22-year-old entrepreneur Zach Patton, owner of Cretaceous Buffalo Clothing on Elmwood, is pushing the presence of an ambitious underground production to the forefront by combining his two favorite passions: street wear and hip hop. To the thirsty MCs swimming all across the city: this is your chance to shine. The Cretaceous Sunday Cypher--“cretaceous,” as in belonging to the age of the dinosaurs and “cypher,” as in a freestyle battle of rhyme and wit---began in July as a small, modest, and informal way to bring together some of the burgeoning talent the city has to offer under one roof. “Skateboarding in the community I grew up in was kind of dying, and I was an avid skateboarder when I was younger, so I thought, what can I do to start getting people motivated to skate again?” the Kenmore native said. “So I figured the best way to do it was to start some kind of brand. We got into the whole t-shirt thing, and ever since then it has snowballed into so many other things, currently, the biggest thing being hip hop right now. That’s a scene that we chose to attach ourselves with because it has grown so fast.” Now on its fifth run as a permanent, monthly-scheduled event, the cypher has created some buzz among the Buffalo music community. The last event, held in November, garnered about 27 registered MCs from all over Buffalo and a crowd of more than 100 people.
This month’s cypher will work like this: A roster has been hand-selected by the Cretaceous crew of standouts from cyphers past and posted on their website. There are two rounds. Each MC gets an average verse of 16 bars or, whatever they deem appropriate for their turn. There will be an open mic beginning at 5 p.m. before the official festivities commence for those who didn’t make the roster, but have the urge to spit. “Some of these people have an agenda when they’re saying things. A lot of the people that do these…they’ve got something to say, whether it be about the government or how they came up, they’ve got something to say,” said Paul Boal, the master of ceremonies, who lent his exquisite skill of beatboxing to this past cypher event, bursting out into “In Da Club” and “No Diggity” rhythms on whim. When Ali ABishai gripped the mic, the holy sermon shook his soul—and the entire room of MCs. The native from Niagara Falls and one of the original founding fathers of “God hop” in Buffalo finds that the message of Christ is well-received through unorthodox means. “When you embody what God hop is, it’s hip hop. …I could sit here and preach Christ to you all day long, would you listen? But do it the right way, and you walk away with a message, you walk away with raw beats, and you walk away with a person that cares,” the spiritually-rooted MC said. Since participating in his third Cretaceous cypher thus far, ABishai has learned that the time one has with the mic is short, so each moment better be memorable. “Detail is important especially in a room full of MCs. Stand out as much as possible, even with the way you hold the mic. First impressions sometimes might be your last,” ABishai said.
According to Tre “Ocho” Marsh, when you’re an MC in the underground scene, you have to put yourself out there to get a taste for what’s out there. “Hip hop in itself is competitive, and you have to see where everybody’s at. You kind of have to know hip hop in order to stay relevant, especially when you’re talking on the mic, and in that, you get to see everyone’s thought process basically: pieces of their albums, pieces of everything that they’re doing outside of the cypher itself. So you get to see everyone’s development,” Marsh said. As the underground hip hop community gains more notoriety within Buffalo, it is Patton’s hope that so too will the Cretaceous Buffalo clothing brand. “The image of our brand has improved. People who wouldn’t necessarily buy our clothes, or know who we are, suddenly you hear them saying, ‘Cretaceous’ because of the cypher,” he said. “We all grow together. As the hip hop scene grows, we grow too. We help the artists, and the artists help us out.” Although there are a few other cyphers in the area that ABishai is continuously invited to, he feels that presently, the Cretaceous Sunday Cypher is where he wants to carry his message. “(The cypher) is about us coming together and creating, hopefully, a real brother-sister relationship and unity in hip hop,” ABishai said. “This is home right now.” This month’s cypher will take place today at 6 pm at Cretaceous Buffalo on Elmwood. For more information on Cretaceous Buffalo, visit their website. The event is free and spectators are welcome.
~Photos by Jeff Kress Jr. and Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
