SMKA: it's MUCH bigger than hip hop hip hop hip hop hip

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Ok its time.

Its time for me to give enough time and credit to the ridiculousness that is SMKA. SMKA is a recoring label created by Atlantins that love this city. Home town pride is something I deeply respect. I love it when people love their city. SMKA takes to a level beyond rocking a (404) tee shirt and telling all your Northern friends that they "don't even know" (both obviously things that I have done.) SMKA decided to celebrate hip hop in a way that both actually brings people together and promotes great music.

Friday night was the CD release party for the 808-Experiment Volume Two, SMKA's second mix tape that features fantastic talent. Download it. Go ahead. It's free. It's great. 808-Experiment Volume Two">Just do it now.

I walked into the release party, which was held at the Star Community Bar in Little 5Points, by myself. After noticing that I was counting out $1's and change and obviously feeling stressed about the (not very expensive but i haven't have a job in a while) cover charge, the door guy took pity on me and let me in without paying. I say this not to piss anyone off but it is important to understand the community oriented feel I found myself in the middle of. I met up with highschool friends all of whom were thrilled to see people we went to school with doing so well and really, passionately excelling.

SMKA is made up of 808 Blake a.k.a. Blake German , Mike Walbert and 7King a.k.a. Kyle King. These are folks that love hip hop so much that they want our current definitions of hip hop to get better and broader and want those definitions to be in conversation with pop definitions of hip hop. i.e. when we can get trap artists talking to the nappy roots, we're on to something.

I ran into probably 8 or 10 people I knew on Friday from all walks of life in Atlanta. All twelve of the performers (just a sampling of the works on the mix tape)absolutely killed their performances. The energy started high and never went back down.

The 808-Experiement Volume 2 features music from the likes of A.Leon Craft, a clever and supremely talened MC who you can hear on the first mixtape as welland on 2 highly anticipated albums coming out this year and Tom P, (who I personally have known since I was was four and who I beyond thrilled to see perform live) who was described on Friday as the "hardest working man in atl hip hop." Just to name a few.

The show paused at one point to collect money for a small organization in Haiti. The woman who went on stage to collect spoke briefly about how it is all well and good to offer money to large corparations and relief effots but that often a great deal of work happens on small scale levels. Her family has started doing such work and she was excited to talk about the importance of supporting such organizations. People passed bills forward across the crowd and a couple people had to hop on stage to help her hold and collect it all. I just read that SMKA decided to match the money donated Friday night.

Much to my excitement it wasn't all dudes! Neo-soul singer (my label, not sure how she self-describes) Alexandrea Lushington held it down. She started her piece by saying, "I'm the only non-MC on this mixtape," to which the crowd responded with various versions of "whooo!" and "get it!"

Jokingly, in conversation with a friend I said that I wondered if SMKA was sitting around talking and were like "Oh Shit We Need A Woman!"

"As Men usually are," he said.

"True," I responded. "And as hip hop usually isn't."

"True," he said.

I had a blast Friday.
SMKA, keep doing what you're doing.


EDIT ~~~ can't believe i forgot!
I GOT THIS and MY LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE:

CR10

Returned from "Struggle and Strategy to Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex"the CR10 conference in Oakland, CA this past weekend.
I learned so much this weekend its hard to know where and how to start. I attended a workshop on alternatives to the police which talked about building community and safety in a way that you know how you would actually call if you felt unsafe, in stead of calling the police. It was about knowing the people around you, it was about trust and it was about accountability to and for and with each other.

It was a very powerful weekend. The first workshop I attended was lead by the Rose city Cop Watch from Portland, OR and was called "Getting Real about Alternatives to the police." We talked about how to deal with unsafe situations with out involving the police and thus trying to prevent people from entering the prison and "justice" systems in the first place. We talked about creating community based initiatives, formal or otherwise that would help you actually answer the question of who you would call when you feel unsafe, other than the police. It was a discussion format and people talked about what they ALREADY do in their communities other than call the police and people talked about what they want to do. We talked about how to implement ideas that did not recreate hierarchical systems and use tactics similar to police and prisons. This is not an easy idea. People talked about communities in which people knew who was committing crime and that in those communities elders and "tough people" need to seek out those committing harm and give them a talking to. I was uncomfortable with this. Obviously violence and intimidation made me uncomfortable but I think it runs deeper than that. I said that I think while it is helping and important to "protect" those who have been robbed or hurt it is also important to think about why people are committing hurt in the first place. Why is someone stealing from my house? What do they need that they aren't getting? Is there something I could be doing to help with that? Is that responsibility? Who's is it? If we are against the use of "the state" for aid, who is responsible? Since the schools starting serving free breakfast we don't have the Panther's free breakfast anymore. Is that good? Is it important for resources to be institutionalized? What happens when those institutions fail?