Deep Dickollective (D/DC) was an

LGBT hip hop LGBT representations in hip hop music have existed since the birth of the genre despite blatant discrimination. Hip hop has long been portrayed as one of the least LGBT-friendly genres of music, with a significant body of the genre containing ...

group based in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

that were active in the

homo hop LGBT representations in hip hop music have existed since the birth of the genre despite blatant discrimination. Hip hop has long been portrayed as one of the least LGBT-friendly genres of music, with a significant body of the genre containing ...

scene of openly queer/

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

artists during the 2000s. They were regular performers at the

PeaceOUT World Homo Hop Festival The PeaceOUT (World) Homo Hop Festival was an annual festival of hip hop music and culture created by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people from 2001 to 2007. The main festival took place in Oakland, California, although sibling f ...

curated by group co-founder

Juba Kalamka Juba Kalamka (born July 12, 1970) is an African American bisexual artist and activist recognized for his work and founding member of homohop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and his development of the micro-label sugartruck recordings. Kalamka ...

History

Deep Dickollective was formed in early 2000 by

, Tim'm T. West and

Phillip Atiba Goff Phillip Atiba Goff is an American psychologist known for researching the relationship between race and policing in the United States. He was appointed the inaugural Franklin A. Thomas Professor in Policing Equity at the John Jay College of Cri ...

. The three began working together after Kalamka and West met following a 1999 screening of black gay filmmaker and scholar

Marlon Riggs Marlon Troy Riggs (February 3, 1957 – April 5, 1994) was a Black gay filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several documentary films, including ''Ethnic Notions'', '' Tongues Untied'', ''Color Adjustment'', ...

' film ''

Tongues Untied ''Tongues Untied'' is a 1989 American experimental documentary film directed by Marlon T. Riggs, and featuring Riggs, Essex Hemphill and Brian Freeman. The film seeks, in its author's words to, "...shatter the nation's brutalizing silence on matt ...

''. Kalamka and West later met Goff on the campus of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

, where West and Goff were enrolled in PhD programs. Though Goff, Kalamka, and West had performed solo work at several readings in the previous months, The group's first performance as Deep Dickollective was May 12, 2000 as a part of curator William Jones' Black Gay Male Radical Performances series at the legendary Black Dot Cafe's original location at 2330 International Blvd. Titled "With The Key: SISSSIES", the show's naming served as an overt recontextualization of popular early 1990s Afrocentrist/

Black Nationalist Black nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that black people are a race (human categorization), race, and which seeks to develop and maintain a black racial and national identity. Black natio ...

rap group

X-Clan X Clan (formerly stylized as XCLAN and often incorrectly spelled X-Clan) is a hip hop group from Brooklyn, New York, originally consisting of Grand Verbalizer Funkin' Lesson Brother J, Professor X the Overseer, Paradise the Architect, and Su ...

's homophobic tag line. Kalamka and West had been performing for years as MCs but had few opportunities to work as out queer artists until encountering each other and Goff shortly thereafter. Kalamka had begun recording an experimental spoken word project called "Pre/tensions" with

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

blues and avantgarde jazz guitarist/bassist

Dick Deluxe Egner Dick, Dicks, or Dick's may refer to: Media * ''Dicks'' (album), a 2004 album by Fila Brazillia * Dicks (band), a musical group * ''Dick'' (film), a 1999 American comedy film * "Dick" (song), a 2019 song by Starboi3 featuring Doja Cat Names ...

(formerly of

Club Foot Orchestra The Club Foot Orchestra is a musical ensemble known for their silent film scores. Their influences include Eastern European folk music, impressionism, and jazz fusion; ''The New Yorker'' described their style as "music that bubbles up from the int ...

) and with groundbreaking queer hip hop group

Rainbow Flava A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows ca ...

, but both were interested in the possibility of creating a project that would push buttons around

race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

ness and

masculinity Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors con ...

in hip hop all at once. Frustrated with the resistance they had faced from an allegedly progressive "conscious" spoken word scene, the three began jamming together in private on Stanford's campus and came up with the skeletons of about 20 songs, 13 of which would become their debut recording ''BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo''. In a moment of anger while discussing their difficulty with the local scene (West had been performing at readings and with bands since his arrival in 1998, but lost all of his bookings once the scene became aware that he was gay) Kalamka blurted "well, if them girls can call themselves the Punany Poets (a then popular Oakland poetry group), we can be Deep Dick Collective!". The name was then shortened to "Deep Dickollective", but the initials "D/DC" remained as the three letter abbreviation seemed to roll off the tongue well, and signified the group's

deconstructionist The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences ...

intent. What started as a parodic exercise to vent frustration became a blooming underground yet internationally critical success that involved 11 queer men who recorded and performed as members of D/DC. During the recording of ''BourgieBoho'', Kalamka decided that it would be easier to promote and manage the group's work if there was a micro-label of some sort that served as a reference point for people that were hearing about the group. Taking its name from a comment on his and West's choice of clothing by an old black man in downtown San Francisco, Kalamka created Sugartruck Recordings, which has since released additional recordings by D/DC as well as that of rapper Katastrophe (the Outmusic Award winner ''Let's Fuck Then Talk About My Problems''), and did micro-distribution of close to 20 titles by other artists in the scene. ''BourgieBoho'''s release was followed by the 6-song EP ''Them Niggas Done Went and Said...'' in 2003, concurrent with a 7" vinyl single release of "Movin' b/w Straighttrrippin'(C-Phlavormix)" by the now defunct Boston punk distro

Agitprop! Records Agitprop! Records is a 'revolutionary hardcore and hip hop music, hip hop' independent record label based in Boston, US, founded by Jacob Tavares. The name comes from the term Agitprop, a genre of political propaganda from Soviet-Russia. One of ...

. The group recontextualized statements such as the lyrics "In a circle of faggots, your name is mentioned" from the song "Dooinit" from

Common Common may refer to: Places * Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland * Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts * Cambridge Common, common land area in Cambridge, Massachusetts * Clapham Common, originally com ...

's album '' Like Water for Chocolate''. The same year, D/DC won the "Best Hip Hop Group" category in the ''

San Francisco Bay Guardian The ''San Francisco Bay Guardian'' was a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1966 by Bruce B. Brugmann and his wife, Jean Dibble. The paper was shut down on October 14, 2014. It was relaun ...

'''s Best of the Bay reader's poll. In February 2004, the group released its third project, ''The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes'', which was a double nominee in the 2005 Outmusic Awards as well as being named to '' Out'''s Top Ten Gay Albums of 2004 list. March 2005 saw the release of the nine-song EP ''Live at Wildseed and Mo''', as well as much more extensive touring as a group and solo following the premiere of

Alex Hinton Alexander Laban Hinton is an anthropologist whose work focuses on genocide, mass violence, extremism, transitional justice, and human rights. He has written extensively on the Cambodian genocide and, in 2016, was an expert witness at the Khmer ...

's documentary ''

Pick Up the Mic ''Pick Up the Mic'' is a documentary film, released in 2006, which profiles the underground homo hop scene, which is a subgenre of hip hop that includes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender artists. The film was directed by Alex Hinton. The do ...

'' at the 30th

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a permane ...

. The ensuing increase in visibility created for queer hip hop artists (as well as the opportunities for self-promotion and distribution created by MySpace) led Kalamka to shift Sugartruck's promotional attentions to releases by himself, Deep Dickollective and Katastrophe. Its fifth disc, ''On Some Other'' was released by Sugartruck on June 22, 2007. Ongoing creative differences and the desire to work on other projects led to Kalamka's formal dissolution of the group in April, 2008. Deep Dickollective played its last contractually obligated show at Albuquerque (New Mexico) Pride on June 13, 2008. Lyrics from the song "For Colored Boys" (from the album "On Some Other") were included in the lyric compendium The Anthology of Rap of Yale University Press (2010). The group's members currently perform and work as solo artists and lecturers based in various cities across the United States.

Discography

* 2001 ''BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo'' (sugartruck recordings) * 2001 ''Independent Sounds:Amoeba Music Compilation Vol. III'' (Hip Hop Slam) * 2002 ''Phat Family Compilation Volume One:Tha Dozens'' (Phat Family Records) * 2003 ''Them Niggas Done Went And Said...''EP (sugartruck recordings) * 2004 ''Azadi!: A Benefit CD For RAWA (compilation)'' (Fire Museum/ElectroMotive Records) * 2003 ''Movin' b/w Straightrippin'(C-Phlavormix)'' (7"single) (Agitprop!Records/sugartruck recordings) * 2004 ''The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes'' (sugartruck recordings) * 2004 ''Phat Family Compilation Volume Two:Down 4 Tha Swerve'' (Phat Family Records) * 2005 ''Live at Wildseed and Mo EP (sugartruck recordings) * 2007 ''On Some Other'' (sugartruck recordings) * 2012 ''With The Key (Sissies): The Very Best of Deep Dickollective'' (sugartruck recordings)

References

External links

Deep Dickollective official website

Sugartruck Recordings official website
{{Authority control American hip hop groups LGBT-themed musical groups LGBT hip hop musicians Musical groups from Oakland, California Musical groups established in 2000 2000 establishments in California 2008 disestablishments in California Musical groups disestablished in 2008