1/8/07, 11:55 am EST

The First Assignment: Krishtine de Leon on Bay Area Hip-Hop

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YEAR OF THE (UNDER) DOG

The Bay Area’s music scene kicks the door down in 2006

On Grove Street and Laguna in the maple-tree lined district of Fillmore, San Francisco, there’s a gathering of young, black men clad in red with gold teeth and dreadlocks with bleached tips. Police cars circle around them with daggers for eyes, willing for an infraction — even the most minor — to bring back to the local precinct. Little babies cling to their teenage mothers, plaits shining in obscene colors and intricate patterns.

Meanwhile, in East Oakland, Booker’s Liquor Store is jam-packed with scrapers and muscle cars with whistle tips. They change locations adeptly, and a man named Pretty Black calls his soldiers to meet at a burger joint on International Blvd. The hyphy train — as it is called — begins, and an endless line of cars zig zag towards the destination. When they arrive, the powerful cars then proceed to dominate the intersection with vehicular acrobatics: figure 8s and donuts filling the streets with thick, sour, black smoke and loud music. Any other day, this intimidating and massive collection of young people from San Francisco to East Oakland would have resulted in two predictable outcomes: a.) someone getting arrested b.) someone getting shot. The outcome was two separate shootings — videos that is — for rap artists who wanted to show the world, and the streets, that making music can be a viable meal ticket and a perfectly-legal celebration of their misunderstood culture.

This year is turning out to be a great year for the Bay Area music scene, much to the surprise of the rest of the world, and no surprise to those planning for this moment for years. After a decade of muffled silence, zero media representation, and a culture stifled and exploited simultaneously, we have arrived. Sound the horns. Ring the bells. And like Too $hort’s newest single, “Blow the Whistle.” The new renaissance of talent — both old and new — from the Bay Area is joining forces to solidify their rightful place in music history.

David Canales, 21, is a Bay Area native and avid fan of rap music. “I’m just glad we finally getting paid for what we been doing for so long. The recognition is the best thing about the Bay Area movement to me right now,” he says, gold grill shining. “I think we gon’ be in the game for as long as we is, ’cause we been lacing the game as long as it’s been going [on], you feel me? We deserve it, man…”

How long exactly? Starting with the Godfather of Bay Area Rap, Too $hort has been rapping for over 25 years with 16 albums under his belt at the age of 40. Then came the Ambassador of the Bay, E-40, who entered the game in 1987 with his family, The Click and is just now getting unprecedented national recognition. Keak Da Sneak, the biggest unsigned hype out of the Bay, was already signed at the age of 14 in ‘93, meting out one of the biggest hits “Keep It On The Real,” with his group 3X Krazy. And last but not least, San Quinn, dubbed “The Young Baby Boy,” was a sophomore in Washington High School when he became a star, ultimately acquiring a Guinness Book World Record for “Most Album Appearances Under The Age of 21.”

The artists, themselves, are not surprised about this newfound attention, and even skeptical about their next moves. Since functioning independently for so long, money never came easily, and they always had to answer to the concerns of their community. “My goal is to get all the majors to come out here to the Bay and pay attention to all this great talent that we have, and that’s my mission. I been winning for years, and I don’t mind other people winning right along with me,” says E-40. Keak Da Sneak, feels a bigger responsibility with his music than landing a major record deal. “I think a lot of people expected me to crash and not uphold this movement. And then a lot of people are trying to capitalize and run with it. I ain’t doing it for me. I got a lot of people to save, families, communities. Because we didn’t have nothing that kept us off the streets when we was growing up,” he says.

San Quinn, sees the economic potential of this renaissance. “I’m a young, black man like Willie Brown was a young, black man and end up being the mayor, and grew up around the corner from where I grew up. The upper class community gotta know that their kids listen to this. We say a lot of things, but look at New York. In between Russell Simmons, Puffy, and Jay-Z, they rep a Billion dollars. Three black men out the gutter.”

It’s more than just music to the artists that hold themselves accountable to the direction of the people they represent. When someone is silent for so long, they have time to think about their next move, and what profound statement they will say when finally being asked to speak. On those corners, with those loud but economically invisible people, what holds them together is a third and often unforeseen option: success, even if it is just for the weekend, in the form of a music video.