Sometimes I get on my bike just to ride. Other times, I have a route and destination in mind. But I don’t always know what I’ll see along the way.
As I the Randalls Island Connctor, I heard music on the Bronx side. That’s not unusual; I figured it was coming from somebody’s car. But then I heard…rapping. And it didn’t sound recorded. So of course I had to check it out:
The words they chanted, shouted, stage-whispered and simply spoke resonated, not only because of their rhythms and rhymes: They were as skilled as any I’ve heard, but they didn’t come cheap: The pain and frustration—and triumphs—pulse from them.
But even though their raps dealt with events in the artist’s lives and the world today—or, at least, they could have been today’s stories—I had the seemingly-odd sensation of going back 40 or 45 years. I soon realized why: Those young men with old souls were doing like the early hip- hop djs: They set up sound equipment in a public space (the corner of East 132nd Street and Locust Avenue, to be exact) and opened themselves up to whoever chanced by.
The main differences were that the man who was the actual or de facto sound engineer was using a laptop which, of course, nobody had “back in the day.” And he didn’t have a turntable, which almost everyone had.
I will definitely check out their YouTube channel (Punchline Academy). Will I encounter anything like that impromptu concert on a future ride? Before today, I probably would have said, “no.” But after today: “I’ll never know!”
