By Shelby Powell

Rappers have always rapped about drugs, primarily because many of them are from areas heavily burdened with the pain of addiction. They spin tales of dope boy lives and climbing to the money mountain top by hustling their intoxicant of choice from this corner or that one. But when you turn down the volume and look at what they are talking about, it’s not glitz. It’s not glamour. As a matter of fact, prior to March 27th 2009, if you lived in New York, it was probably a lengthy jail term without the benefit of treatment or rehabilitation. And you could thank the Rockefeller Drug Laws for that.

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The relationship between mainstream media and the optimistic elements of hip hop is tenuous at best. Constantly being tossed into an abyss of negativity that feeds off the shootings, drug arrests and jail terms; the genre rarely finds itself basking in a positive light. Not because constructive behavior isn’t practiced by the musicians; but because that behavior isn’t always seen as news worthy.

Case in point: Saigon.

With enough buzz to jump start a tree hugger’s electric compact, the Brooklyn MC is slated to act as New York’s latest Pied Piper, leading the masses back to the cradle of hip hop civilization through his much anticipated album, The Greatest Story Never Told. He is a movement in the making. He is beyond talented. He is revered by his peers. And he has as much street cred as the law will allow; and some the law won’t. However, all of his layers have not been exposed on a grand scale.

As a co-founder of Abandoned Nation Entertainment, Saigon has not just lent his celebrity to a worthy cause. He is fighting on the front lines with a group who not only wish to entertain, but also bring social change.

The full story backs us up to the late 90s when Saigon (Uncle Sam knows him as Brian Carenard), awash in street thought, found himself behind bars. While originally charged with attempted murder, the teen was ultimately convicted of first degree assault. The mental wrestling match between his past and his future ensued as he pondered the lengthy sentence he dodged, and his future won.

He joined an in-house project known as the Resurrection Study Group and became friends with one of the other participants, Omnipotent; as well as the instructor Sharieff Clayton.

“I met Saigon in 1997. And we were, for lack of a better word, classmates in the Resurrection Program. But after a while we were teaching some of the classes. And actually classmates isn’t a bad word at all because we were learning,” Omnipotent offers.

The study group, a meeting of minds to build tools for avoiding the the pitfalls of urban life, not only cultivated productive mind-sets in the trio; it also fostered a desire for transformation. Once all three were released, they took what they accomplished inside and unleashed it on the streets of New York.

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This week, the A3C Festival unfurls over three days, from April 12-14, drawing top-shelf acts like Souls of Mischief, Cool Calm Pete and Strange Fruit Project to the ATL. Christopher D. French previews the weekend’s events.

February 7 would have been James Yancey’s birthday. Instead, one of hip-hop’s great producers died three days after his 32nd year on Feb. 10, 2006 and then achieved a most bittersweet triumph with two posthumous albums: The Shining and Donuts.

Who knows if J-Dilla’s name would continue to be remembered if not for the new material that continues to spring forth, from the ever-reliable Stones Throw (a reissue of Ruff Draft packed with unreleased material that’s due next month) to his many friends (Phat Kat, among others, will issue J-Dilla tracks over the next several months)? Certainly hip-hop — and popular music in general — does a poor job of remembering its fallen idols. Even the dead are subject to the same trends, peaks and valleys in popularity as the living. That’s why we celebrate Tupac Shakur and not Big Pun; and Big L and not Cowboy.

J-Dilla remains in our thoughts because his music is more relevant than ever. The future soul locus that now occupies much of the black music underground, with its mixture of heartfelt neo-soul, tentative leaps into house music and broken beat, and occasional yet unapologetic thug-ism was anticipated by J-Dilla and his village of the slum. It is important, too, that we are celebrating his birthday. Unlike Tupac and Biggie, we aren’t celebrating his death-day with magazine covers and tributaries to the moment he was slain and burst forth into the mainstream public’s conscience. We’re hailing his life and music.

You can visit Stones Throw’s website and learn more about its activities, from tribute parties and a special podcast to the aforementioned Ruff Draft. This site’s efforts are much more modest, but no less heartfelt. Below you’ll find an essay I wrote on the day I learned J Dilla passed. RIP James “Jay Dee/J Dilla” Yancey.

Photo by Rafael Rashid from the book Behind the Beat. Taken from Stones Throw’s website.

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