The Bandwagon has been moving at a good pace. We're making great time on our destination to the top! This coming Monday promises to be an exciting part of the journey.
K-Gaines and Cyph Diggy, the talented Hip-Hop duo known as The Sleepwalkas are celebrating their long awaited release: "Cookie Cutter Cornballs Can't Cut It."The Sleepwalkas release comes simultaneously as their fellow AOK Collective family 2 Hungry Bros and Jersey emcee 8thW1 celebrate the release of the No Room For Dessert album.
Make sure you're in attendance as I debut my newest song, Creator, produced by the homie Ty Real da Rockstar. This uptempo joint PROMISES to move every body in South Paw Monday night!
I just got off the phone with the next “SoSoon Woman of the Month,” miss Charlotte Mishell. And to be honest prior to our talk, I wouldn’t have needed a better reason to write about Charlotte beyond saying “She’s my number one Queens sister.” However, I learned that she and I share some very interesting common bonds. Would you like to hear it, well here it go……..
If you’ve ever read Superman comics or graphic novels, you may be familiar with a character by the name of Bizarro. He is in a word, Superman’s opposite. During our conversation, Charlotte and I realized that we are each others Bizarro versions of one another! Charlotte is to the New York City Hip-Hop scene what I am to the New York City Spoken Word scene; one of the few fairly respected in our “opposite crafts;” kind of a big deal considering you don’t see many emcees at Spoken Word venues and visa versa. If you’ve ever been to some of the more revered Hip-Hop venues in New York, you’ve likely seen the large personality that personality fits into the compact physical frame that is Charlotte. You’ve probably even seen her rock a Spoken Word piece in that same Hip-Hop dominated venue. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that Charlotte is well respected and appreciated in the Hip-Hop scene of New York.
On the converse, I remember earlier in my performance career when I would much rather be at Spoken Word venues over Hip-Hop venues. As a result I think it’s safe to say that I’ve garnered my fair share of respect within the New York City Spoken Word poetry scene.
Interestingly enough in both of our respective scenes, neither of us sit at the nerd table, but we’re definitely not sitting with the cool people either (think Bizarro!) Neither of us like competing; we’d much rather go to a space where it’s more about sharing our talents with other artists and fans alike. But put the battery in either one of our backs and we may do it. Individually we both put Queens on our backs when we’re on and off the scene (with all due respect to ALL Queens emcees and poets.) Here’s another for ya; ask either of us about the best moment ever in our respective lives and we’d both say our respective birthday parties, which were also CD releases featuring performances from our peers in and around the scene. But if all of this isn’t enough, Charlotte currently stands in the building where I once called my elementary school, in the capacity of an 8th grade teacher. What a bizarre world we live in!
The story of Charlotte’s life is in my opinion is even more interesting than the parallels between her and me. A five year old Charlotte used her creative talents to make a book for her mom. Birthday’s and Christmas’ were opportunities for Charlotte to custom make cards for her mom (mom would NEVER accept Hallmark.) Mom wanted Charlotte to be a writer, largely based off of her early realization of her daughters creativity. But young Charlotte couldn’t understand the concept of writing as a career.
Let’s go deeper; mom wanted to be a teacher. A Syracuse University bound Charlotte flirted with education as a major, but didn’t do so well and concluded “not for me.” The Syracuse University graduate Charlotte worked for some time in the broadcast communications, but quickly noticed the bills were not getting paid. She’s been teaching ever since. Bizarre? Charlotte’s take on the matter; “Everything that's supposed to happen always does, no matter how much you try to screw it up."
Adult Charlotte has bigger aspirations though. She doesn’t like working in a system where she and her peers are being used as tools to manufacture complacent human robots, which are provided with just enough education to eventually mold them into worker bees for our hive of a society. It’s to the point where she rendered herself jealous when one of her closest colleagues recently quit.
Charlotte’s role in this artistic realm we live in is to go against the grain. She refuses to accept the barriers that many Hip-Hop and Spoken Word artists choose to embrace, be it proactively or inadvertently. The self proclaimed “Daughter of Hip-Hop” is working on a video. Books are not quite her forte. Her 1st project being the release of the “Love, Charlotte” CD is concrete evidence of aforementioned endeavors. According to Charlotte, “CM (Charlotte Mishell) is not an emcee.” But if you ask me, she does a good job riding the fine line between Spoken Word Poet and Hip-Hop artist. That’s why Charlotte is a SoSoon Woman of the month.
Shout out to the homie Mike Barber from I Wanna Work For Diddy/host of my peoples For The Love Of Poetry's monthly showcase at the Times Square Art Center. I stole the title line from him!!! But it's quite relevant because I have a lot of updates for the peoples, and much of it is centered around BX and BX related entities. So let's get into it.
Shout outs to the homey Conscious a.k.a the Bronx Ubervillan for bringing me on as a feature last month, for The Bonfire monthly showcase at The Bowery Poetry Club. I had the opportunity to rock the stage with the likes of Donny Goines, who is also a BX representative and a huge representative of New York, which is something SoSoon is all about!!!! Lookout for the footage Soon!
Flash forward to the present. I had the opportunity today to do a lot of Bronx related community service. I was on 170th and College Boulevard with G.A.ME which is an organization that started out of Hunter College almost 10 years ago, and has grown to become an international organization. G.A.ME is volunteering at a community garden not to far from the G.A.ME's Bronx headquarters. I put in WORK out there before heading downtown to Boss Tweeds Bar for a Crohn's disease fundraiser. My coworker and good friend Simon's father is currently living with the disease, In preparation for an up and coming marathon, the family put together the event to raise money for the cause. P.S. Simon is a BX resident just to bring relevance back to the topic matter!
Finally I ended the evening in the studio put the finishing touches on a song called Zemira which I will debut next week at The Bronx Museum. A good friend of mine, Ms. Mecca Woods co-wrote a screen play with the aforementioned title with talks about the trials and tribulations of a young woman growing up in The Bronx as she attempts to overcome. This event, which is next week will feature performances from The AMP|Indelible team, including my manager/web designer Timothy Prolific Jones amongst others.
Closing the month out, G.A.ME will be having a Go Green concert at the community garden I volunteered for earlier today, which will be held on the 24th of June and of course your boy Soon will be rocking out.
Who ever said Queens don't have love for The Bronx. I mean The Bronx is my grandmother considering Hip Hop is my mother!!!!
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 04:32PM 
