ToozDay Absence

If I could only meet one poet who's alive today in the here and now, it would have to be the legendary Miguel Algarin.

It was his book- "Love Is Hard Work"- that inspired me to touch the stage in the first place, back in the Year-Of-Chronological-Paranoia 2000. I was talking about this with a politically-charged Rich Villar last night..

Hey, LouderArts/Acentos team!

I heard you guys caught him at the Nuyo on Tuesday, I am jealous to an insane degree. lol.. anyhow, hope to make more of an effort to catch you crazy mo'fo's on Monday Nights.

NuyoRican Hip Hop Junky



Whats poppin' viewers?



When I was a young cat, I'm talkin' like Junior High School, My

brother and I used to act like we were on-air personalities for an

imaginary radio station that we called "Radio-Off-Tape-On".

That was actually written on the switch that turned the radio off on

our tiny azz boombox and got the tape deck operational, anyways me and my bro did everything.

We did fake commercials, fake songs, fake interviews, we were just

some little nuyorican Brownsville cats that were in love with

anything involved with hip hop.

I was a lil young dude and I just wanted to emulate what I knew about

rap..I used to call myself "Funkmaster Flex", and I named

my younger brother "Hellraiser Richochet". I got my name from hearing

you on the air at WBLS I believe around DJ Red Alerts time.. imagine

how far back that was!

I'm a Nuyorican (from Brownsville/East New York), I'm a spoken word

poet, I'm an emcee, and once upon a time I was the audio-video guy at

Atlantic Records, where the Terror Squad ruled.

At the time I was there, though, I didn't take full advantage of my

position, in retrospect I could've done so much more but I really

wasn't aware of how the odds were stacked against us. As a matter of

fact, it looked as if the doors were swinging wide open for latinos

when the legendary Big Pun went platinum! But here we are, a few

years later, and we're still out of the spotlight.

I believe that we ( latinos ) are still considered background

entities in regards to hip hop.. always the dancer, always the

producer..the graff artist/ promoter/ you-name-it, but rarely do we

get to be the actual performing stars on-stage.



do you feel that the time for

more latinos onstage in hip hop will come, or that our time has

passed? The decisionmakers are all corporate and not from the

public, from what I understand.. what do you think?



Don't worry, my people.. its a rhetorical question ;)