a time, TRIBES Radio Online.

The underground can be a land of muted voices and unsigned talent with so much to say and do in the arenas of culture and politics. TRIBES Magazine and Entertainment Group is them; and the Queen’s powers to amplify their creative force and carry their work across the globe grows on! Check us out next time for TRIBES Magazine Winter Edition Presents [fill in the winter theme]!

 

This Side of Highways

Stars in their eyes burst and became a spark of dying sunlight as fall descended upon Battleground Apartments and the tender maples shed their rusted cloaks on the concrete and asphalt. The air in the room was full with the eruption of sighs as an October afternoon settled on the heart of tobacco country and the dust hung above their heads in the glow upon mussed sheets, above the sea about a tangle of legs and dimpled cheeks. It rolled in and out of the shadows painted on the knot of lovers, tumbling on the springy twin bed.

Tonya looked from the back of her thoughts, spread easy over the vault of ceiling, to the mouth of her beloved, opening in a plump bud beneath her. “I promise. Augustine won’t even know I’m here,” followed by a barrage of nibbling that flitted and stuck about Tonya’s ears like pollen upon sticky wings.

The rolls of the dishonorably discharged under Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell had finally erupted- at nearly 5000 since the birth of the Clinton closet solution to gays in the military- and into change still waiting to be felt on the ground. Tonya had never intended to come out to the military or at home for that matter. Still, she had kept a count of the casualties and suffered her own growing fatalism, watching homophobia run rampant into another presidential election.

“There’s a faggot on the base and he should die,” Alex spoke too loudly as the conversation in a stolen moment on the base had turned unexpectedly from mutual seduction to politics. “That’s what they said after they found Private Winchell’s body and began questioning his ‘brothers.’”

“Did they prosecute the murderers?” Tonya muttered. She didn’t need to know anymore about what had happened.

“Who is they? The military or the five supreme courts that backed up the madness!?”

“Hey Alex,” Tonya had offered, reaching deep for something to get the romance back on track. “What do you call a dyke in the military?”

“What?” Alex’s eyes rolled into a smile that carried honeysuckle and onion grass back in through the open window.

“Horny.”

Rumors started to rumble beneath the Fayetteville clay at that time, in quiet places the women had shared as friends and colleagues, potential lovers. And in the instant after the first drop of rain but before the flood of lies that would spew from all directions, Tonya caught the morning sigh of a personal conduct investigation through her driver’s side window as she fled back home for some rest before reassignment.

In a bustle now to be rid of the new lover, “I’ll call you,” was said, though the words were but a ruse to obscure the ultimate goodbye. “Why don’t you let me help you get your things together,” sounded more urgent than Tonya had intended as she hustled Lydia out the door.

The still of premature darkness was deafening as it crept before Tonya on the sunken stairs leading back up to her bedroom. Tonya crept with it to avoid the arc of waning light caught in the drawn shades and sank in a cover of corner, mumbling “…the new guestroom,” without hearing it. Tonya lowered her head to reach for the dream road to the edge of the world.

And Tonya was climbing slowly and then racing towards soaring skyways suspended over the void. The take-off of wingless riders into oblivion broke her heart and Tonya came to with a start in time to hear her mother’s jingling keys in the lock. It was time to get back on the road.

 

At the Speed of REM

Dreaming and waking reversed
A day marked by wishing for night.
Deep and meaty, it was,
Infused with a beating
Heart and essence of running souls or
An earlier life and locale of memory.
Yet, in dreaming stuck
In slumber, we all were reborn.
In waking, wishing through the daylight hours
For sleep and for life.

 

Holiday Weekend Weed Bangers and Smoked-Out Film Classics

“I’m in love with Mary Jane/ She’s my main thing/ She makes me feel alright/ She makes my heart sing.” – Rick James

For this Fall 2011 issue of TRIBES Magazine, it didn’t seem right to address a theme so close to our heart- Marijuana and the growing legalization movement- without also paying tribute to the culture and artifacts that borne the movement and continue to entertain the people.

In this traveling edition of Urban Warriors (the currently retired but ever-evolving TRIBES Magazine blog-ersation), we honor the culture- the films, both indie and major studio, and music, crossing the spectrums of identity and taste- to compile a playlist for your next netflix order or visit to itunes. A catalogue appendix for your essential film collection, Urban Warriors presents TRIBES Magazine’s favorite Weed Bangers and Smoked-Out Film Classics.

“Pick it, pack it/ Fire it up/ Come along and [check these] hits from the bong…” Cypress Hill “Hits from the Bong” Columbia Records 1991 [Image of Cypress Hill]

But before we begin, we should set a few parameters. First, what is a Weed Banger? A smoke-out film classic? Lists of get-high film classics and music hits are as available and diverse as varieties of herb.  But here are a few standards agreed upon here in the TRIBES Newsroom.

Artifacts to make the list must:

…resonate with a diversity of Urban Warriors and weed smokers. We value underground and niche creations but for our purposes we want ‘high timers’ of all shapes and sizes involved in the discussion.

…be nearly Mary Jane exclusive. The films and musical hits to join our list focus mostly on Green, the Green, and only the Green. We neither encourage nor glorify the use of any drugs legal or prohibited.

…be historically responsible. The culture and its icons are to be treated with honesty, affection, and respect.

While these guidelines like the laws of our nation are only as firm in our minds as they are righteous, let us set out on our journey for the top five.

Are you high yet?

_____

5. Up in Smoke (Lou Adler, 1978)

“…Does Howdy Doody got wooden balls?” The undeniable foundation of the genre, this film was the first story ABOUT mary jane, through the hazy eyes of two of our most recognizable icons; starring the legalization movement’s most vocal proponent Tommy Chong, and Cheech Marin, character actor and silver screen star.

4. How High (Director Jesse Dylan, 2001)

“I figure if I study high, take the test high, I’ll get high scores! Right?” Starring Meth and Red well after both have reached pop icon-status, this one is a must see for the sheer love of the Cypress Hill laced soundtrack and site of two of our favorite brothers having a blazin’ good time on screen. “Look up in the sky/It’s a bird. It’s a plane/ Nope. It’s Meth and Red smokin’ lye on the plane.”

3. Half-Baked (Director Tamara Davis, 1998)

“You ever seen the back of a twenty dollar bill…on weed? There’s some weird shit going on in there, man.” Dave Chappelle- confirmed Hip Hop lover and creator of the best sketch comedy show since Kids in the Hall (or ever), presents Mary Jane 101: A love story, full of everything you needed to know about the sticky-icky; and a brief sit-down with Willie Nelson -“I remember when a dime bag cost a dime.”

2. Friday (Director F. Gary Gray, 1995)

“Weed is from the earth. God put this here for me and you. Take advantage man, take advantage.” With a cast made up of comedy and dramatic masters including Regina King, Nia Long, John Witherspoon, Bernie Mac, Chris Tucker, Anna Maria Horsford (Amen, The Wayans Brothers, How High,…) and, of course, Ice Cube, Friday was always destined to be a classic.

1. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (Danny Leiner, 2004)

“Ding-dong! May I interject for a second? As a Burger Shack employee for the past three years, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if you’re craving White Castle, the burgers here just don’t cut it. In fact, just thinking about those tender little White Castle burgers with those little, itty-bitty grilled onions that just explode in your mouth like flavor crystals every time you bite into one… just makes me want to burn this motherfucker down. Come on, Pookie, let’s burn this motherfucker down! Come on, Pookie! Let’s burn it, Pookie! Let’s burn this motherfucker down! Let’s burn it down! Let’s burn it! So you guys maybe should just suck it up and go to White Castle.” If you’ve ever held a sack of castle burgers with a couple of hungry friends in the dead or hum of midnight, Harold and Kumar may just be telling your story. Hilarious and totally unexpected (and a definite yes from the entire council), Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is utterly true to the smoked-out genre, following the model created some thirty years earlier by “Up in Smoke” with an endearing and timely Garden State twist.

Honorable Mention:

The Big Lebowski (Directors Coen Brothers, 1998)

“You’re like a child that walks in halfway through a movie and wants to know what the fuck is going on!” In other words, check it out. Your neighbor with the so-so green has already seen it…five times.

City of God (Fernando Mereilles, 2002)

An incredible coming of age tale rolled up in urban landscapes, action cinema, and transnational reefer culture; sex, samba, and pot. It’s not quiet a smoke-out film classic but we can’t stop talking about it.

Alpha Dog (Nick Cassevetes, 2007)

Driving marijuana connoisseurs of all ages to Northern California and incorporation in the small ‘farm’ business.

Viva la movement!

______

 

Evolution of the Real Hip Hop: Dirty Water’s Joe D and Cee Brown talk to TRIBES Magazine

by: Alana A Jones

It’s the year 2008. Popular trends have brought the eighties back into our homes. The community’s music has risen to the center of the mainstream on the heels of conservative politics, republican economics, and ostentatious materialism. We wonder about the effects of our individualistic ideals while we face recession and suffer the pain of the hype.

From a monopoly of corporate sharking and mainstream noise that’s overrun the airways, and from deep in the sea of Indy artists that flood the internet underground, Dirty Water rises, with a trial of sounds and treasure chest of influences to confidently take the title as ‘The Best Group You Haven’t Heard Yet.’

The public is ready for ‘the real’ and Dirty Water is that mature and self-conscious voice.

Alumni of North Carolina Central University, where the duo met and joined creative forces, Joe D and Cee Brown bring lyrical styles bred of legendary mc’s like KRS One, Big Daddy Kane, and Slick Rick to bear on a production style influenced by Pete Rock, Premier, RZA and older school artists including Al Green and Isley Brothers. Both natives of D.C. and the Go-Go sound, the pair rides their professional roots in spoken word and as frontmen for North Carolina’s Marquee Band and Show, to create quality music, full of honest lyricism and smart musicality, for a well-versed audience.

In their latest self-titled album, Joe D and Cee Brown bring Hip Hop full-circle with twelve tracks that pay homage to the pillars of Hip Hop, R&B, and Soul while engaging listeners in something sincere and grown-up, we haven’t quite heard before. Dirty Water brings freshness, energy, and ingenuity- ‘the Modern’- to Hip Hop and to the Indy scene in which they are making a name for themselves.

In a recent interview with the duo, TRIBES Magazine takes on the creative team and enjoys an opportunity to learn more about Dirty Water’s origins, their path to notoriety, and their creative vision for the future.

 TRIBES: Tell us a little about your meeting at NCCU.

Cee Brown: I guess in retrospect, it didn’t feel like it then, but there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on while we were down there. Of course, Little Brother was forming. I was classmates with Fonte and Joe lived in the same dorm with Pooh. Then, of course Yahzarah, [was there too]. So it was a small world.  While all that was going on, we were in a go-go band, the Marquee Band and Show, and that’s actually how we met. Not how we met, but how we ended up hooking up creatively.

 Joe D: There was a whole lot of weed smoking going on too. I don’t condone that but that…helps field relationships and ciphers, free style ciphers, and songs came out of that.

 Cee Brown: It was a reason to get up.

 Joe D: It was a reason to get up and then we had the beat machine there so we’d plug the mic in, start recording, and the rest is history.

TRIBES: You’re both from PG County, MD, just outside of WDC, which has produced a lot of criminal minds.  Tell us about what it was like growing up in that area and how did it shape you as artists?

 Joe Dee: All the dudes in PG County weren’t doing things to get locked up. I mean, PG County is like the most affluent of black counties in the U.S. so there were a lot of kids that had opportunities and, you know, that’s the beauty of us. We never front. We were never trying to be something that we weren’t; and I was a smart kid. I did my stuff. I partied. I went to the go-go’s and did all that stuff; but I pretty much kept my nose clean. That sort of [criminal] lifestyle was something that never really attracted me. I was DJ-ing. I was listening to hip-hop. I wasn’t really into the whole thug life element.

 TRIBES: You can definitely hear the honesty in the music.

 Joe D: We value certain things. I think that being a man and raising your family and doing the right thing…that’s harder than being hard. Being responsible is what should really be held high. So, [thugging] was never something I got into because I had parents there and a big brother that were always influences on me in a good way. I was going to do the right thing. You know, there was still that element, but I just knew that you have to do the best that you can for yourself.

TRIBES: Talk about the dominance of certain styles in Hip Hop music today?

 Cee Brown: At the end of the day, it all ends up being a good thing. Like Snoop used to say, “it all ends up being good” because even the corny, bubblegum stuff adds to the larger picture and once the mainstream market gets saturated with all the nonsense and they can’t take it any more, the attention gets shifted back to the underground.

 TRIBES: Mainstream is so ready for ‘Dirty Water’!

 Cee Brown: Well, yeah. Yeah, in a way but then you can’t go into it thinking that you’re going to make a million dollars and sell five and six million records like they used to do back in the late nineties; when Jay and them first hit and Biggie was rockin’-and-rolllin’ and Outkast was at there peak and people were selling eight and nine and ten million records. I don’t think the industry supports that kind of career for an artist anymore, what with everything that’s going on with the internet and mp3s and what have you. But if you’re talking about being able to sustain yourself and make a living as an artist, I think that the market is definitely ready for artists of substance; that have something to say, that have multiple influences musically and that are trying to attack more than one of your senses.

TRIBES: Your bio says your music is as ‘hip hop as it should be’.  How exactly should Hip Hop be?

 Cee Brown: Hip hop really is a relative term. It is whatever your perception is and whatever you like. Of course there are certain basic cultural elements that have to be there. Otherwise it’s rock and roll, or it’s soul music, or it’s country music. Certain things have to be in place for it to be hip hop. But, we say it’s hip hop as it should be because [our music] has integrity. We are ourselves and that’s one of the main ingredients of hip hop- You have to be there. It can’t be some character that you created. You put a little salad dressing on it and, you know, spice it up, create an image for yourself, that’s all fine, but you still have to be there. It has to be about you and if you’re not involved in your own art then it can’t be hip hop because then it’s not real and hip hop is supposed to be real.

TRIBES: How has the response been to your CD latest project?

Cee Brown: It’s been all positive. Of course, it’s difficult to promote, now because…It’s a blessing and curse, with the market being open to independent artists on the internet. Basically anybody can get on the internet and do anything they want to do, if they’ve got enough time. But it’s a blessing and a curse because it’s like trying to be noticed in a riot. There’s so much material out there now. So it’s difficult to promote and I guess that’s any independent artist’s gripe. Promotion is the biggest part of it and the hardest part of it.

TRIBES: Anything else you want the world to know about Dirty Water?

 Joe D: I would tell him to stay true to his roots. I would definitely say you’ve gotta be true to yourself if that’s something you really want to do because it’s hard work. It’s the music business and you can only deal with a lot of the bullshit if you love doing the music. Just be true. With this and anything you set out to do, do it for all the right reasons.

Stay true to yourself, keep Jah first, and believe in yourself.

 

 

KIN4LIFE: 80′s Babies

Written by Alana Jones

When KIN4LIFE sends a shout-out to all the 8 bit, Dutch smoking, space invaders, Hip Hop connoisseurs and lovers of an earlier time best listen up. As a duo of 80s babies born into the music and raised in its golden era, KIN4LIFE sets out on a mission to bring that golden era back to the present and back to the music.

Lyrical duo Nor and IQ succeed brilliantly, distilling the essences from the boom-box, ghetto blaster, and club classics we’ve loved, reinvigorating them with simplicity in tracks like “80s Baby” and “Seven Eleven” (my Spring 2011 riding anthem) in a collection of album hits and new EPs dedicated to the ‘good old days.’ KIN4LIFE succeeds brilliantly in triggering nostalgia, with a variety of tracks that stand out from the forest of skinny jean hip hop, unique and independent, yet guaranteed to take your soul back to a better time when we were young and the emcee ruled.

True to the Indy spirit, KIN4LIFE, has been on the grind for more than a decade, turning ‘family’ ties, friendship, and a shared respect for the Hip Hop heritage alive in their hometown of Mt. Vernon, NY into hit sounds. The duo produces under their self-styled label, Noriq Records, broadcasting their creations, including the new mixtape, “Welcome to Planet Noriq,” and new album “I Love KIN4LIFE,” via a variety of web vehicles, interacting with fans with a traditionalist’s spirit and iconography in a futuristic landscape of virtual music and social media. Striking a path for new millennium female emcees while rocking a full touring schedule of live show, KIN4LIFE is busy, generating love for their music in audiences across the globe while reinventing golden era hip hop in the digital age.

Combining equal parts thick lyricism (from emcees that spit rather than ride a hook), sparse production that respects the lyric and the verse, the right references to the classic funk/soul samples and rhythms that fired up the block party, with a pinch of playful self-awareness, golden era hip hop was alive. It breathed and walked, making us want to dance and sweat. In this modern world of cool virtual reality, KIN4LIFE brings all of this to their music and in the process offers this pulsing moment back to us.

 

La Mission: Film Review

Written by Alana Jones

Che Rivera has recreated a life of peace for himself in his small family- his only son and his crew- his classic cars, his throw-back music. Though the kids still know “that’s Jesse Ramirez’s father. He’s a real Original Gansta,” Che is a man with a contented life and, after prison, the loss of his wife, a resulting bought with alcoholism, and the whole bag of suffering that may come with a youth spent, he is content in the reeds of his own oats sown and his beloved son preparing for high school graduation. 

Still there is an anger that lingers. “I don’t know why, Che, but sometimes you just break my heart.”

Perhaps there are no new ideas in the world but in the new film from the Brothers Bratt, an opening shot on a sprawling metropolitan skyline, a fade into tall palms and a busy boulevard, an EMT siren, and a cut to one man on a funky stroll to the guitar and organ leads us absolutely someplace new. In the Mission district of San Francisco illustrated in the new film from the Bratt Brothers, Aztec warriors ride in flames against las conquistadores on the concrete and brick murals. Community elders recite prayers in rarely-spoken tongues for fallen sons, and the funk of The Stylistics carries us to a Mechica circle of ancient drums and magnificent feathers, a modern cultural identity and political history, brown like la raza.   

“You can take the man out of The Mission but you can’t take The Mission out of the man.”

But is there room in the definition of a Mission man for the love another man?

The answer offered by our director is as intricate as the emotional turnings of our protagonists or the folds of a diverse latino community depicted in the film. There is a lot at play, a lot at stake from both tradition and modernity, and La Mission awakens the discourse on masculinity, homosexuality and cultural identity, fatherhood and friendship, memories and the flux of time.

And then there is the music. Or rather, I should say, first, there was the music including funk soul icons Marvin Gaye and The Isley Brothers (and alternately, an original score of acoustic, string and reed compositions) that invites us to cruise with a brown counterculture of low riding and funk soul music on the Friday Night Ride, that you’ve maybe never seen before.

I lost myself for just a moment in the sweetness of The Stylistics and a rose placed in my hand by a long-haired gypsy.

Nevertheless, the relationship between a father and his son as they reconcile a difficult truth remains central. The scenes between the two men are powerful. Their chemistry is undeniable and the dynamics, even as resolutions are hard to find, ring true.  

Starring Benjamin Bratt best known for his role on TV’s “Law and Order” and Erica Alexander of the hit sitcom “Living Single” along with a host of newcomers led by costar Jeremy Ray Valdez.

 

Hail to the Beastie Boys: Reconnecting Hip Hop Heads and Neophytes with Their Roots

Written by Alana Jones

Out of cyberspace, the technosphere, the post-modern weird-sphere, and worlds of hyper-sex and iconoclasts of all variety, the Beastie Boys, in their latest work Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, speak around some of their favorite themes including the requisite art of microphones and emceeing itself, just like the guys next door… that grew up and now live (albeit in a better neighborhood than you) in the real world. And this is the Hip Hop space, grounded and familiar, though not without their trademark imagination, where the genre was nurtured and may once again exist in the hands of these pioneers of Hip Hop and contemporary popular culture’s golden era.

Much credit to today’s youth, the young stars and interactive fans, pioneers in their own right that shot pop culture into outer space, taking the internet and mobile device technology and recreating Hip Hop in virtual reality. However, like former partner and fellow icon Russell Simmons (whose latest book Super Rich on his Zen lifestyle and popular success is featured in the April 2011 issue of Yoga Journal magazine), the essential nature of Michael Diamond (Mike D), Adam Yauch (MCA), and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock)’s new project is imbued with the wisdom of maturity- to remain eternally young, wonder-eyed and exuberant- and this latest work oozes with the confidence of well-heeled wisdom that yields, on Hot Sauce Committee: Part Two, lots of the stuff we have loved in the group since License to Ill brought Hip Hop to the suburbs with three white boys from the Manhattan underground as the vehicle, more than a quarter of a century ago.

With roots in the hardcore punk scene, the Beastie Boys first hit the stage on 110^th and Broadway, soon joining the compilation album “New York Thrash” in 1979 and releasing their EP “Polliwog Stew” in 1982. Originally including two additional members, Kate Schellenbach of Luscious Jackson and John Berry, who helped coin the group’s name the Beastie Boys, as Beings Entering Anarchistic States Towards Internal Excellence ripped through the NY hardcore punk scene and brought it to the screen in the Philip Pucci concert film “Beastie.” 

Discovering a love for film and pushing the boundaries of media and communications early on, the group reached outside of the punk box in their next major track, “Cooky Puss,” finding a successful partner in Hip Hop where they mined for influences and inventive opportunity, eventually pairing down to a trio, adopting new monikers, and incorporating a DJ, Rick Rubin, into the mix, in a collection of tracks that eventually spawned the album and international video countdown killer, License to Ill in 1986.

License to Ill and its hit singles, “Fight for Your Right [to Party],” “Brass Monkey” and “Paul Revere” introduced the world to the Beastie Boys and led to a whirlwind of creative activity including a cameo and soundtrack feature in the films Krush Groove and Run-D.M.C.’s, Tougher Than Leather, a perpetual touring schedule, and a year after year of hit tracks from mostly successful albums including sophomore effort, Paul’s Boutique (1989), touted as some of their best work, a junior work, Check Your Head (1992), recorded at the band’s G-Son Studios and released on their own Grand Royal label, and fourth album, Ill Communication (1994) with the singles “Sabotage,” “Get it Together,” and “Sure Shot” putting them at the head of the Lollapalooza lineup.

With a worldwide reputation for conjuring punk spirits in concert audiences, the Beastie Boys found a new generation of fans with the re-release of an extended License to Ill in 1992 that brought the group the ultimate mainstream recognition and cemented their place in the Hip Hop history books and pop culture consciousness. Offering yet another chart-topper, the album Hello Nasty and single “Intergalactic” took them into the new millennium at the head of both the mainstream and Indy packs, earning them Grammys in multiple genres and categories, and persuading their fans to follow them further into the sound experiment. Followed by the 2004 collection To the 5 Bouroughs, the Beastie Boys work remained consistent as their quarter-century of fame was honored, finally, in their induction, in 2007, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

2011 and almost thirty years into a platinum career, the Beastie Boys recent film short remix of the 1987 hit “[You Gotta] Fight for Your Right to Party” featuring Elijah Wood, Danny McBride, and Seth Rogen, won them critical acclaim at Sundance and a reinjection into the MTV spotlight, while the new video single “Make Some Noise” has fans (that now span generations) foaming at the mouse once again for the release of the new album Hot Sauce Committee: Part One.  

“Since the dawn of time, and perhaps even before, there was a silent order who were tasked with a mission. They held their secret tightly. On May 3rd the Hot Sauce Committee Part Two will be unleashed on the general public. Hold fast ye heathens,” posted Yauch on the Hot Sauce Committee: Part Two website. Leaked during album delays (the result of real life challenges the band seems willing to address openly), the new revamped Hot Sauce Committee: Part Two, is out now and moves perfectly in the ebb and flow of resonance and experimentation, the cycle of genre shifting and ever-relevance, that has kept their music in rotation and promises from the first to final track of Hot Sauce Committee: Part Two to excite fans of their greatest hits, engage the Beastie-come-latelys, and wake-up the Hip Hop heads ready to break for the summer.

I miss the way we felt in the 90s and like a soul memory or the essence of Zen, I offer thanks to the Beastie Boys for taking us back to that feeling without being ironically retro. They know and want to share with us (including the young artist finding their voice on Garage Band instead of in a garage with a band), that joy and satisfaction can be found through eyes like a child, humility and a playful spirit. Those were the days and Mikee D, Ad-Rock, and MCA offer them back to us in the present.

On this eighth studio album, funky bass highlights and car bangers include lead track “Make Some Noise,” “Too Many Rappers (new reactionaries version) featuring NAS,” and “Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament.” Take a listen at blog.beastieboys.com.