Underground teleportation
How hip hop helped me bust out of big tech prison and reclaim my focus
2005, Analog Brothers, 2000 Ground Control Records
It wasn’t the sound of the track that awoke me, but the depth of it. It was 2005 and I’d fallen asleep in a small attic studio in North Portland. My then boyfriend was messing around on the turntables and Midnight in a Perfect World’s haunting familiarity drew theta waves into soundwaves, ushering me from sleep to consciousness.
The mid 1990s had marked my divergence from hip hop, stemming from commercial takeover in the culture, and that day in ‘05 was the first time I’d heard DJ Shadow. A fragment of resonance for my golden-age-to-gangsta arrested development. That moment foretold my reunion, 17 years in the future, with the genre that had shaped my teenage years and had remained, dormant, at the essence of who I am and what my purpose is. Captured by Midnight’s warm melancholy and nostalgia, I glimpsed forgotten parts of myself. Endtroducing’s introspective instrumentals and obscure samples fed parts of my mind and soul deprived since my departure. I listened over and over, as new neural connections formed.
Midnight in a Perfect World from Endtroducing, DJ Shadow, 1996 Mo’Wax Records
By that time though, influenced by melophile coworkers and radio hosts like Steven Cantor, my exploration had drawn me to such varied sounds as Ibrahim Ag Alhabib’s Tinariwen; the early-eighties LP, Over the Edge, from Portland punk band the Wipers—an outgrowth of the metal that, in my teens, had vied with hip hop for my attention; the seductive score for Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows, brilliantly improvised by Miles Davis as he watched scenes from the film; and a dive into Brazilian bossa nova via the Gilberto family. I felt no immediate call to turn back.
Romeo from Over the Edge, Wipers, 1983 Zenorecords
Générique from Elevator to the Gallows score, Miles Davis, 1958 Fontana Records
Then Facebook caught on. While at first it was a place to catalog and share the sounds I loved, the experience rapidly overwhelmed and degraded my focus, diverting and distracting me from the music that sustained me. As teams of engineers worked behind glass screens to hook and condition me, survival appeared to mean playing the attention-seeking game with the best of them. With my finger on the scroll wheel, the pain and joy of real-life experiences were anesthetized. My intrinsic motivations were eventually lulled to sleep.
… my exploration had drawn me to such varied sounds … I felt no immediate call to turn back.
Seventeen years, the death of my father, and a global pandemic would bridge my connection with Portland-based DJ Wicked, aka Kirk Kirkpatrick, in 2022. Wicked had adapted his weekly, in-person Wicked Wednesday movement, then approaching its 25th year, into a weekly online, all-vinyl live stream for his fan base. The 100-episode series was filled with underground and 90s-and-forward hip hop along with live scratch sessions and educational segments. Exposure to this had an immediate and life-changing impact. An excavation of my true self from underneath life’s rubble.
Wicked Wednesday: The Hip-Hop show! Ep #94, 2021 DJ Wicked
In a recurring segment of the show, “Your MP3s Bore Me”, the veteran DJ and educator featured what he described as sharing one record from his collection “that has some type of fun, special, unique, interesting, or sentimental quality to it”, including everything from The Egyptian Lover’s 1986 to DJ Abilities’ Phonograph Phoenix. The wheels of my musical foundations turned along with the ones and twos and I began using the segments as personal writing prompts. It was Wicked’s presentation of A CloakWork Orange by LA-based The Cloaks (Gel Roc and AWOL One) that engaged my imagination like nothing before. The 2022 album, the third for the duo and their producer, Awkward, was central to my entry into underground hip hop. It connected dots where no points had seemed to exist before.
A CloakWork Orange, The Cloaks, 2022 Abolano Records
With my finger on the scroll wheel, the pain and joy of real-life experiences were anesthetized. My intrinsic motivations were eventually lulled to sleep.
My processing of A CloakWork Orange would reveal that hip hop had held this obscure passageway that paralleled the one I’d taken as a cinephile, from studio to indie films. In 1993 I had sat in Portland’s Whitsell Auditorium riveted by Paul Auster’s gambling misadventure, The Music of Chance (James Spader, Mandy Patinkin, Joel Grey, dir. Philip Haas). More realistic and moving; less idealist; the ability to make me think about issues and subject matter; and a more level industry playing field—independent film was a doorway from which I would never turn back. A parallel portal—those same ideals—led me back home to hip hop, through the underground.
The Music of Chance trailer, Dir. Philip Haas, 1993 I.R.S. Media
While I’d been too immature to fully comprehend the New School’s sociopolitical agenda at its outset, I listened intently in 2022 as “new-school-with-old-scars” emcees Gel Roc, Abstract Rude, and AWOL One called out invasive technology and misinformation in the former’s track, Edge of the Edge (prod. DJ JahBluez). With echoes of The Message in its bars, insights surfaced from deep in my subconscious, and I snapped out of the illusion that I was alone in the intensity of my love-hate relationship with technology and my desire to rise above it. Like the antiheroes in The Music of Chance, compelled to play “just one more round” of poker, then forced to build an endless wall for their insane hosts to pay off the losses, I’d been unwittingly put to work building a tedious, purposeless wall for big tech, to whom I didn’t owe a cent. And the wall had come between me and life.
Edge of the Edge from Poetry of War, Gel Roc & DJ JahBluez, 2022 Abolano Records
More realistic and moving; less idealist; the ability to make me think about issues and subject matter; and a more level industry playing field… those same ideals led me back home to hip hop, through the underground.
Reading the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari a few months back was a major breakthrough as to how I got off track from my purpose and how hip hop has aided my return. First, the writer and journalist explained that I’m not crazy for having shifted my precious time and attention from activities I love to vacuous scrolling. He reveals that the work of psychologist and behaviorist B. F. Skinner was directly sourced by engineers in designing social media platforms to hook users, through so-called dopamine engineering. Just like the operant conditioning of the pigeons Skinner trained to make specific movements by rewarding them with seed, I’ve been conditioned to respond to hearts, likes, and prioritized content by staying glued to the internet and social media, including its underwriters of all motivations. His talks with interface designer Aza Raskin emphasized how the latter’s invention of the infinite scroll removed the opportunity to pause between web pages, keeping me online for “just those few more seconds”, turning into hours, days, and years of precious life. “Every day,” Hari reveals, “as a direct result of his invention, the combined total of 200,000 more human lifetimes—every moment from birth to death—is now spent scrolling through a screen.”
Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari, 2022 Crown Publishing
Maybe most revelatory for me was the book’s mention of intrinsic motivations—the things I am driven to do regardless of hearts, likes, or even money—as an antidote to compulsive scrolling. Going further afield, tapping outlets like Fat Beats, broadcasts like Hip Hop Stacks and Breakbeats & Rhymes, looking up artist interviews, and attending live events brought steady doses of introspection, even as tech-device conditioning continued its assault. But more importantly, I was exposed over and over to artists and producers pursuing their calling, driven by the pure love of hip hop I shared.
… I never thought these other people would even like my music, that’s because that ain’t the reason why I write my music. - Vic Spencer
Watching this video on August 5th, 2022, I heard Vic Spencer articulate in Wavez Micro what I hadn’t been able to. I got choked up with a mix of outrage, love, and resolve when I heard the words. Outrage toward big tech for pacifying and manipulating people through device conditioning. Love for the skinny, reserved teen/young adult in me (and others) served faithfully by hip hop’s right-left-right-you’re-toothless hard edge in mitigating personal- or collective-level tribulations. Resolve, to overcome distraction and reclaim my voice and my life’s purpose. Underground uncovered a deep motivation to merge my love of hip hop with my creative writing ability; a desire not derived from any kind of external validation or fanfare. And after seeing the aesthetic and poetry of contrasts created by Sun Bronx in Wavez, with its retro Charlie’s Angels meets Chicago’s East Side vibe, I started teaching myself video editing in earnest, expanding my voice through that medium.
Waves Micro from Mudslide, Vic Spencer & Small Professor, 2022 Coalmine Records
The poetic contrasts throughout underground, further evidenced on the 2023 From the Slumz EP (prod. Tone Spliff) in the compelling interplay between the title track by Utica’s Benny Slumz and We Are Rulerz, featuring Colombian-born The One Lavic, conveyed that I could take any topic, however gritty or grimy, and literally write my heart into contentment, busting out of the like/dislike/react ternary prison into free expression.
From the Slumz title track, Benny Slumz & Tone Spliff, 2023 Mind Write Music
The contemplative aspects I’d resonated with in Midnight in a Perfect World—before my already fragile sense of deep focus had succumbed to algorithms, infinite scrolling, and teams of engineers maneuvering controls—are a vital reprieve found in underground hip hop. And what other genres give me poetically, energetically, and culturally, underground hip hop matches it, paired with a frequency resonant with my golden-age roots. The ability to know myself and my purpose, stopping to take stock of my circumstances and where I’ve come from, despite an environment of constant derailment, provided the traction for creating this online journal.
While invasive tech continues trying to hook and divert me, the incisiveness and industriousness of underground hip hop reorient me daily to my sense of focus and the issues that matter to me, as expressed in the music as well as other mediums and genres. It brings into high relief the strength I’ve developed from my life experiences so far. The anti-oppression, pro-autonomy underpinnings of hip hop I’d relied on before are still there. Hooked upfront by the hard beats, I am ultimately taken in by the consistent drumbeat of conscious, clear-sighted messages. As the most fun, compelling, and influential force of the last half-century, hip hop outsizes big tech, except maybe in the context of streaming services or generative AI, but that’s for a future post.
The poetic contrasts in underground relayed that I could take any topic and literally write my heart into contentment … into free expression.
Mike Check by Shottie, 2023 95Labs
I’ve come back a better-stronger-more-ardent hip hop head, picking up where I’d left off with Death Row, before the internet craze, and going ever deeper. Underground was the answer to my unarticulated prayers, showing me a way out of the shadows and through previously unimaginable doors.
Oracle from Underground Overlords, Mic Bles x Brenx, 2023 Jus Da Ill Music
Further listening:
Canibus on invasive technology:
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