Cosmo Baker, a Philadelphia DJ who’s been behind the turntable since he was a teen, has seen Philly’s creative fabric unfold through the decades. Baker sat down with City Cast Philly to discuss his career, South Street as the bedrock for Philly’s rich subcultures, and where all of that stands today. Part of this conversation is featured in the second episode of our podcast series on South Street.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
How did you find that your thing would be DJing?
”DJing parties for me was great because it allowed me a certain amount of control. It allowed me to share what it is that I wanted to share with people in terms of ‘you really should listen to this Gang Starr record, you should listen to this Tribe Called Quest record.’ But it also gave me the safety and the comfortability of being in my own space, in my own zone. As a 15-year-old kid, that's what I was doing. And then I've never really gone back.”
What was your earliest memory on South Street?
“Before I was DJing, I was spending a lot of time on South Street because of my mom's store that was there … I was just getting into skateboarding at the time and I said, ‘Mom, you should open up a skate store.’
“ It was called Spike’s Skates…It was a pretty big thing in the sense of not just the development of skateboard culture in general, but also as to like the way that people would congregate in and around South Street at that time. It was the epicenter of skateboarding culture in Philadelphia. Legitimately, it would be hundreds and hundreds of kids that would come to Spike’s Skates on a Saturday and a Sunday and would spend their entire day there. And it was a community.”
Do you feel like Philly’s struggling to maintain hip-hop?
“ No, I don't. I think hip hop is something that changes. I think that the aesthetics of it change. I think that the artistic elements and the fabric of it may shift.
“ Philadelphia's got a really vibrant hip-hop community and I totally think that it's continuing on. Hip-hop is a culture and that’s 50-plus years at this point. It’s been the dominant pop culture for a good third of that time.
“ It's part of the responsibility of us as Philadelphia artists and musicians and people who love not just the culture, but the city itself, to make sure that we continue to foster what may be something that would supplant us.”
What was South Street like in the early 2000s? What is the future of South Street?
“ There was a big shift in just South Street in general..it really goes back to the co-opting of something that's cool, something that's genuine, and something that's unique.
“I really feel as though there was this swing of the pendulum where it really kind of went from the opposite of where it was a place where people could get together and find their communities and thrive. It became about commerce, and it became about the dollar, and it became about the capital. By and large from the shutting out of independent mom-and-pop businesses and bringing in Verizon stores and things like that, it ... lost its vibe, lost its character.
“ I still see mom-and-pop shops down there, right? I still see people hang out. I still go to South Street and shop. I'm not a teenager, so I'm not really gonna go out there and hang out on the street … like I used to, you know? But especially in a day like today, where we're all so connected digitally and social media, people need places to gather.”
