Jaime Crockett, a music buyer and manager at Independent Records (who is also a local musician) sees the ego being a problem as well. "I think the 'Who's the best MC' thing, that's part of the whole culture. It plays a part at times with battles, but when you're trying to work and make shit happen, that's not the place or the time."

Francois Baptiste, House of Blues (HOB) promoter/producer and the co-host of the MixTape show Sundays on KS107.5, feels that another challenge is so many people have different visions of where they want the local scene to go. "Some want a local artist to blow up, or want hip-hop to be more community and politically active. Both are good directions for Colorado hip-hop, but it causes friction in the streets and in the end nothing really gets done, except by a few folks."

LOCATION, LOCATION, FRUSTRATION

Born in Denver, Rei-Rei spent some time in Texas before returning to her home state to continue her life and her career. "Texas is more advanced than Colorado," she comments. "I just learned about a new environment. They come from country, and country's all about family. It's all about loyalty. Here it's not like that."

In Texas as a hip-hop artist, it was easy for her to make her way through the door because of the popular support of hip-hop in itself, as it was here in Denver in the '80s. Moving into the '90s, clubs were fearful of the thug factor and shut their doors to hip-hop nights. Combined with authorities looking down on urban themed events, she feels this led to a downfall of live hip-hop during that decade.

As suburban kids and the rest of the world made hip-hop a multi-billion dollar industry, Rei Rei believes this led to the resurgence of clubs to once again support hip-hop in order to get a piece of the monetary pie. No matter what the motivation, she's happy that once again the doors are open to her and other hip-hop artists, and sees Boulder in particular as the local town full of kids that love their music and just wants to have a good time.

Black P vents, "To be honest, Denver's frustrating for me. I've gone up there and done tons of shows like at Soiled Dove, Larimer Lounge, and Lions Lair." But the only ones that really paid off were the opening gigs for national acts. "So I just wait and chill for someone like Eyedea and Abilities to come through town because I know I'm going to get paid and sell records."

His experience and that of Accumen1 have proven that Colorado Springs fares better, "We've done it for years and now when we do a show at 32 Bleu we get 500 people there," compared to a Denver show with Yo! Flaco where 20 to 50 people showed. "They've been doing it for five years. Why aren't they packing out venues like the Ogden with 500 to 600 kids?' It's a way bigger market."

Every month Black P. takes his Colorado tour through Boulder and Ft. Collins, playing the Fox Theatre, Boulder Theater, Aggie and the Starlight. He happened to be heading up to Denver the night of The Streets show in June, when Fox Theater called him for a last minute opening gig for the London hip-hop group. He rocked the full house, and in the middle of the show asked the enthusiastic kids if they knew who Black P was. Only a few raised their hands. That didn't stop them from dancing and throwing their hands in the air, and by the end, they were left wanting more. In time Black Pegasus has seen, "The kids from Denver come to Boulder to see me instead," because of the positive vibe.

Before HOB, Baptiste got his start as a promoter in Boulder in '93 doing small hip-hop events at warehouses and Tulagi's via 3 Deep Productions. "Then I started to work with Don Strasburg at the Fox Theater for the next couple of years. The Fox Theater is where I consider to be the birth of the hip-hop movement in Colorado." At that time, Fox enabled them to dispel those rumors that hip-hop shows meant trouble, and because of the patrons, hip-hop was an economically viable market.

"Hip-hop prospered in the early 90's at the Fox Theater," Baptiste explains, "when at that time, gang violence throughout Colorado put a black eye on hip-hop. I also had the great opportunity to work for Bill Bass who was also instrumental in taking hip-hop to the Fox Theater and bigger arenas, such as Red Rocks," like the Smoking Grooves Tour. From there he went to House of Blues Concerts with Jason Miller, who he believes to be, "the greatest fan of hip-hop in the concert business. Jason and I have made it a point to bring the best hip-hop to Colorado. And we have."

For Reese and Still Livin Entertainment, he finds that Colorado's listening audience has limited access to homegrown music, "primarily because of the local radio and its lack of support for our local artists. So it depends on which side of the fence you're on. Are you trying to make money or are you in it for the love?"

He doesn't put all the blame on the radio programmers, but feels that the artists AND the audience both need to step up to raise the bar. "When you go to other cities the people know their artists and their music. You go to Kansas City and they don't wanna hear the top 40, they wanna hear Rich the Factor or Fat Tone or X-TAC (extasy). At the same time, there is a shortage of good local music out there. I heard David Banner say it the best, 'A lot muthafuckas need to go back to school.'"

FINDING TRUE LOVE

"From stereotypes of hip-hop, to power struggles, to lack of respect of the hip-hop culture. No one city is better than the other when it comes to building their hip-hop community," says Baptiste, "But hey, isn't that what hip-hop is about? Over coming the struggle, right?"

Let's hope some lessons on the negative affects of power struggles were learned by this year's attempt at a Denver Hip-Hop Summit. And next time around, we leave our egos at the door for the overall good. As the writer of one bumper sticker once said, "The power of love can only happen when we eliminate the love of power."

During a phone interview this past July with Dr. Benjamin Chavis, he stated, "For 2005, Denver is not only on our radar, but we have plans to convene a hip-hop summit in Denver. We're just trying to get an appropriate date and get the artists cleared," he says. He also repeated the statement from May, "We want to make sure that whenever we convene in Denver, it will be successful."

The timeframe they are kicking around is February of next year when the NBA All-Star Game comes to Denver. Chavis did say that he will be coming to Denver this Fall, but declined to say exactly who he will be meeting with because at the present time, they don't have a local planning committee. "There are a number of people who have contacted us who want to be on the planning committee," he states. Let's also hope that when that committee is assembled, there is more of that balance between local government and hip-hop grassroots.

"Hip-hop is a growing phenomenon in Denver. So when we come to Denver, we're going to celebrate the evolution of hip-hop in Denver, doing the same things we've done in other cities: encourage young people to be motivated to register to vote, to do positive things with the opportunities their society offers," says Chavis.

And then there are those peeps that are celebrating Colorado right now, on their own.

As a way to bring Denver the "family" atmosphere Rei-Rei experienced in Texas, the MobRuled/Dankside 1st Annual Local Celebrity B-Ball Tournament took place during the 4th of July weekend in the Montbello neighborhood, with kids doing double-dutch while the adults played hard-nosed 3 on 3 for their respective record labels. "It was so much fun, we're planning "Part II" for the middle of August," Rei-Rei says.

The Colorado Hip-Hop Coalition holds hip-hop networking events the second Saturday of every month. On Saturday, August 14 they'll host the "Unity Opportunity Action" training, an education program that utilizes the organizing model of "Unity, Opportunity, Action, as an exercise in the 3 laws of leadership," where middle and high school students will be face to face with Colorado's hip-hop community organizers, and professional hip-hop entrepreneurs.

"I think the scene is really good now," says DJ Vajra, "There are definitely a lot of people who are trying to put in a lot of work and make the scene even better. I think that people are a lot more confident in what artists from Colorado can do and what they can accomplish. Even the radio stations are starting to come around, realizing that Colorado hip-hop has a very valid place in the local music scene. That Denver and Boulder aren’t just little cowtowns full of people who are just trying too hard, but that Colorado is becoming a successful artistic community."

Referring to a book by Deepak Chopra, "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success," which Russell Simmons himself has been known to absorb, there are two laws that come to mind: The Law of Pure Potentiality and The Law of Karma.

There is so much potential here, but the attitudes, egos, apathy and "what's in it for just me" attitude will leave Colorado hip-hop in a state of suspension if those negative energies aren't snuffed out. We've highlighted just a few of the people who are living and breathing this art form, and they need our support and the belief that it can only get better.

We encourage the hip-hop community in general to contact us with whatever is going on: an MC Battle, a CD release show, or a cultural event. There are many artists that have done their part by sending us music, and now it's our responsibility to bring them to you. But we believe that this is only the tip of the iceberg, so spread the word that Kaffeine Buzz wants to play a part in supporting music and the hip-hop community, and we'll work hard to boomerang that karma back out.

Props out to Independent Records as they celebrate their anniversary this month and their support of local music of all kinds. We love you guys.

-August 2004

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