Shafiq Husayn grew up immersed in the hip hop of Leimert Park's Project Blowed and The Good Life.

He attended Uncle Jamm’s Army parties in the early ’80s at L.A. Sports Arena, hung out with Ice-T at Radiotron and Crenshaw High School and produced half of Ice’s 1991 O.G.: Original Gangsta album.

Husayn just dropped a new disc and he reminds everyone where he comes from. En’ A-Free-Ka, the solo album from Sa-Ra Creative Partners, shows Husayn sitting inside Africa by the Yard, a store in Leimert Park Village.
The interview by Phillip Mylnar is titled: The Sound of Leimert Park Hip-Hop Zulu rising (again).

"When hip-hop existed not on record but via the playing of snippets of other people’s records, funky eclecticism was king. Led by Afrika Bambaataa, a native of the Bronx whose move from gang member to hip-hop icon and founder of the Universal Zulu Nation was, in part, prompted by a trip to Africa, early park jams would reverberate with the sound of a couple of bars of Electric Light Orchestra meshing into a moment of Bill Withers, Twilight 22 musically commingling with Atlantic Starr," Mylnar writes.

"Today, Husayn is carrying that torch."

Fidel, a collector of arts from across the globe but a specialist in African relics