\u201cWe\u2019re about to play the most famous record in hip hop,\u201d the Bronx rapper Melle Mel promised the crowd of some hundred or so on a hot late afternoon, at a corner block party wedged along the borders of Jamaica, Hollis and St. Albans.<\/p>\n
And so he did, leading a rousing version of \u201cRapper\u2019s Delight\u201d that followed a version of his own old sextet\u2019s signature song \u2014 Grandmaster Flash\u2019s \u201cThe Message\u201d \u2014 a record he must have performed hundreds of times, but it felt, in some way, still fresh and clean, as indelibly cool in his hands as his ivory-white fedora or his well-maintained pecs.<\/p>\n
The past Saturday afternoon might have been the biggest version yet of Farmers Day, a block party that takes place annually around a painted rock that doubles as a World War II memorial on Farmer\u2019s Boulevard.<\/p>\n
It was a small, if sturdy, corner of old-school rap lore; in his hit song \u201cMama Said Knock You Out,\u201d LL Cool J would chant out the street name as a kind of call-and-response and, in 1995, he would pose for the photographer Ernie Paniccioli on top of the rock, taking a break from shooting a music video in the area with Boys II Men.<\/p>\n
Fittingly, the star of the upcoming \u201cNCIS: New York\u201d made an appearance last Saturday, too, arriving briefly to shake hands like a politician, just before the party started.<\/p>\n
In recent years, the festivities have begun to attract actual politicians, this time including Gov. Hochul, herself busily searching for votes in Queens to shore up her reelection campaign.<\/p>\n
The governor came with a local entourage that included both her running mate, former City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams of Jamaica, and other allies still in office such as Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and state Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans).<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, my grandmother who\u2019s 93 years old is still here,\u201d said Hakim Dubois, selling shirts showing his late uncle Earl \u201cE-Love\u201d Matthias, one of Cool J\u2019s longtime hypemen, per Dubois. \u201cStreet fashion should have more representation on a higher level with urban apparel,\u201d Dubois told the Chronicle.<\/p>\n
It was part of a larger cultural exchange, one that stretched down into Atlanta, where a similar block party will be happening toward the end of the month called \u201cQueens Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the stage over in Queens, a handful of other legends, local and otherwise, passed though, too, from Mel downward.<\/p>\n
There was the Hollis group Black, Rock & Ron, a late \u201980s fixture whose Lord Black and The Ruler Master Rock traded bars with a kind of hopeful ease. And there was Mr. Cheeks, a tall Queens rapper whose set closed out the block party, and whose delivery warbled with a kind of sandpaper clarity.<\/p>\n
And then there was Sweet Tee, also from Hollis, with a debut album from 1988 and with bars that still cracked and shimmered in the late summer air. These were songs about strutting out, demanding what you want, capturing moments of feeling powerful. When she did her biggest song \u2014 the 1986 single \u201cIt\u2019s My Beat\u201d\u2014 it felt like it could only be hers, and it was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019re about to play the most famous record in hip hop,\u201d the Bronx rapper Melle Mel promised the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[446,23992,63660,3945,126809,126806,426,80721,4790,40649,126805,126808,9,24,63,122,124,123,126807],"class_list":["post-337659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-adrienne-adams","tag-black","tag-block-party","tag-donovan-richards","tag-farmers-day","tag-hakim-dubois","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-leroy-comrie","tag-live-music","tag-ll-cool-j","tag-melle-mel","tag-mr-cheeks","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-rock-ron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}