Sharon Vanorny
Darwin Sampson has had it with hip-hop.
Although he’s a fan of the music and owns the only music venue in Madison to recently offer local rap acts, he’s decided to “take a time out” and will not be booking any more rap shows because of a string of violent incidents.
“We’ve had three fights in the past two months,” says Sampson, who opened the Frequency on West Main Street in 2008.
The latest incident occurred at a private hip-hop show Wednesday night, where a Frequency employee was struck with a bottle while trying to break up a fight. “This time it resulted in me being in the emergency room with my employee at 2 in the morning,” he says, adding that the employee required stitches to close a head wound but is now recuperating.
Sampson will honor the rap shows he has already booked but will not schedule any more “until I can figure out how to run shows without staff members getting hurt,” he says. “My concern is for the safety of my staff and the people who attend my shows.”
He says the temporary ban on hip-hop shows at the Frequency will last one year.
Rap promoter Mark “ShaH” Evans says losing the venue has implications citywide. “The issue now is the perception to the other venues in town — that’s the bigger problem,” he says, adding that this will be yet another justification for other venues that haven’t booked local rap acts in some time. “It’s going to have a chilling effect with other venues that I’m more worried about.”
This is the second time the Frequency has stopped booking hip-hop shows. Three years ago Sampson cited pressure by the building’s landlord for the decision, but later hired Evans as a special promoter of them. As Evans describes it, he’s now more of a “hip-hop adviser” — Sampson asks for Evans’ advice (yes or no) on certain acts and lines up security.
While Evans finds fault with an inadequate private security team hired for the Wednesday event, Sampson says violence is more frequent at rap shows than at other music events. “There is a problem with overconsumption of alcohol and people bringing in their own liquor,” he says. “I do think the audience has a certain responsibility for taking care of each other. Until that culture is developed here, I can’t run hip-hop shows because they’re just not safe.”
“At other shows, there’s more self-policing,” he adds. “If there’s a fight at a punk show, people clear out and help break it up — that doesn’t happen at hip-hop shows.”
After news broke that the Frequency would not be booking any future rap shows, many local fans took their outrage online. Some attacked Sampson on social media, calling him a racist. Others have decided to boycott shows of any kind at the venue.
Sampson is anything but a bigot, says Rodney Lucas, a Madison native who performs under the name F.Stokes and has sold out his “Day After Christmas” show at the Frequency the past six years.
“I can see why this decision was made — one of his staff members was hurt. He’s not racist. He’s not against hip-hop. He’s a legit fan and a supporter,” says Lucas. “This is heartbreaking for him and is nothing personal.”
All of this is just another chapter in the story of conflict with local rap music in Madison.
“I’m not surprised,” says Dexter Patterson, a veteran of the local rap scene who performs as Tefman and is a member of the hip-hop band Dogs of War, which has played at the Frequency. “We’ve been in this cycle for a decade where things are shut down, then they come back, then they get shut down again. It’s nothing new.”
In the past, say Evans and Patterson, the city has threatened venues that book rap shows with nonrenewal of their liquor licenses. So in 2009, through the local hip-hop advocacy group the Urban Community Arts Network, Evans began working with representatives of the Madison Police Department and the city alcohol licensing committee to set security and safety guidelines for all live music venues. If such policies were followed by a venue, he says, and an incident still occurred, there would be no backlash against the venue.
That plan, which Evans saw as a way to open more venues up to the idea of booking local rap acts, improved things but has now fallen by the wayside. Evans says city representatives need to come to the table to find a permanent solution.
Having had a good working relationship with the Frequency in the past, Evans hopes Sampson will soften on his “time out” from booking local hip-hop. “He’s honoring the shows he has. Probably by the time he’s done honoring those, maybe in a month or three months, I hope hip-hop will be back [at the Frequency],” he says. “I don’t think it will be a full year.”
But Sampson isn’t budging and says booking rap shows has just become too much trouble.
“I’ve stepped forward and have been supportive, and it’s done nothing but get me called racist when I have to pull back and try and figure out a way to be safe,” he says. “I don’t want to do this — I have to.”
If he loses money, so be it. If people call him names, so be it. His only concern right now is safety. “People are going to think what they’re going to think — I don’t care,” he says. “I know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. The safety of my staff and customers is first and foremost.”
