What is Hyphy? (1st draft of introduction to Oakland in Popular Memory)
I explained to the first-year undergraduate that hyphy is a fast, hyper-active style of hip hop music from Oakland, California where I was born. I continued, clarifying that hyphy doesn’t involve just music, but it’s an entire movement, which embodies a culture, lifestyle, attire, and an ever-evolving patois consisting of words that for the most part originate from 3 men named Mac Dre, Keak da Sneak, and E-40.
He was intrigued. I went on explaining that the Hyphy Movement involves sideshows, which are wild rallies, often in abandoned parking lots in East Oakland, where people “go dumb,” doing wild car tricks involving “ghost riding the whip,” which is when the driver hops on the hood of the car while it’s moving so that the car appears to be driven by no one except a ghost.
I then explained that there are several dances associated with the music, most notably the Thizzle Dance, where a guy drops ecstasy and does an awkward dance where he appears like he just smelled something foul.
At these sideshows and around town men wear extremely large sunglasses called “stunner shades” with Raiders caps sideways. Many have long dreadlocks and wear giant white t-shirts that go to their knees. Wealthier men have gold and diamonds covering their teeth.
One of the up-and-coming artists in the Movement called Mr. Fab drives a giant yellow school bus around Oakland with giant spinners on his wheels. When the school bus stops, the rims keep spinning. Vehicles like this are often also equipped with whistle tips, restricting exhaust from escaping the muffler, so that the car makes an extremely loud noise that can be heard for over a mile.
I could see from the expression on his face that his intrigue turned into bafflement. He looked at me trying to decide if I was making up this fictitious culture like a hip hop-inspired Tolkien, or if what I was saying actually happened in this bizarre land called “Oakland.” I promptly ended and told him to just search for “Hyphy” on YouTube.
After interactions like these, I realized that the culture I grew up with, which I took for granted, was as strange to my Scottish classmates as their ancient culture was to me. In their culture, things I’d only seen on TV, I saw in Edinburgh: kilts, caber-tossing, bagpipes, ceilidhs, haggis neeps and tatties, and drinking not only a hair ‘o the dog at the top of Arthur’s Seat (drinking Scotch when you reach the top of the hill), but also a yard of ale when you came back down.
I began my first show in fall 2008 with a manifesto. I said that just as Jorge Luis Borges wrote the rallying cry of the Ultraist movement in the December 1921 issue of Prisma: “The ultraists proclaim the need to free art from its decrepit state,” so too would my radio show free mainstream radio from its decrepit state. On my show, the overly Auto-Tuned music prominent in most top-40 DJ set lists would be replaced by music performed by musicians who actually compose their own music.
My show would feature artists who had vocal training, could play their own instruments, and who had spent years mastering their craft. Many songs on mainstream radio at this time featured more of the talents of their post-production sound engineers than the talents of the artists themselves. Many of the independent artists I hoped to interview didn’t stoop to the lowest common denominator to sell to a commercial market segment, but produced a body of work that’s as intelligent and insightful, as it is enjoyable to listen to.
These independent artists I aimed to interview practiced hard at their craft, didn’t care how large PR agencies told them how to market their music, and didn’t focus primarily on the trending topics of pop music of the era: violence, misogyny, and money.
However, after playing a hyphy-dominated set list for a few weeks, and receiving questions from Scottish people about "Thizz culture" and what it means to get "hella hyphy," I came to see that my dual missions of bringing Bay Area music to Scotland and to heighten the public discourse of music by showcasing independent artists were coming into conflict.
Coming to this realization mid-semester, I selected George Watsky as my first interview which aired on November 11, 2008. I felt he balanced the "Bay" aesthetic that I was trying to bring to Scotland, while eschewing the drugs and alcohol and negative aspects of the Hyphy Movement. Back in high school, Watsky and I had participated in poetry slams with Youth Speaks, the nonprofit spoken-word organization in San Francisco.
The Watsky interview opened up a world of possibilities to me. My show became less about hyphy (although I continued to play occasional E-40 or Keak da Sneak tracks), and I used my Fresh Air radio show as a platform to interview and engage in deep discussions with some of my favorite artists. Oakland in Popular Memory features 12 of these conversations that I’m excited to share, many for the first time in print.
The interviews cover the lead-up to and election of President Obama, race relations in Oakland in the post-Oscar Grant era, and the latest interviews cover the Occupy Oakland movement.
For more information about Oakland in Popular Memory, please see the book's Kickstarter page.
