CMJ Portrait: Rapper Theophilus London

June 20, 1989: James Ridgeway, Peter Kwong, Joe Conason, Susanne Lee & Mitch Berman report on scenes from a failed revolution

“The tension of wanting to say more than the tradition can allow explodes the tradition.”

“Stoned silly most of the time, more than half a million freaks from all over the country made the painful pilgrimage to Max Yasgur’s 600-acre farm to play in the mud.”

"It was weird, and it was wild. It was freaky, and it was freedom. It was lunacy, and it was love. It was beautiful."

“What happens when the myth of a particular place is trade­marked by a corporation? Can you trad­emark Detroit? What about Stonewall?”

"His buddies are LSD cultists, Hell's Angels, peace marchers, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac hangers-on, a bookshop owner, a helicopter pilot wounded in Vietnam, and people who prefer anonymity, like Mountain Girl"