What is hip hop?

It's hip hop from the hip hop.

What is hip hop.

You go in in your best trends.

Beat is full of trends and flaws of metaphors.

You can't handle this, yo.

What is hip hop?

It was that scary street thing that no one had wanted to have anything to do with.

What is hip hop?

Digging in the crates.

It's not something you do.

It's something you are.

I guess.

Hip hop i nothing but a branch of the tree called music Hip hop is culture.

Hip hop is life.

I'm 36.

I still love hip hop no doubt.

Oh, oh, this is Michelle Massey with the Got Skillz, Get their segment on the Next level hip hop show.

DJ, you cannot hear.

Tune in WQED.

Show time.

Are you really Put up your hands and say Yeah.

Check it out.

So it's hip hop on the bird Hit it!

Say 412 From 1981 this episode of Black Horizons took a hard look at a new form of musical expression.

Rap music.

Rap or hip hop, as it soon came to be known, came from the streets and used urban language and imagery to tell storie that some folks found offensive.

And I really don't appreciate it because it's on the radi and everybody's exposed to it.

That's my opinion of in the words and whatever.

I just don't appreciate it.

The Bronx, Brooklyn and Spanish Harlem have always been credite as the birthplaces of hip hop, but by the early 80s, hip hop had spread to Pittsburgh, and many local groups were ready to sho their brand of hometown style.

You step back.

We're coming through what the people in the place this is just for you, a little something.

Jump 82.

1234.

Mark C was a hip hop fan and a promoter during those early days.

The show actually would be taped from our parties.

We had like the car for White Coliseum, Hazelwood.

We would tape the parties an then bring it to the TV screen.

There's some other little girls from Garfield.

They call themselves the little Rappers.

Yes, sir.

Yes, but that's only for now.

We like to show you party people.

And that's my point, that it was time to pay for.

Seeing people battle seeing the groups did our steps, their routines, all the practice and hard work paying off.

When you go up there and live on the stage and it's here and your voice over the loudspeakers and everybody had their routines down, all that just was something to remember and enjoy.

Mike, I want to tell him, my man.

What what you got for me?

There was a local group who opened up when they were called HQ.

That's there for home equality.

They were the first superstar local rap group, and we went to schoo with these guys at Westinghouse.

My thing with safety, you know, we used to have parties.

Everybody had a good time and everybody it was safe to go to and have fun.

Parents trusted us and they knew that their kids would go there and come back safe.

And it's all good.

From your station plays in hip hop and R&B.

That's 106 jams WAMO Mark.

C's brother is local WAMO radio DJ Sly Jock.

As you can see, he's been aroun hip hop for a long, long time.

I guess we go back to the Sugarhill Gang, Rapper's Delight, you know?

And I remember the old people saying, oh, that ain't gonna last but a minute.

You try to rap, you know?

And the vibe trying to rap you know, it's just hard, man.

Make a quick rap.

Im gonna beatbox, ready?

My name is Slapjack.

Gonna make you Rocky.

I make you get up, out you see me.

And if they give me a chance, I'm going to make you dance a while a rap to the beat.

That's enough.

In the early days of Pittsburgh hip hop Sly Jock assembled a variet of local groups for stage shows.

The Vicious Three, The Lady MC.

My younger brother was in that I used to have the T force.

Let's see.

It was a toughie.

Tough.

Breakers and, rappers, the robotic TikTokers.

Man, it was just so many, so many of them.

Now, the hi hop community just hates leaves.

But just so you know, both locally and nationally, there are two distinct areas of hip hop.

One is, for lack of a better term, commercial.

It's full of big cars, big women, high living and big money and can be seen just about anywhere.

That's not what we're going to dwell on now.

The whole home I wish I had t try and figure out wasn't you.

Don't with your whole family.

the other, and much less know as seen, is called underground.

It has a social conscience and wants to remain true to that conscience without selling out.

Well, both of these hip hop venues are alive and well in Pittsburgh.

We're focused primarily on the lesser known but vibrant Pittsburgh underground hip hop scene A long tim fixture in that scene is PC TV's underground hip hop video magazine, produced and directed by Adam Smith, and Les Bigelow.

Marge, take a step forward Please.

No remarks and take a step back.

Please.

Cool.

Between 60 and 75% of, most hip hop sold is bought by the suburbs.

And, that's that whole connec that's been like that for years.

It's now it's acceptable for people to admit they listen to hip hop now or they to admit that they buy hip hop now.

It's been commercialized and it's been bottled and made ready for sale.

And there's a nice clean label put on it now, and you have grandmas rapping water, making waffles on commercials and stuff like that.

And when it first came out as an art form it was that scary street thing that no one had wanted to have anything to do with.

This is something that's wanted in every community.

If you go in any city righ now, everybody wants more of a hip hop press.

It's the advertising agency.

Seem to think like if they pu some kind of hip hop spin on it, you know, that it's going to sell, you know, make the Pop Tarts go right here, hear when they coming out the toaster, as any true aficionado will tell you, hip hop is composed of four basic elements.

And like the periodic table of elements found in science, these elements serv as the foundation for everything we call hip hop.

So again, the four basic elements of hip hop are DJs.

MCs, B-Boys and B-Girls, and graffiti.

DJ oh yeah.

My name is DJ Supa C. Roland C Matthews Junior, also known as Chip Hip Hop, started with the DJ, which is the backbone of hip hop.

The DJ would be equivalent to the orchestra or the, drummer and bass player and horn player.

They would go into their mothers or fathers, record collection and get old soul or jazz records.

They would go through the record and find a particular break in the record.

For a particular sound.

Okay.

And the break, what I mean by break was after the music is going, there's a particular point in the song where it just breaks, everything stops, and the drummer is playing, and maybe there's like a bass line going, so that would be called what they were called, the break the, the people that were dancing.

These breaks were called Break Boys.

And you just rock that drum break back and forth and the breakers would start.

That would be the break of the song.

That's what they call break dance.

And they would come ou and start break into that break.

That's why these lines are on here.

It's not not to try to give up tricks of trades, but the lines like, give you focus on where the record is because the beat's going to hit right where that's at 12:00.

Then you have also what they call coast to coast and coast to coast.

This is like the original essence of DJ.

And right here, this is, you take a break beat.

And back in the day, they only had the same.

They only had a short break on a record.

So you would only have a certain period to either break dance or rap or whatever you want to do.

And they would loop it back and forth manually before there was any sort of sampler or sequencer, they would just loop it back and forth and you take this same part.

If you can imagine this being a James Brown recor where you only had a drum break, you'd have to bring that break back before the word started.

And then later on, you have, Grand Wizard Theodore, who invented scratching.

And scratching is basically just taking a particular sound in a record, bringing it back and forth and it creates a certain rhythm or melody.

It's just like a runner who got to run you know, 100 sprints every day.

You got to do the same scratch over and over till your muscle memory builds up, until your muscles know what to do without even thinking about it.

Because if you thinking about it, it ain't going to sound right.

As DJs evolved you have what they call tricks where you spinning around using different parts of your body to hit the fader, like the hands, knees, elbows, feet, stomach, toe to.

And this turned into, this brought about DJ battles.

Okay, okay.

This is the element right here.

The main stage.

This is the foundation.

The hip hop right here.

This is like, the drum.

This is like an African drum.

This is what sets the tone.

This is what sets the tempo.

This is what, rocks the party.

Yeah.

I mean, you can't rhyme over beat without this right here.

So Peter Pan was my first record.

The cut.

And they had a little 45 with the green on it, so I don't, you know, scratch you know, Jack and the Beanstalk going and going up the golden egg, you know, and couldn't have different things from Peter Pan.

So eventually my father walked in.

He said, that's how you.

Cause Peter Pan because he was into jazz.

So he would give me some old jazz records that his didn't get scratched up.

So I would eventuall cutting guitars and everything.

But I still only had one turntable, so eventually he bought me another one.

But I didn't have a mixer, so I just would scratch with two turntables.

So I had a duck, Peter Pan on this sid and George Benson on this side.

So it made a weird combination.

On.

I am strictly the guy who gets the party.

Hey.

Lets the crowd know that I'm here and let the crowd know that they're, you know, they're having a good time.

The whole night.

I control people's emotions more.

So I'm like the weather man.

I can make it rain.

I can make it shine.

I can make it sunny.

I can make a game.

Whatever you want.

I'll give it to you on a will of spill.

Check it out, y'all.

And M.C.

means move the crowd.

Master of ceremony or microphone controller.

You have to be able to capture the audience and work with the energy of the audience.

Give them something they can give back to you.

so people like to call it poetry, put to a beat spoken word put to a beat.

For people who don't know what MC is.

It's somebody who reps the first rhyme you ever run.

Yeah.

My toothbrush.

Yeah.

My toothbrush bought it at the Rough code store.

It was right on sale for $1.64 something, something something got the toothpaste.

Something, something something put it right on the face.

It wasnt something to tha effect.

It was just one verse.

And I won an award for it back in elementary school.

Yeah.

So deadly scribes.

Never a silent shame.

I'm sitting up on top of the world watching the pirate game from far away.

This world is kind of right.

It reminds me of the lights that shine I brings.

This whole soul define rock refrain I think of mine metaphor become more.

I used to say for a long tim that I don't mind being broke.

And it was kind of like the persona that I carried because I was a broke MC.

But I had more skills than any of these guys with money.

This whole industry is male dominated, and it can be kind of intimidating too if you're a woman and you enjoy the music, but you get a little nervous if you're not good enough.

These men are hard.

They are hard on you.

If you don't represent, they'll tell you, especially the people around here, you know?

So that's challenging.

It's real challenging, as I think that's why, as with anything, you know, you know, I just grab the microphone once I get the data sold.

You didn't understand cause yo didnt know my name is Joy Brown And I just get down down town that's where I go to get my beats from.

But LPs they make these too.

there actually aren't like that many female MCs out.

So of course as soon as you say your female MC, you get to look like you're wack or something like that.

But once you spit in, you know you.

Prove yourself.

It's just like your regular MC and we're going our mystery ministry.

But the enemy really work, which is so heavily structured that blow up a lot of weed.

You screaming whole lot with we.

All the blueprints of the game plan.

I hold the knowledge that's not known to man.

Your whole existence could invest with one hand, execute absolute.

Still no dispute.

We're sometimes the ones tha create the lullabies for hip hop were sometimes the one that write the love stories for hip hop.

But we sometimes want to be like our brothers, and we get rugged and rough and tough, like, like, braids when she rock rough and stuff with her afro puffs.

That was her influenced b the brothers in her in her life, you know?

So we just we play a number of different roles, and I think that the brothers appreciate it.

To the great You can look at the media.

See it is you don't see any female in hip hop and the ones that or hip hop, as far as I' concerned, do not represent me.

So I mean, it's a shame that you got to get in a, you know, in a bikini, you have a mic in your hand just to be her.

I mean, that's not what I'm about.

So I try to keep it true to me.

But being that I keep i true, it it it causes problems.

It creates difficulties of being her and being seen and being recognized and recognized in the way that, yeah, I can do this without, you know, being explicit with it.

Just do it because I love it and do what's true to me.

I'm seeing has just as much as a work ethic.

And I think writing writing is not hard.

MCing is hard.

MC is a master of ceremony.

And to be the master of ceremony, you have to know everything that's going on and and in your function.

I think writing is not har because we take it so seriously and we work.

So I'm glad writing is hard.

Science.

The UN silence knowledg our branch leaf nap sap saplings thinking quickly intricately thinking illustrative instinctively extract extract their theorem repeat obsolete delete.

Concrete.

Surrealism.

Heartbeat.

Complete pendulum.

Split realism.

Neural kinetics above.

Normal acting.

Rhythm and building.

Violent.

Psilocybin.

Delirious.

Riots.

Riot.

Delirious.

Psilocybin.

Violence and vision.

Rhythm.

Acting.

Normal.

Above normal.

Kinetic realism.

Split pendulum.

Complete.

Heartbeat.

Surrealism.

Concrete to lead.

Obsolete.

Repeat.

Theorem.

Lyric extract.

Abstract.

Instinctively illustrating.

Thinking intricately.

Quickly.

Thinking.

Saplings.

Knapsacks.

Leave out branc knowledge to on silent science.

Writing is hard, but to be I mean to be a full fledged MC is the hard thing, you know, to have to to be actually be able to stand at a sho by yourself on stage and command everyone's attention and not have them be bored being a master, true talent.

And like, that's what it's all about.

This is Chris.

I'm known as the Moore.

You are listen to the Next level show.

Got DJ selecting DJs super speed Don't forget ICE and Michelle Massey.

Don't forge Queen.

He's here in the house.

We rocking it on the next level.

Yeah.

Oh my head, baby.

And.

No doubt baby step.

If it's done right it can actually I think it can raise consciousness.

But lyrics and MCs are saying real music.

We understand that we have our issues.

We're mourning death right now, but we're still keeping the culture going.

So if you want to understand that, then come and talk to us about why we write the way we write, understand why we move, the way we move, understand wh we love it the way we love it.

And we'll gladly let you know because it is here to stay.

I don't doubt that we're going through it, bu we're not going to stop though.

Don't stop, hip hop, don't stop.

Hey yo, let's kick thi for the b boys who love hip hop.

We're now going to progress to some steps which are a bit more difficult.

And the B boys ar the ones that just find supreme and ultimate pleasure in what we do.

So they show their appreciation by dancing.

When we give, when we give to them, they give back to us.

I'm 32, so I gotta know, you know, I don't.

I got a warm up to warm.

Maybe you gre up without a mother or father.

And you meet these kids who have gone through these hard times all their life and have found this art of dancing and expressing themselves and dancing out.

I like to think of it as dancing out all the aggressions in my life.

When I'm on the dance floor, I'm releasing everything that makes me unhappy, and that when I'm done practicing and I put my good shoes on to walk home in this 30 degree weather, you know I'm free.

I'm free at heart.

I'm free at mind.

And I've relieved the biggest burden of all, which is this negativity from everyday living.

It's changed my life.

Two years ag I was 180 pounds on five five.

So you can imagine what I look like.

I found dancing and my whole life changed.

I, I came from a town where there wasn't too much to do.

There was no youth centers.

There was nothing really to do but get into trouble and drugs and alcohol and that's.

That was all there was to do.

And, when I found breaking and it changed my life, I started eating, right.

I started stretching, I started working out, you know what I mean?

Drugs and alcohol.

would never even came in to my mind.

It was like, because that got in the way of my dancing.

Makes you better.

The competition, you know.

So you see that person?

He's got your move.

You you know, you study, you move.

You know, you see him in a club, you battle him.

And maybe the next time yo beat him, he may might beat you.

It's like it's a natural reaction.

You see someone do somethin hot, you can't help it go.

Oh.

Oh, oh, oh, it's more than that.

It's a battle when you want to compete against somebody, but it's more of a battle with yourself trying to dance to the beat.

You know, you may wan to do a power move to the beat.

It may seem so harder.

So you study it.

You practice it.

Battle creative.

However you see what creativity is.

You know, for hip hop, you got to know the basics of rock.

The six that the freezes and then you take it from there.

You know, you can't just go out and do incredible move and say you're a breaker.

You have to know the basic if it comes in ho and I might come in, you know, you know, I see him get hot on the floor.

I'm like, he ain't leaving me behind.

Yeah, no.

So yeah, we vibe.

We all motivate each other.

This competition is in Stuttgart.

Germany is called battle of the year.

It holds 9000 people.

The last even they have won a B-Boy Summit in San Diego, California around October.

They have program B-Boy master' program in Florida coming out.

We're going.

Yeah, we're going to have different categories.

Little kids, veterans, people in i for 20 years, people under 13.

It's just people come from all over the world as well as the world.

B-Boys, as young as six years old.

Not just oh, I'm talking real.

They're good.

They can put them up against anybody.

I was at my aunt's wedding an I was watching my friend dance.

His name was Jimmy, so I just threw myself all over the floor and my dad says, I'm not going to embracing.

So he took me to my friend for his friend Frankie's.

It's like the beginning.

I mean, I still break, truthl Ive had a lot of injuries in it You know, I work for myself, so I don't have health insurance, so I have to be a little bit more careful with what I'm doing these days.

But, you know when there's a good cycle going on, I will jump in, believe that.

Yeah.

I want to see it in an Olympic sport.

You know?

I really want to see it in the Olympic sport to give something to these kids.

They want to train for four years to be in the Olympics.

You know, hip hop for me, basically is expression I express myself through the dance.

I, I am music in physical form.

I like to call it as a dance and, everything like that.

It's it's a family, especially in Pittsburgh, our whole hip hop community.

It's a family.

I know everybody, I love everybody, we all get along when the show comes up.

I'm excited because I'm going.

If I get to see my family, an it gives me a vibe that there's no other substance in this world has ever given me.

Being a graffiti writer is taking the risk.

You got to write, you got to do the action.

You got to go out and paint and be called an outlaw at the same time.

There's always going to be a right and wrong of it, no matter, you know, like for every wrong pornography, there's always someone that's going to say, well, that looks nice.

And I wouldn't mind that on my body.

But then there's always someone that goes, that's my property, I pay taxes.

So there's really, you know, it's it's always going to there's always going to be that that hatred for it.

And, and there's always going to be that love for it.

There's really nothing you can you can't just convinc the whole world like to love it.

And you know, so as far as I like as when I used to do it, I used to always try to do productive stuff.

I wasn't really into the damaged part of it.

Like, you know, I was into doin like colorful murals and like, you know, letting people see my name in other neighborhoods, like productions where, like, you know, we you know, come with a crew and, you know, we blast colors out and we do banners like it was to me, it was always about doing doing banners and doing like production where people would come and, you know, see the art form of it, you know, banner more like your name, you know, you know, like everybody has a tag and your name and then your name eventually becomes your lifestyle and how you live.

Every writer has a black book and like, puts their art.

They get together, you know, put it together.

These are, these are banner that I actually painted in 1992.

You know, when people would see my tag and they know me, they, you know, my letters and the letter stars were my lifestyle of how I was living on the street.

This i like the they call it the fame.

EVA line.

Like when you do the bus weigh, the bus weighs.

It's all about the line.

Like growing up, there's always like so many people from all around Pittsburgh get on this bus way from downtown and back and forth.

So it makes your ride a little bit more enjoyable.

When you're out on the EVA, you go, you ride by, look to the right.

The characters is colo compared to just a dreary wall.

I mean, I used to catch EVA and I would be like and people be like oh, I should just keep humble.

Like, you know, just making people's eyes pop out, you know, like just that.

That's that.

That's enough to where, like, kids are like, oh, look at the cat in the hat.

Like Doctor Seuss is on the bus.

So a little kid, just like little things like that make you make someone happy, and you're like okay, I, you know, I was there, I did it, you know, like, they don't know I'm humble.

The graffiti artist, they're the ones that take all of the the inspiration from the DJs, from the lyricists, and they are the ones that are artists.

They are are artistic spokespeople.

They, they create the image for the for people to look at, to observe and to learn about.

My opinion is, is like we're basically throw into this, this kind of society.

And they tell you that this is not allowed and this ain't allowed.

I see billboards and that's the same to me as graffiti.

Anything that has riding on it trying to grab your attention, you go b if you go by a car dealership, they got big old letters.

It's the same thing.

There's no difference to me.

I mean, except that they're they're just trying to grab your attention, and I'm just trying to grab your attention to open another people's eyes to a new art form that, you know, been around for a lot of time now and just people are asleep in it.

I've been thinking a lo about that sort of thing lately.

And for me, I think every day I have to see a lo of things that people force me to look at, like the media, you know, corporations.

I'm forced to look at a lot of things that I don't necessarily want to see every day.

And I think it's good for sometimes people to see things that they don't understand or necessarily they might not like it, but, you know, it's good to see things, you know, that confront you.

You know, things you have to you know, make you think maybe or make you upset or make you happy.

I think it's a good thing.

You know, every day I have to look at all these billboards trying to sell me all this stuff that I don't want every day.

So.

To me graffiti is is a lot of things.

It's fun.

It's frustrating.

And, it's just it's tradition is isn't to me.

It's it's life, you know?

It's my life.

You know?

This is something I like to do.

It makes me feel really good.

You know, like, if if I paint something and I like it, which sometimes I don't, you know, if it's something that I like, you know, I can sit back and I can look at it and just sit there.

It's like I did that, you know, it's like a release from from all this stuff that I have to deal with, you know, day to day, you know, it's like a release from from society, I guess it's like my thing, you know, something that makes me feel good and it makes me feel some self-worth, you know, makes me feel good about something.

Like, I'm creatin something.

I'm being productive and in a positive way.

Also, although some people may see it as being destructive, you know, personally, me, I don't I don't think I'm really being destructive.

I'm not trying to hurt anybody or destroy anybody's stuff, you know?

I mean, there may be graffiti artists that are trying to do that but me personally, you know, it.

It might be destructive but to me, I'm trying to just, you know, be creative because there's enough destructive things going on, as you can see, like in the world today, enough people being destructive.

I'm tryin to, you know, just do my thing.

I used to write my last name, brick, when I was really young, too.

Everywhere.

All around, shady side, all around.

Celebrity around Highland Park, you know, like you know until my dad was walking a dog once in Mellon Park and sa my giant brick piece on the side of a wall walking a dog, I was like, what the hell?

You know, like, I used to have to sneak cans, like, you know, at a hundred cans, and I'd throw them off the second floor and be like hey, I'm going on and go around, you know, not now.

It's all, you know, it's all love.

My mom, you know, I gave him heart attacks.

You know, the whole time you know.

But now they can they can deal with it now, you know, they come in, you know, my dad always still walks a dog.

Everyone knows my da on the celebrity and shady side.

Because always walks a dog, always wears my coats.

My leather coats.

And people know him as like the hip hop dad.

Yeah, they got love for it.

They they know, you know, they they, you know, my mom knows all about, you know, like, because, you know, I always have graffiti writer work for me and stuff like that.

And she'd always be like, I saw his stuff down Oakland.

You better tell him to calm down and look at your papers.

Welcome to the natural choice.

Look around.

I don't think it would be fitting that everyone to come down here and be a part of the hip hop community.

If I didn't really, truly represent some of the elements of hip hop, the basic elements that, you know, hip hop is founded on, MCing, DJing, b boying and graph art.

Graffiti art is, you know, a staple, but this one was done by brother named Ali and goes by the chemist.

Graffiti stands on its own, even without hip hop.

I mean, I mean, don't get me wrong, I' not saying anything bad about, like, the elements and everything, but graffiti is the only element that you have to take a bigger risk.

It stands alone just from the whole system.

Sometimes if taking a risk i as part of graffiti, I have to.

I have to agree with that.

But at the same time I'm getting a little older and I really I don't want to run from the police anymore.

You know, I'm I just want to.

It's always been my focu just to to really do my thing.

So I want to take a risk.

I'll, you know, I'll go somewhere and I'll paint something in a spot that's visible for the public.

But generally, you know, I just like to do my thing.

And it' kind of like a personal thing.

There's going to be risk no matter what.

I think if kids had a spot where they could do murals and not get harassed by the police, harassed by people that own property, I think it would cut down a lot of the illegal stuff that people do.

You know, and like I said, you know, it's the it's the it's the tax dollars.

And, you know, you pay taxes.

You're like, hey, someone to face my property.

Of course you're going to be mad.

You know, I mean, I mean, this stuff here has bee there's stuff here on this bus that's been here for 21 years, you know, 22 years, like since I first built the bus way.

There's been graffiti on this bus right here, you know, and there's nothing really you could, you know, you know, oh, for every art kid that's going to school right now, there's a there's a kid in fifth or fourth or fifth grade catching the bus right now.

And he's seeing that and he relates to it.

And that's how you become a graffiti writer.

Personally, for me, when I paint, sometimes I just want to d my thing and just be left alone.

I'm not really doing it for, you know, other people.

I do it just so I can do my thing, get my picture and go home.

That's what we try to do.

Try to look out for young kids, give them guidance.

So there's a lot of young graffiti writers we try to guide in the right way when they come to the store, you know, tell them not to, you know, you know, get into, you know, computers, get into graphics, you know, get into, you know, get into where the art can take you don't like just, you know, don't let the crime clinch your brain because it doesn't pay off.

You know, I know a kid has been painting since 82 and I've learned a lot from him.

Just being around and just seeing how he reacts in a train yard or how he goes you know, it is you constantly in touch with your other crew members of how you should act and behave and the dangers that are always there.

So basically you have to have a good crew or else you're going to if you're going solo, you you better be, knowledgeable enough about the spot so you don't have to get entangled in that dangerous.

And it's highly, highly dangerous because trains can go by in the middle of the night.

Police are going up and down this bus way all day, and if you get caught, you're going to definitely get some fines because Conrail doesn't really who th bus way appreciate any of this.

They're pretty much it's it's a crime.

They just play by the rules, you know, even though it might be nice, it's still a crime.

You know, among my crew members, I guess I'm kind of known as the guy that will find the new places to go paint.

You know, the more, you know, undercover spots to go paint.

And I guess the this Pittsburgh being kind of like an old industrial city.

There are there are all kinds of, like, old warehouses and abandoned factories.

And, you know, there's bridges everywhere.

So, you know, I, I always try to creep around and find a new place, you know, to do my thing.

So there are lots of spots, like, you can be traveling around the city, like going across a bridge and under the bridge.

You would never know that.

There's like there's like artwork like this, you know, it's all over the city, all kinds of places, all kinds of different people doing their thing.

There's rules and graffiti, like, you don't tag a church, you don't.

You don't tag something that's historical, like you don't go down t Carnegie Mellon and tag there.

There's rules to it, you know, there's certain spots where, you know, certain, you know I mean, there's always someone that's going to break that, but there's certain boundaries that you shouldn't know of.

You know, there's always going to be, you know, you shouldn't tag a church.

It's just disrespectful.

I mean, getting fame i a big part of it, but it's like, how are you going to get that fame you get if you if you go and just destroy everything, you're going to end up in jail.

And you I can't paint in jail.

There's enough people in jail already.

What am I going to do in jail?

I rather get fame for painting like really nice pieces, you know?

Or, you know, getting up in my way.

You know there's more longevity in that.

And I guess a lot of people will probably disagree, you know?

And I guess that's fine.

But then again, a lot of peopl that are like going around here now tagging everything up and destroying stuff.

When I started doing it and he started doing it, these kids were in elementary school or junior high school when we started.

So we've been doing this a little bit longer than a lot of people.

So I guess maybe we kind o look at it a little differently.

Graffiti.

Okay, this stuff doesn't happen overnight.

You don't become good at graffiti in one day, two days a week, whatever.

I love that song.

Hip hop has spread the world over.

Local filmmaker Jared Buba wen to his ancestral home of Italy and made a video that shows that hip hop can flow in any language People in southern Italy feel oppressed by the dominant culture.

Instead of voicing thei oppression through aggression, they're deciding to try try to voice their oppression in a more academic way.

And the way that they found, I think, is through hip hop.

And they've emulated African Americans and their music and kind of parallel the things that they're talking about.

When I was there, I was expecting to see, you know, eight, nine peopl that were interested in hip hop.

And then, you know, I've been shooting video on the stage in this piazza and, you know, it's just a grea it was a great scene, but I was privileged enough to be with German Italians that were there that we're talking about the German hip hop scene.

I was there with Spanish Italians, with American Italians, with Canadian Italians, and they were all talking about what was going on with the hip hop culture in their specific region.

It was amazing for me to hear the same story told over and over agai in each of the different cities these people were talking about social oppression.

They were talking about people that were spreading non truths about their art and about hip hop, There's so many huge events that people travel from all around the world.

I know I've already been just with breakdance.

I've been in New York, I've been to Maryland, I've been to Miami just for competitions, and I see people.

When I went to Miami last year, there was, over 50 B-Boys just from Franc that didn't even speak English, and they were there to compete.

I've been DJing since 94, and it alread has taken me around the country and around the world.

So I got to, open for Run-D.M.C.

and Chemical Brothers in Israel in 98.

I got to play with, Beck and Rage Agains the Machine at Coachella in L.A.

in 99, and I've played countless raves and parties throughout the country.

Hopefully we can push our sound t Europe, and that's basically how a lot of hip hop is surviving these days.

Is is going to Europe and their fan base is just there, just so into observing the elements here, almost everybody participates there.

They have a lot of people that are fans.

And while all of this might look like a lot of fun, which it often is, hip hop has turned several of these underground artists into entrepreneurs.

And that's why I wanted to name a studio Ya mom'z house.

When you step in here, it's your mom's house.

Treat it like that.

Come in, have a seat.

Relax, create.

Forget about everything.

Just.

Just simply concentrate on creating.

That's the purest state.

That's your moms house.

My rates are crazy low because I want people to finish their project.

But at the same time if you're doing the wrong thing, I'm expose you to the right thing.

Y'all got your lyrics memorized or what?

I don't even know if they convinced my first keyboard was a Casio SQ5 that I bought from sun TV and appliances, in 1988.

It was the winner in a shovel.

Snow all around my neighborhood to save up $52.10.

I'll never forget how much it cost.

And I used to sweat this keyboard.

Its keyboar was like the living God to me.

I shovel so many people snow.

It was ridiculous.

You own your mom's house.

We own the production company.

Thats the future of the art form.

That's the future of the music is keeping it alive by us only in venues.

Starting the record companies, u opening the studios, us for us.

about us, knowing ourselve and being ourselves, naturally, that's pretty much it.

Anything else?

You know when you're following a formula, I just gotta go on and you're not being yourself or you're trying to be.

What's someone else laid out that's gotta go?

Because that's not hip hop.

He May Allah Quiver.

Akeelah Soon and DJ super C have been together since they were in the ninth grade.

Back in the late 1980s, they formed a group called Pencils in a Cup, and in 1991 made a video for a national PBS special called a Mind of Your Own.

They hadn't seen it since then.

Turn up some volume on temperature.

Concerning, please.

I'm about to get embarrassed and only commercial To school for to get my education.

Please.

You can't do it any more.

Oh, look at your way.

Oh, yeah.

This is the way it goes.

Another takes time.

It's worth it.

Don't you know to be a doctor, a lawyer and I to.

All right.

A workout in the gym in.

Because get my job.

A truck, a train.

Oh, yeah.

Me too.

Me.

Whatever.

Let him be.

Oh, we got the little tape doing it for me.

Oh, what a crowd.

As you can't see the blown that music.

They get a mind of your own.

Go and get a mighty.

Oh, just stay in school.

00000!

I tell you what.

When, when he used to call me.

This is how I knew that we were going to be serious.

When he would call me at 3:30 a.m.

and my mom would be sleeping in the other room, and she'd be so upset that the phon would ring at 3:30 in the mornin because my mom tells you, don't call at 3:30 in the morning.

That's disrespectful.

And, he would call me at 3:30 in the morning with that little corny beat On a Casio SK5 And I kept using the same drums.

But my mother, after a week, told me that boy's serious, and you need to stay around him if you're serious.

But if you're not serious, you need to tell him to not call you anymore.

Because this is something you don't want to do.

When we look at the tape, we're better than that now.

And we're ten of 15 years older.

That's the difference.

Yeah.

We're getting better as we get older.

We're getting quicker on the turntables.

Better on the, the machine tweaking.

Yeah.

That ain't playing the piano.

So we're getting better and faster as we get older and more creative.

More creative.

Definitely.

It's it's it's amazing.

It it just smacked me right in the head.

I couldn't believe it.

You know, the history with these brothers, the friendship, you know, which is so importan in chemistry of of rap groups.

You know what I mean?

Being friends first and then creating second.

You know what I mean?

And it's all one in the same.

And to see us on, on on, you know, video like that, you know, skimming, you know, rhyming doing a cut, doing a scratching.

And it was for a good cause.

Get a mind of your own stand school, you know what I mean?

Get that education.

And tying it in the hip hop is so beautiful.

It's so beautiful.

You know what I mean?

And it's like hi hop has strayed away from that.

A lot of u decided to go into the business aspect of the element, lik Justin Strong o of the channel.

That's pretty much what we do is give what we like to say the disadvantage cultures in, the city of Pittsburgh a platfor to express themselves, singing, for the artists to grow and develop.

What's a day to day process you really don't get, in a sense, step back from the trees and see the forest.

But I always have people pull m to the side and say, you know, keep, keep pat me on the back and like, you don't realize what you're doing.

I'm like, you know, they see the beauty of it.

You know, people here having fun.

I'm always at the compute looking at what bills do next.

You know, it is a business.

It's like, I deal with the realities of the business side, which started out with the four elements, which has grown and had kids, and now it's its own like culture.

Some of the kids are some some bad kids and don't necessarily represent the parents well.

But, you know, you're going to have that in a family.

You're going to have, so many different, so many different styles, so different personalities to it, you know, starting to learn the, economics part of it.

You know, those are controlled, the business side of things.

So pretty much defining what the cultur and what hip hop is going to be in this city.

Guys want to come with all the the hardness and the balance, this and that.

That's cool.

But they're not going to own venues, you know, and, you know, in the shadows we can determine what gets played and what doesn't.

And next thing that we'll we'll get our own radio station and determine that awesome.

We're not 16 anymore.

You know, you see a movement of hip hop entrepreneurs, but we'll see a whole bunch of them on this show, that we're kind of taking matters into our own hands.

So for anybody out there in hip hop scen that doesn't like what they see, do something about it.

And if you're bored just because you're a boring person.

And, so we won't be mad if you move one less, negative, spirit to deal with.

All that glitters is not gold.

But I definitely can't complain.

Locks.

Braids.

Fakes.

Caesars.

Micro braids.

Cornrows.

Senegalese twist.

Starter locks.

Double strand twist.

I mean, any any any haircuts that you can imagine, any braided or natural hairstyle.

If you can think it we can help you conceptualize it and bring it to life, even though there's a salon on the other side and they can hea some of the things that we say, there's thing that happen in this barbershop that's almost sacred, you know, that you don't, you know, it stays in the shop.

You know, it really does.

And I think that, a lot of people don't realize the importance of the black barbershop, the community and that just this one would just just for Pittsburgh or in America, for example.

I mean, the black barbershop has always been the staple if if not one of the mainstays, the barbershop, the beauty salon has been the mainstays and the staple of the black community.

Those are the businesses that last the longest.

Those are the businesses that, have the most, when we say longevity, I mean, they're just they're those are the businesses that the community needs and counts on.

I like the, the, the whole mom and pops type, you know, feel I want to expand.

I would like to open up another 1 or 2, you know, I mean, but I don't think I could go further beyond that just because I know it would lose its home feel.

There are a few outlets for underground hip hop in Pittsburgh.

They include Milk Records, which carries a wide selectio of music from techno to hip hop.

It's also a place where the B-Boys come to practice, so that's just all my keys and 720 records we're trying to expand.

We have the online side taken off right now that's growing every day, and we're trying to basicall franchise it out as a, you know, mostly hip hop record store mostly vinyl, which is unusual.

There's one store in New Yor called Phat Beats that does it, and we're trying to model ourself after that and bring it to, you know, maybe Pittsburgh, Ohio, the whole tri state area, basically, you know, Pittsburg is a little bit of an old city.

So, you know, we come into the position where when we want to put something ou the way that we wanted to come, you know, we're able to get a lot of love from papers like the City Paper.

Every no and then they feature you, but, you know, they write your stuff.

They usually do it wrong.

So that's why we guys are our own thing, you know, putting out a magazine.

That's the same thing with, like, the television shows, right?

We've never really been on TV before.

So at this point, we're putting out our own documentary, like QED was in the house last night.

And, you know, they saw my camera crew.

We've been doing that for like 6 or 7 weeks getting footage.

So, you know, we just been al about putting out our own stuff.

That's what you have to do, really.

It's the American way, you know, because the whole thing with me throwing parties was that there was never anything for the breakers.

So I had to get started and throw some for the breakers because it wasn't happening.

And that's how we got started in this whole business where I got started in the business, and that's how it happened.

I mean, I guess that's the situation for a lot of people here in America is that, you know, whatever they want to do.

Is it happening?

So they got to find a way to put it out.

And that' how you become an entrepreneur.

That's how you get started.

You know, that's really what we're trying to do if marketing, you know, like there's no one here doing what we're doing.

There's no one even attempting to do it on the same level.

That's why we put it out.

And that's why I think we're going to be successful.

A lot of my writer right now that I grew up with, and they're doing like fantastic jobs that work for clothing lines.

Now, designing interior like the work of our store was done by one of my partners back in the day, another partner, Sarge.

Everyone knows him.

He was notorious.

He's a giant sculptor now.

He doesn't show, like, you know everyone's doing well with it.

You know, like, we can't do it illegal forever.

You got to.

You got to change it aroun and make it your, you know, how how are you going to make it pay the bills.

This is a nice shirt.

But at the same time it goes back to the graffiti.

Edward has actually a kid painting on a wall and running away and hangin on the script and on the back.

Here it has them after after they're done with their bag, relax.

And you know, it goes to where you could wear thi to church or something or Easter and you wouldn't even notice that, like someone's like, you know, like, you know paint graffiti no matter what.

There's always a break in graffiti and see it.

But then there's always the clothing part, the geared all that, you know, in hip hop, like the jeans suit, the the Gucci suits.

And when Cara Swan had the, the leather hats with, you know, always had a fashion to it when EPMD had the same suits on crisscros wearing their clothes backwards and always had a fashion statement.

Hip hop always has a fashion statement.

And this is what, you know, graffiti writers went into, is designing the fashion that hip hop kids wear.

This A-line is called PNB Nation.

It's actually designed by three graffiti writers from New York that are really in the graffiti culture right now.

They start painting in New York.

FC crew, Fan City, a guy name West Brew and Zulu do this line.

They've been in it.

They've been doing clothing since like 87, in New York, on the streets.

It's called paint, PNB.

It has a lot of meanings like post no bills, people never believe pancakes and butter.

Proud Nubian brother, proud New York Boricua.

It means a lot of thing.

Pittsburgh National Bank it can you know.

But all the line is dedicated to this spring line that they brought out is is dedicated to the graffiti writer in hip hop.

So what is hip hop?

Ask a hundred different people and you'll get 100 different answers.

Hip hop is very expressive fun.

That' what hip hop is supposed to be.

Fun.

Hip hop.

Some people would say a way of life.

You got to be hip hop to know hip hop you know L-o-v-e is what hip hop is.

I know what hip hop is, you know?

And the people who who I'm surrounded with, they know what hip hop is.

Hip hop is really just the whole vibe and the whole, like, connection with people and community and like the liveness rap is something you do hip hop or something.

You live.

Hip hop is a culture.

It's a lifestyle.

It's the way you talk, you know, the way you live, the things you do.

Hip hop means everything to me.

It's it' my culture.

It's a way of life.

It's life.

What would I be without hip hop?

Nothing.

I wouldn't even know who I am.

It's hard to really explain.

It encompasses my life fully.

So I can't really sit back objectively and say what hip hop is.

I just know that I live hip hop, my crew, all my friends live hip hop.

So to us, I guess hip hop is just our lives.

We need a 60 minute show to tell you what is the significance of hi hop is, you know, the struggle.

You know, hip hop is you know, dealing with racism.

Hip hop is, dealing with sexism.

Hip hop is, you know, the music, you know, that deals with the racism and sexism I have to say, my mom is hip hop because she's singing the music that hip hop came out of.

She sings in a group, Pure Gold.

That's a group in Pittsburgh.

You don't even know where the hip hop is today and where the music of this generation, it's still it's still music from.

It's still just music from older generations, from older generations.

And it's going to be amazing to see what spawns out of hip ho and who's going to be sampling hip hop.

And yeah, what the MCs will be doing at that time.

Hip hop to me is a culture.

It's a way of lif lived out by a number of people.

It's a very important movement because it brings a lot of people together.

It's not something you do, it's something you are.

I guess.

You know what I mean.

You you don't.

You can't do hip hop.

You know you are.

I guess that's the only way I can explain hip hop.

I grew up when hip hop was born.

I guess it's whateve you make it, you know?

Really?

Because as you can see, people are using hip hop to sell chicken wings and and all kinds of stuff and saying, that's hip hop, this is hip hop, this hip hop, that hip hop is definitely a way of life.

Hip hop for me basically is expression hip hop.

It's it's the mainstream right now.

It's cool to love hip hop.

It's cool to be hip hop.

Hip hop is people, a culture, feeling stressed, emotions, everything.

It's not just the music, it's the style of dress, the way people speak, dance.

You know, the way people think, even I think it's it's, you know, in terms of pushin the envelope on certain issues and, you know, consciousness, it's all of those things.

Who's to say like, what is hip hop?