No matter how you cut it, the shootings outside I-Spy that left two people dead last weekend cannot be separated from the scene that surrounds the artists who played there. The performers who took the stage Friday, October 4, create rap--not hiphop (a distinction I made in my essay "Thug Life"--June 2). Rap, which emphasizes and celebrates thug realities, has been in favor for several years, while hiphop, which offers a diverse gallery of black realities, has been in sharp decline. The reason for hiphop's decline has much to do with the basic prerogatives of the recording industry (corporations like Sony and Island): The market wants thugs, and the recording industry wants to make a profit; therefore, it supplies the market with what will make it profits--thugs.

The music performed that Friday night was predominately rap, and the violence that erupted outside the club early Saturday morning reflected the themes and imagery that dominate rap music: threats and boasts, automatic weapons, blazing bullets, and, once all of the smoke has cleared, the bodies of murdered "niggaz."

Indeed, the circuit between rap and reality was unimpeded: At around 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, 200 people who attended the I-Spy performance were in the parking lot on the southeast corner of Fourth Avenue and Virginia Street. All at once, shots were fired, and people started scrambling. Some ran to their cars, others just ran for their lives.

The gunmen entered an SUV and fled the scene, firing toward the crowd. As the SUV pulled out onto Fourth Avenue, a cop saw the gunmen firing out of their windows in the direction of the club, and opened fire on the vehicle. He missed his target and instead struck the windows of Bed Bath & Beyond.

A swarm of police cars and bikes (the crime scene is only four blocks from the West Precinct) pursued the SUV, and on Lenora and Fourth it T-boned a massive Cadillac on the right side (the driver was unhurt). The vehicle then careened into a parked white Honda. The shock of the accident brought the gunfighting to a conclusion. In the end, two men were dead, two injured, and the police estimate that 50 rounds were fired (judging by descriptions given by witnesses of the incident, that estimate seems conservative).

The show connected with the shooting was a rap extravaganza featuring local groups such as Unexpected Arrival, Cool Nutz, Gangsta Nutt, and Skuntdunna. Most of these performers are on Sea-Sick Records, owned by Ghetto Prez (Keek Asphy), who also performed that night, along with DJ Kun Luv (Chukundi Salisbury), the publisher of Seaspot Magazine. (Seaspot recently celebrated its first anniversary at EMP with no incidents.)

Though I admire the entrepreneurial spirit of the Ghetto Prez, who promoted this particular show, it's impossible for me to ignore the violence that too frequently follows rap shows. I'm sure he is unhappy about these disruptions, as they hurt his business and make it hard for him to find premium downtown locations for his shows, but what is to be done about the actual violence--a violence, furthermore, which fills most CDs that make up the now billion-dollar rap industry?

One performer at the show, Neema Khorrami of Unexpected Arrival, gave the expected statement to the Seattle Times: "Some people may automatically want to link (the shooting) to a hiphop show because that's the stereotype." [Sunday, October 6.] I'm certain the Seattle Times published that comment to make its readers laugh at the rapper rather than sympathize with (or register) his point of view, because the facts in this particular case are so evident.

When, for example, a group of Hells Angels motorcyclists exploded into a knife and gun battle that left three people dead on the streets of Las Vegas last April, no one had any problem associating the incident with the annual biker convention that was in town. Likewise, the gun battle and I-Spy's rap show (not hiphop show, as the promoter, Steven Severin, stressed to me over the phone--he has had countless "underground hiphop" shows without incident) are linked, and to reject the very truth of this is to make matters dumber than they are. And if matters are that dumb, then how can we formulate an intelligent solution to the question: How can black entrepreneurs like Ghetto Prez make money without these fucking crazy situations?