Yesterday, I had the pleasure of joining some of west coast hip hop’s legendary emcee’s in the village of Leimert Park in South Central Los Angeles. Myka 9, Chali2na, Pigeon John, Ava DuVernay and Ellay Khule gathered to take some photos for URB’s feature on This is the Life; a film that documents the cultural mecca we know of as, The Good Life Cafe. To sit back and watch these incredibly talented, influental emcees interact and exchange stories years after writting on the first pages of west coasts rhymebook was simply amazing. After taking some photos at the park we continued on to Earlez Hot Dogs on Crenshaw and Exposition; literally kitty-corner to the famous Good Life Cafe, where I interviewed the director of the film, Ava DuVernay.
Here is a piece of the interview.
With all of the commercial success of one side of L.A.’s hip hop scene. Why didn’t the artists that came from The Good Life get the same recognition?
Ava DuVernay: That’s a big question that we raise in the film; that even some of the artist have, which is: why didn’t the music reach a certain level of commercial success? Certainly there were record offers made and artists on major labels, but “West Coast” became known for a certain kind of aggressive music that was gang-related and if you weren’t doing that then it wasn’t accepted. There were definitely artists that were dealing with the same subject matter [as artists from The Good Life] and experimenting with styles and patterns; most particularly New York, and that seemed to be accepted, but here it wasn’t because they wanted to hear a certain thing from Los Angeles. Which is okay, but I think that it left out a whole community of artists who were not getting down like that. The wonderful thing about it is that these artists have continued to make records, tour the world and have fan bases that spread far and wide…
Stay tuned for the rest of the interview!
And in the meantime check out GoodLifeLove.com
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Good Life reunion concert Mar 10th
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