Vintage Is The Nu-Nu

The most memorable moment in 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s has got to be when community organizer, Ms. Joan breaks up a would-be scrap on the corners of late 1970s South Bronx. She takes the DJ’s mic and admonishes the block party crowd—rimmed with ‘hood leaders and the ghetto’s most prone to NYPD hyper-surveillance.

The street corridors quiet down in reverence when they see her approach the booth—a respect most of the cops sidling up and down the street could only wish for (with or without heat). Seeing that the crowd is waiting for her gentle rebuke to grace the sound system, she finally speaks—and in the tone they expect and feel they deserve from a Mother:

“Freak! Now I mean, freak! We came here to party, hear??”

She breaks her sternness with a smile, the two so-called gangsters she broke up agree to fight tomorrow, and the DJ cranks again.

Now that’s “vintage.”

And that’s what birthed hip hop as we know it. In the midst of a community that had been hollowed out by the disappearance of jobs (check), displacement of Black and Brown neighborhoods (check), imminent reign of Reagan (comparable enough to a recent departure of Bush, and who knowwwwws what Empire has in store next—check), and can suddenly be relegated to the shadows of an ice blue Tiffany’s kind of demographic that didn’t—couldn’t—exist or expect to only a few short years before…(check, but insert Starbucks here)

A culture emerged that quenched the thirst for rebellion.

And I hope the point is made: we could use a sort of revival.

Within the last decade, folks mourned and beat the horse past dead about Hip Hop’s fate. More than anything, what undergirded these discussions was a longing—not just for content that would nourish the aught-sick soul (riddled with degradation and commercial compromise) but for Movement that would protect that space where we can “freak” and let our minds be free (in the midst of social turbulence and chaos).

So it’s not such a terrible thing that SNL'er (yes) Gary Weis couldn’t churn the 80 Blocks doc out sooner en masse than October 2009. He made it in ’79 alongside Jon Bradshaw and George Van Noy under the tag Togg Films, Above Average and Late Nite Productions.

His intention was to cover (we hope not fetishize) 'gang life' in BX with, it seems, a cursory glance at how tagging, emceeing, and deejaying threaded through (3 of 5). But you’d be wise to check it out.

Perhaps one of only a few glimpses we can get to guide us through the Palindrome mirror: RETWEET: Past and Future are but mirrors of the present moment. Live today as you would have it reflected through all time.

Where do we go from here, Hip Hop?

How do we shelter the people and stay awake just the same?
All the answers we could ever want are staring us down our backs. Sankofa.