"Kid Lucky"

Features
Verizon Beatbox Mixer Brings Mic-Spitting to the Masses
Written on
July 27th 2006
Author
by Kiran Aditham |
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While it’s always been one of the quintessential components of b-boy/hip-hop culture, beatboxing is also one of its toughest to master. With your mouth as the instrument, and the microphone the outlet, natural sounds coalesce and make for some of the most interesting, and at times, jaw-dropping “music” out there. But seeing as it’s an art form unto itself, with skills, talent and swagger all required, only a select few make the cut as true maestros of the beatbox.
Thankfully, a major brand like Verizon was (surprisingly) aware of this fact, and lured said maestros—Rahzel of the Roots crew, Baba Israel and “Kid Lucky” Lewis to name a few—to lend some street credibility to their latest branding campaign. Late last week, the company launched the Verizon Beatbox Mixer on its site, www.richerdeeperbroader.com, which has been an ongoing portal that emphasizes Verizon’s shift from just a mobile carrier to an influential entertainment brand in the broadband era.
“The concept for the interactive component is really walking the walk,” says Richard Marks, Group Account Director for R/GA, the agency Verizon hired to help implement the Beatbox Mixer. “They’ve changed a lot of the company, moving away from being a phone company to being an entertainment and broadband company. They want to provide broadband and entertainment leadership… they’re working with us to help them change their image.”
With image change and strategic shift in tow, Verizon’s already shown they can be hip with the kids thanks to the mixer, which according to the company, is “a cross between a music video, a video game, and a drum machine. More specifically, visitors to the mixer can pick their beatbox pro of choice, choose from several of their vocal stylings, and perform live synchronization with multiple video and audio samples. Additionally, the Rahzel wannabes can create, save, and share their own performances or listen to the most popular ones created.
As for why beatboxing was chosen from Verizon and R/GA’s perspective, Marks explains, “a) It’s such an amazing talent and the genre in itself is great and b) back in the early days of hip-hop, it was a one-person thing. But in the last three years, it has been more of a collaborative effort. It’s got a great soul to it.
He continues, “We didn’t want to pick something that was already done. We wanted to help it happen, and show how broadband and site can achieve the sharing of this underexposed medium. It’s to help the community. We worked with Rahzel, Kid Lucky Entertainment, Baba Israel. Really, in achieving that goal, we’re showing the power of broadband.”
Another plus in Verizon’s favor is that it is eschewing the major online media, and is taking it to the street with offline events touting the Beatbox Mixer and letting the word spread virally from there. “It’s definitely meant to start underground. There are bunch of wild postings R/GA created to launch in East Coast markets–Philly, DC, New York.
We threw a launch event to share with press to demonstrate the mixer, a live mixing performance by [hip-hop troupe] Ill Minds. We had kiosks there. We’re starting with offline, and we’ve launched a couple of videos on Google and YouTube to really create beatboxing session and drive people to the sites.”
With more content set to be added, from both an aural and visual perspective, Marks insists that the microsite will be live for quite a while. But first, he says it’s time for the underground to create a grassroots marketing initiative for it. “Once we build more of that urban mass, that underground mass, we’re going with a street team,” adds Marks. “We’re really hitting underground first. The whole project was about trying to make this a very authentic platform. We didn’t want this to come off as a very commercial idea. But we’re also achieving our commercial goal of [advocating] the power of broadband.”
Want to put your mic-spitting/mixing skills to the test, with a little help from the pros? Lose yourself in the moment at www.beatboxmixer.com

- Kiran Aditham - www.adotas.com

NYNiche is a Japanese online magazine. Here is the link they wrote about the Subway Series.

http://www.nyniche.com/soul/hiphop/10_index_msg.html - www.nyniche.com

It's Goin' Down
HIP-HOP GETS BACK TO ITS ESSENCE ON THE TRAIN.





In the rap world, the term "underground" has long been associated with purists who toil in obscurity while scoffing at shiny-suit rappers and their candy-painted vehicles. But for the creators of New York City's 5th Element Subway Series, the term is literal.

On Sunday, May 21, close to 100 international and interracial rappers, beat boxers and dancers piled into a car on the No. 4 train at Grand Central Station. Traversing several lines and stops, the vocal-only troupe hit up all five boroughs, effectively going "all-city" in one afternoon. It was the seventh Subway Series, a biweekly event founded by Terry "Kid Lucky" Lewis last February as a response to what he viewed as the stagnation and commercialization of rap music. "We're challenging people to do new and creative styles," explains the 33-year-old Brooklynite, who runs Beatboxer Entertainment, a production company that has worked with Rahzel, Doug E. Fresh and Scratch from the Roots. "We had tap dancers tapping to MCs rhyming, and we had b-boys break dancing to beat boxers."

Employing online tools such as e-mail blasts, Listservs and Craigslist postings, Lewis recruited a coalition of artists that has grown in size at each successive event. "I think a lot of this generation has lost contact with the street side of hip-hop, the street side meaning literally rockin' in the street," says Baruch "Baba" Israel, 32, a NYC beat boxer and MC who has attended three rides. "It brings the feeling that hip-hop has an urgency, a playfulness and a need to interact with the world directly."
Direct interaction with regular MTA commuters inspired both excitement and bewilderment, but, overall, the subterranean joyride went without incident. Even the notoriously overzealous officers of the NYPD couldn't derail the soul train. "Acop [yelled] at us...but we [couldn't] hear him on account of how loud we were rapping," recalls Graham "proGrammar" Mackenzie, 29, of Manhattan. "This being New York and all, and us not really causing any trouble, the cop just gave up and gave the conductor the go-ahead to let us keep on."

With similar events cropping up in Chicago, San Francisco and Toronto, the Subway Series won't go off track during a summer hiatus. "You can't deny it's real hip-hop," says Kid Lucky, who plans on launching a fall session that will rock from Manhattan to New Jersey. "We're going to the street—leave the bling at home."
With stickup kids out to tax, that's healthy advice for anyone riding—or rapping on—the subway.
— BEN DETRICK

046 XXL MAGAZINE AUGUST 2C
- Ben Detrick

Sunday rappers pause for the cause

by amy zimmer / metro new york

MAY 19, 2006
MANHATTAN — Terry “Kid Lucky” Lewis and a band of beatboxers, spoken word artists and MCs have brought hip-hop to the subway every other Sunday for the past three months.
This Sunday marks the final “5th Element Subway Series,” before Kid Lucky takes a summer hiatus. He’s hoping it will be a grand finale as the group weaves from Grand Central down to Whitehall Street and on to the Staten Island Ferry.
“We’ve had B-boys, tap dancers, MCs,” Kid Lucky said. “The last one was just dope. We rode the train and then went out to a park with a DJ in Sunset Park.”
Kid Lucky wants to get back in touch with “the essence” of hip-hop, “the days without the microphone, without the turntable, but when human beatboxing was hot.”
When Metro caught up with Kid Lucky for his first Subway Series installment in February, 25 people showed up. That number has tripled, he said. “We had Japanese TV contact us, the BBC,” Kid Lucky said, “but sadly, the black media didn’t pick it up; Vibe didn’t pick it up; Source didn’t. That’s the thing about ‘consciousness hip-hop,’ those cats are not picking it up.”
Another “subway series” got more attention. Rap group Mobb Deep spent five days trailed by MTV cameras as they rode trains, hung out with kids and signed autographs to promote their album, “Blood Money.”
“We went to different spots, like Fulton Mall, Jamaica Avenue, Fordham Road, 125th Street,” said Prodigy, on the phone from touring in Milwaukee. “We got an MTV audience to see what the ’hood looks like.”
Prodigy remembers impromptu ciphers on the train while growing up in the Queensbridge Houses, but he would not perform there.
“I did my time on the train,” he said. “Now, we’re riding cars.”
Rapper’s delight
• The 5th Element Subway Series meets on Sunday at 7 p.m. at Grand Central at the back of the downtown 4/5/6 platform.

- Amy Zimmer

Lips Inc.
Hip-hop disrespects them. Subway patrons love them. Beatboxers make some serious noise.
by Derek L. John
December 5th, 2006 12:08 PM






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Kid Lucky (center, with sunglasses) and his salivating crew spice up your commute.
photo: David Yellen

Hear it for yourself: World-class beatboxing by the inimitable Ready Rock C
On a sleepy Sunday evening, a Brooklyn-bound L train lurches to a stop somewhere deep beneath the East River. Strangely, nobody in the last car seems to notice. Not the old ladies clutching shopping bags, not the preening hipsters wobbling in ill-fitting heels, not the starched family men on the way home from church. The packed train is too busy craning its collective neck toward a noise wafting from the middle of the car:

Boom-boom . . . ghat—tssst . . . boom-boo-boom . . . crack! Brooklyn! Bring that beat back!
Boom-boom . . . ghat—tssst . . . boom-boo-boom . . . crack!

Out of a huddle of swaying bodies, a nimble kid in high-top sneakers drifts into view, sputtering improvised rhymes over a heavy beat. His verses are forgettable—"Keepin' it real/You know the deal," etc.—but the musical backbeat is not. Its underlying thump and stutter-step rhythms tickle tired feet along the car's dirty floor. More than just curious, the crowd of onlookers are confused, their quizzical faces all asking the same thing: Where are the drums?

The drums seem to be near Kid Lucky. But upon closer inspection, it's suddenly clear that Kid Lucky is the drums. In fact, he and a couple of motormouths on either side compose an entire rhythm section. Passengers press close behind, and Lucky, feeding off the crowd, huffs and puffs a deep bassline using only his mouth. With loose lips flapping and Adam's apple bobbing, the barrel-chested beatboxer barks out a Fort Apache–style breakbeat, a favorite of the two B-boys in attendance. Decked out in tank tops, tube socks, and headbands, they breakdance in the limited space between the handrails. Shockwave, a lanky, blond-haired beatboxer in his late twenties, steps up to the cipher, seemingly frothing at the mouth. His muscular percussion buttresses Lucky's raspy turntable scratches, and together they give new meaning to the expression "say it, don't spray it." Lucky draws a hurried breath and eggs on the crowd, "Now clap your hands to the beat!"

Only 20 minutes earlier his crew had boarded the train at Eighth Avenue, kicking off the latest edition of the twice-monthly Subway Series, an informal gathering of homegrown beatboxers, B-boys, MCs, and their ilk. In the last year or so they've taken over entire subway cars for freestyle performances. The L is their line of choice tonight, and as it rolls eastward, the rear car sucks in one unsuspecting rider after another. With the train fully loaded and stuck in the tunnel, the beatboxers now face a large and captive audience, something they hadn't had in a long time.

An old-school hip-hop throwback to a time when, as the lyric goes, "shoelaces were fat and Michael Jackson was black," human beatboxing first emerged on the streets of New York City in the early '80s. Pioneers like Doug E. Fresh and Darren "Buffy" Robinson of the Fat Boys began mimicking the drum machines—or beat boxes—popular with DJs. Such high-tech equipment wasn't cheap, so a few enterprising loudmouths started vocalizing their own beats. A minor craze ensued, culminating in the Fat Boys' appearance on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. Always somewhat of an oddity, beatboxing came to symbolize hip-hop's early invention and innocence. Its proponents once rivaled MCs for mic time, but when hip-hop rose to cultural prominence soon afterward, their mouths fell largely silent.

Beatboxing never really went away, of course—it just went (often literally) underground. And that's where it's thriving on this particular night, in the steamy subway car. The mood may be light and jovial, but the beatboxers have something to prove. They fret about being regarded as charmingly nostalgic at best, and hopelessly outdated at worst. DJs, MCs, breakdancers, and even graffiti writers have long enjoyed deity status as the four official elements of hip-hop. But the culture's outrageous success has somehow left the "fifth element" behind. Beatboxers' quest to regain cultural cachet is odd in terms of the venues they choose (poetry clubs and subway cars), their opponents in the battles they fight (VH1), the now famous former collaborators they sue (the Fresh Prince, for one), and the bizarre schemes they hatch to steal back the spotlight (one plot involves dolphins). Their art may look funny in person, but this is no joke.

Lucky and his ragtag crew have long seen themselves as latter-day John Henrys fight ing an increasingly mechanical and soulless music industry. "It's the human mouth beating technology at its own game," explains veteran beatboxer Baba Israel. "Laptops can break down, and I've been at shows wh - Derek John

Hip-hop with a porpoise

by amy zimmer / metro new york

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NOV 27, 2006

MANHATTAN When Terry “Kid Lucky” Lewis isn’t organizing the bimonthly Sunday Hip-Hop Subway Series — where rappers, singers, beatboxers and even tap dancers jam in transit — he’s running his own production company, Beatboxer Entertainment. In his spare time, the Brooklynite has been reading about dolphins and dreaming of a way to unite his armchair research with hip-hop.

He recently won approval from the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key, Fla., to send a team of seven beatboxers to perform and conduct research with dolphins.

“I’m trying to figure out musically what we can do that will bring out something unique with the dolphins,” said Kid Lucky, who expects to stage the performance in October 2007. “But it’s not just about music, it’s also about science.

“In hip-hop culture there have been questions about how to get the youth exposed to more about science and math,” he said. “We have a spiritual base and we haven’t complemented it with a knowledge of science.”

Kid Lucky wants to know if dolphins will respond to beats.

“The concept of dolphins being able to work with music isn’t anything new,” he said. “Dolphins are very smart.”

Mary Stella, media relations coordinator at the Dolphin Research Center, sent an e-mail to Kid Lucky last month with some ideas: “We envision some performers standing in the water on one of our special DolphinSplash underwater platforms to perform. Our trainers would then ask the dolphins to come in close to interact and, hopefully, make some sounds, too.”

The performers, who will be about hip- to waist-deep in the water, depending on their height and the tide, won’t use any lyrics. They will use clicks, pops and whistles to create their musical compositions.

Kid Lucky acknowledged some people might find the dolphin project gimmicky but, “I don’t want that amusement to stay amusement. I want it to progress into something greater. We have a scientist who’s a beatboxer, we have teachers, we’ve talked to research scientists.

“Sometimes you need to take risks, like the risk of being laughed at and losing it all,” Kid Lucky said, “to do what you know is right.” - Amy Zimmer