Archive for May 2008
Chicago’s new hip-hop scene (Sunday Story)
With big names like Kanye West, Common, Lupe Fiasco and Twista emerging from the Windy City, Chicago has long been known for its hip-hop music. The only thing most of these artists have in common, however, is their hometown, and there’s been no defining Chicago sound in the hip-hop world for a long time.
Until now, that is.
A new wave of music is coming out of the Chicago hip-hop scene, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Combining electronic dance beats with hip-hop music, a new crew of rappers and DJs has been gaining credit with critics and mainstream music-lovers alike and making the Chicago scene stand out above the rest.
There’s no name for it yet, but the sound takes the best of both music scenes and mixes them together. DJs, who have been taking a backseat to rappers in mainstream hip-hop culture lately, now take the limelight as they cut up-tempo beats from popular electronic dance songs and mix them with quick raps.
And it all revolves around the party. Nothing revolutionary has come out of the Chicago scene since the emergence of the disco-influenced, electronic-driven sound of house music in the mid-1980s, and Chicago artists have now just started to create this new hybrid of music that again makes people really want to dance and have a good time.
“It’s more about keeping an upbeat rhythm,” said local rapper, producer and DJ Jeremy “Young Live” Davis, 22. “It’s real energetic and fun. That’s the basis of it – have fun with it.”
Chicago rapper Vincent Peters could not agree more. He says the new sound really started with DJs on the scene that took the music from one song and mixed it with the vocals of another, creating mash-ups.
“Here in Chicago, the DJs are the ones that have the huge following, and they’re defining it,” he said. “They started doing their mash-ups, which created a whole ‘nother subculture of music.”
Peters and other artists on the scene credit a lot of the movement to DJ duo Flosstradamus, also known as 24-year-old Josh Young and 26-year-old Curt Cameruci. According to the group’s MySpace music page, the two DJs met in Chicago in 2005 through a mutual friend who said they should hook up because they played the same kind of music. After they met, Young and Cameruci decided to just start spinning together, and soon the two were playing regular gigs at clubs and bars around the city, like Subterranean in Wicker Park and Town Hall Pub in Boystown.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Gomez
Name: Flosstradamus – Josh Young and Curt
Cameruci
Age: 24 and 26, respectively
Occupation: DJs
Years Active: 2005-Present
Label: Koko B. Ware
Associated Acts: Kid Sister, The Cool Kids,
Matt and Kim
Website: www.myspace.com/flosstradamus
According to Bill Bucholtz, proprietor of Town Hall Pub on north Halsted Street, Flosstradamus’ “Get Outta the Hood” nights every third Wednesday of the month at the local bar used to get so packed that they had to start denying people access at the door. Young, college students, who make up most of the group’s fan base, would wait in lines outside the pub, dressed in skinny jeans, brightly-colored t-shirts and their coolest pair of high-top sneakers.
“It turned out to be one of the best shows in the city,” Bucholtz said. “They would mix up so much different music, playing classical music and then jumping into the hip-hop. The enthusiasm they spill over, the energy they have – it just flows out into the crowd.”
Since then, Flosstradamus has gained national attention and are now DJing shows around the world. They’ve used their success to bring other artists on the scene in the spotlight too, like The Cool Kids and rapper Kid Sister, who both used to perform with the group at their gigs across the city. They each now have full-length albums due out later this year.
“All we ever wanted to do was throw a party, and the party blew up,” Young told URB last November. “As a result, we’re bringing people up with it. As long as we all keep doing that, we’ll have something, and right now, everyone is trying to put everyone on their shoulders.”
Kid Sister, aka Young’s real older sister 27-year-old Melissa Young, has had just as much success as her brother’s group. In the past year she has made URB magazine’s list of the next 100 artists of 2007, gracing the magazine’s cover with Flosstradamus last April. Her single “Pro Nails”, featuring Kanye West, has received critical acclaim in the music world, as Melissa Young raps about looking good and feeling cool over a light, poppy beat: “I’m looking sharp you can’t compete with a champ / Steady flickin’, I’m holding down that lawaway rack.”
“I certainly think there was a need for something here in Chicago, and we all provided that,” she told URB last November. “At the time when we started doing our stuff, I think there was a real need for carefree, unpretentious fun. And I have to say that I do feel partly responsible for bringing that here.”
Chicago-based producer James “Jimmy Con” Wineman says it’s these artists who really started the scene. Chicago partygoers were just ready for the change, making it more mainstream and popular.
“People were just searching for something different,” he said. “People wanted to change…and this gave them people the perfect opportunity.”
Either way Chicago artists agree that the new sound is here to say and will only keep growing.
“As of now, I see it expanding even more,” said Columbia College student Jeffrey Shafer, a local rapper and president of the Columbia Urban Music Association.
Davis agrees, saying that with veterans in the game here in Chicago becoming more and more popular, this new sound will set a place for Midwest hip-hop in the music world
“I see it growing, and it’s growing faster than I thought it would,” Davis said. “The Midwest didn’t have a particular sound and you know, it’s coming up nowadays.”
W.C. 973
Source List
Jeremy “Young Live” Davis, Rapper/Producer/DJ
Interviewed over the phone on 5/10/08 at 4 p.m.
(312)545-6387
Vincent Peters, Rapper
Interviewed over the phone on 5/5/08 at 7 p.m. and 5/6/08 at 9:30 p.m.
(202)294-4222
Bill Bucholtz, Proprietor of Town Hall Pub
Interviewed over the phone on 5/13/08 at 1:40 p.m.
(773)472-4405
James “Jimmy Con” Wineman, Producer
Interviewed over the phone on 5/6/08 at 9:45 p.m.
(248)885-0530
Jeffrey Shafer, Rapper/President of Columbia’s Urban Music Association
Interviewed over the phone on 5/11/08 at 10 a.m.
(312)523-6702
Richard “DJ Moptop” Furniss, DJ
Interviewed over the phone on 5/12/08 at 11:30 p.m.
(203)240-2541
“The DJs full job is to make remixes off of song, and now people are starting to realize that the can make bank off it. It’s becoming an art form.”
“People who like rap music can now listen to it in a different medium and now it’s being offered.”
URB Magazine, “Juke All Night, Play All Day”
http://www.urb.com/features/427/JukeAllNightPlayAllDay.php?PageId=1
Flosstradamus MySpace Music Page
http://www.myspace.com/flosstradamus
Chicago dancers take to hip-hop (Article #10)
Marlin Harrington, a dance minor at Columbia College Chicago, takes an extra class over at the Lou Conte Dance Studio on West Jackson Boulevard every Thursday night. When he gets to the studio, however, he doesn’t pull out his jazz, tap or ballet shoes from his bag. Instead, Harrington puts on his coolest pair of sneakers and starts to stretch on the floor.
Hip-hop isn’t just for the clubs anymore. Dance studios around the country have been adding hip-hop classes to their repertoire, and in Chicago, they are becoming more and more common. Teachers draw inspiration from their own personal background to create dance combinations that are both exciting and high energy for experienced dancers and non-classically trained students alike.
“It’s on the upswing,” said Christopher McCray, founder and artistic director of Corpo Dance Studio on Ravenswood Avenue.
The Corpo Dance Studio has offered hip-hop since it opened in September 2007, and, according to McCray, people continually ask about the classes.
“It’s definitely one of our higher demand classes,” he said.
McCray thinks the classes are so popular because people look at it as something they can actually do, both inside and outside of the studio.
“Out of the dance aesthetics around, it’s more accessible to the masses,” he said. “People view it as ‘Oh, I can go in sweats and a t-shirt and learn something I can use at the club.’”
Shannon Westveer, director at All About Dance on Clark Street, agrees.
“People like it because they want to be able to go out and dance and look like they know what they’re doing,” she said.
All About Dance offers hip-hop classes for both kids and adults. According to Westveer, right now it’s the most popular class for kids, and the adult fan base is growing.
“It’s all the hype out [in the dance world],” she said.
Joel Hall Dancers and Center on Berwyn Avenue has been offering hip-hop for 10 years now. According to Manager Vanessa Truzillion, the classes have even grown in the last year or so.
Truzillion thinks a lot of hip-hop dance fans are inspired what they see in music videos and TV channels like MTV.
“There’s this whole little underground culture that has stepped in the mainstream and cultural dance forms,” she said.
Joel Hall Dancers and Centers, Corpo Dance Studio and All About Dance all have more than one hip-hop instructor teaching classes, and each teacher has a different style. Teachers use their own expertise to conduct classes and create combinations, which provides a wide variety of lessons and moves for students.
The Corpo Dance Studio, for example, has two hip-hop teachers, Tenile Pritchard and Chris Courtney. Courtney focuses on old school hip-hop, mixing in popping and locking with new dance forms. Pritchard, originally from New York, adds an East Coast flavor to her dances that is fun, sassy, and largely funk-based. Girls flock to her class on Wednesday nights, shaking their hips and stepping with a strong, fierce attitude that is both fun and feminine.
Harrington takes the Thursday night beginner class at the Lou Conte Dance Studio with Trae Turner. Turner is a dancer and choreographer for The Collective Hip-Hop Dance Crew and head of the Chicago branch for the Hip-Hop ConnXion, a non-profit hip-hop dance team designed to educate young, intermediate dancers and create positive role models.
“His style is so unique,” Harrington said. “I love it.”
Originally from Detroit, Harrington has been taking hip-hop classes since he was 6. He started attending classes at Lou Conte when he moved to Chicago last fall for school. According to him, it’s always packed in the studio.
“There’s new people every time,” he said.
W.C. 617
Source List
Marlin Harrington, Student at Columbia College Chicago
Interviewed over the phone on 4/15/08 at 8:00 p.m.
(313)623-5569
Christopher McCray, Artistic Director at Corpo Dance Studio
Interviewed over the phone on 4/15/08 at 4:50 p.m.
(773)472-1921
Shannon Westveer, Director at All About Dance
Interviewed over the phone on 4/15/08 at 5:30 p.m.
(773)572-8701
Vanessa Truzillion, Manager at Joel Hall Dancers and Center
Interviewed over the phone on 4/19/08 at 4:50 p.m.
(773)293-0900
The seven new deadly sins (Video Assignment)
Journalism students run into trouble with the police (Article #7)
For five journalism students, their first time personally working with a Chicago police officer certainly wasn’t a good one.
Five Columbia College Chicago journalism majors who tried to record a Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy beat meeting Wednesday ran into trouble after police officers refused to let them tape record, and ordered them to turn their devices off.
The students were covering a CAPS meeting at beat 1834 for one of their classes, said Thomas Pardee, one of the students present. According to the Columbia sophomore, him and his classmates arrived early to the meeting. Only two members of the public were there, and four or five police officers were sitting behind a table at the front of the room. The students sat down in the back, and about three or four of them pulled out their tape recorders and recorded the entire meeting. Nothing happened during the meeting; it was afterwards, when they broke up to conduct individual interviews, that the trouble began.
Pardee said he was recording an interview when one of the officers, Sergeant Banaszkiewicz, came up to him and told him he wasn’t allowed to record at a CAPS meeting.
“He said that I should know for the future that I wasn’t allowed to tape record those meetings, and if I did it again we would be kicked out,” Pardee said. “He was really rude, and that’s putting it mildly.”
Srgt. Banaszkiwicz then told all of the students to turn off their tape recorders, and ordered them to spread the word to their classes.
“I was just very angered at the fact that this officer thought it was his job to educate us and that he did it so viciously,” Pardee said. “What I’ve found is that a lot of them think they know the rules. They think they know your job better than you do.”
According to Monique Bond, Director of News Affairs for the Chicago Police Department, the media is not encouraged to tape record meetings for the benefit of the public. Citizens may feel uncomfortable talking about crime if members of the media are taking down their every word, and in CAPS meetings, citizens should be able to talk as freely as possible.
“We don’t want them to feel like they’re being monitored, watched, or taped,” Bond said. “It makes them hesitant to come forward with information. This is the one time where we have an opportunity to hear community concerns.”
However, police protocol does dictate that citizens can vote to decide if they want their meetings to be recorded by the media or not. Sometimes citizens may want to share their information with reporters, Bond said.
“When there are large meetings, usually they want the media there, but we just have to give the option to the community first,” Bond said. “We have the right to reserve the privacy of the citizens.”
Pardee has never heard any of these rules, though.
Either has Heather Kimmons, assistant public access counselor for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
According to Kimmons, journalists should be allowed to record during CAPS meetings.
Under the Illinois Open Meetings Act, section 2.05, any person can record an open meeting using tape, film, or any other meetings. Authorities can set rules to ensure that meetings aren’t interfered with, but they cannot ban recording devices all together.
“[All rules and rights] would turn upon whether this was a meeting of the public body,” Kimmons said. “In all likelihood, this would qualify as an open meeting, in which case any person is allowed to record.”
The rules still seem to be a bit unclear between police officers and the media. For Thomas Pardee, however, it’s obvious what he got out of this experience.
“Police are representatives for the Police Department, and this officer was a terrible representative,” he said. “Chicago police officers don’t have the best reputation as it is, and it seems to me that it should be part of their job to prove that wrong. That’s the opposite of what he did that day.”
WC: 673
Source List
CAPS Meeting – Beat 1834
In-person on 2/27/08
Thomas Pardee, Journalism Student at Columbia College Chicago
(209) 681-4368
Interviewed over the phone on 3/11/08
Heather Kimmons, Assistant Public Access Counselor for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
(217) 557-0548
Interviewed over the phone by Margaret on 3/11/08
Monique Bond, Director of News Affairs for the Chicago Police Department
(312) 745-6110
Monique.bond@chicagopolice.org
Interviewed over the phone by Thomas on 3/11/08
