Karen Ponzio Photo
Batts.
Joey Batts, a hip hop artist and American literature teacher in a Hartford public high school, pays attention to what’s going on around him as well as what is going on inside his own mind.
“I never liked the holidays,” he said, “and back in 2014 I was feeling the need to give back to the community” around this time of year. He noticed there were teenagers and adults alike who were “displaced” and “struggling.”
“Everyone thinks of the archetype of the homeless person as an old man, but I had never thought about it affecting teenagers until then.”
He put “two and two together” and decided to organize Hip Hop for the Homeless, a series of shows in different Connecticut towns that would raise money for a specific homeless shelter or charity in that town.
The first year of Hip Hop for the Homeless, he did seven shows in a row. Since 2015 he has changed it to six shows — Thursday through Friday over the course of two weeks — “so I don’t wear myself out,” Batts said. He enlists the help of his friends in the hip hop community to perform. He asks for donations, from money and canned goods to clothing. He also sells shirts and sometimes has raffles. According to Batts, each year’s series of shows has raised at least $2,000.
Friday night’s show at Pacific Standard Tavern on Crown Street was the second to last one of the year (the final one being in Jewett City on Saturday) and included ten acts, as well as DJ Mo Niklz and Batts as host. Some of the acts had performed in these shows every year. Some performed at multiple shows in one year.
“Many of these people have been there from the beginning. I like to stay loyal,” Batts said. Batts has even had students volunteer to help at an all-ages event. “They’re excited to give back too,” he said.
Before the show began, Batts and Niklz bantered a bit onstage. (“This is special,” Batts said. “I love New Haven.”) Batts also announced that all money made on Friday was going to Columbus House.
The show began with music from Wolf Largis from San Francisco manipulating sound boards on a table in front of Niklz, creating everything from otherworldly sounds to more traditional beats, all without lyrics. But he took a moment at the end of his short set to tell the crowd to “give Joey Batts your money.”
Local artist Sese L Boogie and Gambit offered words with a back beat provided by Niklz that got the crowd moving, with Jimmy Vo of NYC also getting people closer to the stage and clapping along during his set.
Two local acts, Muggsy and Old Self, each brought their own style to the stage, the former jumping off the stage to dance with a couple of women in the audience during one of his numbers while the latter sat for part of his lyrically strong and often humorous set, delivering songs with lyrics as varied as “Do Unto Others” and “Relationship Fat.” He even went behind the curtain at the back of the stage to rap at the people walking by the front window of the bar on Crown Street, all while letting the audience know how they were responding.
Nu Irth and AQMNI — part of the Hartford-based hip hop group UZOO along with Batts — combined their talents onstage while passing the mic to each other to take turns fronting each song in their high-energy set.
Jules Baxter told the crowd Hip Hop for the Homeless was “a near and dear cause to my heart.” He said that he himself had “been homeless numerous times in my life,” offering lyrics such as “I got a dollar to my name and I’m hollering for change and nobody’s hollering back.” He thanked his friends for coming to hear him at his first show in a while. “I’m trying new beats,” he noted.
Sketch tha Cataclysm, who has performed all four years of the series at multiple venues, also noted that he was homeless during the first two years of the series. “Yeah, I was couch hopping” he said — certainly not as dire as it could have been — but it also drove home the need for him to be involved in helping others in the same situation. Sketch’s lyrically intricate explored personal experiences (“I dig into my pocket all my money is spent / A third goes to taxes, a third for the rent”) and the universality of the human struggle. The past couple of years since that tentative period had been fruitful for his writing, he said, and he would not only be releasing a new EP in early 2018, but re-releasing a previous album and a book of poetry.
The final performer of the evening, Jahan Nostra — another who had performed at this series previously and at multiple venues — offered a song he said was written about youth homelessness called “Embrace the Rain,” and though the crowd had thinned by then, he gave his all to convey his words and the meaning behind them.
“This is not all about raising money, it’s about raising awareness, too,” Batts said before the show began. “I’m extremely pleased it’s been going on for four years now. I didn’t think it would get as big as it has.”
He’s also still paying attention and thinking ahead. “How cool would it be to help a family in each city?” he said with a big, warm smile. According to Batts, this show raised $300 to add to the total, $1,664 as of Friday.
“I’m a numbers guy. I always want to raise more,” he said. “But whatever we do is something.”