Social
Activism in Hip-Hop — New York’s ReadNex Poetry Squad
By Peter Aaron
Compton.
Brooklyn. Detroit. Hotlanta. Philly. All undisputed hard-hitting
hotbeds of rap and hip hop. But upstate New York?
“It’s
definitely happening up here, even though it doesn’t get heard
as much,” says Decora of Hudson Valley-based rap and spoken-word
crew ReadNex Poetry Squad. “There’s an extreme amount
of creativity.
and talent in places like Newburgh, Albany, Watertown. But up here
it’s not [densely populated] like it is in the big cities,
people are just more spread out.”
In
fact, the grad student-dominated group—male MCs Decora, Cuttz
El Colombiano, and Latin Translator, lady rapper FreeFlowin, all
24, and male DJ H20, 21—is itself a geographically dispersed
entity: All of the guys live in either New Paltz or Newburgh, while
FreeFlowin resides in Brooklyn. But throughout its seven-year history,
mere physical distance has never kept the band from its chosen role
as a message-bringing, social-activist juggernaut.
Decora,
Cuttz, Latin, and FreeFlowin met as students at Middletown’s
Orange County Community College in 2001. “A couple of us were
part of a community outreach program that did things like organize
basketball
tournaments and field trips for students, stuff like that,”
Decora recalls. “We also ran an open-mic night on campus,
which Latin used to host, and it was really popular. The four of
us all used to hit that all of the time and we were all really into
poetry and hip hop, and we all wanted to use those things to work
on social change. So we said, ‘We should start a group.’”
The
ReadNex released their first CD, F.O.S.S.L., on the band’s
own Debefore Records label in 2003, and took their high-energy live
show to stages in the Hudson Valley and New York City. CONTINUE....
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