Crib Notes

Which came first, the BET Hip-Hop Awards or Atlanta’s steady flow of garbage-ass rap music?

The chicken-or-the-egg question occurred to me as I watched last night’s broadcast of the awards show, which should’ve been renamed the Gucci Mane Awards for the number of performances (3?) featuring the East Atlanta-bred MC.

It typified a night in which the show took every possible opportunity to reference Atlanta — which is odd considering the crowd is made up entirely of industry fucks (artists, publicists, label reps, promoters, radio heads, etc.) and almost zero fans. (more…)

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Not since N.W.A. dropped “Fuck the Police” 20 years ago has hip-hop sounded this defiant, this jaw-dropping, this groundbreaking.

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The Goodie Mob reunion is one week to the wind, so we’re taking a last look back at the buildup to the biggest show of the year with some footage from their MARTA press tour through the S.W.A.T.S. and a little concert footage.

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Remember that scene from “Chappelle’s Show” when Charlie Murphy recalls the time when the late Rick James came to his brother Eddie’s pad and started jumping up and down all over the leather sofa with his muddy platform boots on, yelling “Fuck yo’ couch, nigga!” Well, that’s HOLLYWEERD to the nth degree. Take the lineup: a self-styled savant who goes by “the Dreamer,” two full-time tat artists (Tuki Carter and Chris “the Love Crusader” McAdoo) from City of Ink, and a jazz-sax journeyman who calls himself the mythical Stagolee. That ain’t no rap group, it’s a band of gypsies. Since materializing out of thin air nearly two years ago, the four-man crew has busily crafted its own unruly narrative. The three mixtapes released in the past 12 months showcase the group’s penchant for combining sweet indie-pop incarnations with self-indulgent fantasy funk. It’s a nutty mix. Yet somehow they’ve managed to turn their wild inconsistencies — from constantly evolving musical influences including OutKast and the Doors to hit-or-miss live performances — into the main attraction. Like a traveling freak show, Hollyweerd piques our curiosity. No matter how odd, we can’t turn away for fear of missing what might happen next. www.myspace.com/hollyweerd.

See the rest of BOA After Dark

(Photo courtesy Joeff Davis)

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The future of hip-hop has a past, and her name is BOOG BROWN. Two years ago, she was just a restless Detroit native and recent college graduate who thought she’d find better opportunity and a good job Down South. So she loaded up her stuff and she moved to “Black Hollywood” — Atlanta, that is. Shopping malls. Music stars. But Brown found herself more at home within the city’s underground scene, where she met such collaborators as producer Illastrate. Already, she’s proven herself to be that rare gem of an artist who can push a genre forward by taking it back to “The Essence,” when, as she raps with a warm, detached flow on her first single, “shit used to be credible/incredible vocab/no amount of swagger hide a wack verse.” The irony, of course, is that she unleashed that salvo, from her anticipated Miss Black America mixtape, smack dab in the middle of rap’s swag capital. Despite all our fair city has to offer an up-and-coming MC, Atlanta needs Boog Brown more than she needs us. We need to remember how it feels to hang onto the edge of every lyric, to pause in the middle of a verse and rewind, to find ourselves transfixed and transformed by the renewing power of a rhyme. Atlanta should be so fortunate. www.myspace.com/bbrownfbgm.

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ALL FOUR ONE: Cee-Lo (clockwise from front), Khujo, T-Mo and Big Gipp put the city on their backs.

By Maurice Garland

Once known as “the city too busy to hate,” Atlanta has seemingly turned into “the city too busy to remember.” In its desire to become a hybrid of New York’s grind and Los Angeles’ shine, many of the cultural landmarks that made the city what it once was have disappeared. Remember the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium where Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record? It’s now a parking lot. Such streets of infamy as Stewart Avenue and Bankhead Highway have been renamed. Earwax Records got squeezed out by the iPod. Even the sports memorabilia shop Distant Replays is a distant memory. Compound that with the Atlanta Housing Authority’s nearly completed plan to erase every last trace of housing projects from the landscape, and it seems the city’s becoming a soul-less shell of its former self.

But on a recent August afternoon so humid and hazy it would leave local TV weathermen Glenn Burns and Ken Cook speechless, four recognizable brothers donned in throwback red Adidas jumpsuits stand outside the West End soul food restaurant Chanterelle’s. They resemble a blast from the not-too-distant past.

Continue reading “A dirty job for Goodie Mob”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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FOR THE PEOPLE: Chosen (back row, from left) Amond Jackson, StaHHr, Boog Brown, Kalonji Changa, Khalilah Ali, Ekundayo, Taj Anwar, Mike Flo, Doll Daze. Rita J (seated, from left), Señor Kaos, Kelly Love Jones.

Twenty years ago this summer, when Public Enemy dropped “Fight the Power” — the wake-up call of an anthem laced with 400 years of black angst and pent-up aggression — Kalonji Jama Changa was sitting behind bars for engaging in illegal drug activity or, as he now refers to it, “selling plantation poison.”

Born into a family of activists, his misguided sense of rebellion led him astray as a teen, “almost like the preacher’s son,” says Changa, who still went by his birth name Nigel Korsnick Brown at the time. “I was like the white sheep of the family.”

Locked away in prison for nearly two years, Changa finally heard his calling.

“Everything my mother and father ever told me came to me all at once. It came to me when they talked about slavery. It came to me when they talked about the prison business. Everything just started popping in my head,” he recalls. “I could not believe that I was really running from myself.”

He runs in the opposite direction now, as founder and national coordinator of FTP Movement, the several-years-old community activist conglomerate with an exchangeable acronym: “For the people. Free the prisoners. Formulating the plan. Fuck the policies,” Changa says, rattling off the endless options. “We wanted something that was interchangeable for any given situation.”

When “fuck the police” is suggested, Changa laughs. “Usually, I don’t say that. We don’t want to appear to just be some mad, ranting, raving lunatics.”

Continue reading “Food, Clothes & Shelter: Atlanta’s independent hip-hop scene remixes revolution”

“Veggies & Fruit” (Vance Vexed feat. Nappy Roots and A. Leon Craft)

“Resistance” (StaHHr)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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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. (more…)

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Many hip hop beefs — 50 Cent vs. Rick Ross, say, or T.I. vs. Shawty Lo — are all bluster. But when Young Jeezy and Gucci Mane beef, people die. That’s why it is troubling that the two are at it again.

As reported on Miss Info’s blog, Jeezy apparently took issue with a recent Gucci song and fired off a diss track, “24 23,” which take aim at Gucci and associate OJ da Juiceman. “Tell him this ain’t what he want, not the boy Snow,” Jeezy raps of Gucci. “But between me and you, I think the boy slow.”

It’s not entirely clear what Gucci song Jeezy takes issue with. Sure, his recent Big Cat Records album Murder Was The Case contains plenty of Jeezy disses, but most of that material was recorded years ago. If there’s a shot taken at Jeezy on Gucci’s latest Writing On The Wall mixtape, I can’t pick it out. Anyone?

Finally, as Miss Info notes:

Mind you, this Friday, Gucci Mane, OJ da Juiceman and Young Jeezy are booked to perform at the 102 Jamz SuperJam in Greenboro, NC.

And then on Saturday…again…Gucci Mane, OJ da Juiceman and Young Jeezy are booked to perform at the Hot 107.9 Birthday Bash in Atlanta, GA.

hmmm…let’s hope both sides respect their radio sponsors and keep the peace.

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Eddie Meeks, one third of veteran Atlanta hip-hop group Prophetix and a brilliant MC in his own right, looks to be back in the studio with this single “S.o.S to the World“.

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Our cover story on Gucci Mane this week is generating a lot of buzz, including a post on Vibe magzine’s number one hip-hop blog, Nah Right.

Unfortunately the commenters there aren’t focusing on all the scoops in the story — about how Gucci spent his time in jail, about his upcoming album, or about his recently-settled lawsuit.

Instead, everyone’s making fun of his haircut and his skin:

there are coded Mayan 2012 prophecies hidden on his scalp ….

[he] was trying to freestyle while getting his hair cut

Thats a scripture in OJ Da Juiceman’s [II] native language

Gucci looks like he’s cryptic member of the Komodo Dragon family. Like special edition Indonesian version….weird

He is a Komodo Dragon, period.

Gucci the only human being with pixels in his skintone

In his defense, the image posted on Nah Right is a bit pixelated. The one here should be a little better.

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Soulja Boy covers rolling out this week

The hardest working teenager in show business?

Fresh off of his XXL cover and featured on the cover of rolling out this week, Soulja Boy (is he going to drop the Tell ‘Em when he gets older a la the former Lil Bow Wow?) keeps adding new tour dates. He’s already sweeping through the American North, South, East and West, and Pollstar confirms shows in the unlikely burgs of Blackfoot, Idaho, on June 24 and Saint George, Utah, on June 25. St. George is in the heart of Mormon country, while Blackfoot is a town of 10,000 and, you guessed it, the Potato Capital of the World.

Oh, and there’s a confirmed local date as well, June 20 as part of Hot 107.9’s Birthday Bash at Philip’s Arena. Look for a feature story on the former one-hit wonder/sudden critical darling in Creative Loafing that week, in which Soulja will talk about firing his management, his upcoming third album and his money-management secrets. Seriously.

UPDATE: See his 5/26/09 interview with the ladies on “The View” below the jump. (more…)

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Be sure to check out my story on Bobby Ray this week, in which he discusses his transition from gat-rapping persona B.o.B to existential genre-hopping rocker/crooner/MC.

He was very forthcoming in the interview, and I ran out of space for all the great anecdotes and info he shared. Here are the best cutting-room floor bits.

Why he won’t visit his Grand Hustle label head T.I. in prison

“He doesn’t want anyone to see him in prison. I thought about it, I was definitely going to come by a lot. But he doesn’t even want his kids to see him there. He doesn’t want that image implanted in their heads, of him being in jail. I can kind of understand that.”

Janelle Monae

“She is probably my sister from another planet or something. She reminds me a lot of me. Everything that she says and does, her music and her show, kind of rubs off on me. She has a lot of good energy, and I take what I like from it and put my spin on it.”

His future goals

“I’m trying to outdo myself. I’m going to take all the best elements from all the music I know. I don’t even want to say some of the stuff I’m thinking about, because it’s stuff that’s never been done before, like recording a song on an airplane. Or maybe even recording a song outside.”

On the Outkast-sized expectations people have for him

“It’s what you make of it. Sometimes it used to intimidate me, but now, it’s like, you gotta go with it, you have to use the energy to your advantage. If people are excited to see me, I’m like, ‘Fuck yeah, I’m excited too. Let’s do it.’”

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There was much speculation about who would emerge victorious in last week’s sale’s battle between pathological fibber/former correctional officer Rick Ross and Atlanta transplant/suburban zeitgeist-capturer Asher Roth. The normally Manhattan-obsessed Gawker even weighed in on Roth, with Pitchfork’s Tom Breihan going so far as to predict Ross would move 300,000 units in his first week out and to speculate that if a second single “manages to stick, he’ll go platinum, easy.”

It doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen. The results are in, and Roth’s Asleep in the Bread Aisle has debuted at number five on the Billboard 200, moving 67,449 copies. (Some have the figure closer to 62,000. Can anyone explain the differential to me?)

Ross moved about 158,000 units and hit the top spot, making Deeper Than Rap his third number one album. Not bad, but indicative of the weak sales climate and, for the record, nowhere near as many copies as his rival 50 Cent tends to sell, even on a bad outing.

Among other Atlanta artists, Keri Hilson’s In A Perfect World… continues to defy industry expectations, moving 23K this week to put it over 200,000 all told. Looks like the album’s long delay didn’t kill it after all, although who knows how high she could have flown if the thing had dropped last year. As it stands, Hip Hop DX notes its “considerable radio and video play” and calls her “Interscope’s present R&B flagship artist.”

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All right, I admit it. I was wrong about Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em. Since writing him off as a one-hit wonder and giving his latest album iSouljaBoyTellem two stars, I have played that thing more often then I’d like to admit. Especially the banger “Turn My Swag On” and his shockingly innocent/surprisingly tender ballad, “Kiss Me Thru The Phone.”

No, I don’t cry during the video when those old people start smooching each other remotely. Okay, maybe I do, but not that often. Okay, maybe often.

Both tracks are on Billboard’s top 40 right now — “Kiss Me” peaked at number three — and the songs are finding success on iTunes as well.

In defense of my rating — I’d give it 3, maybe even 4 stars if I had it to do over — I’m far from the only critic who has recently seen the light about Soulja Boy. In fact, suddenly SBT’E is turning into a bona fide critic’s darling.

“He writes unbelievably effective hooks, which he rattles off as if he were seeing them for the first time on a teleprompter,” gushed Village Voice writer Zach Baron recently. All of the sudden the word “genius” is being bandied around to describe someone whom critics had absolutely no patience for during “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”’s peak.

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I’m a little late on this, but it looks like DOOM has finally, unequivocally, admitted that other people have performed for him at his shows.

HipHopDX: So just to get it out of the way, can you address the recent scandal where you were allegedly sending an impostor to perform in your mask at DOOM concerts?

DOOM: [Laughs] Alright. Here’s how I look at it, because the wording in there is kinda funny. “Impostor.” Impostor would imply that the character. I liken it to this: I’m a director as well as a writer. I choose different characters, I choose their direction and where I want to put them. So who I choose to put as the character is up to me. The character that I hired, he got paid for it. There’s no impostor.

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Earlier this week Bow Wow announced his retirement, making him the only 22-year-old American confident enough to hang it up during these recessionary times.

His recently-released New Jack City II was his last album with Sony, and he’s hinted at retirement for a while, including during this interview during the promotion of his ill-fated 2007 collaboration with Omarion, Face Off.

Still, what’s strange about the declaration is that he made it after his new album flopped. It debuted at number 16 on Billboard, moving just over 30,000 units, which puts it on track to be the worst-selling CD of the seven he’s released. Everyone knows you’re supposed to announce your retirement before your album comes out, so you can pump up sales. Announcing it afterward is basically admitting you can’t hang anymore.

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By the looks of this video, it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish Atlanta’s other hip-hop scene from the mainstream. Perhaps that’s the point. Of course, this is a song about “Caddys” — what more should one expect? Ride out. Park. Post up. Repeat.

That’s not a diss, just an observation on the visual tip. My hopes for SMKA’s The 808 Experiment are still as high as they were when I wrote about the compilation several months ago.

So, in case anyone gives a fuck cares, here are my votes (in this order) for the next video, if that’s even an option: 1) “Sweet Confusion” feat. Wil May and Toussaint, 2) “Alien (When in Rome)” feat. Jay West, Savage and Gilles, 3) “I’ve Been Drinkin’” feat. J Beans and Crysis.

Keep bangin’ people.

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Killer Mike has been vocal about distinguishing authentic Atlanta rap from the emerging hipster-hop scene that’s taken root here in recent years. Now, he’s taking it to the recording booth with the scheduled release of a compilation album titled Underground Atlanta.

Due in June ’09, the album will highlight a range of hood-happy and street-certified ATL artists from Gucci Mane to T.I. — who recently signed Mike to Grand Hustle Records.

Underground Atlanta will be released through Killer Mike’s own Grindtime Official imprint via his distribution deal with SRC/Fontana.

He’s quoted in the press release below the jump:

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The party’s over. But we’re vicariously reliving the moments of SXSW 2009 through one of CL’s favorite Atlanta-based artists.

Just as hip-hop got major play at this year’s festival, it was also Spree Wilson’s first time attending and performing. Check out his stream of Twitter updates over the weekend, and follow him at twitter.com/spreewilson. (See him in on stage with stic.man of Dead Prez in pics above.)

Just touched down in Austin!!!….Time to play ball folks!!!…lol

9:19 AM Mar 20th

Been up for 24hrs straight!!…gonna crash for a couple of hours once I get to hotel!

9:40 AM Mar 20th

At the hotel..may link up with Small Eyez and the homie Donwill later..

2:38 PM Mar 20th

Chillin in Blu with Dead Prez, Nikki, Small Eyez, and Cynthia…just caught up with Janelle and crew at Solange show..

12:36 AM Mar 21st

Lookin at Austin City Music Hall…shit is HUGE!!!….it’s gonna be crazy tomorrow!

12:41 AM Mar 21st

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