The Hip Hop Culture Center is on Hiatus. We would like to thank everyone who have supported us through out the years. We will be relaunching our website soon with new programs and activities. Stay tuned!

ATTENTION MEDIA:

Rapathon 5 is being held at the Hip Hop Culture Center in Harlem, starting Sat, May 21 at 3pm and ending Sun, May 22 at 7pm. Ralph McDaniels is one of the five exclusive Videographers of record for the event for 28 hours. No other media outlets will be allowed to film. Still photography is allowed. If you are interested in receiving a pass/permit to film the Rapathon you must contact The Hip Hop Culture Center at 212-234-7171 by May 19th. No film/video shooting will be allowed without a pass/permit. Vendors interested in tabling/booth opportunities should inquire. If you wish to view the Rapathon log on to www.livestream.com/onfumes for continuous 28 hour coverage.

Zulu Nation Joins Rapathon 5. There are not many organizations that have been around since the beginning of Hip Hop and epitomize every element of the culture. That’s Why The Hip Hop Culture Center is proud to announce that the Zulu Nation will be sending an eight man squad of MC’s to create the First Zulu Nation team at Rapathon 5.

The Captain of the squad will be Lord Yoda X. They will hit the stage on May 21st from 11pm – Midnight. All funds raised during this time will be donated to The Zulu Nation Building Fund. If you are interested in participating in this years Rapathon auditions will be held at the following time’s At The Hip Hop Culture Center in Harlem. The Center is located at 2309 Eighth Avenue, 125th St., 2nd floor of the Magic Johnson Theatre complex, see below for dates. To find out more about Rapathon 5 click here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUCBA1Kmnj4 and support True School Radio on WHCR.org every Tuesday from 8pm-midnight.

May 3rd 6:30-8;30PM
May 10th 6:30-8:30PM
May 12th 6:30-8;30PM
May 14th 2:00-4:00PM
May 17th 6:30-8:30PM
May 19th 6:30-8:30PM

https://picasaweb.google.com/PTCpictures/FabulousFashionWeekend#

FabulousFashions Weekend company was created to give young, talented, up and coming designers the opportunity to fulfill their dreams of showcasing their work. Our mission is to provide an affordable venue where young designers will have access to the fashion elite, buyers and media. Like most art forms, fashion needs to be nurtured and celebrated, and assisting young talent is paramount to ensuring that fashion remains creative and cutting edge. Fabulous Fashions Weekend will be staged twice per year, in the Spring and in the Fall.

Check it the photos here: https://picasaweb.google.com/H2C2fam/ParisDelegationVisitH2C2#

I hope you guys are getting your bars together. There should be lyrical lines competing with each other in your brain. You should be in your mirror recanting 16 after 16 after 16 like water. Your written, freestyle and frittens should be receiving a rhyming  work out on the daily. You should be pounding out punch lines, scanning your rhyme book, and getting your breathing on point.

Other disciplines have the Super Bowl, the Finals, the Championship. We, high caliber emcee’s who like to rock with other individuals of our species have the Rapathon. The only event of it’s kind, on the planet Earth, for people gifted in the art of Yes, Yes, Yall.

So here’s the deal. All returning Veterans please email a photo of yourself ASAP to hiphopculturectr [at] gmail.com. In addition please post Rapathon information example (posters, audition dates, updates on your social networking hookups. (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc…) We need to let the world know that Rapathon 5 is coming up and that you are starring in it. Note, all participants must come to at least one of the audition/rehearsal dates. They are…

May 3rd 6:30-8:30PM
May 10th 6:30-8:30PM
May 12th 6:30-8;30PM
May 14th 2:00-4:00PM
May 17th 6:30-8:30PM
May 19th 6:30-8:30PM

So in closing let’s end with the words that all H2C2 alumni know so well  “Rock,You Don’t Stop…Keep on…You Don’t Stop!”

It was the fall of 1972 when I transferred to St. Catherine of Genoa in Washington Heights. On the first day of class a bugged wild boy named Tom Lowe, a short cat skin the color of a Hershey bar and a perfect Afro, served as my one-man welcoming committee.

During lunch, somehow luring me into the doorway of the rectory, Tom proceeded to jump me. Throwing punches with the fierceness of Ali, he laughed as he kicked my ass. Confused by this sudden senseless violence, I weakly tried fighting back, but it was futile.

At nine years old, he already embodied the swagger of a young hustler. Years before Tupac or 50 Cent, he was the first dude I’d ever met who personified being ghetto.

Ironically, like myself Tom was also an alter boy, helping Father Bob on Sunday mornings, various funerals or midnight mass. Not surprisingly, Tom was one of those kids who stole sips of communion wine and tried to intimidate other boys into doing the same.

Besides being a bully and a thief, a liar and a cheat, Tom’s only redeeming quality was a fierce passion for music. With taste that leaned towards songs about drinking, drugging and fighting.

One favorite was Jim Croce’s rowdy “Bad Bad Leroy Brown,” and the other was the funky wah-wah of Curtis Mayfield brilliant “Pusherman,” a song featured in the film Super Fly.

Although Curtis penned the words to serve as anti-drug anthem to balance the “cocaine commercial” of the film, it was obvious Tom thought the lyrics, “I’m your doctor when in need, have some coke, have some weed,” was supposed to be celebratory.

Banging out a beat on the desk or a parked car, he’d sing the song loud and proud as though he knew first hand of vices none of the other kids had ever been close to.

Not being a shrink, I had no idea why Tom behaved the way he did: maybe he had a big brother who worked for Harlem hood Guy Fisher, maybe he had a father who was doing time in Rikers. I do remember his mother, a soft-spoken frail woman who seemed as scared of her son as the rest us.

Years later, at a cocktail party inside an exquisite Striver’s Row brownstone, where Miles Davis’ beautiful Sketches of Spain played in the background and most of the chatter was cultural, I ran into a back in day female classmate from those long gone grammar school years.

“Do you remember Tom Lowe?” I asked her. “I sometimes wonder what happened to him?” Nodding her head, she replied simply, “Last I heard, he was sent to jail for a long time.”

Without missing a beat, I laughed so loud and for so long, folks thought I was choking. Composing myself after fifteen minutes, I finally said, “Why am I not surprised.”

Comprised of the some of the best lyrical emcees in the Tri-State area, the Rapathon has proven to be one of Hip Hop’s must see events of the year.

Not only do we celebrate the culture of Hip Hop through positive non-stop freestyle, we share a camaraderie that lasts far beyond the famous Rapathon countdown.

The Hip Hop Culture Center is honored and thrilled to announce that we will be hosting the 5th Annual Rapathon; Saturday, May 21st 2011 through Sunday, May 22nd 2011.

H2C2 has managed to feature over 150+ rappers, 30+ DJs, beat boxers, and musicians from all over the world. This year will be no different from any other, expect an additional hour on the clock totaling 28 hours of straight Hip Hop! We will hold 4 to 6 open auditions at our venue for those interested in performing. To take part in this staple event you must be able to rhyme for 90 seconds straight without cursing, commit to the show, and interact well with others. Just show up with an undeniable rhyme and you might be the next emcee to grace the famous Rapathon stage. Be prepared for an unforgettable experience because H2C2 has a lot in store. For more info stay tuned to our website www.h2c2harlem.com.

H2C2 not only provides exclusive shows for the community but also prides itself on its educational involvement. Using Hip Hop as an instrument to educate the youth the Hip Hop Culture Center offers a program called Edutainment. This workshop combines the latest Hip Hop tunes with academics covering subjects from Civil Rights to Financial Literacy.

We are located at 2309 Frederick Douglass Blvd., 2nd Floor of the Magic Johnson Theater in the heart of Harlem, along 125th Street shopping district. We are accessible by A, B, C, D, 2 and 3 trains. For more information pertaining to the 5th Annual Rapathon, please contact us at 212-234-7171 or hiphopculturectr@gmail.com.

By all accounts, 1971 was a great year for former newspaperman- turned-pulp novelist Ernest R. Tidyman. Along with the paperback release of his hardboiled debut Shaft, the Cleveland, Ohio native co-wrote the film version for MGM as well as the screenplay for The French Connection. The year before, French Connection producer Philip D’Antoni and director William Friedkin read Shaft in galley form and was impressed with Tidyman’s gritty gumshoe story.

“I was shocked when he (Tidyman) walked into my office, because I was expecting a black person, because Shaft was about African-Americans,” D’Antoni recalls in the documentary Making the Connection: The Untold Stories. “Not only was he white, but a very WASP-y person from Ohio.”

At the time, Tidyman was a 42-year-old former New York Times reporter who began his career as a teenaged journalist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. After Tidyman’s stint at the Times, he started thinking about writing Shaft. “The idea came out of my awareness of both social and literary situations in a changing city,” Tidyman told a writer in 1973. “There are winners, survivors and losers in the New York scheme of things. It was time for a black winner, whether he was a private detective or an obstetrician.”

Three years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, “the Black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks,” as soulful composer Isaac Hayes described him on the Oscar-winning Theme from Shaft, became a cinematic symbol of Black power and a mainstream household name. The seminal film also helped birth the 1970s blaxploitation film movement that includes Super Fly and The Mack.

Ironically, the same night Hayes accepted the Academy Award for best song, Tidyman also won a gold statue for The French Connection screenplay. Yet, in Shaft’s forty-year history as a movie icon, most fans of the film know little about Tidyman’s pulp fiction series. Between 1971 and 1975, Tidyman wrote seven Shaft novels with titles that include Shaft Among the Jews (1972) and Shaft Has a Ball (1973).

For the rest of this essay, go to: http://www.mulhollandbooks.com/2011/02/25/shafted-on-ernest-r-tidyman-and-the-makings-of-shaft/#more-813

Written by Michael A. Gonzales

“Where I come from people worked, they did real jobs,” laughs Nigerian filmmaker and photographer Andrew Dosunmu.

Dressed in stylish plaid pants, gray long-sleeved shirt and a brown felt hat, he lounges in the warmth of a SoHo coffee shop a month before his much-anticipated feature debut Restless City premieres at Sundance Film Festival.

Selected for the festival’s innovative and original work in low and no-budget filmmaking category, Restless City starring Tony Okungbowa, the dj from The Ellen DeGeneres Show, already has a major buzz. “The genesis of Restless City was born out of my frustration with trying to make another film (Mother of George) that I was having problems getting financed,” Dosunmu explains. “I got tired of waiting for things to happen. My thought was, ‘I’m a filmmaker, I should be making films.’ I just wanted to create something.”

Teaming up with friend and screenwriter Eugene M. Gussenhoven, the pair set out to tell a different kind of immigrant story. “Living in Harlem, these characters are young adults who come to New York from Africa to get theirs. America is where dreams are made, but New York City is where Run-DMC was born.”

Dosunmu, who directed the award-winning documentary Hot Irons about competitive hair styling in the inner city in 1999, insists that Restless City, the story of an African immigrant surviving on the fringes of New York City is not autobiographical, but his life experiences have clearly left him with an understanding of the do-it-yourself aesthetic that many New York newcomers must adopt to be successful in the city of ambition.“In this film, I try to explore the consequences of displacement,” he explains. “There can be such a restlessness in this metropolis, because it’s a constant hustle just to provide and survive.”

In 1994, when I first met Dosunmu, the former design assistant for Yves Saint Laurent in Paris had come to Atlanta styling Public Enemy for a Vibe magazine article penned by Kevin Powell. Grinning, he says, “I remember that day; I put Flavor Flav in a cool plastic raincoat. I’ve always loved images and in the beginning of my career styling was the closest I could get to photography.”

Between sips of coffee, Dosunmu says, “Fashion got me into shooting pictures. Although I am a self-taught photographer, when I was styling, I worked with some great ones that I learned from; they were inspiring.”

For the rest of this story, go to: http://aleim.com/andrew-dosunmu