Yesterday [Tuesday, June 21] something big went down in Hip Hop. This wasn’t a sold out concert, an album signing, or even just a glimpse of Kanye West from a car.
Instead, Maino and Uncle Murda were sitting on a stage speaking to up-and-coming Brooklyn rappers and moderated by Lisa Evers, the well known face and voice from Hot 97’s Street Soldiers and New York’s Fox 5 News.
The invitation said this event was called Brooklyn Unified, and that the topic of discussion would be “choices,” so they weren’t giving away any details of what was going to be talked about or what sort event this was going to be.
And what did happen was truly unprecedented in Hip Hop. Maino quickly explained once the event got started he was there to talk about the recent violence at Irving Plaza, not to the press or general public, but to native Brooklyn rappers, so that he could impart his knowledge to them following the incident.
Maino was clear from the start—this was not a peace summit, not an event where he preaches to the youth of Hip Hop to throw away their guns and turn saints over night. He told the crowd, “On some RNS, I’m not coming at y’all on some peace s*it.” Maino and Uncle Murda came together because they wanted to help young rappers understand the ramifications of an event like Irving Plaza.
Murda laid it out simply for them: rapping is how we feed our families, and when something like Irving Plaza happens, all of that goes away. Both Murda and Maino were there that night, and since then, their images have suffered. They told the crowd they’re having trouble getting into clubs because they are seen as a security threat. And while the media often plays a big role in the perception of such events, and what that means for Hip Hop, Maino and Murda were concerned with the response of rappers themselves.
They explained to the crowd that the industry behind the music – the labels, the media, the sponsors, etc. – only views Hip Hop as a business. Maino said:
“It’s all corporate. They don’t understand you. If they can’t sell you, they won’t work with you. We gotta know that now, they don’t understand us. They’ll stand next to you when you hot, but when it gets real…”
That was the major message of the event. Violence in Hip Hop hurts an artist’s ability to market him or herself, which puts their entire career in jeopardy. Maino and Uncle Murda were not involved in the incidents at Irving Plaza, and yet they are still suffering because of the violence that took place that night. And this message resonated with the crowd. Several people stood up and echoed the sentiments of Maino and Uncle Murda, and called for more meeting like this one.
One person in the crowd asked a very poignant question about “realness,” and how artists such as Maino and Uncle Murda handle their images without resorting to violence. For anyone who knows Hip Hop, the question of realness, street cred or representing has been a central theme to the art form since the 1980s. To be seen as frontin’, or not really “about that life,” is to been seen as soft and untrustworthy on some level. So the question got at the seeming conundrum that Hip Hop has gotten itself into. How do you keep it real, if that means resorting to violence, if that ends up hurting you, those around you, and the business as a whole?
Maino responded with a question of his own. He asked the crowd, and really asked Hip Hop itself, “how real do we want to keep it?” Maino wasn’t concerned with what other rappers said on songs, or put out on social media, but he wanted to make sure that these young rappers understood the true ramifications of keeping it real. Both he and Uncle Murda emphasized the importance of making smart choices when it came to keeping it real. They told the crowd that you might have to swallow your pride sometimes, or that you just got to let certain things ride, because at the end of the day you are your brand, and your brand is your money.
At the end of the event, all the rappers piled on stage to take a group shot with Maino and Murda, and there was a true sense of community that wasn’t there at the start. Why this was so important to Hip Hop is because rappers have never held such a meeting of the minds before. Rappers feel a sense of community with those who come from the same city, but rarely do they meet at a private event to discuss behavior and conduct. Maino and Murda wanted to share their experiences on the business side with rappers who were on the verge of breaking into the industry.
Afterwards, Lisa Evers summed it up perfectly. If the industry has its board meetings and strategy planning sessions, then what Maino and Uncle Murda did yesterday, as she put it, was call a “community share holders meeting” for Hip Hop, so that Hip Hop artists could be on the same page, and share their knowledge with each other, all so that they could make better choices in the future. She also said that she hopes this is the birth of a new movement, where rappers can come together, swap information, swap stories, and work together to keep Hip Hop safe and profitable for all.
Lisa Evers will also be hosting the 6th annual Push for Peace event at the Brooklyn Borough Hall, this July 30. The event will be from 1-4 pm, and will cover the same topics that Brooklyn Unified covered, involve similar artists, and it will be geared towards the public.
