Paradise Gray, aka Paradise the Architect, watched hip-hop save young people like himself when he was growing up in the '70s in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

	Paradise Gray, co-host of the Pittsburgh Hip-Hop Awards Sunday night, says there is an extreme amount of talent in the area. Click photo for larger image.

Thirty years later, the DJ, rapper, producer and activist thinks hip-hop culture can help do the same here in Pittsburgh.

Gray, who will co-host the Pittsburgh Hip-Hop Awards Sunday with his old friend, Grandmaster Mele Mel, has a long track record in hip-hop, beginning with his membership in the socially conscious group the X-Clan.

On the business side he was a photographer for hip-hop magazines and manager of entertainment for The Latin Quarters, the legendary New York club that helped launch such acts as Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest.

Despite being a diehard New Yorker, Gray moved to Pittsburgh in 1993 with a cousin who was going to Pitt and has been here most of the past decade. He did a stint in the late '90s as the executive in charge of urban music at the MP3.com. On the North Side, he currently owns and operates Pyramid Recording Studios and The UndaGround Lounge, a hip-hop art gallery and performance space. He is also the producer of "Underground Hip-hop Video Magazine" which airs on PCTV Channel 21 at midnight. His community activism includes directing an after-school mentoring program for young people called Almost Home.

This week, he talked about how a growing hip-hop industry in Pittsburgh wouldn't just help the artists, but the support people as well. "The real money, the consistent money, in the music business is being a writer, a photographer, a fashion designer, a soundman, a lighting technician, a lawyer -- there are so many side businesses that develop from having a healthy industry for young people. It would be something so wonderful; it would be able to keep young people in the city."

Beyond that, this passionate advocate had a lot to say about the state of hip-hop.

What do you think of this first Pittsburgh Hip-Hop Awards?

It's a great idea. It's something that is long overdue. As far as I'm concerned, there's always been an extreme amount of talent, but the business hasn't caught up with the skills of the people. So, finally, what this does is give people in Pittsburgh an opportunity to give credit and praise to these wonderful artists who don't get any regular airplay from their local radio. They don't get the love they deserve for the talent they have. I've been around the world nine times, and I truly believe the artists in Pittsburgh are as good as artists anywhere.

Would you say a lot of hip-hop artists in Pittsburgh have given up at some point?

It's not that they give up, but they get frustrated because there's not as much support here in Pittsburgh as there is in other cities. If you go back a generation or two you find that Pittsburgh musicians and artists ranked among the best anywhere. If you look at the jazz greats from Pittsburgh, the list is phenomenal. Pittsburgh can and will generate as many great hip-hop artists as it has jazz.

Does it take one major force in a city, like a Ludacris in Atlanta or a Nelly in St. Louis?

It wasn't really the artist Ludacris that made Atlanta popular. It's the people who handle the business in the city. We need intelligent people to step up now and meet the challenge the artists are laying down now. We need management, promotion, production, entertainment lawyers, booking agents; we need the press to create excitement.

Why do you think we haven't had those people?

Everyone's focused on New York and L.A. What people don't realize is that we did hip-hop in the streets for 15 years before it even got on a record. We went through the same thing in New York, where no one believed in the music or the culture and people treated it as a fad and no one took it seriously till it blew up and made so much money. If you look at the South right now, if they had waited for New York or the West Coast to legitimize them, they'd still be waiting. Pittsburgh has to operate as though no place else exists.

When you think of the local talent, what names jump out at you?

The Govament, a group called Da Sinate, a kid named Wiz Khalifa. There's a whole host of guys that people never heard that are waiting in the wings to come out and crush it, male and female, and they're very young.

You come from a different generation when hip-hop was more socially and politically conscious ...

You know why? Cause there really wasn't much money involved. You did what you lived, you did what you loved. You did it for the artistry. You did it for the music, the passion. Basically, when we were growing up, the industry didn't reflect our values. Entertainment was extremely inaccessible to poor people then. Now, these guys are coming up and everyone looks just like them, dresses just like them, talks just like them.

There were 40-something major labels when I was growing up. Now there's only three. They have a cookie-cutter formula of what they're looking for. Now that you can get $30 million for making songs about sex, violence and drugs and, you're young, you're looking at that money, you're not looking at hip-hop as an art form. Hip-hop was our recreation. Hip-hop saved people in New York from gangs and from drugs, where now you get paid $30 million to talk about the gangs and the drugs. A lot of people focus on the negativity in the lyrics of hip-hop, but nobody is focusing on the corporations who have a financial gain. You don't see A Tribe Called Quest making $30 million.

Are people like Jay-Z and Ludacris partly responsible for that?

If you're Jay-Z or Ludacris and you want to be more creative and musical and make music like A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul or OutKast, you're looking at the bottom line as a businessman. I'm sure that if you submit some stuff that is not following the format of radio, they'll tell you right away, 'We're not going to get behind that.' They're not looking for music as an art now. They're just looking for music as a business. Back in the day, you had all the independent labels like Profile, Tommy Boy, Def Jam. Those labels have been incorporated into the large labels. There's not much room for the Roots From Philly, who make great music and have great concepts but don't sell a lot of records. These are companies with thousands of employees they have to pay. Instead of having 20 different artists that they're working at different levels, they want five artists that sell 10 million albums. Every single artist is not supposed to be multi-platinum.

What keeps you involved, even as the business and the culture has gone in this direction?

What keeps me involved is that even though these major labels may own the business of hip-hop, they don't own the culture of hip-hop. That still belongs to us. The commercial music industry, they don't own me. They don't own everything about the business. There is always something new that is going to be created, a new sound, a new vibe and this music belongs to me. I don't care who's co-opted it, who's trying to steal it. I'm not going to be one of those who will easily let it go. I'm going to keep breakdancing till I'm to old to dance. I'm going to keep appreciating graffiti and creating physical art and I'm going to keep nodding my head every time I hear a young guy spit some lyrics off the top of his head. I'm like hip-hop's greatest fan.

You talked about the business side. What else could hip-hop do for Pittsburgh?

Hip-hop can be a unifying force to finally erase the lines that are drawn between communities in Pittsburgh. The young people in Pittsburgh, they're boxed off into the Hill, Homewood, Wilkinsburg, the North Side, the South Side, and they feud with each other because they live in different hoods. Hip-hop opened up the city of New York into one city. I would really like to see hip-hop here in Pittsburgh free people from these little boxes and open the city so young people could travel from hood to hood and not have problems just because they don't live there. Pittsburgh needs to be one city, one people, one 'hood.