EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW / SHOW REVIEW -PART ONE-:
On the way to work, Friday morning, in a stoned haze, the radio in my truck told me, in a voice very unbecoming of 8 a.m.: "2 Live Crew, LIVE tonight, Empire in Ybor City, bikini contest!" I reached the newsroom and called my editor across the Bay, told her I'd like to cover the concert. "Yes, go ahead," she said, "But people won't want a traditional concert review. 2 Live Crew don't have enough contemporary fans. People only remember them from their First Amendment controversy. I'd like a 'where are they now?' angle." At 3 p.m., I left work and decided to drive to the club and talk to 2 Live Crew before their show at 10:30 that night. The blacktop parking lot was just starting to breathe out all the heat it had collected during the hotter parts of the day. I breathed it in crossing the parking lot to my truck, trying to figure out how to spin the story the way my Editor wanted without pissing off the 2 Live Crew. I reached my truck and got in, sealed up the cab, started the engine, immediately pushed the air-conditioning switch to its coldest shade of blue and turned the fan up to expedite the freon. My body temperature was already back down as I turned the corner away from the paper. The library passed by. The museum. My bank. As I traversed the last block of Tampa's mini-downtown, I noticed several large black men outside the lobby of the gold-trimmed hotel, loading and unloading luggage. Most musical groups stay downtown if they're lucky enough to be able to afford a hotel when they come through. I didn't recognize any of the black guys as members of 2 Live Crew, but they stood out against the backdrop of the hotel with its mass of white faces and business suits, so I pulled into the parking lot to sniff them. I stepped out of my comfortable truck, toward the hotel and lingered around the black men and their heavily tinted van. I leaned on a railing as if casually waiting for someone to pick me up, craning my neck around, keeping my eye out for my imaginary ride, and also peeping into the front, un-tinted window of the black guys' van: nothing. I felt suddenly very guilty and racist for pulling over at the first sign of black people. But then Fresh Kid Ice stepped out from behind the van. I hadn't seen him at first, though he's very recognizable. Fresh Kid Ice is the only non-black member of 2 Live Crew. He's Chinese. He has a gimp left arm wrapped in a beige, Velcro, support brace that he has worn since I first heard 2 Live Crew at the age of twelve. His trademark brace swung lazily at his side as Fresh Kid Ice walked toward the cool, gold lobby, followed not by Luther Campbell, Mr. Mixx and Brother Marquis, but by four unrecognizables. I stepped up to them in my big clunky tan, shoes with the Velcro straps and reflectors. Questionable shoes. As I mustered the fortitude to speak to them, I couldn't shake the mental picture of the group encircling me and making fun of my shoes. "Can I bother you guys for a minute?" I asked them timidly. Their manager stepped forward. He was big, almost 50, gold but not gaudy sunglasses, and an 80's style Kangol hat. He was very nice to me. "I'm Ed." He said. "Amhed?" I asked as we followed the rest of the crew inside to the air conditioned lobby. "No…just Ed." "Oh…you said 'I'm Ed'…oh, I thought you said 'Amhed'." Three majestic, young, black women came in the glass doors behind us. Ed and I decided I would meet the crew at the club at their 5 p.m. soundcheck. I sealed my self back up in my temperature controlled truck and headed home for notepad and tape recorder LATER… I sat in a concrete stairwell at the back of club Empire, watching 2 Live Crew soundcheck. The crew (which featured none of its original members, save Fresh Kid Ice) ran through bits of "Move Somethin,'" "Fuck Me," and "Me So Horny," intermittently stopping to, very seriously, discuss the sound quality. The bass would start and Fresh Kid Ice, in a T-shirt and shorts and a huge gut, would grunt into the microphone, "You might as well, give up the pussaaaaay! You might as well, give up the pussaaaaay!" ...and then nonchalantly ask Manager Ed or the sound guy or anyone else listening, "Is that alright? Sounds like the highs aren't coming through." They had all been in this job long enough where they no longer appreciated the irony, if they ever saw it in the first place. The three black ladies I'd seen at the hotel wandered around the empty concrete dance floor. They were all ass, extravagant street clothes and long, straightened hair. They looked bored and plaintive and almost sad. But when the soundcheck bass would kick in, they would lazily kind of booty dance, seemingly unaware they were doing it as they stared at their shoes thinking about something else. It was soft and sexy. Much more so than the thrusting weirdness of purposeful and aggressive booty dancing. One of the girls wandered by the stairwell talking on her cell phone, her long hair crumpled up in black and dyed-red bunches on the back of her head. "Yeah, we here," the dancer said into her cell phone, as if speaking to her mom. "We made it, we at soundcheck." She was painted up and beautiful. Make-up lined her swollen, unsmiling lips. After she hung up, I got her attention:. ME: Can I ask you some questions?(in the background Fresh Kid Ice still testing the mics "Lick my aaaaaaaaaaaass bitch!") DANCER: As long as you don't ask me somethin nasty…(I like these guys' lack of irony quite a bit. Later that night at the show, when she was half-naked, I noticed a life-sized cock and balls tattooed in an upside down 'T' between the breasts of this woman who implored me to not be nasty.) ME: I won't, I won't. What's your name? DANCER: Supreme. (Here Supreme finally smiled. And she had gnarly teeth like a spelunking cave. But it didn't detract from the beauty of her mouth). ME: And where are you from? DANCER: I moved to Miami probably about 2 years ago, but I'm originally from Maryland. (I thought of crabs) ME: How long have you known these guys? DANCER: A year and a half. ME: How do you know them? DANCER: I auditioned for them. ME: What did you have to do for the audition? DANCER: Just dance…to their music…basically. (I was self-conscious about seeming as if my questions were loaded. Like I was trying to get her to admit that she'd blown the entire 2 Live Crew to get the job. I'm so afraid of coming off like an un-cool MEMBER OF THE PRESS that I end up coddling most of my interviewees). ME: At the audition, did you wear a g-string? DANCER: Don't be nasty… ME: No, no that's not nasty. DANCER: Yes, a thong. ME: What's the stage show like tonight? DANCER: Um…Basically…a lot of…booty shakin'…a lot of booty shakin'…there's a lot of booty shakin', we have routines that we do that we been working on. We go on tour Monday. This is the first stop. ME: (pointing over across the empty room to the two other girls) And those are the other dancers? DANCER: Uh huh, they're new, they just started with the group. ME: Does it get rowdy at y'all's concerts? DANCER: We have shows where the guys get rowdy but that's only because…(pregnant pause)…we have them under control. ME: Do you have a job in Miami. DANCER: This is my job. (…she says, very defensively: her first show of emotion). ME: Well, yeah, I mean, I was just wondering if this is your full time… DANCER: Yes. We're on the road a lot. ME: And where's this tour headed DANCER: (At this point they begin to test the microphones again, loudly. "You might as well…" blurring out Supreme's words as she speaks into the recorder. The soundcheck paused as she finished her last sentence)…I like my work. ME: What do you do while these guys are making records? Or do you tour and record at the same time? DANCER: Well, I'm the one who makes up the routines. I have the costumes made. ME: Oh, costumes! What kind of costumes are you wearing tonight? DANCER: Um…booty shorts…booty shorts and a top (She puts her hands to the sides of her chest to illustrate 'a top'. I'd been trying not to check her out too much, but I followed her hand gestured to her breasts for a second then moved my eyes across the tattoo on her distended belly. Her ass stuck out in the back and her stomach in the front like some big, carnal 'S'. I ended the interview before I get too caught up in her 'S-ness'*) ME: O.K. Thank you for your time. The soundcheck eventually ended and I sat in the silence of the concrete stairwell. One of the other dancers walked by, staring at the ground, snapping her fingers and singing to herself softly, "You might as well give up the pussy." An older black guy in an Empire polo shirt came by and swept off the stairs. As he swept around my feet, he stopped to laugh at my shoes. After he left, Manager Ed led Fresh Kid Ice over to me at the stairwell for the following interview. Take notice of how many of Fresh Kid Ice's answers have nothing to do with my question. This is a regular occurrence in interview situations. Celebrities are programmed to say certain things about themselves and their careers, regardless of whether the answer lines up with the question. Also notice that I am a poor journalist for not leading Fresh Kid Ice back to the original question for a straight answer. It's hard for me to bring myself to bug celebrities (even third tier celebs), so I end up accommodating them the same way I stack up my dirty dishes into an easy-to-carry pile for the waiter when I'm through with my meal. I am not a great journalist. ME: So, have you been dealing a lot with the press lately ? F.K.I.: Off and on…just been doing a lot of radio things. ME: How do you feel about the press now in the year 2000? How have they been treating you? F.K.I.: Everything's been cool. We been doing a lot of club runs: staying low key. ME: The press hasn't been hassling you? F.K.I.: No, no no, you know? We're just takin' the music back to the people so we're doing a lot of clubs. ME: Yeah I was gonna ask you about that: 2 Live started out as an underground group. But then you had that moment of…mass exposure…which…you probably never thought that'd happen (nervous laugh). But now it's gone and you're back to being an underground group. Do you aspire to get back to that larger level of success or do you like the independent music scene? F.K.I.: I like going to a lot of clubs, doing a lot of fraternity parties, come close with the people. ME: Yeah, what are some of the plusses of being underground? F.K.I.: Well, sometimes you can get a lot wilder in clubs, ya understand?: there's no kids around. ME: Have you guys been getting in any trouble with the stage show? Or is it pretty mellow these days…mellower I mean? F.K.I.: Well, it all depends on what the club wants: we can do like, a PG or we can go X-rated…and X-rated is what we wanna go. ME: What's tonight's show rated? F.K.I.: I'm not sure. (Looks back over his shoulder as if expecting the rating symbol to be hanging above the stage) I think it might be a R or somethin' like that ME: How long has everybody been in the group: these guys you have with you tonight? F.K.I.: What' s happened: a lot of the group members are doin' a lot of different things, so sometimes the line-up changes, off and on, we have replacements, for certain shows and so forth, like, you know? But we try to keep everything back together. But a lot of times, what we'll do…(pause)…what we're trying to do is do a reunion album. Hopefully, that'll happen soon. ME: Would that include Luke? F.K.I.: Yeah, we were talking about it, but everything didn't come together the last time we were talking. Too many other people wanted to have their hands in it. ME: Oooh yeeeeeaaaah, I can imaaaaagine (…I say with hyper-compassion as if I've tried to arrange a failed reunion album myself. I just have too much compassion for celebs). Do you have a new 2 Live record coming out with these guys? F.K.I.: Not yet. We were trying to do the reunion album and that didn't go through, so I just decided to try and put my thing (the album, Fresh Kid Ice: Still Nasty) out on my own little label (Chinaman Records), and try and do it all myself. ME: How old are you? F.K.I.: I'm in my 30's. ME: How long have you been doing 2 Live Crew? F.K.I.: Since it started. I'm one of the original members…we… ME: (Interrupting) Oh, I know, I know, F.K.I.: Back in 84 we started it. ME: Yeah, I was listening to it then actually…on the bus…it fucked me up pretty good (nervous giggle). We used to hide the tapes from our parents. F.K.I.: Oh, O.K. ME: It was good. F.K.I.: --- ME: Do you own the name: 2 Live Crew? F.K.I.: (head down, looking at his foot as he lightly kicks the side of the stairwell like a little kid)Uh…Yeah. ME: Have any of you guys had kids since..? F.K.I.:We all have kids. ME: Well…yeah…but….have any of y'alls stances or attitudes changed since… F.K.I.: No…y'know, you just separate the two, y'know? One thing too…2 Live Crew is like a business, so…you know…we try to…(shyly) do that type of thing. ME: What do you think of the stuff that's considered controversial today? Like, what do you think of Eminem's music? F.K.I.: I think the music's good. It's a good thing that…you know…that a lot of people are doing different things like that…it spreads it up…spreads it all around… (Manager Ed walks up and gives the 'we gotta go' look to Fresh kid Ice) F.K.I.: (to me) We can step out, let's step outside. (We walk outside along the brick wall of Empire, toward the 2 Live Crew mini-van.) ME: Who produces your newer music? F.K.I.: We use different producers. We use like, DJ Spin, we use like Clay D. When we can get a hold of Mr. Mixx (the original 2 Live DJ) we try to get him to do a lot of stuff. ME: Were any of the guys that will be with you on stage tonight, there with you from the beginning? F.K.I.: (loooooooooong pause)…maybe. ME: Maybe? (Fresh Kid Ice obviously does not want to admit, "I am the only original member left"). F.K.I.: A lot of them have been with us for a long time. ME: (backing down like a weakling) Cool…cool…cool. (As Manager Ed and Fresh Kid Ice speed up towards the van, walking several steps in front of me, I realize that not much interesting has been said. In a desperate attempt to conjure something entertaining, I stop on the sidewalk and ask them, in all sincerity…) ME: What do you think of my shoes? (…SILENCE. They stopped and turned around and looked at my feet very seriously. They walked toward me to get a closer look at my questionable shoes). ME: That's gonna be my last question. (…SILENCE) F.K.I.: Your shoes? (…SILENCE) ME: Yeah, I been trying to figure out what the hell I think of them actually. (…SILENCE) MANAGER ED: Put em up. (I lifted my pant leg and brought my foot off the ground. Ed tipped his sunglasses up to inspect. Long pause as he examines them closely, then answers…) They hella. ME: You like em? MANAGER ED: Yeah, they hella. Are they comfortable? ME: Oh yeah, they're really comfortable but I just haven't been able to figure out whether they're cool or whether they're stupid looking. (At this point they both laugh heartily at me. It's OK that they're laughing, but I don't laugh with them. I want them to know I'm being sincere. So I don't even smile.) ME: But I figured I'd ask the 2 Live Crew. F.K.I.: I like em. I'd wear em. Are you reviewing the show tonight? ME: Yeah. MANAGER ED: See you there. They walked on to their van and I went home to ready myself for a night of high-pitched, sexual aggression which was also to include a bikini contest.
*"S-ness": props to T. P. |