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Tuesday, January 19, 1999 By Tony Norman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
He wasn't exactly James Meredith integrating the University of Mississippi, but M.C. Ambush was something of a profile in courage at the Turmoil Room Saturday night.
As one of two white guys gutsy enough to grab the microphone in a basement full of low expectations of him, Ambush knew there was no getting around the tension he embodied as an "appropriator" of hip-hop, long synonymous with African-American urban culture.
After Ambush grabbed the mike from Uncle Noodles, a brother whose verbal flow should've intimidated everyone in the room, his rhymes were quickly overtaken by the staccato beats of the turntable and the sound system's tinny acoustics.
But Ambush hung in there, defying the crowd's waning interest in an improvised narrative that seemed to evaporate like smoke under the basement's low ceiling. He compensated for the obviousness of his lyrics by upping the speed of his delivery, even managing to turn a particularly clever phrase before losing momentum.
Though unpersuasive, there was something gallant about Ambush's refusal to back down from the challenge of snatching a small piece of Pittsburgh's hip-hop legacy.
It occurred to me while watching him reluctantly hand the mike to another rapper that a tenacious but scared white kid doing his best in a "black art form" was more in tune with the spirit of the original civil rights movement than all the static hagiography leading up to the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.
The dozens of white hip-hop fans who rubbed elbows with black youths to cheer on Pittsburgh's underground rap aristocracy Saturday night were united in their belief that they were all heirs to the same art, even if white guys had to work harder to "get a piece of the pie."
The audacity and charm that animated the original civil rights movement can still be found in places like the Turmoil Room in Regent Square, where kids of all persuasions hang out while negotiating the ebb and flow of cultural expression.
The sight of a multiracial crowd milling in front of a Regent Square gallery entrance still has the power to startle, even in the East End. That's why underground hip-hop will baffle anyone intent on keeping score in the racial sweepstakes that is America.
While misogynist and violent variations of rap dominate the pop charts, the local hip-hop scene has produced artists who don't seem to be in any hurry to pick up a gun: Rook & Bishop, Stretch, Oyo, Bravo, Strict Flow, Keen Intellect, Image, B-Tree and Gee Man come immediately to mind.
"I'm not a violent brother," Dashon, the show's headliner, growled when he grabbed the mike. "I don't kick rhymes to save the world, to save my community or to save Afrocentricity. I'm just about hip-hop."
When Dashon and Snook launched into their anthem "Let's Get Hype Tonight," it was easy to believe in hip-hop's ability to forge a cultural consensus, despite the song's rude sentiments. But I couldn't help smiling when Ambush returned, unbowed by his poor showing earlier.
"I represent Allderdice," he said sending a shout-out to his high school. It was a funny bit of chauvinism coming from a guy who represented so much more than that.
Tony Norman's e-mail is: tnorman@post-gazette.com
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