Hip Hop in Humboldt County

DJ Thanksgiving Brown at work on the turntables.

From the outside looking in, appearances are always different. I have lived here for more than a year, but I have had a difficult time absorbing the Humboldt County experience. I breathe Hip-Hop, and have since my early adolescence in a Virginia college town much like Arcata. I have yet to exhale.

I came to Humboldt County to finish school, and this move presented me with an alternative outlet for my love of Hip-Hop. When I pick up a pencil in class, it’s no different from when I pick up a microphone behind the turntables. Turning textbook pages requires the same flick of my wrist that allows me to cut records back and forth.

Whether I’m in the Bronx or Compton, Hip-Hop transcends locality. I am as fascinated with Hip-Hop now as I was 10 years ago, a child of rap straining to hear the late-night, crackling college radio station. Today, I am a man of Hip-Hop, meeting and greeting the burgeoning Hip-Hop community in Humboldt.

Humboldt County is for drifters. Bands of all varieties come and go like transients on the Arcata Plaza. Like in countless other college towns, the influence of Hip-Hop barely reaches beyond boom boxes and television sets. Surely there was a local cat or dorm-room wizard who owned all the best tapes or records, if he was truly devoted to Hip-Hop. He probably had a collection of music videos too, a la “Yo! MTV Raps” and “Rap City.” He knew what time it was.

But groups and actual emcees were not on the scene. It seemed that listening to and experiencing the enigmatic aura of Hip-Hop forefathers like Too $hort and Big Daddy Kane was enough to satisfy the appetites of local Hip-Hop devotees.

Today, there are Hip-Hop groups in Humboldt County. Everywhere. Hip-Hop artists appear to be coming out of the woodwork, empowered by “do-it-yourself” ethics. It has become almost too easy to call yourself an “emcee,” “producer,” “W,” “graf-writer,” or other titles rooted in Hip-Hop jargon. That’s not to say talent is abundant.

In Humboldt, there are higher-profile groups like the Humboldt County Freestyle Kings, who have reportedly inked a deal with Universal Records and a sponsorship with Teva sandals. Potluck is another local and sought-after Hip-Hop crew, extending executive production credits to longtime NOFX member Heffe.

Lower-profile artists range from Manifest, the one-man-army, to the jazzy instrumentalists known as the Hip-Hop Lounge. They run rampant on the local Hip-Hop scene. Considerable legwork is contributed, as well, by the likes of DJ Red, Jet-Eye, Scrooge, and Thanksgiving Brown.

On any Hip-Hop scene, non-commercial radio is an important element — locally, these radio venues have been KHSU and the oft-defunct 94.9 FM, Humboldt Pirate Radio. Emcee Manifest recalls that during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when there were no venues, rocking the airwaves at HSU was crucial to keeping Hip-Hop groups alive. With no Cafe Tomo or Club West to book shows with, Manifest’s long-since disbanded group Lakota depended on radio to circulate their sound.

“Nothing of Hip-Hop has happened since,” said Manifest, who explained that outside of the two or three “reigning crews,” there isn’t much else.

Hip-Hop’s heritage traces back to Jamaican rumblings in the late ‘60s. Ultimately, the births of all genres of music, from jazz and rock ‘n’ roll to soul and gospel, helped create the Hip-Hop phenomena. Hip-Hop was born in America in the late ‘70s in New York City. It took 10 years for the Hip-Hop sound to spread from the South Bronx to surrounding boroughs and neighboring cities.

Most of today’s most devoted Hip-Hop heads weren’t even exposed to the sound until 1988, when coverage of the culture was mostly negative. Many in the mainstream hoped that it was a passing fad, but somehow the music-buying public couldn’t resist the hypnotic beats of Hip-Hop. With the creation of music video programs like “Yo! MTV Raps” and “Rap City,” Hip-Hop was invited into middle-class American homes. These viewers and the rappers who mesmerized them were probably equally unaware of each other’s lifestyles. That doe-eyed fascination has mutated from adoration to competition.

Twelve years later, the same kids who gazed at flickering images of posturing crews wearing thick gold chains now aspire to experience these Hip-Hop fantasies themselves.

Hip-Hop is timeless. Just like the rest of the country, Humboldt County changes with the times. Venues close and reopen, and new faces fill the seats. The Hip-Hop culture, which grew from poverty, is still waiting to cash in some Humboldt green.