Old School Internet Hip Hop Nerdery
DrJoel
932 Posts
Does anyone remember U-WU? It was this Wu-Tang email thing that i was all over when i was in high school. People were selling / trading mixtapes, there were album rumours all over the place, soundclips of upcoming stuff, freestyles. i have a ton of tapes that i got through people on there. Tons of remixes and all that. i think the guys name was John that ran it.More nerdery....ICU? Another internet hip hop movement...i think that was based out of Cali, but people from all over the globe. They put out a tape and i got other people's homemade tapes, the only one i remember was a guy named Tack Fu.Anyone?
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Also, I remember ICU. I was a member of that for a second... hahah!
I used to run that BOMB HIP-HOP AUSTRALIA website if anyone remembers...
peace.
Ill Crew Universal. i know i have that tape sitting around somewhere.
Did you used to post stuff about your site in either of those places? It sounds really familiar, maybe i used to check it out back in the day.
The reason I did that was because no one was doing what I had wanted to do. There were no official Wu-Tang websites, and the three Wu fans sites that were out there were all about "isn't Meth FOINE?" I was a long time fan of "Goldmine" magazine and eventually a writer, and while they didn't outright say they were anti-hip-hop, they didn't exactly treat it as a serious form of music, or at least as "records worth archiving". As far as gathering the news, the information was out there, all I did was put it together. The biggest honor, which I didn't take as such when it happened, was when one of the official Wu sites had ripped off the discography I put together, right down to the catalog #'s, formatting, and descriptions of each. Someone else had actually taken it from my page, and passed it to them. All I had wanted was proper credit, I didn't do what I did to score free tickets, Wu-Wear, or anything.
It wasn't about being a nerd about it, but then again I was doing something I'm sure a lot of us wanted to do. All I wanted to do was gather information in a healthy manner, and I think I did a great job at doing that. But after a few years I realized that I did have my own music and writing to take care of, and I was neglecting that. I had to switch the emphasis, which coincided with the point in which I felt Wu's music were going everywhere and nowhere.
I remember when Mercer @ Sandbox celebrated his 10th anniversary and singled me and a few others out as being the "old school internet hip-hop heads". That nerdery is something I know I do in my music and my writing, and it's not about wanting to be a nerd, but being curious about what makes things tick. In other words, I don't care about the Wizard Of Oz, I want to know what were in the machines. If healthy discographies could be done for rock and jazz, why not hip-hop? Those same people who were passing the records off as trash are now the ones putting up Whistle 12" singles at record shows for $35 each. Fuck 'em.
I was a member of ICU briefly, I did have a song on the first two ICU comps. I'm glad I don't rap anymore.