| My stomach started to turn in the frozen pizza aisle of a Walmart Supercenter in Skokie. I travel to Skokie infrequently at best, and Walmart even less. I've been to no other place in the world that makes me feel like I'm consuming nondescript sludge from a trough quite like Walmart. I didn't care to investigate the state of the megastore's bathrooms, nor did I want to do anything to make them worse.
I went to my least favorite big-box store in search of Yachty's Pizzeria, a new frozen food product bearing the name and likeness of Atlanta rapper Lil Yachty. The quest fit right in my wheelhouse. My obsession with pizza has, in recent years, led me to launch several campaigns to win "best pizza" in the Reader's "Best of Chicago" poll; during the worst throes of the pandemic I developed a strong taste for frozen pizza, and, if pressed, could rank my favorites from standout to mediocre. (Even mediocre frozen pizza can get the job done, which can amount to no more than "filling me up while reminding me of all the great pizzas I've ever eaten.")
And I've written about Lil Yachty handfuls of times, though for the most part I'd cover him in passing. He's been a guest voice dropping in on a mixtape from a rapper I prefer, or he'd struggle through a late-evening set at a festival packed with better performances. I've been covering hip-hop for the Reader long enough to recall the blowback Lil Yachty received in 2016 (at least two generations in the world of culture journalism, where turnover is high and new websites spring up and fold in less than two years) when he told Billboard he couldn't name five songs by Tupac or Biggie. The unbridled intensity directed at Yachty took hold of otherwise fickle voices online far longer than I anticipated; years later, Yachty said he'd never experienced that kind of hate before, and even received death threats for what he considered an honest disclosure.
I saw the response to Yachty as a reaction to him as much as what he said, since that throwaway comment also seemed to capture the youthful puckishness that drew people to Yachty and repelled them in equal measure. Yachty could sometimes harness that charm into songs vital to hip-hop at the time, but more often his persona shined (or took up a lot of oxygen) outside his music. In 2017 I noted Yachty was "better at being a brand than he is at being a rapper," so I wasn't surprised to see him become the face of a food product created by Universal Music Group for Brands and sold exclusively at Walmart.
It felt obvious for me to seek out Lil Yachty's frozen pizza, but I continued to interrogate my desire. Why spend my time seeking out a food product by an artist who exists on the fringe of my reporting when I have enough trouble trying to cover unknown and well-known artists in my own backyard? Gone are the days when I could write about the local hip-hop scene in a way that suggested comprehensiveness; even though I know I can't write about every local rapper and producer I like, I often find myself in a position where I'm overwhelmed by the number of great emerging acts I wish I could cover. (This is a good problem to have—I'd be far more concerned if I couldn't find anyone whose music felt worthwhile to me.) So why give more of my time to Yachty?
Curiosity drove me, in part, though I'm not sure obtaining and eating one of his frozen pizzas would have actually provided me with any answer to the questions I had. Namely: why Yachty frozen pizza? I'm aware that for two days in 2017, the rapper got the keys to NYC restaurant Famous Ben's to turn it into a pop-up pizza place named, yes, Yachty Pizzeria. I also know that same year, Genius staffer Rob Markman took Yachty to L.A.'s Stella Barra Pizzeria to show the MC how to make pizza. And, yes, I've now read Yachty's claim that he's eaten pizza every day since second grade.
Part of my unease and interest in this pizza product stems from being able to see the gears of the machine behind it. I got a bad taste in my mouth when I scanned the press release for Yachty's Pizzeria and came across this quote from UMG Global Bands EVP Richard Yaffa: "Yachty's Pizzeria is an exciting example of a strategic brand extension that both represents the artist's interest, passion, and personality as well as a way to help him expand his business portfolio."
OK. Sure. Sounds appetizing.
I love how people can express themselves and tell a story through food, but I couldn't see beyond the corporate gibberish surrounding Yachty Pizzeria. But it did make me reflect on how and when pizza and hip-hop have commingled, and how it's influenced the culture. I thought of Crispy Crust Pizza in Englewood, New Jersey, which employed Henry "Big Bank Hank" Jackson in the late 1970s. Jackson used to rap to cassettes of the Cold Crush Brothers while working at Crispy Crust, which piqued the interest of a customer named Joey Robinson. Joey told his mom, singer and industry veteran Sylvia, about Jackson; Sylvia requested the MC show off his skills in the parking lot of Crispy Crust. Jackson earned an invitation into a group Sylvia Robinson put together called Sugarhill Gang, which put out the first breakthrough hip-hop single in the fall of 1979: "Rapper's Delight."
Thirty-eight years later, the owner of Crispy Crust, Craig Colombo, made the smart move to stake a claim in hip-hop history. In 2017, hyperlocal Jersey news site Daily Voice published a short story with the specious claim that Crispy Crust is where "rap was discovered." I've searched for more reports on the role Crispy Crust played in hip-hop, though they're threadbare; the shop is a passing detail in Sugarhill Gang retrospective articles. I've looked for extant stories from the time Jackson worked in the shop, but the most I could find were reports of health-code violations and ownership changes in the time shortly after Jackson left the shop to focus on hip-hop.
I think about Crispy Crust, a pizza place I've never stepped foot in, a lot more often than some pizza spots I've eaten from regularly. I want to know more about the culture around the place when Jackson worked there to get a better grasp of a place that inexplicably played a key role in the commercialization of the music I love. These are the kinds of food-meets-music stories I like to dig into, when the connections between these two worlds emerge with little outside knowledge or acknowledgement—I like spending time excavating those relationships in my own backyard and in places I've never lived. Working on stories like those reminds me of why I've dedicated so much of myself to culture journalism.
Perhaps that explains why my stomach got upset with me when I went looking for a story in a Walmart frozen food section.
 | 
0 Comments