Bounce Beat Baby: My Life Through The Sound of Go-Go

By MALIIK OBEE

Go-Go is to the Washington D.C. area what Grunge is to Seattle or Hip-Hop is to the South Bronx. The definitive sound of Chocolate City has been heard worldwide thanks to pioneers like Chuck Brown, E.U and Junkyard Band. But Go-Go has managed to stay true to it's roots, a genre of music that nearly remains inclusive and underground to it's true fans. Over the last five decades, the sound and style of go-go has continue to evolve. Here is the perspective of the bounce-beat era of go-go from author Maliik Obee, who moved from New York City to the Washington D.C. area as a child and has seen go-go have a major impact on his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MALIIK OBEE
• Release date: Oct 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386106265

Book preview

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1  Pots & Pans

Chapter 2  Bladensburg All Hail tO THEE

Chapter 3  Morgan State University

Chapter 4  Rap Is for bammaz

Chapter 5  Coming Into My OWN

Chapter 6  Their Go-Go vs Our Go-Go

Chapter 7  The ART OF STAMPING

Chapter 8  Maryland Bammaz

Chapter 9  landova takin ova!

Chapter 10  fuck jack johnson

Chapter 11  r.i.p shirts from iverson

Chapter 12  where do we go from here

1

Pots & Pans

I’d barely unpacked my bags when I went roaming my new neighborhood. It was the summer of 1999, and with every step I took in this concrete jungle, my eyes took in a new world. It’d only be a matter of time before my ears would change my life. I’d soon find out that there was more to Washington D.C. than the White House. The brash, cockiness of being a pure-blooded New Yorker runs through my blood, even though I barely spent half of my life there. I was born and partially raised in Queens, Rosedale to be exact. I was born to Robin Obee and Marshall Newby, an ignited flame of love prematurely put out. I can only vividly remember one encounter with my father, Christmas of 1994. The Sega Genesis was the biggest thing since sliced bread at the time, and I got it. I’d go on to get plenty of gifts over holiday seasons throughout my life, but that moment with both of my creators I’d covet forever. It didn’t last long, as it’d be the last memory I’d have with Marshall.The void of a man in my life was filled by several, in the form of my uncles. My mother was one of 10 children birthed by my grandmother Gloria Obee. Big families were the norm back then, and in the Brooklyn streets that she raised them in, it was a survival tactic of sorts. Despite being raised by a single mother, I never got the idea that she ever struggled in my early upbringing. I never went without anything I needed, and she always found a way to get the things I wanted. But with that came an understanding of appreciation, and that I must earn the things I was given. My aunt Denean was my grandmother’s second-youngest child, and my mom’s best friend. She lived with us at the first apartment that my mom had of her own, on 147th Road. We called her Neana, and I won’t pick favorites and say she was my favorite aunt, but we had a special connection for as long as I can remember. We’d joke and play games and sing songs on the three-block walk to Troop Memorial Preschool on 243rd Street. My mother worked overnight for Time Warner Cable, and when I came home, she’d be there. We always had a great bond, especially with me being her only child. When we weren’t reading, playing or doing some other activity fit for a small child, we were taking trips. Working at Time Warner offered plenty of perks, like sitting in the press box for a New York Knicks game, or free tickets to Six Flags: Great Adventures in New Jersey. I’ve always been a fast learner, and after completing first grade with flying colors at P.S. 138, the school offered to allow me to skip the second grade. But it didn’t last a week, I missed my friends, and while I was certainly smart enough, I didn’t feel like I fit. My mother didn’t object, and allowed me to go back. My best friend growing up was Stanley, who lived around the corner from the school on 144th Ave. We formed a bond over basketball before school and during recess, but after school, Stanley was my partner in crime in running the streets. My Grandma and a few uncles and aunts lived on the same street, and when I turned 7, I started going over there after school until my mom got off.

I rushed home to finish my homework and play Knockout Kings on Playstation with my uncles or watch Zoom on PBS and Angry Beavers on Nickelodeon. I was always a curious child, and Stanley only made this worst. I’d hang out with him at his house, and play video games with him. His older brother was in the streets, a member of the LB Fam gang. This stood for Lost Boyz, yes, like the rap group from Jamaica side of Queens. As is with big brothers in the street living fast, the younger brother loses their innocence pretty early playing catch-up. We didn’t always chill at his house; we often would go up to 243rd street. This was a main street for the neighborhood, with a grocery store, barber shop, liquor store; you know the black community essentials. I soon discovered that dudes from rougher neighborhoods would come down to Rosedale to get at the girls. They’d hang out on this street, selling drugs or just enticing us lil dudes to do shit for kicks and giggles. I’d tell my grandma I was going to the library, which was on the corner, and I’d be out back hanging with some guys 10 years older than me. I still had to be back around that corner by a certain time, so I’d check my little watch periodically. I never was a bad kid, but I was the sneakiest honor roll student there was. Around the time I was eight, my mom got serious with a man. I knew it was serious, because she would ask me hypothetical questions about what I’d like in a father and the likes. I’d never seen my mother with any man intimately besides my father. Until this year, I didn’t even know she was dating Rick, our old landlord when we briefly lived in Cambria Heights. His name was Milton, and he lived all the way in Washington, the Nation’s Capital. They’d been talking pretty seriously, and she deemed it the appropriate time to meet him. I’ll never forget the bright gap-toothed smile he gave me when we got to Chelsea Pier for our little outing. We hit it off immediately, and he’d come back to New York a few more times. Towards the end of fourth grade, my mother started selling me the dream of moving down to D.C. Milton had a spot uptown off of 14th Street, in the Columbia Heights area. But for my mom, she was intent on that being temporary. She had her mind set on moving to Silver Spring in Montgomery County. She sold me on schools that gave each child their own computer. Remind you, this was 1999, and I frequented the library to use the internet, which was still fairly a new concept. I had my first girlfriend that year, Trisha, a pretty West-Indian girl. With about two weeks left in school, my friend Kevin decided he wanted her to be his girl. The class proposed we fight over her. This would be the first and only time I’d fight over a woman. I’ve never been a violent person, but I do consider myself a decent fighter. Needless to say, I beat Kevin’s ass real bad after school. I’d psyched myself up in school that I wasn’t about to lose, and luckily I didn’t. The class ridiculed Kevin the next day, making him sit at the end of the lunch table. It didn’t take long for him to want a rematch, and I knew I had to send a statement. Soon as the bell rang at 3, we all stepped out into the schoolyard.

You wanna fight me? You wanna fight me bitch?  I mean, he set up the fight, so I don’t know why he wasn’t prepared. He was taking forever to take off his book bag, so I hit him before he could get the second strap off. I kept hitting him until a parent broke it up, and proceeded to run the three blocks home before the principal made her way over to us. My mom was set on moving at the end of the school year, and the house had been packed up. She expedited the process, deciding to move with three days of class remaining. I’d packed all my things out of my cubby into my trash bag and book bag as I watched Kevin eyeing me on and off. I felt like a punk, because I knew he’d try to fight me again on the last day of school, and here I was making a great escape. But I also felt that unless he and someone else where to jump me, the outcome would be the same; third time’s the charm. When I threw my stuff in my mom’s trunk and looked back at my school, I realized life as I knew it was about to drastically change. My uncle Darryl and Milton’s cousin J.R. loaded up the U-Haul and followed my mom’s car to D.C., getting drunk the whole way down. When we got to D.C., they unloaded the truck in Milton’s one bedroom apartment. We explored the city as a trio for the next month, doing things a real family would do, and I was happy.

On the 4th of July, you can always count on fireworks, cookouts and bullshit. We went down to the Mall on Washington to enjoy the festivities. As the sun set, the fights began, and I quickly learned where I was at and who was running the show.  Soufwest! Fuck What Ya Heard!  I’m not sure who the opponent was, but they weren’t a formidable one, as bruised bodies lay on the gravel of the mall, while others limped away, leaving their friends behind. We got home safe and sound, but my mother’s car wouldn’t fare so well. The tiny street we stayed on had cars on both sides, forcing a responsible driver to pay attention to avoid hitting anyone. In the wee hours of the morning, a drunken Mexican man came barreling down the street, hitting multiple cars, including my mother’s. Despite being from the hood, my mother despises hood shit. And that incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We didn’t have to move to Silver Spring, but we couldn’t stay here. Milton’s family still laid claim to the house that he and his sisters and cousins had grown up in Kentland on East Ridge Drive. Arrangements had been worked out, and we packed up again, headed for Landover, Maryland.The two-level home was more than enough space for the three of us. But it didn’t take long for my mom’s partner-in-crime Aunt Neana to move down from New York to stay with us. Shortly thereafter, so did my grandmother. Kentland was architecturally and agriculturally different from my former homes in Queens and D.C., but I knew I was in the hood from the beginning. Milton had grown up here, and we’d always run into somebody he knew. Up the street was the Martin Luther King Shopping Center, with the Belle Haven Apartments to its left. We’d take the short walk there to get a haircut, or drive if we were headed to Shopper’s Supermarket for food. I’d been to the park to shoot hoops with him, played videogames and more, but I hadn’t made any friends yet. I didn’t even know how to talk to these niggas.Words like Youngin, Joe and Bamma were foreign to me when I heard them in the barber shop. I’d talk only to the barber in a low tone in an attempt not to draw attention to my accent. When August came, I was taking a walk down the street to the gas station one afternoon, when I saw an abundance of people at the field behind Columbia Park Elementary. The sign on the gate read Kentland Cougars Football: Sign-Up Today. I’d played football in the schoolyard dozens of times in New York, but never for a team, never with equipment. I watched the kids in awe as they ran drills and plays without equipment. I listened to the coach’s scream, and parents chatter about whatever. And then I heard it for the very first time.

I’d managed to be in Kentland for several weeks without hearing Go-Go. If I did, I had no idea what I was listening to. There was a car in the parking lot of the school blasting what I now know as Rare Essence. The music and football compelled me so much, that instead of going to the store, I hopped the gate and walked along the outside of the field closer to the parking lot. I was just as curious about this sound as I was about inquiring how to get on this team. There were a group of teenage guys hovered around the car nodding their heads to the beat. It didn’t sound like any beat I’d heard before, nothing like DMX or Ja Rule, who were both from NY and hot at the time. The instruments were live, like the drums we played in music class back in Queens. But not like the African style we were taught, they were singing and rapping over it and screaming.  Well it’s the Kentlandddddd ZOO!  Whoever it was that said that on that song obviously knew about this neighborhood, and these dudes around the car were hyped. Children can be gullible yet inquisitive, so my 10-year-old self really believed that there was a zoo somewhere nearby that