The four-decade history of New York hip-hop is a story of crews and cliques, from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to the Wu-Tang Clan to Bad Boy and Dipset. Continuing that legacy for much of this decade has been A$AP Mob, the Harlem collective fronted by A$AP Rocky that brought its Too Cozy Tour to a sold-out Echostage on Wednesday night.
On tour in support of an album whose press campaign spawned fake news, fake reviews and fake corporations shilling fake products, Arcade Fire came to the stage Saturday night with an equal dose of unreality. Introduced as the “undefeated, undisputed, heavyweight champions of the world,” the band made its way to the center of the Capital One Arena floor to an in-the-round stage surrounded by boxing ropes as a Michael Buffer-esque announcer humble-bragged about the band’s countless awards and honors.
Plenty of DJ-producers start record labels. For Sinjin Hawke and Zora Jones, that wasn’t enough. Instead, they would need a multimedia platform to house all their audiovisual work — tracks and mixes, animated 3-D graphics and interactive apps. That platform is called Fractal Fantasy, which since 2012 has been home to the pair’s vision for the future of club music.
‘Where I come from is the beginning of the story for me,” says D.C. rapper Lightshow. “Where I’m going is the narrative.”
Where Lightshow comes from is the neighborhood around 10th Place Southeast in Congress Heights. He was born Larinzo Lambright-Williams, just down the street at what was then Greater Southeast Hospital, and his first two homes were on the street. 10th Place is such a prominent part of his identity that he appends it to his social-media handles and references the block in his lyrics.
When Kate Ross first came out, she would go to lesbian bars and parties by herself. She didn’t exactly get a warm welcome. At the lesbian dance party She Rex, which used to pop up at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room, she says a fellow partygoer took one look at her high heels and long hair and called her a “confused straight girl.”
“I shaved off all my hair and had a mohawk,” she says. “No one questioned me after that.”
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