The Fulton Mall, the commercial street in Downtown Brooklyn that is closed to cars, was arguably the hottest shopping destination for New York’s hip-hop community in the 1980s. Shop that, in a combination of hipster clichs, also serves Pabst Blue Ribbon. “You didn’t go there unless you had a reason.” Now the reasons can include coffee roasted on site or 14 varieties of homemade vegan nut milk at Red Lantern, a bike “I lived a block away from Myrtle Avenue when it was called ‘Murder Avenue,’ ” said the Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli, who is known for his political engagement and literaryĪllusions. High crime rate, and was frequently mentioned in songs by Brooklyn M.C.’s and by Queens rappers like Nas and Mobb Deep. On the north side of the park, Myrtle Avenue was known in the ’80s and ’90s for its Now, on Saturdays, there’s a farmers’ market at the southeast corner of Fort Greene Park.
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Police have cracked down on musicians playing in the street or park after complaints from neighbors. Shiffman said, “Fort Greene was a place where you walked down DeKalb Avenue and young men would play their bongos and other instruments and get together.” In more recent years, the (Also from Fort Greene were Ol’ Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan, who was born Russell Jones and who died in 2004, and the old-school “Everybody in the poetry/hip-hop artist world came to Brooklyn back then to perform,” said Michael Thompson, owner of the Brooklyn Moon Cafe, which has been serving Caribbean and soul foodĪt South Portland Avenue and Fulton Street since 1995. If Bedford-Stuyvesant was the center of hard-core hip-hop, Fort Greene - mentioned by Masta Ace and Gang Starr’s Guru, both of whom lived in neighboring Clinton Hill - was the locusįor progressive hip-hop, with visits from M.C.’s renowned for thoughtful, Afro-centric lyrics, like Digable Planets, Common and Q-Tip, and slam poetry stars like Saul Williams. Which since 2011 has been selling cheeses and meats that are “locally, ethically and sustainably sourced.” A couple of storefronts over is the Brooklyn Victory Garden, The Met Food where Biggie once bagged groceries is still there, but a hip-hop record store on Fulton that sold bootleg CDs has disappeared. Biggie was among them, as he put it in a famous rhyme: “Used to steal clothes, was considered a thief/Until I started hustlin’ on Fulton Street.” “Groups of young men would hang out and look intimidating,” added Ron Shiffman, a founder of the nearby Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development, a nonprofit organizationĭevoted to city planning. Lot more hustling drugs were a lot more prevalent.” (The rapper Chubb Rock lived one block over on St. James Place and Washington Avenue since 2000. “It was a much more depressed area,” said Andrew Thompson, who has owned the Golden Krust outlet on Fulton Street between St. Representing BK to the fullest,” as he rapped in “Unbelievable” - which were very different back then.
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James Place between Fulton Street and Gates Avenue: Biggie grew up in Apartment 3L and sold crack and engaged in freestyle rap battles on these streets - “Live from Bedford-Stuyvesant The action, Biggie’s childhood apartment, a three-bedroom walk-up, was recently listed by a division of Sotheby’s International Realty. If you look hard enough, the rougher past might still be visible under the more recently applied gloss. The disconnect between brownstone Brooklyn’s past and present is jarring in the places where rappers grew upĪnd boasted about surviving shootouts, but where cupcakes now reign. The Beastie Boys, Foxy Brown, Talib Kweli, Big Daddy Kane, Mos Def and L’il Kim.įor many, the word “Brooklyn” now evokes artisanal cheese rather than rap artists. Among the artists who lived in or hung out in this now gentrified corner of the borough: Not only Jay-Z, but also Were arguably all of the above, the then-mean streets gave birth to an explosion of hip hop. Including successful hardcore rappers, alternative hip-hop M.C.s, respected but obscure underground groups and some - like KRS-One and Gang Starr - who Biggie, who was killed under still-mysterious circumstances in 1997, was just one of the many rappers to emerge from Brooklyn’s Though it was at the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant when he was growing up.
A mural of the Notorious B.I.G., killed in 1997, in today’s Bedford-Stuyvesant.įor current real estate purposes, the block where the Brooklyn rapper Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, once sold crack is now well within the boundaries of swiftly gentrifying Clinton Hill,