HISTORY LESSON: Dave Medusa and Medusa’s Chicago

I ripped this off the Medusa’s website. The new Medusa’s is suburban, safe, commercial, and nothing like the Medusa’s of old. But since I stole this history lesson from their website I should at least allow you a link to their site. Blah.

DJ SCRAPPY – Limelight and Medusa’s

Anyone feeling nostalgic about the old days of Medusa’s and Limelight can get a small taste of the past by visiting the web page of Jonathan “Scrappy” Gilbert.
The longtime resident of Medusa’s and Limelight made a reputation for himself at these legendary clubs alongside names like Mark Picciotti , Teri Bristol, and Lil Louis.

DJ Scrappy now resides in Huntington Beach, California but you can still listen to his mixes here.

http://www.scrappybeats.com/

SOUL TRAIN line dance to FRED WESLEY & THE JB’S

Doin it to the death !!!!

LIL LOUIS presents: The Bismark Reunion – - April 3, 2010

Be there or be unaware.

Dzine keeps it real. Real Expensive!

Dzine, a Chicago based painter, former graffiti writer, and founding member of the famous 90′s Chicago graffiti crew “Aerosoul” has now officially catapulted himself onto the mainstage of the American Contemporary Art scene by having a successful showing at Art Basel.

Art Basel which ended last week (Dec. 6-9) is the largest North American art show; held yearly in Miami, it has always been considered the Super Bowl of the American art scene and a privilage for artists to be able to show their work there.

On the opening day of the show Dzine sold a painting of his to a private collector that flew in from London for a handsome price of $30,700.  Also by the end of the first day, news spread that a foundation in Spain had purchased a customized 24-carat gold bike from Dzine at a price of $35,000.

$65,700 on your first day of the show is not bad;  not bad at all.

What makes this article interesting isn’t that an artist sold his work for alot of cash, but more importantly because a former Chicago graffiti writer who took incredible amounts of criticism, and heat when he started venturing off into the world of contemprary art has come back like a terrible nightmare to remind all the critics and all the hiphop heads back in the day who preached to keep it real, what REAL success looks like.

In the early 90′s, Chicago’s hiphop scene was so vibrant that there was a plethora of talent waiting to be noticed which included artists, dancers, dj’s, and mc’s.  With the large amounts of talent came large egos, and crews trying to control scenes with ghetto celebs spreading hate and jealousy which had everyone judging eachother and had everyone trying to prove how to “keep it real.”

Nowadays when we look for all these old cats with talent, you’ll find them doing other things, and talking about how they had to “grow up”, and now “keeping it real” has a much more sober meaning now.

Nowadays hearing news about successes like Dzine have me wondering what was it that we were keeping real anyways?  poverty?  ignorance?  low self-esteem?

More importantly now,  the question nowadays should be-

What is real?

Dzine - St. Louis Museum of Contemprary Art

Dzine – Chicago Magazine (July 2007)