Hip Hop News That Isn't About Dumb Sh*t - Week of Dec. 16, 2024

[00:00:02] And this is Hip Hop Can Save You.

[00:00:38] Popping it here on the audio feed just in case you don't catch the video version over on YouTube.

[00:00:44] It'll give you some insight as to the type of things we talk about on the show and of course news and views about hip hop music and culture that showcase its innovative, inventive and insightful nature.

[00:00:56] Of course I'd love for you to be on the live stream as you'll hear we converse with folks in the chat and there's some back and forth which I love and we're trying to build that up.

[00:01:03] So if any of this interests you set your alarm for Monday 9 p.m. Eastern and join us at hiphopcassaveamerica.com slash watch for the live stream version of the show.

[00:01:12] We'll be back in the beginning of the year with some more guests and doing some of the things that we've been doing normally.

[00:01:17] Shout out to my man Macedonia, shout out to Radio B-Sots, both sides of the surface and others who let me know that giving this part of the show to the audio feed is actually welcomed.

[00:01:27] So I'll keep doing it for a while again this one's a little long because again with no guest we have an extended period.

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[00:01:40] It's a free newsletter. It actually contains most of the items that we then end up talking about on the show.

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[00:01:54] mannyfaces.substack.com.

[00:01:55] And lastly, I know it's the holiday season and you're probably tapped out and spent giving gifts to all your peoples.

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[00:03:04] We've got Teremoana, Randy, Tony, Jamie, Austin, Sarah, Dr. Elliot Gann, AJ Woodson, Silent Night, Mark E, Jesse G, Toast, Nicholas S, Brianna C, Steffi, Kath, Morgan, Andrew Wang, Dr. Raphael Travis, Patrick, Chris J, and Adam Cruz.

[00:03:21] All these folks have contributed to the cause.

[00:03:23] So you wouldn't be alone.

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[00:03:46] Anyway, here it is.

[00:03:48] HipHop News That Isn't About Dumb-ish for the week of.

[00:03:50] Let's see, we're posting this.

[00:03:51] We'll put this up on December 19th.

[00:03:54] Let's just say December.

[00:03:55] It'll go up December 19th, 2024.

[00:03:57] It's a man, Manny Faces wishing peace and love to you and yours.

[00:04:02] Once again, this is something that I like to call.

[00:04:08] HipHop News That Isn't About Dumb-ish.

[00:04:14] Let's talk about it.

[00:04:15] We got some items in the newsletter this week that I think you should be interested in.

[00:04:22] Again, I mentioned the HipHop Studies Conference at Howard University that I attended and took part in.

[00:04:28] There was a Chuck D documentary, a documentary that Chuck D from Public Enemy produced called Fight, called In the Hour of Chaos, The Art and Activism of HipHop.

[00:04:39] It was produced while he was an artist in residence at UCLA.

[00:04:42] And so we did a little film screening of that documentary.

[00:04:45] It's not out, out, but it should be out and available if you're interested in seeing that sort of thing.

[00:04:51] But Howard, their second annual HipHop Studies Conference went down.

[00:04:55] They'll be doing another one next year.

[00:04:56] We'll preview it a little bit later on.

[00:04:58] And I didn't put it in last week's, even though we talked about it.

[00:05:02] Hey, there you go.

[00:05:03] There's my blue sky.

[00:05:04] Thanks, man.

[00:05:05] Thanks, Bob.

[00:05:06] Appreciate you.

[00:05:07] That is my blue sky.

[00:05:08] So jump on my blue sky and get all up in my, as my man Max from Un-F-ing the Republic likes to say, we can blute each other.

[00:05:19] Reclaiming HipHop's Power, a student review of the annual HipHop Studies Conference.

[00:05:23] And what I love about this is not just, we're not just sitting here with gray hair, beards.

[00:05:27] And, you know, back in my day, HipHop was this, that, and a third.

[00:05:30] This was actually a student who attends Howard University who was at the conference and gave her full analysis of it.

[00:05:37] I thought it was very valuable if we don't listen to the young people about what they're taking out of these situations.

[00:05:42] There's a great conference session there with a bunch of professors and, you know, sort of like, you know, older generation HipHop heads.

[00:05:49] And all the young kids, you know, kids, you know what I'm saying, no disrespect, 19, 20, 21.

[00:05:54] And there was a dialogue happening about this generational gap that we talk about, you know, in HipHop a lot.

[00:06:02] But the failure of, you know, the young folks to kind of, what would the perceived failure of young folks to be cognizant of HipHop's power.

[00:06:12] And I push back on that so much.

[00:06:14] I think it's actually us older folk that have lost sight of what HipHop can actually do.

[00:06:19] So anyway, it's a great article.

[00:06:21] You can check that out.

[00:06:22] That was one of the things that we shared.

[00:06:25] I mean, starting off with a James Baldwin quote, you can never do wrong.

[00:06:29] The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover.

[00:06:33] If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see.

[00:06:36] And that's what artists do.

[00:06:38] And that's what a lot of things that happened there at the conference happened.

[00:06:44] So that's cool.

[00:06:45] And, of course, related, I did have the two of the professors that were orchestrators, organizers of the conference on this program a couple episodes back.

[00:06:57] So do check that out if you want to know more about the HipHop Studies Conference at Howard.

[00:07:01] And more importantly, the HipHop Studies Minor Program at Howard.

[00:07:05] They launched a minor program, which is starting in the spring.

[00:07:08] And that's, you know, of interest to academics, of course.

[00:07:11] I will.

[00:07:12] I'm going to touch on this.

[00:07:13] I'm going to touch on this.

[00:07:14] We don't get into this sort of news here too much.

[00:07:17] Although I have something to say about it, maybe, at the end.

[00:07:21] There's an interesting article on NPR.

[00:07:23] And I only point to it because it's, you know, all this Jay-Z, Diddy, you know, particularly Diddy in his cases and Jay-Z stuff.

[00:07:31] It's not that it's not important.

[00:07:32] You know, I like to say on this show we talk about hip-hop news that isn't about dumb-ish.

[00:07:38] Which means I don't like to get into the gossipy stuff, the entertainment stuff.

[00:07:41] There's plenty of places for that.

[00:07:42] You can find that in a million places online, whether it's quality journalism or not.

[00:07:47] It exists.

[00:07:48] And it's not really our lane.

[00:07:51] But that's not to say that this isn't an incredibly important story.

[00:07:56] One that has a lot of ramifications and a lot of nuance.

[00:07:59] Obviously, if we have, you know, a major figure, no matter whether they're in hip-hop or, you know, in the movies or, you know, anyone who, you know, through the Me Too movement, who's committing these kind of atrocities, they should absolutely be held to account.

[00:08:13] And I'm not, I'm of no opinion because I don't know enough to know because I don't have the evidence and I'm not in the courtroom and I'm not in the back room of the investigators.

[00:08:25] So, and nobody is.

[00:08:26] None of y'all are.

[00:08:27] So none of y'all have, none of y'all really know anything.

[00:08:29] So stop.

[00:08:30] But have fun.

[00:08:31] Have fun speculating and doing all that.

[00:08:34] I'm not going to do all that.

[00:08:34] However, I did find it interesting, this article, which published a few days ago on NPR, what exactly is driving the conspiracy theories about Diddy.

[00:08:44] And it goes through a little bit of a timeline, right, of the, you know, of the case, of the arrest, you know, repeatedly denied that he's ever done any of these things, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:08:56] But it does get into a little bit of, you know, why the speculation, the rampant speculation, you know, is happening.

[00:09:04] There's some talk about misinformation, false information, disinformation, conspiracy theories.

[00:09:08] And, you know, it's a well-reasoned look at, you know, how, especially in today's day and age, you have a major, you know, case.

[00:09:18] You have a major, I don't know, news story or item of interest that everybody and their mother is going to have their two cents, you know, on it.

[00:09:27] And because everybody and their mother can have, you know, access to the internet and spread information, you're going to get a lot of information.

[00:09:37] And it speaks to media literacy and how we should, you know, look at things.

[00:09:43] And, you know, maybe if you're listening to this show, I'm preaching to the choir.

[00:09:46] You're not someone that gets taken in by, you know, some of the, you know, disinformation and falsehoods that permeate, you know, the internet.

[00:09:57] But I thought it was a good breakdown.

[00:09:59] It's a long, it's a good article.

[00:10:00] It's long.

[00:10:01] It goes into it.

[00:10:02] There's a section about scapegoating of hip hop.

[00:10:04] Again, these are some of the nuances we have to look at.

[00:10:06] We have to weigh whether, you know, we can be so adamant against someone like Puff going down.

[00:10:15] If we believe that he did some of these things and obviously we have to believe victims and we have to protect, you know, women and men and people who are, you know, in positions that are being taken advantage of.

[00:10:28] But we also know that hip hop gets over criminalized.

[00:10:31] We have to, we know that, that black people in America get over criminalized.

[00:10:35] There's a balance here to strike.

[00:10:36] And it's so it's, people are going to have their strong opinions on it.

[00:10:39] And I think that if you go into this, watching this whole thing, paying attention to it, following it with that, with both sides in your mind, you can actually have some decent amount of patience.

[00:10:49] First of all, for God's sake, just have patience to see how it all plays out.

[00:10:54] But also, you know, looking for the biases in the coverage, looking for the biases in the folks you might follow on social media.

[00:11:03] And I think it's just, it's a good lesson when you read this whole story and you think of what's happening with, with, with Didier.

[00:11:08] And since this came out, obviously with Jay, it's, it's important.

[00:11:12] It's, it's not insignificant to think about how we look at these big, big major stories and try to approach them with a, you know, sort of a nuanced and boundless approach.

[00:11:24] I thought it was important.

[00:11:26] Uh, we had a story, uh, on the education, healthcare, public services.

[00:11:33] I like to have things from all over the place, right?

[00:11:35] So we had, we started off with, you know, education.

[00:11:38] We went into legal, right?

[00:11:41] Uh, sort of pop culture, something that's happening in, in mainstream.

[00:11:44] Uh, and now we're touching on mental health services.

[00:11:47] You know, that hip hop can, uh, be used to advance the, the, the success of mental health.

[00:11:56] Uh, we just talked about whatever it might've happened in Wisconsin or, you know, a number of other, you know, school shootings or, uh, violence that happens in the world, violence that happens in communities of color, violence that happens in poor, uh, communities throughout the country of all demographics.

[00:12:10] Um, you know, much, much of it and much of what we're facing as a nation, especially after pandemic has been, uh, a mental health crisis.

[00:12:19] Just one way or the other.

[00:12:20] Doesn't mean you're going to go, you know, shoot up a school, but you're obviously, we're all, we all got something, something, something.

[00:12:26] If you look at the, the political scene and the, the, the reactions to stories like this on social media, people are bugging and I'm just as guilty as anybody else.

[00:12:39] So can hip hop play a role in fixing that problem?

[00:12:44] There will be a plethora of mental health professionals that say yes.

[00:12:49] One of them is JC Hall.

[00:12:50] Uh, JC Hall is, uh, has a school, uh, uh, counseling set, uh, studio set up.

[00:12:58] He's in the Bronx, New York.

[00:12:59] Uh, he's been on this show, uh, and we can go back in the newsletter.

[00:13:03] I linked to his episode and he wrote a, uh, very compelling piece about the restorative potential of hip hop therapy.

[00:13:11] Uh, and we have a lot of people that, uh, we've had on this show and we've talked about, uh, that do this sort of thing.

[00:13:17] But again, you might not be up on this.

[00:13:20] You might be coming across this for the first time and you may have some connection to the mental health industry, or you may have children.

[00:13:26] He may be a parent.

[00:13:27] All you have to do is be a parent to watch the show.

[00:13:29] You don't have to be an educator and say, wow, there's actually ways that hip hop can help my kids, you know, um, deal with their trauma.

[00:13:39] And that, that would be cool because if, if you, if you were an older head like me that come up on hip hop, you would have, you would have taken to that.

[00:13:46] I went through like traditional, what do you call it?

[00:13:49] Uh, therapeutic, you know, stuff that wasn't helpful to me.

[00:13:54] That wasn't, uh, it didn't, I didn't do well.

[00:13:59] They didn't know me.

[00:14:00] They didn't know where I was culturally, uh, attached.

[00:14:04] I can only imagine how it is if, if you're, you know, uh, from a different, different ethnicity.

[00:14:11] In fact, you know, again, 15, 20 years ago where you're not getting treatment that's based on your cultural, on this, you know, we talk about it a lot, culturally relevant, culturally responsive, culturally affirmative.

[00:14:25] Methodologies that are used in education these days.

[00:14:27] So if the reasoning is, Hey, you'll just connect better with a person.

[00:14:34] If you're respectful and understanding and have some kind of, you know, nuanced, uh, comprehension of their cultural, you know, ethos, that makes sense, right?

[00:14:46] So can we translate that to the education space?

[00:14:48] Well, if teachers, you know, who may not be from the same, you know, demographic can find ways to respectfully and authentically connect with a young person.

[00:14:56] You might be able to introduce some, some school, some educational ideas that they can kind of, Oh, I get it because you're speaking my language.

[00:15:03] Okay, cool.

[00:15:03] Well, okay.

[00:15:04] Now we translate that over to, uh, the therapeutic space.

[00:15:09] And JC Hall is a great example of this.

[00:15:11] And I just wanted to point this out.

[00:15:12] This is a great long, um, article about his work.

[00:15:15] We've had him on the show to actually talk about it.

[00:15:17] Uh, but this might be the first time it was a long time ago.

[00:15:20] I'd like to get him back.

[00:15:20] He wrote a whole long thing about how, uh, hip hop can help young people heal from trauma.

[00:15:28] So great story.

[00:15:29] Great thing to read, especially if you're in that field, um, or have interest in that.

[00:15:36] So we wanted to make sure we touched upon the therapy aspect, the health and wellness aspect of, uh, hip hop being able to help save America.

[00:15:44] Uh, moving on.

[00:15:45] Uh, there's a good, this is, it's an old story, new story.

[00:15:48] It's a, it's a new story, uh, on spin about run DMC proving that hip hop was an art form.

[00:15:53] And the reason why it's, uh, uh, come out now, even though the documentary that it's based on came out a little while back,

[00:16:00] it's because the documentary, uh, called Kings from Queens has been nominated for a Grammy.

[00:16:04] Uh, it's a good documentary.

[00:16:06] I watched it and probably talked about it on the show, uh, some time ago.

[00:16:09] So it's a good story that connects sort of, uh, it talks about the documentary, uh, but it does a good job of, of that sort of bridging that gap of how run DMC,

[00:16:18] proved that hip hop could be an art form, uh, not just a genre of music.

[00:16:23] And, and I think in the eighties and nineties, we talk about now, like hip hop being a culture.

[00:16:27] That's something that a lot of people don't, they don't really grasp and get ahold of.

[00:16:30] Um, run DMC helped make that happen because it expanded from genre to sort of into the world of lifestyle.

[00:16:37] And it was happening of course, but run DMC brought it sort of to the mainstream and to the forefront so that more people could know about it.

[00:16:44] And then a lot of people could feel comfortable doing it.

[00:16:46] You had, you had some freedom to say, Oh, I, this is how I represent myself in, in my hood or my area of the, you know, uh, of, of the world.

[00:16:54] And it's okay to do this because they made it, they made it cool.

[00:16:57] They made it acceptable.

[00:16:58] We're already doing it or they're already.

[00:17:00] I wasn't even, you know, I mean, talking about as I was coming into the culture myself, but folks are doing that.

[00:17:05] And so it gave that sort of a, uh, you know, I say permission, I guess, or validity.

[00:17:11] Right.

[00:17:12] And so it was a good story.

[00:17:12] Good story on spin about, uh, run DMC.

[00:17:15] And of course the documentary, I don't know.

[00:17:18] I can check real quick.

[00:17:20] Um, Hulu maybe.

[00:17:24] I'm going to see where, if you haven't seen it yet, I did it.

[00:17:28] I did it.

[00:17:28] There was a, there was a show.

[00:17:30] I did a bunch of, a peacock on peacock on peacock, uh, maybe Apple TV also, but, uh, yeah.

[00:17:36] Peacock is where I saw it.

[00:17:37] Um, I did a show a bunch of, I don't know, a bunch of, uh, you know, months ago where I was talking about,

[00:17:42] there was a plethora of good, uh, hip hop documentaries that came out.

[00:17:47] Um, you know, I guess in the last couple, you know, bunch of months, six months, it was the,

[00:17:52] the little brother documentary, the old dirty bastard documentary, run DMC documentary.

[00:17:59] Uh, any others?

[00:18:02] Andrew Wang, you remember any others that we were talking about?

[00:18:05] Been a good flurry of hip hop documentaries recently,

[00:18:11] which I would hope that turned people on to the idea of other good hip hop documentaries from the past.

[00:18:17] Uh, I think of Time is Zillmatic, Nas's documentary about Nas.

[00:18:22] Um, you know, there's been a, uh, uh, uh, I think I'm hoping, sort of an opening.

[00:18:27] I'm hoping, I'm hoping, it's hoping, hoping for an opening.

[00:18:30] I'm hoping that, uh, there's more and more opportunity for films to be made, but particularly documentaries.

[00:18:38] Biopics are cool.

[00:18:40] You know, straight out of Compton made a big bunch of noise a bunch of years ago.

[00:18:43] Um, but documentary work, real journalism work.

[00:18:47] I have some, some stuff I'm working on in that field too, because I have ideas in every possible nook and cranny of the world.

[00:18:52] And I'd love to be able to see my idea come to fruition, uh, you know, sort of on the TV slash streaming slash, you know, video, uh, angle.

[00:19:03] And, and because I'm, you know, we do, we do journalism, we do hip hop stuff.

[00:19:07] Like I'd like to see more and more.

[00:19:09] So anyway, just yay to that happening.

[00:19:12] Um, and the King Queen's documentary was a good one.

[00:19:16] The history of run DMC.

[00:19:19] Uh, again, old school to the new.

[00:19:22] Shouts to, uh, Glorilla.

[00:19:27] AP did a, oops, you don't see it.

[00:19:30] Hey, by the way, I'm also putting this section of the video podcast, the live stream.

[00:19:36] I'm ripping the news section and also putting it on the audio feed.

[00:19:39] So if you don't get a chance to listen to all of this, but maybe you drive to work and you listen to me on the audio podcast, the hip hop save America audio podcast, you'll get these stories there too.

[00:19:49] Um, but I love that when we're here together and just, you know, kind of commenting and, you know, putting our two cents in Glorilla, uh, made a lot of noise last few months.

[00:19:58] Uh, she's coming up.

[00:19:59] She's doing her thing.

[00:20:00] We talked about Dochi last week.

[00:20:01] You know, again, I don't like to separate all the time.

[00:20:04] Women artists as opposed to men artists.

[00:20:06] Uh, you know, but some people do.

[00:20:08] And there's been a lot of talk over the years of, uh, wishing that there was greater diversity or greater, um, uh, range for our women, uh, artists.

[00:20:17] Although we don't seem to ask the same of our men artists.

[00:20:20] I mean, and we do complain sometimes, uh, but then there's enough people saying, no, no, they exist.

[00:20:25] You just gotta go, you gotta hunt for them.

[00:20:26] You gotta go underground.

[00:20:27] Like you guys gotta search all those artists, you know, kicking the knowledge is all, you know, the conscious rap and substantive stuff.

[00:20:33] It's all, yes, it's true.

[00:20:34] It all, it all exists.

[00:20:35] So to, but to say that women today don't have that when you know that you should know that like Rhapsody exists, that Cyrock exists, you know, that, you know, Lick Lee and, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, little Sims and, and, uh, uh, Doja Cat even like to some degree, even though she's super, you know, kind of on a pop level, but Dochi came out and put all that talk to rest.

[00:20:57] I'm like, yo, we out here.

[00:20:58] Stop it.

[00:20:59] Um, Glorilla's not exactly on that lane so much more of a, you know, uh, fun.

[00:21:03] Uh, uh, you know, not a substantive, not a stylistically groundbreaking artist, but she's doing her thing.

[00:21:10] And I thought that AP did a nice story giving her, uh, you know, sort of a rundown of who she is and what she's doing.

[00:21:17] Um, just might be, you know, that you don't know about some of these new artists.

[00:21:20] I thought it was a good one to point to.

[00:21:22] I want to make sure that we're sharing the generational love as it were.

[00:21:25] Um, and I thought it was a fine story and I like Glorilla.

[00:21:28] I'm not going to lie.

[00:21:29] I like what she's doing.

[00:21:30] Um, so there's that.

[00:21:33] Hip hop started out in the park.

[00:21:35] You should do it out in the dark.

[00:21:37] Da, da, da, da.

[00:21:38] Okay.

[00:21:38] So next story on the, I don't know why that came into my mind.

[00:21:41] Um, Detroit.

[00:21:43] What up to folks from Detroit?

[00:21:45] This is an interesting story.

[00:21:46] It talked about how Detroit's hip hop scene is impacting local economy for the better.

[00:21:52] And again, this is what we do here.

[00:21:54] We share the stories about hip hop doing positive things.

[00:21:56] There's so many stories I'm running out of breath telling you about all the stories that

[00:22:01] most people don't think exist because you generally don't see this story being rebroadcast

[00:22:07] on your hip hop media outlets.

[00:22:09] Although they'll rebroadcast NBC news interviewing the Jay-Z accuser till they're, you know, they

[00:22:15] run out of, uh, www space.

[00:22:18] Right.

[00:22:18] They'll do it all day, every day.

[00:22:20] And they'll talk about it.

[00:22:20] And they'll have commentary on it and they'll do it.

[00:22:22] And they'll do a video on it.

[00:22:23] And they'll have a social media post about it.

[00:22:25] But when you hear stories like this, you don't really hear stories like this there.

[00:22:28] So that's what I do.

[00:22:30] Anyway, Detroit.

[00:22:30] Shouts to the D.

[00:22:31] Uh, bunch of interesting insight about what's happening locally in the Detroit area.

[00:22:38] Now I don't vet these articles.

[00:22:40] I don't know if like whoever wrote this is really talking about all the, you know, all

[00:22:45] the ins and outs of Detroit, but I think I got a pretty decent idea of what's happening

[00:22:50] out there, uh, in the local scene.

[00:22:51] I used to cover hip hop music and culture in New York city.

[00:22:55] I had, uh, I started a, uh, online publication called birthplace magazine.

[00:23:00] I did that for about a decade, a decade.

[00:23:05] I was covering New York area, hip hop music and culture.

[00:23:08] I was like the only one.

[00:23:11] And we're talking about 20, you know, 2011, maybe a little earlier, 2010 to about, you

[00:23:23] know, 2018, like heavy for about eight years.

[00:23:26] I was covering, it's called birthplace magazine.

[00:23:28] I had an events calendar.

[00:23:29] I was at all the independent scene, you know, underground joints.

[00:23:32] We didn't talk about the superstars that much.

[00:23:34] We did, but they weren't really representing like New York.

[00:23:37] We still, and people were calling New York dead in the water and saying, you know, they're,

[00:23:43] they're lost and there's nothing happening.

[00:23:45] And any artists coming from New York sound like they come from somewhere else.

[00:23:48] I'm like French Montana and ASAP and all them.

[00:23:51] And to a certain extent, that's right.

[00:23:53] They were following national trends, but that didn't mean that the local scene was insignificant.

[00:23:57] Au contraire, Mon Frères.

[00:23:59] There was a incredible independent scene in New York city.

[00:24:02] There was a multi-elemental hip hop scene in New York city.

[00:24:06] That was just beautiful.

[00:24:07] There were longstanding institutions like Freestyle Mondays and End of the Week and Brown Bag.

[00:24:14] All Stars were doing jams.

[00:24:15] My People's, the band called Fuse, were doing the lineup.

[00:24:17] Weekly showcases, big, big events.

[00:24:21] The MC Challenge, the end of the week MC Challenge, which then went to different places around the world.

[00:24:26] Like so much stuff was happening in New York that was being overlooked by, again, hip hop media, quote unquote, that we had to tell that story because it was getting left out.

[00:24:36] And so I love local hip hop stories.

[00:24:39] I love learning a little bit more about, I went to the Chattanooga Hip Hop Fest.

[00:24:43] I live in Atlanta now, so I was able to go a couple years ago to the Chattanooga Hip Hop Summit.

[00:24:49] And I learned a little bit about Chattanooga's local scene.

[00:24:52] Like every city got a local scene and there's gems there.

[00:24:56] There's artists, first of all, that are super dope that may not get, you know, much attention outside of those areas.

[00:25:03] So obviously we want to find, you know, we want to try to like do a little exploration and see like who's popping in different areas of the country.

[00:25:09] But there are organizations, there's nonprofits on the ground.

[00:25:13] We talked to Jose Moore, who's out in, I don't want to say Little Rock.

[00:25:18] I don't want to get it wrong.

[00:25:20] The all the above, Lansing, Lansing, Michigan, the all the above hip hop academy.

[00:25:24] Like Lansing, Lansing, Michigan's got a great, you know, local hip hop scene.

[00:25:30] My man Monk in Grand Rapids is a great local hip hop scene.

[00:25:36] Every place got a local hip hop scene.

[00:25:38] And when you tap into those folks, you start learning what they're doing on the ground and you start getting like gems of information.

[00:25:46] Because if we want hip hop to help save America, you can't have a one size fits all approach.

[00:25:52] Right.

[00:25:52] There's going to be different things.

[00:25:54] So I'm always listening and always tuned in.

[00:25:57] And we had Dr. Dia from Alabama's on the show and the social justice, you know, movements that they're doing there.

[00:26:04] So I'm always interested in local, you know, local scenes, especially when it's presented in a positive manner.

[00:26:11] I don't know.

[00:26:11] I hope you are, too.

[00:26:12] That's that's why we do this.

[00:26:14] I'll give you one more.

[00:26:15] We'll skip ahead because Memphis.

[00:26:17] Shouts again to Glorilla, where she's from.

[00:26:20] Memphis wants to build a museum, a hip hop history museum.

[00:26:24] We've talked about the importance of archiving here.

[00:26:26] We've talked about the importance of preserving these stories, of not letting the mainstream corporate controlled whitewashing of the culture.

[00:26:37] Right.

[00:26:37] Like, you know, we're trying to protect against that.

[00:26:39] I'm trying to use my position and privilege to make sure that doesn't happen.

[00:26:43] I know that there are people we've talked to so many people from the archiving space.

[00:26:46] My man, Ben Ortiz at Cornell University.

[00:26:48] Shouts to Martha Diaz.

[00:26:49] Shouts to my girl, Summer, executive producer, consulting producer of this podcast.

[00:26:53] Summer McCoy with the Mixtape Museum.

[00:26:55] We talked to we're going to talk to Sarita Gates with the Gates Preserve.

[00:26:58] Ralph McDaniels.

[00:26:59] We've talked to like doing all this like preservation of all these different aspects of hip hop, you know, culture.

[00:27:06] So the hip hop museum, what they're doing in New York City, of course.

[00:27:09] And so when you when we talk about, again, local plus important ways to control control your narrative, because otherwise it'll get taken away.

[00:27:20] And we're we're able to do that.

[00:27:21] We're able to be proponents of it.

[00:27:23] Look, here's a quick story from Memphis that want to bring a hip hop museum to their music fans around the world.

[00:27:29] Know about the importance and the influence that Memphis has on hip hop.

[00:27:34] It's why some say the Bluff City deserves its own permanent museum dedicated to the celebration and preservation of the genres, music and its culture.

[00:27:43] WREG's Alex Coleman tells us where that project stands.

[00:27:45] And if Shelby County commissioners are feeling the flow of Memphis rap.

[00:27:51] You didn't have to do that.

[00:27:52] Like, all right, you didn't have to do that.

[00:27:55] But anyway.

[00:27:57] Memphis, Tennessee, home of blue, soul and rock and roll is taking another step to becoming home to his first hip hop museum.

[00:28:05] Memphis rap icon Al Capone is known for the hustle and flow theme song Whoop That Trick.

[00:28:10] The Memphis music scene, especially the hip hop scene, has been dominant.

[00:28:15] We need a better voice over news people in any way.

[00:28:19] For a long time.

[00:28:21] We've been just as unique as the soul music era.

[00:28:24] Memphis hip hop, which has influenced music, culture, fashion, dance and the arts globally, took center stage at this Shelby County Commission meeting.

[00:28:33] We've had a thriving music culture for years, but it is revving back up.

[00:28:40] After stacks close down, it is revving back up.

[00:28:42] Former Greater Memphis Chamber President Beverly Robertson of Trust Marketing, who is also the former executive director of the National Civil Rights Museum, along with others, updated commissioners on the museum proposal.

[00:28:55] Can you adjust the timeline?

[00:28:55] Okay, so we haven't decided on exactly how long it will take.

[00:29:01] A financial overview shows the museum could be visited by more than 43,000 people each year, have annual operating expenses of $1.8 million and revenues of $1.14 million.

[00:29:13] But it could require additional funding of more than $700,000.

[00:29:17] Once we get anchored, we will figure out how to generate the revenue to be able to sustain and grow the museum long term.

[00:29:27] But commissioners question would Memphis artists and historians be involved in the project?

[00:29:32] And would there be an educational component for children and possible job training in music for young adults?

[00:29:39] Organizers say yes.

[00:29:40] Some of the programming thoughts and ideas that came up were like master classes, production classes as well, which obviously are much more relevant to young adults.

[00:29:51] Performance space as well in the space.

[00:29:52] So we are certainly thinking about that demographic as well.

[00:29:56] Even though an official name, location, and projected opening date has not been determined, many hip-hop pioneers say the hustle and flow of a Memphis hip-hop museum deserves to happen in the home of grit and grind.

[00:30:09] Listen, we need that hip-hop museum in Memphis because the history runs deep.

[00:30:13] Reporting for your news leader in Memphis, Alex Coleman, WREG-TV, News Channel 3.

[00:30:20] Hustle and flow in the heart of hip-hop, right?

[00:30:23] Well, by the way, rapper Al Capone tells us that he also believes a hip-hop museum would help bring more tourists into Memphis.

[00:30:30] Well, there you have it, Bob.

[00:30:31] We have a fantastic rhythm and flow possibility right here in Memphis, Tennessee.

[00:30:37] Thank you.

[00:30:38] Back to you, Manny.

[00:30:40] So, yeah.

[00:30:41] I mean, yeah.

[00:30:44] So, listen, I think it's a great idea.

[00:30:46] I think every city, every state, every place should be able to orchestrate its own hip-hop museum.

[00:30:50] There are a lot of—oh, shouts to the D.C., the National Hip-Hop Museum in D.C.

[00:30:55] Shouts to Red Summer.

[00:30:56] Oh, there's so many people doing this work.

[00:30:58] So, what I would hope—I talked about this with Ben Ortiz in depth, actually, in one of the early episodes of Hip-Hop to Save America, where we talked about, you know, Cornell University.

[00:31:10] Harvard University also has—there's a bunch of universities.

[00:31:13] William & Mary have, you know, has an archive.

[00:31:19] There are nuances to this.

[00:31:22] Don't try to reinvent the wheel.

[00:31:25] Hopefully, there's a, you know, consultant coming into Memphis to the planners.

[00:31:30] Maybe, you know, I have to get my consultancy bag going.

[00:31:34] But, like, because we want to go in and say, look, y'all may not know the extent that museums and archives and these have happened already.

[00:31:44] And so, it wouldn't be—first of all, it's not as big a sale.

[00:31:49] You don't have to sell it as much if, you know, you have all this proof.

[00:31:52] So, hopefully, someone's saying not just that it would be good for us here, but that it's already been good for other places.

[00:31:57] So, you know, hopefully that's happening.

[00:31:59] The key there would be having historians and local folks being involved.

[00:32:04] It's difficult.

[00:32:05] There's nuances.

[00:32:06] You have to worry about different factions having differing, you know, opinions about who's more important and who should be involved at the top.

[00:32:14] And so, there's a lot of, you know, nuance to consider.

[00:32:17] Obviously, there's monetary aspects.

[00:32:20] I've seen a lot of—I've talked about this in the past.

[00:32:23] I've seen a lot of hip-hop-oriented or hip-hop-affiliated, you know, movements to establish a thing.

[00:32:32] Beg the public for money.

[00:32:36] And now I'm doing that.

[00:32:37] I say, hey, can y'all by any chance help me pay to do this damn show?

[00:32:42] Because no one pays me to do this.

[00:32:44] All this beauty that I've set up.

[00:32:46] And I'm in so much debt just to bring y'all this stuff.

[00:32:49] Y'all can help.

[00:32:49] That'd be great.

[00:32:50] Patreon.com slash manyfaces.

[00:32:55] But also, I've seen literal examples of a hip-hop-based museum, Hall of Fame.

[00:33:03] It was being called—matter of fact, there's more than one, so, you know, there's a lot going on here.

[00:33:08] But a hip-hop institution like that doing a public fundraising campaign, it's not the one in New York City.

[00:33:16] It's one that doesn't exist anymore.

[00:33:18] They came.

[00:33:19] They had an idea.

[00:33:20] They ran a bunch of, you know, events.

[00:33:22] They had a big thing.

[00:33:24] They tried to hire me at one point.

[00:33:26] It was going way back.

[00:33:27] They hired other people.

[00:33:28] They got money from the public because they were like, wouldn't you—this was before the National—the Universal Hip-Hop Museum, The Hip-Hop Museum in New York now.

[00:33:36] And they said, wouldn't you love to have a, you know, a hip-hop museum in New York?

[00:33:39] And everyone was like, oh, my God, yes, take my money.

[00:33:41] And then they said, great, we're going to—we're working on it.

[00:33:43] We're doing—and then they disappeared.

[00:33:47] It didn't work out.

[00:33:49] And they didn't offer refunds.

[00:33:51] So I often worry that, you know, organizations like this have to be really, really careful.

[00:33:57] I'm one guy.

[00:33:57] You can give me money all day, every day.

[00:33:59] And you know what?

[00:34:00] Once I start getting—once I crack the grant code, I'm not going to—there's going to be no more pay.

[00:34:05] Everything's going to be free.

[00:34:06] There's nothing—y'all not.

[00:34:07] I might even give you money back because that's how I am.

[00:34:10] I don't want to nickel and dime, y'all, but I need to nickel and dime, y'all.

[00:34:12] So it's at the bottom of the screen.

[00:34:13] Become a Patreon.

[00:34:14] Please, Jesus, please help me.

[00:34:17] But these institutions, like, have to have this in mind.

[00:34:23] Natalie Crew knows.

[00:34:24] Shout out to Nat Crew.

[00:34:25] Excited about the museum, but that world is exploitative AF.

[00:34:28] Spent the last three years building one in Chicago.

[00:34:31] That's right.

[00:34:36] Yeah.

[00:34:37] So that's what we have to watch out for.

[00:34:38] And I'm saying, it happened.

[00:34:39] It really happened.

[00:34:40] Nat, I was covering it when I was doing Birthplace Magazine 10 years ago.

[00:34:44] 10 years ago.

[00:34:45] There was a whole thing.

[00:34:46] And then that's how I learned that, like, you got to be careful—not careful, but the nuance is so important.

[00:34:50] Because you had these folks that were like, we're going to build this thing.

[00:34:53] And then, like, some of the pioneers were down with them.

[00:34:56] And some of the pioneers weren't.

[00:34:59] And some of the pioneers were like, are we getting, like, reparations here?

[00:35:03] Are we getting remunerations from, you know, our contributions?

[00:35:06] You collected our stuff.

[00:35:08] You're talking about our culture.

[00:35:09] What are you giving us?

[00:35:09] What promises?

[00:35:11] How are you incorporating out?

[00:35:12] Same thing with the Hip Hop Museum in New York.

[00:35:14] I know they're going through this.

[00:35:15] So it's very—I was talking about that years ago.

[00:35:19] Years, because it's been going on for years.

[00:35:21] So museums are the new grift, but hip hop museums are the old—the old grift has been happening for a long time.

[00:35:26] So now that there's some examples that we can look at and say, okay, kind of done right.

[00:35:33] Or at least, you know, let's not reinvent the wheel.

[00:35:35] But make sure that you're taking these things into consideration so that it doesn't become a grift and a money grab.

[00:35:41] So that's my thoughts when I see something like that.

[00:35:45] But yeah, it's something to be—that's what we need.

[00:35:49] So Crown & Beat says—hey, what's up?

[00:35:51] Says, we need Worldwide Hip Hop Museum for educative purpose.

[00:35:54] Yeah, I think—so, again, giving some kudos to the hip hop museum.

[00:36:00] Let's see.

[00:36:01] It was the Universal Hip Hop Museum in New York.

[00:36:03] You know, shouts to Rocky Buccano and a lot of friends that I, you know, and colleagues that I know who work in the organization.

[00:36:11] And then they changed their name to the hip hop museum.

[00:36:14] They took the Universal out for reasons.

[00:36:16] It's another show.

[00:36:18] But I also don't like that name because it's like the hip hop museum.

[00:36:21] It, to me, you know, implies that you're, you know, the hip hop museum.

[00:36:28] And you're a good one and you're a big one and you're an important one, but you're just a hip hop museum.

[00:36:34] Like, you're not the—there is no the.

[00:36:37] There is no end-all, be-all.

[00:36:39] There is no, you know, like, institution of hip hop that, like, is above all.

[00:36:47] So I want the—the—the—I don't want to say the.

[00:36:51] I'll say the—the hip hop museum to have an education, you know, pillar, right?

[00:36:58] They must have education pillars.

[00:37:00] They can't just collect stuff and put out there.

[00:37:01] I know that that's what Cornell does, Ben Ortiz.

[00:37:03] You know, they—because they're in an educational institution.

[00:37:07] There's problems with that.

[00:37:08] So if you're going to have, you know, an independent thing, you want to—

[00:37:11] So I guess—I guess what I'm saying is you—you have to have many.

[00:37:18] There doesn't have to be one.

[00:37:19] There can be many.

[00:37:23] But because that grift game is real, as Natalie points out,

[00:37:26] we've got to find a way as sort of culture keepers or watchdogs, right?

[00:37:31] I guess that's kind of what I envision myself.

[00:37:33] And Natalie, again, if not doing it herself,

[00:37:37] certainly inspiring those of us to watch out for these—these okie dokes.

[00:37:42] As she says, now, the—some dirty stuff there with the international pioneers

[00:37:49] in—in New York, you know, and then kept the Kickstarter—kickstartering.

[00:37:53] So, you know, like I said, there's different—yeah, and—and good point.

[00:37:58] There are others, you know, other countries that have—

[00:38:01] Matter of fact, it's a good one.

[00:38:04] It's an expensive book because academic press—it's a good book.

[00:38:10] I don't know if you—hey, Nat, I don't know if you know Murray Foreman.

[00:38:12] He's been on the show.

[00:38:13] Good guy.

[00:38:14] Out of Northeastern University.

[00:38:17] Hip-hop archives, the politics and poetics of knowledge production.

[00:38:21] Goes into a lot of—these are, like, chapters about—so again, I just opened up to chapter 11.

[00:38:26] This is, like, very serendipitous, Nat.

[00:38:33] Living archives, producing knowledge about hip-hop culture in East Germany, right?

[00:38:37] So there are archives throughout the world.

[00:38:39] And again, this is something that I say, Nat, I mean, since I've been doing New York hip-hop,

[00:38:45] you know, 15 years or whatever, I mean, years ago, and you were one of my, you know,

[00:38:50] friends and fans and fam, you know, you always reminded me,

[00:38:53] you know, you could have a New York focus, but don't forget, like, the rest of the world.

[00:38:57] And what I like to say now is we've definitely—America exported hip-hop to the world, right?

[00:39:04] And great.

[00:39:05] Then the rest of the world kind of smacked it, flipped it, rubbed it down, and did its own thing.

[00:39:09] And some of the things they're doing, we need to import back because they've kept the essence.

[00:39:15] They've kept some of the—you know, they've, you know, switched it.

[00:39:17] They've done some things.

[00:39:18] They've added their own appeal to it.

[00:39:20] I won't go into it again.

[00:39:21] I've talked about it many times.

[00:39:22] When I went to France and saw hip-hop in France being performed and promoted and respected,

[00:39:31] and it was just—I saw something different.

[00:39:34] It was a different way that they view hip-hop.

[00:39:38] And so, again, we talk nuance and balance all the time.

[00:39:41] We have to protect our pioneers.

[00:39:43] We have to protect our, you know, originators and make sure that their contributions are never erased.

[00:39:49] Of course, of course, of course, of course.

[00:39:51] But we can't also deny that the gift that they gave the world was this beautiful transmutative—transmutative, is that a word?

[00:40:00] We have to protect our transmutative culture that can do so much good.

[00:40:03] We can't just, like, gatekeep it to death.

[00:40:07] All that to say, I think that people across the seas have done really good things with hip-hop that I'd like to make sure that we're trying to remember or bring back because we've been so capitalistic in America that we push all that stuff to the sides.

[00:40:25] Oh, this is interesting.

[00:40:26] Bob Knutson said—I hope that makes sense, y'all, and especially Natalie, who now I'm just speaking to, like, one-on-one because you always make me nervous.

[00:40:32] I want to make sure that I've got it right, Nat, because you're, you know, you're my—you're one of my muses, as you know.

[00:40:39] Bob Knutson will put up again.

[00:40:40] I'm still waiting to see a British invasion style of hip-hop from overseas coming back to the U.S. and shaking things up.

[00:40:47] I mean, you know, it's weird because you had sort of like that back-and-forth with Drill.

[00:40:54] You had the grime scene, you know, in, you know, in U.K. particularly.

[00:41:01] Oh, yeah, see, Nat says the Brits have been coming over here, grime and hip-hop and DJs as well.

[00:41:07] So, um, there's a couple of artists that, like, kind of starting to—like, Little Sims, kind of starting to—you know what I mean?

[00:41:15] Like, you know, among the heads, you know, making some noise.

[00:41:19] You've got the Afrobeats thing happening.

[00:41:22] A number of those artists are in Africa.

[00:41:23] But, of course, Europe has a, you know, a big artistic, you know, foundation from Africa and that kind of sound.

[00:41:33] So, I think there's, you know, a lot going on, Bob, where we're getting more global and we're starting to see the influences.

[00:41:41] I mean, if you look at what Drake did, you know, I think Drake tapped into some U.K. producers and artists and sounds a couple years ago when he was in his U.K. era.

[00:41:55] So, yeah.

[00:41:57] Yeah.

[00:41:58] So, we get a little bit of that.

[00:41:59] It's not—I know what you're saying, Bob, like, the Drake of, you know, I'm going to say London.

[00:42:08] I don't know any other places.

[00:42:10] Obviously, this place—I'm trying to think of, like, where, like, you know, like where U.K. Drill comes from, like, that area.

[00:42:17] I can't remember.

[00:42:19] I haven't watched enough Top Boy.

[00:42:20] I gotta remember.

[00:42:21] Anyway, to come over here and, like, some artists just, like, blow it out of the water like we've seen a couple of Afrobeat artists do.

[00:42:27] And, you know, so maybe that'll happen.

[00:42:28] Maybe we'll see.

[00:42:32] Shouts to—oh, Crown & Beat.

[00:42:34] Since 91, I've been listening to hip-hop in the Netherlands already.

[00:42:36] It's such a massive culture here.

[00:42:38] Almost similar to New York.

[00:42:39] Yeah, I saw the same thing in France.

[00:42:40] I mean, that's—you know, when you go overseas, the cultural aspect of it, the elements are much more, you know, prevalent.

[00:42:46] You find—and, you know, we've heard this throughout the years that, like, legacy hip-hop artists from the United States don't really get a lot of opportunity or a lot of love, which I disagree with to some extent.

[00:42:57] But when they go overseas, they're revered.

[00:42:59] And it's a lot—you know, so you'll see a lot of legacy 90s artists just, you know, four or five months out of the year doing that Europe, you know, trip, moving it and grooving it and coming back, making their money and, you know, hitting the global stage.

[00:43:13] So, yeah.

[00:43:14] Natalie Crew says Lil Sims and earlier London Posse.

[00:43:17] Cookies Crew, that's right.

[00:43:21] Deems.

[00:43:22] Deems from Netherlands.

[00:43:23] Collaborated with Ice-T and Big Daddy Kane for, like, 20 years.

[00:43:27] Yep.

[00:43:27] Yeah, okay.

[00:43:28] Deems.

[00:43:28] So now I'm learning because I don't know.

[00:43:30] Like, I—it's like, I went to France.

[00:43:32] I went to Lyon and I saw—there was a big festival there.

[00:43:34] And I saw Oxmo Pacino rock.

[00:43:38] And I don't—I didn't—I don't speak a lick of French.

[00:43:40] I didn't know.

[00:43:41] I was just like, hi.

[00:43:42] And everyone in France is so cool.

[00:43:43] Like, they were so nice.

[00:43:44] They were like, I—oh, the women.

[00:43:47] So I'm so sorry.

[00:43:48] My English is not so good.

[00:43:49] And I'm like, look, I come from New York.

[00:43:51] Your English is better than, like, everybody I know.

[00:43:53] So I don't know what you're talking about.

[00:43:55] You sound fantastic.

[00:43:56] And I was, oh, no, it's okay.

[00:43:57] I will say everything I can with so much precision and make it sound good.

[00:44:01] And I'm like, first of all, everything you say is gorgeous.

[00:44:04] So keep talking and I don't care.

[00:44:06] But, um, because it's France.

[00:44:08] It's French.

[00:44:09] You know, you know what it is.

[00:44:10] But I didn't know anything.

[00:44:11] But I knew that dude could rap.

[00:44:13] I could tell you, like, I don't know nothing about this.

[00:44:15] I don't know nothing.

[00:44:16] He's an OG.

[00:44:17] But Oxmo Pacino could rap.

[00:44:19] Yeah, I know he—I know someone.

[00:44:20] I know rap.

[00:44:21] And then so now everyone, like, if I ever meet someone from France, like, an old head, you know, or an old school, you know, rap head, I'd be like, yeah, you know, my favorite, you know, is Oxmo Pacino.

[00:44:30] Oh, yeah, that's the guy.

[00:44:31] So I know.

[00:44:34] You know what I mean?

[00:44:34] So, yeah, yeah.

[00:44:36] So, um, so now Deems.

[00:44:38] Okay, so Deems from Amsterdam.

[00:44:39] Now I'm going to do the same thing.

[00:44:40] If I ever go to Amsterdam, which I almost did last year and it didn't happen and I'd like to—I'd really like to go one day.

[00:44:46] Um, don't worry.

[00:44:47] If y'all donate to my Patreon, I don't spend it on trips frivolously.

[00:44:51] Um, but I—I would—I hope we'll get to Amsterdam someday.

[00:44:55] Um, that being said, Deems.

[00:44:57] Now I know it's Deems.

[00:44:58] I assume it's Deems.

[00:44:59] I assume I'm saying it right.

[00:45:00] Uh, but yeah, you know.

[00:45:02] So anyway, word.

[00:45:03] Um, there you go.

[00:45:06] Shouts to LC.

[00:45:08] Legendary Cyphers we talking about?

[00:45:10] Yeah.

[00:45:14] So, um, yeah, global.

[00:45:16] Worldwide.

[00:45:17] Worldwide, baby.

[00:45:18] And that's why I love it because now we're talking about that, like, we just had a 15, 20-minute sidebar on, you know, global hip-hop influence and—and just got joyous about it.

[00:45:30] And wasn't talking about, like, whether or not today's hip-hop can still be—eh, come on now.

[00:45:37] That's what we do over here.

[00:45:39] That's what we do here.

[00:45:41] Word up.

[00:45:43] Um, and indeed, of course, uh, uh, Legendary Cyphers.

[00:45:47] And the thing I have there—oh, you can't see it now because I adjusted the camera.

[00:45:51] I gotta put it down here.

[00:45:53] I can't not.

[00:45:56] Put it right here.

[00:45:57] So we see it.

[00:46:00] Legendary Cyphers.

[00:46:01] Rest in peace, my man Majesty.

[00:46:02] Uh, of course.

[00:46:04] And the Legendary Cyphers crew in New York City.

[00:46:06] Every—it's out of season now.

[00:46:08] Um, I assume it's coming back.

[00:46:10] But every, uh, was it like—it's like March or April to October, November.

[00:46:17] Union Square subway station in New York City.

[00:46:19] You come up 8 o'clock Friday night from 8 to midnight, and you're gonna see a crowd, a cypher.

[00:46:23] You're gonna see a cypher of rappers.

[00:46:27] And in the middle will be Beats playing.

[00:46:30] Beautiful.

[00:46:31] Thanks, Bob.

[00:46:32] Thanks for checking in.

[00:46:33] Make sure when you go to New York, the one thing I'm gonna make you do is go to see Legendary Cyphers.

[00:46:37] Uh, and we see this—this—this ties into international because Legendary Cyphers sits in a circle.

[00:46:46] There's a bunch of regular MCs, and you'll just have people jumping in the cypher and freestyle rapping.

[00:46:52] Top of the head, off the dome, Beats playing in the middle.

[00:46:56] Camera around, people around, just everyone hanging out, having a good time.

[00:46:59] The hustle and bustle of Friday night in New York City just going on.

[00:47:02] It's like—it's like a universe within a universe, right?

[00:47:05] It's like—it's like a portal.

[00:47:06] It's like you—it's like the gravitational pull pulls you over, and now you're watching.

[00:47:10] And there's people, oh, and they're dropping beautiful rhymes.

[00:47:14] And some people are good.

[00:47:15] Some people are great.

[00:47:15] Some people are just playing around.

[00:47:17] It's so much fun.

[00:47:18] It's dope.

[00:47:19] But what happens is—and I talked about this in several lectures, keynotes, and in my book—

[00:47:27] It's free.

[00:47:28] It's out in the open.

[00:47:29] They just do it.

[00:47:30] It's a cypher.

[00:47:31] It's the epitome of hip-hop, like gift to the world.

[00:47:37] Just come by.

[00:47:38] Just walk past.

[00:47:39] Or just jump in.

[00:47:41] You're welcome here.

[00:47:42] Don't care who you are.

[00:47:44] Because it's New York City, so it's international.

[00:47:45] You might be from any—and they've had international people jump in, and they've had celebrities jump in, and they've had people from all walks of life, all demographics, all borders, all nationalities, all ideologies, all religions, all races, all creeds, all colors.

[00:47:59] You're welcome in legendary cyphers.

[00:48:01] It's the microcosm of the global beauty of hip-hop.

[00:48:07] You respect what we do.

[00:48:08] You cool with us?

[00:48:09] We cool with you.

[00:48:10] Let's do it together.

[00:48:12] That's what it is.

[00:48:13] That's what it is.

[00:48:14] It's so good.

[00:48:15] Natalie Crew, hip-hop can save the world.

[00:48:17] We're starting with America, and once I get this built the way it needs to be, we're going to do that, too.

[00:48:24] I own the domain name.

[00:48:25] I'm already on it, so come on now.

[00:48:26] You know where my head is.

[00:48:28] So, yeah.

[00:48:28] Anyway, shouts to the global hip-hop community, and that's why we can't let—I said in the last newsletter,

[00:48:37] all this talk about, you know, the salaciousness and the gossip.

[00:48:40] It's worth talking about.

[00:48:41] It's a serious story, and there's serious ramifications and nuances and such, but also,

[00:48:44] shut the F up already.

[00:48:46] You don't know yet.

[00:48:46] Just wait and see what happens, but if you want to just, you know, talk about it, fine.

[00:48:50] It's like sports.

[00:48:51] We could talk about—I'm a Knicks fan.

[00:48:53] Look, I'm rocking a Knicks.

[00:48:54] Look, come on.

[00:48:55] Got my basketball anime crossover.

[00:48:59] Look, check it out.

[00:49:02] All right?

[00:49:02] If you know, you know.

[00:49:03] So, you know, I get it.

[00:49:04] We talk in between games about the next game and who should be traded and who should be

[00:49:08] doing what and does he got his shot and whatever.

[00:49:10] Fine.

[00:49:11] Have at it.

[00:49:13] But the culture—but we owe the culture to have these conversations, too.

[00:49:18] And I really appreciate y'all being here with me and reminding everyone who might tune in

[00:49:22] and turn up with us that all this stuff exists, not just here in America, but truly throughout

[00:49:29] the world.

[00:49:33] Cool.

[00:49:34] I love it.

[00:49:35] I love it.

[00:49:36] I love y'all.

[00:49:37] I do.

[00:49:38] I love y'all.

[00:49:39] I'm really happy.

[00:49:39] Don't forget, you can, again, become a patreon.com slash mannyfaces.

[00:49:44] You can sign up for the newsletter, mannyfaces.substack.com.

[00:49:47] I'm really just reading you things that are sitting in your email inbox if you're already

[00:49:49] signed up.

[00:49:50] If you're not signed up, come on.

[00:49:51] Let's go.

[00:49:52] Let's do it.

[00:49:52] Just get in there because I won't always do this.

[00:49:54] Sometimes we'll have a guest and the guest will take up the most part of the show.

[00:49:58] So if you're not getting the newsletter, then you will be poop out of luck, as they say.

[00:50:06] So mannyfaces.substack.com.

[00:50:10] I've got some more things for y'all in the new year.

[00:50:14] We'll talk more about the book.

[00:50:15] We'll talk more about community and some things that I got in the works.

[00:50:21] But let's just run through these last few things and then we'll get out of here.

[00:50:24] I just wanted to show you that we cover all the elements as best that we can.

[00:50:29] Story about dance.

[00:50:31] There's a review of this doesn't apply if you're not in New York City because you can't

[00:50:35] see this.

[00:50:36] But this is a choreographer, Bintu Dembele.

[00:50:39] I'm probably saying it wrong.

[00:50:42] This is the first showing of her work in the United States.

[00:50:44] Explored the crossover between hip hop and diasporic African ritual.

[00:50:50] So it was a really good performance.

[00:50:52] It'd be the kind of thing that I'd love to go see.

[00:50:54] It's a little bit of high arts, high fine arts in New York City.

[00:50:58] And it was performed already.

[00:51:00] It's probably gone.

[00:51:01] But it's something you should know about.

[00:51:03] You should know that these intersections exist and that they're happening on a higher level.

[00:51:12] Thank you.

[00:51:13] I appreciate that.

[00:51:14] I really love your show.

[00:51:15] Such a positive and inspiring vibes.

[00:51:18] Thank you, Crowned and Beats.

[00:51:19] I appreciate that appreciation.

[00:51:21] And it's I can't do it without y'all coming and being here and doing it with me.

[00:51:25] I'd get really awkward if I just talk to myself.

[00:51:28] So thank y'all for coming here and participating, throwing some things, some ideas out there into

[00:51:32] ether.

[00:51:32] Your voice being heard in the chat.

[00:51:34] But I'm going to make in 2025, I'm going to make it so that y'all can come on here and

[00:51:39] say your two cents, by the way.

[00:51:42] I'm going to invite voice callers and possibly video callers.

[00:51:45] So we're going to do that.

[00:51:46] Like sort of like talk radio in a way.

[00:51:48] Like you can call in if that interests y'all.

[00:51:51] If y'all want to do that, like let me know.

[00:51:53] I can we can make that happen.

[00:51:56] So but thank you.

[00:51:57] In the meantime, I really appreciate y'all being here and, you know, being able to share

[00:52:01] this stuff with y'all.

[00:52:02] It's I'm just sharing.

[00:52:03] I don't do anything.

[00:52:04] I mean, I do things, but and I do things, too.

[00:52:07] Like I got a whole podcast that we incorporate hip hop and social justice.

[00:52:12] So I definitely do things, too.

[00:52:13] But I love being able to share all this information with y'all.

[00:52:17] Shouts to New Face.

[00:52:19] If you in Atlanta, you know who New Face is because New Face was there.

[00:52:22] New Face was everywhere and New Face continues to be there.

[00:52:26] So we talked about archiving and the importance of that, but also, you know, the folks who do

[00:52:32] that, this is a longer story.

[00:52:34] I just I just want to play a clip from it because, again, this is linked.

[00:52:40] This is ATL live on Atlanta News First.

[00:52:42] And I did not know who New Face was till I came to New York, just like someone who grew

[00:52:47] up in Atlanta might not know who Ralph McDaniels is.

[00:52:49] Right.

[00:52:49] It's fair.

[00:52:51] Ralph McDaniels is an icon in New York City.

[00:52:55] But of course, you know, if you visit Video Music Box was a local show and it, you know,

[00:53:00] the the the mythology of it extended.

[00:53:05] But you probably don't if you grew up in Atlanta and you were a hip hop head, you might

[00:53:09] not know who Ralph McDaniels was.

[00:53:12] Same thing with me coming down here from New York and not knowing who New Face was.

[00:53:15] How dare I?

[00:53:15] But this guy's been around since the beginning and he's I've seen his sort of pop up exhibits.

[00:53:20] He's a collector.

[00:53:21] He collects hip hop memorabilia.

[00:53:23] He was always he's always backstage.

[00:53:25] He's got pictures.

[00:53:25] He's got flyers.

[00:53:26] He's got original CDs.

[00:53:27] We'll see a couple here from from his Usher collection.

[00:53:30] I guess Usher was doing a show, although it was postponed.

[00:53:32] But they brought New Face on to talk about it.

[00:53:34] And I've just given props because I recognize that when you in somebody else's city, you know,

[00:53:39] I'm still a guest here.

[00:53:41] I'm three years, three and a half years deep in the Atlanta area.

[00:53:45] But, you know, you come in, you don't parachute here and tell people, you know,

[00:53:50] who does what properly.

[00:53:51] You give respect where respect is due.

[00:53:53] Shout out to New Face.

[00:53:54] I just want to show a little bit of love to the brother New Face.

[00:53:57] Let's check it out.

[00:53:57] He has made a name for himself as the keeper of all things Atlanta.

[00:54:01] And he's brought some special Usher memorabilia with him to celebrate his return to the ATL.

[00:54:08] We're so excited for this.

[00:54:09] I know, because when you look at all the magazines, you look at the CDs, you're thinking,

[00:54:13] how did this collection even begin?

[00:54:15] How did it get started?

[00:54:16] Right.

[00:54:16] And our guest this morning is going to break it all down for us.

[00:54:19] So if you could please welcome here, Larry Compton, also known as New Face to ATL Live.

[00:54:24] Welcome.

[00:54:25] Good morning, ladies.

[00:54:26] How are you today?

[00:54:27] We're so good.

[00:54:27] We're so glad you're here.

[00:54:28] We know you.

[00:54:29] You know, you just walked in.

[00:54:30] Yes.

[00:54:30] So good.

[00:54:32] Perfect timing.

[00:54:33] But this is all things.

[00:54:34] Why did I blow him up like that?

[00:54:35] I mean, it's not like he was mad late.

[00:54:36] And he just, you just walked in.

[00:54:37] You just got here on time.

[00:54:39] Otherwise, we'd be talking to an empty chair.

[00:54:41] About Usher today.

[00:54:42] Yes.

[00:54:43] So tell us a little bit about what you brought.

[00:54:45] We want to get into the CDs because this one is my personal favorite, Concession.

[00:54:50] Yes.

[00:54:51] Celebrating 20 years this year.

[00:54:52] Yes, indeed.

[00:54:53] Celebration.

[00:54:53] And these magazines as well.

[00:54:54] And what you're looking at is like, you know, the lifespan of his career, the early parts,

[00:54:58] the Vibe magazines, the Young Usher, the father, the transition.

[00:55:03] And starting from the very beginning.

[00:55:05] A lot of people know me talking about with artists, the evolution and from the very beginning.

[00:55:09] What you're looking at here is like the original first headshots of his first career.

[00:55:12] I got to lay this here so you can get a shot around.

[00:55:14] Wow.

[00:55:15] I mean, this guy right here.

[00:55:17] Wow.

[00:55:18] That's so good.

[00:55:19] The Christmas Carol Usher.

[00:55:20] You know, what do you know about that?

[00:55:22] Like, these are rare things that people, you can't just go to like Amazon to buy these

[00:55:25] and you're not going to be able to go to Target.

[00:55:27] So, you know, like you said, I'm the keeper of the culture, preserver of the culture,

[00:55:30] historian.

[00:55:31] But celebrating people that look like us in this hip hop.

[00:55:33] And I was very excited for this show because I'm always known to be in backstage.

[00:55:37] And I'll wrap this up and the artist is like, I don't even have this.

[00:55:40] What are you doing with all this stuff in the physical copy?

[00:55:43] So what you're looking at is right here is just a sampler.

[00:55:45] This is not even the, if you look at this stuff.

[00:55:48] And this isn't like the part two one either because I remember being very salty in seventh grade

[00:55:53] when my boo came out and it wasn't on.

[00:55:55] At least you can.

[00:55:56] Exactly.

[00:55:57] It wasn't on.

[00:55:57] You had to get the second CD.

[00:55:59] You know what?

[00:56:00] I love a good CD though.

[00:56:01] I guess I'm a dinosaur because there's something about holding a CD and it's so nostalgic.

[00:56:05] Yes, indeed.

[00:56:06] And that's my brand too.

[00:56:07] It's called Nustalgia.

[00:56:08] I'm known as New Face, but my brand is called Nustalgia.

[00:56:10] And that's what we do.

[00:56:11] We celebrate it.

[00:56:11] And we even go back to the VHS and the cassette tape era as well.

[00:56:14] Yeah.

[00:56:15] I love this.

[00:56:16] And I really.

[00:56:16] So just shout, you know, you can watch the whole story.

[00:56:18] It goes on for another three or four minutes, but shouts to New Face, shouts to people like

[00:56:22] that.

[00:56:22] Again, we mentioned a lot of folks earlier in the show, like doing the archival work.

[00:56:26] It's such an important thing.

[00:56:27] And it's also, you know, I talked to Sarita Gates.

[00:56:29] I'm long overdue having Sarita Gates on this show.

[00:56:32] She has an organization called the Gates Preserve.

[00:56:35] And she talks, she was, you know, doing journalism work and she talks about how she just didn't,

[00:56:42] she couldn't find online, like, like old issues of the source.

[00:56:48] Like she wanted to look up, you know, an article or whatever, or, you know, some of her favorite

[00:56:52] writers who used to write for, you know, source or vibe or double XL.

[00:56:55] And they, you couldn't, you just, they didn't exist.

[00:56:58] They weren't, they hadn't been scanned.

[00:57:00] They, they, they didn't have online, like they didn't have a PDF.

[00:57:03] Like there was no, so, you know, she started saying, you know, collecting or wanting to

[00:57:09] collect them.

[00:57:09] I'll let her tell her story better than I can recall it.

[00:57:11] But she was basically saying, someone basically said like, you need to archive this stuff.

[00:57:15] She's like, what's archive?

[00:57:17] What you need to become an archivist.

[00:57:18] And she's like, what's the archivist?

[00:57:20] Like, I don't even know what are you talking about?

[00:57:21] This wasn't what she was doing.

[00:57:25] And so I say, you know, as we get older, and I don't mean that much older, you could be

[00:57:30] in your twenties and feel this way.

[00:57:31] But like, there are ways to get involved with hip hop music and culture that can be good

[00:57:37] for hip hop music and culture.

[00:57:38] And by extension, as we like to talk about good for humanity in ways you don't even think

[00:57:43] of.

[00:57:43] And this is so important and needed and necessary, especially hip hop's 50 something years old.

[00:57:50] The archives still exist, but it's interesting because we came up in the cusp of this transition

[00:57:56] from analog to digital.

[00:57:58] Shouts again to Summer McCoy with the Mixtape Museum.

[00:58:01] There's so many mixtapes that came out literally on cassette tapes.

[00:58:04] It's the only place they exist.

[00:58:06] And if you don't have a copy of it, you don't have the original, it's like it never happened.

[00:58:10] And this may not be important to people who are outside of the culture, but think about

[00:58:16] what a mixtape by a mixtape DJ was.

[00:58:19] It was a chronicling of a moment in time, not just putting out an album by one artist, but

[00:58:24] by a cultural, I don't know, curator.

[00:58:29] Taking a selection of songs, assembling them in an order that was different than anyone else

[00:58:37] or anything official.

[00:58:41] There's culture in that.

[00:58:43] But if we don't get those, if we don't round up all those mixtapes, those mixed CDs, eventually

[00:58:50] what went online, we had an episode a few episodes back with the Dat Piff Internet Archive, which

[00:58:55] had been transferred to the Internet Archive, disappearing, gone.

[00:58:58] Gone.

[00:58:59] Like 600,000, 300,000 mixtapes that only existed in digital format, gone.

[00:59:06] This may not be important to some of the folks outside of the culture, but it'd be like, listen,

[00:59:12] I don't care about every book in the library.

[00:59:13] I don't read all these stories about things that don't interest me.

[00:59:18] But if I went to the Library of Congress and I said, well, I'm just going to take from here

[00:59:24] to here these shelves and just burn them, you'd be up in arms.

[00:59:34] Well, they're doing the same thing.

[00:59:35] They're allowing the same thing to happen to hip hop's history.

[00:59:39] So we need people to get into this field.

[00:59:44] And so New Face is a great ambassador for that.

[00:59:48] And so that's why I share these stories.

[00:59:50] That's what I do.

[00:59:52] We got to do.

[00:59:53] You know, AJ, rock in the house.

[00:59:56] Come on now.

[00:59:57] Everyone needs, who can, needs to document hip hop, even if it's just in their region.

[01:00:01] You see what I'm saying?

[01:00:02] And of course, shouts to Westchester, shouts to Long Island, where I'm from, like where

[01:00:06] AJ is from.

[01:00:07] Also, but like, just like we were talking earlier with Memphis needing that hip hop museum, it

[01:00:12] has to happen locally.

[01:00:14] And it's nothing.

[01:00:15] I want to say something here.

[01:00:22] A lot of the things that have to be done to preserve, protect, and promote hip hop from

[01:00:32] a cultural standpoint, for the type of stuff we're talking about, it's not artists.

[01:00:37] It's not your favorite rapper.

[01:00:39] They're not cut out for this.

[01:00:41] They're not built for a lot of this stuff.

[01:00:43] It's fine.

[01:00:44] There's no, I'm not, you know, but like a lot of times I'll see like, I'll just keep it

[01:00:49] real, I'll see a, you know, political, you know, hip hop and politics panel.

[01:00:53] And it'll have like some, you know, some rappers in it that maybe are, you know, mildly, you

[01:01:01] know, political in their, in their artistry.

[01:01:05] Maybe have done a couple of things outside of the music world, but more often than not,

[01:01:10] not really, not, not really, really.

[01:01:13] Not like Majesty did.

[01:01:15] I talk about Majesty from Legendary Cyphers.

[01:01:17] Not like Majesty did where he was out there locking arms with protesters, blocking the

[01:01:22] bridge, protesting the police killing of Eric Garner.

[01:01:26] Not like Majesty was on the phone with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, protesting the police

[01:01:33] killing of Michael Brown, coordinating New York protesters.

[01:01:37] His music community, not like Majesty going to Palestine, going to Cuba before he passed

[01:01:45] doing, you know, human rights work.

[01:01:49] Not like Majesty who was helping Hassan Salam with his album release party and bringing in

[01:01:54] organizations like Justice, NYC, Justice League and Copwatch into the album release party.

[01:02:00] So you had a table with merch, but you had a table with Copwatch.

[01:02:05] That's, that's the hip hop person that needs to be on those panels.

[01:02:10] Not rapper X, Y, and Z.

[01:02:13] I'm sorry.

[01:02:14] I don't care to the level of even the, you know, sure, a killer mic, but also a Majesty.

[01:02:21] How about that?

[01:02:22] Yes, and.

[01:02:23] Yes, and.

[01:02:24] Because then you're not really bringing people who are really doing this stuff.

[01:02:27] So the same thing has to happen with archiving.

[01:02:30] You can't have artists.

[01:02:32] That's not their thing.

[01:02:34] So you need us.

[01:02:36] The culture needs you.

[01:02:38] It's what can you do to help this out?

[01:02:41] And you may have the ability to play a small part.

[01:02:43] That's what we need to do is as folks that are getting older, I say this, nah, nah, I'm

[01:02:48] going to get riled up.

[01:02:49] I'm going to take it out soon.

[01:02:50] I just trying to say that we have to play a part in this.

[01:02:53] And when we get older, we waste a lot of time critiquing, criticizing, and complaining about

[01:03:00] the quality of the music or what we hear or what we see.

[01:03:03] That doesn't matter.

[01:03:04] Are you helping archive hip hop?

[01:03:06] Are you helping?

[01:03:07] Are you going to the Board of Education and saying, hey, I heard about these programs

[01:03:12] that can help kids do better in their standardized tests?

[01:03:16] I heard about it on Manny's show.

[01:03:17] Are you, what's up, Board of Education?

[01:03:20] Are you, because you could do that as a parent.

[01:03:21] You could do that as a community member.

[01:03:23] You know, can you go to your, to those school board meetings and say, hey, I just saw an

[01:03:29] article that Manny Faces shared on Hip Hop Save America from JC Hall, who's got a studio

[01:03:34] built in a school in the Bronx, or Dr. Ian Levy, who's been on the show and built a studio

[01:03:38] in his high school, and they're saving lives and making young people deal with their trauma

[01:03:42] better to the point where, you know, they're changing lives.

[01:03:46] Hey, Board of Education, my kid goes to this school.

[01:03:49] Why don't we have a program like that here?

[01:03:50] Are you doing that?

[01:03:51] That's what we need to be doing.

[01:03:52] Stop, stop, stop complaining about Sexy Red or whether Jay-Z did it or not.

[01:03:58] Like, like, come on now.

[01:04:00] Let me not tell y'all what to do.

[01:04:02] Let me just say that, I'm like y'all, like y'all here doing the work.

[01:04:06] Most of y'all listening and watching.

[01:04:07] This is for, you know, folks who, who feel less inspired.

[01:04:12] Let's just say, and I get it.

[01:04:13] I understand why they don't want to do any of these things because you don't know this

[01:04:15] stuff exists because your social media feed don't have this information because your

[01:04:19] hip-hop media doesn't have this information.

[01:04:21] Because Channel 11 News probably doesn't have this information.

[01:04:24] I got this information.

[01:04:25] I'll help you out.

[01:04:27] Let's make it work.

[01:04:30] Let's do it.

[01:04:31] Let's do it together.

[01:04:33] Yes, AJ.

[01:04:34] Go to your public library and let them and get them to create a hip-hop section with some

[01:04:38] real hip-hop books.

[01:04:40] Oh, all right.

[01:04:41] I got to do books.

[01:04:41] Thank you.

[01:04:42] I got to do books before I go.

[01:04:43] Oh, dang it.

[01:04:44] I got to put your book in.

[01:04:45] Well, so many things.

[01:04:47] I'm only one guy.

[01:04:49] AJ wrote books and he's going to get mad at me because I didn't mention, I didn't put

[01:04:52] his book in a thing.

[01:04:54] AJ, you have to, I got to see if your book is accessible or is it only through you directly?

[01:04:59] Like, can you get it through bookshop.org is what I'm asking.

[01:05:02] If you get it through bookshop.org, I'm going to add it to the bookshop.

[01:05:04] If you got to do it from you directly, I'm going to mention it.

[01:05:07] I mentioned it before in a newsletter, but it's the Christmas season and people buy books.

[01:05:12] So I will mention it directly in the next newsletter.

[01:05:14] Either way, you'll see why in a second.

[01:05:16] But the whole point of that is, yes, go to your library and say we need a hip-hop section.

[01:05:21] And also, also, go to your library because they do accept feedback from the public.

[01:05:26] Like, go to your library, go to your museum.

[01:05:28] I lived in Newark, New Jersey for a little while.

[01:05:30] They had a great museum.

[01:05:31] They had a great programming.

[01:05:32] But they usually just said, hey, Black History Month, February, let's do a thing on hip-hop.

[01:05:37] Well, November is Hip-Hop History Month.

[01:05:38] So you should also do something in November.

[01:05:40] And also, every month is Hip-Hop History Month.

[01:05:42] So you should have something throughout the year.

[01:05:43] There should be no turning on and turning off.

[01:05:47] You know what I mean?

[01:05:48] Especially in areas like Newark, New Jersey.

[01:05:50] You know, you have that demographic where they're not turning off Black History because it's Newark.

[01:05:56] So throughout the year, they have, you know, they pay homage to Black History.

[01:06:01] It's Newark.

[01:06:02] But you have to include hip-hop with that.

[01:06:04] Hip-hop history is Black History.

[01:06:06] Hip-hop history is American History.

[01:06:08] And if you want to encourage the next generation to take advantage of the – I practically grew up in a library.

[01:06:16] I have so much reverence for libraries and museums.

[01:06:19] And if you want the next generation to come in, you have to welcome them in with their cultural identity being welcomed at the door.

[01:06:27] And so you got to go to your library, exactly what AJ said.

[01:06:29] You have to go to your museum.

[01:06:30] You have to tell them, no, not just once a year, bro.

[01:06:35] All through the year.

[01:06:36] And find ways to help out.

[01:06:39] So shout-out to Natalie Kruh, who also mentions – okay.

[01:06:43] I didn't forget your book, AJ.

[01:06:46] I mentioned a few recent books.

[01:06:49] Recent books.

[01:06:50] Okay?

[01:06:50] So write a new book.

[01:06:52] Listen, I'm jealous of all your authors anyway because it's taken me like seven years to write one book and it's still not even out yet.

[01:06:57] And I can't even tell you when it's going to be out.

[01:06:58] That's why I keep hinting at it.

[01:07:00] But I don't – anyway, I will mention it specifically.

[01:07:03] You'll get a big shout-out in the next one, my man.

[01:07:06] So I got you.

[01:07:07] And I've mentioned it before.

[01:07:08] So I just didn't mention it in the roundup.

[01:07:10] Anyway, I wonder if we can go into bookshop.org because – I know – is it Amazon only?

[01:07:16] All right.

[01:07:17] Because I try to send to bookshop.org.

[01:07:19] For those of you who don't know, let's do it now and then we'll take it out.

[01:07:22] So the last section of the newsletter.

[01:07:28] I'm not scurrily you, AJ, but I appreciate you and I definitely want to big you up.

[01:07:35] Because, again, you're doing the work that I'm telling people, like, we need more people doing the work.

[01:07:40] And you've literally been doing that work.

[01:07:41] So – and, yes, on the show.

[01:07:44] I don't want to have new guests on at the end of the year.

[01:07:46] It's the holidays and all that.

[01:07:48] But let's make that.

[01:07:49] We tried and it didn't work.

[01:07:50] And so let's get it going beginning of the year.

[01:07:53] So I mentioned bookshop.org.

[01:07:55] Folks might not know about bookshop.org.

[01:07:56] So we buy books, right?

[01:07:58] And we go to Amazon and I'm buying more books, but I'm buying them used because I can't pay full price for things.

[01:08:05] But I do think that if you want to buy books, especially gifts, and you want to buy a new book for somebody, bookshop.org you should know about.

[01:08:15] Bookshop.org is the alternative to Amazon, where it's a network of local bookstores, local and – what do you call it?

[01:08:25] Like locally owned bookstores, which I love.

[01:08:28] I just love a book.

[01:08:29] I love a whole, you know, you've got mail, you know, kind of bookstore.

[01:08:36] And I actually want to open one one day.

[01:08:38] Like I really want to – like shout out to like Busboys and Poets in D.C.

[01:08:42] Like that's such a vibe and like I want to have my own like Mannian poets.

[01:08:47] Like I just want to copy their whole ish and bring it somewhere wherever I am.

[01:08:50] But anyway, so I love bookstores.

[01:08:53] But bookshop.org is a network of independent – I don't know if you could like pick them or whatever.

[01:08:58] You can't – I don't know.

[01:08:59] Anyway, the whole point is you're not buying it through Amazon, right?

[01:09:02] You're supporting local and locally owned.

[01:09:04] So that being said, you go to bookshop.org and you search for a book and you buy it.

[01:09:09] It's from one of these stores as opposed to Amazon.

[01:09:11] So what I've set up is – people can do this.

[01:09:14] You can set up your own like storefront in bookshop.org.

[01:09:19] So if you go to – and again, if you just, you know, get the newsletter, damn it.

[01:09:24] Is it on the bottom of the page?

[01:09:25] No, I'm over there begging for money.

[01:09:28] Where's the newsletter?

[01:09:29] Okay.

[01:09:30] So that's the – just to remind you on the screen, Manny and to the listeners,

[01:09:33] mannyfaces.substack.com.

[01:09:35] The Hip Hop Advocacy Bookshop is there in bookshop.

[01:09:40] So it's like a, you know, it's like an affiliate page or whatever and it lists.

[01:09:43] And so what I've done here is I just went through and I added a bunch more today.

[01:09:48] There are a bunch of hip hop recent books that have been released that are, I guess,

[01:09:56] I'd say like hip hop books for the intellectual in your life, like for the hip hop, you know,

[01:10:01] intellect in your life.

[01:10:02] Some of them are academic.

[01:10:04] I know the Bloomsbury Handbook of Hip Hop Pedagogy is $200 and I don't expect anyone to buy that.

[01:10:10] Shout out to Dr. Lauren Kelly, Dr. Darren Graves, who wrote that book.

[01:10:15] We did a podcast together on it.

[01:10:17] It's right here.

[01:10:18] I have it.

[01:10:20] They don't expect you to buy it.

[01:10:21] I don't expect you to buy it.

[01:10:23] We don't want you to buy it.

[01:10:25] But we want you to know about it because there may be a, and AJ, put your link in the chat.

[01:10:34] Feel free.

[01:10:35] There may be a paperback version coming out, whatever.

[01:10:39] Or you may have some institutional money and you can get that.

[01:10:42] That's cool.

[01:10:42] But there's others, like there's other books, you know, that are affordable and I'm curating them.

[01:10:50] So I'm not just putting like every hip hop book that comes out, you know, you can go do your own research, as they say.

[01:10:58] These are books that I think are up to a little bit of a standard and I'm not disparaging anybody else.

[01:11:06] I don't want to say a standard, but maybe more of a, just the ethos, the vibe of what we do here.

[01:11:11] So they do have some academic, you know, lens to it, or they do have some cultural lens to it.

[01:11:17] It's not just like, you know, the biography, like Eve's biography is out.

[01:11:22] And I guess I could put that on here.

[01:11:24] You know, shouts to Kathy I and Dioli.

[01:11:27] You know, it's a fine book.

[01:11:29] It's a great book, but it's more of a general release book.

[01:11:33] And I don't, I could put it here.

[01:11:35] It'd be fine.

[01:11:36] Maybe I should.

[01:11:36] And maybe I will.

[01:11:37] I'm just one guy.

[01:11:38] But the point is, I want to call attention to books that you're not going to see on a, you know, New York Times list or, you know, radar online, whatever.

[01:11:50] Like, you know, the, the, you know what I'm trying to say?

[01:11:53] Like the pop culture lists will probably have the Eve book on there.

[01:11:57] And so you'll probably see that.

[01:11:58] You'll probably get that.

[01:11:59] I'm trying to give a little bit of focus to stuff that's sort of in our, in our lane.

[01:12:03] Anyway, that all being said, you can go to the Hip Hop Advocacy bookshelf, get all kinds of books there.

[01:12:08] I'm going to be continuously adding this.

[01:12:10] I want to stay up on this.

[01:12:14] And, and make sure that we have, I think this is a good book, Rap on Trial.

[01:12:19] I have it here.

[01:12:20] And I think I did buy it, actually.

[01:12:23] And it goes, it details the, sort of like the, the issue, I'm clicking things badly.

[01:12:31] The issue with rap lyrics being used in trials.

[01:12:33] We just had a big, long Rico trial here, Young Thug in Atlanta that lasted a year.

[01:12:37] And a lot of it had to do with lyrics being used in the courtroom.

[01:12:41] And it's a very nuanced legal issue.

[01:12:45] And it goes to what we talked about in the very beginning of the show, the over-criminalization of hip hop,

[01:12:49] the over-criminalization of particularly young black men in America.

[01:12:54] But that's not to say that if you did something bad, that you shouldn't be held to account.

[01:12:58] How do we balance that?

[01:13:00] And so this book, for example, which I've had for a long time, I've cited on this store, on this store, on this show.

[01:13:05] And I've tried to get the, I've met the authors, but we haven't been able to get them on the show.

[01:13:10] Goes into that.

[01:13:11] It's a good book.

[01:13:12] And it's a good book for people that, you know, are interested in the legal ramifications and the legal nuances that have to do with hip hop culture.

[01:13:19] So anyway, the bookshop is there.

[01:13:22] I've added some current, some recent books.

[01:13:24] We're going to make sure.

[01:13:27] You don't know that.

[01:13:31] What do you call it?

[01:13:32] My book is coming out in August of 2025.

[01:13:36] Natalie Crew.

[01:13:36] I do have a book coming out and it's a, it's a, it's a real book.

[01:13:40] It's not just like, I didn't just like scribble it and be like, here, you know, here's a book.

[01:13:45] Um, but I'm a little bit like nervous about it because I've never, you know, like, like when you write your own book and you self publish, you have that freedom and control.

[01:13:54] And that's cool.

[01:13:55] But like, I'm doing it through a publisher and it's like, are they going to like what I do?

[01:14:00] Cause I'm not, you know, like I got that, that academic lens, but I'm also like many faces.

[01:14:06] So, you know, so they have it.

[01:14:08] It's with them.

[01:14:09] I'll tell you more about it when I know more about it.

[01:14:12] How about that?

[01:14:12] Um, I'm hoping, I'm hoping, I'm hoping, uh, for before August.

[01:14:17] We'll see.

[01:14:19] Cause I'd like to, I'd like to be at the conferences next year.

[01:14:21] Oh, the conferences.

[01:14:22] Oh my God.

[01:14:22] Okay.

[01:14:23] Last thing, last thing for tonight.

[01:14:24] I want to be at the conferences next year to talk about the book.

[01:14:26] So the last thing, uh, the other thing that the newsletter does that I, I just have to honestly tell y'all you're not going to find anywhere else.

[01:14:35] No one else in the entire world of eight point, whatever billion people does this.

[01:14:40] And what I do is I, I try to my best to curate.

[01:14:45] And I don't want to say nobody does this.

[01:14:48] People do it, you know, like on their feeds.

[01:14:51] I get a lot of, sometimes I find out stuff from other people, uh, like Martha Diaz, for example, who will put like the repost a lot of people's events.

[01:14:58] And so I don't want to say nobody does this in the world, but nobody does this where I actually collect it.

[01:15:03] So that's not just a fleeting thing in your, uh, website, uh, in your social media.

[01:15:09] And I bring it to a place that we can keep track of it.

[01:15:12] Okay.

[01:15:13] And what these are, are what I call, um, interdisciplinary hip hop events.

[01:15:17] They tend to be conferences and seminars and sometimes webinars and, you know, but it's generally a meeting of hip hop minds.

[01:15:26] Right.

[01:15:26] So a lot of that is academic.

[01:15:28] Um, although I put this because D nice is going to be at the Kennedy center in DC, which is like kind of a big deal.

[01:15:37] So I won't do conf concerts unless they're like a really big deal, like something different.

[01:15:44] So I'll do some of those sometimes, but mostly it's like the next things you'll see here.

[01:15:48] And right now it just so happens.

[01:15:50] This hasn't, this isn't always, sometimes there are art exhibits, big art exhibits at, um, uh, you know, museums that have to do with hip hop or archive, you know, archive pop-ups and things like graffiti shows and things like that.

[01:16:02] So, uh, I really try to be, um, and I'm, and I'm doing more because we're going to have, you know, like I talked about with the breaking events, there are ongoing breaking events.

[01:16:11] It was just a world finals and they were on this before.

[01:16:14] So the, uh, freestyle session is the name of a, uh, a big, uh, breaking community, um, that does throughout the year, Red Bull, you know, those, those kinds of organizations.

[01:16:22] I want to make sure that those events are here because, you know, I don't want you to ever like be in my ecosystem and be like, well, Manny didn't tell me about breaking.

[01:16:31] He didn't tell me about the American beatbox championships.

[01:16:33] He didn't tell me about the DMC world DJ championship.

[01:16:36] No, I'm going to tell you about all those.

[01:16:37] That's where you're going to find it here.

[01:16:38] It's going to be here.

[01:16:39] So we're going to really build up this, this event listing.

[01:16:42] Um, right now, um, it's, it is, it just happens to be because I know when they're coming.

[01:16:48] Some of them don't even have information yet, but I I've heard of them and I know them and I've dealt with them personally.

[01:16:53] So it's a bunch of conferences.

[01:16:54] So I call this a sneak peek of 2025 academic conference, academic hip hop conferences, but please don't think that you have to be an academic to come to these.

[01:17:03] I, I, I need to reinforce that repeatedly.

[01:17:06] It's so important that hip hop practitioners be in the building, that hip hop artists be in a building, that hip hop fans be in a building, that people who have nothing to do with hip hop, nothing to do with like hip hop academics or whatever.

[01:17:19] Like you just, you work in a store or you are a manager of a company, but you're a hip hop person come to these events.

[01:17:27] Watch it to be inspired by that interdisciplinary kind of vibe that we're talking about here all night long.

[01:17:32] So real quick, and then we'll go.

[01:17:35] It's not a poetry book, Natalie crew.

[01:17:38] I don't want to say yet.

[01:17:39] I'm going to say when I, when I tell you what it's going to be, it's going to be.

[01:17:42] Um, so what we're talking about is in March, uh, the hip hop literacies conference at the Ohio state university, uh, it's Dr. E Elaine Richardson.

[01:17:51] Uh, it's a feminisms hip hop feminisms, um, is the, is the sort of theme, uh, uh, but here it is hip hop feminisms, culture, care, and justice.

[01:18:02] So again, how many times we talk about women not being represented properly in hip hop and that's a thing.

[01:18:08] And that's something we have to deal with.

[01:18:10] Well, a whole conference dealing with it should be, if you're so concerned about it and you want to understand it more and you want to be involved in it and find ways to, uh, fix it or, uh, hear testimony of where, um, you know, feminism is being exalted through hip hop.

[01:18:27] This would be the place to be.

[01:18:29] This would be the place to be.

[01:18:30] Now it's in March, March 21 to 23rd.

[01:18:33] Uh, and the call for proposals, another thing that I'll try to collect and do a really good job of.

[01:18:37] Although y'all do a bad job, hip hop academics at, at spreading the word.

[01:18:43] You always complain like, oh, we didn't get enough people knowing about our conferences.

[01:18:47] Y'all do a bad job.

[01:18:48] And I understand why, because you don't, you know, you're doing all the organizing, all the organizing, all the organization.

[01:18:54] So I'm here to help.

[01:18:55] Please, if you have an event coming up and you listen to this show, cause I know you do, please let me know about it.

[01:19:00] Don't wait till I discover it.

[01:19:02] Okay.

[01:19:02] I used to have this problem with the New York hip hop heads.

[01:19:05] I'm like, y'all got a show coming up like this next weekend.

[01:19:07] You know, I have a hip hop events calendar.

[01:19:09] You know that I'm the only one that has the New York hip hop events calendar.

[01:19:13] And that is good.

[01:19:14] And people check it.

[01:19:15] And I get hundreds of people every week looking at that calendar.

[01:19:17] You know, the people come from other countries and be like, I am in New York.

[01:19:20] I have to find what's happening in hip hop.

[01:19:23] And they look at my calendar and you know this, but you don't actually submit your event to the calendar.

[01:19:28] Like, come on, what are you doing?

[01:19:29] What are we doing?

[01:19:30] So same thing.

[01:19:32] Academics, you work in the thing.

[01:19:33] You're doing an event like the thing I'm talking about.

[01:19:35] Please send it to me.

[01:19:36] You know how to find me.

[01:19:38] I'm not going to tell you.

[01:19:39] So hip hop literacies in March, April, Words, Beats, and Life.

[01:19:43] Great organization out in DC.

[01:19:45] Shouts to Mazie Mutafa, executive director.

[01:19:47] Shouts to Mikhail Amin.

[01:19:48] All the good folks that work with Words, Beats, and Life.

[01:19:50] They're having their annual festival.

[01:19:52] I don't know if the date has been solidified, but I caught wind that it's in April.

[01:19:56] So I'm pretty sure that's when it's going to happen.

[01:19:58] More info to come.

[01:19:59] They'll be probably doing a call for things.

[01:20:03] If not, it's just a great conference festival to go to.

[01:20:07] There's usually performances.

[01:20:08] There's poetry.

[01:20:10] There's hip hop.

[01:20:11] There's academic talks and culture talks and things like that.

[01:20:15] So that's a good place to be.

[01:20:17] Hartford, Connecticut, the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival, April 18th to 19th.

[01:20:21] I got to tell you, if you like me talking about this stuff, the very first time that a conference, an academic conference, don't forget, I don't have a degree.

[01:20:29] I'm not an academic.

[01:20:31] I didn't come up in that world.

[01:20:34] The first academic conference that let me get on a podium and talk to the people and accept my proposal and do my talk was the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival, something like eight, nine years ago.

[01:20:44] So shouts to them.

[01:20:45] They're having their yearly festival there.

[01:20:48] As Dr.

[01:20:49] Messia Clark from Howard said about the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival, that's a great place to come to if you want to get what Natalie Crew and I were talking about earlier, sort of an international perspective about what's happening in hip hop.

[01:21:00] So, you know, Connecticut, New York area, make it happen.

[01:21:04] It's a, you know, April is a good time.

[01:21:06] April in New York City.

[01:21:06] That's good.

[01:21:07] Come to New York City, do a little vacation, shoot up for the festival, you know, and I think they'll start Legendary Cyphers, but can't go wrong.

[01:21:14] It's perfect.

[01:21:14] Then June, the Hip Hop Ed Conference, our good friends, the Hip Hop Ed Movement is happening.

[01:21:20] So that's June 2025.

[01:21:21] And then November again, the third annual Hip Hop Studies Conference at Howard University.

[01:21:26] So just a quick rundown of upcoming things that we're paying attention to that we're keeping our eyes on for the next year.

[01:21:37] Again, I think we'll do two more.

[01:21:39] There's two more shows this year.

[01:21:40] Then we'll get back to guests.

[01:21:42] But I think I'm doing a pretty good job rocking with you and giving you information that you should have if you are a fan, friend or family of hip hop, music and culture.

[01:21:52] And wishing for it to be able to fully live up to its potential.

[01:21:57] Hip Hop's like America, man.

[01:21:59] Like, in theory, America's pretty aight.

[01:22:02] Like, you know what I mean?

[01:22:03] Like, democracy and freedom of religion and speech and, you know, and rule of law.

[01:22:10] But, you know, blind justice.

[01:22:12] Like, theoretically, it's a great idea.

[01:22:15] It's a great concept.

[01:22:17] But it just, it's been bastardized.

[01:22:21] Never lived up to its potential.

[01:22:23] This is how I see hip hop.

[01:22:24] I see hip hop as being a universal, a global and beautiful, loving, caring culture that is nothing but inventiveness and innovation and creativity and peace, love, unity and having fun.

[01:22:39] And respect for your fellow man, woman, child, and everything in between, whatever, however you identify.

[01:22:48] All the things.

[01:22:49] Because it's just like, if you hip hop, you hip hop.

[01:22:51] We don't care who you are.

[01:22:54] And I've mentioned, you know, I've given credit to Karis One, who in a lecture, it's online, in the Netherlands.

[01:23:02] In the Netherlands.

[01:23:02] Look, Netherlands come a full circle.

[01:23:03] Said, you know, that whole idea of Martin Luther King's, you know, my children should not be judged by the color of the skin, by the content of the character.

[01:23:12] That doesn't exist anywhere.

[01:23:13] It just doesn't exist.

[01:23:14] It's, again, good in theory.

[01:23:17] Doesn't actually happen.

[01:23:19] To some degree, it does happen in hip hop.

[01:23:23] Only in hip hop.

[01:23:25] Where you come into the cipher and you spit.

[01:23:29] Or even if you just sit there nodding your head.

[01:23:31] You're showing respect.

[01:23:32] You're showing love.

[01:23:35] You respect what's happening here.

[01:23:37] You're good with us.

[01:23:39] You're good here.

[01:23:40] That's what brought me into hip hop.

[01:23:42] That's what brought y'all into hip hop.

[01:23:45] It's really a beautiful, beautiful thing.

[01:23:47] So, we're doing our best.

[01:23:48] We.

[01:23:49] Me.

[01:23:49] And y'all.

[01:23:50] We.

[01:23:50] We.

[01:23:51] Yeah, we're all doing this together.

[01:23:52] It's a community.

[01:23:53] I'm really trying to build a community.

[01:23:54] And so, this is one place we're going to do it.

[01:23:56] The podcast is another.

[01:23:58] The newsletter is another.

[01:23:59] And I got some new stuff happening at the beginning of the year.

[01:24:02] So, stay tuned for that.

[01:24:06] I'm done for tonight.

[01:24:08] Thank you.

[01:24:09] I appreciate y'all.

[01:24:11] Oh, you're saying I'm doing a good job.

[01:24:12] Thank you very much.

[01:24:13] I appreciate y'all for being here.

[01:24:14] Let me not talk y'all ears off.

[01:24:16] Because then you won't want to come back next week.

[01:24:17] We will be back next Monday.

[01:24:19] I've already got the idea.

[01:24:22] Normally, I kind of think of this on the fly.

[01:24:24] But next week, we'll be asking.

[01:24:27] We'll be asking.

[01:24:28] I'm not gendering hip hop.

[01:24:31] But it's funny.

[01:24:32] So, I'll do this anyway.

[01:24:34] We're going to ask hip hop.

[01:24:37] Have you been a good boy this year?

[01:24:40] So, that's my creepy Santa Claus voice.

[01:24:43] Or, fine.

[01:24:44] Let's not.

[01:24:44] Let's do it all.

[01:24:45] Have you been a good girl this year?

[01:24:47] Whatever.

[01:24:47] And then again, I don't have anything more than that.

[01:24:50] Because the rest of the world hasn't opened up to, you know, the fact that there's other genders.

[01:24:53] But the point is, has hip hop been good this year?

[01:24:57] Would Santa give hip hop a present this year?

[01:25:01] Let's talk about it next week.

[01:25:02] Monday, live, Hip Hop Can Save America.

[01:25:05] The live stream show.

[01:25:07] With me, many faces.

[01:25:08] With you, all the great people.

[01:25:11] And let's see if we can keep this going.

[01:25:13] And bring it into the new year.

[01:25:14] So, next week, Monday night, 9 p.m.

[01:25:16] Tell your friends to tell some friends.

[01:25:17] You can thumbs up this article.

[01:25:19] This article.

[01:25:20] You can thumbs up.

[01:25:21] Give us a thumbs up.

[01:25:22] Give it a share.

[01:25:23] People can watch it even though they missed it.

[01:25:24] And then they'll have a FOMO.

[01:25:25] And they'll be like, oh my God.

[01:25:26] Yeah, like Crown and Beasts.

[01:25:27] You got to come in on time next time.

[01:25:28] You missed some probably good stuff.

[01:25:30] So, now everyone's going to know that this is must-see.

[01:25:32] TV.

[01:25:33] But share it.

[01:25:34] Love it.

[01:25:35] You know, make sure you subscribe to all the things.

[01:25:37] Y'all know what to do.

[01:25:39] You know how to internet.

[01:25:40] And I'm out.

[01:25:41] I'll see y'all next week.

[01:25:43] I think I got everything I wanted to talk about.

[01:25:45] So, yeah.

[01:25:46] I don't have an outro to this show.

[01:25:47] I've been doing it for a year.

[01:25:49] I don't have a way to like, I have a great intro.

[01:25:53] But I'll just say this and then I'll stop.

[01:25:55] I'll press the button.

[01:25:56] Many faces.

[01:25:57] You sick for this one.

[01:25:59] Appreciate y'all.

[01:25:59] See you next week.

[01:26:02] Once again, thanks for listening to another episode of Hip Hop Can Save America,

[01:26:06] a.k.a.

[01:26:07] The World's Most Important Hip Hop Podcast.

[01:26:09] My name is Manny Faces.

[01:26:11] You can find out more about the show at hiphopcansaveamerica.com.

[01:26:14] You can watch the show now as a live stream on YouTube.

[01:26:17] Hiphopcansaveamerica.com slash watch.

[01:26:19] Check back for all the replays as well.

[01:26:21] The interviews from the live stream will be brought here onto the audio feed.

[01:26:24] So, you always get the best of the live stream.

[01:26:26] You can also check out our Substack newsletter.

[01:26:28] It's free at mannyfaces.substack.com.

[01:26:31] Filled with stories of hip hop innovation, inspiration, and in general, hip hop news that isn't about dumb s**t.

[01:26:39] Eternal shouts to our consulting producer, Summer McCoy.

[01:26:42] Be sure to check out her dope initiatives, Hip Hop Hacks, and the Mixtape Museum.

[01:26:46] We'll be back soon with another dope episode.

[01:26:48] But check us out on the live stream as well.

[01:26:49] On Mondays, 9 p.m. Eastern, hiphopcansaveamerica.com slash watch.

[01:26:54] Until next time, it's Manny Faces wishing peace and love to you and yours.