History Of Black Low-Riding
I've been seeing a lot of my Mexican brothers and sisters trying to commit ethnocide of Black people and our involvement in the culture of lowriding. I think I pinpointed the disconnect and how our involvement was systemically removed. Will I say it was purposely done? No. I won't go that far; although, that can very well be the case. Time has, however shown, that inspite of the outlet, our involvement still remains minimized, and that is hard to ignore. More on that later. But I believe the disconnect started in the mid to late 1970s with the introduction of "Low Rider Magazine".
Low Rider Magazine was created by Mexicans and for Mexicans. It introduced the culture to the rest of the world, but our representation was left completely out of it. To this day, very little has changed on their part. There is still only Mexican representation in their magazine and internet fingerprint. The only place you really see us, is on their stages to perform. I was one of those many performers in the 90s.
Their accompanied label (Thump Records) was heavily represented with Mexicans, and rarely any Black people (at least, at the time), but the headliners were almost always Black artists. In fact, I'm far enough removed to share the fact that Bill Walker wasn't interested in signing any of us unless we were already established artists. I've seen and heard the bigotry from that man's mouth close up and personal while he was drunk in Arizona after a show, at the Biltmore Hotel. It took everything I had not to flat glass him there on the spot; but I digress: in doing so, the history of their humble beginnings in the culture has been the ONLY one that was researched and cataloged. With the involvement of the internet, that history has done nothing but blossom, and created a space where brown faces and ONLY brown faces are seen and made apart of it. To find our involvement, one has to specifically Google "Black Low-Riding history", and even then, the results are far less robust. To find history from our perspectives, be it books or documentaries, one has to really scour the internet to find it, and depending on that author(s), the information may be subject to be not as accurate as it should be.
I've always called it a "shared culture" because there was a lot of techniques and contributions shared on both ends that created the culture of what we see today. But every time I did, my statement would be met with the same old, "Chicanos invented lowriding. Black people didn't get into it until Snoop Dogg introduced it in videos". But they forget all the aspects that come with it that doesn't solely depend on them; like the music, which was, again, showcased by their accompanied label with the car shows. Or a lot of the slang that is used, the plaque designs, and so on and so on. Hell, the song "Low-Rider" was written by Black men named Lonnie Jordan, Charles Miller, Howard E. Scott, Harold Ray Brown, and B.B Dickerson, of WAR.
So just know, this culture is just as much ours as it is my Mexican brothers and sisters. Some of you may hate that idea, but facts are facts. You gonna have to live with it.
Doc Nasdee out! Oh, and go stream my song "Hoo-Bang", available on all streaming services! AFTER, of course, you enjoy a more in depth history from the video above, if you haven't already.