Y-Not And The Rise Of Schtarker Rap
Character Sundays
Rap and hip-hop have always seemed to be the province of the urban kids. Beats and rhythms seemingly taken from the white noise of city traffic, lyrics decrying police treatment, glorifying street gangs and their culture, boasts aimed at the crew on the next block, the very things middle and upper middle class shouldn’t be able to relate to in any way shape or form. Yet, rap/hip-hop is has influences rock and roll genre immeasurably since the late 1980’s.
Movies like Malibu’s Most Wanted show just how pervasive the music has become in the lives of the suburban and exurban adolescent experience. So it’s no shock there are now Jewish rappers out there but a black orthodox Jewish rapper with payas? Yes there is and he bills himself, cheekily, as Y-Not (and raps in Aramaic, the language of the Mourner’s Kaddish!).
(From the 3/20/11 Detroit News article by Neal Rubin)
It’s not your everyday record company, and people understand that. When all but three musicians are Orthodox Jews — including the black guy who raps — you don’t dial up Shemspeed if you need an act for Friday night.
Also, says Yitz Jordan, “Jack’s House of Ribs is not calling. That’s not happening.”
The music business is what it is, though, and the hours are what they are, so Jordan is less than perky on his way to a morning gig at a school outside New York City. He’s the rapper, and he’s on the phone from the back of a taxi saying he’s not sure what grade levels he’s going to find when he gets there: “It’s way too early for me to even think about who I’m performing for.”
He’s also a bit snappish on the subject of his original name, before he converted and figured out there was a rhythm to ancient languages like Hebrew and Aramaic. (“Don’t ask me that. I never use it.”) But he’s a positive guy, Jordan says, doing positive hip-hop, and if he can stay awake long enough, it won’t be early anymore.
Jordan, known on stage as Y-Love, will be working more suitable hours next Sunday when he plays the annual Steven Gottlieb Music Festival at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield Township. Along with an electro hip-hop, Yemenite-style DJ called Diwon, a “Biblegum pop” duo known as Stereo Sinai and the avant-jazz quartet Pitom, he’ll be part of a 6 p.m. showcase devoted to progressive Jewish music and unusual descriptions.
Don’t be scared away by the languages, Jordan says. He mostly rhymes in English, and when he doesn’t, “you can understand a lot of it from context clues.”
Those of who write your grocery lists in Latin or Yiddish, meanwhile, will feel right at home.
Finding a new faith
Jordan does not hold the exclusive copyright on being a black, Jewish rapper. Drake, whose album “Thank Me Later” hit No. 1 last year, is all of those things, plus Canadian. But Y-Love is Jewish first and foremost — even if being Jewish came second or third.
His Ethiopian-American dad was a New Age sort of guy, his Puerto Rican mom was Catholic, and they went to a Baptist church in Baltimore because it was close by. At 7, having seen something about it on television, he announced that he wanted to celebrate Passover. Perplexed, his mom approached a Jewish co-worker: “What do I do?”
Young Jordan wound up at a Seder. By second grade, he says, he was trading his lunch money to a classmate for second-hand Hebrew lessons, and by high school he was a punk rocker with red and black braids — beneath a yarmulke.
High school friends challenged his sincerity often enough that “it was extremely annoying,” but on the plus side, it spurred him to learn widely and quickly about the faith. Eventually he moved to Brooklyn and converted, and it was there that his rabbis gave him a fateful set of marching orders.
Go forth to Jerusalem, they said, to integrate the Torah into your life and accidentally discover rapping.
A start in New York
Everyone at the yeshiva, or school, was assigned a partner. Jordan’s was a future lawyer from Long Island named David Singer. Singer would pound a beat on a table, and Jordan would read the Jerusalem Talmud in its original dialect of Aramaic.
Fast-forward a year and a few thousand miles, and the two of them found themselves in a Manhattan bar on open mic night, where they freestyled some of their polyglot routines and brought down the house.
Now it’s Jordan’s career, and his imprint. The night he corralled Jay-Z’s producer outside the men’s room of a nightclub, he had to apologize before he launched into his rap-slash-sales-pitch: “So sorry. I just can’t do this unless I drop in a little bit of Aramaic. Do you mind?”
There was no objection, but no career epiphany, either. So Jordan is still kickin’ it with the homeboychiks at his record company and getting ready for the release of his second album, “This Is Unity,” which is upward of 80 percent English.
“I’m trying to be a little more accessible,” he says … and ideally, a little better rested.
Yes it’s true. The Jews are taking over hip-hop. Soon the Gansta rap sub genre with be known as Schtarker rap. Bitches will be Yentas. And there will no longer be thieving. All monies will be invested for the fortunate mark.
Ads
Denizens of the Zola System
- A Visual Identity
- Ashley Morris
- Clip It Baby
- CNN
- Dennis Machinegun Thompson
- Detroit Free Press
- Detroit News
- e3 Your LIfe
- Fox News
- Henry Mena
- Hollywood Gem
- Jewish World Review
- Jimmy Fallon
- Mick Farren
- New York Daily News
- New York Post
- New York Times
- Open Salon
- Sacred Fools Theatre
- Scoop Momma
- Skip Williamson
- SPIN Magazine
- The Blacklisted Journalist
- The Choke
- The Financially Troubled Arizona Republic
- The Los Angeles Times
- The Nearly Famous Barry Young Show
- The Purple Gang
- The Wall Street Journal
- The Washington Post
- The Washington Times
Categories
- Alpha Female/Beta Male
- Assholes Anonymous
- Character Sundays
- Detroit Stories
- G-d's Guide To Home Appliance Repair and Sports Betting
- How Drunk Do You Have To Be To Get The Joke?
- Jimmy Fallon
- Overheard in a Los Angeles Bar
- Overheard in a New York Bar
- Overheard on the Subway
- Post Urban Culture
- Quotes from How To Fix a Horserace
- Rachel Kramer Bussel
- Skip Williamson
- Sleaze Culture
- The Best of the Zola System
- The Con
- The Core Belief
- The First Essential Scary Truth
- The Magic Bullet Theory
- The Martini Chronicles
- The Second Essential Scary Truth
- The Street Hustle
- The Summer Of 1992
- The Zola System In Action
- The Zola System On The Road
- Uncategorized
- What's in Your Fridge?
Archives
- February 2017
- May 2016
- May 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- March 2014
- January 2014
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008