Still keeping it real
Scribble Jam continues to educate and entertain in its celebration of hip-hop culture

TABARI MCCOY | CIN WEEKLY

Paint can? Check. Turntables and fresh kicks? Check and check.

How about a microphone? Check, one-two, one-two.

It's Scribble Jam time. Your fellow B-boys and B-girls are waiting.

Four.

That's the total number of activities (graffiti, breakdancing/B-boying, DJing and rapping - "the elements") that Scribble Jam intended to celebrate when it started in 1996. Fast forward 11 years, and Scribble Jam has grown into the biggest annual hip-hop festival in the U.S. (if not the world), drawing more than 10,000 people for its four days of concerts, art expos and legendary B-boy, DJ, beatbox and MC battles.

"Fat" Nick Accurso, who has been with the event since the beginning, attributes Scribble Jam's success to simply keeping it real.

"Scribble Jam is basically as grassroots as we could possibly get (in relation) to something created in the '70s and '80s in New York," Accurso says. "In '96, all your gangsta rap started to evolve, and we still had the love for the culture for what hip-hop was meant to be ...We wanted to do a festival, and (Scribble) was the best way to (do that) with that many different interests coming together."

MIDWEST CONNECTION

Accurso says, for several years, Scribble's organizers focused on making the various battle events as strong as possible. The strategy paid off as it helped grow the event's notoriety, allowing Scribble to start bringing in more concert performers, such as notables MF Doom (of DangerDoom fame) and Masta Ace. Last year, the event expanded even further by conducting its first-ever national tour, with several groups performing in 13 cities across the country to promote the annual main event in Cincinnati. This year the tour went international to Australia, home of Scribble Jam's 2005 MC Battle winner, Justice.

Given the event's success, you might think Accurso would be tempted to move the event from Cincinnati to a larger city where hip-hop is bigger and more appreciated.

But not Accurso - he says Cincinnati is the best place for Scribble to be.

"First of all, Annie's is the greatest venue in the world. I've never been anywhere that they own all the property, so we can do murals; we have over 50 artists doing murals on the walls there over the weekend, and there's nowhere else in the world at any venue I've ever been to that would allow something like that," he says. "When we're in a big city, it's hard to network and get everybody to come to the event (because) they have hip-hop every single night."

INTERNATIONAL APPEAL

Thursday will be a very big night in the life of Cincinnati native Don "Donwill" Freeman as he and his Tanya Morgan bandmates make their Scribble Jam debut at the festival's opening night showcase.

And Freeman - whose group has been featured in prominent hip-hop publications The Source and XXL as well as on MTVU - looks forward to the exposure Scribble Jam will give his group.

"You have a lot of places that support national acts and national artists, but when it comes to showcasing local and underground talent, those venues and opportunities are far and few between (in Cincinnati)," he says. "But Scribble Jam is worldwide, and you can't buy that kind of exposure. People come from other countries, and that's just crazy to me; I've literally met people from France and Germany and they're here for hip-hop."

Von Pea, a Brooklynite who is the only non-Cincinnati native in Tanya Morgan, agrees that Scribble Jam is needed and loved by B-boys and B-girls worldwide.

"You need something to showcase the other side of hip-hop because the mainstream has their things and they are more in the forefront, but up-and-coming artists, they need their medium," he says. "People really do care because they fly from another country to come to Scribble Jam; that says a hell of a lot. It's not that people only want to hear the popular music that is hip-hop; there are people that still care about it and love it and it's become part of their life."

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

MC Jarvis Tubbs (aka Dirk Dangler) is also excited about Thursday. His group DFI will make its Scribble Jam debut Thursday at Top Cat's as well, a goal he says the members have been trying to achieve for the last five years.

And now that he's made it, Tubbs hopes other artists get a chance too.

"Content gets overlooked and Scribble Jam brings it back because people get back to the roots of just standing in the cipher and battling and people breakdancing," he says. "It would cause a huge disappointment if there were no Scribble Jam."

Long-time fan Jen Guethlein, 26, of Clifton concurs.

"(Scribble Jam has) fabulous music, insane battles (and) some of the neatest people you'll ever meet - you don't get this many people in one area in Cincinnati unless it's Scribble Jam," she says. "That's what makes Scribble Jam what it is."