Where will Spree go from here? Atlanta’s hip-hop anomaly represents on mtvU
July 21st, 2009 by Rodney Carmichael in Music news
Vote for Spree Wilson’s “Word” as mtvU’s Freshman Video of the Week
Atlanta lost a true musical talent a few weeks ago.
I’ve been reluctant to write about Spree Wilson’s departure to the Big Apple. Maybe because it’s further proof that our city — once upon a time rap’s freaky, funky, country cousin — has become too damned (black) Hollywood for its own good.
When CL featured Wilson last year, he was still trying to find his place among the city’s alternative hip-hop crowd:
In a close-knit scene where even the best acts still struggle to form an identity beyond the shadow of OutKast, Wilson really is an outcast. Despite the wide range of influences coursing through the disparate veins of Atlanta’s latest ground-level movement – from electro-punk to retro-’80s rap – an MC who hits the stage with an electric guitar strapped to his chest doesn’t quite fit the bill. In other words, dude is out with the in-crowd – or the out-crowd, as it were. Confused? Imagine how Spree Wilson feels.
“It’s just super weird. If you ever want to know what irony is, hang around the scene and be yourself,” he says. “I feel comfortable in my own skin, but when I walk in those places I feel like, man, I don’t belong in here.”
Mind you, he’d long since been courted by a few major label subsidiaries and was collaborating with Rowdy signee Novel, as well as producer No I.D., at the time. He earned a feature alongside Talib Kweli on Novel’s “I Am” off the 21 film soundtrack. He’d started to garner some hype from notable music blogs, too, and such tastemaker publications as URB. Even the city’s fickle, left-field scene began to take notice.
But Spree was always more hippie than hipster. I remember bumping into him in Criminal Records one time. He had an intense look on his face and both of his arms were full of used vinyl LPs — old Dylan and some obscure folk rock. Not the stuff you’d imagine a present-day MC buying. He wasn’t just grabbing up stuff to sample, either, these were artists he counted among his favorites and was adding to his collection.
Before he left Atlanta, he gave me a copy of the unreleased album he planned to shop around to labels while in NY. It features nine tracks of the kind of quirky hip-hop I’ve come to expect from Spree, plus a heaping helping of indie pop rock that sorta took me by surprise. That’s probably what I’ll miss most. Rarely do you get the pleasure of watching an artist grow before your eyes. Dude seemed to shed a layer of skin with every performance, always tinkering and toying around with his sound. Sometimes the boisterous Spree would show up onstage, other times the pensive one. But you always felt him searching, thinking, pushing, and engaging himself in the process of discovering who he is as an artist and how best to present it to the public.
The video above (”Word”) was directed by Phillip Sportel and shot in Atlanta. You may recognize some of the scenery (there’s even a shot of Creative Loafing’s Barack Obama cover from last year thrown in the mix). This week, it competes with a handful of other videos for mtvU’s Freshman video of the week. Get your vote on. Then check out the video below. It’s a montage shot last year to the song “Where Do We Go From Here” — one of the best on his unreleased CD. It’s full of those thoughtful vocal inflections of his, and that lyrical tug between motivation and melancholy that always seems to fuel his quest:
“This fifth of Jack Daniels
damn near has me ready to dismantle
everything I love so I speak on it like a panel
A list of broken dreams long as size 11 sandals
Used to find my strength in old tunes
but lately I been wrapped up like a butterfly’s cocoon trying to find my place to loon—
Cuz there’s no place
for a kid as well-rounded as the moon….”
Listening to his CD over the past couple of weeks, I realized that creatively-speaking, he’d left Atlanta a long time ago. But he says he’s still repping his city. From what I can gather since talking to him, he went out on a limb with the move in the hope that it would put him in closer proximity to collaborate, and even produce for, signed artists. And it’s already paying off as he’s been busying himself with production work for Jazmine Sullivan, Common, Cee-Lo and several other big names.
My only hope is that he’ll make a bigger impact on the industry than the industry makes on him. Considering the creative risks he’s taken thus far, I don’t think I have much to worry about.
July 21st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
good read…glad he’s going on to “sow his royal oats”. power, peace and blessings spree!
July 21st, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Beautifully done.
July 22nd, 2009 at 12:40 am
Spree will be back here as part of the A3C Festival in October. He is exactly the type of artist that our event wants to represent. Hip Hop is desperately in need of having its boundaries pushed and he is a pusher to the highest degree.