Dan Charnas on IllDoctrine.com

Jay interviewed me for his second piece on Asher Roth. Check it here:



You can watch his first piece here.

White Devil Becomes White Angel - Tony D. R.I.P. (1966-2009)

Very few white boys in hip-hop could make the Black heads say, "Damn!"

Rick Rubin did it. Eminem could too. And so could the producer Tony D.

I still have clear memories of that day, 20 years ago, when my roommate Paul incessantly imitated a song he heard on Red Alert's radio show, a song that mashed-up lyrics from Rakim and Chuck D. for the chorus:

Back to the lab/Know what I mean?
Back to the lab/Bazooka, the scheme!

That was Tony D.

There were two Tony D's back in the day, actually. It was very confusing. One Tony D. was MC Serch's partner in the record label Idlers (as in "Tony Dick gets the gas face"). Idlers, of course, was the record label that brought us the Jungle Brothers.

The other Tony D. was Anthony Depula, of Trenton, New Jersey. This was the Tony D. over whom my roommate Paul gushed; the Tony D. I would soon meet when I started working for Profile Records, the home of Run-D.M.C., Rob Base, Special Ed; the Tony D. who brought the world YZ and Poor Righteous Teachers; and the Tony D. who died this past weekend when his car rolled off a roadside in New Jersey. Tony wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and he broke his neck. He was 42, and had a wife and two daughters.

I was, 20 years ago, a very serious little man about hip-hop when Profile Records' president Cory Robbins plucked me out of the mailroom to do radio promotion and write artist bios. Poor Righteous Teachers, three young Five Percenters from Trenton, were the first group I promoted. I took all of this so seriously that I created a glossary of all the terms they used — some from the Five Percent Nation, some Trentonian, others from outer space — and distributed it to national media. Their records were incredible: Red Alert had been running their first record, "Time To Say Peace,"; and their new single, "Rock Dis Funky Joint," was bananas.

So it came as a surprise to me when their producer walked into my office for the first time: 200 pounds of beefy Italian-American, with a stringy mustache, pointy goatee and greasy long hair topped with a baseball cap. Tony was gregarious, in constant motion for a heavy guy, always with a huge smirk on his face. How did a bona-fide, self-admitted greaseball become the producer of Afrocentric, militant Muslim hip-hop artists like PRT and YZ? The way Tony put it was that since he was Sicilian, he was "33 1/3 percent Original Man" anyway. That, he claimed, was his hip-hop pass.

But the real reason was that Tony D. was dope. His beats were always crisp and clean in a way that he himself wasn't. Tony D. achieved something that most hip-hop producers never do: His beats sounded like he made them. It's hard to describe his signature sound. Maybe it was the little after-bounce he gave to his kick drums. Or perhaps it was his collage-art choruses pieced together from two, three, or more different sources:

"Rock dat!" "Funky..." "Joint, joint, joint"

We hung out during the video shoot for "Rock Dis Funky Joint," and I got that record played across the country, from Kiss FM in New York to KDAY in L.A. The hit record made Tony D.'s personal plans possible, and Tony D. landed a solo deal with 4th & Broadway. Yeah, Tony D., a/k/a Harvee Wallbanger, was a rapper, too — sort of a cross between Kool Keith and Dom DeLuise. He was naturally funny guy, so entertaining that Cory Robbins took a throwaway Poor Righteous Teachers song on which Tony made a cameo, and placed it at the beginning of their album. Wise Intelligent, the group's leader, may not have thought much of Tony's lyrical abilities ("rock some of that rubbish you be writing"). But the white devil could sure make a beat.

Tony D. handled being the devil with great aplomb. He was a ball-buster himself, so he didn't get too bent out of shape when you busted his. I once told Tony, always rapping even when nobody invited him to, that I "wanted to sign his breath." Tony took it like a champ.

An amusing truth about white boys in hip-hop is that, often, we tried to outdo each other in games of "Blacker than Thou ." That's probably why Tony D. and Serch never got along, despite my failed attempt once, at Irving Plaza, to get them to talk. They ended up fighting.

After I left Profile and went to work for Rick Rubin at Def American, I tried to involve Tony D. in anything major that I did. I signed one of his groups, the seriously misnamed Blaque Spurm, for its seriously talented MC, Bobbie Fine. When I retreated from hip-hop for a while, resuming the writing career I started many years back at The Source, I lost touch with Tony.

We got re-acquainted when I began writing my book on the history of the hip-hop business. Tony D. was still living in Trenton, still making beats, still managed by Kevon Glickman, the former counsel for Ruffhouse Records. Just over a year ago, I made plans to interview them both for the book. I was supposed to drive down from New York, pick Tony up in Trenton, and then drive us both to Philly to meet Kevon. Tony had to cancel at the last minute.

"I have to watch my daughter," he said. That was the last time we spoke.

Perhaps Tony D. could have been bigger if he had left Trenton behind. But then again, Tony D. knew who he was. Italian, Sicilian, American, Jersey boy, white boy, DJ, rapper, beat-maker, husband, father. How many of us are that secure? Tony D. may have been a devil to some, but I'm pretty sure Black Jesus is saying "Daaaaaayyum!" courtesy of his rotund new archangel. Trenton makes, God takes.

Tony, at last, has gone back to the Lab.

Know what I mean?

How We Will Win

How We Will Win from Dantrification on Vimeo.

Dan Charnas says it ain't about Obama.

(iPhone users: Click here for the YouTube version)

Can the Democrats redraw the map?

Can the Democrats redraw the map? from Dantrification on Vimeo.

Once Upon A Time...

... I wrote this article for YogaJournal.com

Apparently, it is now in the running for a Maggie award.

You be the judge.

UPDATE: I won. :-)

Happy 2008

After an extended holiday both here and abroad, it’s time to dig into this year’s work:

• As many of you know, I’ll be spending most of my time reporting and writing my book, “The Big Payback: How Hip-Hop Became Global Pop,” coming out on New American Library/Penguin in the Fall of 2009. See y’all in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami and Houston soon.

• Music criticism for the Washington Post, and posts here and on hiphopmusic.com.

• Other ventures, coming soon.

Wishing power to all of your resolutions.

-D

Good Intentions

The confluence of genius and psychopathy is all too common in hip-hop, the convergence of genius and altruism all too rare. Few rappers possess what Chuck D. had, try as they might. From today's Washington Post.

Hydrated Fo' Life

Reviewed the new Fitty for the Washington Pizzy today.

And got Milk some ink too.

Where hip-hop lives...

...on Monsieur Talib Kweli's new album, Eardrum.

From today's Washington Post.

It’s not about the music. It’s about the songs.

Just to show you how big of a Prince fan I was in high school:

On Class Night — the annual party where the outgoing seniors ripped the teachers, and the teachers roasted us back — the faculty sketch ended when Principal Chestnut came out dressed as yours truly, holding a framed portrait of the Purple One.

“Prince and I are here,” he exclaimed, closing the show.

By the time I left college four years later, Prince and I were through.

Why? I think Jon Hein had it right: Prince jumped the shark at “Sign O’ The Times.” Until that album, Prince was an innovator. As popular as he became with mainstream audiences, he was always doing something bold. A new album from Prince was like a musical middle finger to everyone, even to some of his fans.

But “Sign O’ The Times” was different. If, as Alfred Hitchcock once said, the definition of style is self-plagiarism, then Prince was becoming very stylish indeed. He began repeating himself. As much as I liked “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” I couldn’t help hearing his re-use of the stutter-step riff from The Time’s “Get It Up.” As much as I liked “Dorothy Parker,” I couldn’t listen to Prince drone on about things like taking a bubble bath with his pants on, not when another group, Public Enemy, was just starting to talk about some really important things. Songs like “Hot Thing” and “It” seemed like self-indulgent double-album filler. That year, during the sultry summer of 1987, was the last time I really heard Black radio play a Prince song to death. “Adore” was his swan song, the last grind.

Don’t get me wrong: I think Black people will always, always love Prince. But that doesn’t mean they’ll listen to him. Ironic indeed that, in 1988, the bootleg “Black Album” surfaced, a meandering collection of mediocre songs that were rumored to be a meditation on Blackness but, if anything, showed how Prince felt about being upstaged by hip-hop during its Golden Age:

“Riding in my Thunderbird on the freeway
I turned on my radio 2 hear some music play
I got a silly rapper talking silly shit instead
And the only good rapper is one that's dead.”

And I was like, “Fuck that.” I’d much rather listen to Nice and Smooth rip “Starfish and Coffee” over the Lafayette Afro-Rock Band than Prince’s pretty, precious original any day of the week.

Prince entered his jingle phase in the 1990s, nice, easy-listening pop confections like “Diamonds and Pearls” and “Cream.” And what do you do, a few years later, after putting out garbage like “My Name is Prince” and “Sexy MF,” when nobody gives a shit about your music anymore? Blame your record company.

I was at Warner Bros. during his ugly split with the company. Russ Thyret, the chairman of Warner, the man who had found Prince and signed him in the 1970s, had just invested millions in Prince’s new label deal when The Kid announced that he would no longer record for Warner. Russ felt completely betrayed. One time, Rick Rubin began to ask Russ about it, and Russ pointed a finger at him: “Don’t – You – Say – That – Word.” The “P” word, he meant.

In the post-Warner years, I must admit to a hope that Prince would somehow find a renaissance in the opening of his vaults. But I listened to all three CDs of “Emancipation” — I remember because it absorbed an entire road trip from LA to San Fran — and the only songs I liked were the ones he didn’t write: “Betcha By Golly Wow,” and the Bonnie Raitt song, “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” The album was as boring as the Central Valley landscape rolling by my window.

Still, Prince was one of the first artists to try to tap the power of the Internet. Even if I didn’t care for his music anymore, I developed a new kind of admiration for him: Damn, he can really do this himself. An artist can make a living, even remain a star, without the help of a major record company.

I hadn’t much considered Prince until 2004, when my college roommate invited me to see Prince at Meadowlands, a stop on his “Musicology” tour. As expected, his mode of distribution was ingenious: Everyone who bought one of the pricey concert tickets walked away with a free album. What I didn’t expect was how the show would move me.

For a guy in his 40s, dude looked, played and moved spectacularly. Entering my late 30s, that was inspiration enough. But at mid-show, he started doing this tune, “Prince Is The Name” (unrecorded, I guess, because I can’t find it anywhere). He said:

“Warner Bros. used to be a friend of mine/
Now they’re just a motherfucking waste of time”

...and by 2004, Warner had become the exact same thing to me. He continued:

“If you cant do it on your own/
It ain’t worth the fame/
Everyone gets older/
But I remain the same/
Prince is the name”

Hot damn. People cheered, the confetti came down, and damned if I don’t still have a few pieces of that sacred paper on my altar.

As a performer, as a human being who does “himself,” Prince is a renewed inspiration. His performance earlier this year during the Superbowl half-time deluge was a modern day miracle: How did he keep from tripping on the rain-slicked stage? How did his hair stay up? How could he move his fingers so accurately over those wet guitar strings (I can’t even do it well dry)? How did he keep from electrocuting himself? Dude is blessed.

Even so, I wouldn’t go as far as Jon Pareles did in his recent article in the New York Times, in anticipation of Prince’s new album, “Planet Earth.” In “The Once And Future Prince,” Pareles intimates that Prince gets that, in the 21st century, it’s not about CD sales, it’s about the music. I wouldn’t even be as nice as my pal J. Freedom DuLac was, when he pronounced in the Washington Post that the new album was “30 percent bad, 40 percent mediocre and 30 percent really, really good.”

As much as I admire Prince, I want to like his music more than I actually do. The truth is, even with Prince’s independence and brilliance as a performer, I can’t remember a single song he’s done in the past decade. And when it comes to being culturally relevant and resonant, it’s not about the music. It’s about the songs.

The fact is, R. Kelly is writing better songs than Prince. Has been for a while, actually.

God help us all, but it’s the sad, sad truth.

It's enough to make your blood run khaki

Reviewed Common's new album, "Finding Forever," this week in the Washington Post.

Scenes From A Graduation

Just a few short weeks ago, just recovering now.

The kid cleaned up though. I got:

• a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship
• the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing
• the Sackett Graduate Award
• and graduated with honors

Oh, you my Master now?! ;-)

Thanks, fam & friends for an awesome two years at Columbia Journalism School.

Love, D