Heh. Gar, sorry I sounded pissy - I only just realised how pissy I *did* sound. I honestly didn't mean to, and your advice is good. But truly - trust me. I'm seriously good at what I do, even when it's uncharted waters. If I get in over my head, there are a whole lotta peeps covering my back.

Plei, I'm going to have to. The only thing about this that really makes me want to whimper and crawl into a corner. Because me and hiphop, notoriously not so much.

OK, Wyclef Jean. But that's pretty much it.

Hmm - while not following it as much as Erika, I have followed a little. You might try Gil-Scott Heron -before the time you are writing about but he started the whole damn thing. Before Gil-Scott Heron there was street poetry. Afterwords there was Rap. And then even the whole thing of taking rap and mixing it with Jazz - GSH was one of the first to do that too. Of course you have heard of him and probably heard him to boot. But if you are going to have to listen to a lot of hip-hop, and normally don't like hip-hop try listening to some GSH first. I don't say it will reverse your feelings or opinions or anything; but maybe it will let you get something out of it you otherwise would not get.

Plei, I'm going to have to. The only thing about this that really makes me want to whimper and crawl into a corner. Because me and hiphop, notoriously not so much.

e me. I'll shoot you some stuff that you may not hate. (I may or may not have encoded it already. Nope. Not encoded. Will do tomorrow.)

Also, Roz's friend Jen may be able to suggest some that won't hurt your brain.

Gar, again, sorry to sound pissy, but I'm 52; you're teaching your grandmother to suck eggs.

I have a far too vivid memory of telling my "how can you not like rap it's so FRESH and NEW!" friends of my daughter about "We Almost Lost Detroit" and "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", and getting the big eyeroll. Truth is, rap was originally supposed to be guerilla street theatre, a kind of performance art. It aint music. Hiphop is, but to me, it's all of a massive irritating blandness. Yes, I'm including the Fugees.

It isnt that I don't know the stuff. It's that I loathe it. 98%, at a conservative guess, makes me want to kick something.

Plei, if you think there's anything that won't send me into severe eye-tic reaction, shoot it along, by all means. And yep, I'll ask Roz to hook me up with Jenny. I owe Roz a call.

deb, it sounds like the same visceral reaction I have when I even so much as hear football on the television.

I love hiphop, though. But if I had to write about football...there's not any game in the world that would make it palatable for me.

Poking my head in...

Truth is, rap was originally supposed to be guerilla street theatre, a kind of performance art.

I'm not sure I would define it as street theatre. Rap was originally just MCs keeping the crowd going. (Put your hands up! Make some noooooise!) The bboys were the performance artists. Over time, the MCs got better and more creative and rap became more than just a backdrop for the dancers.

Gil-Scott Heron, to me, is not a true founding father of rap. I think he was the precursor to rap. I feel the founding fathers were the MCs who pulled all their various influences together and started spitting over the breaks. People like Grandmaster Flash and Mellie Mel. They created the template and, while the sound has certainly evolved in the past three decades (omigod, I'm old), modern day hip hop music still closely follows that template.

Now, admittedly, if you ask a dozen people who the founding fathers of rap were, you're probably going to get a dozen different answers. Though if anyone cites The Sugar Hill Gang, you should disregard their answer and mock them heartily.

Jamaica fathered rap. You know, with the dancehall toasting and stuff.

Of course, it depends on who you ask.

And it has nothing to do with Deb's excellent opportunity. It's just something I like to bring up.

Huh.

I know Nu. thing. about this stuff. Less than nothing. Zip. Less than zip, even. Which would be zi. Or possibly z. I haven't the faintest idea who Daymond is, for example, but I gather he is A Well-to-do Chap, and that he is related to hip hop in some fashion. And, more importantly, he is putting interesting, challenging and financially rewarding work Deb's way, which is all good. Yo.

So - utterly ignorant of the subject matter, but I'm very excited by how this is unfolding. Go you.

Meanwhile, I've just started the first few paragraphs of this kids' book thing, and I'm still enjoying it MASSIVELY. At some point I may post you a wee bit, but in the meanwhile I'm more likely to be asking questions about things like tall ships and libraries and celtic traditions for different kinds of trees and gnosticism and random shit like that. Maybe.

So. Much. Fun.

Gil-Scott Heron, to me, is not a true founding father of rap. I think he was the precursor to rap.

Either way. I can do the definitions any way they come, and I can even appreciate some of the stuff lyrically, but the rap I first heard defined as rap - that would have been right around the early eighties - was still very much street stuff, and I mean street in the actual dictionary definition: out in the street, people getting progressively more pissed off about something and willing to make noise about it.

All of which I am right there for - shit, it's where everything from Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and early (pTUI!) Bob Dylan came from, all the way through the Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers": we are forces of chaos and anarchy, everything they say we are, we are, and we are very proud of ourselves - up against the wall, motherfucker! Public Enemy and Tupac didn't invent anger, and changing the spelling of motherfucker to muthafucka doesn't make it new. It's simply the evolution of a real and justified anger at the shit going down, not an original species.

None of which invalidates a word of it. But I have huge issues with it viscerally (Allyson, I totally get the football analogy, you bet), and viscerally is how I write. It's my wellspring and my source. So this is going to be tricky.

I loved Gil's stuff. Still do. But Public Enemy and damned near all of what followed?

Lost me. Because music has a couple of firm requirements for me, not to be defined as good (lyrically, there's some killer lyrics out there), but to be defined as music in the first place. Numero uno?

Hum it. Play it on an instrument.

And I can't, not with rap. It's angry noise, monotonal poetry with a scratchy reversed turntable passing for harmony and structure. And for me, that's not music, it's performance art.

post-toasties:

It occurs to me that, once the deal is signed off on, I'm going to have to do some serious immersion in the roots of the current scene. Keeping in mind that Todd KC (the "Todd" was Daymond's choice for an avatar name, not mine) was born in 1971, he would have founded FlyByNight in his mid-twenties (also historically factual; FUBU was created when Daymond was in his mid-twenties), right around 1996.

That defines the period I really want to start with, in terms of complete familiarity: the sounds, the slang, the people getting listened to, the club scene.

Immediate sources are there for me, but if anyone can toss off some names and/or sites I can check into without having to make the calls to Grim or Jared or my daughter, that would rock my world. And BTW, everyone participating in this conversation is getting thanked in the acknowledgements.

Kristen? Plei? Gar? Allyson? Jess? ita? Anyone who was listening and watching in 1995 - what was happening back then? Who were the stars of the marketplace? Anyone out there go clubbing in the mid to late nineties?

and eta because my brain is made of Alpine lace reduced fat cheese: Fay, remember to watch how much you post, if you're planning on selling it to a publisher. That's what your WIP readers are all about.