Fist City: Rockwell Knuckles aims to punch through St. Louis hip-hop's glass ceiling

Mondays were the brainchild of Lamar "Finsta" Williams, who explains that it began as an alternative to the mainstream, club-oriented rap that was becoming popular at the time: Even as St. Louis was beginning to embrace crunk, with its simplistic hooks and slow but catchy (and danceable) hi-hat and keyboard beats, the Hi-Pointe was promoting a style of hip-hop modeled after New York artists such as the Wu-Tang Clan and Gang Starr, emphasizing inventive lyrics and beats.

"We were still focusing on being wordy with the lyrics while everybody else was being stupid," says Finsta. "Everybody like, 'Where did these guys come from?' People would be like, 'Are you from New York or something?'"

While independent artists were able to gain a critical toehold in cities like New York, Minneapolis and the San Francisco Bay area, crunk, the movement that started with Master P, continues to rule in St. Louis to this day, with contemporary artists such as T-Pain and Soulja Boy dominating local radio and clubs.

Though it would enjoy brief reincarnations at other locations throughout the city, the last true Hi-Pointe Monday was held in September 2006, not long after new owners took over the venue. And by all accounts the local underground scene has never quite recovered. There have been several attempts to recapture the magic, the most notable being the short-lived Integrity, a hip-hop networking and showcase night at Blueberry Hill hosted by Finsta, producer Tech Supreme and DJ Trackstar, but almost all have failed.

"We always cling to how it used to be," says DJ Needles, co-host of Fat Laces, a local hip-hop show that airs Sunday nights on KDHX (88.1 FM). "It used to be better around here as far as actual events showcasing raw hip-hop. We don't really have that anymore."

Currently only a handful of underground hip-hop nights exist; the most prominent take place in the vicinity of Soulard: Needles' Café Soul every third Friday of the month at the Lucas School House, and Trackstar's Monday gig at the Old Rock House.

Trackstar speculates that the shortage of quality underground nights has rendered networking nearly impossible. Sadly, he says, most people don't seem to care.

"The only thing I can come up with is, the way everything is going with the Internet and MySpace, everyone thinks they're their own self-contained unit," Trackstar says. "Everyone thinks they can do all their self-promotion and networking on MySpace.

"People think they don't need events because they can check out other people's work and network and get feedback through MySpace, so why spend five dollars to go out?"

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By the time Knuckles graduated high school in June 2000, he had joined a promising group of seven St. Louis rappers who called themselves Pangea. He enrolled in fall classes at Harris-Stowe State University but soon dropped out to pursue his music career. Pangea quickly became the Next Big Thing on the local scene.

"You can't talk about St. Louis hip-hop without talking about 'em," says DJ Needles. "They was the little cats that just further solidified that this area's got some real independent thinkers and profound writers in hip-hop."

The group's future, however, mirrored the fate of the supercontinent from which it took its name: Relationships deteriorated as members of the act drifted apart.

"It just got ugly, to where it come to the point that somebody was going to get their ass beat or shot," says DJ Charlie Chan, who had signed on to produce the band.

Knuckles says there are no hard feelings between him and his former bandmates, and calls his time with Pangea a learning experience.

"They're good people, man — musically cold, personally awesome," he says. "It's just everybody likes to work in music at their pace, and I got to keep movin' and groovin'."

Eventually the cast was whittled down to just Knuckles and two close friends, a rapper named Wafeek and Brian "Grand" Trotter, who pulled double duty as emcee and band manager. Soon after Wafeek moved to Tucson in 2003 to try his hand at the West Coast music scene, Knuckles followed. After a few months, the pair decided to move to LA to record a project with a production team called the Art Thugs. They wrote the entire album on the nine-hour drive across the desert.

"It was awesome," Knuckles recalls. "We were just driving and writing — the seat of your pants, a few bucks in your pocket, a couple hundred dollars next to nothing, working on what you got. It's like, 'OK, this is going to work. Yes, it is. There's no choice.'"

Wafeek says in those days Knuckles was willing to play the rap game.