SUGA FREE, KOKANE, DREAMCASTMOE (DJ SET) — live event
This story is part of Image issue 18, “Mission,” an anthology of fantastic voyages — from L.A. to the world and back to the epicenter. Read the whole issue here. It’s no simple feat to get to Suga Free. This is by design. Iceberg Slim once wrote that “a pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth,” so it’s fitting that the path to Southern California’s pope of street gospel slices through cold and remote terrain. The high desert has been battered by a biblical series of storms. On slick roads stacked with banks of snow, “Proceed With Caution” signs flash at nervous travelers. There’s a thin line between isolation and serenity, and Suga Free needs nobody but Suga Free. The canonized pimp-slash-rapper, once described by Snoop Dogg as “my only competition,” now lives an hour from the Pomona asphalt that he immortalized like lost scenes from “Superfly,” in a placid subdivision toward the Victor Valley foothills. Suga Free’s nondescript two-story house sits on the edge of a lake filled with ducks and catfish. His home studio overlooks half a dozen speedboats idled at a dock. He’s so close to the water that he can practically dip his toes from the computer desk. After half a century of hard living — near-death experiences, struggles with substance abuse, multiple incarcerations, the shady travails of the record business, the constant stresses of the world’s oldest profession — Suga Free has learned to value simplicity. “I don’t run in the streets anymore,” Suga Free says. “I don’t chase women. I’m not at Hollywood parties. I’m not at other rappers’ functions. I don’t do [things] just to be doing them.” At 53, Suga Free still looks exactly like Suga Free. Honoring his commandment to be fly for life, his hair remains long and luxurious. He’s draped in a custom-made tracksuit with his name emblazoned on the back. The right questions elicit stanzas of profane one-liners, flamboyant slang and coldblooded wisdom. (“Every time I walk out of my house and turn that key in my car, that means I’m finna spend some money,” he laughs. “I’m trying to squeeze a quarter till the eagle screams.”) Ask the wrong question and you don’t want the answer. The successes of the last quarter-century adorn his sanctuary. Gold and platinum plaques honor his collaborations with DJ Quik, Snoop Dogg and Lil Jon. A gilded disc celebrates “If You Stay Ready,” his pimpadelic ode to the art of preparation, which reached the top of Billboard’s Bubbling Under the Hot 100 list in May 1997. At the time, no one had ever heard anything quite like Suga Free. He didn’t rap, he glided like a swan at the Player’s Ball, inventing his own unquantized, improvised rhythms. During those final few springs and summers of the last century, Quik and Suga Free were the undisputed champions of L.A. hip-hop. In the final days before local urban radio ceased to meaningfully exist, they were regional superheroes, patron saints, a secret dap among tapped-in Angelenos. A pair of hilarious, vulgar and charismatic mad scientists wearing impeccable manicures and exquisitely straightened perms “silkier than Charlotte’s Web with waves deeper than Redondo Beach.” The embodiment of effortless cool.
Starts: 2024-02-10T19:30:29Z
Ends: 2024-02-10T22:30:29Z
Where: 599 Johnson Avenue, New York 11237, United States
Price: $27.4