B+ Interview

Written by Ashknuckles on Friday, 12 June 2009 16:14

Brian Cross is fierce, not America’s Next Top Model fierce, what I’m talking about is intellectually fierce; culturally aware fierce; politically fierce; manifest destiny fierce, that kind of fierce. Throughout the organic birth of the Los Angeles hip hop music scene, Brian Cross (a.k.a. B+), has been there to witness, capture, and publish the music's historical moments in time.
Brian and I come from very different backgrounds. He uses words like “diaspora” and “syncretic” in his explanations when talking about hip hop; I just know that Hip Hop saved my life. He is the first kid to graduate from college out of his family; I am the only kid that didn’t attend a 4 year, or become a doctor. One thing is for certain, we both are passionate about music, Hip Hop, culture and history.
B+ for Dilla

B+ is an important artist, not only to the Hip Hop culture, but to Latin American, African and Brazilian cultures as well. He is important because everything he does is informed by Hip Hop, and he does it on an elevated cerebral level. At the end of the day, we needs artists like Brian Cross to add to the entire spectrum. Hip Hop and music culture in general, need people like B+ because he is one of the few photographers that have the vision, the drive, and the stamina to take the art and music [of Hip Hop culture] into the academic, intellectual, and fine art levels of society. The fine art world is a much more critical platform to stand on. B+ is that person standing on that platform, bringing his ideas on a platter, bringing his well thought out, well executed, well informed projects and concepts. It is necessary that someone is doing it, and doing it well (no pun intended). Similar to that of the Baiana women he speaks of in this interview, when elaborating on the birth of Samba music, B+ is a role model. Someone that has contributed to the culture, changed history, and has the capability to cultivate more space for growth with distinct interests in mind.

Letta Mbulu or Miram Makeba?
Miriam Makeba

Lauryn Hill or The Fugees?
Lauryn Hill.

Bahamadia or Guru?
Bahamadia

Ms. Dynamite or Roots Manuva?
Roots Manuva

Latifah or Lyte?
Lyte

Oaktown 357 or the Wee Poppa Girls
Oaktown 357

Jean Grae or What What? (same person, no sh*t!)
What what..

Ursula Rucker or Saul Williams?
Saul Williams.

ASHKNUCKLES: What is Hip Hop to Brian Cross?

BRIAN CROSS: The music has changed a lot in the last 5 years, but, Hip Hop for me is the most important cultural result of the last generation, like 25 years. It manifests in many many different ways but it is the most recent, most current, most complicated, syncretic, culture work that produced out of the African diaspora for this generation. It’s many things. It’s a way to understand the world now. It wasn’t always like that, but I think it is now. It’s not always something that I’ll sign off on, sadly, there was a time when it was. There was a time in the mid 90’s where I would fight to the death—even for things I didn’t personally agree with - like a lot of the misogynistic aspect, but I would still fight anybody being critical of Hip Hop. Whereas, now, I don’t think I would. There’s so much stuff in the culture, or purporting to be in the culture now that I couldn’t sign off on, wouldn’t sign off on. [The]excessive consumerism, the Nihilism of it, the self destructive aspect of it, the hyper-sexuality. In the last 10 years, there have been a lot of things that have changed in the music - or in the culture - since it’s become really mainstream that aren’t as much of interest to me. At the same time, it informs everything that I do. I think Mos Def said it best, “Don’t ask where hip hop is going, ask where are you going?” I feel like from spending the 90’s paying dues, it’s with me. I don’t have to pray every day, and it’s still with me. I don’t have to practice Hip Hop everyday, I feel like Hip Hop…somehow…I’ve made the osmosis a little. I’m part of it now, I’ve contributed enough…

AK: What are your thoughts about the climate of the Hip Hop music scene or movement here in Los Angeles?

B+: As far as the mainstream - what the mainstream has done to Hip Hop music and the culture is largely negative. I think you can put a mark in the ground and say before the Chronic it was one thing, and after the Chronic it started to become something else. By the 2000’s, now it’s really become like…it’s a whole new generation of kids, a whole new generation of interests. To me, it’s kind of become a stand in for something. Some of the worst features of turn of the century American culture you could say, are perfectly visible in Hip Hop. Which is sad to say. In terms of greed, in terms of violence, in terms of subjugation of different peoples, in terms of “I’m not the sucker, you’re the sucker” type of mentality, and all of those kinds of things. But it wasn’t it like that, you know, hip hop was always better to me when it was discursive. And I feel like in the last 10 years it’s become very didactic. It’s come to mean one thing. I don’t think it ever meant one thing. I don’t think in the park it meant one thing. In the 90’s, it didn’t mean one thing. It was Nas, or was it? It was OC, or was it? It was Ras Kass, or was it? But it was never one thing. It was discursive. Whereas now, the real discourse, it doesn’t happen any more. Now it’s the old KRS One thing, whoever has the most record sales, whoever has the most power, it really is that now, and sadly the culture has taken a big hit because of it.

The second part of the question is about Los Angeles. The interesting thing about L.A. is that, there is always is this sort of urge to be outside of the mainstream here. Maybe its because, literally, we share the city with Hollywood. It goes back to WW2, the black arts movement here, it goes back to Horace Tapscott, Billy Higgins, and people like that, the Watts Prophets, people who weren’t interested really in the kind of mainstream trappings. Even NWA, you can say is part of that. I don’t think they weren’t ever interested, as a group, they weren’t interested in the kind of mainstream. They weren’t trying to be, like, you know pop icons. They were trying to change things. They were trying to open doors for cats. And for a kind of descriptive narrative form that didn’t exist for in pop music at that moment. Somehow in LA, when you look at people like what’s been happening over here over in the last 3 or 4 years, the whole Low End Theory, the whole Brain Feeder, Flying Lotus, Ras G, even Gaslamp, like that whole new generation of cats that are coming through on some edgier underground, Blu, even the Build an Ark stuff. It’s still part of the same trajectory, we’re just finding different ways to do it. Finding ways to do it that ask questions, as opposed to provide fake answers. It never ceases to amaze me, I always feel optimistic about the culture here. It’s just one of those things. I always felt that kind of city pride and I never felt like it went away. Whether it was Madlib carrying the torch, whether it was Dilla deciding to move out here. There’s something out here where there’s a little bit of space that people don’t feel that they have in New York to be outside for a second. I think you need that. The way New York functions is, it’s like everyone on top of each other. It doesn’t seem like there’s room for people to go outside or think outside the box for a second. Whereas in LA, I feel optimistic. Even the mainstream out here it doesn’t bum me out as much as the some of the other stuff that’s going on. Some of the stuff from the South, some of the stuff from New York. Whereas out here, The Game, I’m not going to change the station if I hear it, it’s super main stream music, but it’s not God awful.
B+2

AK: How much do you think your family played a part in the fundamental growth of your success as an artist?

B+: In terms of the kind of day to day aesthetic aspect of it my work, my family plays very little roll, they didn’t really know what I was doing. I was living 6000 miles away from home. But in terms of fundamentally, in terms of the support needed to actually be able to do something like this, I couldn’t have done it without [them]. I come from a working class, basically, maybe lower or middle class family, my dad had a decent job. I was the first person out of my whole extended family ever to go to college. Without my dad and my mom, in very different ways, without them being completely, in at best, being able to support…well it’s a double edge sword. They were super supportive, but that made me not want to not fuck it up. I was the first kid out of our family to go to college, my parents didn’t want me to just do art. My parents were like “But you’re good at math, why don’t you just do architecture…” I didn’t like architecture. So we came to this compromise where I would do industrial design. So I did industrial design for a year. And then, I didn’t like it. So I wrote this really long letter to my parents explaining why I was gonna switch to do fine art. So my Dad came to me and goes, “Ok I have two questions for you. First question is, are you cool with the idea that you’ll never be secure financially? That’s OK with you?” And if you ask an 18 year old that kind of question, they’re all going to all give you the same answer which is “Yeahhh fine!” Now that I’m 43, maybe I should have thought a little more seriously about that question. But, I’m still cool with it, and I’m still not stable financially. The 2nd question was “I don’t give a f*ck why you decide to do it, I don’t give a f*ck if your standing here right now telling me you want to be a garbage collector. If you really think you can be the best garbage collector in your world, and you really are committed to that, then I’m cool with it. So, if you really think you have a chance, that field is so competitive, you’re either the number one or number two guy…or your not working…and do you think you have a chance?” Again, naively, I said, “Yeah” In the end I didn’t even know I wanted to be a photographer. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. [He said] We will underwrite you but this is your commitment to us, that you’re going to be okay, financially you’ll be able to figure it out, and you will be the best you can possibly be. It’s come a long time since I took money from my Pops, but I still feel like that’s part of the responsibility I have to my family. I think that a lot of my drive comes from that, a lot of my self discipline. The guilt I get if I’m not working. I never take a holiday. A holiday to me is what we just did. Out of the 3 1/2 weeks that we were out, I don’t think there was one day when we didn’t go to shoot something. I come back and I’m refreshed, and I have new ideas, and I bought some records.

AK: What are your thoughts on women in Hip Hop?

B+: The minority within the minority. It’s always been a difficult thing. To me, Hip Hop is part of the Diaspora tradition. If you look at a lot of the traditions coming out of West Africa, not all [but a lot], women don’t touch the drums, for example. Hip Hop music is built around drums. The traditional roles within African culture for women isn’t making the music. There’s other things that women do. I think that’s unfortunate. I think that’s not the way it is if you look at other diaspora parts of the culture. If you look at Samba, that was one of the points of BrazilianTime, that samba was born out of a culture that was at moment illegal in segregated Brazil, the turn of the century. The only people that fostered it, were the Baianas, they call them, which were the elder women in the Afro Brazilian community . The ones that are the fruit sellers but they’re also the Mae de Santos, the spiritual, the mothers of the saints. The whole point of Braziliantime, and the point I like to repeat. These cats would get together, and they would make this music, which is a kind of hybrid form of Brazilian music. At first it wasn’t even called Samba, it was a new urbanized kind of rhythm that they were making. And the social conditions were remarkably similar to the Bronx in the 70’s. Interestingly enough, these Mae de Santos, these Baianas, these women, these fruit sellers, also did another illegal activity which is candoble, they were the spiritual leaders of the community. They would always have a space in their house for performing ceremonies. And they opened up that ceremonial space in their house for young Samba musicians. And that space then, by virtue of that space existing, in these economous little spaces existing, this culture and this music was able to grow. What’s interesting as it grew, Samba made room for the Baianas. There is no Samba school that doesn’t have it’s Baiana wing. There’s a wing for the elder women, and there’s a place for the elder women always in Samba. That means different things, it’s a very very different situation for a 17 year old man who’s angry, who feels like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, to get up with a mic in his hand, in front of a room of other 17 year old men who feel like they’re angry, and the world’s weight is heavy their shoulders. But [what] if that room also has 20 women, varying ages from the last 60’s to the early 70s? Take The Good Life (root of the Hip Hop movement in L.A.) You can underestimate, till the cows come home, the role that B.Hall played in that, but it was fundamental to the way the Good Life evolved, it’s so important. That is the problem for me so much of the time. There is 2 problems with Hip Hop music as I see it. One is, there’s a profound imbalance in terms of women. Profound, it permeates everything, it’s like the unwritten. And the 2nd thing is, as far as music goes, [Hip Hop] has the worse case of lead singer disease. In rock they call it “lead singer disease”…Well hip hop is based on that, that is not how it was to begin with. Them dudes weren’t the lead singers. The lead singer was guy with the records. As it evolved, the fundamental, social, personal, kind of problems evolved. So yeah, you can’t downplay it, and you can’t emphasize it enough. At the same time, it’s almost like the air we breath. Its not something you can put entirely at the feet of the pioneers…but at the same time its all pervasive in the culture.

AK: Who are some of the women in hip hop that you shot or worked with? What were they like? What woman in hip hop did you really enjoy working with?

B+: Back in the day I shot all the L.A. females from Yo yo, to Urban Props, to Sin, I had a really good relationship with Lauryn Hill, Lauryn Hill is amazing. When I met her, the acting thing was starting to percolate a little bit. She was still at NYU. And she was in a group. They were all living in one house, like a proper immigrant household that had the rice and beans on all the time. Mad people sleeping on the floor. All Haitian people and they had the studio in the basement. She lived a mile or two away, she definitely came from 2 parent, middle class household. She was definitely a star of the show. A big part of the reason why they were given a second chance after that 1st record was because she had other things going on. Like , Mos Def could make a lot of dud records, and he’ll still have a record deal, because Mos Def is a star regardless, whether he raps or not. We were cool. We got along good. I super liked working with her. Really sweet, kinda cool person. She would kinda open herself up to me a little bit as far as like feeling insecure about this and that, beautiful as she was, people don’t see themselves that way. And so it was cool. Then Sheena, at Rap Pages at the time where I was working, had this idea to do a photo issue. She wanted to put a woman on the cover, and she wanted the woman to be Shiva, and she would have all the elements of hip hop in all of her different hands. But, the trick was we had to paint her blue, this is kinda before photo shop, I mean photo shop existed but it wasn’t like funky phat graphics, so she had to be naked, and we had to paint her blue.

Jamrocks B+

AK: Your recent work involves you traveling out of town to explore other places, often times to third world countries. Does that perspective you gain from traveling alter the way you see poverty situations here in Los Angeles? Or do you still feel that “poverty is poverty.”

B+: I always try, as best I am able, to stay connected to what’s happening here. Whether it is at Nickerson, or Jordan Downs, or its in East Los, wherever there’s crisis, trouble, and problems in Inglewood with the police department right now. The Oscar Grant thing, to me these things are all related. Ever since I was in my late teens I’ve always had an issue with Liberalism for want of a better way of describing it. Liberalism to me can be very very good. Many people believe themselves to be liberals because they believe it’s a way of them attempting to understand the plight of others and to have an empathy for the plight of others. Too often Liberalism means you’ll run over a homeless dude on the way to your benefit for the children of Tibet. Too often that’s the case, Especially white middle class liberalism. It’s frightening how blind how people become to the ground and conditions in front of them. The only reason I do those kind of traveling is to try and get a better perspective on what’s going on here. To try and understand other ways of thinking about things like poverty, hunger, cultural collapse, collapse of the family. I’m interested to see answers they have in Brazil, in Cuba, or Columbia. Like I was saying about the Baianas in Samba, this country is too insular. We’re part of a continent here. A continent we don’t know anything about. Most people think of Mexico as Ensenada, and the whore houses of Tijuana. I’m not trying to be facetious [but] unless you are Mexican and have a connection there, that’s about as much experience as a lot of people have in Mexico, or some resort in Acapulco or Cancun. As it turns out, its one of the richest and diverse cultures on the planet. It’s an extraordinary country. And most people don’t have a clue. Most people have a f*cked up attitude about the people that come from there. And [they're] opposed to being open and learning, and trying to understand, most people don’t even bother. To me it’s a part of considering yourself North American that I really find abominable. And even, being critical of Hip Hop. Don’t think rhyming started in the Bronx. There’s people who have been rhyming competitive improvisational rhyming against each other while they make rhythms on a pandero or a tambourine since the 1590’s in Brazil. That’s the first recorded account of it. And it probably existed before that, it probably came from North Africa. But in the Americas, people have been battle rhyming against each other since the 1590’s in the Northern part of Brazil. So Stop It. And stop trying to think there are some…Yes there are things that are specific to the organization of New York at that time. And obviously there are things that are specific that are definitely American about it--North American United States culture about it. This is the whole diaspora trajectory thing to this whole thing. It needs to be in balance. Too often people are right off the International component. Herc (Kool Herc) wasn’t from the United States, Herc was Jamaican. These are mundane facts that anyone who knows, knows. People don’t live that reality. Cultural nationalism is a very dangerous thing. I’ve practiced this myself as an Irish person. The kind of nationalism I believe in is where you are as critical of your culture as you are proud of it.
Madlib by B+

AK: You published a book called "It’s Not About a Salary", explain the title and what it means.What was T-Love’s involvement in that project?

B+: The original title of the book was "There’s a Riot Going On." I always thought of that album from Sly and the Family Stone…somehow it meant so much to me at that time in terms of Black California culture. And I thought it was just a great title for a record. And then 1992 happened, and then there was really a riot going on, and I was like, I can’t call it that. What I liked about “It’s Not About a Salary” was, it was a line from KRS, who for me, part of my getting into Hip Hop in the late 80’s was around KRS. We’re around the same age, he grew up in the streets of New York, I always thought here was something brilliant about that line. It kinda spoke to me. At that time, Hip Hop was a cottage industry kind of. But it was one of those things that for a lot of kids of color, particularly, was their ticket out of salaried world. Whether it was the salaried world of McDonald's, salaried world get a shit job at some Century city mail room and try and work your way up, whatever the limited set of options that existed for people at that time. “It’s Not About a Salary” was kind of a sense of like “I’m not sure what this shit is about, but I’m sure it’s definitely not about this…” And then there’s the full on part of the equation in which NWA has used it as part of a scratch hook. I’m into the idea of titles that can encapsulate several different things at the same time., like Ghost Notes. So it just works. Naming to me is super important. And the subtitle is just “Rap, Race and Resistance in Los Angeles.” At that time, it was all about the 3 word phrases…moderism, post modernism, and…something else. Rap, Race, and Resistance.
The second part of the question, T-Love. The book is framed by an essay by me, and an essay by Reagan Kelly. My essay was kind of a more general overview, like a personal version, and attempt at a history of hip hop in Los Angeles, or an attempt to kinda frame what the oral history that your about to read. How would Horace Tapscott fit in to it, how would Roy Porter fit into it, how would DJ Quick fit in to it. Attempt to join some docs, make some links, and set out a series of positions around the music. Reagan was a woman I worked with at the time that was at Cal Arts with me, who was really a partner in many ways in the whole project and helped get amazing support. We lived in the same apartment. She was just as enthusiastic about hip hop music as I was. Her whole interest was in the invisible underclass of Los Angeles, which is the Latino underclass in Los Angeles. She grew up in San Marino. She use to go to high school and just bug out, before she would even get up in the morning the streets would be swept, the pools were clean, the garden was manicured, the kids were fed, and you got up and you wouldn’t even see them. She was super concerned with that. Her essay was about particularly West Coast Latin Hip Hop that was burgeoning around Kid Frost, around Proper Dos. And then I just kind felt like it needed an insiders voice that could describe the scene from the perspective of an MC. I always thought T-Love was a really talented writer, thinker, woman, artist, very go getter, very pro-active. She wanted to write, and so I kinda pitched her on the idea of writing the afterward. There’s all this talk and history, and loose stuff, and there’s the photos of “the now.” But, u never get someone actually describing what it’s like to be the heart beating inside an MC, so she wrote that.
Omar by B+

AK: I read in the book “Cover Story” by Waxpoetics that Eazy E asked you to teach him how to shoot photos. What was that experience like?

B+: Eazy E was the first person to ever actually hire me to do an album cover. I’d never been hired to do an actual cover before. I had shot Freestyle Fellowship for Inner City Griots and it was used inside. I shot House of Pain for their record and it was used inside but never actually the cover. He gave me a shot without a portfolio or nothing. I did it. And we kinda became friends. We met because I interviewed him for “It’s not about a Salary." We kinda clicked, he gave me his phone number and he said call me. I think he was really key, and a really really smart smart guy. I had this theory, that he thought what had happened with Toddy T and Schooly D. said f*ck the model of signing of Epic, and cleaning up your act and wearing nice outfits. Lets just be raw and sell more [as long as] we can keep our hustle up. Basically he figured out the financial model that Master P and Cash Money road the coat tails of afterwards. The genius at the beginning of that shit for me, well here’s two, Too Short is one of them and Eazy E is the other. Eazy is is way heavier as a financial model than Too Short. So I would call him and ask him these mad questions like “Why did you sign to Priority? Was it because they could flip the records quicker?” Just mad sh*t, cuz I was just trying to figure it out. And we kinda became friends, and I would see him at the club. And from time to time he would hire me to go to record release parties and take promo pictures or whatever. And that’s how I was living. That was my day-to-day money at that time. Got the job on the record cover. I was the photographer for Atban Clan. Did the Blood of Abraham. And then he found his next NWA, and it was Bone Thugs N’ Harmony. And he really wanted to be involved in the kind of image making part of the process. Like how they look, how are they are going to present themselves to the world. He went out and bought himself an expensive camera. Film. This was the mid 90’s, like 94. But of course he didn’t have a clue. So the deal was, the publicist called me and said “Eazy wants to be the photographer for Bone Thugs N’ Harmony, but he doesn’t really know how to do it. So he wants to hire you to do it, but he’ll be your assistant.” And so I was like OK. And it was great actually. You know, he’s the president of a record company, he drives in a B12 Mercedes. The guy’s a millionaire already, hands down, easy. And he’s there like popping me rolls of film, funny, just like into it, you know. There was some pretty mad people hanging out him at the time. He definitively had a really strong interests in pornography, like a very strong connection with the Black porno community at the time. But he was interested in making images. So we hung out, and I showed him how to make a camera.

AK: How did you feel during the time of Eazy E’s passing and what was that like?

B+: It was the first time where somebody that I felt I was pretty close died, [he] died so suddenly and so tragically that it like, it wrecked me. I didn’t want to go to the funeral. I really, I really,…yeah I cried. It was hard. As different as we were, I’m Irish, I’d only been here for a year, heavy accent, I had this book…and he liked the book. He liked it, Ice Cube really liked the book, even Jerry Heller like the book. You know when you just click with somebody, he thought we were cool. He would ask me about Ireland, you know, friends, homies. Sheena and the Poetess use to have a house. They had this big party. It was kinda between Christmas and New Years, I think. Everybody was there, and I was here, and he was there. So we ended up chilling and we’re talking. And it was one of those things where the light was really nice, and I remember looking and going like yo…like it’s just dope that like.. it was nice to see a dude that like…he didn’t flash or nothing, but you could tell he looked after himself, and that he had enough money to look after himself properly, and he eats good. He really seemed like he was, he was shiny that day, he was giving off the energy. That was the last time I seen him. It was like a month and a half later. The first thing was like his asthma was acting up, he’s in the hospital. Then it was like whoa it’s really bad, he’s got bronchitis, he's really sick. But you know it’s like he has asthma and it’s kinda like it’s respiratory stuff he’s not gonna die. And the next Thursday or Friday I get a call they were having a press conference he was HIV positive. Two weeks later he was dead. Eazy E didn’t seem unhealthy to me. The last time I saw him, he looked amazing. I don’t know, there’s all kinds of theories about that sh*t. I don’t know what happened. For me it was a big loss.

AK: What are your current projects that we can expect to see from you next?

B+: Timeless round 2, in conjunction with the release of the 3 DVD set from round 1…Mulato, Verocai, and Suite for Ma Dukes. Very exciting actually. It’s gonna be incredible. Some really really high powered people want to mix Suite for Ma Dukes. That’s very new news. In the meantime, Quantic will be in town July 4th. And we’re gonna do this thing at the Independent Theater where we’ll show this 30 minute documentary and this music video. [Also] there will be a party on the roof, lots of Colombian, and Brazilian[music]. Towards the end of the year, I’m going to stop traveling and try to make Ghost Notes into a book. It needs to be out there now, it’s time. It’s been 16 years since “It’s Not About a Salary.”

For more information about Brian Cross and his work, visit http://www.mochilla.com/

Images courtesy of B+

By Ashknuckles

Tags: