room #2

no more squatting! i found a place in tsim sha tsui, kowloon (TST) on kimberly road for $3000HK (~$390)... so i am conveniently located 2 minutes away from take5 (one of the few worthwhile shops in hong kong). yet i'll probably wait until i get to osaka to buy any denim (since osaka is the denim capital of the world). but i must thank scott a. mckay once again for putting me up. thanks scott. moved in today despite the rain- so i now live with an indian IT professional, thahir, who's lived here for 12 some years and has rented out this room since then. he showed me all the copies of people's passports that have come through- over 20 of them from all over the world, crazy shit. and i finally have wireless! w00t.

maurice, giovanni, and mic

so my fashion hobby has actually paid off quite a few times during this fellowship. i've managed to obtain a lot of random contacts from fashion websites i used to frequent. i got a bunch of bboy contacts from a fashionable bboy that had crewmates who came over to china. today i met several people somehow connected to hiphop through me searching for some fashion labels.

i heard about a store called safehouse that carried brands OTHER than A Bathing Ape, Supreme, and the general 'hypebeast' streetbrands- they carry stuff by a lesser known labels like house33, lowrider, situation normal, crooks & castles, stabs, etc. almost no stores are on ground level, so you're constantly looking up to the second levels trying to find interesting stores... unfortunately safehouse was on the third floor so i never saw it while walking around causeway bay. but after doing some research i found a website (prowolfmaster) that had pictures and an address.

safehouse

that's how i stumbled upon prowolfmaster, a design company run by a man by the name of giovanni or gio for short. on the website i found pictures of some pieces by the swat crew (which is why i posted about the swat writer a few days ago). i actually emailed the giovanni just asking about the pieces and the jackets and such- while mentioning what i was doing here. so he emailed me back and said we should meet up some time, and he would introduce me to MIC, the guy that does both the jackets and pieces i posted earlier. so a few days later i took a trip to causeway bay, i stopped at safehouse and started talking to maurice (who was bumping labincalifornia, props).

maurice (safehouse)

first about street fashion, because i specifically asked for a belt by house33. he was happy to know i heard about the brand so he started up a conversation. we eventually got into what i was doing in hong kong. he told me his friend, tracy funches, was planning on doing a documentary on asian hiphop so we should get in contact (tracy has done a documentary on pimps). while i was there giovanni gave me a call, his studio is right down the street- so we went to one of his friend's cafes in the area (giovanni gave me a little background as to why there is so many cafes and hair salons... apparently if you don't get into college (you have to take a huge standardized exam and you get ranked into a school) you can't really do anything and you're parents think you've amounted to nothing. so all these kids open up their own businesses to survive- most of them being clothing stores, cafes, or salons...).

anyway, we talked for a few hours about hong kong hiphop, the graf writers in particular. he was born/raised in chicago, moved to new york for art school, never finished- but got a job in hong kong a few years ago with EA Sports as a designer... then he quit his job and is doing prowolfmaster (which happens to be most of his old graf crew from chicago). here he's got the crew "swat" which has members in hong kong, guangzhou, and shenzhen. recently a few have been kicked out (which is a story in itself… basically two of the members got paid $10,000 to do a government art piece and didn’t tell any of the crew members about it until it was done. this was an example gio used to illustrate the “backwardness” of the hiphop culture here- or things that are holding it back). he said that there are about 20 graf writers in hong kong, but only about 4-5 of those actually “have heart”- the others are seem to be doing it out of trendiness (apparently it gets the girls too- gio also told me that anyone dressed as a gansta thug gets mad hot girls too- right under his studio there is a “urban wear” store called the ash – the first urban store in hong kong. their success brought two or three more on the same street in the same building. They all used to be friends, but they beef now that they’re competitors- but only behind each others back). anyhow, we talked at length about MC Yan, who is the godfather of hiphop in hong kong. he was in the first hiphop group that made it big (maybe the first hiphop group period) in hong kong, LMF or LazyMuthaFucka. they were big maybe 5-6 years ago, have since disbanded, and now he is a writer (goes by the tag syan) and ghostwrites (writes lyrics for) for the hong kong pop-star edison chen. gio told me about how he always talks about how the whiteman is holding the chinaman down, hiphop, and whatnot… i’m hoping to meet with him soon! he told me about the beef between him and this guy from europe (norway? I forget.. his name escapes me too who is lauded as the first person to bring graffiti to hong kong) because some locals give more respect to the foreigner than him. this is a big problem I’ve seen throughout my travels- sure give respect where it’s due.. but people in china and hong kong like to give respect to any foreigner that comes along and “claims” they know what’s up.. even when they have absolutely NO skill to back it up. and i really abhor the ones who come saying “i gotta show them what REAL hiphop is, i gotta educate them” – like they know everything about hiphop… shit, since when do you define what hiphop is for other people?... but i digress. oh a short note about the king of kowloon.

@ the star ferry (tst side)

Tsang Tsou-choi is renowned throughout hong kong for his graffiti- marking up hk streets for more than 40 years. his "calligraffiti" consists of incomprehensible texts that include names of family members, ancestores, chinese and british historical heroes, and places in HK. apparently the guy is 78 years old and on cruches yet he still hits the streets with his calligraphy brush (talk about gettin' over..). the cops have busted him numerous times, but i think they have stopped since some people regard him as a working-class man's hero. so he's the real king of graffiti in hong kong.

back to our conversation- we also talked about hong kong kids in general. I’ve gotten some insight through talking to my cantonese tutor, jenny, who was born/raised here and went to toronto for college (unfortunately i’m not learning much cantonese, I should’ve bought an electronic dictionary instead of taking classes!). the education system here is much like the rest of asia- where your life seems to be contingent on one exam in high school (a few years ago there was a large problem with teenage suicide because of this exam). this seems to create a lot of kids that give up on school and have to find something to do (which is why they end up opening clothing stores/cafes/hair salons like i said earlier) or if they are rich enough they can go abroad and study somewhere. again, money is probably the most important thing here, aside from family- except the family wants you to make money to support them. so most of the kids here are still living with parents/grandparents, since paying for your own place is super expensive and its probably a cultural thing too. this gives you a bunch of kids that are constantly being nagged by their parents to go make money to support the family. so hiphop is usually not an option. this also may be a factor in the creation of a mass that wants “easy entertainment”. by this i mean things that are easily accessible and things that you are not required to use brainpower to consume because your workdays are long and you just need a dose of some depressing romantic story to make you feel like your own love life isn’t so bad afterall (haha). hiphop is not “easy entertainment”, unless of course you are just in it for the fashion and are content with eminem and 50 cent. this is where the magazines come in. here in hong kong there are weekly magazines full of the new shit that comes out- its basically like a catalog- they show the new products, the prices, and what shop you can go to get them. so when any small label starts up, if they have magazine coverage then people are going to flock there and buy it (if of course the editors say its hot shit). so in hong kong, the easiest way to start interest in anything is through fashion- because these magazines are centered around fashion and that’s what everyone cares about here (even though its not entirely evident when you walk the streets).

milk and touch magazines (for research purposes only of course!)

i’ve probably mentioned this before but to reiterate myself… culture, fashion, and music all seem to be separated from each other here. for example you can dress punk but that isn’t considered to an indication of your musical preference, you can be a skater but you probably listen to canto-pop and not punk or hiphop, you can be a street baler and don’t know who 50 cent is for example. here it seems fashion is for the sake of fashion only… well maybe to show how much money you have haha. (though oddly enough, i first heard of hong kong hiphop through fashion and "street toys". an artist by the name of michael lau did some crazy street toys 5-6 years back, inspired by the aforementioned LMF).

anyway, mic came sometime in the middle of our conversation and was rather quiet- probably because we were talking english really fast. he was happy to answer my questions though. gio told me mic gets hired to teach graffiti in high schools too (which gio scoffed at), but it illustrates how graffiti is viewed here.. as a trend, something cool to do. he also gets hired to do ‘custom’ shoes for little shops (but just does designs they want- like designs of popular cartoon characters and such- when I asked why he doesn’t do things his own style like the jackets he did- he responded that hong kong kids don’t care about originality- they just want whatever is cool at the moment- the brand logo or the character…) he said he’d do a jacket for me, so hopefully i’ll come back to the states with one! and the next time he goes bombing, he’ll take me along… which I hope actually materializes, cause that would make for some dope footage!

i also got hooked up with some PWM stickers and MIC stickers

prowolfmaster

MIC (SWAT)

scofield x ray charles

after a day full of mishaps and spending over $60HK and 7 hours on transportation to nowhere, at the end of the day i was at least able to see john scofield at the hong kong culture center (albeit half an hour late). i haven't seen the man since i was a sophmore in high school.. at the ark in ann arbor which was a nice intimate show in a smallish venue. this time around it was in a large concert hall and i was stuck up on the balcony.. it was good though, despite the relatively unresponsive hong kong crowd. they had difficultiy clapping with the music- which reminded me of the (wonderful) movie, swing girls. it's a movie about misfit japanese schoolgirls who join a big band group to avoid summer make up classes... but then they actually find an interest in jazz and its the story of them saving money to buy intstruments and trying to become a real big band. in part of the movie they learn how jazz is syncopated... because all of them clap to the music on the 1st and 3rd beats instead of the 2nd and 4th beats. then there's this wonderful little segment of them clapping on to music in various places around the city. anyway- that's what most of the crowd was like, clapping on the 1st and the 3rd, which was really odd to me- i guess there's not a lot of exposure to jazz here. oh, but we sat next to a old interracial couple (in their 60s?) that were getting down, singing along, and dancing in their seats which was refreshing. sitting there also renewed my interest in buying a hammond b-3 organ... ah i really wish i never quit playing piano or at least was motivated/talented enough to pursue jazz piano on my own. and i wish i could sing. this guy by the name of dean bowman was on vocals.. and damn the man could sing a very convincing ray charles.

afterwards i had to meet scott at a hipster party at the cattle depot artist village, something like the art community, "dashanzi", in beijing but much smaller. the place is out of the way, in hong hom, and used to be a genuine cattle depot. it was only interesting because it was an international gathering of hipsters haha, but they were too cool to talk to me so i didn't find out what "the scene" was like here. but who really cares?

swattie tagger!

i've made the habit of snapping pictures of tags, throw ups, pieces, stickers, and street art i come across. it's funny because whenever i go to a new city full of strangers, i still run into "familiar faces" like andre (who i've seen here, shanghai, and bangkok) and giant (who i see almost everywhere). when i got to hong kong however, i noticed someone was tagging "swat" of all things. was there a swat alum hitting the streets of hong kong? haha. well i found out the guy goes by the name of MIC aka L9 Luja. I don't know what the swat thing is about or if i'm misreading his tag... but yeah, it humored me thinking it was a swattie. above is one of his pieces in a cafe and below are two crazy jackets he handpainted...

my landlord is an asshole.

despite living in an ideal location with a whole apartment basically to myself (the landlord works in shenzhen so he spends 5 days a week there and not here)... my landlord is an asshole. he's basically kicking me out, giving me a 2 day notice. how the hell can you find a place in TWO DAYS. if i stay longer than that he wants to charge me some ridiculous amount of money. he's booting me out because his sister is moving in with her husband and kid (who previously were renting out a serviced apartment for $30,000 HK a month (~$4000)... but they couldn't extend their lease. COME ON, i'm sure you can find someone that's willing to take your $30,000). but on the upside... i have a great friend by the name of scott a. mckay that is at CUHK and is willing to put me up (again) in my transition time. so now i have to pack and move out tomorrow.

can you dig it?

with the warriors being co-opted in hiphop as a classic (the most obvious being p.diddy saying "baaaaad booooy, come out and plaaaay" in craig mack's "flava in ya ear"), the recent release of the warriors video game, and the release of the retail mafia warriors inspired clothing line (which is terribly done i might add), i figured i should sit down and watch the movie to see what the fuss is about. so naturally i crossed the border to shenzhen and picked up the dvd-9 version for $1.25 and smuggled it back to hong kong (i do not condone the purchase of bootleg material... haha. but really, if it's dope buy the real thing).

released in 1979, it was before my time. i don't think i even heard about it in passing until high school. but in my travels i've seen the grandwizard roc raida and hong kong's mc goldmountain rockin' the warriors shirt, so i must be missing out. i finally sat down and watched it and it exceeded expectations. if you're unfamiliar- its a story based on an ancient greek nonfiction tale Anabasis set in a near-future new york that is overrun by gangs. the gang superleader, cyrus, holds a meeting in the bronx to unify all the gangs into a supergang that would run the entire city- during the meeting cyrus is shot and the murder is framed on the warriors hailing from coney island... so the story is their trip home with every gang out for their heads. watch it if you haven't. david patrick kelly, known to me as t-bird in the crow (a movie i was semi-obsessed with in middle school) is a great soft-spoken villian, which is probably why he was typecast into the t-bird role. but yes, watch it.

and shit. if you really like the movie don't buy the retail mafia clothes, get hooked up with one of these:


real heads will know what's up haha.

rythym and blues

rhythm and blues, originally uploaded by xcoldricex.

while looking for some retail therapy i came across something that actually says something for once from our friends over at fiberops: "rythym & blues not rap n' bullshit"

i remember seeing a pin that said "say NO to R&B killing Hiphop" or something to that effect. its true though, this is something that china needs to learn too. they don't seem to separate out the "r&b" from the hiphop and also take it a step further by using the term hip-pop all the time (is this term even used in the states?). in a few magazines i've seen hiphop culture introduced as hip-pop... ..

james brown in shanghai

James Brown

Mr Dynamite is finally bringing to China a healthy dose of soul. James Brown, in his first trip to the mainland, will perform for one night only at the Yunfeng Theatre in Shanghai. A living legend, the 73-year-old entertainer and his band still travel the globe to perform about 100 shows each year, delivering such classics as “Make it Funky”, “Super Bad” and “I Got You (I feel good)”. The man has produced 114 singles and recorded 17 number-one hits, putting him second only to Elvis for the most chart hits of all time.

Mr Brown—with his gold satin suits, swivelling hips and talk of being a “sex machine”—marks a departure for the Yunfeng Theatre. The 1,500-seat venue belongs to the People’s Liberation Army, and usually hosts military performances and tame acrobatics shows. Mr Brown’s Chinese promoters, China West Entertainment, say they picked this theatre for its size and convenient downtown location.

(from the economist)

and of course dj v-nutz would be the proper person to ask to host the afterparty. i am seriously considering going even though its only in two days... but it's steep... but then again its the godfather of soul... fuuuck.

v-nutzzzzz!

ramblings.

well, i guess i can blame china for not allowing me to make a proper blog until now (blogs are blocked by the "great firewall of china")- but in actuality it's been my laziness and the loss of a 10 page email rambling about what i was up to in guangzhou. so i took a few months sabbatical.

a quick and dirty introduction. i'm in hong kong now, on my thomas j. watson fellowship adventure, exploring hiphop cultures in cities across east asia. i've been travelling through china for the majority of the first half of the fellowship- going through beijing, shanghai, guangzhou, shenzhen, wuhan, and chongqing. by the end of all that i needed to get out of china, so now i'm here- pseudo-china hong kong. it really isn't anything like china... aside from the availability of chinese food, chinese people, and people speaking some dialect that i don't understand.

i always wanted to come here.. i think mainly because i used to like sneakers so much and you can find almost any limited edition, collaboration, overpriced whatever sneaker here. haha. in fact, i currently live right next to the sneaker street (fa yuan street) in mongkok which is right next to the touristy street market, the “ladies market”. fortunately and unfortunately I do not have the funds to keep up this sneaker addiction and I think I have shifted my addiction to other random things so i’m safe for now.

hong kong is interesting on many levels though. The hyperconsumerist culture is pretty intense. i would consider myself to be shamelessly consumerist, especially a year ago. but the six months i spent in china, living on my own and doing the independent thing calmed me down quite a bit. i usually ended up just walking around and hardly ever buying anything because i could pay for 5 meals if i didn’t buy that $5 t-shirt. lately though, i’ve realized that just being here for a month has pushed me back to my old self- maybe because food is expensive here haha… no but everyone is so caught up in money here, you really can’t avoid it. then there are the trendy magazines that come out every other week, showing the latest trendy clothes, crossovers, etc. showing you all the things that you can’t afford. not to mention all the kids walking around head-to-toe in bape gear, porter bags, vivienne westwood accessories, etc. even people that aren’t usually interested in material things change a bit when they get here. On a side note, hong kong street fashion is extremely disappointing to me. i expected people to be dressed a lot better than this. No one is really original- everyone seems to just wear a lot of bape.. and the puffy vests (bonus points if it’s a bape camo puffy vest). oh well, i guess i’ll have to wait for japan to be inspired. (i think korea will just be clean cut, burberry style fashion- or so i hear).

but i regress. fashion isn’t the focus of my year, its hiphop. but yeah, hiphop fashion doesn’t seem too popular here- i think the trend already passed because i’ll see a person in “urban” gear maybe one or twice a week. this may be used to indicate that the hiphop trend has already passed and the people involved now are going to be the true heads… and so far, based on the people i’ve met and talked to, that has been true. sure they’re still the “posers” around, but probably a lot less than before… but yeah, i found it nice to see that the people pushing the hiphop scene aren’t necessarily caught up in the fashion.

went to dip last night, where hierophat (a group of djs, mcs, dancers, promoters pushing the hiphop scene in hong kong) holds their weekly friday party. lambert, the co-founder of hierophat, gave me a brief history lesson and told me that dip was the original hiphop club in hong kong. dip is apparently the only club that plays “true hiphop” and doesn’t care what the dj is playing. In fact, last night there was a bunch of stuff like medina green, pharcyde, and the like thrown in the mix (compliments of DJ JP, a hong kong born dj/producer who lived in australia for quite awhile and came back). back to the history…after seeing the success of dip, other clubs followed suit which birthed heihei club (which i have yet to go to…) and a few others. currently at the top of the hiphop club food chain is sugar, which happens to be co-owned by the owner of dip. sugar is ultra-posh, with a $20 cover, $10 drinks, and no sneaker dress code. dip is still pretty nice, but the poshness factor is toned down (maybe because its so old, and by old i mean like 3-4 years?... the average longevity of clubs in hong kong is anywhere from a few months to a year i hear). oh and clubs aren’t very big here, every club I have been to has been in a commercial building complex, on one of the upper floors- so clubs are a bit more intimate/cramped than most of the places i’ve been to in china. an interesting trend you see here is the fact that there are party mc’s- like how emceeing started- a guy to get the crowd hype, spit a freestyle every once in awhile… the only other place I’ve seen that is in guangzhou, but that’s only because they stole the idea from hei hei club (the hiphop night there was advertised as a heihei party even though it was in guangzhou.. go figure). but props for keeping it old school… shit do clubs in america do this?

enough of the history. so last night at dip was interesting. i invited ryan (the other watson fellow guy that’s doing the same topic as me) and jen (ryan’s girlfriend’s friend) to go out to dip. jen’s friend’s friend, emma, who is passing through HK and who we went out with the night before to a club called edge (yet another “hiphop” club.. which turned out to be pretty wack)… er ok. so emma invited a bunch of the american study abroad students at CUHK to come, so it ended up being a club full of americans… american college juniors. talking to them made me feel all old, everyone would ask me if i was a junior and i had to explain to them that i graduated, doing this fellowship, talk about swarthmore, blahblah. shit I’m not that old, what the hell. anyway, they turned out to be really annoying, trying to make me dance when i didn’t feel like it.. yelling at the dj to play cheesey music (the dj directly complained to me that my “friends” were annoying as fuck… even more than local girls… which says a lot). it was too bad, because the music was good and the since 70s crew (5 electric boogaloo style dancers) showed up. but it was too much to deal with so i left early around 3am. ah well. sometimes i feel like i’m not cut out to club anymore… i should just stay home and watch movies… like what I’m going to do right now after i archive my posts from that other blog i sort of had.. on a saturday night. haha.

legends never die.

Harold Hunter 4.2.74-2.17.2006

wazzup national survival session

text later. video clip now.

jay dee r.i.p.

jaydee aka j dilla. r.i.p. you were part of the culture that changed my life.