It’s late. I’m at home in Hunters Point, a poor neighborhood in San Francisco. I just got back from my snooty private art school, and I’m pissed.
In my class, some corny fool — fresh from the slums of Orange County — gave a presentation on graffiti in the Mission District, a Latino neighborhood where I grew up.
For 15 minutes, he spewed forth a mess that was one part technical graf process facts (which he probably got from a book), one part personal misconceptions and one part pure bull. He even threw in some “real graf jargon” for good measure.
After class, I told him, “If the cats I know heard what you just said, they wouldn’t even bother laughing at you.”
I’m not an urban anthropologist. I’m no expert on graf art or hip hop. I’m just a kid who grew up with the culture, hanging out with toys, bombers and kings.
But in Frisco, it seems hip hop is just another genre now — cultural clothes to throw on and off. The art presentation and other recent episodes of random whackness led me to believe that hip hop and graf were dead.
Then I visited the South Bronx.
In New York, hip hop is life. It’s second nature, like a reflex, like brushing your teeth.
Businessmen wear du-rags. Makeup artists listen to A Tribe Called Quest as they cake up old Jewish ladies in high-end beauty shops. Hip hop is everywhere, in storefronts, on people’s clothing, thrown nonchalantly into conversations. Most important, it’s on the streets. Even the movie posters are murals done in spray paint.
There’s an entire economy in the Bronx supported by hip hop. Cats make a living selling mix tapes and spray cans, or painting graf murals.
In hip hop’s birthplace, it was plain to see that hip hop ain’t going anywhere. But hip hop can only truly happen naturally, like it did in the beginning: Circumstances pushed on young people caused friction and sparked a creative outcry. Lack of resources is no problem. No instruments? Make the music with your mouth. No dough for a dance class? Battle your homie. Nobody to encourage you? Step up your skills, achieve fame.
After my South Bronx pilgrimage, I was feeling good about the state of hip hop, but it took some Cambodian Americans from East Oakland to show me just how alive the culture still is.
Oakland, Calif., has produced its share of well-known hip hop artists. Rafael Saadiq, Too $hort, Tupac, Mike “Dream” and now two up-and-coming cats: Sam, 21, and Pat, 19.
Sam and Pat were raised in and around the Oak Park housing complex. Oak Park is a little Cambodia surrounded by taco stands, blaring low riders and, most important, the Oakland Graffiti Wall of Fame. Using the urban crafts of graffiti and break-dancing, these two hip hop renaissance men are on a mission to get known, and they’re bringing their people with them. I caught up with them on a hot Oakland afternoon.
Born from Cambodian parents and raised in the states, Pat is grateful for a lot. “I won’t take anything for granted, you know? Being a Cambodian [American], there’s a lot of history behind me that I learned from … all the pain my people went through. We wanna show our appreciation to our elders, we wanna do something positive, to bring up our people. A lot of Cambodians get caught up in gangbangin’. It’s sad.”
Sam nods. “Cambodians, we’re different from everyone. Back in the days, Cambodia used to be rich. Then the war started. You’ve heard of the killing fields? Because many of our race got killed, they got killing and war in the back of their minds. Everywhere you go, Cambodian [American] youths are gangbanging. I’d rather stick with graffiti.”
Sam says he’ll become a rap star, a movie star, a baseball player — anything to achieve success and represent Cambodian Americans. “You see black people, that’s cool, they made it up there,” he says. “Mexicans, they’re up there, too, they’re on their way to the top.”
We’re interrupted by giggles. Curious kids from around the complex peek through an open window. “Who’s that?” they ask, pointing at me. Pat signals them in. “This is my homeboy.” Pat looks at me and asks, “Wanna see ‘em break?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Aye, show ‘em the crab, like I taught you.”
One kid reluctantly starts contorting, semi-standing on his hands, and then walks like a crab.
“Yeah,” Pat says, “I brought breakin’ to Oak Park. All the shorties started bustin’. You know how J-Lo and Fat Joe represent for Puerto Ricans? I wanna do that for Cambodians.”
And then it hit me. That’s the way it works. Hip hop is a natural reaction to the environment, whether your environment happens to be Orange County, the South Bronx or East Oakland. Hip hop is the ever-renewing new. It’s ancient. It’s just a term we use to describe the arts … urbanized.