I HAVE been listening to a lot of the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique album. This fact really has nothing to do with this entry other than on the Beastie Boys’ song “Car Thief” from Paul’s Boutique, there is this line: “your girl got dicked by Rickey Powell,” and the fact that Rickey Powell is like an unofficial Beastie Boy, which makes for a nice kind of symmetry between my actual life and this blog entry.

In recent conversations with other writers and magazine heads I have been saying that I do not want to write about “cool culture” anymore, ever, in any kind of way. However I feel compelled to talk about Paul’s Boutique and Rickey Powell since this “blog” also acts as a kind of public journal of my influences. I like Rickey Powell a lot. I love the New York street scenes he photographed from the ’80s of hip-hop kids because I feel that I am still very much one, just like Powell. Sometimes being hip-hop and graying doesn’t work at all. Then I see a guy like Russell Simmons, Rickey Powell, Rick Rubin, Rakim or Dr. Dre and think differently. Powell was an unknowing (although now he has to be aware of his influence) architect of the scene for the better part of three decades.

Currently, Powell has a column on The Citrus Report and while it is not say, the most enlightening material, it is the irreverent, honest voice of Rickey Powell and it gives me hope. He hasn’t changed. True School. It is the Rickey Powell I have come to know and love as a public hip-hop figure and the columns are the thoughts of an aged hip-hop head that cares about the world and fights the good fight, it seems. Recently, Powell had a solo exhibit at MilkStudios/Gallery.

Rickey Powell column for The Citrus Report [Here]

Flickr set of Milk exhibit [Here]