Last weekend, on a short trip back to Singapore, I managed to just sniff the outsides of *scape where an indoor event was taking place. It turned out to be Amateur Takes Control’s single launch where they were collecting donations to put together a full length album. I arrived 2 songs shy before the end of the show so I didn’t pay the $10 to be amongst short, young folks and that would have just reminded me that I was one of them close to 10 years ago, attending every single gig, no matter the genre. My passion for gig-going probably secured me great friendship with my closest circle today; they who enjoy watching random bands with messy haired vocalists who gaze at their shoes during their performance, buy the dollar buttons and lose them the week after, and then meet the who’s who of the scene. Trust me, I’ve done my rounds. Because of these people, I got to know the difference between rock and post-rock, drum&bass and downtempo, hardcore and metal, indie and pop-rock, and of course, I passed on my share of Hiphop and R&B. While I had turned Hiphop and R&B into a fulltime career, 4 years back, I can’t say that we’ve grown as much as the other scenes that co-exist. I used to think it’s some kind of struggle this neglect that Hiphop gets and that everybody thinks it is a fad. Truth is, it is Hiphop in Singapore itself that never progressed as a scene.

Don’t get me wrong. You have these wonderful individuals making music, and contributing. They grow big and strong, and even better, overseas. But looking at ATC’s album launch, I was really jealous at how much attention this young, new, independent band they are getting from their peers, and how much support their older counterparts are giving them like their distributor RockStarCollective and Djohan who did their artwork. These guys have been around before *scape was *scape. Wasn’t that what I was trying to do for Hiphop in Singapore? I know why it didn’t work out.

When you go to a rock gig, small or big, you will see these random photographers, merchandise people, sound system providers and such. They have nothing to do with each other, and they probably don’t know each other, but they’re there, at every gig. These pictures will pop up in Facebook and Myspace and blogs the same night, and when you meet these familiar people at the next gig, they’ll have those buttons on their vests and bags, and the soundman will be wearing the t-shirt with the band logo he got for free from the previous gig. The bands, more or less, are the same, and for the good 2-3 years that they stay committed to the game, they’d be playing the same songs. Even the sound of a drumroll would trigger the crowds to scream because it would be a song that they know by heart, even if there are no lyrics to this post-rock piece. There’s the politics, of course. 1) The fella rumoured to be making all the money and keeping it. 2) The dude taking all the credit for the work. 3) The band leader who got paid but never shared the loot. 4) The sound system company who was shortchanged. But new bands come by, new supporters flock to the gigs, new organizers who want to make it right take over, the flyers start having logos so that losers can’t stake their claims, and sound system folks now ask for 50% upfront. And you’ll see the pictures up on the blogs at the end of the day, archived for eternity and it will be browsed by the mat-rockers of a decade ago, from Weekendtrip (when Awakening was still doing it), from Localpalooza, from BayBeats before Nokia, and from the Area22 moshpits. They’d all be smiling from their desktops knowing that somebody have continued bearing the torch, even if they don’t know each other. They’d comment on the pics, and then trigger huge networking possibilities.

Since 1999, Hiphop in Singapore has been young. When you go to a gig, everybody is your age. And it kept on recruiting the post-O level graduates (or non-grads for that matter) and their likes. It started out at YouthPark too but the sound system have always been bad. There have never been official photographers except for trueblue Hiphop head, Sketch. The kids were only there to have fun, I suppose. The performers were random, one or two would stand out, especially those with true messages and a good sound. But after a while, we did away with the DJ because it got expensive to host a show with monitor speakers and turntables. The b-boys started taking part in dance competitions instead. We even did away with the whitewash planks for the graffiti boys to work on. Little did we know, we’ve broken up a family. Not even Triple Noize’s win on primetime TV helped pave the way for street Hiphop to follow suit because we, as rappers and R&B singers, never saw how important the photojournalists, bloggers, and the likes were. The occasional Community Club gigs now feature guys with dramatic makeup, dancing to the beat that the rap group brought from one of the few well-known beatmakers here in Singapore. The older folks leave, and never looked back. We don’t have progress, development, and all we kept doing was pat each other on the back on how great the performance was, while truly, we know we need more than that to achieve a big break. Maybe not everybody wants a big break, but don’t you want some kind of reward? Even if its not $, don’t you want somebody to bop their heads to your song? Somebody you don’t know, perhaps. Somebody who doesn’t know Hiphp, even. Not NoiseSingapore, a government-funded youth program helped give a boost when they recruited Hiphop acts for their year-long campaign with their TV and online ads. I suppose we don’t have anybody else to blame but ourselves for the lack of vision, and that we didn’t even bother looking up how much buttons would cost because our beat was just so banging. If Nas thinks that Hiphop is Dead, he should see the state we’re in here in Singapore. At least the famished in Africa knows that they need food, but the struggling rapper here don’t know what’s wrong with him. No points for any of you.

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