The Dope Poet Society

 That was our first group.  

  Bursting straight out the slums of Beverly Hills. 

    We used to do little shows at rich girl's houses when they're parents would go out of town for the weekend, setting up shop in their living room,  rapping over pause tape beats that I used to make with my homey Ecto's karaoke cassette machine. (he's the one cheezing with the off-shaped jew fro)  

We had typical this-is-my-first-demo names for songs like "expression is the weapon" and "positive vibe".  

  Shit was hot.   

 

Being that they were my older brother's click, I was always the youngest, and as you can see by my midget-like appearance, the smallest.    

Maybe its the Notre Dame Sweatshirt or those dumbo ears , but it looks like i'm holding it down for all the hip hop Keeebler elves across the world.  

 Yo, remember when rocking overalls and letting the straps hang was fresh?   (Terrible trend in retrospect.  Please no hipster revivial)   Or what about when you'd have one strap on , and let the other one hang?   Im trying to remember who really made that look famous, or if it originated on the east or west coast.    Someone help me out. 

That was around the parachute pants era ( another trend that should be burned and buried). 

  It was me, DJ Shalom (you can laugh now) holding down two plastic aiwa belt drive turntables and a karaoke machine ( the original 360 instant replay machine)

On the the imaginary 'air' mics were the devastaing sounds of  Ecto AKA Loveboat to my left,   Kairi AKA Kid Kai (ohshit Kai was early on the 'kid' thing) holding it down with the hooflattop that ruled in 89,  my big brother Neil aka Boy Wonder uptop with the bootleg gucci tee,

And the there was Jubin.  

To this day i still think about Jub, and how nice he was.  He was FAR more advanced than any of us at the time. 

First of all, off top you can see the MC Serch resemblance.  Yo I even think we got the 3rd Bass fanclub adress off their album once and sent a pic of Jubin, in hopes that they'd recognize and maybe use him in a video as a young Serch.    That was his nickname.  Serch.

  

He was of Persian descent.   This was around the time when rocking X hats and African medallions was in, and it really wasn't that fresh to be a white rapper. 

  I remember he had some rhyme where he proclaimed, "im Asiatic, from Iran".   

  

We were all fuckups for the most part.  6th grade, just starting to smoke weed, doing grafitti,bad grades,  just being idiots.   

But not Jubin.

He was like the smartest kid in the whole school.   And when we decided to do the group thing, to most of us it was just another fun thing to do, just clowning, trying to get girls attention.   We'd probably get bored eventually and move on to something else like kids always do.  

  But Jub took it serious.    

Ill never forget we all slept over at Jub's crib one night, and I remember seeing this chart on his wall, like a calender that was written in his father's handwritting.  

  It was like an ultimadum!

  It had one date marked on the calendar that said on it something like " if you don't complete this music project by this day, you must move on"

  I couldn't even comprehend it.   Dude we were in 6th grade.      He was the man.

 When i think back, the way Jubin was, and the way his parents were on top of him about relentlessly achieving whatever his goals were, it stuck with me.    Cause that's how I am now with myself.    

   Needless to say, The Dope Poet Society had a short run, and over the years Jub went his own way, as we got older and kept fucking up more, I guess he and his parents realized we we're not the right group of kids for him.    I still see my brother, Kai and Ecto to this day, but I haven't seen or heard from Jubin in at least 15 years. 

  Heard he ended up being a huge doctor who makes way more $ than  the remaining members of DPS combined.   

 I mean he was super intellegent, but he wasn't no square either.  He was hop 100%.   

I think about the homey all the time.