“Grown and sexy” is an established category for a hip-hop event, but on Friday night Tara St. James and Akon introduced a new kind of bash to the St. Louis scene: the grown-and-classy dinner party.
The occasion: the birthday of Tiffany Foxx. (Which birthday? You kidding? You think a female MC older than 18 is giving away her age?)
The venue: a private room at Busch’s Grove, the fancy, historic restaurant in Ladue.
The dress code: “formal & fly,” though folks paid much more attention to “fly” than to “formal.”
The menu: your choice of steak, salmon or free-range chicken, with an open bar, all on Akon’s tab.
In the house: Akon, the singer who splits his time between Atlanta and Senegal (where his father, the traditional percussionist Mor Thiam, was born). Akon was born in STL, when his father was based here.
And Aloha, the former American Idol contestant, now an up-and-coming vocalist. She sang a vibrato-heavy version of “Happy Birthday” to the birthday girl.
And Bradd Young, the producer and singer who divides his time between St. Louis and Los Angeles. He led a spirited R&B version of “Happy Birthday” for a few bars, after Aloha was finished.
And Guccio, label head for Black on Black/Quit Playing. Guccio is backing June 5, a new female hip-hop trio called June 5 that includes Tiffany, Tara (who performs under the name Brooke HollaDay) and D.T.
And Vic Damone, one of the MCs in The All Stars, who said he is sitting on a couple of hot new mixtapes.
And about 30 other people from Tiffany’s family and the local hip-hop scene. Actually, this was a nice slice of the local hip-hop industry. When Tiffany’s clip reel rolled and we watched her cameos in various Nelly videos, there was a lot of chatter from folks who had worked on those shoots, in various capacities. This was a room full of producers, MCs, stylists, writers, publicists, managers and players.
The dinner party format meant that all of these people – or, at least, subsets small enough to fit around a table – actually had to speak meaningfully to one another, rather than lounge against a wall of a club.
In my experience of hip-hop industry hangs, this was completely new. Judging by what others at my table said, it was new to most of us. People seemed to fall back on what they knew, sit-down family dinners. At our table, we waited until everyone was seated with their entrée served, then we held hands and said grace before chowing down.
Wow, I thought. If only the moralists who reject the hip-hop scene as a bunch of pants-sagging, panty-showing animals could see us now.
But then, I thought, if only more hip-hop lyrics had the depth of the conversation that went around our dinner table. After all, we were gathered to celebrate an artist whose first two efforts for Snoop Dogg’s label were “Can’t Find My Panties” and “Shake That Shit.” There is nothing wrong with sex and club jams, but there is something wrong if that’s all a culture chooses to produce or consume.
Actually, I had a conversation at the dinner table about that. I was talking to Evan Savage, who had been invited by his cousin, Harold Guy, a songwriter and manager who helped Toya get her break.
Evan’s family is from St. Louis, but he was born in Houston and lives down there. I was all ears for the South Houston scene, where DJ Screw originated chopped and screwed.
Evan was a little down on his town. He said that “bar” (as they call the codeine-based prescription cough syrup widely used in Houston hip-hop circles) just leaves people “fighting to stay awake” while they party.
Evan said dudes in the Houston scene mostly are obsessed with drugs and car culture, which is why those subjects dominate hip-hop lyrics down there. “You’ve got to talk to people about what they know, and that’s all anybody knows about,” he said.
Such is the vicious circle between poor education and limited options in mass-market entertainment.
I thought of two things Screw said in a 1999 Murder Dog interview.
“I like hearin’ the conversation, see how they carry themselves,” Screw said of his social life. Screw would have enjoyed the dinner-party format for a hip-hop birthday party (though he would have had to bring his own “bar”).
And, promising more good work from him, he said, “It ain’t gonna stop till the casket drop.”
Not to bring up death at a birthday party (happy birthday, Tiffany!), but “it” stops for all of us when the casket drops. That should inspire us to say and do more meaningful things while we are alive. There’s got to be more to life than leaning against the wall of a club, getting high and shaking that shit.
