Word: cypress
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...downtown club, sleepy, music throbbing, your third drink drained. A stranger starts whispering gruff poetry into your ear. That's Tricky, the prince of trip-hop, and a dues-paying member of the musical avant-garde. In his mesmerizing new album he collaborates with hip-hoppers DJ Muggs (of Cypress Hill) and Grease. They help bring his almost perversely abstract compositions back down to the street, grounding them with raw raps and blunt beats. Tricky remains endearingly elusive, delivering almost all his vocals sotto voce, winding his way through the shadows of his songs...
Inside the $50 million casino resort that Florida's Miccosukee Indians have just opened near Miami, it's hard to imagine that the rows of blinking machines could have any purpose more sublime than electronic bingo. That's why Miccosukee chairman Billy Cypress likes to usher guests onto the rooftop and point west to his tribe's home: the Everglades. An 18,000-sq.-mi. expanse of shimmering water, waving sawgrass and emerald tree hammocks, it is one of America's most vital but abused natural treasures. Like the endangered wood storks that glide overhead, the fewer than 500 Miccosukees...
...scheduled to submit to Congress an $8 billion, 20-year plan to restore the Everglades, the most massive environmental project ever undertaken in the U.S. Native Americans are usually cast as p.r. decor during campaigns like this: the sad, silent Indians lamenting pollution on TV spots. But this time, Cypress is determined to "do something a lot of politicians and environmental groups don't always like Indians to do: speak." And win lawsuits. The tiny tribe has seized a leading role in the Everglades restoration by outmaneuvering some of Florida's and Washington's strongest lobbies in a legal campaign...
...Cypress explains that "our values tend to balance respect for ecology with respect for people." Poling a canoe into the marsh, as baby alligators dart around the lily pads, he passes the tree islands where the Miccosukees practice sacred rites. When asked if the Everglades really could return to the way it was a century ago, he smiles mischievously. "That's easy," he says. "Just give it all back...
...These people are trying to be like hip-hop, I say to myself. I simply am. If KRS-1 claims that one can "be hip-hop, standing in line at the supermarket," why can't I be hip-hop while concentrating in C.S.? Don't I listen to Cypress Hill's "Hits From the Bong" in the Science Center terminal room? Don't I fight for my right to party? I smile as I recall the wealthy, cookie-cutter suburb of New York City where I grew up. Maybe I'm not quite ready to break out the turntables...