If you're really "in the streets" of New York City, then most of the people in your circle should be street urchins and guttersnipes also using the asphalt lawns of the Big Apple as their playground.

They're your closest friends, even though you didn't go to school together; you're not from the same hood or even the same borough. Yet somehow you're friends. The street is your alma mater. Racking, hustling, skating, rapping, writing graffiti, drinking, drugging... that's the curriculum.

Telli and Jah Jah, the remaining members of NinjaSonik (their DJ, Teen Wolf, left the group), are no different. Jah is from the Bronx; Telli is from Brooklyn. Both went to different schools and for the most part hung out in different hoods. Yet a love for skating and music bought them together. They recently released the EP No Swords, No Masks as a prelude to their next album, Peter Pan Syndrome, which is scheduled to drop this summer. Though in keeping with their usual sound and aesthetics, their new music makes it obvious that the duo wants to lay claim to the downtown rapper throne. Here's why they think they deserve it.

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​This seems like a great recipe for a riot: New York Times Arts & Leisure cover boy Drake playing a free show in the rap capital of the world on the day his sure-to-be-#1 Thank Me Later hits stores. With teen-pop survivors Hanson. And local art-rap pranksters Ninjasonik. So if the sheer popularity of the headliner doesn't do the South Street Seaport in, leave it to the three separate fanbases who will surely show out in force to level the docks in an ineffectual, Canadians rap fans vs. aging teeny-boppers vs. Bushwick 40 oz.-drinkers all out brawl. Still, since Drake is about to be one of the more famous rappers on the planet, we're going to go ahead and guarantee this is the last time you'll be able to just go wander down to the south end of Manhattan and see him for free, like it's nothing. Summer concert season, you make zero sense, but we kind of love you anyway. [Paper]

all photos and captions by Rebecca Smeyne

YIMBY columnist Chris Weingarten's contribution used the album as a platform for what appears to be... well, let's leave it to Chris, who chimes in with an update. "My piece is the jar itself, which is full of water and the record after put it in a blender. No bodily fluids were harmed in the making of this piece."

Damn, there was a plethora of lady parts at the Front Room Galleries last night in DUMBO--not a bunch, not a lot, a plethora. Makes sense. This was the opening of an art show where the white vinyl-sleeved 12-inch single of Ninjasonik's party-rap threat "Somebody Gonna Get Pregnant" was the primary canvas. So affixed to walls last night was an album cover, unfolded, and rigged to resemble a baby ninja emerging from a rather gruesome birth canal. It looked, harrowingly, like a spread from an adult pop-up book.

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The backing track for the Knifefight: No Rules trailer, posted below, is Murdertronics' "Get 'Em High." In this context, the Get 'em hiiiiiiiiiggggggggh/Get 'em drrrrrrrrrrruuuuuunnnnnk chorus--uttered more times than I can possibly justify counting, in a manner not unlike Yellow's belly-aching dinosaur-burp "Oh Yeah"--isn't an aspiration, but a manifesto. You see, Knifefight: No Rules is a short about a crazy-ass show that went on in a Greenpoint warehouse this past February. Put on by the eponymous Knifefight--the party-throwing moniker of Andy Smith, ex-Chief Magazine engine who also ran the dearly departed, DIY space Bodega--the two-night affair at 171 Lombardy starred the usual crust-crunk suspects: Ninjasonik, Japanther, Cerebral Ballsy, the Death Set, Boogie Boarder, Murdertronics. Project Fathom filmed the whole thing and whittled it down to 12 minutes.

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All photos by Rebecca Smeyne

Whatever you did this weekend probably wasn't as bezerk as the Bed-Stuy version of Hoodstock, an Oakland party exported to Willoughby Avenue on Saturday that brought New Orleans sissy bounce star Big Freedia to Brooklyn. Big Freedia and his airborne-booty dancers were the de facto headliners, but the usual Bikes in the Kitchen all-stars were also in the house (Ninjasonik, Japanther, Cerebral Ballzy). Ninjasonik used Sunday to ReTweet a flurry of misspelled praise ("long time since been 2 proper undrgrnd show, left soakin wet w/ legs bruised up like a crak whore frm da pit" wrote @SaintElasticat) and our photographer Rebecca Smeyne, who's basically seen the Japanther boys more times than their own parents, also couldn't stop e-raving about the party either. Even Matt and Kim testified: "If you were not at hoodstock tonight you missed out and I am sorry. It was an amazing show!" Sure looks like it. Full gallery here, selected photos below.

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​It's a Tracy Morgan phrase turned Bushwick cops-are-coming party-mantra, and now Ninjasonik's nightly promise that "Somebody Gonna Get Pregnant" is the centerpiece of a Brooklyn art show. Last winter, the heavy-lidded King Cobra-rap trio, with the help of all-around creative guy Nick Chatfield-Taylor, sent out more than 60 copies of Ninjasonik's 12-inch vinyl single "Somebody Gonna Get Pregnant" to friends, artists, and collaborators. The request was simple enough: do whatever you want with the white sleeve.

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Photos by Nate "Igor" Smith

Party-rap trio Ninjasonik may be best known for squeezing into tight pants and threatening mass impregnation, but these three room-wreckers have also, as we keep noticing, become unofficial mascots for downtown tallboy spraying, raucous crowd-surfing, and stoner-face posing. They were doing all three again on Sunday night, taking over Ella Lounge on Avenue A to shoot a video for the track "Pic Party." Nate "Igor" Smith was there to document the shoot, which featured members of the Death Set and ubiquitous DBB-dude Anton Glamb. By the looks of the photos, there was a ton of booze, bros, and Mishka wear--basically, the average Ninjasonik Sunday night.

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Nate "Igor" Smith

Telli Gramz of Ninjasonik

Why isn't there universal shorthand for tracks in which rappers individually single out their loved ones, from God to Mom to the local corner slinger? Lupe Fiasco's "Outro" is a bloated example that comes to mind, with 12-plus Food & Liquor minutes of Cornel West's model citizen shouting out everyone he ever added on MySpace, but these things really do need a name. "Crew clip," "homie holla," "family props," or "posse cut," as one intra-office dialogue yields, don't quite seem right. Rap nerds, where's your clever?

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Girls not having much fun. Pic by Connar Walik, more below.

​Once a year, mtvU hosts the Woodies, an event that's a lot like the Teen Choice Awards, except that it caters to college kids and music-industry people who can say stuff like, "I started listening to that band, like, two years ago." The award show held their third gala at the Roseland Ballroom Wednesday night, a room filled with contest-winning ticketholders, nominees, MTV personalities, reality-TV stars (Roxy, you get the gas-face), and many, many red Solo cups. The whole "college" shtick was kind of cute, really. The nominees and performers were set up at brightly lit, sparkly bars instead of your usual plush audience seating. There were waiters walking around with burgers, fries, and brownies, with kegs stowed away for flip-cup and beer-pong tournaments. They covered everything from Gaga to Gossip Girl, and someone even got Kanye'd . . . but we'll get to that later.

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So that "Goodbye Summer" Bikes in the Kitchen show went down on Saturday, though the threat of rain moved it indoors from 979 Broadway Backyard to Above the Auto Parts Store on Bushwick Avenue. It was, as these things usually are, incredibly sweaty, packed, and smelly, starring Team Robespierre, Ninjasonik, Juiceboxx, and those other usually BK loft suspects. Rebecca Smeyne braved the B.O. and came back with these photos. Do these Ninjasonik dudes ever stay home?

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