Bomb the Suburbs.

TECUMSEH · December 2005

I pulled out Upski's book the other day and re-read it for the first time in years. How many of you remember this book? It was an enjoyable read. For some reason it got me thinking about the ill-state crew. Anybody know what's going on with them these days?

canonical · December 2005

Always meant to pick up that book. I got his second book, No More Prisons and liked it a lot. Thanks for reminding me, I'll have to look around again.

cuttysharp · December 2005

what happened to the dariens?
only shit i ever heard was that verse y-not-never-the-less had on common's second album.
anything else?

and yea...upski is that dude.
we use words like mackadocious needs to be widely distributed in public high schools.
last i heard he had set up shop in raliegh.

TECUMSEH · December 2005

Word up, I never got around to reading the No More Prisons book. I'm have to check for that one and see if I can't get a copy. Thanks for reminding me. Good lookin out.

pickwick33 · December 2005

I pulled out Upski's book the other day and re-read it for the first time in years. How many of you remember this book?

Remember it? Shoot, I bought my copy directly from Upski, who was standing in the middle of a courtyard at 53rd & Harper (in Chicago) hawking it! Had a whole box full of them and was yelling at the top of his lungs for all passersby to buy a copy...and when you did fork over the dough, he personally tagged each cover, writing the title graffiti-style. I wasn't a hip-hop fan (I'm still not) but I'd been reading his articles in different magazines for maybe a year before the book actually dropped, and was impressed. Great tome. Seems like yesterday.

Lord, I miss that cat so bad (he left town years ago). To promote the book, he kept sticking flyers for it all over the city, and it was a long time before most of them came down. Really - we're talking 1994 when he put those up, and there's probably still peeled fragments of eleven-year-old Bomb The Suburbs posters on storefront walls today.

TECUMSEH · December 2005

Yeah you don't hear about crews like the dariens nowdays. It's a whole diffrent world out there.

Swayze · December 2005

Yeah you don't hear about crews like the dariens nowdays. It's a whole diffrent world out there.

what, you don't want to give cred to OFA and SLK?

TECUMSEH · December 2005

I pulled out Upski's book the other day and re-read it for the first time in years. How many of you remember this book?

Remember it? Shoot, I bought my copy directly from Upski, who was standing in the middle of a courtyard at 53rd & Harper (in Chicago) hawking it! Had a whole box full of them and was yelling at the top of his lungs for all passersby to buy a copy...and when you did fork over the dough, he personally tagged each cover, writing the title graffiti-style. I wasn't a hip-hop fan (I'm still not) but I'd been reading his articles in different magazines for maybe a year before the book actually dropped, and was impressed. Great tome. Seems like yesterday.

Lord, I miss that cat so bad (he left town years ago). To promote the book, he kept sticking flyers for it all over the city, and it was a long time before most of them came down. Really - we're talking 1994 when he put those up, and there's probably still peeled fragments of eleven-year-old Bomb The Suburbs posters on storefront walls today.

That's dope right there. Yeah how you describe the flyers is hella ill. It's like a ghost that hangs around from a diffrent time. It's like every time you see a burner you always wonder what the story is behind that one and the person who did it. All the creativity being swallowed up into time. I always wonder were those people are at nowdays are they alive or dead. In Jail or on Wall street, or anywhere in between. I guess this goes for more then just Graph. It's so crazy cause there's so much to learn and see in this lifetyme. At the end of the day all you can really do is just live.

spivy · December 2005

great book! it reminds me of "steal this book". Sadly, both books are starting to show their age. Graffiti (on the east coast) is dissapearing at an astonishing rate. Nyc is losing its identity to coporate take-over and Boston is a shell of what it used to be ( even 10 years ago ).

TECUMSEH · December 2005

Yeah you don't hear about crews like the dariens nowdays. It's a whole diffrent world out there.
what, you don't want to give cred to OFA and SLK?

You got a good point. There are tons of crews that were out there or are out there. It seems that people a lot of times piece for a period of there life and then there out. The sad thing and at the same time dope thing about graph is it's only here for that little space in time, just like people. Cause once it's gone, outta site outta mind. I guess we should really value people more while they are here.

Unknown · December 2005

I bought that too and still have my copy, and it read kind of funny since i'm smack dab in the middle of the ultimate suburbs.

Shortly after the book came out, local writer GraspABK did a nice Bomb The Suburbs piece along the train lines, it was up for a couple years too.

I didn't even know he had a book out for No More Prisons, I used to see it tagged on the sidewalks in NYC and I know there were a couple of 12"s about it.

aleit · December 2005

I bought that too and still have my copy, and it read kind of funny since i'm smack dab in the middle of the ultimate suburbs.

Shortly after the book came out, local writer GraspABK did a nice Bomb The Suburbs piece along the train lines, it was up for a couple years too.

I didn't even know he had a book out for No More Prisons, I used to see it tagged on the sidewalks in NYC and I know there were a couple of 12"s about it.

"no more prisons" was a campaign- still is to some degree. check PMP in both NY/CA (prison moratorium project). can't truly say that it was upski's- slogan or no slogan. it was powerful to see those tags though or blown up hyge all over the states. i saw it everywhere when i drove across the country, along with Andre the Giant of course.

i read "No More Prisons"- he gave me a a few of them when i was invited to facilitate a workshop at a conference in NC. i gave them all away to my students- i was teaching a high school course on prison/criminal justice issues at the time. i read it- it was ok. some interesting ideas, but i will admit that i got very tired of reading about how he traveled to ghettos across America to promote his book and how inner city neighborhoods really aren't that bad 'cause he was there in the dead of night, etc. etc. It read as kind of righteous and pretty irrelevant. most of the book was about young people with money becoming philanthropists- not too much information in there though. But if the book brought new ideas into the heads of young people- it was successful.

meatyogre · December 2005

I bought one off the dude directly in 98 or so. He's like a hip hop Richard Simmons.

Great book, really cool and inspiring ideas and stories. The one about his buddy who ruined his brain from paint fumes always had me worried about my homies that painted.

tripledouble · December 2005

I bought one off the dude directly in 98 or so. He's like a hip hop Richard Simmons. Great book, really cool and inspiring ideas and stories. The one about his buddy who ruined his brain from paint fumes always had me worried about my homies that painted.

those books were great. i was very surprised when i met him cause i expected differetn, but whatever...i feel he was doing very proactive things. the jump in his mentality from bTs to nmp was impressive. and ari, the rich kid philanthropy thing was an excellent idea...but i'm with you on the ghetto-adventurer tales, although most observations were sharp.
nomore prisons is an important book.

pickwick33 · December 2005

I pulled out Upski's book the other day and re-read it for the first time in years. How many of you remember this book?

Remember it? Shoot, I bought my copy directly from Upski...(t)o promote the book, he kept sticking flyers for it all over the city, and it was a long time before most of them came down. Really - we're talking 1994 when he put those up, and there's probably still peeled fragments of eleven-year-old Bomb The Suburbs posters on storefront walls today.

That's dope right there. Yeah how you describe the flyers is hella ill. It's like a ghost that hangs around from a diffrent time.

I wonder if there are newer hip-hop generations who have no idea what those leftover posters were about.

I don't know if you've ever lived in Chicago (then or now), but after the book had been out for a few months, Upski did an in-store at the old K&B bookstore on 53rd & Lake Park (I think it's a Blockbuster Video now). It was an unusually large turnout, but about half the people there were irate parents wondering what all this "bomb the suburbs" business was about (at first, if I remember correctly, the flyers had no additional info beyond the title, so some thought it was a weird terrorist plot or something).

DJFerrari · December 2005

I was a freshman in high school living in Chicago when that book came out. I picked one up from Gramaphone records on Clark street about 2 blocks from my school. That's the year I got into hip hop in the first place. So great and so important. Required reading for all!

DJ Ferrari

aleit · December 2005

those books were great. i was very surprised when i met him cause i expected differetn, but whatever...i feel he was doing very proactive things. the jump in his mentality from bTs to nmp was impressive. and ari, the rich kid philanthropy thing was an excellent idea...but i'm with you on the ghetto-adventurer tales, although most observations were sharp.
nomore prisons is an important book.

hey tony- in no way, do i mean disrespect to upski or the book. dude is visionary and acts on his convictions... that is enough. the rich kid philanthropy thing is a good idea and appropriate perhaps- gauging who read the book and its audience to some degree. i don't remember really what the nature of my criticism was... we're talking about reading this when it came out- perhaps it was partially due to some glossing over of the issue of "the prison" itself and the scarcity of meat in terms of content along those lines. maybe it was an initial response to the long somewhat ambling sections on the ghetto-adventurer tales which seemed out of place- or maybe out of context for what my expectation were of the book's focus.

regardless, the shit inspired the young people i was working with and fueled ideas and passion.

and easier to find fault when you aren't the one who published your own book to share with the public- and did that shit DIY. upski was very cool on the one occasion i met him. kind of been wondering what happened to the Reciprocity folks out in raleigh.

kind of drives home that i've been proscratinating doing my own writing all day- which is supposed to be a summary and expression of my own ideas and vision (and will suffer for it this weekend). so i best be curtaling my critiques.

peace.

TECUMSEH · December 2005

I wonder if there are newer hip-hop generations who have no idea what those leftover posters were about

You know there has got to be. I've never been to Chi-town(my wife got cousins out there so I def down to visit) but kids is kids all over. It's like there isn't a lot of documentation on how hip hop evolved all over the place, who were the old school cats in this city or that city. What were their stories. I doubt some kids even know the history of their own citys let alone other places out there. The hip hop then was a lot diffrent then what kids got now(I think the internet changed things a lot back then it would be like you would here so and so talkin bout these cats from over there or from this city. Hella word of mouth and urban legends. Also it was a lot bout skills and styles and just doin it for the love, props, honeys, jewels, cause, ect.....you know what ever. It was never just one of those things). Things just change. People grow up and got families to feed. Sometimes it's hard for them to grow and become more mature with it. For real this is a challenge. How big hip hop has become is crazy in its self. But it is a thing that is a huge part of youth culture. I think in a sense a lot of hip hop is like tribal culture, rights of passage and what not, and it fills in for things we are missing in our society. It kinda says a lot that hip hop has been around long enough so that people talk about the history of it. Then you got take that all in the context, that it means so many diffrent things to so many diffrent people. I guess this would be a good time to ask what does hip-hop mean to you. I'm a start a new thread with that.

Jonny_Paycheck · December 2005

William "Upski" Wimsatt

New York Democratic Senator Chuck Shumer

SEPARATED AT BIRTH???

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Bomb the Suburbs.

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