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Jay-Z - Where I'm From (Streets is Watching)
I was going to school up in Boston when Streets is Watching came out (on VHS!) back in the spring of '98. Boston, at least back in the day, was not particularly well known for being plugged into hip hop, so I spent about a month hitting up every back alley bootlegger around the way before I was able to track down a copy of Jay-Z's cinematic debut. My search took me to some rather interesting locales - Boston's portrayal in Good Will Hunting and Gone, Baby, Gone might leave you with the impression that the roughest neighborhoods you're likely to encounter are filled with preppy-looking Irish kids, but there's far more to the city than what the Afflecks would have you believe - until I eventually got my hands on the "official" version, the one with a relatively young Jay-Z pulling the triggers of imaginary twin glocks on the cover of the cassette box. The hunt for the movie was well worth the effort, as I spent the majority of the summer watching it with my friends on an almost weekly basis. It was so entertaining that I was even able to forgive Jay for his blatant attempt at crossing over on his previous release, In My Lifetime Vol. 1.
Looking back a decade after its original release it would be easy to dismiss the movie ("movie" being used generously in this case, I suppose, as Streets is Watching is little more than a collection of videos with one gratuitous, but rather well filmed, lesbian sex scene thrown in) as a visual representation of everything that went wrong with hip hop during its ballin' out phase of the late 90's, but my friends and I reacted to it as if it were a motivational video, finding inspiration in every act of Jay and Dame's conspicuous consumption displayed on screen. Filled with scenes of overflowing Cristal - that golden-foiled drink we had heard references to in song but never actually seen anyone actually drink before - and expensive cars, it depicted a lifestyle we all aspired to achieve upon graduating (I'd imagine a few of these guys found similar inspiration).
As hip hop continues to focus on that suit and tie rap that's cleaner than a bar of soap, as 'Deck would say, it's unlikely we'll see anything quite like this film again, with mainstream artists and executives risking their corporate sponsorships and Wal-Mart-friendly images by allowing themselves to be filmed in the type of scenes that could be found on Streets is Watching. Among the highlights, there's Lyor Cohen smoking a cigar alongside Akinyele while watching a young woman demonstrate her impressive flexibility in the nude, Dame Dash gleefully participating in a project shoot out John Woo style, and Jay-Z himself snuffing out a snitch. The script and the "acting" in the movie are so poor (though admittedly Jay improved over his earlier turn as Keyser Soze) that it's hard to take any of these scenes seriously, but can you imagine the '09 version of Jay-Z, with his carefully cultivated image and $200 million contract, participating in anything like this today?
There are a ton of other great little scenes and guest appearances throughout the movie that motivated me to recently watch it again for the first time in several years. There's Gano Grills, an actor from Law and Order and OZ who is perhaps best known as the creator of the original Wu-Tang logo, putting in one of his first on screen performances as the aforementioned snitch. Biggie, Nas and AZ show up briefly to play a game of Monopoly with real money (a feat my "funemployed" friends once tried, only to discover that it only takes one bad trip around the board to lose an entire month's wages). Jay-Z drops the hilarious, though inaccurate, response to the question, "What's the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.6?" ("Like 30 to 40 grand, cocksucker," according to Jigga, though the reality is closer to 5 grand). My favorite part of the movie, though, is the bonus section, which includes a handful of old videos from Jay and Dame's time before Roc-A-Fella records, featuring Jay rapping in double-time and using the entire budget for one of his videos to rent out a boat christened "Dir-T-Pan-T" and party out in the Caribbean Islands.
The most interesting side story to Streets is Watching, however, and the real reason I dug up the cassette in the first place, concerns the life and times of one Steven 'Drac' Johnson. Johnson served as Jay's barber in the early days of his career and Jay, presumably more as a favor for services rendered than for any proficiency as an actor, cast Johnson in the role of a rival drug dealer. In the sparse plot of the movie, which reenacts in part the lyrics from Friend Or Foe and Friend or Foe '98, Johnson's character rolls into town with a bag full of guns and money and proceeds to get robbed in his motel room by Hova and company. After failing to heed Jay's warning to leave town and never return, Johnson's character briefly develops a Jamaican accent ("A gun in your mouth and that's all you can come up with?") before finding himself on the wrong end of Jay's gun. End scene and, with it, Johnson's short-lived career as an actor.
Jay-Z - Friend or Foe + Friend or Foe '98 (Streets is Watching)
(Steven Johnson comes in at the 0:16 mark)
Fast forward four years later to the fall of 2002, and we find the real life Steve Johnson fallen on hard times in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, unemployed and diagnosed with AIDS contracted from his recently deceased wife. Apparently nursing a long-held grudge against White America and determined to go out in a blaze of glory - before leaving his apartment, he told his son that he would "make them famous" and scribbled on his wall, "Tell the boys in blue I won't be easy" - Johnson headed into the East Village armed with "two semiautomatic handguns, a two-shot Derringer, a Samurai sword, dozens of plastic wrist cuffs, and a squirt bottle holding a full quart of kerosene." In addition, he hooked himself up to a catheter, anticipating a lengthy shootout that would leave little time for bathroom breaks.
On his way into the Village, "looking for 'happy people' and seeking to avenge the oppression of black people like him" (according to the NY Times), Johnson listened to a recording of himself saying:
"Get ready to pull your guns on these crackers, son. . .Don't have no pity, yo. Bang them in the head and let them bleed, son. Let them bleed. Let them cry. Let them scream."Eventually arriving outside of Bar Veloce at 2 A.M., Johnson opened fire on one Jonah Brander, who retreated into the bar after being shot in the lung. Johnson followed Brander into the wine bar, shooting him in the back, and proceeded to take all 40 of the patrons hostage, dousing them with kerosene and threatening to light them on fire. When the police eventually arrived, Johnson began shooting at the squad cars. With his attention focused on the police outside the building, two women from the bar jumped on top of Johnson and managed to subdue him (though one women caught a bullet to the shin for her efforts).
After five years of court proceedings, including one mistrial, Johnson was eventually sentenced to 240 years in jail in 2007. My recap doesn't really do the whole story justice, so if you're interested in more details you can dig through the Times' coverage of the trial.
So yeah, Streets is Watching: two thumbs up!
7/20/2009 7:58:51 PM posted by Fresh