The Music of Dreams

When Robert Shipp drives the streets of his Venice neighborhood, he sees what is plainly there: drug dealers. On certain corners and lurking near alleyways, they are there, young men and women openly hailing passing cars, looking for the next buyer of their crack cocaine.

The scene weighs heavily on Shipp, 36, a man who once traveled these same streets as a drug-selling gang member. A decade ago, Shipp turned his own life around, replacing the story line of a wayward young man with that of a minister, family man and activist in Venice’s Oakwood community.

Now, backed financially by his sister, who won $3.9 million in the state lottery, Shipp is launching a record label, a company that he hopes will become profitable selling the musical talent of locals and that will create jobs for a community hard-hit by unemployment and poverty.

Most of the drug dealers in the neighborhood, Shipp said, would quickly trade the hardscrabble life of illegal sales for an honest job.

“Just about everybody I talked to believes in the Christian way, but they have a problem as far as money,” Shipp said. “So, they do anything to get money. I think that pretty much has been their excuse. So what I’m trying to do is wipe out excuses.”

Shipp knows it is difficult to start any business, and realizes the music industry is especially perilous. For 18 months, Shipp and his sister, Rochelle Ware, researched the industry, applying for business licenses and checking out potential recording acts.

“We knew going into it that it was going to be tough,” said Ware, who declined to reveal how much she will invest but said she is “committed” to the project. “It wasn’t until the work started that I realized just how tough it is. Now I have a different appreciation for people in the music industry.”

But already the company is beginning to make music. Five acts, mostly rappers, are signed to the label, called Robert and Rochelle Records.

Last fall, Dope Slang, a Venice rapper, released a recording called “Whatz Good N Da Hood.” The recording received some limited local airplay and is being stocked in some independent records stores in the area.

The label will soon record a track with area rappers called “War Without a Cause,” a song partly based on a 1993 Venice gang war that left 17 dead. A video of that song is planned.

Eventually, Shipp hopes to offer jobs to neighborhood youths to get them off the streets and away from drugs and gangs. Even now, the groups signed to his record label and doing work for his company must be clean of criminal activity.

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For Alfonso Lampkins, a.k.a. Dope Slang, the record label offers him a chance to move from Venice backyard party rapper to recording star. But, Lampkins said, he dreams not only of fame but of success for himself, his toddler son, and others in the neighborhood.

“Some people take their energy and channel it into a gang and really get deep into it,” said Lampkins, himself a former gang member. “But we could take that talent and energy into music.”

What motivates Shipp is his shared background with those in Oakwood, one that goes beyond his criminal past and encompasses a deep affinity for the close-knit neighborhood where he was raised and still lives.

Shipp, whose full-time job is behind the deli counter at a Venice Ralphs, is a guest speaker at churches and hosts a cable program that highlights the accomplishments of Oakwood residents.

“You have people that start [drug dealing] from the age of 12 on up,” Shipp said. “They are not really trapped. But you get to the age of 16 and 17, they are trapped and it’s hard for them to get out. It’s not because they don’t want to walk away. Their mind is trapped and they see no other way. I used to think the same way. I know what they are going through.”

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Shipp, one of eight siblings who grew up in the neighborhood, joined a Venice gang at age 13. By 16, he was selling drugs. But he graduated from high school and studied for three years at Eastern Michigan University.

That college experience helped change him, Shipp said.

“Before I went to college, I had a coldness, I didn’t care,” Shipp said. “I was smoking [drugs]. I didn’t care about what I had done. But when I came back, I didn’t have a cold heart.”

Shipp remained on the streets with his longtime friends, however. It wasn’t until a few years later, when he became a Christian, that he attempted to leave the streets.

Even then, his gang impulses foiled his efforts. Moments after Shipp publicly committed his life to Christianity at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Oakwood, he witnessed rival gang members shooting on the street.

“I grabbed my cousin’s shotgun and ran right out in the middle of the street,” Shipp recalled. “The church people were walking by. They saw me. I was embarrassed. So I didn’t want to go back.”

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He didn’t return to a church for two years. Then, after experiencing a spiritual calling to God, he stopped hanging out with the gang, drinking and using drugs. Shipp, the married father of two children, said he hasn’t slipped since.

Actor Beau Bridges, who along with his father, Lloyd Bridges, finances a Venice performing arts group where Shipp volunteers, has no doubt that Shipp’s record label will succeed.

“He’s turned his life around and become a very spiritual person and is now bent on helping other people,” Bridges said.