Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
If you say “hip hop” and “Los Angeles” in the same sentence, gangsta rap immediately comes to mind. And with good reason. When N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton burst through the gate in 1988 it presented a sound and vision so powerful and so unique to the city and its culture that it would become the building block for successive waves of artists. In the back of a health food store on Crenshaw Blvd., however, a different scene was germinating alongside the wheatgrass and organic produce which prized verbal dexterity and conscious lyrics over gritty tales of gang life and party anthems.
From 1989 to 1995, the Good Life Cafe hosted hip hop open mic nights every Thursday which helped cultivate Los Angeles’ alternative hip hop scene. The 2008 documentary This is the Life, chronicles the scene and its major players and is currently streaming on Netflix. It was the first feature film by Academy Award nominee Ava DuVernay, who would go on to direct such movies as 2014’s Selma, the 2016 documentary 13th, and created the mini-series When They See Us and the hit television show Queen Sugar. DuVernay is the scene’s most famous export, having performed there as part of the rap duo Figures of Speech. Other notable luminaries include the groups Jurassic 5 and the Freestyle Fellowship.
The hip hop open mic nights at the Good Life Cafe were founded by B. Hall, who was friends with the store’s owners, and her son, the musician R. Kain Blaze. Hall possessed a matriarchal authority, which helped nurture creativity and keep the peace, no small feat at the time. “I mean, man, we’re in the middle of South Central, where it goes down on the daily, and everybody was able to come here and just create,” says rapper Tray Loc. While its beginnings were homespun and humble, it drew a generation of young MC’s looking to hone their craft. “It became kind of a mecca for skill,” says Jurassic 5’s Chali 2na.
Performers from all backgrounds were welcome to get on the mic at the Good Life as long as they followed the house rules; no cursing, no chewing gum, no leaning on the paintings hanging on the wall behind the stage and no iggedys, diggedys or migiddedys, a lyrical trend popularized by Brooklyn’s Das EFX and seen as a lyrical cop out. If you did well, you received the approval of the crowd, and, more importantly, your fellow MCs, none more coveted than that of the Freestyle Fellowship. “All the MCs that went to the Good Life were trying to impress the Freestyle Fellowship,” says rapper and performer Abstract Rude. If your shit was wack, the crowd told you to “pass the mic” and parted before you for the walk of shame out the front the door. It didn’t matter if you had a record out, as Fat Joe learned on an early trip out west. “He thought he was one of the best rappers in the world but we actually knew we were some of the best rappers in the world,” recalls the MC Ellay Khule with pride.
While early crowds could number as few as four, the open mic nights would eventually draw hundreds, far exceeding the performance space’s capacity. Soon celebrities and industry players were seen in the crowd. The A&R men stuck out most according to Chali 2na, saying, “That dude is from some label or something. Either that or he’s the police.” Others recall with bemusement the night Shannan Doherty came down. Some came down to take notes. Abstract Rude notes the influence of Good Life regular Volume 10 on early ‘90s cuts by Ice Cube and how Bone Thugs-N-Harmony borrowed the sing-song lyrical style of Freestyle Fellowship’s Myka 9. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it doesn’t pay the bills.
While This Is the Life possesses the look of the low-budget first time feature it is, DuVernay’s narrative skills are on full display and her familiarity with the subject matter gives it an authority which is both thorough and affectionate. It’s a well done and enjoyable viewing experience, whether or not you’re familiar with the artists and ranks among the best hip hop documentaries ever made. While fame and fortune came to relatively few of the Good Life veterans, that’s not the game they were playing in the first place. “We were always artists not businessmen,” explains Ellay Khule. “While someone else was getting up a scheme to be somebody’s manager or go to school, we was trying to be the best lyricists on the planet. And then, for a small time, we did that.”
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.
