Earlier this month at a crowded S.O.B.’s, Boot Camp Clik, a collective of veteran Brooklyn MCs, was celebrating the release of its hot new album, Casualties of War. As the MCs took the stage one at a time, each raised the club’s temperature; when Sean Price and Rock—two of the group’s heaviest hitters—jumped up, they were greeted with thunderclaps of noise, making it hard to tell where the roar of the audience ended and the MCs’ forceful vocals began. The energy was every bit as infectious as at any punk show.

IT’S LIKE THIS, IT’S LIKE THAT Sean Price
of Boot Camp Clik breaks it down at S.O.B.’s.

Photo: Tim Soter

But why have scenes like this become scarce in the city of hip-hop’s birth? In retrospect, the ’90s were a golden age for live rap music in the city, with a number of clubs (including the Muse, Homebase, Union Square, Wetlands and Tramps) routinely putting together bills on which young upstarts could learn the ropes of performing for a live audience. In NYC today, the system of working your way up from small clubs hardly exists for hip-hop artists. “They’ll book a no-name rock band at Mercury Lounge with the idea that it could be an arena act in five years,” says Larry Gold, who runs S.O.B’s. “No one’s taking those risks on up-and-coming hip-hop artists.”

Besides Gold’s venue, a fixture on the scene for more than 20 years, and, to a lesser extent, the tourist-oriented B.B. King’s and Park Slope’s Southpaw, few NYC clubs below the 2,100-capacity Nokia Theatre have more than a tenuous connection to the local hip-hop scene. Conversations with artists, promoters and scene players revealed a litany of reasons why live performance has drifted to the fringes of the hip-hop experience—from conservative talent-buyers who believe a rap show automatically means a troublemaking African-American audience, to the very nature of how hip-hop music is produced and consumed today.

“There were more [promotional] outlets for us back in the ’90s,” says Dru Ha, cofounder of Duck Down, the indie label that Boot Camp Clik calls home. “But now all we have is the Internet, print and live performance, which is crucial. We’re strangled in terms of radio and video play—those just aren’t there for us anymore.” Just like rock radio has dramatically shortened its playlists, stations like Hot 97 and Power 105 seem to play the same handful of tracks over and over. Even nighttime shows, where legendary DJs such as Funkmaster Flex spin new artists alongside classics, have become more closed-off to many indies. “Guys like [producer-DJs] Green Lantern, Kayslay and DJ Envy have pull at radio,” Dru Ha says. “If I have a new artist and Green Lantern has a new artist, whose record is going to get played first?”

The recording industry is in a steady decline, and hip-hop’s album sales are dropping even faster than rock and pop’s. But while many rock bands have constructed new business models in which relentless touring produces a steady revenue stream, few hip-hop artists have done the same. “We had a head start in accepting that our careers wouldn’t be maintained by radio and video,” says Dru Ha. “So now Boot Camp is a worldwide touring thing—they go to Chile and Japan, Switzerland and Australia, and people come out.”

Yet if less experienced MCs don’t have access to stages in NYC, they’ll never develop a strong live show. And some new MCs simply don’t care to be hot performers. “A lot of guys now go straight from mixtapes to playing stadiums,” says Lord Finesse, a Bronx MC whose 1990 album, Funky Technician, cemented his place in NYC hip-hop history. “They don’t know how to talk to a crowd or put together a live set.” Over the past 15 years, Finesse has become a steady organizer and host for shows at S.O.B.’s and throughout the city, and he’s watched the overall atmosphere go cold. “Younger MCs are too fucking cool to jump up onstage and just rip it,” he says, ticking off the things that have changed since the ’90s. “There’s less camaraderie, people don’t support like they used to. We’re missing the rooms—I love S.O.B.’s and Joe’s Pub, but we need more places bigger than that—and we’re missing educated promoters who can put together a strong bill.”

One educated promoter who’s more sanguine is Peter Agoston, who recently joined the in-house staff at Knitting Factory in part because he sensed a lack of clubs with frequent live hip-hop. “Back in the day, MCs had to show up onstage every week and earn respect,” he says. “People like Big Daddy Kane and Run-D.M.C. made their names onstage.” The Knit is one room that was already receptive to hip-hop; Clipse, a pretty hardcore duo from Virginia, has become a house favorite after a few wildly successful gigs there. “It’s made strides for their NYC popularity, the fact that people could see them in an intimate space like this,” Agoston says. “They’re a great example of how rap acts can work in a club.”