​Kudos to Capital New York for writing the most thorough piece yet on the great Prime 6/Yo! MTV Raps/Park Slope-is-racist controversy. You recall the online petition, circulated by one Jennifer McMillen, suggesting that Prime 6, a soon-to-be-opened club near the Atlantic Yards nexus, consider playing "indie" music instead of hip-hop, so as to become "a vibrant artistic hub instead of another Yo MTV Raps 'bling-bling' vip club." Hilarious. The online mockery began immediately, even as everyone suspected this was performance art. As indeed Capital pretty much confirms it to be: Two weeks later and no one has heard from -- heard of, really -- any Jennifer McMillen, while Prime 6 proprietor Akiva Ofshtein never really even mentioned hip-hop in the first place. To wit:

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​Recently our hackles were raised after a concerned Park Slope resident (or, as reports increasingly indicate, a gifted troll) sent out a petition hoping to keep a new club from playing the hip-hop music (gasp!) in yuppietacular Brooklyn. We could not imagine the anarchy if rap music ever hit Park Slope: Think upended strollers and innumerable adorable pug dogs scattering toward Grand Army Plaza, causing winter-squash raviolis to rattle off forks at Al Di La. Uh, you're all conveniently forgetting that the Rub throws a great weekly party on Fifth Avenue, and KRS-One was born in Park Slope, right?

Anyway, our favorite line in this ridiculous petition is the decidedly anachronistic description "another Yo MTV Raps 'bling-bling' vip club," which moronically links a hit 1988 TV show with a hit 1999 song. Which got us thinking: Do today's rock critics know more about the seminal Yo! MTV Raps than your average panic-stricken Brooklynite? And so we asked 15 music writers:

Who were the hosts of Yo! MTV Raps?

Should be super easy, right? It's essentially the show that brought hip-hop to the suburbs in 1988, changing pop culture, fashion, and music forever. It brought radical politics to our living rooms and taught a generation of white kids to shave lines into their hair (sorry, mom). Was our panel of critics actually watching this landmark moment unfold? Or were they too busy waiting for Dave Kendall to play the new Mighty Lemon Drops? Our posse in effect consists of 15 professional and semi-professional rock writers, all given the usual rules:

1. I will not identify you AT ALL, so it is OK to be wrong. [We will say that our esteemed panel edits magazines, websites, and alt-weeklies. They have written for pretty much every outlet you've ever heard of, from Rolling Stone to Spin to Billboard.]

2. You can't use Google.

The correct answer and some dropped science below:

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Any excuse to repost this logo again though

​For the past week, the controversy over Prime 6, an in-the-works "Yo MTV Raps 'bling-bling' vip club" set to open on 242 Flatbush Avenue, has stayed at the top of our Google Reader and Twitter feeds since "Jennifer McMillen," a woman who claims to live on the same block, created a petition suggesting that the club switch over to indie music, despite the fact that "R&B and rap happen to be [her] two favorite types of music."

Last night Community Board 6 met at Long Island College to discuss this and other, less bloggable matters. Although nothing was voted on (there will be another meeting a week from today), Permits and Licenses Committee head Mark Shames stated the community's position, and did so without having to name-drop his "African American friends and colleagues."

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The real Fab Five Freddy probably neither wrote nor signed any of these petitions, just FYI.

​So last week a brave young Park Slope woman named Jennifer McMillen entered the fractious debate over Prime 6, an allegedly hip-hop-friendly club set to open at Flatbush and Sixth in Brooklyn, to the trepidation of some neighbors who feared, in the memorable coinage of her Internet petition on the matter, the presence of "another Yo MTV Raps 'bling-bling' vip club." Despite clarifying that Park Slope is not at all racist, she personally loves rap/r&b, and has several African-American friends, McMillen (whom no one, from the Voice to the Wall Street Journal, has yet been able to find, leaving open the possibility that this is all an elaborate prank) was nonetheless showered with derision, which at first took the form of people signing her petition under amusing fake names (Whitely McWhite, Lou Dobbs, Fab Five Freddy, U Haz No Blak Frenz, etc.), and has now spawned the inevitable: answer petitions. Let's take a closer look at two of them.

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​You will by now be familiar with Prime 6, the soon-to-be Park Slope club and already the site of much controversy. Will the neighborhood descend into an orgy of Yo MTV Raps, "Henessey" [sic], and "bling-bling" on account of the club's plans to play rap music? Or will the forces of "indie" prevail? Who knows, but the latter seems increasingly less likely. Since the petition to inform owner Akiva Ofshtein that "Indie Music Will Earn You More Than Hip-Hop!!!" leaked earlier today, the internet has stuck back, flooding the document with "signatures." We use quotation marks because, well, look above. Shout out Das Racist, Will Smith, Mel Gibson, Fab 5 Freddy, and Barack Obama, and no love to the people getting all ad hominem with this surely already deeply regretful woman (click to enlarge):

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​So there's a hot new club/bar/live-music venue called Prime 6 in the works down in the Atlantic Yards nexus at Flatbush and Sixth in Brooklyn, inciting the usual neighborly trepidation, because this club might play rap music. There is now a petition circulating, not to stop Prime 6 from opening, you understand, but just to suggest they find a . . . friendlier style of music. "Indie," for example, which'd make the place "a vibrant artistic hub instead of another Yo MTV Raps 'bling-bling' vip club." And here we go.

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