Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
"Grappling with a concept as weighty as identity without coming across as pandering or didactic takes mad skill. With its complex web of pointed spoken samples (ranging from gay Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin to political singer/storyteller Utah Phillips to a shockingly indignant Bill Cosby), evocative production (from skipping-stone break beats to fuzzed-out jazz samples), and sick, clever (but rarely preachy) rhymes, Proto-Negroes proves that D/DC is more than well-equipped to handle the challenge -- and to hold its own against whatever the mainstream or the underground throws at it. "
-march 2004
- San Francisco Weekly
"...where other groups have run aground with baroque prissiness and intellectual gobbledygook, DDC has always pulled off its overintellectualism. In fact, once you hear Proto-Negroes, you'll realize that pomo-homo hip-hop, like post-colonial theory, is actually kinda sexy."
-March 2004 - Eastbay Express (Oakland,CA)
"It's a highly literate, polished route that Tim'm West (aka 25 percenter), Juba Kalamka (aka Pointfivefag), Phillip Atiba Goff (the Lightskindid Philosopher) and their colleagues negotiate through 'misty-eyed' Afrocentrism, homophobia and racism. They do it with theoretical lucidity and no sledgehammer politics.
But the really great thing about BourgieBoho is that the music's so good: the Deepdickollective have also served time as performance poets and studio wizards. The deconstructed beats owe something to drum'n'bass minimalism, but just as you lock into a groove, this ensemble surprises with a loop of lush violins. It's an album that sets the agenda, musically and politically, for some time to come."
-February 2004 - New Internationalist Magazine, UK
"Gawd, that group is so gay, and proud of it. These self-defined"BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomos" get the word out to hip-hop haters and enthusiasts. Their lyrics are brainy and political, but their live shows are pure animal energy."
-San Francisco Bay Guardian
2003 "Best Of The Bay"
Readers Choice Award,
Best Hip Hop Group - SF Bay Guardian
"With fierce , hardcore rhymes and grungy , jazz influenced kitchensink production, theres nothing subtlle about this fierce, rising bay area :"homo-hop" quartet."
Summer, 2004 - Colorlines Magazine
"D/DC shows are kinetic displays of rhyme-juggling, often with performers finishing one another's raps before segueing into their own. If the MCs' skills raise some eyebrows, however, their lyrics raise more"-
December,2001 - San Francisco Chronicle
"I've seen Deep Dickollective a bunch of times, and always enjoyed them. But tonight, DDC was something different. Maybe it was the fact that they were on last, and were the culmination of the entire Pe"aceOUT fest thus far. These guys are the intellectual architects of homohop; superb MCing, tight lyrics, presentation and music... it was fucking incredible. Each member of DDC retains their personality; yet collectively, they're massive.They're the quintessential hip hop posse... the energy never let up, and just kept being transferred from person to person until it reached a peak. The freestyles were hot, in case you had any doubts about their abilities. You could not be in that room and not feel a part of them. I can't say enough about DDC... their records are good but live they're something else. "
-Matt Wobensmith,
founder , A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Records
November 2003 - A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Records Website
10. Deep Dickollective, The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes
"Using clever rhymes and an elaborate blend of spoken word samples (from Bayard Rustin, Bill Cosby, Utah Phillips, and others) and break beats, this group of gay hip-hop MCs examines what it means to be black and gay—especially where issues of identity are most unstable."
Matthew Breen, Jan.2005 - Out.com
"it is extremely difficult to incorporate incredible intellect, musical skill, and social clarity into one medium as well is this group has done. the lyrics and the pure aesthetic appeal of the cd could be considered enough on their own, but the combination plus delivery is awe inspiring. be forwarned, this ain't no elevator music!"
--Customer, CDBaby.com - CDBaby.com
Discography
BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo
CD (Sugartruck, 2001)
Them Niggas Done Went And Said...
CD (Sugartruck, 2003)
All Deep Dickollective albums are available at
CDbaby.com
Amazon.com
Itunes.com (search "Deep Dickollective")
Movin' b/w Straighttrippin' (C-Phlavormix)
7" single (Sugartruck 2003)
The Famous Outlaw League Of Proto-Negroes
CD (Sugartruck, 2004)
Live At Wildseed And Mo'
CD (Sugartruck,2005)
On Some Other
CD (Sugartruck 2007)
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Juba Kalamka (pointfivefag) barely subsisting and living in a youth hostel following a December 1998 move to San Francisco from Chicago, takes the last $30 of his Starbucks paycheck and buys two tickets for the 10th Anniversary screening of Marlon Riggs' Tongue Untied at the Castro Theatre (June,1999). Says pointfivefag:
"I'd paid my rent for the next two weeks, and the two tickets left me with $3 till we got tips the next Friday. I'm thinking, I'm in San Francisco, and it's my first pride event. Do I miss this show, or go, be really broke and have something to remember for life? I'm so glad I did."
An erotic poetry reading followed the screening, in which Tim'm T. West (25 percenter) was a presenter alongside Jewelle Gomez, G Winston James and Marvin K. White. Struck by the first open description of queer desire in hip hop culture he'd ever heard, Juba approached West following the reading and exchanged phone numbers. After a week or so of phone tag, the two began hanging out. On one occasion Juba was introduced to Louie Butler, who hosted a series of popular spoken word events in downtown Oakland.
Juba was in the beginning stages of recording what would become his first solo spoken word/hip hop experiment - Pre/tensions, and now had the opportunity to write and perform on a regular basis in a queer-friendly context. Meanwhile, on Stanford's campus, Tim'm made his first connection with Phillip Atiba Goff (lightskindid) a Philadelphia born, Harvard grad/first-year psychology student. Says 25percenter: "In a typical sort of Stanfordish fashion someone asked me, "do you know Phill? He has dreadlocks too, but he's lightskinded" The two began commisserating around Stanford's Campus, the three finally meeting at a Stanford COHO Spoken Word/Hip Hop show. It was at this point that the three realized the intersection of their artistic and cultural sensibilities, and decided to hang out to work together.
Adjourning to a music room on Stanford's campus to jam in a piano room, Tim'm and Juba rapped, sang and scatted while Phil spoke and wailed and played. They came up with the basis for 15-20 songs (a number of which have become BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo), as well as the name Deep Dickollective - a tongue in cheek fun-poke at the proliferation of womanist "punani poet" enclaves in '90s spoken word circles. Encouraging responses from the public following their firts public performance during the Black Gay Letters and Arts Movement's(B/GLAM) 2000 showing Out Festival,
Returning from a radio simulcast of counter-hegemonic-to-the-military/industrial-cultural-production poetry and song, it was over a double cheeseburger and chili fries that Ralowe Trinitroluene Ampu (G-Minus) brought his brand of scathing anarchy into 25percenter's operation. 25percenter was unsure with whether the young and apparently mentally unstable individual (who was dressed as the devil) was just another irrational radical or in fact, a fag. Their first encounter was not the most harmonious, but it was G-Minus' sincere passion for their art of rhyming which proved irresistible and resulting in the near immediate installment in the collective.
Further encounters and performances with G Minus led the group to connect with their pivotal recording opportunity with Dub scientist Russell "ArchieSmooth" Gaddis, a friend of bassist Mitsu Overstreet, who G Minus met in a San Francisco bookstore. Thus began the process of recording the initial D/DC release, at which time the group began re-connecting with several of members their individual communities, including Douglas (Doug E) Eglin, a co-founder of seminal Oakland crew Conflama (who featured on two tracks "Straighttrippin'" and "The Ah-Ah" before his amicable departure to concentrate on solo ventures) and Oakland poet Dazie' R. Grego (Ms. Edge).
In the period leading up to and immediately following the completion of "BourgieBoho" in November 2001, D/DC began securing spot tour dates in a number of local venues, as well as college and university functions around the United States. It was function that The group met Marcus Rene' Van (Mr. ManMan,The Herb With Nerve) a renowned performance poet and filmmaker,and later Jeree Brown (JBRapItUp) a poet/mc drum and bass producer from East Palo Alto.
Both Brown and Van brought important individual performance histories that have been succesfully intergrated into the continually developing and evolving Deep Dickollective universe of artists,and are featured heavily on "The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes" (2004) which was named to Out Magazine's Top Ten Gay Albums of The Year list. D/DC's fifth full length "On Some Other" will be released in early 2006.
Given the impress hip-hop has had on culture internationally, the interventions lyrically and politically of a bunch of queer Negroes is bound to have ripple effects. The point is that D/DC represents a "coming out" in hip-hop about what some of us have known for a long time:
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