I can remember my earliest and fondest memories of meeting up with Hip-Hop. I didn’t know at the time that was what I was doing. I just thought I was living life having fun being a kid. Every summer school would end and then a week later there would be this festival in Flushing Meadows Park. The festival was called ‘Queens Day’ and it was a celebration given by the Quens Boro President’s office. There were vendors and soundstages throughout the park. Most importantly, there were girls, tons of them, from all over Queens.
Queens girls were a different stock than Manhattan girls and Brooklyn girls. While Manhattan girls were usually bourgie because of their mixed race parentage, Queens girls kept it eye level. While at the same time Queens girls were easy on the eyes as opposed to Brooklyn girls who often had a razor scar across their cheek from their mouth to their ear. Queens girls lived in houses with furnished basements. If you bagged up a shorty from the Rosedale area you had hit the teen poon jackpot. Her parents might have a house with a detached two car garage. One of those refrigerators that had a door for the freezer compartment and one for the regular foods. The bathroom always had a toilet seat with that fuzzy cover over the lid. Queens girls were the creme de la creme.
Queens Hip-Hop was on the come up too. RUN-DMC was changing the game with their shout-at-the-microphone rhyming style. Along with the young and brash LL Cool J it semed like Queens, New York was the center of the Earth. All the credit for making that summer one of my most enjoyable times belongs to RUSSELL SIMMONS. He understood the force with which rap music and Hip-Hop culture spoke and he put it all on the line to bring the art to people would never have been exposed to it. There was ridicule and derision that met him at almost every turn, but he still continued to grind for this thing with no guarantee from anyone that things would pan out. Even though I will be the first to call ol’ boy ‘HU$TLE $IMMON$’ I have to respect his grind and his belief.
Also the fact that he helped put Queens, New York on the map.
Even though I’m Brooklyn for life, co-sign on the Manhattan, Brooklyn Queens girls.
Mr. Penn….I am repping for the scar-less dime pieces that held Brooklyn down. LOL
How you gonna call us out for not having two car garages? LOL
“One of those refrigerators that had a door for the freezer compartment and one for the regular foods”
^ I hear that!
If I may also wax poetic about Queens and hip-hop…
My old man is a born & raised South Sider and for the most part he had plans of raising a second generation of ’em when good fortune (or a number) hit and allowed him to move his brood out to Long Island. A mere 20 mins away from his beloved South Eastern Queens I still had ton of family out there mainly amongst the co-op of Rochdale Village where we just moved out of.
So there we always visits to Queens, hanging outside on the benches, the omnipresent radios, and the numerous games we’d play I was drawn to the beats and rhymes coming from the b-ball courts out back on the Bedell Ave side of Rochdale. With out sounding corny it was “riveting”. See we always had music going growing up. We never went to church as a family but was raised on Hal Jackson’s Sunday Classics “hymns” cranked lound on ‘BLS while domestic duties dominated the morning. But like all of us discovering hip-hop it was DIFFERENT. So with out getting all Sanaa Lathan and Taye Diggs about it I was hooked.
All of a sudden Queens seemed so far. With the dearth of hip-hop access in Long Island, and I didn’t own my first box to tape on Friday or Saturday nights. So I was amped when my cousins would come out to baby sit or I was sent to my grandmother’s (NANA R.I.P) for the weekend (who just sent me downstairs to my cousins) just so I can soak it all up and maybe luck out on getting a hand me down tape that they might of considered “old”.
Ah those were good times in Queens. I got older and the mid ’80’s rolled around and my old man didn’t want me hanging out as much in the Q-borough. Some of my relatives and their friends and kids I hung around started getting into the allure of that era and I spent more time in LI. But I got a box for my 10th born day and me sat up catching Chuck & Red, Marley and Magic, or WBAU I was able to cope. But I will always owe my love and introduction to hip-hop thanks to Queens…
*honors Hip-Hop*
^Her parents might have a house with a detached two car garage. One of those refrigerators that had a door for the freezer compartment and one for the regular foods. The bathroom always had a toilet seat with that fuzzy cover over the lid. Queens girls were the creme de la creme.
^While at the same time Queens girls were easy on the eyes as opposed to Brooklyn girls who often had a razor scar across their cheek from their mouth to their ear.
ehem…whilst for the most part those statements might seem true, I have to say (and quite gently so as not to get cut…) that was mostly for those…ehem….PROJECT CHICKS! I grew up mostly in East New York, not in the PJ’s bjut close enough to feel bullets swishing by at night…and our girls were dimes, just think all flavors of west indian girsl, PR hoties and Dominican Princesses, and I will not leave our all american girls(or I will get cut)…all at the same time, and no we didn’t have garages but we all had finished(some what) basements complete with paneled walls, a big old couch and TV and makeshift bar (with no liquor in it).
AND at the end of the day, brooklyn girls were quick to get busy unlike most queens girls who saving it for catholic school preist or whatever….
BROOKLYN STAN UP!
NEW YORK STAND UP!
Yeah Lion XL….I was one of those good Brooklyn Caribbean girls…I didn’t quite put out at the time…(my mom and dad didn’t play that so I had to wait and sneak the boyfriend in when they weren’t home or cut school, LOL)…but girls in BK knew how to wine to all the hot reggae joints and actually dance in those red light basement parties. Not stand there worried about their new perms getting sweated out like those stuck up Queens chicks.
Not to mention if a fight broke out we would have your back for real…..where Brooklyn AT???????
BTW… I’m overwhelmed by the classicfulness resplendance of the two tone jeans with the boat shoes.
Is that Chams de Baron gear worked in there??????
wow..missed that one…and dont dismiss the quick release snaps on the pants legs….which were useless to queens dudes because as I said queens girls were ehem…’TIGHT LIPPED’…(evil grin)
Candace…word, brooklyn girls were always ready at the throw…even though yall was mostly why we got into scraps in the first place….and dont let my west Indian brothas throw game at an american chick…yall took that shit personal…..
Lion…we sure did take that personally. More fiyah!
fire dallas.
what’s good poon? detached garage. two-door fridge. a house. fuzzy toilet seat.
PEACE
I must agree with you Candice. BK All day and not one razor scar on this face, lol.
I’m feeling you LionXL, lol