Wearing good-fitting khaki shorts and a T-shirt that bears the name of his company's Web site, Stu Pflaum looks more like a young entrepreneur than an experienced Hiphop DJ.
Stacks of vinyl records reach the ceiling in Pflaum's apartment, but he makes no mention of them, instead talking about the growth of his self-owned business and Hiphop as a potential career.
Uncorrupted by corporate influence, Pflaum, or DJ Xplosive as he is known in Athens, still treats Hiphop as a culture and, more importantly, as a way of life.
Most of what I'm doing at any given time of the day is I'm either involved with ... some aspect of Hiphop
or I'm thinking about it said Pflaum, who is pursuing a career in politics on the East Coast.
Pflaum's sentiments were common among local Hiphop activists: all said they treat Hiphop as more than just a musical genre.
It's everything said Darrel Greene, known locally as rapper Jesty Beatz. You can have a nation of just Hiphoppers out there.Small, but cultural
The distinguishing feature of the Athens Hiphop scene is not its size, but its cultural foundations. None of the Hiphop artists in Athens have been signed to a major label ' though some have drawn interest ' and most do their own promotion work.
Pflaum invested $7,000 of his own money in his Hiphop production company, Element 9 Hip-Hop Production, which promotes about seven artists. The company is named after the ninth element of Hiphop culture, entrepreneurialism, because that element epitomizes Pflaum's grass-roots promotional efforts.
Despite just returning from an international tour in Mexico, Greene started off with $30 and a spindle of CDs, and he still does all his own production and promotional work.
I've gone on a tour out of the country with big name people
Greene said. I got that far on my own
so if I can keep working
keep plugging away
keep staying hungry and focused and determined
I think I can do it.
Unfortunately, Hiphop artists in Athens do not draw large crowds, said Curtis Manley, booking manager at the Blue Gator, 63 N. Court St. Although Manley said he sees talent in local Hiphop artists, their shows bring in only about 75 people on a weekend night, compared to the Blue Gator's regular jam-band crowd of more than 200 people.
The talent that Athens has
it's just too bad you can't get people out there to let them see it
he said.No longer black music
Defined culturally, Hiphop, spelled as one word with a capital H to denote its cultural significance, has four core elements, but as many as nine total elements, said Ohio University Professor Akil Houston, a noted Hiphop scholar. The four core elements ' emceeing (rapping), b-boying or b-girling (breakdancing), graffiti writing and DJing ' are supplemented by knowledge, beatboxing (using the voice as an instrument), street fashion, street language and entrepreneurialism.
Gabriel Gonzalez, president of OU's Hiphop Congress, strives to make people aware of all of them ' not just rap.
It's rap music that sells
but then I explain to kids that it is a culture
