It was fitting that the first region to shatter the monopoly of the five boroughs would reflect its diametrical opposite.
DELINQUENT HABITS DELINQUENT HABITS CRACK
In the City of Quartz fractured by racial and class conflict, internecine gang wars, the barbarism of the Los Angeles Police Department and the debilitating effects of the crack epidemic, funk was both brick and mortar. It is propulsive driving music made for perilous freeway chases and Sunday Crenshaw cruises. It was hard enough for Bloods and Crips to boogie to, but smooth and bespoke enough to appear on Soul Train and American Bandstand. Sparkling sheen and champagne excess clashed with pornographic rawness and grimy realities. What followed cannot be extricated from what informed it: Parliament's " Flashlight" and " Atomic Dog," Frankie Smith's " Double Dutch Bus" (where Snoop discovered his "izzle" slang), The Dazz Band's " Let It Whip," The Gap Band's " You Dropped a Bomb on Me," One Way's " Cutie Pie," Ronnie Hudson's " West Coast Poplock," anything remotely in the purple shade of Prince and every moment that Roger Troutman touched a talk box.įunk animated the spirit of Los Angeles because it encapsulated the light-noir dialectic. As late as Bill Clinton's second term, terrestrial radio taught the sound of '82 alongside Tha Dogg Pound and Suga Free. If synth-funk supplied the vulcanized spine of LA hip-hop, it's because that's what its rappers, producers and DJs absorbed during their adolescence. To make the bridge between eras more explicit, SOLAR co-founder Dick Griffey eventually co-founded Death Row with Suge Knight. Soul Train spawned SOLAR (Sound of Los Angeles Records), which discovered The Whispers, Shalamar, Lakeside and Midnight Star. By decade's end, Casablanca Records, the disco locus behind Parliament-Funkadelic, relocated to the Sunset Strip. Motown's arrival in 1972 augured the city's arrival as a world capital of Black music.
But LA is where they eventually hung their sequins and lycra. Most of its second-wave geniuses emerged from the rusting factory towns of the Midwest. Beyond the skill disparity, a key difference stood out: While The Sugarhill Gang interpolated the sleek disco-soul of Chic's "Good Times," the self-described "terrible two" from LA rhymed over the orgiastic sleaze of Rick James' "Super Freak." " The Gigolo Rapp" was a brazen imitation of "Rappers Delight," right down to the label (Rappers Rapp) being owned an ex-Sugar Hill record salesman. In 1981, two Air Force veterans, Disco Daddy and Captain Rapp, released LA's first official rap record after meeting at a club night welcoming Magic Johnson to the Lakers. Considered a fad, LA hip-hop lacked its own Sugar Hill Records. But the West Coast remained a step behind. In '79, Williams consecrated Eve After Dark in Compton, the future Eden for the Wreckin' Cru's teen breakout star, Dr. During the last days of disco, the founders of the pioneering World Class Wreckin' Cru and Uncle Jamm's Army - Alonzo Williams and Rodger Clayton - spun funk, R&B and soul in foggily remembered nightclubs. With gymnastic ground-floor innovations imported from New York, breakin' swept the inner city.ĭJs and B-boys dominated. In LA County, Central California transplants teamed with Long Beach natives to form the iconic crew the Electric Boogaloos. By the late '70s, both coasts simultaneously codified the four elements. In Southern California, locking merged with popping, a spastic hiccup of jerky arm, leg and chest pops from the Bay and Fresno. After Soul Train relocated from Chicago to Hollywood in 1971, Campbell became a featured dancer and his interlocking joint freezes and rapid-twitch movements were soon expanded upon by polyester Baryshnikovs across syndicated America. That's where commercial art student Don Campbell invented "locking" by hybridizing the "funky chicken" and the "robot." The locomotion's genius lay in its open-source design. Several years before Kool Herc's South Bronx "Back to School Jam," a B-boy tidal wave crested out of a South Central community college cafeteria. Funk was the primordial essence in the collective DNA.
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