Shouts to the homey iFux for giving me my new favorite internets word, that technically isn’t profanity.
I went to see the Beatnuts inspired off-off-OFFFFFF Broadway play called ‘Deez Nuts’ produced in conjunction with the 2009 Hip-Hop Theatre Festival. Give credit to ego trip’s Sacha Jenkins for blazing a trail with what I will call a musical memoir. The Beatnuts hail from my former home borough. As a matter of fact, I remember JuJu when he was still on the corner in front of the bodega on 37th Avenue. The street was dotted with several bodegas on the same block. Most weren’t really bodegas though.
Off The Books featuring Big Pun, Cuban Linx
The performance goes from narrative to personal reflection into music and back again. It’s as zany as you might expect something about the Beatnuts to be. They reminisce about the chance meeting that formed their friendship and their love for Hip-Hop music. I never really considered the fact that Les and Ju were latinos and how that made it difficult for them to come into the arena of rap from a commercial standpoint.
No Escapin’ This
Growing up in Corona Queens you were used to fuxing with Blacks, Latinos, Asians and even whites doing Hip-Hop shit. From breaking to writing to deejaying and rapping. It wasn’t until we got a little older and rap music became so popular that Hip-Hop was fractured along racial lines. I’m not saying that there were a glut of white rappers that have been lost or forgotten because there isn’t. The tradition that rap takes from the pastime called the dozens makes rap more familiar to people of color.
Watch Out Now
I think I have taken the Beatnuts for granted because we all grew up in the same neighborhood. These dudes were pioneering producers back in the late 1980’s and you can hear their sound in the beats of so many artists from Showbiz and A.G. to Fat Joe and the incomparable Big Pun. JuJu reflects on Big Pun is part of the play that is warm and touching [ll]. I have to also give credit to the producer Peter Oasis who managed to make a stage play everything but ghey.
Not that being ghey is a bad thing, its just not what you want to be when you are fux’n with Deez Nuts.
The 2009 Hip-Hop Theatre Festival continues. Logon to www.hhtf.org for the remaining schedule of shows and performances. Representado.
