A couple weeks ago the “urban culture” site Ruby Hornet threw a private party at the James Hotel’s posh and futuristic J Bar in River North. The occasion was the release of Chicago Picasso (Duck Down), the first solo mix tape from Kidz in the Hall MC Naledge, and a fair cross section of the local hip-hop scene turned out. The mirrored partitions in the bar’s seating area—actually panels of one-way glass concealing flat-screen monitors—displayed a video slide show that was mostly photos of the MC.
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Naledge met Double-0 while they were both students at Penn, but an Ivy League diploma doesn’t necessarily confer the same advantages in hip-hop that it might elsewhere. The Kidz have had to lean pretty hard on their work ethic, and they’ve been scuffling for long enough that Naledge is starting to worry they might never break out. “Our path has been a lot more blue-collar,” he says, “and that’s something that we’ve prided ourselves on, but also something that we’ve strived to shake.”
Admittedly the Kidz devoted part of their 2006 debut, School Was My Hustle, to poetic sociopolitical observations and throwback soul beats, and their Obama anthem “Work to Do” earned them not only the acknowledgment of the campaign but also a verse from Talib Kweli on a remixed version of the track. But they’ve also been mentored by platinum-selling producer Just Blaze, who used Double-0’s “Don’t Stop” beat as the foundation for Jay-Z’s “Show Me What You Got.” The single “Drivin’ Down the Block,” from their 2008 album The In Crowd, features cameos from Bun B of UGK, Pusha T from Clipse, and Def Jux head El-P. And their remake of Special Ed’s 1989 track “I Got It Made” got a big push from Reebok’s Classic Remix promotion.
“For so long it hasn’t been looked at as an art form,” he says. “It was looked at as something born out of economic deprivation, like ‘Oh, these are these street kids who don’t have anything else to turn to, so they beat on tables and make street music. They can’t sing, so they rap—they talk over these beats.’ Nah, this is an art form. You have kids in the suburbs who are shunning the flute and the violin to rap. Hip-hop is the voice of the youth, not just the voice of the ghetto.”
