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from page R19
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6676 ORCHARD LAKE RD.
Michael Elkin is entertainment editor
of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
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9/10
1999
120 Detroit Jewish News
6000
didn't help that much. "Even in
Hebrew school," Hoch recalls with a
smirk in his voice, the kids wrote
graffiti on their siddurs."
His mother's prayers were answered
when she pushed him to enroll at the
High School for the Performing Arts
in New York.
This award-winning performer,
who also has acted in films such as
The Thin Red Line, draws a line in the
sand on theatrical stages. Cross over
into my world to see the hypocrisies
endured by the outcast and the insult-
ed, he seems to say to the audience,
which usually is made up of a high
percentage of Jews.
But Jews aren't his only followers;
Hoch also appeals to a cross-section of -
cc my people," whom he considers
‘`people in Brooklyn, Queens, people
who are second- and third-generation
New Yorkers — and my generation."
"The hip-hop generation is wide-
spread around the world. I discover
that when I tour, when I hit more
universities, blah, blah, blah," he says.
Or is that yadda, yadda, yadda?
One of his more infamous stage bits
focuses on the offer he got to do a
Seinfeld segment in which he would
ORCHARD LAKE RD.
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After a bar mitzva at a Reform
temple, he was ready for reform
school. Two weeks after his brachot
from the bima, Hoch almost hocked
his happiness for a stint in prison. At
13, he became a man — and a juve-
nile delinquent.
"I got arrested for doing graffiti,"
he says, and, no, he didn't use any of
the new pens he got as gifts.
The writing was on the wall in
other ways too: He was also charged
with drug possession.
"Stupid, eh?"
Hoch still seems to smart as he
talks about it. But he never lost the
love and support of his mother, who
raised him after she and Hoch's father
divorced. Nothing's changed, he says
of the mom who thought he was such
a nice Jewish boy.
"She still thinks I'm a nice Jewish
boy," he says.
But his future looked like a still
life: no movement from the neighbor-
hood, "where I participated in the
hip-hop and street culture."
Learning about his Jewish culture
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JEWS AND HIP HOP
from page R19
In his 1998 book Hip Hop America,
music historian Nelson George takes a
more nuanced look at hip hop as an
aspect of black culture. "One of the
prevailing assumptions around hip hop
is that it was, at some early moment,
solely African-American created,
owned, controlled and consumed. It's
an appealing origin myth — but the
evidence just isn't there to support it."
George goes on to document the
Latino dancers and "tastemakers,"
Caribbean DJs and Jewish entrepre-
neurs who nurtured hip hop in its
infancy. He considers Rick Rubin,
founder of Def Jam Records, one of
hip hop's most successful labels, to be
part of a long tradition of black and
Jewish collaboration in grassroots
music that goes back to the 1940s,
when Leonard and Phil Chess and
Jerry Wexler recorded early blues and
R&B.
Despite the presence of numerous
Jewish producers and promoters,
Jewish hip hop as such has mostly
existed in novelty acts like Two Live
Jews and Members of the Tribe
(M.O.T.). Proudly derivative, these
two groups view rap music and style
through a Borscht Belt lens.
Two Live Jews' 1990 album, As
Kosher As They Wanna Be, parodied
Two Live Crew's notorious 1989 disc
As Nasty As They Wanna Be, while Dr.
Dreidel and Ice Berg of M.O.T. take
their sobriquets from L.A. gangsta rap-
pers Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. (Satire is a
two-way street, however, exemplified
by rap producer Price Paul's cartoonish
1996 album, Psychoanalysis: What Is
It?, which looks at Freud through the
eyes of gangsta rappers.)
One minor Jewish-defined rap act
that developed within a hip hop
milieu is Blood of Abraham, which
first appeared in 1994 with its debut
album, Future Profits, on legendary
rapper Eazy-E's Ruthless Records.
The most prominent example of a
synthesis of hip hop and a Jewish
sensibility is Remedy, a writer for the
wildly popular Wu-Tang Clan, who's
now a performer for the Killa Bees.
His single "Never Again" off the Bees'
album The Swarm, which sends a
powerful message about post-
Holocaust identity in a multiethnic
America, has brought him onto the
Jewish cultural radar screen, perform-
ing at benefits for Jewish causes in
New York and L.A.
"Sixty- and 70-year-olds were lov-
ing me, and I was the only reason the
kids would come," said Remedy. His
solo album is due out this month.