How do you say ‘real hip-hop’ in Korean?
Wednesday, October 10th, 2007
The second annual BET Hip-Hop Awards festivities haven’t even started yet, and I’m already so over it. Perhaps that sounds a bit blase coming from the music editor. But like any major award show, the weekend surrounding the BET Hip-Hop Awards (hosted in Atlanta) has little to do with music. The corporate-sponsored events; the celebrities, wanksters and wannabes in attendance; the goo-gobs of groupie action — it all adds up to more of a headache than it’s worth.
Blame it on the old man in me, but sometimes it’s a bit disheartening to see how “Hollywood” hip-hop has become. Bah humbug.
So imagine my surprise/relief upon hearing about the Asian Hip-Hop Summit, scheduled to coincide with the weekend’s celebfest. The summit had been going on for five years in L.A. before breaking out in ‘07 to San Francisco, Seattle, NY and now Atlanta. The ATL summit includes two shows — one on Saturday at Dem Saigon Cafe & Bar ($5. 8 p.m. Oct. 13. 4300 Buford Highway), and a second on Tuesday at Lenny’s ($5. 8 p.m. Oct. 16. 486 Decatur St.).
There’s a long lineup of acts from Atlanta and elsewhere on the bill, including Jackie Chain (a Southern-styled rapper with a pimplike persona), Bruce Leroy (a neo-soul band fronted by an Asian rapper), R&B songstress Joy Tolentino and the self-produced Kato (pictured in the above photo from his MySpace page).
As the names might suggest, these are Asian-American acts — which means most of them rap/sing in English without even the hint of an accent. I had a few other questions MySpace couldn’t answer so I hit up the organizer, Kublai Khan, myself via e-mail.
Mainly, I was curious about how deep the Asian-American hip-hop scene is in Atlanta. I also wanted to know if Khan had attempted to reach out to BET since both events are jumping off at the same time.
You can read his full response below the jump. (more…)
