Get Your Mother Off The Crack

If you pressed me for my favorite rap song of all times, I'd have to say it was "Top Billing," by the Audio Two. It's really bare bones and the kid rapping "Milk Dee," is all business, he just gets to the point: "I get money, money I got / Stunts call me honey if they feel real hot / That's how it is, you can ask Giz / I stole your girl while you were in prison / Jail, for MC assault / You was jealous it's all your fault." They had a couple of other good songs, too like "I Don't Care" and "The Questions," but I think their next best song had to be "Get Your Mother off the Crack." You know the song is great because they didn't have to call it "Get Yo Momma Off Da Crack," it's just that real. Anyway, check it out.

I bring this up because I came up DJing during the 1980s crack epidemic. In fact, my first stab at white boy rapping was the song "I Want Some Crack," which I wrote back in 1986 or so. So yes, it's true. I invented Crack Rap, much props due. Thank-you. Thank-you. Anyway, it was a funny time that, all these really skittish people hanging around pre-gentrified Williamsburg making me nervous: hoes turning tricks by the river and then walking past my apartment to score some crack from the Latin dudes over on Driggs and then heading back toward the river to give some more head. I read somewhere that some crime experts don't think the drop in New York crime statistics had that much to do with Rudolf Giuliani's "Zero Tolerance" policies as much as it did with the crack epidemic just burning itself out. That makes sense. If you saw the folks I saw cracking up you wouldn't want to go there. You would, in fact, want to get your mother off the crack soon as possible. It wasn't like the that Furious Five song "White Lines" that told you "don't do it," but that all coke heads got pumped up dancing to anyway. "Get Your Mother Off the Crack," wasn't a party song, no way, no how. It was a stone cold diss.

I bring this up to point out how much things have changed since I've returned from Brazil. I left right around the time Giulani took office. Today, no more crack hoes, not too many addicts hanging 'round and rap has gotten pretty damn baroque compared with what the Audio Two was doing back in the day. This point is well illustrated in the movie 17 Again (which is actually, not bad). As you might already know, or could probably figure out, the movie is about a guy who gets to re-live his high school years again. So in the late 1980s the cheer leaders dance to Young MC's "Bust a Move," and today it's Fergie's "Fergalicious." Needless to say, I really dug the old school but the cheer leader moves for Fergalicious were just that.

Okay, so what's my point here? This whole digression was touched off by digging through You Tube and coming upon some videos by friend Bo. Bo is this really top notch DJ based in Rio de Janeiro who plays capoeira and travels around the world producing tracks for third world rappers. Basically, all the stuff I would have really liked to do when I moved down to Rio but instead I became a foreign correspondent and raised a family. Oh yeah, Bo also surfs, which is something I could slap myself for never learning having lived for nearly 15 years a few blocks away from a surf break. But here's the thing, I was busy trying to get myself together as a journalist and a pop and never found the time. And now that I'm back in New York on an editing desk, I'm starting to see just how glamorous the path I did choose to take might seem to those of you who aren't me. But I'm always a road not taken kind of sucker. But anyway, I got over all the envy stuff and instead I'll share with you some Maga Bo videos for your enjoyment. Any of this making sense?



Oh yeah, there's a post script: I was walking down Av. Visconde Piraja one night with Nicholas about a year or so ago and we ran into Bo who Nicholas hadn't met before or had but was too little to remember. And after we said good-bye Nicholas asked who he was and I filled him in. When we got home Nicholas told Ivandy "Yeah, and we met a DJ friend of Papa's from back in the day. He needed a haircut."



And check out Bo's blog:

http://comandodigital.com/kolleidosonic/