Audio By Carbonatix
Last week I got a call from DJ EFN of Crazy Hood Productions, who was upset about the article that I wrote about his crew (“None of Dem,” July 31). He claimed that, instead of discussing the musical projects C.H.P. has released in the past several months, including his group DA ALL’s debut album Who’s Crazy and Garcia’s single “None of Dem,” I focused on salacious details such as how they drank Bacardi rum (which, admittedly, I partook in) during the interview and Weird Thoughts’s hilarious story about winning the 305.com basketball tournament last May (which, like everyone else there that night, I thought was funny). When writing the story, I felt that these seemingly irrelevant anecdotes illustrated that C.H.P. is a group of ambitious, hard-working young men trying to build a successful career in the music industry, not a horde of thugs rapping about sex and violence. But where I saw humanizing details, EFN saw “street shit” (albeit stories they told me on the record) that cast C.H.P. in a negative light.
In most respects, EFN took the article way too seriously. But he has a point. When journalists write about hip-hop acts, they tend to rhapsodize about all the debauchery the acts get into, rather than the music that they produce. Granted this is usually an attempt to create a three-dimensional portrait, but it can also have the opposite effect of playing into popular stereotypes of rappers as brazen, lackadaisical knuckleheads with little respect for authority or anyone else besides their immediate friends. And I am all too aware of how police departments around the nation often target hip-hop fans — especially people of color — who dress in the latest fashions (sports jerseys and baggy clothing, for example) through racial profiling and harassment.
This can make for a difficult balancing act: How do journalists, especially those of us who consider ourselves hip-hop fans, write objective pieces about rappers without literally getting them into trouble? It doesn’t help that too many of them expect us to be innocuous little helpmates who advertise their wares and sing their praises instead of knowledgeable observers attempting to craft thought-provoking articles. Case in point: Nas burning a stack of magazines on the cover of this month’s XXL. “My whole career magazines treated me bad — except for the first time I came out,” he says, referring to the critical acclaim he received for his debut, Illmatic. “It concentrates on my personal too much rather than concentrating on the path that I’ve laid or the path that I’m on — the positive shit.”
Nas doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Most critics treat him equivocally because he’s made some awful music over the years (Nastradamus, anyone?), but he has rightfully earned his share of praise, too, for solid albums like the recent God’s Son.
Still I respect EFN and his efforts to promote Miami hip-hop culture. So I asked him to write a statement detailing his criticisms of the article. He sent it to me via e-mail, and it read, in part:
“I honestly feel that the article you wrote on us did not accurately represent what we stand for. For the most part the article is an honest interpretation of what was spoken about and done that night. I feel that out of all the things spoken about, you as a writer decided to highlight much of the negative than the positive. We spoke on these things with the thought of giving you the full picture of what we have dealt with and done. We just wanted you to understand as much about us, so that you can better write about our music. Things we did and went through are exactly that! Things we went through and things we have overcome. We feel that our music could have been better exposed [as well as] the fact that we have done so much for the local hip-hop community and have been loyal to Miami hip-hop for ten years! We like to be balanced, to show the real, but to teach the counter of that, so that young kids can learn. We really don’t mind that you touched upon blunts, Bacardi, hoes, and police, but we know that we represent more [than] just that! The truth is that we represent hard work, determination, and ambition! For the record, our offices have never been raided by the police. We told you that our [now-closed] store Crazy Goods had been and that was five years ago. Out of all the things discussed that night, you decide to quote things about sluts, police, relationships, & basketball games! There is no problem with writing those things but balance it out with quotes about hard work, overcoming, determination, and love for the music.”
