Many hip-hop heads, who often differentiate between "hip hop" and "rap," argue that one small subset -- the street kids -- are ruining things for everyone. They complain that the cops are painting everyone with the same brush. "They're so ignorant," Efrain Oliva says. The troublemakers are a small element -- people coming in from Richmond and East Palo Alto to go to the Oasis or Illusions or DV8."
Oliva continues, "I won't do hardcore because the more hardcore the music, the more hardcore the crowd. I don't want to put myself in danger, I don't want to put my audience in danger and I don't want to get a hip hop-friendly club owner in trouble."
"You can get a tough crowd at certain shows," agrees Billy Jam, "because you'll get predominantly guys and they're rivals at odds with each other depending on where they're from. But I find disturbing the attitude to keep them in the ghetto or the projects where they won't cause any trouble."
The class conflict is more noticeable in the Bay Area because the local rap sound is predominantly considered street and gangsta. Thus local rappers can't get a show in their own hometowns. Rappin' 4-Tay (the Fillmore), E-40 (Vallejo) and Dru-Down (Oakland) blew up big and got signed with enormous bonuses in the past year, but none of them could get anyone to put on a real show in the Bay Area. Promoters and club owners feared that a projected pimps-'n'-players audience would get itself -- and them -- into trouble.
"I won't touch a rap act from the Bay Area because of posses and their neighborhood loyalties," says Oliva. "If you tell a club that you want to do a local group, they just laugh at you."
The back room at Premiere Production Studios in Bayview Hunters Point is brimming with local rappers: Dre-Dog, the Cold World Hustlers, 11/5, Mr. Laid, Under Da Influence. The most beautiful little boy is walking around smiling and waving at everybody.
Someone asks if anyone heard that the DNA put on a show called Best of the Underground. "Wha?!" asks a puzzled Dre-Dog. "I didn't hear about that. Did any of you all?" No, everyone says. "Well then, how can you have
a show called
the Best of the Underground when none of us heard about it?" he asks. "We're it!"
The banishment of live hip hop hurts these guys the most. Because of where they're from and the crowds they'll draw, they can't get any gigs. As a result, they're unable to flex their live skills, drum up local support or make ends meet. "These contracts we have with rap labels pay us twice a year," complains E-Sic of the Cold World Hustlers. "Shows are the food on our table," adds his bandmate Big Vic.
The last time local rappers got steady gigs was in September and October when the Nation of Islam organized a tour of sorts in neighborhoods like the Fillmore and the Western Addition. "I thought it would be a good way to go throughout the neighborhoods and help unify us and convince people to stop killing each other," says Sister Jayvon Banks of the Nation of Islam. "The one thing all the neighborhoods have in common is they all have a rap group."
The concept turns the notion of live rap as automatic trouble on its head. The rap groups saw the Nation of Islam events as a way of building bridges between warring communities and defusing an obstacle to performing live. The six shows drew upward of 1,000 people and under the watchful eyes of Nation security no one popped off.
But ultimately, there's no simple solution to the recurring cycle of violence and crackdown. What's killing live hip hop? As Paris says, "All it takes is one fool with a gun.
