It’s Tuesday and the night is crazy muggy and a crowd is gathering in front of the Bop Shop on West Division. B-boys and girls in their late teens and early 20s are standing in slouchy jeans and backward-turned caps talkin’ and trippin’.
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The mad bass of A Tribe Called Quest is rippling out from inside as groups line up by the door. At the bar the air is thick with the smell of beer and beedies, the thin Indian cigarettes hip-hoppers favor. DJ Tony Craig, formerly known as Twilite Tone, is pumping out a mixture of old R & B, disco, and hip hop in the dark room in back. A few guys in loose Karl Kani jeans are flexin’, making their bodies move like hyped robots, and three men in locks and fros stand in a corner rappin’ to King Just’s underground hit “Warrior Drum.”
Kelli Curry, Freedom Rag’s 24-year-old editor, says she started the magazine in homage to her grandmother, a Harlem Renaissance concert pianist who fostered within her a love for African art forms. The magazine’s mission is to give voice to the city’s African American community. “There’s no reason black artists and writers shouldn’t have an outlet,” Curry says.
