Yesterday, on the Howard Stern show, clips from a rap song called “Free John Gotti” by a group called Pizza Connection, consisting of current Stern show writer Sal Governale and some other goofyball Italian teen into hip-hop living in Long Island in the early 90s, was played and endlessly clowned. If Sal and his Pizza Connection buddy ever got some tapes or records pressed of this, it’d be some kind of “Oh my god” random rap collector’s item. Some guy in Japan would drop $40 bucks on it.
“Free John Gotti”s got a real hip-house influence, by which I mean, it has some cornball keyboard lines and some god-awful Big Daddy Kane approximation hyper-enunciated raps over top of it. That said, it’s a pretty fascinating misreading. Two ethnic Long Island kids reaching into all the politically-minded hip-hop of the era and grafting it onto the culturally protective, gravely misinformed dinner-table talk of their parents.
I also included the audio from the show, because of the heavy thicket of context you get via Sal Governale when he’s grilled about this bizarre song. In terms of perception about hip-hop and snitching and politics, this is fun for showing the way every tightly-knit group of peoples has very similar, self-destructive and self-preserving codes about snitching and protecting one’s own, etc. Also: Pizza Connection is a dope fucking name.
further reading/viewing:
-”Chicago Hip-House Documentary 1989″ off YouTube
-”I Pissed On a Girl” by Sal Governale
-”My Wife” by Sal Governale
-”The Departed & “Thief’s Theme” by ME
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Roosevelt Cagey
2 Jul 12 at 5:41 pm
i am relaly at a loss for words.thank you for all the posts you have made so far. they relaly made me laugh and kept me entertained. i have lost count of the number of times your post made my day ^_^ thanks for all the hard work you put in researching and statistics in your post and I will especially miss the annual April 1st post that you usually make. you introduced me to Johnny’s and I am relaly grateful for that. hope there will come a day when you feel like blogging again.I wish you all the best in all that you do. good luck on publishing your book too.
Shinta
5 May 14 at 4:35 am