THE FREESTYLE FELLOWSHIP
Liberating Rap from Its Prison
How Freestyle Fellowship built abstract hip-hop in a health food store, influenced every rapper you love, and never got the credit they deserved.
There's a tiny health food store on Crenshaw Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles that changed the course of hip-hop. Most people have never heard of it. The ones who have will never forget it. The Good Life Café held weekly open-mic nights through the late 1980s and into the '90s, and what happened inside those walls — the freestyle ciphers, the jazz-drunk MCs, the sheer velocity of language — quietly rewired what rap could be.
Freestyle Fellowship were the church's most devout congregation. Aceyalone, Myka 9, P.E.A.C.E. and Self Jupiter. Four MCs who rapped like they were playing instruments, who turned the four-four prison of commercial hip-hop into something that sounded more like Coltrane than Compton.
They formed in high school in the late 1980s — Aceyalone, Myka 9, and Self Jupiter coming together first as the MC Aces, a short-lived precursor to what would follow. P.E.A.C.E., a former high school friend, was added, and Freestyle Fellowship was born. The Good Life Café was their proving ground — a place where any MC who showed up expecting to coast on a hook would be humbled, and where the best ones would push each other to places the mainstream had no map for.
Their mission statement, delivered on the song 'We Are the Freestyle Fellowship', reads less like a bio and more like a manifesto: "Acknowledging rap as an artform, we break the rules and set new standards in the vocal arena by experimenting with tonal and harmonic inflections and sporadic pitch changes and deliveries." In 1991, that wasn't a statement. It was a provocation.
"What we are is liberators, liberating rap from its R&B/funk structures — that 4/4 prison."
Myka 9 — Los Angeles Times, 1993
The West Coast Tribe That Never Was
Fellowship may have been tabbed to be the West Coast Tribe Called Quest, but their career arc is as erratic as The Five Heartbeats. Despite recording the 1993 oracular jazz-rap classic Innercity Griots, their label Island/4th & B'way failed to break them on radio. Then Self Jupiter got locked up. Aceyalone and Myka got six-figure solo deals from Capitol, but the label shuttered its urban department almost immediately, leaving a pair of Myka solo albums in permanent purgatory. P.E.A.C.E. nearly got a deal with Death Row — the story goes that Suge Knight thought he was too wild even for him.
Rather than slow down for popular appeal, they sped up. Mirroring their rise was the Death Row regency — the post-Chronic era when gangsta rap became the local hip-hop world's chief export. Big Boy might have bought a tape from Aceyalone, but he wasn't about to play him on the Power 106 Morning Show. The Good Life faithful flew their own flag, and the flag didn't fit on commercial radio.
As LA Weekly put it — and nobody said it better — they were "the astral jazz-cracked geniuses of sherm-strafed South Central, rapping with caged bird cadences about sleeping on park benches, biblical books, and gangsta rap carpetbaggers."
"Everyone from a young Ice Cube to Snoop Dogg were known to pop up at The Good Life. Fellowship were rumored to have influenced every fast rapper from Busta Rhymes to Bone Thugs."
P.E.A.C.E. and the Day They Made History in a Room
A friend of The Pharcyde, P.E.A.C.E. was there freestyling with them the day they recorded the interludes for Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde, with producer J Sw!ft on piano and JMD on drums. In a song later leaked on DJ Nu-Mark's Craft Services: Jurassic 5 vs. The Pharcyde, Fatlip asked P.E.A.C.E. about his trip to NYC.
"P.E.A.C.E. was my brother in rhyme. Before the industry record deals, we would cypher, and I got a chance to witness his natural genius."
"P.E.A.C.E. is one of the greats and he added to the energy just being there — he raised the bar for them as MCs. I went to high school with that cat. He was so crazy. I used to drive him to the Good Life. One time we were sitting in the car and P.E.A.C.E. freestyled, I kid you not, for 45 minutes without one mistake. We were blown away."
"Their clear influences on their spiritual descendants: The Pharcyde, Jurassic 5, Busdriver — and all the art rappers and funky beat producers that followed."
Antakly Projects
I've been obsessed with the Netflix series Hip-Hop Evolution.
Episodes 1 and 2 explore the whole West vs. East Coast hip-hop wars, and then the over-the-top 'Jiggy' and Roc-a-fella mogul era. But the third episode had something special and different. The focus shifts to a new subculture of hip-hop which stemmed from a tiny health store in South Central L.A. called the Good Life Café — where young MCs claimed their own sovereignty and flew a flag of their own design. (The only time and place Fat Joe ever jokes about getting booed off stage.)
Freestyle Fellowship, Abstract Rude, Chali 2na, and Medusa are some of these MCs who challenge the idea that the West was won because of gangsta rap. They became messengers proving that hip-hop is a result and creation from love — not another by-product of commercialization, corporate greed and manipulation.
These albums — To Whom It May Concern… and Innercity Griots — are often considered some of the first in abstract hip-hop. The genre they pioneered. The flag nobody else was flying.
We have been a part of this change — using social media to expose the works of some of the most inspiring artists in the world and putting you, the reader, in touch with them directly. There is no need for only a few people in a flawed system to dictate what artists can and cannot be exposed to. Today it is more important than ever to preserve the artist's perspective. Because artists are. ✦
My career has never moved in a straight line, and that has always been the point. It began in fashion with a formative chapter at Vogue Italia, followed by an unlikely detour into finance. From there, film, PR, events and production. A role as Director at Wilhelmina Models in Dubai sharpened an eye already trained on people worth watching. Then came the years that shaped the platform: writing, editing, producing photo shoots, a short-lived photobooth business, lots of yoga and eventually Madrid, where the light is just right. Currently in the States in a new and exciting field — digital marketing for higher ed — but this remains my passion project. What started as a hobby back in 2003 evolved into Antakly Projects, leading to some exciting conversations, projects, and lots of joy. Throughout all of it, my best friend, one small white Shih-poo called Coco, has been present, unimpressed, and very fluffy.