#Slauson Village

[athena411-blog]

A very different book about the gangs and clubs of Los Angeles before the birth of the notorious Crips and Blood sets. Features information on African-American, Latino, Asian-American, and racially diverse clubs/gangs in South Los Angeles and adjacent areas. 

[eamonwhalen]

Rap I Liked 2020

An attempt at an omnivorous list of rap songs from the year 2020 that undoubtedly missed many good songs. 

In a Spotify Playlist

In an Apple Music Playlist

If you’d like to read what I wrote this year click here. 

1. Quelle Chris and Chris Keys featuring Earl Sweatshirt, Denmark Vesey, Merill Garbus and Big Sen - Mirage

2.   Mozzy featuring Blxst - I Ain’t Perfect

3. Jay Electronica featuring Jay-Z - A.P.I.D.T.A

Sleep well Lately, I haven't been sleepin' well I even hit the beach to soak my feet and skip some seashells Sleep well The lump inside my throat sometimes it towers like the Eiffel Sometimes I wonder do the trees get sad when they see leaves fell Sleep well The last time that I kissed you, you felt cold but you looked peaceful I read our message thread when I get low and need a refill Sleep well

4. Shabazz Palaces - Fast Learner

5. G-Herbo featuring Juice WRLD, Chance The Rapper and Lil Uzi Vert - PTSD

“People judge people from my city, or people who go through what we go through. It’s just the way you’re brought up and different situations that you experience that change your life and make you who you are. There’s a lot of people who would come to my city and not make it. There’s certain survival skills that you learn in Chicago from just naturally adapting to your environment. People judge us and outcast us from what they see on the outside but they really don’t know what’s going on on the inside. We’re making rational decisions because what we go through forces us to make those decisions. Just the older I get, the more serious I look at it. When I was younger I had my family taking care of me, and I was just living life like a kid. But by 14-15, there’s a lot of kids in my city who are living the lives of adults at that age. Other places people don’t live like that. When I was 16 I started to see people die around me. In my city theres so little to depend on, so people take other options to survive and make a way for themselves. At a young age you start learning this,” - G-Herbo, from an interview I did with him a few years ago. 

6. 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’ featuring Young Thug - Rich N***a Shit

the sounds of luxury

7. Sada Baby - Slide

8. Megan Thee Stallion - Circles

https://youtu.be/TwZl9WCHjnc

9. Polo G - Martin & Gina

10. Gunna - Skybox

11. Pop Smoke - Yea Yea

Rest in Peace Pop Smoke

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/pop-smoke-dior-protest-music/

12. Bfb Da Packman featuring Sada Baby - Free Joe Exotic

13. NBA Youngboy - The Story of OJ (Top Version)

14. Bris - Me Important

Rest In Peace Tricky Dance Moves

15. Playboi Carti - @ MEH

16. Navy Blue featuring Ka - In Good Hands

“Even friends in a frenzy became ravenous

Brothers named universal, wise, supreme became savages

It's said the common thread with our enemies

Is we was all men in need with no amenities

Couldn't sit in peace, we each hit the streets for remedies

Through the hatred accumulate a hundred arms we was centipedes

The stress of empty pantries kept us antsy

No lie, essentials essentially in a shanty

Could give scripture but that big picture is what you can't see

Every grain I spelt is what helped enhance me

Went from gun waving to saving lives

I give sight to the blind just for the 85

That's what I was in the line of scrimmage

Lost some folks of course, that growth redefined percentage

Doomed in the womb, surprised I ain't see a hanger

Start questioning affection when all you see is anger,

But now I’m in good hands, surrounded by good women, good babies, good mans,”

-Ka

17. Lil Uzi Vert - Chrome Heart Tags

18. SahBabii - Double Dick

19. Rezcoast Grizz - Water

20. Future featuring Drake, Da Baby and Lil Baby - Life Is Good Remix

21. Drakeo The Ruler featuring Icewear Vezzo and ALLBLACK - We Know The Truth

The Ruler’s home. Read Jeff Weiss on Drakeo’s trial and release, and the book Rap On Trial for an underreported and understudied phenomenon. 

22. Future and Lil Uzi Vert - That’s It 

23. Shordie Shordie - Save A Little

coolest new voice in Rap

24. Busta Rhymes featuring Kendrick Lamar - Look Over Your Shoulder

25. Cam & China - Know What I’m Saying

https://youtu.be/H1JSWy9lxuk

26. Ovrkast featuring Navy Blue - Face

27. J Hus featuring icee tgm - Helicopter

Shaitan in police uniform Feds in a helicopter I seen pigs fly but I never seen a unicorn Tryna find cover on somebody's front lawn I see an undercover and he had his gun drawn Didn't like me 'cause I'll never conform Man want beef, but they'll never come forth Like CB, all I need is one corn You see me alone but I got a strong force No man can ever put my life on pause They enslaved my ancestor, no remorse I bring knowledge to Europe, just like the Moors The knowledge, they need it, they cravin' for more Left the yard before the jakes kicked in the door Have you seen a lengman drop his stick on the floor? Say you wanna bang, you don't look like you're sure

28. Demahjiae featuring Mejiwahn, Michael Sneed and Pink Siifu - Wild & Fireflies

29. Lil Baby featuring 42 Dugg - We Paid

No choice but to respect someone who is not only still rockin’ with the Detroit Lions in 2020 but says so much on the biggest song of his career thus far. 

30. Ka - Patron Saints

31. Benny The Butcher - Famous

32. Key! - Spend One Night

33. Smino featuring JID and Kenny Beats - Baguetti

34. Open Mike Eagle - Death Parade 

35. OMB Peezy - Sleep At Night

36. Mick Jenkins - “Carefree”

read me on Mick Jenkins circa 2016.

37. Chris Brown and Young Thug featuring Lil Duke and Gunna - Big Slimes

38. Freddie Gibbs and Alchemist - God Is Perfect

39. Chester Watson - Life Wrote Itself

40. Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats - DIET

read me on Denzel Curry circa 2015

41. Young Dolph - Hold Up Hold Up Hold Up

Still probably the coolest thing any rapper has done in years. 

42. Dua Saleh - Hellbound

43. Rod Wave - Fuck The World

44. Young Nudy - Deeper Than Rap

45. Bobby Raps - Believe The Lie

Alex Howard, more like Alex Garland!

46. Saba - So and So

47. 2 Chainz featuring TyDollaSign - Can’t Go For That

https://youtu.be/ccenFp_3kq8

48. Blu and Exile - The Feeling

49. astralblak - Out In The Woods

50. Key Glock - Word On the Streets

51. Black Thought featuring Portugal. The Man & The Last Artful, Dodgr - Nature of the Beast

I feel like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, less Denzel Washington When people are watching me If the right amount of likes and follows can make me less hollow I'd somehow be more complete But people tend to be more toxic so we see more gossip And there's tension on the streets

52. Flo Milli - Not Friendly

53. Shootergang Kony - Still Kony 2

54. Homeboy Sandman - Trauma

55. Kevin Gates - Weeks

56. Pink Siifu and Fly Anakin - Open Up Shop

57. P Will aka Prince Williams - Survival 

58. Cupcakke - Discounts

59. Nas - Ultra Black

60. Spillage Village - End Of Daze

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/magazine/societal-collapse.html

What I listened to most besides songs by artists on this list:

Jazmine Sullivan’s live performances of Lost One and Pick Up Your Feelings

Other stuff that doesn’t really belong on a Rap list:

Liv.e, Brent Faiyaz, Helado Negro, Slauson Malone, Chronixx, Contour, King Krule, Kehlani, Moses Sumney, Thundercat, Soccer Mommy. 

Best books I read that were published in 2020: The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins and I Got A Monster by Brandon Soderberg and Baynard Woods

[zazamatic]

‘You’re just showing us what we’re not gonna live in’

Rent-controlled apartments in Hyde Park will be demolished to make way for a sprawling new complex -  to build it, the developer will need to knock down Dorset Village, a 1940s garden apartment complex with 206 rent-controlled apartments.

https://la.curbed.com/2019/12/17/21021269/dorset-village-rent-control-affordable-redevelopment

https://www.apartments.com/dorset-village-apartments-los-angeles-ca/pfh7nwr/

Facing Real Estate Slowdown, Jeff Greene Regrets Building His Mega-Mansion

The property has two bowling alleys, a theater that seats 50, a discothèque with a rotating dance floor, a hammam Turkish-style bath in the master suite and a 24-car garage. The property also has 6 acres of vineyards and a wine cellar.

Mr. Greene and his family have only spent about two weeks there in the past year, he said, noting that he considers the whole project a mistake. "I totally regret it, wish I never did it," he said, noting that he first saw the property in the newspaper. "I thought it was a deal. I’m thinking ‘Wow, this will be cool. Let’s try living in a giant big mansion.’ I don’t even like sleeping in the place. It’s too big."

https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/facing-real-estate-slowdown-jeff-greene-regrets-building-his-mega-mansion-133431

Demolition of Dorset Village Planned for June of 2021 - nearly 200 families will find themselves directly and permanently displaced from the historic Crenshaw district.

https://la.streetsblog.org/2019/11/26/demolition-of-dorset-village-set-for-june-of-2021/

Billionaire Jeff Greene’s Plans to Raze Dorset Village Are About as Awful as You Might Imagine

the historic garden apartments of Dorset Village figure heavily into the story of the late rapper, entrepreneur, and urban visionary Nipsey Hussle, killed two blocks away this past March 31. 

https://la.streetsblog.org/2019/05/09/billionaire-jeff-greenes-plans-to-raze-dorset-village-are-about-as-awful-as-you-might-imagine/

“Crenshaw made me. So I’ll always be in Crenshaw. Always fighting,” Nipsey Hussle wrote in an essay for The Players’ Tribune last year. “The work ain’t done yet. The marathon continues.”  The fight to claim place and space at Crenshaw and Slauson would become one of the defining struggles of his life.

https://la.streetsblog.org/2019/08/15/nipsey-hussle-understood-cities-better-than-you-why-didnt-you-know-who-he-was/

During the Depression, affordable housing was a nationwide concern; in 1940s Southern California that urgency overlapped with a need to house wartime factory workers and then returning veterans. Bolstered by federal financial support (Housing Act of 1937) and a continuing New Deal ethos, housing was considered a human right and discussed with a level of positive, even moral rhetoric that seems impossibly idealistic from today's vantage. To wit, Franklin Roosevelt's proposal for a second Bill of Rights, in 1944, included "the right of every family to a decent home."

In the service of social progression, many architects of this era fused modernist design with the pastoral ideals of the Garden City movement to create quickly fabricated, affordable, and dignifying residential developments.

During the Cold War, Southern California emerged as a stronghold of McCarthyism. Private sector real estate boards, property owner leagues, and the politicians seeking their votes launched an outright war against public housing, which was portrayed as "part of a conspiratorial effort by well-placed communists [...] to destroy traditional American values through a carefully calculated policy of racial and class struggle."4 The local housing authority was demonized and compared to the Gestapo. This conflict was so incendiary that public housing became the primary issue during Los Angeles's 1953 mayoral race, and the incumbent candidate who supported it was branded a communist and lost.5 The winner, Norris Poulson, instantly canceled the city's public housing contract with the federal government.

https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/good-design-is-for-everyone-the-evolution-of-low-income-housing-in-la

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.  

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.  

But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture.  I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out.   We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

-Excerpted from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second inaugural address, January 20, 1937

https://preservation.lacity.org/sites/default/files/GardenApartmentsofLosAngeles_ContextStatement.pdf

[sheikhmo]

Slauson Village member on subsets, White conflict & Bunchy Carter during...

[tonybconscious]

Wow...Nipsey Hussle is still kickin' up dust... even from the grave !!! The MARATHON CONTINUES !!! Ashe, NAMASTE TONY B. CONSCIOUS (323)251-4969 #art #artist #blacktwitter #clothing #denim #jeans #blackartmatters #fatlegsmatter #blackartist #artistic #paintonclothes #nipseyhussel #nipseyhussle #themarathoncontinues #crenshaw #slauson #leimertpark #losangeles #beatologyvintage #tonybconscious #tonybconscious1 #tonybconsciousart #tonybconsciousartwork (at Leimert Park Village) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4rLRqgD4Mt/?igshid=lez2g8yjnwf4

[athena411-blog]

Los Angeles gang history 

[songsalive]

Review: SongNet’s Jimi Yamagishi Shares Ways to Connect with Fans at Songsalive! Orange County Songwriters Workshop #musicbusiness

Eleven songwriters came together at a rather nice diner in Orange County, California for the February 2018 meeting of the Songsalive! Orange County Monthly Songwriting Workshop & Critique. Our special guest Speaker was Jimi Yamagishi of both Songsalive! and SongNet, and we're always happy to have his expertise and experience on hand. Joyce Melton began things with a whistle tune (try to get THAT out of your head) about lost love and longing. (The music was by Bob Winter.) Host Rod O'Riley came up next with a punk-folky song about vegetarians -- and those who aren't. Gail Wasserman presented story lyric about a kitchen in the city that decided to provide free meals to the poor. Tracey O'Connell (of Sparky & The Ancient Mariner) showed us a beautiful tune of longing (and her equally beautiful guitar). Gil Mosard presented a story song with lots of references and lots of jazzy 7th chords! Newcomer Bob Slauson's song immediately reminded everyone of classic   Greenwich Village folk by people like Peter Yarrow. Sherif Guirguis sang a soulful song in protest of war, in his typical hypnotic raga style with his typical hurricane of a voice. Kate Albright's song was positive and (unusual for her) came across as a sprightly march. Bob Winter's own song was just a skeleton at the moment, but it still came across as a feisty fight song. And finally, Lucius Austin gave us a Christmas song in the smooth jazz style of Al Jarreau. As you can see, there were a lot of different styles on display!

After we finished up with dinner and the reviews, Jimi Yamagishi took the floor. He had stories to tell about his own experiences in the music business (he's been at this a while!) and about how to connect with fans of your music at places OTHER than music events -- how to be a part of their "real lives" such that they will actually remember you. Good stuff. -Rod O’Riley

To find out about our workshops and other events, please visit www.songsalive.org/calendar.

[sheikhmo]

Slauson Village member on subsets, White conflict & Bunchy Carter during...