Thats Too HipHop

Im not sure where to start. I've been working with ICanU for the past 3 weeks. ICanU is a bit of an experimental teaching program born of Alan "Sparky" Starks who I met through the school. He called me in to help him teach and it just so happens he and some other students from Studio 4 have been teaching students songwriting and beatmaking. His philosophy (Sparky) is teaching students through what they are already good at and setting up a comfortable learning environment for them to relax in.
I guess he'd heard about the Hip Hop Workshops and things i've taught at Studio 4 for the past year and a half and decided to add me to the team.Turns out these students are children of Hip Hop but I dont feel like he wants to acknowledge it... We had a bit of a debate on whether or not teaching "my Hip Hop", as he put it, would be advantageous or not. Of course, he, a classic studio musician and instrumentalist of over 20 years, having worked with such people as Stevie Wonder and the like, found it easy to say "Lets water it down so that it can be easily digested by students who arent familiar with you know... your style of Hip Hop".

Now cut to yesterday for a second and then we'll cut back to my analysis on this comment...

So me and Quality, who also is working with me at ICanU, went to DJ (well he's the DJ...) at one of the schools we teach at called Edgewood learning center over in Brooklyn Center kind of. We set up the turntables, mixer board, 4 foot speakers (I think the proper term is "monitors") and camera stuff. We have a playlist or two of the things these students wanted to listen to. Mind you, there is a section of students in the school that are autistic.
Its 12:30pm and we're there to entertain for 2 hours. The playlist we'd been given had some oldschool stuff (given by the teachers of the autistic students) like "the twist", "we are family" type joints... Another half of the playlist was pop stuff like Beyonce "Girls rule the world" or... Lil Jon (who I like) "Snap Ya Fingaz" type stuff. On the table are some of our own CD's that we usually have playing in the car or whatever like J-Dilla, Flying Lotus, Nicolay, Foreign Exchange and the like. Everytime I pop one of those CD's in, Quality would pop it out.
He says that "Djing is not about what you want to hear (the DJ), its about what the crowd wants to hear." I nod in agreement and leave him to his thing. We happen to be running out of songs to spin and Quality is trying to compensate by downloading off the internet in the meantime.

"Yo just put that Dilla Joint in"

"Nah, thats too HipHop".

Never thought i'd hear him say that. But he might have been joking. And i wasnt trying to impose, it really was his gig after all, not mine. He's just tyring to keep the crowd pleased at this point. Playing the pop songs that they want to dance to; compromise. Appropriate but... at that point... I wonder what Dilla would do?

I still dont know what to make of the sparky comment though. Quality says we shouldnt burn the bridge but I say fuck it. Because I filmed some 93.X concert for this guy and he gets a little wierd on me when he wanted the footage. I respected him more 3 weeks ago but now he's gotten too fresh with me. I cant prove it right now but Im slowly realizing that im not going to like working under this musician. Im obviously "Too HipHop"...

Its almost like telling someone that they are too "Black" or too "Asian"... Or telling a white dude he cant be a rapper because he's "too White". Fuck off...