Live From the Writer's Bench: Why Doesn't Hip Hop Music Reflect The Violence Going On In Our Communities?

We’re living in a day and age where the hip hop culture has been shut down. Long gone are the days “where murals would stand on wall so grand” and we could see subways beautify our cities. No more breakdancing battles or cats practicing their windmills and footwork on cardboard corners throughout the hood while a boom box blasted whatever was the latest banger on deck. Gone are the days of it taking a crew of dudes to help a DJ carry his crates of records and equipment to turn the party out. Nowadays as long as you’ve got Serato and can carry a laptop, you’re considered a DJ. And don’t get me started on MC’s actually rhyming about something. Back in the days, MC’s would take their music fresh out the studio and “put it n tape and in the city I test it” but nowadays they bypass the city and head straight to the strip club. My dude White said it best about 10 years ago, when he told me, “nowadays MC’s make strip club anthems and we never got that memo in our subscription to the Source.” But even though the culture that has influenced millions all over the world has died off, a group of hip hop heads who were there to witness the glory days of hip hop with crews like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, The Cold Crush Brothers and Run DMC to actually witnessing the emergence of lyricists like Rakim, Big Daddy Kane and Kool G. Rap come into the game, have come together to start Live From the Writer’s Bench.

Live From the Writer’s Bench is a hip hop roundtable on the culture of hip hop. This show ain’t about what your son or your nephew is listening to…but it’s about what YOU grew up listening to! Every Monday, me, Ev, Beezo, and Vic will be your hip hop CNN chopping it up about everything from why hip hop doesn’t speak to the violence that’s plaguing our communities across the nation to who rounds out our top 20 MC’s EVER list and everything in between. If you love hip hop and are tired of cats who know nothing about the culture reporting on it, then every Monday you need to be tuned in faithfully to Live From the Writer’s Bench. Trust, you won’t be disappointed.

And for some hip hop history for cats who may not know, The Writer’s Bench is located at 149^th Street Grand Concourse in the Bronx and was the spot where graffiti writers from all over NYC would come to link up, make plans on what tags were going up next, to polly, squash beefs and critique art on the trains as they came through the station. Because the 2 and 5 trains ran through this station and since both had train yards in BK and the BX, these two lines had some if the illest graf in the city running on them. When it was time to pick a name for this show, this is the first thing that came to mind because the same way the legends before us used the bench as their platform to speak on the hip hop culture, we’re using a similar platform to continue those same discussions. Salute.