And the winner is......Too $hort in the ongoing beef / rap battle between Too $hort and Messy Marv who, as instigator, is indeed messy - not to mention foolish to take on the respected "Godfather of Bay Area rap." That's my personal opinion but already it seems that most other Bay rap fans are similarly taking the side of $hort in this seemingly mean spirited & uncalled for attack by Marv - an undoubtedly talented rapper but one known for starting beefs with others.  This battle (essentially an attack) began recently on Twitter by Marv but $hort did not take the bait and respond, at least initially. Soon after the beef escalated from online to the studio where Messy Marv., a couple of weeks ago, recorded "Class of 84 (Fuck Too $hort)" in which his main gripes with  Too $hort seem to be that he was not born in the Bay, that he has not helped other artists enough to Marv's liking, and that he is "old." Note that at thirty something (his self-penned bio says he's 31 but some say he's closer to 40 than 30) Marv is not exactly a young cat himself in this rap game.

                              

Bay Area hip-hop got much love in the Big Apple over this past weekend when both Andre Nickatina and Zion I & The Grouch (aka Z&G), who headlined concerts at NYC's Highline Ballroom and Knitting Factory respectively, had the packed venues loudly & appreciatively showing much love for the Bay Area.

Sunday night at the Highline, in Manhattan's Chelsea district, longtime San Francisco rapper Andre Nickatina stopped the music and led the packed house in a back-and-forth chant of "Mac Dre, Mac Dre." Throughout the rest of the excellent show, for which up-and-coming SF rapper Roach Gigz opened, he had the supercharged audience (many donning SF Giants hats) singing along to the lyrics of songs such as "Killa Whale." Two nights earlier over in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Zion I & The Grouch similarly had the packed Knitting Factory crowd (many clearly Bay Area transplants) singing along in unison to the Zion I Bay Area hip-hop anthem "The Bay."

"It's like being at a rap show in San Francisco," enthused one Andre Nicatina fan Sunday night in New York as the artist formerly known as Dre Dog launched into one of his newer songs, the title track of his recent album My Middle Name is Crime, a collaborative full-length with The Jacka (with the absent Jacka's verses played back on tape).

Today marks the anniversary of a sad occasion for Bay Area rap fans. On this date, November 1st, back in 2004, Vallejo rapper Mac Dre was shot and killed in Kansas City, Missouri after a car pulled alongside the van he was in and fired several shots, killing the rapper born Andre Hicks on the spot.

Mac Dre had performed at a concert in Kansas City that weekend and was on his way out of town on Highway 71 when the car pulled up alongside the vehicle in which Mac Dre was a passenger and opened fire. The driver of the van crossed over into the southbound lanes of the highway before crashing into a ravine. By the time medical help arrived on the scene Mac Dre was dead from a single bullet wound.

If he were alive today, Mac Dre would be 40 years of age and, no doubt, the traditionally prolific artist would have recorded and released at least a dozen albums and Treal TV DVDs over the last six years. In honor of Mac Dre, below are a few videos by the artist including two from the 1990s, from his pre-Thizz stage and before he spearheaded the Bay Area's hyphy movement. You're missed, Mac Dre.

In 1999 the independent East Bay hip-hop-themed online company The Giant Peach was formed by Karen Dere with planning help from Stinke, whom she had worked closely with at the Hierogyphics' company (the pioneering Oakalnd hip-hop entity that was one of the very first to embrace the Internet in the mid 1990's -- years before most people even had an email address, nevermind a fully functional online distribution outlet for indie hip-hop). Working at the Hieros' company for several years coupled with the previous years' experience and expertise she culled from her time as a DJ, etc. at KALX radio, Karen had gained enough insight and knowledge to launch The Giant Peach.

Initially created as "a means for independent labels (with an emphasis on hip hop) and artists to produce their own line of garments and distribute their products to the masses" -- as its mission statement lays out -- the Giant Peach (GP) has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade but has still pretty much stuck to its initial plan of creating a bridge between artists/labels and fans and of exhaustively carrying the clothing lines of popular design artists and collectives, and always with an emphasis on those from the Bay Area.

This film was taken from two different short films shot over a hundred years ago along the identically same route in both 1905 and a year later in 1906 by an unknown cameraman, who captured the silent footage from a streetcar going straight down San Francisco's Market Street towards the Ferry Building. This short piece (one of many that utilize the public domain footage) edits together San Francisco both before and after the big earthquake of 1906. Footage from the Prelinger Archives, edited by Matt Lake.