By Garrett Caples
I was talking to Beeda Weeda at a listening party for his latest disc Da Thizzness (SMC), when someone sat down at our table. “I want you to meet this man,” Beeda said, introducing me to Charles Johnson, executive director of the Town Business Network.
Founded two years ago as a nonprofit social-activist group to combat Oakland’s spiraling murder rate, TBN has lent its organizational might to a variety of causes, most recently voter registration within the ghetto hip-hop community. To this end, the group has just released its CD, Wake Yo Game Up, a pro-voting compilation including tracks by the likes of NEW Oakland (Mistah FAB, Beeda, and J-Stalin), San Quinn, and even Too $hort himself.
Largely given out at panel discussions and registration events in the hood, and also downloadable at www.wakeyogameup.org, the release aims to speak to the community in its own terms about the importance of casting a vote in these critical times. While voter registration is over for the upcoming election, TBN is still pushing the disc to help get out the vote, working to ensure that people who register actually get to the polls on Nov. 4.
“Historically, the people in the ghetto are least active in the political process,” Johnson said. “Obviously there’s a lot of interest in their voice this year. I was hanging out with San Quinn when the idea came up to make some music around the election, using hip-hop to push the message to go vote.” In short order, Quinn cranked out the anthematic “Fight to Vote,” with its at once angry and incredulous chorus: “We had to fight to vote / sacrifice life to vote / now we got the right and we don’t like to vote?” Even if you’re not part of the target audience, there’s something quite beautiful and powerful hearing Quinn put his signature bark behind such a message, bringing some of that stern righteousness Chuck D did so well.
“There’s a lot of artists out here in the Bay who don’t talk about such things but would like to,” Johnson said. “This gave them the chance to give back to the community and show the Bay has more to it than gangsta and hyphy.”
Still, despite the quick contribution of Quinn, it took Johnson a good year of work to make the disc a reality, given the difficulty of pinning down such a high-profile cast of rappers.
“It was a long, tedious process,” he said laughing. “It took lots of conversations.” Still, the results belie any difficulties in the process. For a group of artists who seldom tackle political issues in so direct and explicit a way, they’re pretty damn good at it. “Vote (Ready or Not)” by 18-year-old Beeda protégé Yung Moses is an impressive plea packaged as popular music, as well as the only explicitly pro-Obama song on the otherwise studious non-partisan disc.
The title track, “Wake Yo Game Up” - which can be downloaded here - is one of the first releases of any sort from NEW Oakland, a supergroup consisting of Mistah FAB, Beeda Weeda, and J-Stalin. An incredible track whose themes span the civil rights struggle to get the vote, possible voter-fraud in the 2000 election, and the relationship between the economy and ghetto life, “Wake Yo Game Up” makes me hope the group will continue developing this conscious streak in their subsequent work.
Beeda, in any case, is among the disc’s first converts to the political process. “I’d never register to vote before,” he confessed. “Taking part in this project made me realize I had to and I did. It actually woke my game up.”
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