When Hip Hop Came Together to Close the Crack House w/ X-Clan-(It Was One of Many Battles Against Chemical Warfare)

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People have often talked about fighting wars using biological and chemical weapons. We came after Hitler for using them. We came after Saddam Hussein for using them. Sadly no one ever came after those who flooded urban communities during the 1980s and into the 90s with Crack. If this wasn’t a weapon of mass destruction, I don’t know what was.. One thing I can say about Hip Hop is that early on it confronted the problem.. Kool Moe Dee dropped a dope song called ‘Monster Crack’ in 1986..

Before him, we heard Cracked Out by Masters of Ceremony featuring a young Grand Puba who later went on to be a part of Brand Nubian.. Of course we all know the joint from Public Enemy ‘Night of the Living Bassheads which featured the debut of a young actor named Samuel Jackson.

Another landmark song ‘Batterram‘ came from West Coast Legend Toddy Tee.. who responded to the hateful orders of LA Police Chief Darryl Gates to use an armored tank with battering ram to break into fortified crack houses in hood. On more than one occasions, police got the wrong address and broke down the wrong house..

We also cannot forget Donald D who was one of the first rap artists to come out and blame the FBI for crack in the Hood. This Rhyme Syndicate member had a song called F.B.I. which stood for Free Base Institute.  Before people got into crack, they free based cocaine..

A west coast anthem addressing this scourge was Dope Man by NWA..which gave keen insight into what was going on at the time.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqECIKQaPBk  Bay Area pioneer Too Short’s ‘Girl’ was another early joint  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImviIbqI-8Q

In the same vein an anthem song that addressed cocaine and not crack was White Lines by Grandmaster Flash and Furuious Five. It was supposed to be an anti-drug song, but unfortunately many took it to be an endorsement of the popular drug.

Sadly one of the first crack songs I ever heard was one that actually came across as one that advocated smoking crack at least in the hook..It was called Crack it Up by Funkmaster Wiz. In the song Wiz says warns we better not crack it up,  and in hindsight 20 years later we clearly hear it.. At the time..this song was an all out anthem that suggested we go for it.. For many its hard to believe Hip Hop went there, but let’s be honest, back in the early pioneering days it wasn’t unusual to hear popular artist of the day shout to high school folks, ‘If you snort cocaine- say yeah”

The song that really stood out for me but was definitely underplayed was this posse cut, done in the same spirit of  ‘Stop the Violence’ and ‘We’re All in the Same Gang’. This was done by X-Clan leader Professor X. It was a 1993 joint called ‘Close the Crackhouse’ and featured an Allstar line up of  Professor X, BrotherJ, Wise Intelligent, Big Daddy Kane, Digital Underground, Ex-Girlfriend, Chuck D, Sister Souljah, Mickey Jarret, Freedom Williams from C&C Music Factory and 2 Kings and a Cypher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfWmc79iIHk

 Kool Moe Dee ‘Monster Crack’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6ek6UXQWWU

Public Enemy ‘Night of the Living Bassheads’.. This video is deep on so many levels..especially how they showed just how widespread the problem was.. from Wall Street to the Hood. I also like how they did this video as a news report..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyR09SP9qdA

Donald D ‘FBI’

Toddy Tee ‘Batterram’

Funkmaster Wiz ‘Crack It Up’… Can you believe there was a song that actually advocated for crack? When this song first came out the chorus was an affirmative ‘Crack It Up’.. Funkmaster Wiz claimed it was anti-crack song, but the hook left everyone believing it was a pro crack song.. People complained and Funkmaster Wiz went back in the studio and tried to clean up the song by putting the phrase ‘Ya better Not’.. Over the past year or so, the original version has been scrubbed from Youtube and whats left is the anti-crack version..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVBD6hRepIw

Here is a excerpt of the original version.. You can see how folks concluded it was a pro-crack song..

Mele-Mel– doing a live performance of White Lines..

Masters of Ceremony ‘Cracked Out’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62T0Njv-xjM

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Wave of tragedy devastates the hip-hop community

Wave of tragedy devastates the hip-hop community

By Davey D

original article-may 19, 2006

The hip-hop community has been hit with devastating losses over the past few months.

Fans around the world were saddened when producer J-Dilla of Detroit’s Slum Village suddenly took a turn for the worse and died in February of complications from lupus. His death was especially painful because it occurred just days before his critically acclaimed album “Donuts” came out. The previous week, an album-release party was held in Los Angeles, where numerous artists for whom Dilla had made beats, including De La Soul, were on hand.

The sudden death in March of Professor X (Lumumba Carson), leader of the Afrocentric political rap group X-Clan, sent shock waves throughout the community. His death was especially hard to accept because many had seen him at a media reform demonstration just three days earlier, where he had spoken about his determination to step up his activism and resurrect the Blackwatch organization founded by his father, Sonny Carson.

In addition, the members of X-Clan had patched up differences that had kept them apart for more than 10 years. They were set for a surprise reunion. The week Professor X died, he was supposed to visit California to shoot a video with group members Brother J and Paradise. This coast, particularly the Bay Area, had special meaning for the group because it was the first to embrace and champion the music of X-Clan, originally based in Brooklyn.

The fact that Professor X died of spinal meningitis made headlines in New York. The Professor X case underscored the music industry’s dirty little secret: Despite the billions of dollars the industry generates annually, most musicians do not have health insurance.

Weeks after these deaths, the hip-hop community was shocked to hear about the shooting death of Eminem’s best friend, Proof, leader of the group D-12. The charismatic Proof (who played the man who gave Eminem his start in the movie “8 Mile”) had announced that he was working with other artists on a tribute album for Detroit’s J-Dilla. Sadly, people are now doing a tribute album for Proof.

Over the past two weeks, California has lost three hip-hop legends, two of them on the same day. One was DJ Dusk, who spun frequently at Bay Area functions. Dusk was also a political activist in the area of education. He died two weeks ago, when he was hit by a drunken driver in Southern California as he walked a girlfriend to her car. According to witnesses, Dusk pushed the woman out of the way but was struck himself and dragged 80 yards. His selfless act speaks volumes about the kind of man he was.

His death was widely mourned in tributes around the country. He was so well loved that hip-hop pioneers Afrika Bambaataa, Kool Herc and Jazzy Jay made rare joint appearances in New York, Los Angeles and the Bay Area, where Dusk had his biggest followings. They visited San Francisco last weekend to do a tribute and raise money for Dusk’s family.

On the day that DJ Dusk was killed, Michael “Mixin’ ” Moore, a pioneer in hip-hop radio in L.A., died at age 46 from heart failure. Best known for his Militant Mix, fusing speeches and news clips over popular instrumentals, he also is credited with inventing the 5 o’clock Traffic Jam, a mainstay on commercial radio around the country.

While the hip-hop icons were paying tribute to DJ Dusk last weekend, rap legend Skeeter Rabbit of the pioneering dance group the Electric Boogaloos died. He was an innovator in “strutting” and “popping” and was no stranger to the Bay Area, where he participated in numerous competitions.

On Saturday may 20th there will be two seperate tributes and funerals for Skeeter Rabbit and Michael Mixxing Moore

With all the deaths, many in the hip-hop community have taken time to reflect. Since no one is promised tomorrow, we must learn to appreciate what we have today. Digital Underground’s “Heartbeat Props,” which encourages us to honor the living, rings especially true these days.

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Breakdown FM-Professor X was Vanglorious

In Remembrance of Professor X

original article-March 18 2006

Check out this special Tribute Mix we did in Memory of the Late Professor X .

Special Shout out to Paradise the Architect of X-Clan

odeo.com/audio/904888/view

By now folks may have heard the news about the sudden passing of Professor X of X-Clan.. I got off the phone with Brother J who was the lead rapper of this legendary group who delivered the sad news. We believe he died from spinal menegitas.. Tonight there will be a special tribute to Professor X on Divine Forces Radio 90.7 KPFK starting at 10pm if you are in Los Angeles. Brother J will be on as well as Paris..

 The passing of Professor X is sad indeed.. For those who are unfamiliar with Professor X please read the statement released by Afrika Bambaataa… X was the guy who coined the phrase “Van Glorious This is Protected by the Red, The Black and The Green“…What’s so sad and crazy is that nowadays when you talk about Professor X to today’s younger Hip Hop audience, they immediately think of the guy from the comic X-men..

Professor X aka Lumumba Carson was a good cat..who will be missed…

Davey D

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Professor X Was Vanglorious
by Wendy Day

I received an email from Afrika Bambaataa and Yoda today saying that Professor X had passed. I rushed over to allhiphop.com to see what happened to him. They confirmed Lumumba Carson passed from Meningitis. I am devastated.

In 1992, I started Rap Coalition out of pure disgust after seeing how my favorite rappers were treated– specifically, Eric B and Rakim, and X-Clan. In the late 80s and early 90s, these were my favorite rappers.

Lamumba Carson was great because he stood for something. He had something to say and he said it. He was the son of New York based (now deceased) activist Sonny Carson (how difficult it must be to be the son of someone so driven, focused, and important to humanity). Lumumba always rose to the occasion.

I always avoided meeting Professor X and Brother J (who, together, comprised X-Clan and heavily promoted the organization Black Watch), out of fear that they may not be what their image portrayed. At that point, I had met so many of my rap heroes and been disappointed in the past because of the diachotomy between image and reality (a painful lesson for someone devoting a career and life to helping her heroes for free).

I found that J and Lumumba were serious about what they were accomplishing. And while I found Professor X to be human with all the human frailties (thank God!), over the years I have found both of them to be exactly who they portrayed themselves to be–strong Black men, loving and caring for a race of people often too tired to fight for themselves. They were not hypocrites like soooo many others.

Like most rappers, and certainly like the majority of rappers from their generation, they did not make much money from their art form. In fact, they had the further degradation of watching others become wealthy on what they built, and on their art form (a BIG @#%$ you to Lou Maglia and 4th and Broadway).

I just spoke with Lumumba for the first time last year. I had received an email that was making fun of him because he listed himself on eBay, and was auctioning off “a day with Professor X” to the highest bidder. How he must be struggling financially to do something like that, I thought to myself. I became the highest bidder. The fact that I could barely afford to pay my rent at the time did not enter my mind. I was determined to buy a day with Professor X.

He ended the auction before the final deadline (doesn’t matter, I would have won regardless) because of the hateful emails circulating on the web about him putting himself up for auction. I was disgusted by the reaction. It was a f*cking lunch date with Professor X. Had it been Justin Timberlake for a charity, no one would have said @#%$. But a hungry man was not supposed to eat this way, I guess.

Somehow others who have made a career from (read: pimped) Hip Hop had the right to say what was acceptable or not for one of the Legends. All of a sudden, people making money critiquing what others create had the power to say what was the proper way for Professor X to make income. It pissed me off beyond words. I received disrespectful, opinionated emails from self-appointed authorities asking me why I supported such a gimmick. I got emails from fake-ass Hip Hop “journalists” spewing negativity and condescention without having all of the facts. I was disgusted with our community for not supporting Professor X and everyone else like him who needed our support and got jeers instead.

Lumumba called me. He knew who I was. He was excited that I had been bidding on his post. I had the opportunity to tell him what he meant to me. I told him how he influenced me to go down the path I am on without ever having met me. Now THAT’S power. He shared with me some of his industry expereinces and his hopes and dreams.

The price for Lumumba was high on eBay. Not high financially, but high in negative reaction, high in lack of support, and high in the realization that this unforgiving industry has no love for those who have come before when the @#%$ VH-1 cameras aren’t running. I think my last bid was under $100. I would have bid $1,000.

We quietly disrespect our artists for not being Billionaires, and then we disrespect them if we perceive them to “sell out” (read: earn a living). They can’t win. We bemoan artists today for selling misogyny, crime, violence, and materialism, but we didn’t support the ones who had a positive message once they were no longer perceived to be “hot!”

And God forbid they try to earn a buck on eBay selling the opportunity to spend time with them before they pass.

I wanted to spend a day with Lumumba. He would not take my money. We spoke at length about the industry and Afrocentricity. We discussed his father and his legacy. We discussed a lot. It was the first, and last, time we spoke.

I never got my day with Professor X. But what I did get was far more priceless. I got the real Professor X, and he is and was what he always said he was. He was REAL. And he loved people. Especially Black people. He will sorely be missed!

Please understand if the next time you see me I am stomping in my big black boots.

http://www.wendyday.com

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