Part 1 - Lunch
"He held out for a long time, an illimitably long time; why stop now, when he was in his best fasting form? Why should he be cheated of the fame he would get for fasting longer, for being not only the record hunger artist of all time...but for beating his own record by a performance beyond human imagination..."
On most any day you’ll find them on the corner of 8th St. and 6th Avenue. They stand outside of Gray’s Papaya, just below Phat Beats Record Store, six or seven of them at a time, and they hustle off their own CDs. If you’re familiar with Manhattan’s West Village, you’ve probably come across them more than once. Undoubtedly, one of them has approached you with a question like, "You listen to hip-hop?" Or the less abrasive, "Can I have a moment of your time?"
Once they get you to slow down or even stop, they go in for the hard sell. It’s their own album, they’ll say. They produced it, wrote it, pressed it up and now they’re out here selling it. They are the embodiment of the independent spirit. They can be aggressive, annoying and persistent. They can also be charming and persuasive. If you let them in, they can make you feel guilty enough to pretend your interested even when you’re not. They might catch you on the right day and in the right mood. But if you’re in a hurry or if you’ve had a bad day, seeing them can bring out your worst.
"When people just keep walkin’ it doesn’t stop you from doin’ what you doin’ At the same time we human beings. If you walk by me and don’t say shit I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you. Don’t act like I’m invisible. You see me out here. It don’t hurt to say, ‘No thank you.’
These are the words of Unknown. He’s one of the 6th Avenue regulars, a wiry backpack toting tough talker with chiseled features and a menacingly deep voice. Of the three MC’s at a table near the back of the B.B.Q’s a couple blocks east of their outdoor emporium, Unknown is the only one who comes off bitter. Being ignored gets to him. Take the white kid wearing a red, yellow and green (the colors on the Jamaican flag) wristband. Unknown tore into him when the kid didn’t stop to listen to his spiel.
"Them kids that engulf themselves in hip-hop culture, the style of dress and everything think they’re official because they got a Phat Beats backpack, you know what I mean. They don’t know that this is where it actually came from."
We all know the story by now, can recite it with only slight variations: Hip-hop started in the Bronx with Black and Latino kids looking for someway to stay out of trouble. The first MC’s made tapes and sold them on the streets, out of trunks, at block parties.
"Honestly," says Creature, the centerpiece of the interview,"we’re keeping it as real as it possibly can get. It’s going back to the roots. Before they had any record deals cats we’re making tapes, passing their tapes out selling them that way. Anybody who knows the music knows that we’re doing it how the forefathers were doing it. We’re as independent as it gets. There’s no major labels behind us. We’re not underground artists. We’re independent artistpreneurs.
Creature picked up the term Artistpreneur in Chicago while on tour a few months back. It’s so new that the others, Shake o Blaze, a heavy-set Brooklynite who hides his eyes behind a pair of dark shades and Unknown, aren’t even familiar with it. According to Creature (or Creach for short) the difference between an artist and an artistpreneur is profound. Says the husky, dread locked MC from the Bronx, "Artists needs to be pampered. We’re bosses. We’ve taken the role of the general. I don’t just go into the studio and rap. I sell my shit too. I am the streets. Artists are a different thing. Them kids who write rhymes cop a little beat, want to somebody shop it for them, put ‘em in a studio, get ‘em some clothes, make a video. We makin’ all those moves ourselves. They’re not nowhere near the level I’m on."
Coming from a guy whose offices are on any street corner he can make a buck that might sound boastful, but the fact is, despite his modest digs and modest record sales (he’s sold about 2,000 CDs in the last four months), he puts his money where his mouth is everyday. Creature and every other independent artist who comes into the Village from the various boroughs, puts in a full days work selling what he considers authentic good music.
Hip-hop has been Creach’s life for almost half his 30 years on this earth. He’s gone through the ups and downs of the industry, he’s been close to being signed to a major recording contract, he’s traveled overseas and performed alongside artists like Mike Ladd, Rob Sonic, Anti-Pop Consortium and the Executioners. He’s gone through the period of angst that mars the career of any artist who believes his work isn’t being taken seriously by the public. He smoked and drank and cried a river to anyone who would listen. He had talent. He could rock it. Why couldn’t the industry see that? Then Creature decided to quit whining about what he didn’t have and work with what was his. He quit smoking and drinking and humbled himself to do what he once wouldn’t have considered: sell his own music on the street. It happened about five months ago.. He had his EP ready, he was shopping it, but no record company was biting so rather than wait, he decided to lace up his boots, tie up his locks and hit the streets. Since then that’s how he’s made his living.
"I’m not trying to get signed anymore," Creature says, defiantly. "The most I want is a distribution deal that’s going to help me get my stuff out to more people. I’m at a point where why go from being a boss to being a fuckin’ worker." As the boss he can keep his overhead low and dictate his own hours of operation. The cost of a CD is significantly less than a dollar, in some cases less than fifty cents, he doesn’t have a payroll, a lease space, a car note, nothing that would demand that he hand over the rights to his music to a major record company. Moreover, he doesn’t want to entrust the outcome of his labor to the efforts of a corporate entity if he doesn’t have to. There’s no guarantee that they’ll market it properly, and his record fails all they’ll do is send him a bill for his arrears, write off the losses and drop him from the label. "At the end of the day it doesn’t make sense to do all the ground work, all the leg work, put all the effort and time in. It’s like rolling dice and before you see what you rolled you turned away."
Part II - The Hustle
"He might fast as much as he could, and he did so; but nothing could save him now, people passed him by. Just try to explain to anyone the art of fasting! Anyone who has no feeling for it cannot be made to understand it."
"Fuck off," yells a young woman wearing iTunes earphones. In turn, Creature smiles sardonically calls the woman and "idiot" under his breath and keeps moving. She is today’s first outrage. There will be others such as the ubiquitous "get a job" and "that’s why you’re selling your shit on the street". But so far that’s as ugly as it has gotten. What exactly Creature did to incite the ire of the woman is unclear. He merely walked up to her, as he does it seems everyone he passes along Broadway, and made one of his comedic remarks. Something like, "It’s me! It’s really me" or "My CD goes great with Diet Code" or (and this one he reserves specially for white men wearing suits) "Support the arts, it’s a tax write off". And the woman lost it.
"Some people are trained," he says moments later, weaving through the after-work crowd, flashing his CD at all times. "They just feel that if you’re dope then why aren’t you on MTV on BET? That’s the conditioning." Rather than head back to Phat Beats, Creature and the others decided to take their show to Broadway where the previous Sunday Creature made $60 in 15 minutes. "Some people are not supposed to see it when it’s on the ground level. They don’t really appreciate it until they see lights and cameras. Then they’ll be the same people talking ‘bout, ‘I always knew you could do it.’
Notably, Creature says all of this without bitterness or irony, as though it is a simple truth that people believe in what they’ve been told to believe in.
Shake, who dispenses his thoughts sparingly adds, "I appreciate those people more. They’re not easy. You gotta earn em." As far as the disses people commonly dish out Shake doesn’t put much stock in them. "I laugh at ‘em because they wouldn’t get what I’m getting. Even if they try harder."
While Shake is talking, Creature spots a man wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt. He starts in with his routine, but when the man doesn’t slow down he pulls out the big guns, guilt that is. "That’s not nice!," he says raspily. "Bob Marley would’ve loved it." And sure enough the man stops. Creature starts in on him like a true showman, a consummate performer. He comes off sincere, charming and witty. Later, after the man has handed over ten bones in exchange for a CD he’s never heard by an artist he’s never heard of Creature cheerfully remarks, "We got rebuttals for anything you say. Anything you say I gotta fuckin rebuttal."
However, Creature is also willing to accept when people don’t have the money. To him the ones who stop and listen are like valuable investments. "I’ve had people walk by me ten times and on the eleventh time they’ll stop and say I’m going to buy your shit. I see you out here diligently in the rain and heat. I’m going to buy your shit."
"But some people go out there way to be mean, to be assholes," Unknown says. While Creature and Shake seem to be taking the sluggish and muggy afternoon in stride, Unknown clearly isn’t. First, it was the white kid with the wrist band, then it was a Japanese kid who bought his album but told him it better not be wack, then came the store manager who shooed him like a mosquito. Seeing his partner’s temperature rise, Creach makes jokes to calm him down. In response, Unknown grits his teeth and eases up. As soon as he gets back at it, though, a young black dude dressed trendily and sitting on a hydrant near the corner of Houston and Broadway gives him the cold shoulder. Unknown closes his eyes, bites his tongue and crosses Houston.
In his defense there is something peculiar about the fact that the people who treat these artists with the greatest disdain are young black men as well. They turn up their noses, roll their eyes and offer curt remarks like, "I’m good" while not breaking stride. Unknown, who says he never forgets a face, believes that some brothers are embarrassed by what he and the others do for a living. Meanwhile, Shake offers an insight that years of selling on the streets has hipped him to.
"There’s no hip-hop look anymore. I seen people sixty, seventy years old buy my record, listen to the record come back and can recite the record to me, the titles of the song, all that.
Creature agrees. "It’s marketed to kids because it was started by young rebellious kids. But at the same time hip-hop is growing to the point now adults that got family and kids can listen to it. Honestly people buy it because it’s universal and they want to support independent artists. They believe in the arts."
All in all the day is slow. They each sell four or five CDs, a modest amount, but enough to call it hard day’s work. On the way back to 6th Avenue Creature’s phone rings. He failed to mention as much, but he’s being featured a documentary about independent artists called Show and Prove. The crew is waiting for him in front of Gray’s Papaya. Creature tells them that he’s on his way, that he’ll be there in a minute.. Then he gets back to selling.
Part III - Night
"..it was not the hunger artist who was cheating, he was working honestly, but the world was cheating him of his reward."
As a group of six MCs, three filmmakers and a couple of hangers on makes its way down North 6th in Williamsburg someone asks if the neighborhood is still part of Brooklyn. Everyone else laughs; they were thinking the same thing. The neighborhood has the cliquish, campy feel of a Thursday night in a college town. A Lower East Side spill-over has spawned this new hipster enclave and tonight the warmth has thrust everyone outdoors and stirred up a pungent scent of vomit in the air.
North 6th is also the name of the club where Creature will be performing in an hour. Creature’s pal, and fellow artist, Rob Sonic is in the basement of the club waiting the group arrives. Although he’s visibly pissed about, he gives everyone a warm greeting from the barber’s chair he’s reclined in.
"This is some bullshit," Rob says. The gig was supposed to be at the Knitting Factory. Then it got moved to the venue upstairs from where everyone is hanging out now. When a two man band from Georgia was added to the bill, though, the hip-hop acts got pushed downstairs into the dungeon. There’s a soggy couch, a few wounded chairs and a stage that maybe two people can stand side by side on. Oh, and the stalls are open and smeared with puerile tags, like in jail.
"The disrespect hip-hop gets is unbelieveable!" Rob adds, appraising the basement’s meager environs. He just wants to do his set and get back to the Bronx, he says.
If everyone squeezed together maybe 50 people could fit in the basement. The thing is, there may not even be 50 people at the show. With just five minutes until Creature goes on, the girl collecting money by the door has only made $40 or $50. The people who are here are friends and other artists– Beans from Anti-Pop being one in particular. Were it not for the 3 person camera crew tailing Creature, this picture might even resemble a neighborhood basement party much like the ones that make up the lore of hip-hop early years. Beyond the nostalgia, though, there’s a sadness to this scene. Creature has been on his feet all day long and now he has to gather himself to perform in front of 20 people.
On stage Creature looks like Beanie Segal with dreads, and he sounds like a member of ATL’s Dungeon Family. Though he is built like a fullback, he moves effortlessly across the stage. He has personality, and despite the crowds lackluster response he wills himself through a five song set. His style is aggressive, but if you listen you hear layers to his lyrics, messages, autobiographical sketches and his ever-present comedic sensibility. At the conclusion of his set Creature freestyles a few bars. It’s the first time he’s done so in a while and the rust reveals itself when he goes on too long. At the very least, though, it displays his showmanship.
Part IV – Epilogue
At the close of Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist, a short story about an artist who has dedicated his life to being the greatest faster who ever lived, the artist lies in a cage ignored, emaciated and near death when upon being asked why he wished not to be admired for his feats, he replies, "Because I have to fast, I can’t help it." By the same token, artists like Creature make music because they can’t not make music. By titling his EP Never Say Die Creature seems to have embraced the notion of himself as a blue-collar hero, perhaps even found a niche in his obscurity. And why not? He’s on his feet all day and he doesn’t get much praise or pay in the process. For him hip-hop is a job he goes to everyday just like the rest of us go to ours. The only difference is that he never plans on quitting. Even when he’s whipped and dripping with sweat and the night has wandered into the lonely time he’ll tell you straight up: "Giving up is not an option."
