One More Robot - Issue 10

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Features
 
Let’s Talk About Sex, Cindy
The self-appointed ‘Michael Bay of business’, Cindy Gallop, talks entrepreneurship, gender equality, and, most importantly, sex.
by Elaine Burke
 
A History of Dublin Subcultures
Since the fifties, Dublin has seen its fair share of cultural movements, with mods, rockers, teddy boys and bikers, among others, all being popular among the city’s youth.
by Ruraidh Conlon O’Reilly
 
Gothic City
Dublin’s small, secluded Goth scene exists with the help of specialised night club Dominion and event organisers Sedition Industries.
by Jonathan Keane

Peace, Unity, Freedom: Rocking and Rolling in Eastern Nigeria
A look at the music of Nigeria’s underground rock’n’roll subculture of the 1970s, featuring Fela Kuti, Monomono and The Funkees, among others.
by Joe Tangari

The Master Clan
Despite their members often being scattered around the world, online battle clans share a unique brotherhood.
by Colm Gorey
 
Memories of Crack City
How crack cocaine wounded New York City and the artists, musicians, filmmakers and writers who captured the drug’s impact.
by Michael A. Gonzales

Also Includes

Adam ‘MCA’  Yauch 1964-2012 Miles Marshall Lewis remembers the sadly departed Beastie Boy.
 
Trayvon Martin and the Quest for Justice Charlie Braxton describes how the senseless slaying of a teenage boy heightened racial tension across America.
 
Label Perils Karen Lawler spoke to First Music Contact’s Angela Dorgan about dodgy record label deals and how unsigned bands can avoid getting conned.
 
Half Life On the back of De La Soul’s recent side project, Dean Van Nguyen examines how alter egos have affected the output of hip-hop artists.
 
Femme Fetale Simon Mee on the tragic demise of ‘Chelsea Girl’ Nico.

and much more!

Living in (Crack) City

by Michael A. Gonzales

In Spike Lee's half-brilliant Jungle Fever (1991), when protagonist Flip Purify (Wesley Snipes) wanders through the gritty streets of Harlem looking for his crackhead brother Gator (Samuel L. Jackson), the filmmaker chose to highlight the harrowing sequence by using Stevie Wonder's powerful soul anthem 'Living for the City'.

When the drug was introduced to the Harlem scene in the early-1980s it was only a matter of months before the foundation began to crumble. A year later, the majority of New York's low-income neighbourhoods looked like the war-torn landscapes of Europe during WW2. Watching the film during it's opening week-end twenty-one years, I related well to the disgust on Flip's face as he stared at the devastation that crack cocaine caused in our community.

As a native New Yorker born and raised on the uptown streets of Harlem, my personal version of  'Living for the City' went from stickball games in the street to dodging bullets in the day as crack vials shattered beneath my sneakered feet. Yet, while smoking crack rocks began its raging rein of terror in 1984, the same communities were also contributing culturally with the rise of rap music.

With rappers becoming the aural equivalent of Italian neo-realists directors, my favorite being Vittorion De Sica, these young poets were unafraid of showing 'the real' in their material. It was only a matter of time before crack culture (selling, buying, dying) and rap music began to overlap. Twenty-eight years after I first heard a cocaine corner boy on a 145th Street muttering, "Crack, crack, crack," there has been thousands of rock related songs released.

When I began working on my latest drug-related essay 'Memories of Crack City' for the forthcoming One More Robot Summer Issue, I spent a lot of time on YouTube getting lifted and inspired by crack songs created by everyone from Schoolly D to Lil Wayne to Rick Ross. However, since this is issue #10, I decided to pick my personal top-ten crack classics based discs to serve as the soundtrack. In addition, since the piece is about New York, all the songs selected are East Coast based. As one crack head screamed to the other, "Rock on!"

1. Cracked Out by Masters of Ceramony

2. Ten Crack Commandments by The Notorious BIG

3. Rap Game/Crack Game by Jay-Z

4. White Lines by Grandmaster  Melle Mel & The Furious 5

5 Crack Attack by Fat Joe
 
6. Night of the Living Baseheads by Public Enemy

7. Incarcerated Scarfaces by Raekwon

8. Shook Ones by Mobb Deep

9. Just to Get a Rep by Gang Starr

10.  NYC Crack by The Wu Tang Clan featuring RZA

Bonus Track. The P is Free by Boogie Down Productions

Read Michael's essay 'Memories in Crack City' exclusively in the new issue of One More Robot.

Issue 10 Preview: The Subculture Issue

In our upcoming Summer edition One More Robot have turned their attention to various subcultures the world over. From Dublin's Goth scene to the underground Nigerian rock movement of the 1970s, our staff never cover the obvious. Here's a small preview of what we have in store.

To be one of the first to receive your copy, not to mention our Autumn and Winter editions later this year, be sure to subcribe right this minute.

We examine Irish subcultures through the second half of the 20th century, with very special photography provided by Garry O'Neill.
  
 

A look at Dublin's small, secluded Goth scene, including specialised night club Dominion and event organisers Sedation Industries. 

   

A look at the music of Nigeria's underground rock'n'roll subculture of the 1970s, featuring Fela Kuti, Monomono and The Funkees, among others. 

 

Michael A. Gonzales remembers how crack cocaine wounded New York City and outlines how it was captured by artists, musicians and writers.

 

The tragic demise of the mysterious and haunting Nico. 
 



Album reviews include Nicki Minaj, Bear in Heaven, The Futureheads, Too Short and M Ward.


And there's a ton more we couldn't find decent YouTube vids to match up with. New issue out later this month. For the latest news please 'like' us on Facebook.

Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch 1964-2012

I nearly never heard Licensed to Ill back in 1986 because a Five Percenter almost robbed me for daring to support white MCs. 16 at the time, I’d just copped my shrink-wrapped copy of The Beastie Boys classic debut album from Crazy Eddie electronics store in The Bronx, along with a ham-and-cheese hero from my local Bibbo’s Deli. New York City DJs Red Alert, Chuck Chillout, Mr Magic and others spun ‘The New Style’, ‘Hold It Now, Hit It’, ‘Posse in Effect’ and the rest of the group’s Roland TR-808-powered beats on their late-night hip-hop shows on a regular basis. But the Five Percenter – Rashawn was his name – was set to toss my Licensed to Ill in the garbage that cold winter’s day right along with my swine sandwich.

“Fuck those whiteboys,” he said, a fine way to dismiss MCA, Mike D and the King Ad-Rock. Hip-hop’s Ramones. The Caucasian Run-DMC. I was never able to see The Beastie Boys live in concert, and now I never will.

Adam Nathaniel Yauch, rapper MCA, died on May 4th of salivary gland cancer. He was 47. Licensed to Ill, Paul’s Boutique (1989), Check Your Head (1992) and Ill Communication (1994) represent an uninterrupted stretch of crazy-high quality hip-hop in a genre that often struggles to put out more than two consecutive classics. As a group, The Beastie Boys are matched only by De La Soul in that regard.

MCA was the face of The Beasties’ evolution, from the teenage faux anarchy of their hit ‘(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)’ and the inflatable penises of their live shows to Tibetan Freedom Concert appearances and Yauch’s own nonprofit organisation for Tibetan independence, the Milarepa Fund. Yauch is survived by his wife, Dechen Wangdu – an American of Tibetan descent – and their daughter, Tenzin Losel.

As their labelmates on Def Jam brought hip-hop into suburbia, Beasties samples introduced Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and The Clash to the hood. Urban cultural exchange at its finest. --Miles Marshall Lewis