Dudley Street is not as clean as Mass Ave in Cambridge, or even Mystic Ave in Somerville, and last Saturday, February 4, outside the Roxbury Center for the Arts, there was a foot-high pile of trash on the street, some of it appearing to be weeks old. In a city that legislates against T-shirts, it was yet another sign of Boston’s uneven civic priorities. Inside, the priorities seemed more in order. Boston’s hip-hop community is by necessity a tight-knit group, and the audience at the Berklee College of Music’s day-long hip-hop summit was an instructive cross-section: blacks and whites, young and old, male and female. In contrast to the images portrayed by the mainstream media recently, the event accentuated the positive, with discussions on topics ranging from Black History Month to the peace movement. Outside, the movement’s unofficial photographer, A. Garcia, snapped pictures of Edo G, Boston hip-hop’s professor emeritus; inside, up-and-coming MCs like DL and Lyrical networked while neighborhood youths showcased their freestyle skills.
Later that night, at the Middle East, one of the scene’s champions announced his departure. Mr. Peter Parker, a former intern at WBCN and Jam’n 94.5 who has become an influential voice at WILD 97.7, is leaving for 96.3 The Beat in Minneapolis/St. Paul, that market’s number-one station, where he’ll have a prime-time 6-10 pm shift on weekdays and a roving live broadcast from clubs on Saturday nights. Over the past three years, Parker has used his commercial-radio pulpit to highlight local and national underground hip-hop talent, maintaining triple-threat status as a mixtape DJ, producer, and promoter.
“I’m not leaving,” Parker said, “I’m expanding.” A southern New Hampshire native and Boston resident for the past seven years, he said he’ll maintain his relationship with the scene and hopes to work with his current roommate, Leedz of Leedz Edutainment, to bring Boston hip-hop out west. “We’re working on bringing Boston to Minnesota. We want to bring Slaine and Awkward Landing out for a Midwest tour.”
Although he addressed his departure on stage, Parker kept the spotlight on the performers, which included several deserving homegrown MCs. The evening was bookended by performances from Brix, a small girl with a larger-than-life stage presence who got the crowd moving immediately with her quick wordplay and thunderous classic hip-hop beats, and West Coast rapper Ras Kass, a gracious performer who drew a big crowd and seemed grateful for the love Boston showed him following a stretch of bad luck that had momentarily sidelined his career.
Rising local star Slaine likely improved his profile in advance of his upcoming debut, Rich Man, Poor Man (Commonwealth Records, due March 14). He came out wearing sleek shades and a Tupac sweatshirt, mixing new material with songs from his Special Teamz project with Jaysaun and Edo G. Skipping his crowd-favorite “Sally Wong,” he instead established “99 Bottles” and an emotional “Close Your Eyes” as potential new hits. “Just the world’s either lovely or it’s ugly and it’s cruel,” he rapped, spraying the crowd down with water. “I believe that evil exists, but good is true, and I can see the good in you.”
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On the Web:
Mr. Peter Parker: http://www.mrpeterparker.com/
Slaine: http://myspace.com/slainehiphop
Commonwealth Records: http://www.commonwealthrecords.com/
E-mail the author:
Matthew M. Burke: mmbjournalism@yahoo.com
