Short Tribute to Fat Beats

Fat Beats.

I remember the first time I went to the legendary Fat Beats record store in New York City. Fairly typical of many indie hip-hop heads, I was a middle-class white kid who had just begun my freshman year at college in the NYC area. But before I even got to the Apple I knew about Fat Beats - the dude now known as Celph Titled had hyped it up to me over email. I had the address scrawled on a piece of paper in my pocket.

It was September 1996, and it was a hot, muggy day. I went into the city with a friend who was taking bass lessons from some jazz cat who lived on Avenue B. I bought a pina-colada Arizona iced tea and started walking. It's funny to think about now - I've walked all those blocks so many damn times - but it was all just a crazy maze of buildings and sun then, walking up 8th and 9th streets from the East Village to 6th Avenue.

The store - since moving from it's original location on 9th street - has been located above a 24-hour bagel shop for the last fourteen years. There's a crappy gate / door next to the bagel spot, and you gotta walk up a narrow stairway to enter. There would always be some signs posted of upcoming in-stores and new releases right outside the door to the spot.

I just remember the first time I walked in it was nothing like I'd ever scene. Vinyl. Everywhere. All hip-hop. Dozens of artists I'd never heard of. I had no idea where to start. The music was loud and hard, east coast beats, in-your-face intimidating. Welcome to New York.

I don't even know if they sold CDs back then - the space where they have had the CDs recently was the main counter. Instead they had these giant binders where you could, I believe, buy copies of almost any Stretch and Bobbito show from the last several years. Or at least freestyles from those shows, highlights. Not the mention the lastest classic mixtapes - CASSETTES - from the X-Men, Rob Swift, Q-Bert, Premier.

The walls were lined with 12-inches from artists I'd barely heard of. The newest releases, the "choice picks" were on display in the center of the store, across from a DJ who was providing the soundtrack to your visit. There was guaranteed a live DJ playing cuts every time I went to Fat Beats until at least 2000. Some of these DJs who spun there back then went on to be fairly famous. Not to mention that people working at Fat Beats were - and remain - active artists themselves.

I don't remember if I bought anything that first time. I think I was just stunned looking at all that vinyl. I know that I went back there soon after, and began buying a couple 12 inches and tapes whenever I could afford to. I didn't even own a record player. But I had to have all those early Fondle 'Em releases, Company Flow, Natural Resource, DJ Spinna "Compositions." I'd take them back to the school music lab and dub them onto blank cassettes for my boombox.

In the video above, there's a couple clips from an in-store Common did for his third album. I was there - somewhere there is a photo of me giving him a pound. A few years later, I remember shuffling through one of their bins of records and looking over to see Guru intently going through the crate next to me. Once, sitting in the bagel shop below with a couple friends in '97, someone who was visiting from LA said "Man, it doesn't get any better than this - a classic bagel spot under the dopest record store? This is why I need to live in New York."

Sure, I used to talk a little shit about FB not selling enough west coast underground (before they opened their LA store). Sure, there were a few years where I avoided the store due to five different cats stationed at the bottom of the stairs asking me "You like hip-hop?" But Fat Beats remained, and even if it was less frequently, I kept coming back.

And it's honestly amazing to me the storefront has lasted so long. Fat Beats is just the latest victim as mp3s-kill-the-record-store game, the latest spot full of memories to shut down. And it says a lot that they never caved into selling club music or some other hipster bullshit just to get by.

It's hard to fully explain exactly how classic Fat Beats was, especially in the height of the independent hip-hop movement, when there was such a consistent amount of great music being pressed on wax and available at this one spot. Copping something like Rob Swift's "Soulful Fruit" mixtape right after it came out - homemade, raw shit that was hard to find anywhere else, but became legendary.

Over the past several years, the store has slowly become hollowed out, as certain crates and shelves have disappeared with the lack of new music on wax. Often I'll roll up and be one of two people in the place. I haven' t seen a DJ playing records on their turntables in years. But then, I'm not there as often either - I'm part of the problem. I spend most of my vinyl dollars on old jazz records and dusty 45s.

But Fat Beats is hip-hop. It's longevity in a culture that says "old school" is 2001 is inspiring. It is a symbol to many, many people worldwide - of hardcore, indepedent hip-hop culture.

The last time I was there was a couple months ago. I met up with my friend Kindu, of the legendary Seattle hip-hop crew Black Anger, and his wife, who now live down South and were in New York for the weekend. They had a packed schedule, but I remember Kindu telling me on the phone, "Man, you know I gotta hit Fat Beats!" Because that's what it's basically been ever since I moved here 14 years ago. You want hip-hop? Yo, we gotta hit Fat Beats.