From the outside, everything seemed relatively calm. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery sat quietly on a busy Elmwood Avenue on a drizzly Friday night. Yet on the inside, the atmosphere was anything but quiet. In one room, a group of kids armed with markers and stacks of paper set out to create the perfect graffiti design. A little boy no older than 12 was sketching his name out in bright colors while an instructor sat next to him, giving him advice. “Yeah, you want to make sure the letters are shaped like this…” At the other end of the gallery, people cheered and cameras flashed as breakdancers moved in precise rhythm to the DJ’s track. The faint rumblings of a bass echoed through the entire building like a heartbeat.

On September 26, hundreds of people, old and young alike, came together at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for “The Art of Hip Hop 3,” an event that celebrated hip hop not just as a musical genre, but as a lifestyle. The festival started off with various activities such as graffiti workshops, turntable demonstrations, breakdancing exhibitions, and concluded with live performances from local musicians like Edreys, Fresh Guac, and A.L. Third.

Though “The Art of Hip Hop 3” offered many diverse activities, one central message united them all: There is no shortage of talent or creativity in the Queen City. While Buffalo may not have a bustling hip hop scene like New York City or Atlanta, every artist and musician in this small community brings something big to the table. “It’s time to start getting people from the outside to look in, much like how Scribble Jam has put people on to Cincinnati for hip hop, or how the Grunge scene in 1993 really set Seattle off,” Tony Caferro, one of the event planners, explains.

Caferro is a prominent member in the Buffalo hip hop community. A University at Buffalo alumni, Caferro graduated in 2000 with a degree in marketing. He is now the President and Creative Director of Deep Thinka Records, an independent record label he started originally in Fargo Hall. What was created in a dorm room in Ellicott has now grown into a label that works with local artists like Edreys, who has appeared in Billboard magazine, a Yahoo! Launch Music feature, and the Warped Tour, just to name a few. For an independent label that has no major label backings or support, Caferro has seen a great deal of success. “Our greatest strength as an independent label is that we are ahead of the curve in a lot of stuff- creativity, marketing, operational strategies, you name it.”

So with all these achievements and creativity, why is Buffalo not being mentioned in the same breath as Los Angeles or Houston or any of the other major hip hop scenes in the country? “The problem is that Buffalo has such limited exposure,” Caferro says. “If I could afford to live in places like New York, or Los Angeles, or Atlanta, [Deep Thinka Records] would probably be extremely successful.” Occasionally, local musicians will get their songs played on the radio, but for the most part, major radio stations are dominated by a generic playlist DJs are obligated to play. Because the hot new single about cars and cash will always bring in more figures than the local artist rapping about social issues, it’s very hard for local musicians to get their voices out into the airwaves.

Herman Melville once said “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” For the artists here in Buffalo, no quote bears more truth. While mainstream success and recognition is slow to come by, catchy beats and intelligent lyrics are not. Musicians here seem to refuse to conform to a cookie-cutter style, and instead all have their own unique sound and flare. Diversity is perhaps this scene’s strongest point. “Myself, I’d like to think I have a universal sound,” Edreys says. “I would classify it as soul music, in the sense that I talk about life events, things that affect us all. The thing that makes it ‘hip hop’ is the beat I put it to.” Caferro adds, “Edreys, compared to anyone else I’ve worked with, has a sound that is very hard to nail down to one specific market. His music appeals to people aged eight to eighty. It truly is a universal sound.” Other local acts such as Fresh Guac are described to sound like a blend of every genre. “You can think of their music as almost a recipe for a meal…a little bit of salsa, a little bit of chicken, a little bit of everything, and they’ll blend it all together and serve it up to you. It’s fresh,” Edreys comments. Buffalo acts are also unafraid to think outside of the box, as in the case of Dali’s Climax. Steering away from using only turntables and microphones, Dali’s Climax is instead an 11 piece hip hop orchestra, featuring two emcees, guitars, horns, and even strings.

While diversity is always important in a music scene, some consider it to be Buffalo’s downfall. There are some that worry too much variety makes it hard for the city to develop its signature sound, that one unique characteristic that separates Buffalo hip hop from all the other styles across the country. For musicians like A.L. Third, however, the differences in styles are seen to be more of a blessing than a curse. A.L. Third first began performing at the age of 16 and is no stranger to the stage, having played shows in places like Cleveland, Florida, and Toronto. “I can understand the whole diversity being a disadvantage thing, but I think one thing that has been lost in hip hop is the ability for people to be unique and be themselves. Everyone now seems to follow a formula. The industry does it, radio stations try to pigeon-hole everybody, and it’s understandable, because it’s easier to digest that way.” A.L. Third sees the current Buffalo sound of having the likeness of New York City during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. “You had Rakim, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, KRS-One…everyone filled a niche, everyone was unique, and they all had real ill styles. I think that’s what’s great about Buffalo. We’re reminding people of that time, when you could do your own thing and still be fresh.”

Besides emcees, the Hip Hop community in Buffalo is also filled with great DJs, artists, and dancers, many of whom helped out in some way at “The Art of Hip Hop 3.” One artist, going by the alias Michael Thomas, volunteered his time to teach a workshop on graffiti art. “I basically just wanted to keep people informed, get them into a culture that is slowly dying and losing appreciation.” Thomas hopes his workshop will teach people to stop looking at graffiti as just an act of vandalism. “I’m not telling these kids to pick a name, go up to something and just write it all over the place. I don’t want any of the kids here to go out and get hurt or get arrested. I’m keeping it very family-oriented, and I want them to look at graffiti as more of an art form than anything else.”

Hip hop and rap culture are among the last things considered to be clean and family-oriented. Much of this stereotype can be attributed to its portrayal on TV and on the radio. Using events like “The Art of Hip Hop 3,” everyone involved in the Buffalo community is desperately trying to break down that negative image. “It seems like on a bigger scale, hip hop has always had this bad vibe around it,” says Edreys. “People consider it unstable, and they’re insecure about having events, whether it’s indoor or outdoor. I want people to come to events in Buffalo like ‘The Art of Hip Hop’ and realize it’s not what they’ve been seeing on television. We want to expose them to the culture and the history behind it.” A.L. Third also feels the same. “At this day and age, it’s very important to get the kids involved. The media portrays hip hop in a certain light, and it’s important to counteract that, to show them something different. Secondly, the easiest way to shape the future into what we need it to be is to instill the change now, to involve the kids at an early age, because eventually they’ll be the ones making the decisions.”

One performer at “The Art of Hip Hop 3” was not a Buffalo native. Verso, an emcee from Philadelphia, garnished a great reaction from the crowd despite this year being his first time performing at the festival. “Compared to Philly, the scene in Buffalo is a lot more open. The host got the crowd pumped up, and people were screaming my name before I even got on stage. I had CDs to give away, and people were screaming for one, and I was really into that. I’ll come back over and over and over again.” In the future, Caferro and Edreys hope to bring more and more national acts to the city. “The idea is to make it larger than Buffalo, but still promote Buffalo musicians,” Caferro says. “One way to do that is to get a big out-of-town act to serve as the main headlining event. The other is to introduce the idea of different kinds of battles. Not just necessarily emcees, but production battles too. We want to get people outside of the city involved, but we’re still going to focus on exposing local talent.”

“The scene here is small,” A.L. Third admits. “But because it’s so small, it’s a really tight community. Everybody knows each other, and we all try to support each other. Things don’t always happen the way we want it, but that’s how it is. We’re like a family, together through both the ups and the downs.”