Deep Dickollective

Deep Dickollective (or D/DC) is a black queer "homohop" group based in Oakland, California. It was formed in early 2000 by Juba Kalamka, Tim'm T. West and Phillip Atiba Goff. The three began working together after Kalamka and West met at a screening of black gay filmmaker and scholar Marlon Riggs' film Tongues Untied. Kalamka and West later met Goff on the campus of Stanford University, where West and Goff were enrolled in PhD programs.

Kalamka and West had been performing for years as MCs but had few opportunities to work as out queer artists until encountering each other and Goff shortly thereafter. Kalamka had begun recording an experimental spoken word project called Pre/tensions with San Francisco blues and avantgarde jazz whiz Dick "Deluxe" Egner and with groundbreaking queer hip hop group Rainbow Flava, but both were interested in the possibility of creating a project that would push buttons around race, queerness and masculinity in hip hop all at once.

Frustrated with the resistance they had faced from an allegedly progressive "conscious" spoken word scene, the three began jamming together in private on Stanford's campus and came up with the skeletons of about 20 songs, 13 of which would become their debut recording BourgieBohoPostPomoAfroHomo. In a moment of anger while discussing their difficulty with the local scene (West had been performing at readings and with bands since his arrival in 1998, but lost all of his bookings once it the scene became aware that he was gay) Kalamka blurted "well, if them girls can call themselves the Punany Poets (a then popular Oakland poetry group), we can be Deep Dick Collective!". The name was then shortened to "Deep Dickollective", but the initials "D/DC" remained as the three letter abbreviation seemed to roll off the tongue well. What started as a parodic exercise to vent frustration became a blooming underground yet internationally critical success, that has to date involved 11 queer men who have recorded as members of D/DC. ( JBRAP or dJBRAP, Marcus VAN, Baraka Noel, Butterfly Soul, Ryan Solas BeLalgee, Rashaad Prigen )