How We Do It Over Here
Local Show Gives Shine to Bay Area Hip-Hop

While Lil Jon’s felt the need lately to proclaim that ‘Crunk Ain’t Dead,’ and no new East Coast artist has emerged to truly Bring New York Back, out West, the hyphy movement continues to quietly bubble. Although it doesn’t sell as many records as the South or garner the press coverage that the Big Apple does, hyphy still has folks going dumb in the Bay Area. And for the past three years, a locally produced and broadcast television program called The Hipnotik Show has been at the forefront of documenting the burgeoning homegrown culture.

The Hipnotik Show is the brainchild of Bay natives Josue Leon a.k.a. A-1 Sway and Eric Barnoski a.k.a. Booyowski. The pair started the weekly show to give the insider’s view they felt was missing from national coverage of their local hip-hop scene. “Let’s say E-40 has a concert,” explains Leon. “BET will do the [textbook] stuff—video 101—and just get a rapper interview. Same with MTV. On The Hipnotik Show, we will get them talking shit, we will get behind the scenes, talk to them prior to the event and after the event.” Since its debut in 2003, Hipnotik has documented Keak Da Sneak’s extravagant 28th birthday party, E-40’s FatBurger franchise opening, and a concert from San Quentin prison featuring Messy Marv and Dem Hoodstarz.

The show got its start when Leon, a self-taught filmmaker, began recording parties and concerts he attended. Soon friends were requesting tapes and Leon and Barnoski, who runs a painting company, went to Comcast channel 29 in San Francisco. “They said we have an open slot, but we need your first show in three days,” Leon recalls. “I’m like, ‘Of course,’ [but] we had nothing [good] on tape!” The pair quickly scored some new footage, and began holding down their 11:30 PM Tuesday time slot.

Hipnotik has not only proven popular with viewers—in 2004 the show expanded to the Los Angeles market—but with its subjects as well. “I see a lot of bootleg DVDs and a lot of muthafuckas try to put shows together, but none this professional,” says Traxamillion the producer of Keak Da Sneak’s ubiquitous anthem “Superhyphy.” “It’s really helped artists like me and Keak and [Mistah] F.A.B. get a chance to shine.” Adds the Federation’s Goldie Gold, who’s hosted a new artist segment on Hipnotik since 2004: “The show gave Northern California some type of outlet to be seen by their own, like ‘What’s going on with us?’ It helped us take pride in our own right.”

With the success of The Hipnotik Show as proof, that’s no idle flamboasting. —Damon Brown