www.convictedartist.com.

"Aztec Autumn"

this description was given to me by a real chicano fuck that fake shit.

the beauty of the woman actually doesnt have a sexual value to it. her beauty represent the splendor of the Aztec Empire. the Aztec calendar in the background is the representation of the knowledge, and artistic skills the Aztec's possessed. and the sad look in the woman's face represents the downfall and Annihalation of the Aztec culture.
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Thank you Luis Gonzales for the translation of this great picture
-R J Noriega

i love reggaeton but my man tego is a funny looking dude 

See back in the days female rappers didnt have to moonlight as video hoes. 

Roxanne Shante: An Incredible Journey
By Nolan Strong

Roxanne Shante’s name recently surfaced and grabbed headlines due to a recent lawsuit she filed against R&B diva Janet Jackson.

For those old enough to remember, Shante was [is] one of the most well known and well respected early figures from rap. As part of Marley Marl’s Juice Crew, Shante, at the tender age of 14, caught everyone’s ear in 1984 with “Roxanne’s Revenge.”
The record contained the 14-year-old delivering an amazing verse in one of the first of many responses to U.T.F.O’s hit “Roxanne, Roxanne.”

The hit took her for a ride on the rollercoaster of the music business and the experience was so difficult, Shante hopped off the bizarre ride by the time she was 18-years-old.
She compares Hip-Hop to a ‘bad boyfriend’ and reveals that the rap game didn’t treat her as well as “he” could have.

Despite the pitfalls, Shante held on and now runs a successful psychology practice in New York. Her story is inspirational, at the least.

AllHipHop.com: Why are you suing Janet Jackson?

Roxanne Shante: Personally, I don’t have a problem with her. I just figured, maybe it was just an oversight that they didn’t pay the invoice for using my voice on the record. I figured you know, maybe this is something that she over looked with the breast popping out, it just caught up in the mix. So I fell back off of it, like when they get around to it, they’ll get around to it. But then someone contacted me from their office, trying to say that it wasn’t my voice, which really infuriated me.

AllHipHop.com: What song is it?

RS: It’s song #13 on Damita Jo, "Like You Don't Love Me." It’s the familiar “So Fresh” words that everyone samples. Any true hip-hop head is gonna say, when we hear those words “so fresh,” we know that’s Shante.

AllHipHop.com: Do you own the rights to those earlier recordings now?

RS: Yes I do.

AllHipHop.com: That came out on the Pop Art record label out of Philadelphia, right?

RS: Yes. I’ve owned the masters for over 9 years. What people will try to say is that they took it from the Biz Markie record, “Nobody Beats the Biz,” but it doesn’t come from that, it comes from “The Def Fresh Crew.” Biz was on the Pop Art label too.

AllHipHop.com: Is this the first type of lawsuit you have had to go through like this?

RS: Usually it doesn’t have to go as far as a lawsuit. Usually they rectify it and admit that it’s my voice. All it takes is one true hip-hop head in the circle to say “you know what, that is her voice.” I don’t care how many times you try to say it’s not; you know that is her voice. So let’s just pay her for it. She could pay me for what she would pay for one of her handbags. It wasn’t a big deal. I don’t feel like I am being wronged by the industry or anything like that though.

AllHipHop.com: So you’re happy with life?

RS: Out of all the old school rappers that I quote unquote know or socialize with, I am ok and I am fine. Shante is happy. Life after Hip-Hop for me has been better than Hip-Hop had ever been to me.

AllHipHop.com: What are you up to know?

RS: I am a psychologist with a private practice in Manhattan. I also do a lot of voiceovers for certain cartoon characters, I do a lot overseas.

AllHipHop.com: What cartoon characters?

RS: I can’t really discuss it yet, but I can say is that it’s three little girls who are superheroes involved.

AllHipHop.com: With your private practice and your other endeavors doing well, do you ever plan to come back to Hip-Hop?

RS: I love Hip-Hop. It will always be a part of me. But Hip-Hop is like a bad relationship for me. When I dated Hip-Hop, it didn’t buy the things for rappers that it buys now. I talk about Hip-Hop like it was a relationship. It was like a man. It wasn’t that good to me. I enjoyed it, but everyone else was making me a commodity and really taking advantage of me. It turned it into something I didn’t like. So it would have to be incredible for me to come back.
AllHipHop.com: How did people take advantage of you?

RS: Well, you know my age.

AllHipHop.com: How old were you?

RS: I was 14, with no parents, no guardian, and no accountants.

AllHipHop.com: What happened to your parents?

RS: They weren’t around. I was on my own. I didn’t really have any guidance. So I was just going and doing as I was told. So when you had people like Marley Marl telling me after a show that I am supposed to split the money evenly, I believed that.

AllHipHop.com: Was your relationship with Marley Marl more than a friendship and business relationship?

RS: Umm..uhh..My relationship with Marley was, I don’t know how I can explain it. My relationship with Marley wasn’t as good as it should have been. I am not a scorned woman or a mad girlfriend.

AllHipHop.com: You were only 14 when this all happened? When did you know you wanted to get out of it?

RS: When I was 18.

AllHipHop.com: So what did you do, take the money that you made from the rap game and go back to school?

RS: No. When I left the rap game, I left with absolutely nothing. I left with nothing. I couldn’t even get books. They would say "Don’t worry about it Shante, I’ll meet you at Barnes and Nobles and we’ll get the books.” I couldn’t even get them to help me with books. They supported the negative things, but they couldn’t support the positive.

AllHipHop.com: How did you make it through school?

RS: There was a clause in my contract that said they had to pay for my education. Regardless of how far it went. And what happened was, they felt like she’s 14. By the time I was 15 I was pregnant with my son. They felt like they could through that in there because they thought I would never use it. I mean they were like “look at her now.” They thought I was going to get on drugs. I didn’t. And as long as they had my school covered, I was good. I didn’t get school loans, so I had to copy pages out of other people’s books. I would stand in front of the machine with a bunch of nickels and make copies. Page for page for page for page. And every time I copied a page, my love for Hip-Hop was going away, more and more and more. My story isn’t a happy one, but it had a happy ending. I was straight out of the group home; they dangled the custody of my son over my head because I was so young, so Hip-Hop became a labor of love. If you don’t do this, this is what’s going to happen. One day I was finally like you know what? Forget it. It was right around the time I became a Vegan.

AllHipHop.com: How old were you when you decided to be a Vegan?

RS: 18. I would see people devouring meat and then acting like animals. I just figured it had something to do with the food.

AllHipHop.com: Did it help calm you down? Did you notice a change in your own behavior?

RS: I noticed that my own anger subsided, incredibly. I wasn’t as hurt or as mad as I was in the beginning. What’s gonna be is gonna be.

AllHipHop.com: What were you hurt and angry about?

RS: I was hurt and angry at the fact that it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. We were all supposed to come out of the projects together, go buy houses together, go buy cars together, we were supposed to do it all together and be a family unit, which is what I thought we were. When your young and you’re getting $5,000 a show and no one says to you, you know what? You’re the headliner. So, you need to pay Marley like he’s your DJ. [Fly] Ty like he’s your manager? I didn’t do that. They came to me and would say ‘you did a show and there are 5 of us. We’re all supposed to get $1,000 each.’ I believed that.

AllHipHop.com: Do you still talk to any of those guys?

RS: I still talk to Ty. I realized that anger isn’t going to get me anywhere or for me to hold grudges. I don’t talk to Marley. I talk to Biz everyday. They were my siblings in the family, so you can’t hold them accountable for what the mother and father did. You can’t be mad at your brother’s and sisters. You can’t start hating your label mates. Even when they start to learn more. It does hurt when they learn, but don’t share.

AllHipHop.com: Psychology. What made you go into that profession? Was it because of what you had been through in your life?

RS: I know what made me choose psychology was the fact that I knew where my loyalty lied. I knew why I felt what I felt. But I couldn’t understand why they did the things they did. I needed to know to be able to foresee this, should this ever happen again. I never saw the signs. I never saw them for who they were. It’s just like how you can be in a relationship with someone, and you say “I know we can make it, I know it can work out.” But in all reality you may be seeing what you want to see and you’re hoping that person feels the same. I had my good times and my bad times. Had something’s that I wanted to do and a lot of things I was supposed to do.
As time went on, you set yourself up for certain positive entities in your life. And one of the most positive entities I have come across in my career in Hip-Hop is The Royalty Network. The Royalty Network is something that every Hip-Hop artist should be familiar with them.

AllHipHop.com: I know them, my friend Alyssa used to work there.

RS: Well they picked up where Suge’s intentions left off. When Suge came along in the industry, he came into the industry like a savior for us. And I mean the artists who were being slaved out of their royalties, their writing and publishing. It was like there’s this guy named Suge getting people out of their contracts and making deals.

AllHipHop.com: Did Suge help you get out of your deal?

RS: Laughs…You know? He didn’t. But everyone was trying to find Suge, because he was doing what we needed at that time. People were being abused. The Royalty Network came along at the right time. They work for me or other rappers and entertainers. You can fall back and they can help you get what’s yours. Sometimes the percentage that you get is better than sitting home and not getting anything. There’s a lot of people and artists out there who have Royalties out there, but do not know how to go get them. They just chalk it up as a loss. The Royalty Network doesn’t accept losses. I was I would have found them 20 years ago.
One last thing. I can still rhyme with the best of them. I never lost that. If Roxanne Shante was to do another record, know that the people involved are going to be incredible, their persona, the budget, the producers, their offer was incredible.

AllHipHop.com: So if everything is incredible you’ll come back?

RS: Definitely.
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Pay respect to the Architect. She laid down the formula all Femcees have followed. From Queen Latifah to Crunks stars Princess and Diamond. all of them oh her a favor for telling it as it was.
-R J Noriega

AFRIKA BAMBAATAA!!! 

DJ SMURF : BEFORE THERE WAS CRUNK

By K-Star
http://www.we-the-voices.com/

Right now, at this moment, the South and most of the nation is ablaze, a new single called, “Wait” [The Whisper Song] by the Ying-Yang Twins is heating up speakers everywhere as the weather begins to do the same. This track, with its whispery verses and thumping bassline, was the creation of ATL legend – DJ Smurf aka Mr. Collipark. The Godfather of Crunk sits down with We The Voices to discuss his history and the future of Crunk music and Ying Yang

We The Voices: “When did your career begin? What was the first song you ever recorded?”

DJ Smurf: “Back in the late 80s, being a DJ, like 1987-1988. Man, the first song was “To the Walls”. It was a bass record back in 1992.”

We The Voices: “Crunk seems to be a phenomenon right now that everyone is making serious money off of – in what direction do you think the music is headed towards? How was crunk music when it was just regional?”

DJ Smurf: “It’s heading in the direction with what Ying Yang is bringing to the table. Pretty much the South is on it’s own. What Ying Yang is doing is bangin’ in the clubs. All of that was bred from “Whistle While You Twerk”. We don’t get the credit that we deserve. “Wait” is a hot record in the club. Changing up the game is something that comes with the territory in this business

We The Voices: “How was that first experience meeting the Ying-Yang Twins?”

DJ Smurf: “They weren’t a group when I first met him. D-Rock was recording bass music when he was 15-16 years old. We were both signed to Ichiban Records, which was an indie label in Atlanta. I had done a remix with him and that’s how we hooked up. I came into the studio and that was the first time I met Caine. After I had done the remix, I had wanted to get D-Rock for my album, “Dead Crunk,” which had Lil' Jon and Ludacris before their shine. D-Rock had done this joint with me called, “One on One” and I saw him and Caine and it was a wrap since then.

We The Voices: “What do you think is the testament to your success?”

DJ Smurf: “Ying Yang. We started from nothing. No money, no nothing. They don’t know the real story about Ying Yang and how much we built from the ground up. When you put that much work into something when no one gives you nothing – it’s upsetting when someone wants to hate on you and your crew.”

We The Voices: “You’ve come a long way in this industry – what do you think has been the most difficult obstacle to face?”

DJ Smurf: “Getting paid for selling records. From selling “Whistle While You Twerk” to going over to Koch and selling 400,000+ -- AND having to fight, it’s horrible. Labels give you too many excuses. They love to pay you when the pie is little, but let that shit grow big and they forget to pay you what they owe. No one expected us to succeed. They thought that we’d be okay. When we sold all those records they owed us a check and getting a check from a label is hard work, let me tell you! No one wants to put money on you if they feel that you can’t deliver…”

We The Voices: “With the success that you’ve accumulated over the years – are you more sought after as a producer?”

DJ Smurf: “I’m gonna tell you some real shit, very little industry people cared little about Ying Yang. Before, “Get Low” no one cared who produced the beat, since “Wait,” my phone has been ringing off of the hook. A lot of cats think that the beat is crazy.

We The Voices: “Coming into the game in the late 80s – early 90s has that influenced your sound any?”

DJ Smurf: “My sound is what we brought to the table with “Say Ai Yi Yi” and “Whistle While You Twerk.” Caine wasn’t with the bass music, he’s a street dude. D-Rock and I was with this bootyshakin’ music to the core. Slowed down bass music. It wasn’t bounce music like how that New Orleans music is. It was different… it was ours.

We The Voices: “How do you feel about the music nowadays?”

DJ Smurf: “I’m bored with it. Since the South is running shit, we ain’t got nothing else to watch out for. We got very few TRUE artists down here that’s doing shit. I mean I can put my momma in the studio and churn out a hit! That’s how bad I feel the music is right now. With this new Ying Yang album, I don’t feel any pressure to sell albums. “Wait” [The Whisper Song]… TVT wouldn’t put that out as a single. We just felt the beat and felt that that was the heat. I haven’t felt this way, really, since the first album. There’s going to be some shit on this album that’s going to fuck up some people’s faces. We’re on some next level shit.”

We The Voices: “What’s next for you?”

DJ Smurf: “We gonna shoot the video for “Wait” [The Whisper Song]. Caine wants to branch out and do the music he wanted to do. D-Rock wants to go ‘head and work on his music, this gives me time to build up the record label. I got something in the mix with Maroon 5 and Three-6-Mafia on the works. I’m trying to get into everything. D-Rock wants to act and get into the movies.

Mixtape special

Mixtape Special Report


Every DJ will tell you that laying down a fresh-to-death mixtape is one of the hardest things in the world to pull off. So we enlisted the help of DJ Cameo, who just threw down the Xtra Garage Weekend tape for 1Xtra to show GO DJ exactly how it’s done… Bit Of Previous

“I started off watching people like Tuffjam and EZ, the thing I liked about garage was it was proper diverse. I landed a set on Taste FM, at the time I was working alongside the likes of Viper, J Da Flex and loads of other big names in the game. I started playing out at raves, and I produced ‘Addicted’ alongside Viper and Danny C. Then I got a job in Uptown records, where I met J Sweet, and we put out ‘High Grade’. Now I’m head buyer at Uptown, I have a show on 1Xtra and I’m resident at Sidewinder and La Cosa Nostra. I’ve just started my own label Kamikaze, we got tunes coming from Jon E Cash, P Jam, J Sweet, DaVinChe, Terror Danjah, Scandalous Unltd. And J Dubs, nothing but proper producers.”


Gameplan: “I try and identify the sound I believe in, as well as dropping all the big tunes. Good mixing got me up in the game. When I started I could only get the tunes everyone else had, so my mixing ability was the only way I could prove myself. But breaking and playing new tunes has kept me up there, dropping shit no one has heard. Good DJing is also about timing. Learning what to play at what time.”


Outlook: “The scene still ain’t professional enough. A lot of people at the top of the game don’t set a good example. There is so much talent out there, but for one reason or another, the top DJs are not letting it filter through.”


DJ Cameo Ultimate Mix Tape Rules : “First things first, you need a few hits on there, no one’s gonna pick up your tape if there ain’t a few big tunes on there. But you gotta put some original shit on there as well. Make sure you do it live, not on the PC, you need to showcase your skills so do it in one take and keep it tight. A good mixtape takes you on a journey, so it’s gotta flow from beginning to end. Do your homework, get some exclusives. Find the producers that you believe will be big in a year’s time, and break their stuff on your tape.”

Ladies First

Female DJs Got a Foot Through the Door, Ain't Goin' Nowhere
by Raquel Cepeda

At Club NV, the racial profiling at the door on Sunday nights can rival the NYPD's. As with most urban dwellings throughout the city, there's an unwritten rule among doormen and swollen bouncers stating that young blacks and Latinos who dress casually, particularly in baseball caps and sneakers, will undoubtedly cause a riot. Tonight, late-twentysomething African American men—donning silk button-down shirts, shiny slacks, and faux alligator shoes—and white boys in jeans are welcomed to frolic in the name of hip-pop. (The sprinkle of rappers who stop by on their way to or from nearby Chung King Studios are exempted from the dress code.) The vibe in the dark and lovely two-story club looks like a Montell Jordan video shoot for one of his smoothest new jack swings. But once inside, the gully soundtrack—courtesy NV's first lady DJ, Kaori—redeems the saccharin-sweet scene.


Japanese-born DJ Kaori Ueta is a tiny porcelain chain-smoker whose hardcore style is so damn ubiquitous in hip-hop, she's known simply by her first name. Her sets are frenetic, consisting mostly of popular Neptune- and Premiere-produced tracks, sprinkled with reggae and heavy cutting, beat juggling, scratching, and the kind of animated call-and-response her manager and king-spin, Funkmaster Flex, is known for. "My concept in hip-hop is Flex, Kid Capri, and Red Alert," says Kaori. But more than a decade ago, "When I saw them spin for the first time, I was like, 'Uh, I can't do stuff like this.' And then I saw Belinda Becker." Once she'd checked out DJ Belinda spinning at Buddha Bar in the early '90s, Kaori adopted Becker's feminine wiles and combined them with the aggressive, technique-driven bravado she jonsed of hip-hop's most popular crossfaders to create her own ardent style. As little as five years ago, Kaori would have been in a minor league all her own. But today, a multiracial coalition of mixmasters is bumrushing the hip-hop/soul arena, dawning the latest trend in clubland: the female DJ.

Unlike their house music and techno comadres, only a handful of these spin-sters have successfully penetrated the fraternal walls of this ofttimes macho element of hip-hop dance culture. The fairly recent popularity of female DJs has given propers and breathed new life into the careers of pioneers like Hot 97's Jazzy Joyce and Cocoa Chanelle, California-based Spinderella of Salt-N-Pepa, and Club Cheetah's Monday-night promoter, DJ Belinda. On the other hand, the dabblings of bored celebrity offspring and fashion models—excluding the rare-bird DJ Beverly Bond—are becoming the weakest link for the women who want to be taken seriously by their male counterparts.

"You gotta be a good DJ if you're a guy, because they don't care about your looks," says Becker. "But if you're a cute girl and maybe not the best DJ in the world, you can still get a job. You walk in and there's a cute girl there on the turntable, it adds a little something extra to the party. So I think that club owners are open to it, patrons are open to it, and sometimes the promoters are much less stringent on female DJs than they are on men."

Yet more often than not, when promoters do hire women to command the wheels of steel, it comes at a patronizing price. Female DJs have to be the kind of ride-or-die bitches who can remain composed despite shady promoters who sometimes cheat them out of money and denizen drunkards who make condescending requests. "For example, I'm spinning some real shit at a party in Miami," says Manhattan-based DJ Beverly Bond, "but I'm not going left on them because the promoter wanted me to play all of those party songs. So the promoter comes up to me and says, 'It's real easy here, we play straight hip-hop.' I'm looking at him thinking, Do you know what straight hip-hop is? DJ Clark Kent played the night before, and I couldn't see them stepping to him and telling him what to play." Arguably the most popular and respected newcomer in the game, Bond threw on some predictable tracks by Mobb Deep, Beenie Siegel, and Memphis Bleek before packing her crates and coming back home.

"A male DJ will play any song as long as it gets the crowd rocking," quips Soho-based DJ Belinda—and get paid significantly more. As she points out, Marc Ronson, Grandmaster Flash, and Funkmaster Flex get paid up to thousands of dollars per party, but most women have to supplement their incomes with day jobs like promoting, special events, dancing, acting, whatever. "Clubs are still paying women between $175 to $250 a night in comparison," says Becker. The distinction between the sexes lies not in technique—Brooklyn-born veteran Cocoa Chanelle, now in her late twenties, can "cross the arms, use the crossfader with my mouth, go behind my back, under my legs, with my back"—but perhaps in how women listen to music and the way they present it. "I think female DJs are more spiritually conscious and are more likely to play music by artists that have a social message, like Common, Mos Def, Lauryn Hill, and Talib Kweli," says Becker. "Male DJs—and I'm talking about hip-hop—are really into playing strident, testosterone-driven hip-hop."

"I would say as a generalization that when it comes to emotional music, women have a broader appreciation for it than men do," says Bobbito "DJ Cucumber Slice" Garcia, who resides at Apt. on 13th Street. "A lot of DJs don't actually dance; it's a really interesting phenomenon to me. But I think that most female DJs I've seen, like Belinda Becker and Beverly Bond, come from a dance background. When you come from a music-aficionado background and start DJ'ing, it presents a different sensibility."

The slew of female neophytes, who usually spin at posh clubs and lounges, aren't necessarily tech geeks or tricksters who'll cut and scratch the groove out of a song two minutes in. "There's nothing more annoying than when I am at a party trying to get my dance on and someone just gets scratch-happy on me," says 25-year-old Japanese American DJ Erica "E-Love" Hamilton. "I'll cut in between a chorus of a Premiere track, but I try to be as subtle as possible." With the exception of seasoned revolutionaries Kaori and Cocoa Chanelle, when women gig at clubs and lounges, the groove is generally more laid-back.

Once upon a time in SoHo, A mélange of hip-hop aficionados and industry people gather at a re-launch party for Honey magazine. DJ Beverly Bond, surrounded by kaya-puffing male groupies, becomes lifted in turn by every nod and grimace of satisfaction. Maryland native Bond, whose Sony studio headphones are squashing her gigantic 'fro, cruises from M.O.P. to Prince to Buena Vista Social Club to Jay-Z, "gradually telling a story," says Joe's Pub co-owner and publicist Jodie Becker. E.R.'s Eriq La Salle sits a few feet away from the booth, frantically pumping his limbs, while two female patrons squawk about who's going to start DJ'ing first. "Spinning is so sexy," says girl one; the other rolls her neck in total agreement.

Bond is not a turntablist in the purist Jazzy Joyce, Cocoa Chanelle, or even Kuttin Kandi sense of the term. While she does cut gracefully, her skills lie in how and what she blends to move the crowd. Giving a lesson in Africa's continuum in Black music virtually every time she plays, Bond will weave a quilt patching Fela Anikulapo Kuti and Ibrahim Ferrer to the Notorious B.I.G. and Erick Sermon seamlessly.

"I know that I have set myself apart from girls who are models, who are trying to be DJs and trying to be trendy," Bond says several weeks later. "I like to surprise people. I changed the game in a way." Bond supports her record collection and supplements her income by modeling, since collecting records in hip-hop is particularly expensive. Unlike techno or house music, rap DJ'ing generally relies on heavy sampling that crosses into soul, world, and Latin music, making record shopping a costly, arduous sport. "For hip-hop [vinyl], you gotta get your old-school hip-hop, for soul you gotta go diggin' through every little record shop you can find, little mom-and-pop stores, thrift shops," says Bond. A 5-foot-9-inch amber-colored honey, Bond doesn't care about lugging 60-some pounds of musical biscuits up and down the narrow steps of her fifth-story walk-up almost every night of the week. Since 1999, dozens of crates, jam-packed shelves, and equipment have replaced the furniture that once cushioned the butts of the friends who've urged her to pursue DJ'ing as a full-time gig.

In just two short years, Bond has become the MVP of the club scene, due in part to her nights as Joe's Pub resident DJ. "I was like a club head, the person who the DJ played for," says Bond, "so it was kinda easy for me to absorb what they did, and taking it to finding my own flow." When she's not on tour with Musiq Soulchild or Sunshine Anderson, Bond spins at Joe's Pub on Tuesdays.

And still, while Bond and a handful of others have earned respect in hip-hop's fight club, female DJs on the whole have a long misogynist road ahead of them. Hip-hop culture's undercurrent is organically violent toward women. Videos, anthems, and artists go to supa-dupa homoerotic lengths to reaffirm their unyielding devotion to their brothers and neighborhoods, and their rabid disdain for the opposite sex. Belinda Becker, who has an infant daughter, tries not to play music that promotes any kind of hatred. However, the popular consensus from women who focus strictly on hip-hop/soul is not to bring gender politics onto the dancefloor. "I'm not really too much into censorship," says Cocoa Chanelle, "so if there's a record that bothers me, I try not to get too personal to where I am like, Well, this offends me, but everyone else wants to hear it."

This apathetic attitude toward gender politics in the hip-hop nation has resulted in a scarcity of female role models. "For the most part, I don't see a lot of positive women with at least some commercial status that I can think of who are representing women in hip-hop," says activist and 5th Platoon member Candace Custodio, better known as DJ Kuttin Kandi. A co-founder of a collective of DJs, artists, and B-girls called the Anomolies, the 25-year-old Filipina American is one of the most respected beat jugglers in the country. Kandi spins (usually with her longtime partner and boyfriend, DJ Roli Rho) at various underground clubs around the city. "From my own personal conclusion," says Belinda Becker, "hip-hop is a much more violent world than other musical genres. If I'm in a crowded house-music club, I am not afraid. But when I'm in a hip-hop club and it's really crowded and it's tense, you just know instinctively something is going to happen. And it usually does."

"I've had owners come up to me and there'll be a group of Black people there and I'll be playing some new shit, like the new Jay-Z," says E-Love, "and the owner says, 'Stop playing hip-hop. I don't want these people to dance, I don't want them here.' " One of the hardest working DJs in the city, E-Love quit her day job as a Giant Step promoter to pursue singing and writing her own music and DJ'ing. "I really want to end up producing beats and creating music," says the Bronx transplant, "and I figured the more I listened to music and the more that I actually focused on music that's already out, the more I would learn."

For the most part, female DJs don't segue into production with the same speed as male DJs like Pete Rock, Evil Dee, Funkmaster Flex, and Clue, who have made wildly successful transitions into beat-tailoring and business. Jazzy Joyce, who laid down her first recording in 1983 as a member of a group called Sweet Trio on Tommy Boy Records, is only now getting into production; same goes for her Ladies Night partner Cocoa Chanelle and Spinderella. Kaori and E-Love are producing their own r&b projects, yet to be slated for release, and Bond says she is aggressively producing "soulful r&b, soulful hip-hop" tracks on her Triton keyboard. While talk and plans of producing are great for now, female DJs in hip-hop are in the proverbial studio in the same sense as every wannabe rapper in the country. Only time will tell what will materialize.

"The whole notion of one person reading the crowd and then directing the flow and mood of the entire group and then creating one singular vibe is, well, a woman's thing," says Jodie Becker. Tonight at NV, Kaori is in control of the masses of sweaty bodies bumping, humping, and grinding into each other without mercy to the bass resonating through the club's excellent sound system. People are getting their freak on. And even if only a handful will survive the furor, female DJs in hip-hop are not going anywhere, as long as there are asses to deliver to their mothership.