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Too $hort: From mack daddy to do-gooder
Night Owl column by Angela Woodall
Oakland Tribune
May 16, 2008
I got a crash course in Oakland Hip-hop Wednesday night at a party hosted by Oakland rapper Too $hort, who was celebrating the opening of a recording studio downtown.
The place was wall-to-wall with aspiring rappers.
Too $hort — born Todd Shaw — has become a Hip-hop granddaddy. He's grown over the years, so to speak.
Shaw, who has been in Atlanta, Ga., for years, said Oakland is a rougher city than back when he was growing up and drug kingpin Felix Mitchell was running the streets.
But music-wise, the dream and talent are still here, Shaw said.
The young people are just a little short on inspiration, he added. (Actually he said they "need some inspiration" but I couldn't resist the pun.)
"Our city could use some uplifting," Shaw said. "It was time to come back home."
Shaw said he'd be cleaning up his language and steering the young ones toward expressing themselves without the nasty words.
So even rappers like Too $hort known for their smutty language and a pimped-up style can get respectable if they stick around long enough. Look at rappers Ice-T and Snoop Dogg.
To be fair, Shaw's raps were often deeper than his nickname "Shorty the Pimp" implied, particularly in the lyrics about the streets of Oaktown being overrun by crack cocaine and violence.
"City of dope, I call it oak. Can't be broke, selling coke. Fat ropes, shattered hopes," go the opening lines to "City of Dope," which, he rapped, "might be your town."
But the pimpin' image really put him on the map, even as Shaw maintained a split between Todd and Too $hort.
"There's a lot of money in rapping dirty. We're running a business here. I give my fans what they want," Shaw said in 1990.
On the other hand, Too $hort put Oakland on the hip-hop map without the kind of commercial play that Oakland's flashier homeboy M.C. Hammer got.
You gotta wonder how much Shaw is worth.
Presumably, a lot more than in 1981, when his accountant parents moved him and three siblings from Los Angeles to East Oakland, according to a 1990 Oakland Tribune interview. Around 1981 is the time he tried out his first raps while working an after-school job at the Jack-in-the-Box at 24th Avenue and 14th Street.
His first decent audience was a talent show at Fremont High, where he was a student. The often-repeated story is that Shaw sold his homemade rap cassettes out of the trunk of a car and at parties.
In those days, there was no formula or blueprint for success, he said Wednesday, seated in one of his recording rooms looking a bit stressed after the umpteenth interview of the night. Still, he looked nearly boyish instead of like a 42-year-old businessman.
"Everything was done by the seat of our pants," Shaw said.
Wednesday's opening was distinctly mellow and not what you'd expect from a crew of rappers. I guess these guys are getting older.
Besides the music — instrumental versions of rap songs — the loudest noise in the room was the cracking of billiard balls on the pool table near the ample bar.
That's all right with rapper Yella Yezz, who handed Shaw a copy of his CD as the host made his way (dressed in an embroidered white dress shirt and blue jeans) through the hall lined with about six recording rooms.
"You get tired of going to studios where you hear bam, bam, bam, bam. You don't hear much of that around here," Yezz said, referring to downtown.
He remembered when Too $hort used to come around 73rd Avenue. "Everyone wanted to be like Short."
The studio was the brainchild of Elijah Baker, who wrote some of his songs and played bass for Shaw. "I wanted to bring the Oakland sound — live instruments and funky — back," he said, grabbing a drink on his way back upstairs.
Upstairs is where a music and media school for youth is planned — a place they can "come get the vision," said Alginita "Auntie" Owens, the whip-cracking business mind behind the enterprise and Baker's aunt.
Or, as Tony Toni Tone's D'wayne Wiggins put it, "a place young people can get away from all the bull s---."
"Instead of coming together to party, we're coming together to do some good," Wiggins added.
"We're bringing back what Oakland is all about: The arts," he said. "It all started here. We're bringing it back."
That's all for now, ladies and gentlemen. But if you have a cool shindig, e-mail me at awoodall@bayareanewsgroup.com or visit the Night Owl blog at www.ibabuzz.com/nightowl for more events and oddities.
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