Deep Dickollective
Encyclopedia
Deep Dickollective was a black and queer
hiphop group based in Oakland, California
that helped launch the homohop genre of openly
queer/LGBT
artists including the PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Festival
.
, Tim'm T. West and Phillip Atiba Goff.
The three began working together after Kalamka and West met following a 1999 screening of black gay filmmaker and scholar Marlon Riggs
' film Tongues Untied
. Kalamka and West later met Goff on the campus of Stanford University
, where West and Goff were enrolled in PhD programs. Though Goff, Kalamka, and West had performed solo work at several readings in the previous months, The group's first performance as Deep Dickollective was May 12, 2000 as a part of curator William Jones' Black Gay Male Radical Performances series at the legendary Black Dot Cafe's original location at 2330 International Blvd. Titled "With The Key: SISSSIES", the show's naming served as an overt recontextualization of popular early 1990s Afrocentrist/Black Nationalist rap group X-Clan
's homophobic tag line.
Kalamka and West had been performing for years as MCs but had few opportunities to work as out queer artists until encountering each other and Goff shortly thereafter. Kalamka had begun recording an experimental spoken word project called "Pre/tensions" with San Francisco blues and avantgarde jazz guitarist/bassist Dick Deluxe Egner (formerly of Club Foot Orchestra
) and with groundbreaking queer hip hop group Rainbow Flava, but both were interested in the possibility of creating a project that would push buttons around race, queer
ness and masculinity
in hip hop
all at once.
Frustrated with the resistance they had faced from an allegedly progressive "conscious" spoken word scene, the three began jamming together in private on Stanford's campus and came up with the skeletons of about 20 songs, 13 of which would become their debut recording BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo. In a moment of anger while discussing their difficulty with the local scene (West had been performing at readings and with bands since his arrival in 1998, but lost all of his bookings once the scene became aware that he was gay) Kalamka blurted "well, if them girls can call themselves the Punany Poets (a then popular Oakland poetry group), we can be Deep Dick Collective!". The name was then shortened to "Deep Dickollective", but the initials "D/DC" remained as the three letter abbreviation seemed to roll off the tongue well,and signified the group's deconstructionist intent. What started as a parodic exercise to vent frustration became a blooming underground yet internationally critical success that involved 11 queer men who recorded and performed as members of D/DC.
During the recording of BourgieBoho, Kalamka decided that it would be easier to promote and manage the group's work if there was a micro-label of some sort that served as a reference point for people that were hearing about the group. Taking its name from a comment on his and West's choice of clothing by an old black man in downtown San Francisco, Kalamka created Sugartruck Recordings, which has since released additional recordings by D/DC as well as that of rapper Katastrophe (the Outmusic Award winner Let's Fuck Then Talk About My Problems), and did micro-distribution of close to 20 titles by other artists in the scene.
BourgieBoho' s release was followed by the 6-song EP
Them Niggas Done Went and Said... in 2003, concurrent with a 7" vinyl single release of "Movin' b/w Straighttrrippin'(C-Phlavormix)" by the now defunct Boston punk distro Agitprop! Records
.
The group recontexualized statements such as the lyrics "In a circle of faggots, your name is mentioned" from the song "Dooinit" from Common's album Like Water for Chocolate
.
The same year, D/DC won the "Best Hip Hop Group" category in the San Francisco Bay Guardian
' s Best of the Bay reader's poll.
In February 2004, the group released its third project, The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes, which was a double nominee in the 2005 Outmusic Awards as well as being named to Out
' s Top Ten Gay Albums of 2004 list. March 2005 saw the release of the 9-song EP Live at Wildseed and Mo' , as well as much more extensive touring as a group and solo following the premiere of Alex Hinton's documentary Pick Up the Mic
at the 30th Toronto International Film Festival
.
The ensuing increase in visibility created for queer hip hop artists (as well as the opportunities for self-promotion and distro created by MySpace
)led Kalamka to shift Sugartruck's promotional attentions to releases by himself, Deep Dickollective and Katastrophe.
Its fifth disc, On Some Other was released by Sugartruck on June 22, 2007.
Ongoing creative differences and the desire to work on other projects led to Kalamka's formal dissolution of the group in April, 2008. Deep Dickollective played its last contractually obligated show at Albuquerque (New Mexico) Pride on June 13, 2008. The group's members currently perform work as solo artists and lecturers based in various cities across the United States.
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
hiphop group based in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
that helped launch the homohop genre of openly
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
queer/LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
artists including the PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Festival
PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Festival
The PeaceOUT Homo Hop Festival, was an annual festival of hip hop music and culture created by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people and held in Oakland, California from 2001 to 2007.-History:...
.
History
Deep Dickollective was formed in early 2000 by Juba KalamkaJuba Kalamka
Juba Kalamka is an African American bisexual artist and activist recognized for his work and founding member of homohop group Deep Dickollective and his development of the micro-label Sugartruck Recordings....
, Tim'm T. West and Phillip Atiba Goff.
The three began working together after Kalamka and West met following a 1999 screening of black gay filmmaker and scholar Marlon Riggs
Marlon Riggs
Marlon Troy Riggs was a gay African-American filmmaker, educator, poet, and gay rights activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several television documentaries, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment, and Black Is. ....
' film Tongues Untied
Tongues Untied
Tongues Untied is a 1989 semi-documentary film directed by Marlon Riggs. The film seeks, in its author's words to, "...shatter the nation's brutalising silence on matters of sexual and racial difference."-Content:...
. Kalamka and West later met Goff on the campus of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, where West and Goff were enrolled in PhD programs. Though Goff, Kalamka, and West had performed solo work at several readings in the previous months, The group's first performance as Deep Dickollective was May 12, 2000 as a part of curator William Jones' Black Gay Male Radical Performances series at the legendary Black Dot Cafe's original location at 2330 International Blvd. Titled "With The Key: SISSSIES", the show's naming served as an overt recontextualization of popular early 1990s Afrocentrist/Black Nationalist rap group X-Clan
X-Clan
X-Clan is a hip hop group from Brooklyn, New York, originally consisting of Grand Verbalizer Funkin' Lesson Brother J, Professor X The Overseer, Paradise the Architect, and Sugar Shaft the Rhythm Provider...
's homophobic tag line.
Kalamka and West had been performing for years as MCs but had few opportunities to work as out queer artists until encountering each other and Goff shortly thereafter. Kalamka had begun recording an experimental spoken word project called "Pre/tensions" with San Francisco blues and avantgarde jazz guitarist/bassist Dick Deluxe Egner (formerly of Club Foot Orchestra
Club Foot Orchestra
The Club Foot Orchestra is a music ensemble founded in 1983 by Richard Marriott. After a brief career playing dramatic, complex music in San Francisco clubs, they became known for their equally dramatic and complex scores for classic silent movies. The ensemble got their name from a performance art...
) and with groundbreaking queer hip hop group Rainbow Flava, but both were interested in the possibility of creating a project that would push buttons around race, queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
ness and masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
in hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
all at once.
Frustrated with the resistance they had faced from an allegedly progressive "conscious" spoken word scene, the three began jamming together in private on Stanford's campus and came up with the skeletons of about 20 songs, 13 of which would become their debut recording BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo. In a moment of anger while discussing their difficulty with the local scene (West had been performing at readings and with bands since his arrival in 1998, but lost all of his bookings once the scene became aware that he was gay) Kalamka blurted "well, if them girls can call themselves the Punany Poets (a then popular Oakland poetry group), we can be Deep Dick Collective!". The name was then shortened to "Deep Dickollective", but the initials "D/DC" remained as the three letter abbreviation seemed to roll off the tongue well,and signified the group's deconstructionist intent. What started as a parodic exercise to vent frustration became a blooming underground yet internationally critical success that involved 11 queer men who recorded and performed as members of D/DC.
During the recording of BourgieBoho, Kalamka decided that it would be easier to promote and manage the group's work if there was a micro-label of some sort that served as a reference point for people that were hearing about the group. Taking its name from a comment on his and West's choice of clothing by an old black man in downtown San Francisco, Kalamka created Sugartruck Recordings, which has since released additional recordings by D/DC as well as that of rapper Katastrophe (the Outmusic Award winner Let's Fuck Then Talk About My Problems), and did micro-distribution of close to 20 titles by other artists in the scene.
BourgieBoho
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
Them Niggas Done Went and Said... in 2003, concurrent with a 7" vinyl single release of "Movin' b/w Straighttrrippin'(C-Phlavormix)" by the now defunct Boston punk distro Agitprop! Records
Agitprop! Records
Agitprop! Records is a 'revolutionary hardcore and hip hop' independent record label based in Boston, USA, founded by Angela Tavares.One of the label's notable releases is the compilation Stand Up & Fucking Fight For It, its first full-length CD, released in 2002...
.
The group recontexualized statements such as the lyrics "In a circle of faggots, your name is mentioned" from the song "Dooinit" from Common's album Like Water for Chocolate
Like Water for Chocolate
Like Water for Chocolate is a popular novel published in 1989 by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel.The novel follows the story of a young girl named Tita who longs her entire life to marry her lover, Pedro, but can never have him because of her mother's upholding of the family tradition...
.
The same year, D/DC won the "Best Hip Hop Group" category in the San Francisco Bay Guardian
San Francisco Bay Guardian
The San Francisco Bay Guardian is a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. The paper is owned mostly by its publisher, Bruce B...
In February 2004, the group released its third project, The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes, which was a double nominee in the 2005 Outmusic Awards as well as being named to Out
Out (magazine)
Out is a popular gay and lesbian fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle magazine, with the highest circulation of any gay monthly publication in the United States. It carries itself in a similar editorial manner to Details, Esquire, and GQ. Out was published by PlanetOut Inc...
Pick Up the Mic
Pick Up the Mic is a documentary film, released in 2006, which profiles the underground LGBT hip hop scene and homohop, which is a subgenre of hip-hop that includes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rappers, DJ's and hip-hop artists. The film was directed by Alex Hinton.The documentary had...
at the 30th Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
.
The ensuing increase in visibility created for queer hip hop artists (as well as the opportunities for self-promotion and distro created by MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
)led Kalamka to shift Sugartruck's promotional attentions to releases by himself, Deep Dickollective and Katastrophe.
Its fifth disc, On Some Other was released by Sugartruck on June 22, 2007.
Ongoing creative differences and the desire to work on other projects led to Kalamka's formal dissolution of the group in April, 2008. Deep Dickollective played its last contractually obligated show at Albuquerque (New Mexico) Pride on June 13, 2008. The group's members currently perform work as solo artists and lecturers based in various cities across the United States.
Discography
- (2001) BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo (Sugartruck Recordings)
- (2003) Them Niggas Done Went and Said... (Sugartruck Recordings)
- (2003) Movin [7" single] (Sugartruck Recordings/Agitprop!Records,Boston)
- (2004) The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes (Sugartruck Recordings)
- (2005) Live at Wildseed and Mo (Sugartruck Recordings)
- (2007) On Some Other (Sugartruck Recordings)