Catalyst: Duro Wicks' History of Chicago Hip Hop

Catalyst: Duro Wicks & Chicago Hip Hop is an independent documentary film about how Duro "Shame Love Tempo" Wicks fell in love with Hip Hop and helped give it a home on the Chicago music scene of the early 1990's. It examines what made Hip Hop blow up in Chicago so much later than in other cities, how a tiny 100 watt college station became Chicago's Hip Hop radio powerhouse, why it was so difficult for a young Black entrepreneur to get a party started, and a time when social, political and economic conditions ultimately proved to make Duro's dream unsustainable, even though it was more successful than anyone ever imagined it could be. The Chicago Reader called Duro Wicks "one of the godfathers of the Wicker Park hip hop scene." The Chicago Tribune called him "a large man with a charismatic presence... at the center of the kinetic circus." Duro describes himself as "The Catalyst" when talking about how he created a place for a generation of kids to show up and prove. "Before I did my own thing, I had nowhere to go," says Duro "so my whole thing was let's do our own shows." Duro fell in love with hip hop long before it was easily accessible in Chicago, so he wanted to create a place for people with similar passions to gather. After several false starts, he finally got some traction running the first weekly Hip Hop open mic night in the city at a basement club called The Lower Links. It brought in hundreds of kids every week from all over the city and suburbs, which was unheard of in the segregated Chicago of early '90's. After a brief, but wildly popular run, the club ended up being a victim of its own success when neighbors and other business owners in Wrigleyville, unhappy with the growing number of Black kids hanging out in the street every week, took action and got the club shut down. Thirty years later, the story of Duro's wild rollercoaster ride of music, passion, culture, and Chicago history is finally being told. The story is told by Duro himself, with the help of recollections from many of the MC's, DJ's, graffiti artists, B-Boys, and members of the hip hop community who were there with him. Their stories are woven together with archival footage and still images to tell the vibrant history of the early days of Chicago Hip Hop.