San Francisco’s Not Dead: FNG at The Independent
Family Not a Group - Photo ©Jordan Ranft
People love to hate on San Francisco. Conservative media routinely props it up as a failure of progressive policy and regales viewers with stories of uncontrolled crime and open-air drug markets. Aging hippies moan about the death of free love in favor of bland technocratic oligarchy. Transplants complain about how expensive everything is getting, and locals complain about the transplants for making everything too expensive. Amidst all this criticism, one crucial piece of nuance is often overlooked: despite all the negative narrativization, people still live, work, and create in San Francisco. While this may feel overly obvious when typed out, it often seems as though the debate and criticism have created a barrier between the abstract perception of the city and the day-to-day lived experience of people who call it home.
Family Not a Group - Photo ©Jordan Ranft
Enter Family Not a Group (FNG), a 17-person collective of rappers, singers, DJs, and artists, 16 of whom were born and raised in San Francisco, dedicated to reclaiming the story of their city and the people who live there. This is not a group interested in nostalgia; they are not living in the shadow of the Beats, the Hippies, or the Hyphy Movement but are instead pushing ahead in attempts to forge a new era of art and expression on the Barbary Coast.
Family Not a Group - Photo ©Jordan Ranft
Emerging from the COVID lockdowns, FNG wasted no time generating a strong local buzz and has leveraged this hometown love into a multitude of sold-out events, a takeover of KQED-FM’s offices, performances at the SF Museum of Modern Art, and (as of March 30th of this year) a packed show at the legendary Independent SF. All this was accomplished before any official EP or LP releases.
Family Not a Group - Photo ©Jordan Ranft
I know that this is typically a punk magazine, but what these guys are doing is some dyed-in-the-wool grassroots shit, and to create a lane for yourself in a city currently known for being inhospitable to anyone outside of the top 1% is worthy of praise. Not to mention, the show at The Independent ripped. FNG’s set started with one lone member asleep on a couch, woken by the remaining members—12 of the 17 were present—storming the stage and demanding that they throw a party. As this loose narrative continued through the show, members broke off to perform solo and group songs while the remaining members clambered onto the stage furniture or danced along or hyped the crowd up or drank Maker's Mark and ate burritos in the background. From start to finish, the crowd went crazy, fully enveloped by the chaotic energy unfolding on the stage. At the end of the set, one of the members, who had stripped his shirt off several songs prior, grabbed the mic and proclaimed their intention as SF-based artists to take up space and thanked the crowd for helping them do so.
Family Not a Group - Photo ©Jordan Ranft
While San Francisco may be deserving of much of the criticism it gets, there’s also shit like this happening, and that has to matter too.
Family Not a Group - Photo ©Jordan Ranft
(Editor’s Note): In Spite Magazine is a music-heavy, open forum journalist and artist collective— a not-for-profit lifestyle magazine. We promote the voices and stories of journalists, artists, fans, and weirdos from across the spectrum. The punks just happen to be particularly active (and loud) around here.