#88 Pigeon John

Shooting a Take away show with a rap band was something some of us have been waiting for for a long time now. Though we took many musicians in the street, those who created and sing hip-hop - THE urban music - were mostly born out there.

The one condition was to find someone who would fit. Someone who would play the game, disregarding the risks and drop his flow against the concrete with no safety net. One take. Someone young and cool enough to get rid of the block parties clichés.

We found this person: Pigeon John is a mythical product from Good Life Café. Disrespectful, excelling in the difficult art of self-derision since his first album (Pigeon John is Clueless, 2001), reviewing little daily instants and numerous adventures rather than gangsta’s life, the guy from Inglewood played the game for us. His latest opus - Pigeon John & The Summertime Pool Party - where you can find nothing less than featurings with Brother Ali and J-live, is signed on Quannum Records (Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, Curumin, etc.).

Under October’s rain in the Lower East Side, far from the Californian sun, we could fight the grayness only with a sense of proportion and a beatboxing accomplice - Davey Rockit. Of course, when you think Take away show, you think undressing songs. The stripping is all the more spectacular that this kind of hip-hop only uses well-chosen samples as their instruments (and the first one is "Hey" by the Pixies). What’s left is only the essential: a playful voice, sometimes twangy, and a strong sense of derision which shows as much through the lyrics as through the guy’s movements.

The same guy who adresses both the ladies and the nerds, and who cannot help but take the opposite view on anything ("I make the ladies drool - not really but it sounds cool"), then dropped the single from his latest album - "Freaks, Freaks" - under a bus shelter. A jazzy béret on the head and an umbrella in the hand. A unique audience. Sometimes, a Take away show works thanks to people who settle unawares and naturally, on the film. Usually, most of those who let go before the intimidating eye of the camera are little kids. However - for once - here it was an old Mexican guy who invited himself and improvised while the other two, who were giving him the tempo . Of course, he speaks very quickly about motherfucker and big dicks, amongst indifferent teens waiting for the bus, and passers by struggling against the wind. Okay, but he does it under Pigeon John’s malicious stare, who were rapping "underground hip-hop means no women" a few minutes before.

What’s new in this session is that the camera itself turned into an instrument. The guys then played a mugging right in front of a NYPD car. Anecdotal and brash just like 13-year old can be, but telling, still. We could have met a more technical MC than Jean Pigeon, or a more genius beatboxer than Davey, but we couldn’t have met cooler or funnier guys. Not real wankers, nor too much disenchanted, or ironic: only guys who carry along with them a certain human warmth, a bit like Mos Def would, on records as well as on screens in any theater near you.

At last, when they go freestyle - a hip-hop compulsory exercise - it’s on a huge bridge whose end you cannot sea, in the middle of rods in a row as far as the eye can see. The lyrics, beautifully absurd, and the gait of those guys walking under a cloudy sky, remind us directly of what music was supposed to be doing originally: put some joy in the grayness and the concrete, capture again those inhuman spaces thanks to an untied language. Unity, peace & having fun. It was at the beginning of the 80s, and for a short moment, we thought it was only yesterday. Thank you for the time-travel, guys.