An Anecdote To Rap: A Happy 50th Birthday and Thank You Letter To Hip-Hop
On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc, born Clive Campbell, threw the famous “back to school jam” block party on 1520 Sedgwick Ave. The Jamaican-American DJ was instrumental in the creation of hip-hop. However, it was actually Herc’s sister, Cindy Campbell, who had decided to throw the block party. Initially, the goal was to raise funds to purchase new clothes for the upcoming school year. Even ahead of frat party antics, the entry charge was 50 cents for boys and a quarter for girls. Over 300 people would show up at Sedgwick Avenue. DJ Kool Herc would become a local celebrity overnight. Suddenly, the 18-year-old was viewed in a starkly different light throughout the Bronx borough.
From writing stories when I was a kid and later getting into poetry, thoroughly exploring various fixed and unfixed poetic forms like the aubade, elegy, tanka, ode, sestina, pantoum, epistle, terza rima, ghazal, blank verse, villanelle and naturally free verse, I started thinking why not get into songwriting? My logic at the time was that songwriting—emceeing is just a longer and extensive process than writing poetry—one and the same art—just longer verses reinforced by choruses and shit. I get to practicing and realize this shit takes a bit more work and patience than just adding more lines to the verses of the poems I already wrote.
Fast forward to 2013, I drop three mixtapes — Thanatology, Me, The Red Light — one of the names of my other project I dropped that year is escaping me. I dropped these all in the same year with my own beat and mixing production, some of which is production by other producers like Bugseed, Birocratic, Thelonious Martin and others. The cover art of these projects were done by former friends I had met in community college (some of whom I’m still cool with today).
My monikers definitely outlined both my personal, musical, and lyrical growth. First, it was MC Prosee (prose meaning, “regular writing”) that is without metrical or rhyming structure. Unlike poetry, which consists of writing in verse(es), prose is writing that consists of sentences and paragraphs.
In short, MC Prosee was the rapping wordsmith. Negrostotle or ‘Stotle for short, was the fictionalized Black Greek philosopher. For more than a year or so, ‘Stotle built a buzz. Eventually I found it questionable for my white audience to utter ‘Negro’ and this is part of why I decided to use ‘Stotle as an alternative name.
At some point, I put the mic down and went on a hiatus for a while. The reason(s) for the hiatus was because I started to feel like more of a performer who was being used (consumed by the white audience) more than a Black person who was a human being in conjunction with me-the-performer. Overall, the question for me was:
How do I know I’m being appreciated for me and the Black me who is the Black artist?
I didn’t do many shows, and the times that I did, I had a close-knit few of supporters (some of whom I met through the Genius forum and did song collaborations with and the few so-called “friends” I had in person, who, never showed up for me at all.)
I’m a Nyack-native who lived in the Hudson Valley for a large part of my life. Before I moved to New York City, I’ll say that there’s not a single city in the Hudson Valley that is not violently antiBlack, specifically in the music stratosphere—where the demographic is grossly white. Just about everyone one of these white supremacists, who were either apolitical, liberal or conservative, listened to Rock, Punk, Metal, Country, Folk, EDM and mockingly—pejoratively when it came to Hip-Hop.
Historically, this phenomena has been observed as white people who have animalized the Black artists in Hip-Hop culture and Rap music. In the same vein, white people exalt white culture vultures like Iggy Azalea, Mike Dece, Bhad Bhabie, Slim Jesus, Lil Debbie, V-Nasty, Kreayshawn, Lil Mabu, Lil Dicky, Logic, Machine Gun Kelly, Riff Raff, Jack Harlow, G-Eazy, Post Malone and the more openly fascist, white supremacist trash like Tom MacDonald. This doesn’t absolve nonBlack culture vultures of color like Keith Ape who contributed to the ongoing cultural appropriations of Black artists. Ironically enough, however; Black people create(ed) these all these genres, (sub)genres and styles—from Gospel, Blues, Funk, Jazz, Techno, Dubstep, House, Doo-Wop, Ska, Disco, Ragtime, Drill, R&B, Swing, Pop—you name it.
And so, most of the time, people knew of me by word of mouth—as there was a part of me that was still undergoing social anxiety about the way in which I looked when I was performing—what I was talking about in my music—the climate of where I was at in my life: deep-seated feelings of self-lovelessness and misanthropy that was encapsulated in my verses — following the white ameriKKKan dream was reflected in what I believed because like everyone else—conditioned into me. What I simultaneously didn’t pay attention to were the milestones I had achieved throughout my making music.
More than a couple of people were fuckin’ with my sound. Other people saw my being an artist as a money-making opportunity than something I could have fun with. I remember my response to making music as a money-making opportunity being that I was really having fun with making music—with making art—I still feel the same way about making music as I did when I dropped three mixtapes back in 2013. I shyed away from making music—making art, a thing of business partly because I was ignorant about that shit. I wasn’t tapped in to the logistics of the music industry; nevertheless, I was tapped in to the duplicities of the music industry.
Chicago rapper, singer and actor, Vic Mensa said it best. On his 2013 mixtape, INNANETAPE, on his interlude track, FUN!, he contemplates:
Hold my phone. And I was just like, and I was just lookin’ in the sun and I was just like, man, this shit is about havin’ fuckin’ fun. This shit is all about fun. All of this music shit to me, I do this shit for fun, man. Like, it’s a real ass hustle, right now, it’s 100% real, you know. We trynna turn it into a business, but it’s about fun though. Music, man. Music is about fun, music is fun to me. I love it. More than fun, it’s about love. I need to just not forget that
Vic Mensa’s interlude to this day resonates with me somewhat like a doctrine. I suspected that whenever an upcoming artist with potential was slowly on the rise, they would inevitably be taken—oftentimes voluntarily would sign on the dotted line without thinking twice—and now they’re damn near millionaires, forgetting all of those who they connected and shared bonds with and came up with— but without consciousness—and if they are with consciousness — taking in the art more than at face-value, then there’s a chance that the artist is using their own art as a vehicle for the audience to metaphorically consume them and the work they put out as opposed to listening to the artists they confide in — whose musical influence and person(a) they believe in.
Skip to the beginning of when the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to spread across the country. I was just about finished with graduate school at SUNY New Paltz and graduated with a Master’s in English. I don’t know if I’d call it a feeling of spontaneity — a creative surge — but I started thinking it’s time to get back on the mic. With whatever money I had at the moment, I invested in a Native Instruments Maschine Mikro MK3 drum machine. Mind you, the shit already came with sounds, synths, and drum kits. Weeks in of just experimenting with it, I was making beats.
Given the last time I used to make beats, I was using FL Studio, the beats were lacking in quality and punch, as most of my old beats didn’t have baselines or breaks in between them—no EQ mixing—just a kick, snare, and the synth or sample. This time, I eventually learned my way around including basslines, 808s, sounds that were more world-expanding than just a beat bangin’ in the background. I loved spacey, atmospheric sounds—shit that was particularly dream-like—sounds that felt like the music was taking me somewhere.
Getting into music, it was as if I was skipping timelines because I grew up vaguely listening to Kompa because it was what my immediate family listened to. I was also brought up on Michael and Janet Jackson. I turned to 50 Cent, Juelz Santana, Cam’Ron and Jim Jones. My cousin from Manhattan put me on to Dipset when I used to chill with him back in the day. I don’t remember how it happened, but I consistently gravitated towards Bone Thugs -N- Harmony, who blended rapping, singing and harmonizing, innovating a unique style of rap that distinguished them from their Midwestern counterparts like Tech N9ne, Kid Cudi, Atmosphere, Lupe Fiasco, D12 and others.
I eventually started forcing myself to music-binge — listening to various genres outside of Hip-Hop too — from Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Tycho, Sufjan Stevens, Herbie Handcock, Sun Ra, The Meters, System of A Down, Keyshia Cole, (Hed)pe, Elliott Smith, Rage Against The Machine, M.D.C., Jamiroquai, Mary J. Blige, Ellie Goulding, MGMT, Baths, The xx, Mudvayne, Pantera, Bad Brains, Death, Pure Hell, The Ohio Players, Slipknot, Sly and the Family Stone, Roy Ayers, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Esperanza Spalding, Gil-Scott Heron, The Last Poets , etc.
My biggest influence is 2Pac. It’s the vehemence—the fervor—the emotional intensity of his voice and the way(s) in which he carried that energy and his spirit to just convey the essence of Black plight, righteous anger—rebellion and Black joy. To me, some of these attributes are what I unmistakably hear/feel in my own voice and musical experience not by way of comparison but unconsciously I feel myself channeling Pac when I freestyle—make music.
Another major inspiration is MF DOOM and his Special Herbs discography of beats. While learning how to write songs, I learned to rap through the lens of writing poetry and reading about how to rap, learning the five elements of Hip-Hop such as MCing, DJing, Breakdancing, Graffiti and Beatboxing—watching documentaries like The Show (1995) and the BEEF (2003–07) documentaries that chronicled the history of Hip-Hop’s most competitive and personal beefs that originated from the outstart of Hip-Hop’s birth.
To name a few, MC Lyte vs. Roxanne Shanté, Common vs. Ice Cube, Bone Thugs -N- Harmony vs. Twista, Tommy Wright III, Do Or Die, 3 6 Mafia & Crucial Conflict, The Game vs. 50 Cent, representatives of Ruthless Records like Eazy-E, B.G. Knocc Out and Dresta The Gangsta vs. Death Row’s representatives, Suge Knight, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. In fact, I went ahead and bought Paul Edwards’ book, How to Rap: The Art & Science of the Hip-Hop MC.
The book is both a collection of interviews and insights into the historic elements of the mechanics used in writing bars, various subject matters and different styles of rhyming. Some of the interviews go from renowned artists like Lady of Rage, Havoc of Mobb Deep, Rah Digga, Buckshot of Black Moon, Remy Ma and so many others. Occasionally I used to read this book from time to time and brush up on what I already learned from writing poetry, and listen to MF DOOM beats and just freestyle about what I thought to whatever I saw around me.
After having produced over 100+ beats and making songs again, I wanted to undergo another moniker that was simple and yet encapsulated the all of me: pjd. It’s not a contrived or forced name that wanted to gain notoriety like MC Prosee or Negrostotle. pjd is acronymic to reflect the names that were given to me since my birth. They’re not names that are native to Haiti or my Haitian identity. They’re just placeholder names that I’ve claimed as my own that represents the artist and the person independently of that moniker — in other words, I am pjd; pjd is me.
I say Happy 50th Birthday and a special thank you to Hip-Hop, not only because of the fact that the art form is reflective of Black struggle and Black liberation, because it gave me a place to express — to immortalize myself — to speak to worlds unspoken and swept away by the grandiosity of the white ameriKKKan dream.
Despite all the times I wanted to quit because my rhymes were garbage, no matter how many times some of the people in the online forums just gave destructive criticism and laughed and said my shit was trash, there was also a number of listeners—supporters—fans who said I was better than the other local rappers they listened to.
There was one person who paid for one of my mixtapes and said “thank you for this”—upcoming artists in the Genius online community who felt comfortable sharing their music with me because I did the same for them; they did so without destructive criticism—without underhanded remarks—without the unwarranted comments of the human trash who were protected through anonymity—urging these aspiring artists to kill themselves when they were simply expressing themselves—looking to be heard.
In the words of my dude Chop, we should definitely be trying to be more nurturing in the Hip-Hop community, but keep in mind it is a cold world out here; however, just because the root of where Hip-Hop originated from was ruthlessly patriarchal and masculine, doesn’t mean it can’t continue to blossom into exist as a versatile art form that’s welcoming to Black folk coming from all walks of life.
Thank you, Hip-Hop. I love you.
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Patrick Jonathan Derilus is an American-born Haitian independent writer and Goodreads author who resides in Brooklyn, New York. Their pronouns are he, him, his, or they, them, theirs. They write poetry, short stories, and essays. They are published in RaceBaitR, Rabble Literature Magazine, Cutlines Press Magazine, Linden Avenue Literature Magazine, and elsewhere. They are the author of their 2016 anthological work, Thriving Fire: Musings of A Poet’s Odyssey and newest ebook, Perennial: a collection of letters.
