Everyone in New York has a hustle. The elevator guy on Park Ave. that has the drug hook-up; the female intern that wears the short skirts with hopes of making it fulltime with benefits; the business executive that takes his Japanese clients to the strip club in order to close the business deal.

Then there are the guys that push self-published CDs. If you’ve shopped in one of the many major music chains lately, then you’ve probably encountered them. They are not to be confused with the bootleggers that hawk burned copies of the latest pop and hip-hop releases. These guys come well equipped with the strong-armed sales pitch, the delivery peppered with street slang, the negotiable CD price.

The answer to the first question people usually ask is: Yes there is music on the discs. But what is it that motivates these guys? El Blogatisto took to the streets to find out what the deal was documentary style.

Armed with an ancient Sony Cyber-shot we went out to Virgin Megastore at ten at night, shot ten minutes of footage, spent ten bucks, and *edited the results in one night. Here is the first installment of a series of guerilla documentaries on El Blogavision. It’s a little over three minutes long, and at 44 MB, probably requires a bit of download time (we’re working on a more compressed version as we ’speak’).

The subject of the doc is Jerms Black, an NYC huslter that refuses wait for his moment in the hip-hop spotlight to arrive, he’s gonna go out and get it. He paces the bit of pavement in front of the Virgin Mega store, confronting potential clients with a question that’s hard to say no to: “Yo, you like hip-hop?”

In the studio Jerms sounds a bit like another Black rapper, Black Rob. The best song on the album is Gutter Bread (w/ Nappy Roots), but we noticed that though it’s on Jerms’ album, he is actually the ‘featured’ artist on the track. The runner-up is Black & Hollow (w/ Hollow) that features a beat that’s easy on the grime and generous with the bounce. A downloadable version of the song will be available on El Blogatisto soon (but don’t hold your breath).

We promise that the next installment of Guerilla Doc will be shot during the daytime, and with a much more fancy camera.

Enjoy!

*Note to technophiles: to edit an .mpeg in Final Cut Pro, first convert the .mpeg into an Audio .aif file. You will then need to import the video and audio separately and match ‘em up, link ‘em, then edit away.