This random picture is of the main public face of Anwan Glover, a Washington DC hip-hop artists, but in the style of the region, by which I mean go-go music. Go-go music is a style that is oddly clustered around DC. It is similar to other East Coast hip-hop, except with the call-and-response you find in Caribbean house-party music, or black churches.
Back in the '80s go-go clubs were getting shuttered. The violence from the heroin trade was finding its way into the spots where the soldiers were hanging out. Anwan himself has been shot a few times, and a close friend or family was killed.
The violence has largely subsided and go-go music has returned as the most important DC hip-hop music. And Anwan Glover turns out to be, with his many bands and incarnations, one of the leading figures in the go-go world.
Anwan Glover played the character of Slim Charles on The Wire, one of the great side characters in television history. Always a soldier and mercenary, he was one of the few gangsters with ample screen time who survived the series: no jail, no death. His beaded braids clacked faintly from Season 3 to Season 5.
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