Description: One day after the LAPD beat up Rodney King, an Ice Cube concert went down in history as one of the most violent shows ever held at First Avenue. Hosted by Jay Smooth, we ask rap experts and former First Ave staffers about gangsta rap, security, and the uneasy relationship between the Minnesota music industry and Black hip-hop artists.This is the sixth episode of The Current Rewind's "10 Pivotal Days at First Avenue" season. If you missed the first five episodes, catch up below.• April 3, 1970 (The day it all began)• Nov. 28-29, 1979 (The days that told the future)• Sept. 27, 1982 (Bad Brains/Sweet Taste of Afrika/Hüsker Dü)• Aug. 3, 1983 (The birth of "Purple Rain")• Oct. 22, 1990 (Sonic Youth/Cows/Babes in Toyland)Transcript of The Current Rewind season 2, episode 6: "March 4, 1991"Anne O'Connor: We're talking about almost 30 years ago, but my memory of this was like, you opened up the gate at the horse races, and everybody was off to it.[Ice Cube, "The Bomb," with the lyrics:"With the L, the E, the N, the C, the HThe M, the O, the B, the greatLyrics that make the beat swing and I gotchaIt's the hip-hopper that don't like coppers." Hard cut.]Anne O'Connor: And it was just like an explosion, and it was non-stop all night long.["The Bomb" picks up where it left off, running through these lyrics:"And if you try to upset the pot, sonYou get kicked in the chest like a shotgunI make the beats, I make the breaksI make the rhymes that make you shakeMake you findIce Cube never caught in the middleI make stuff that kick you in the a** a little." Hard cut.]Anne O'Connor: We just went from one fight to the next fight to the next fight. There was no breathing time. There was no downtime. It was just, "What emergency is there to go and deal with next?"[Ice Cube's "The Bomb" returns with a sample of spoken audio and several voices singing, "The bomb"]Cecilia Johnson VO: Gangsta rap was the most controversial music of the '90s – praised as an expression of Black America's righteous anger, reviled for its misogyny and depictions of violence. Taking cues from Schooly D and Ice-T, Los Angeles group N.W.A popularized the genre with their album Straight Outta Compton. Their most talented rhymer, Ice Cube, left the group to go solo in 1990. In early 1991, he brought his show to Minneapolis's First Avenue, for one of its most memorable nights ever.["Hive Sound" by Icetep]Cecilia Johnson VO: [over theme] I'm Cecilia Johnson. This is The Current Rewind, the show putting music's unsung stories on the map. For our second season, we're looking back at one of the Twin Cities' – and the country's – greatest live venues through a series of pivotal nights. We're bringing on guest hosts for several episodes. In this one, Jay Smooth – the New York hip-hop radio legend and cultural commentator – joins us to tell the story of one of the most infamous shows in First Avenue's history. I do want to warn you: This episode contains explicit accounts of racism and violence.[rewind sound effect]Jay Smooth VO: Way back in 1991, I founded New York's longest-running hip-hop radio show, WBAI's Underground Railroad. It was a pivotal time for hip-hop music, when it was still just beginning to cross all sorts of cultural boundaries. And the other love of my musical life back then was the Black Minneapolis Sound, as defined by Prince and his many collaborators – who, in their own way, were on a similar path of bringing Black music into spaces where it hadn't necessarily been all that welcome.So, as a devoted student of Prince and hip-hop who came of age in that era, the First Avenue club and its relationship with Black music, and hip-hop, specifically, has always been an object of fascination for me. And though it was primarily defined as a rock club, First Avenue did host a number of high-profile hip-hop shows in the '80s and early '90s, according to someone who saw a lot of them.Tim Wilson: Timothy Wilson, Urban Lights Music owner.Jay Smooth VO: Tim's record store, Urban Lights, is a community hub in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul.Tim Wilson: I remember seeing Run-D.M.C. I remember they had Jam Master Jay kind of suspended in the air, swinging back and forth, and they couldn't jump around on the stage, because the records were skipping and stuff like that, but they still made it through. I remember going to KRS-One; the sound crashed and he literally had one of his people beat box, and he continued to perform. [Tim laughs]Jay Smooth VO: On top of the big names from out of state, Minnesotan hip-hop acts the Micranots and the I.R.M. Crew sometimes performed in First Ave's smaller room, the 7th Street Entry. Still, it would take a while for the club's overall attitude to change, from what sound engineer Randy Hawkins, in Chris Riemenschneider's book First Avenue: Minnesota's Mainroom, called, quote, "anti-rap." The non-white population of Minneapolis grew nearly 70 percent during the '80s. But hip-hop took ...
