Friday, October 01, 2004  

Cocaine Blunts

The broke-ass computer that Noz uses to drop knowledge.

My profile of Noz & Cocaine Blunts,
in the Washington City Paper, Oct. 1-7, 2004

As Nasty as They Wanna Be

Andrew Nosnitsky, half of the Cocaine Blunts and Hip-Hop Tapes DJ team, thinks "it'd be a pretty shitty show if we couldn't play swear words." So it's no surprise when Nosnitsky and George Washington University student Jordan Gaines decide to treat their listeners to Odd Squad's fellatio anthem "Put Cha Lips." "Can I say dick on the radio?" Nosnitsky asks. "I suppose I can."

The pair doesn't get a single protest call. In fact, as Nosnitsky notes, "We don't ever get calls, dude."

Cocaine Blunts can be heard only in GW's Marvin Center, on campus-cable channel 22, or online at GWRadio.com---and there are far better things to do on a Friday night between 8 and 10 than huddle in the student center, listen to radio on TV, or stay glued to a computer as two likable knuckleheads call each other "fool" and spin underground and old-school hip-hop.

But while the radio program broadcasts into virtual nothingness, the show's companion Web site and blog, CocaineBlunts.com, is starting to get some buzz: It's received shine from Rolling Stone, Spin, and the New York Times, and it averages more than 500 unique hits a day. Nosnitsky does the dot-com alone because, Gaines admits, "I don't like to write---or read."

Nosnitsky's MP3 postings and witty write-ups of ultrarare hip-hop songs are the main draw. Recent tunes include a 1980 cut by Disco Dave & the Force of the Five MCs and new, unreleased battle tracks by the little-known rappers the Game and Yukmouth. Though he says a new computer is on the way, Nosnitsky currently manages the site using an iBook that's missing its B, N, period, and +/- keys.

With him and Gaines, both 21, looking to graduate soon, the radio show will likely die with their degrees. But CocaineBlunts.com will continue much as it does now. "I have difficulty writing about something if I'm not passionate about it, which is why the Web site is always going to be a hobby," Nosnitsky says. "I would love to be able to write about really obscure hip-hop all the time, but there's no market for it."

That passion for arcana is evident even in Cocaine Blunts and Hip-Hop Tapes' name, which doesn't reference fetishes for blow-dusted weed and C-90s. It comes, rather, from "Smoke Dope and Rap" by independent San Francisco MC Andre Nickatina. The Bay Area gets repped a lot on the show and site due to the influence of California native Gaines, but Nosnitsky is an East Coaster, hailing from Pennington, N.J. "It's near Princeton---or if you want to help me with my street cred, say Trenton," he kids.

Despite his vast knowledge of hip-hop history, being a white kid from the 'burbs who loves "the sexist stuff---the gangsta stuff" and drinks Mickey's 40s might get him called a poseur by some. Yet the unassuming DJ says his background has only been called into question once---by a white former GW student, no less---when he busted on critical darling Talib Kweli.

"She wrote this diatribe about me on her blog," he recalls. "She said, 'I saw his picture---he's just a stupid white boy.' It was mad funny. She was calling me out on my street cred, which in real-world terms isn't that great. But as far as hip-hop goes, it's pretty damn good. I may be a white boy, but I'm a well-versed white boy."

Posted by CP | Link |

---