Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli.
Speaker 1: You've got a great new book, Rack Capital in Atlanta Story. Joe,
Speaker 1: Why the book? What inspired you? You know, Bob, this
Speaker 1: book really came out of my reporting at the Times. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm the music reporter here in the culture section.
Speaker 1: I started in late you know, the sort of dawn
Speaker 1: really of the streaming era, right. And and one of
Speaker 1: the stories I kept coming back to, uh, you know
Speaker 1: in my time as the beat reporter was rapp in Atlanta. Right.
Speaker 1: I did an early story on artist by the name
Speaker 1: of Little Yachti. UM that was actually a men's style
Speaker 1: cover because he was, you know, sort of moving through
Speaker 1: the fashion and influencer world at the beginning. Even more
Speaker 1: southern music. UM. I did an early story, UM when
Speaker 1: me Goos hit number one with Bad Embugie UM their
Speaker 1: album Culture. I profiled them on that album. I around
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, I did a story on
Speaker 1: this label Quality Control U down there that was you know,
Speaker 1: both Yaddi and and me Goos came from that label
Speaker 1: and they were sort of the homegrown talent incubators of
Speaker 1: the moment in Atlanta. And you know, just over and
Speaker 1: over again, you would see as streaming sort of you know,
Speaker 1: knocked down these walls, Uh, the for what kind of
Speaker 1: music people really wanted to hear write. Billboard charts were
Speaker 1: changing as a result of of YouTube and and Spotify
Speaker 1: and Apple Music. Uh, and always bubbling to the top
Speaker 1: where these sort of you know, very raw Southern rap
Speaker 1: albums and songs. And this is something I grew up
Speaker 1: on as well. This is the kind of music I
Speaker 1: listened to when I was younger, growing up in the South. Um.
Speaker 1: And so the combination of that with my Times reporting,
Speaker 1: I was just coming into contact with all of these characters, uh,
Speaker 1: these labels, these sounds, and and it was just over
Speaker 1: and over again. And you know, I had a I
Speaker 1: had an agent and and a book editor. Uh we
Speaker 1: can get into that. He published Gucci Main's autobiography. Um.
Speaker 1: The the editor who ended up acquiring this book. And
Speaker 1: you know, they kept asking me what kind of book
Speaker 1: I wanted to write. Rap music was something that was
Speaker 1: obviously in the conversation, but I never really found the
Speaker 1: right story. And after a handful of these Atlanta stories,
Speaker 1: you know, they both came to me and they said this, like,
Speaker 1: this is this is the book. Okay, So actually they
Speaker 1: were looking unlike the usual story where an author is
Speaker 1: pushing the book, you already had a relationship, and it
Speaker 1: was their idea that they should be the book. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. You know, I I have been thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, is a book the next step in my career? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, I, like I said, I started at the Times.
Speaker 1: So now it's been almost eight years. Uh, this was
Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle of this book was a really
Speaker 1: long reporting process us. Um. But you know they they
Speaker 1: saw a book in me before I saw a book
Speaker 1: in me, I think, um. And it took some convincing honestly,
Speaker 1: Like I wasn't sure what the story was, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want to just retread the reporting I had already done. Um.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to just write a music book, right.
Speaker 1: I didn't just want to write an unauthorized biography of
Speaker 1: of an artist, which I think, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: place for those, but that's you know, the music bookshelves
Speaker 1: in in in any store are sort of overrun with
Speaker 1: that sort of run of the mill like cradle to
Speaker 1: grave story and so you know, I I wanted to
Speaker 1: do something different. Um. I wanted to do a lot
Speaker 1: of reporting, That's what I what I really like to do. UM.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to track a story in real time.
Speaker 1: So I think, uh, you know, a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of what ended up becoming the book was because
Speaker 1: I wanted to to take what I had done in
Speaker 1: the Times and then sort of spin it into something
Speaker 1: that I could be along for, right. I wanted to
Speaker 1: be along for the ride. And and I think that's
Speaker 1: a through line that runs, uh through a lot of
Speaker 1: the reporting I do at the Times. I like to
Speaker 1: find people at the beginning of their career and and
Speaker 1: see where it goes, whether it's you know, to the
Speaker 1: top of the charts, or it's sort of founders like
Speaker 1: I think both can be equally interesting. Now there's a
Speaker 1: lot of reporting on the hip hop scene. And when
Speaker 1: you wrote your first articles about Luyahti and quality control,
Speaker 1: was there so much information in the pipeline that you
Speaker 1: were up to speed or did this require reporting and
Speaker 1: deep reporting by yourself? You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really good background, right like the Wrap reporting throughout the
Speaker 1: nineties and early two thousand's. Uh, it is invaluable. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking of the Village Voice, thinking of double
Speaker 1: XL later on the Fader. Uh. You know, ton of
Speaker 1: ton of websites really covering regional scenes. But there's something
Speaker 1: about hip hop media. I think that's a has been
Speaker 1: very ephemeral um And and this goes for the music
Speaker 1: as well, Right, there are hundreds thousands of mixtapes that
Speaker 1: are sort of lost to time because they exist in
Speaker 1: this liminal space between legality and illegality. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of hip hop media has has followed
Speaker 1: that path. You know, given how popular as music is, um,
Speaker 1: how important these artists are, how interesting their their biographies
Speaker 1: and their stories are, there's a sort of a real
Speaker 1: dearth of serious reporting on these subjects. So you could
Speaker 1: piece stuff together here and there, you know, YouTube and
Speaker 1: invaluable resource, I think when it comes to comes to
Speaker 1: rap music, um and so you know, you could you
Speaker 1: could sort of piece things together, um, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: a ton of extremely in depth, extremely rigorous journalism on
Speaker 1: these subjects. Um. You know, they're a handful of books
Speaker 1: as I started the research process. Um. But a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys also become famous really quickly. Right, So
Speaker 1: when I'm profiling Little Yati and sixteen whatever it was. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know he he had been just a normal college
Speaker 1: kid right like a few months prior, so, you know,
Speaker 1: he had he had done a few quick hits here
Speaker 1: and there. But the ability to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time with these people and put a lot of resources
Speaker 1: into these stories and not just do a fifteen minute
Speaker 1: phoner or you know, a twenty minute radio station interview
Speaker 1: like that. That's the benefit that comes I think with
Speaker 1: being somewhere like the New York Times where we're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna put serious resources, serious time and
Speaker 1: energy into these stories that you know, I think, especially
Speaker 1: as in the culture section, in the music section, are
Speaker 1: just as important as anything else the paper covers um
Speaker 1: and we're going to bring that level of of rigor
Speaker 1: to it. I hope, Okay. I found out about Little
Speaker 1: Yati and Quality Control and Coach K from Steve Barnett,
Speaker 1: who ran Capital Records until recently. I was completely out
Speaker 1: of a loop. How Little Yadi start to fly on
Speaker 1: your radar? When was it a story? And how did
Speaker 1: you report the story? So Yadi was a Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a funny one because he's a sort of anomaly even
Speaker 1: within the label. Right. Yadi grew up in the suburbs
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. His dad, Shannon, was a famous hip hop
Speaker 1: photographer in the scene, you know, photographed outcast, photographed pastor Troy. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot, a lot of these sort of
Speaker 1: early nineties figures. Ja made Duprie. He was in the
Speaker 1: mix um and and was was known among some of
Speaker 1: these people, including Coach K which is a story I
Speaker 1: tell in the in the book and in the piece. Uh.
Speaker 1: Coach k knew Yaddi's father, but didn't know that Yaddi
Speaker 1: was his son. So Yadi came up independently on SoundCloud. Right,
Speaker 1: this was really the beginning of of artists bubbling up
Speaker 1: on SoundCloud low fi music. Uh, totally self recorded, self released. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he was he was, he was in college.
Speaker 1: He didn't like it. He he liked dressing colorfully. He liked,
Speaker 1: you know, being in the mix fashion wise. He knew
Speaker 1: some Instagram influencers, but he didn't really consider himself a musician.
Speaker 1: But he started making these these you know, sort of
Speaker 1: silly People were referring to them at the time as
Speaker 1: bubblegum trap. Right. They sounded a bit like nursery rhymes.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of auto tune. You know, they're pretty
Speaker 1: the jokes and the lyrics can be a little juvenile. Um.
Speaker 1: And he was calling himself the King of the teens, right,
Speaker 1: So this was really bubbling up on SoundCloud, on vine.
Speaker 1: You know. He one of his one of his songs,
Speaker 1: uh I believe called one Night soundtrack like an early
Speaker 1: viral video around this time, and and and it was
Speaker 1: still pretty novel, right for artists to take off this way.
Speaker 1: You know, we'd seen it. Uh Soldier Boy was many
Speaker 1: years prior to that. You know, they're they're there are
Speaker 1: a ton of examples in between of dance crazes or
Speaker 1: or viral artists and whatnot. Um. But but then being
Speaker 1: signed to major label and turning into big stars like
Speaker 1: that was pretty new, right. So and and then it's
Speaker 1: funny when a kid like that who's totally of the
Speaker 1: new generation links up with somebody like Coach K, right
Speaker 1: who Coach K has these deep, deep deep roots in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta rap scene, in the Atlanta music industry. He
Speaker 1: managed Pastor Troy, he managed Gucci Man, he managed Young Jeezy.
Speaker 1: You know, he's he's as responsible as anyone for the
Speaker 1: sort of explosion of trap music and mixtapes in the
Speaker 1: early to mid two thousand's. Um So, you have a
Speaker 1: guy like that who's sort of keeping his ear to
Speaker 1: the streets and finds out about this weird kid with
Speaker 1: the you know, red braids and the and the beads
Speaker 1: and calling himself the King of the teens. Coach told
Speaker 1: me this story when I first met him, that he
Speaker 1: was you know, he he would have he would have
Speaker 1: people over right, he would he would host a dinner
Speaker 1: party where he would invite young people from sort of
Speaker 1: all walks of life around Atlanta, DJs, you know, street kids, kids,
Speaker 1: kids doing illegal business in the street, A and R. So,
Speaker 1: you know, he he would just bring together this sort
Speaker 1: of network and they would play each other music. And
Speaker 1: he said, you know, he heard he heard these little
Speaker 1: Yadi songs and he was like his interest was peaked.
Speaker 1: But then he saw a picture of him right, and
Speaker 1: he had such a unique style, and he was like that, like,
Speaker 1: I need to meet that kid. Um So he started
Speaker 1: he started pursuing him, and it turned out not only
Speaker 1: did he go way back with Yadi's father, but he
Speaker 1: also went to school at a small HBCU with his mother. Um.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but he had a message in
Speaker 1: his I think maybe his facebok, his Facebook inbox UM
Speaker 1: from literal Yadi himself, who said, you know I'm going
Speaker 1: to blow up. I just need your help. Um. So
Speaker 1: it's these sort of like small world coincidences and overlaps
Speaker 1: in networks and stuff that I think make Atlanta such
Speaker 1: an interance of interesting story and that I wanted to
Speaker 1: tease out in the book. And I had just started
Speaker 1: sort of picking them up along the way as I
Speaker 1: was doing these one off newspaper stories, and then I
Speaker 1: realized how interconnected everything was through the years, through the generations,
Speaker 1: through the different sounds, there's always somebody who was involved
Speaker 1: in the previous thing, um. And so I wanted to
Speaker 1: really tell that story. Okay, when you talk about a
Speaker 1: little Yadi in the book and he ultimately has success
Speaker 1: in the traditional record chart, you whip out this amazing
Speaker 1: statistic of double digit millions that he made within a
Speaker 1: year eighteen months now, and you said it was not
Speaker 1: primarily recordings, So could you talk about how much money
Speaker 1: that was and how he made that money for those
Speaker 1: who were out of the loop. Yeah, so Yadi, I'd
Speaker 1: have to look up the exact, the exact the figure,
Speaker 1: you might have it in front of you. Um. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that was amazing about him was
Speaker 1: that Coach right away I think saw him as a
Speaker 1: as a brand. Right. They wanted him to be Will Smith.
Speaker 1: They wanted him to be, uh, you know, the fresh
Speaker 1: Prince of bel Air. I think I have it here.
Speaker 1: They said he made thirteen million dollars in sixteen months. Right.
Speaker 1: And even from the first time I met Yaddi, we
Speaker 1: didn't interview at like a little Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: after going shopping. Um. You know, Coach's friend owned it,
Speaker 1: and they shut down the place so we could sit quietly.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was like a surly teenager. He
Speaker 1: didn't really want to be talking to me at that point, um.
Speaker 1: But he knew that he wanted to be famous, right,
Speaker 1: He wanted to go viral. He didn't even know he
Speaker 1: wanted to make music. That that part was a sort
Speaker 1: of side journey for him. Um. But he also realized
Speaker 1: the importance of being a brand, right he was. He
Speaker 1: was very young at that time. He didn't drink, he
Speaker 1: didn't smoke, he was he was very adamant that. You know,
Speaker 1: he wanted his career to last as long as possible.
Speaker 1: And and this was something Coach instilled in him, right.
Speaker 1: I think he had that instinct already as a child
Speaker 1: of the Internet. But then, you know, Coach told him
Speaker 1: brands last longer than songs. He said, you know, I
Speaker 1: tell every artist we signed him, I'm real with them.
Speaker 1: He said, you have an expiration date on you as
Speaker 1: an artist. Let's turn you into a brand. Right. And
Speaker 1: so even when Yaddie's debut album on Capitol sort of
Speaker 1: you know, didn't have a huge first week, didn't have
Speaker 1: a smash single, he had a lot of success, as
Speaker 1: you know, as a guest star. He had a lot
Speaker 1: of success, uh in in bits and pieces, uh musically,
Speaker 1: But what he really got good at was he was
Speaker 1: in a Target commercial. He was in a Sprite commercial.
Speaker 1: He you know, partnered with this brand, that brand. You
Speaker 1: can go to the grocery store now and find a
Speaker 1: little Yaddi frozen pizza. You know, he had a he
Speaker 1: had a serial, he had a nail polished line. And
Speaker 1: this was all happening super quickly. He's in a you know,
Speaker 1: he's in a made for made for TV movie. Uh,
Speaker 1: sequel of you know, famous famous hip hop film How High.
Speaker 1: You know, they just immediately saw that what brands wanted
Speaker 1: and what corporations wanted is access to cool, right, and
Speaker 1: what's cooler than rap music? Uh? And Yadi was a
Speaker 1: particularly colorful figure. Um and and they all saw this
Speaker 1: vision very clearly, um and and it just took off.
Speaker 1: And still you know, you you probably see more Yadi
Speaker 1: commercials than you hear Yaddi songs. But that was all
Speaker 1: by design. Okay. So if we talked about today, you know,
Speaker 1: insiders would think that little Yadi has faded, but there's
Speaker 1: mind share in the public and there's also monetary uh
Speaker 1: considerations as a student of the game, where where's little
Speaker 1: Yadi at? And what is his future as a career? Now?
Speaker 1: You know, Yadi has had such an unpredictable career. He
Speaker 1: did this very amazing thing, which is, you know, when
Speaker 1: people were sick of his music and they, you know,
Speaker 1: would make fun of his album for flopping or say
Speaker 1: he couldn't wrap or whatever. You know, oh he's only
Speaker 1: in commercials, he really buckled down and he got really
Speaker 1: good at rapping. And not only that, but he sort
Speaker 1: of located what the next big rap scene was going
Speaker 1: to be. Um, he found these guys in Michigan, you know,
Speaker 1: in Flint, in Detroit, that we're really doing a style
Speaker 1: that comes a little bit from the Bay Area, a
Speaker 1: little bit from the Midwest. Um, you know, rapping really quickly,
Speaker 1: really comedically, really sharp, really funny guys. Um wrapping. You know,
Speaker 1: people call it scam wrap. You know, they're they're rapping
Speaker 1: off in about about you know, clothes and material games,
Speaker 1: but specifically through you know, fraud and financial crime and
Speaker 1: and and you know it's just this this extremely witty
Speaker 1: new sound and subject matter. And he really embedded with
Speaker 1: these guys. He like, you know, he he would spend
Speaker 1: a ton of time there. He made he made an
Speaker 1: album called, uh, you know, uh Michigan boat Boy, which
Speaker 1: was you know, which was him sort of using his
Speaker 1: celebrity to put on all of these regional artists from
Speaker 1: a totally different place. Um. And along the way, like
Speaker 1: he got really good at wrapping, and he just kept going,
Speaker 1: and you know, he put out some mixtapes that sort
Speaker 1: of re establish his credibility. He you know, he found
Speaker 1: other artists and other regional scenes, uh you know, some
Speaker 1: Los Angeles trappers. He fell in with um some New
Speaker 1: York guys. He he just has proven himself to be
Speaker 1: like a real chameleon um and just a really savvy operator.
Speaker 1: And I think like people like hanging around him and
Speaker 1: they like, uh seeing him sort of stretch his talents
Speaker 1: in new ways. Um. And I think he's had a
Speaker 1: lot more longevity because of that than anybody ever imagined.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, you know, as Discuss made a lot
Speaker 1: of money along the way on the corporate side of things.
Speaker 1: So I think because he was making money from brand deals,
Speaker 1: he could sort of do whatever he wanted musically. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's benefited him in the long run. Okay,
Speaker 1: you said you're from the South. Where are you from? So?
Speaker 1: I grew up all around Florida. Um. I went to
Speaker 1: high school in Orlando, Florida, but I lived all over
Speaker 1: the state. My family moved around a lot. And when
Speaker 1: I moved to New York at eighteen, my family moved
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, Georgia. So my sister went to high school there.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time there as my as
Speaker 1: as as my little sister was going through school and
Speaker 1: as I was as I was doing college. Um, so
Speaker 1: I was back and forth between the North and the
Speaker 1: South for the last fifteen years. But the my sort
Speaker 1: of you know, my core adolescence was in central Florida. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you and the publisher have this idea, how do
Speaker 1: you then approach the players and what do you say?
Speaker 1: And do they embrace you or do they are they
Speaker 1: you know, weary at first? You know, I think I
Speaker 1: had proven myself, um at the New York Times and
Speaker 1: in the stories that I was doing along the way.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, when when people see themselves reflected
Speaker 1: accurately in a platform like The New York Times, especially
Speaker 1: in genres that you don't think of as traditionally at
Speaker 1: home in a prestige media place, you know, I was,
Speaker 1: I was taking real care to say, this is the
Speaker 1: most important music in the world. You know, I am
Speaker 1: a relatively young person for this building at this time
Speaker 1: and in this beat. Um, and I want to accurately
Speaker 1: cover you know, what's going on among the youth, which
Speaker 1: tend to drive you know, music and culture trends for
Speaker 1: all of time. UM. So I think, you know, there
Speaker 1: comes some credibility with that. Um And Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: done I had done the work, and I had you know,
Speaker 1: built the built the source relationships with a lot of
Speaker 1: these people. Um. You know Little Baby, who's another big
Speaker 1: character in the book. Uh, you know, I've I've followed
Speaker 1: him on this, on this journey, and I knew that
Speaker 1: I wanted him to be a character in the book because,
Speaker 1: as I said, I sort of found him at the
Speaker 1: right moment, right I did one of his first big
Speaker 1: major interviews as part of this larger quality control feature
Speaker 1: I did. Uh you know, he was the sort of
Speaker 1: artistic centerpiece of that, in addition to the executives who
Speaker 1: were guiding his career, Coach K and P from Quality Control. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think people remember, right when you're there at
Speaker 1: the beginning. UM. So every time I would see him
Speaker 1: along the way, you know, I would say, I want
Speaker 1: to keep doing this, I want to keep seeing where
Speaker 1: you're going. And I remember pretty distinctly, you know, when
Speaker 1: when the book was was being floated, and you know,
Speaker 1: I had an offer to write it. I went and
Speaker 1: I met Coach K and P and Little Baby at
Speaker 1: the Spotify office where they were playing whatever his new
Speaker 1: project was. Maybe. You know, he was putting on music
Speaker 1: so quick at that point that I don't even remember
Speaker 1: which one it was, but I think it was the
Speaker 1: mixtape after the one I wrote about UH, and he
Speaker 1: was there playing it for them, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: get promo and and I sat in with them on
Speaker 1: their meeting. And then you know, after I sat down
Speaker 1: UH with Coach and I said, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to make this book. I want you
Speaker 1: guys to be a big part of it. There's no
Speaker 1: way to do this book if it's going to be
Speaker 1: based on the present day without you. You know, not
Speaker 1: only are you guys the ones breaking all the artists,
Speaker 1: but but you're the you know, you open the doors
Speaker 1: in this town, right, They're the they're the they're the biggest,
Speaker 1: the biggest names in town at that moment and beyond
Speaker 1: UM and you know, you just said let's do it.
Speaker 1: So along then I followed, you know, various artists both
Speaker 1: connected to them and not along the way. Not everything
Speaker 1: in the book is about quality control. There's a ton
Speaker 1: of tangential characters. Um. But like I said, because there
Speaker 1: it is such a small town, because it is a
Speaker 1: music scene, right, I think that that gets overlooked a
Speaker 1: lot um when you're thinking about this this rap music
Speaker 1: that goes internationally. But it's a music scene, just like
Speaker 1: Seattle grunge was in the nineties, or just like you
Speaker 1: know Athens indie rock was, or you know Laurel Canyon
Speaker 1: or any any music scene like these are overlapping groups
Speaker 1: of friends, collaborators, enemies, family, you know, and all of
Speaker 1: the same creative stuff is coming out of there. So
Speaker 1: one person would lead to the next, even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't within the same label or within the same exact
Speaker 1: music orbit. So the book really has two sides. It's
Speaker 1: got the music side and it's got the raw cultural side.
Speaker 1: So many people would say, because you depict a scene
Speaker 1: where almost everybody involved has been to jail, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of crime, what was it like being a middle
Speaker 1: class white ball boy in these situations? And did they
Speaker 1: accept you? Uh? I think they did accept me. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think the proof is in
Speaker 1: the reporting. I think, you know, I got myself into
Speaker 1: rooms by being trustworthy and being open and straightforward with
Speaker 1: people about what I was doing. I said very clearly,
Speaker 1: you know, this is culture, right, this is what's moving markets,
Speaker 1: what's what's moving records, this is this is what people want, right.
Speaker 1: What you guys are doing is important. Um, and I
Speaker 1: want to preserve that for history, right. I want to
Speaker 1: show people where this music comes from, and the reality
Speaker 1: in the music, in the videos and behind the scenes
Speaker 1: is that a lot of this music comes from poverty, right,
Speaker 1: It comes from necessity, It comes from bad neighborhoods. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a character by the name of Marlowe
Speaker 1: in the book, and you know he he came up
Speaker 1: with a little baby. He did not make it to
Speaker 1: the same heights that little baby did, but he was
Speaker 1: open about where he came from and how he'd grown up.
Speaker 1: And to me, that was as important as the music side,
Speaker 1: because he was the real deal, you know. He he
Speaker 1: was rapping about things you hear on the radio, even
Speaker 1: though they may be maybe extreme, but he was also
Speaker 1: living it right. And and by being there every step
Speaker 1: of the way for his career, I think he saw
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to see his life and where
Speaker 1: he came from and how he lived on a daily basis,
Speaker 1: and and he was keen to show it to me.
Speaker 1: You know, we would every time I would go to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I would try to get in touch with him. He
Speaker 1: would pick me up and we would just right around
Speaker 1: all day. Right. He would just take me to to
Speaker 1: whatever he was doing, right, whether that was you know,
Speaker 1: getting a haircut at the barbershop or going to a
Speaker 1: block party or going to the recording studio. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, we just we we built a rapport um
Speaker 1: and and we built a relationship of trust. And I
Speaker 1: think he got it, you know what I mean, he
Speaker 1: knew that it was worth it for people to pull
Speaker 1: back the curtain and sort of see a layer of
Speaker 1: things that you don't always see. Right, even even in
Speaker 1: rap music, if it comes from struggle, and it comes
Speaker 1: from poverty, then it very quickly becomes about you know,
Speaker 1: the the material gains or you know, the success or
Speaker 1: what I made it out from. UM. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think whether talking about Marlow or you're talking about
Speaker 1: Pe or you're talking about Little Riek, another artist in
Speaker 1: the book, that I spent a lot of time with
Speaker 1: her in his neighborhood. Uh. You know, they were they
Speaker 1: were I think excited that somebody was engaged. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn right. I wanted to like be
Speaker 1: able to use whatever platform I had to shine a
Speaker 1: light on the reality of the situation in a city
Speaker 1: like Okay. You depict dangerous neighborhoods. Did you ever experience
Speaker 1: danger personally? I don't. I don't think so. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I it was very clear that I was there as
Speaker 1: a music reporter, right I was. I was hanging around
Speaker 1: with musicians. Uh they are used to you know, this
Speaker 1: is where they grew up. It's it's not dangerous to
Speaker 1: them on a on a day to day basis. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes I would be in cars going really fast.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, like young kids in fast cars like
Speaker 1: to test the engine. Um. You know. Sometimes I was
Speaker 1: like gripping, you know, my my arm rest a little hard. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think it's it was it was fun,
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was mostly uh lighthearted. Like
Speaker 1: even if if these are neighborhoods where you know there
Speaker 1: there there can be higher rates of crime or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like people are just living their lives, right, they wake up,
Speaker 1: they go to work, they hang out with their friends.
Speaker 1: On some level, that's true, but you depict mostly single
Speaker 1: parent households. You depict a lot of these people end
Speaker 1: up raising themselves. A lot of people are involved in
Speaker 1: street crime, a lot of people involved in drugs, and
Speaker 1: those illegal things usually come with violence, death, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about little baby, and you talk about someone
Speaker 1: ultimately segues out of the family unit and finds their
Speaker 1: own way, mostly in illegal ways to get ahead. And
Speaker 1: then you also depicted in the book a lot of
Speaker 1: people are doing so well on the street, they don't
Speaker 1: want to focus on music. So what is really going
Speaker 1: on in the street, in the neighborhoods that these people
Speaker 1: you talk to live in. I mean, that's the reality
Speaker 1: of the situation, right, Like these are places that of
Speaker 1: America and state government, city government has forgotten. Right. These
Speaker 1: are places with school systems that are decimated, with police
Speaker 1: forces that are you know, antagonistic or or decimated. Uh
Speaker 1: you know. There there's their food deserts. You know, there's
Speaker 1: very limited economic opportunity, uh you know, and and and
Speaker 1: everybody is doing their best right to to to get by.
Speaker 1: And and the thing about my my subjects and the
Speaker 1: people I spoke to, you know, they were honest, right,
Speaker 1: they were They were saying, I'm trying to better my life,
Speaker 1: trying to better my family's life. I'm not always doing
Speaker 1: the right thing. Uh you know. They someone like Marlow,
Speaker 1: like you know, he he was very clear about when
Speaker 1: he was doing wrong. Um, but you know I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't embedded with them on a twenty
Speaker 1: four hour a day basis. Right. A lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff was described to me. You know, there are a
Speaker 1: ton of footnotes in the book. You know, there are
Speaker 1: documentaries about this stuff, other articles, books, whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm cobbling together a sort of portrait of these things. Uh.
Speaker 1: But look, this is this is the reality of of
Speaker 1: of life in America. Right. This is the guns, their
Speaker 1: guns everywhere, right, there are guns and white neighborhoods. There
Speaker 1: are guns and black neighborhoods. Uh. Drug dealing, you know
Speaker 1: what what the drug the money that comes out of
Speaker 1: the illegal drug market, like comes from somewhere, you know, somebody,
Speaker 1: somebody's benefiting. Uh. This is just this is just everyday life.
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of the reason this music
Speaker 1: is so popular. Right. Uh. At one point, you know
Speaker 1: p P one of the quality control executives who also
Speaker 1: comes from from this world. You know, he said to me,
Speaker 1: there's more people in the street than anything. Right. The
Speaker 1: reason so many people want to listen to this music
Speaker 1: is because most people are struggling. Right, And and even
Speaker 1: if it's a overblown version of this and artistic version, right, uh,
Speaker 1: composite of all the good and the bad that come
Speaker 1: out come from places like this. Like it's it's true,
Speaker 1: and it rings true to people, and it rings true
Speaker 1: to their struggles, and it rings true about their their
Speaker 1: aspirations and their ambitions. Um. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: I think I don't. I don't think the book is
Speaker 1: heavy handed in terms of you know, whether this is uh,
Speaker 1: whether this works every time? Right, their rap is salvation,
Speaker 1: whether you know you can everybody's gonna become famous on
Speaker 1: on some talent. Uh. You know, I think I think
Speaker 1: it tries to paint an honest portrait of that. Right.
Speaker 1: Some people make it, some people don't. Like you said,
Speaker 1: there's there are people who make more money illicitly than
Speaker 1: they do legally. Uh and and that's a hurdle, right.
Speaker 1: And there are characters in the book again who are
Speaker 1: open about that, um, just like there are people in
Speaker 1: the real world who are open about that. Um. So
Speaker 1: you know, I I just wanted to I just want
Speaker 1: to pay an accurate portrait of the people I met
Speaker 1: in the way they described their lives. Okay. I think
Speaker 1: it's little peace Mother, a little baby's mother who grows
Speaker 1: up in a very strict household, enters the military, ends
Speaker 1: up having a child, seems pretty intelligent, ends up working manually,
Speaker 1: extremely intelligent, extremely intelligent, and yet still yeah, making minimum wage,
Speaker 1: you know, cleaning the courthouse, working at the post office.
Speaker 1: You know. She she's a single mother. Uh, as you said,
Speaker 1: a veteran, uh you know, a marine veteran, extremely bright woman,
Speaker 1: well traveled, spent time in Japan, you know, just an
Speaker 1: inspirational figure all around, and like you said, yeah, still,
Speaker 1: you know, raising three children by herself on a minimum
Speaker 1: wage salary. Like that's that's America for you, Okay. And
Speaker 1: then there's another line from one of the people in
Speaker 1: the book. They're talking about education, and the person says,
Speaker 1: I can point all these people in the hood who
Speaker 1: have a college education and work in minimum wage jobs.
Speaker 1: Why is this the case? Man? That's that's that's above
Speaker 1: my pay grade. I We'll have to ask my my
Speaker 1: economics colleagues about that. But yeah, you're referring, you're referring
Speaker 1: to offset who uh you know, was was part of
Speaker 1: the megas that the rap trio, one of the you know,
Speaker 1: the first major act for quality control, one of the biggest,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest rap so the last decade. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he said that to me, you know, in
Speaker 1: the basement of his mansion and the Atlanta suburbs. You know,
Speaker 1: he was like, he had his first child when he
Speaker 1: was a teenager. He was very open. He took to
Speaker 1: crime to try to provide for his child. And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I could have I could have been on
Speaker 1: the straight and narrow, But who's to say that that
Speaker 1: would have worked for me? Right? And look, this is
Speaker 1: this is racism. This is uh, you know, a lack
Speaker 1: of economic opportunity. You know, you can trace this back
Speaker 1: through through redlining and you know, mortgages and you know,
Speaker 1: hiring practices of of people of color. Like again, this
Speaker 1: is this is a bit beyond my purview. Um, but
Speaker 1: I think the idea that you know, not everybody is
Speaker 1: starting from the from the same place, and not everybody
Speaker 1: has the same opportunities, um, based on where they grew up,
Speaker 1: where they went to school, what color their skin is. Like.
Speaker 1: You know, I think reasonable people can disagree, but you know,
Speaker 1: I think that that that this is not exactly a
Speaker 1: controversial I yeah, right, Uh, income inequality in America, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, last time I checked, is uh it's out
Speaker 1: of control? Okay, just drilling down one more time. Is
Speaker 1: it the people you talked to that to pick a
Speaker 1: dangerous lifestyle with drugs, shootings, gangs, etcetera. Or is everybody
Speaker 1: affected in these neighborhoods, you know, a certain neighborhoods you
Speaker 1: have to not in Atlanta maybe, but you have to
Speaker 1: choose side. You have to be in a gang to
Speaker 1: be protected. Are there people just living normal lives I'm
Speaker 1: talking about? Of course? Of course, of course this is
Speaker 1: not monolithic, right, This is this is a small subset
Speaker 1: of people who felt like they had no choice right
Speaker 1: and got involved in some sort of a dangerous lifestyle.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, Marlowe grew up in Bowing Holmes. Right,
Speaker 1: this is a this was an infamous project in Atlanta
Speaker 1: that was that was since has since been knocked down.
Speaker 1: You know, his father grew up in a project in
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. There's you know, quotes from him in this book. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was, you know, living between households, father in and
Speaker 1: out of jail. You know, Uh, mother having her own issues,
Speaker 1: living with family members, living with friends. Uh, in a
Speaker 1: dangerous place. Right, And this was the example he saw.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's some there's a scene in the book. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can find this on YouTube. Actually a little Baby
Speaker 1: did a panel right about uh, reintegrating from incarceration right
Speaker 1: with alongside other businessmen, you know, guys who got out
Speaker 1: of jail and became truck drivers, open their own business,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And he says, you know, if
Speaker 1: if if you're around drug dealers, odds are you're going
Speaker 1: to think that that's what you do? You become a
Speaker 1: drug dealer. He didn't know any doctors, he didn't know
Speaker 1: any lawyers. You know, he didn't he didn't see that
Speaker 1: example or stand. Um, are there people who grow up
Speaker 1: in these neighborhoods and become you know, uh, doctors, lawyers,
Speaker 1: philosophers of course, engineers of course. Uh you know, but
Speaker 1: but it's not easy. Um. And so much of this
Speaker 1: rap music, I think that's the point, right, Like the
Speaker 1: rap music that is coming out of Atlanta on the
Speaker 1: largest scale, is is about these things, right, It's about
Speaker 1: this struggle. Uh. And so it is created by people
Speaker 1: who have seen it up close, right, or people who
Speaker 1: have been through it themselves. Um. And so of course
Speaker 1: it's a it's a self selecting group. But what I
Speaker 1: wanted to tease out was why this music. Right, trap
Speaker 1: for lack of a better term, is the sort of
Speaker 1: umbrella genre of it within within hip hop. Just those
Speaker 1: who don't know defined trap please, So trap comes out
Speaker 1: of what are referred to as trap houses. Right. Trap
Speaker 1: houses are places for you know, the making and the
Speaker 1: selling of drugs, usually abandoned houses. Uh in in four neighborhoods. Um,
Speaker 1: this you know came from Gucci man, this came from
Speaker 1: Young Jesus, came from t I. These are people who
Speaker 1: became you know, mega stars in the early two thousand's. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know there's early mentions of of trapped in uh
Speaker 1: Dungeon family songs, you know, Outcast, that sort of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know Big Boy of Outcast says like that.
Speaker 1: You know that's why they call it the trap because
Speaker 1: you're trapped, right uh. And and this music is about
Speaker 1: that lifestyle, right that that that world, and it's dramatized
Speaker 1: of course, it's art, of course, um, but it's also
Speaker 1: in places, and especially with certain artists, autobiographical. Um. So
Speaker 1: this is this is like an extremely niche, extremely local
Speaker 1: culture that became popular culture. Right. This became the biggest
Speaker 1: music in the world over the last ten fift twenty years. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it comes from a small group of people. And
Speaker 1: that's that's what the book is, okay. But almost to
Speaker 1: a person, not a little yahni, but almost to a person.
Speaker 1: All of the people in the book have been to jail.
Speaker 1: So not not not quite true. I would I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that true. I mean, I mean the you know,
Speaker 1: the book is about lawyers. The book is about people's friends,
Speaker 1: The book is about people's mothers. Um. You know little
Speaker 1: Rieck Marlowe who you know it was a self proclaimed
Speaker 1: you know, drug dealer and career criminal. He never went
Speaker 1: to jail. He didn't have a felony on his record
Speaker 1: at all. Um. But you know, I think I don't
Speaker 1: have to tell tell you the rates of incarceration of
Speaker 1: black men in this country are completely disproportional to the population. Um.
Speaker 1: So again that's a The prison industrial complex is the
Speaker 1: subject of many other better, uh, more in depth books
Speaker 1: than mine, which focuses more on the music. Um. But
Speaker 1: I would, but I wouldn't say that that everyone here
Speaker 1: has been to jail. Well, let me put it a
Speaker 1: different way. Many people, especially those not interested in hip
Speaker 1: hop believe that these judge these rappers in a negative way.
Speaker 1: Where to use the same word we just talked about
Speaker 1: when you read one your book, they literally seem trapped,
Speaker 1: and that you also talk about the cops in one
Speaker 1: town out to get the rappers were being up one
Speaker 1: being a parole going back. So you end up with
Speaker 1: a sympathetic portrait. You have these people who are reasonable
Speaker 1: sort of caught in their lifestyle as opposed to just
Speaker 1: who are just gangsters from minute one, Yeah, look, these
Speaker 1: are not these are these are not you know, as
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell by on sociopaths, these
Speaker 1: are people who grew up in tough circumstances with very
Speaker 1: few opportunities, who then found their way out and then
Speaker 1: you have a target on your back in a totally
Speaker 1: different way. Right, And that's like, you know, Drew Finling
Speaker 1: is a character in this book. He's a he's a
Speaker 1: defense attorney in Atlanta, currently in the news, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: helping to defend Donald Trump in the in the Georgia
Speaker 1: election probe, which is a whole other story. Um, but
Speaker 1: but Drew, Drew has become very close with a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys, right. He found himself becoming a lawyer
Speaker 1: for Hip Hop Royalty basically through early representation of various figures,
Speaker 1: including including Gucci Man. And you know, he he said
Speaker 1: this to me over and over again. He said, like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe the target that's on the backs of
Speaker 1: these guys, right, Like, these are guys who who made
Speaker 1: their way out of what would have been a dangerous
Speaker 1: criminal lifestyle, and yet they're still being harassed by police
Speaker 1: for opposite right, for having fancy cars or or jewelry
Speaker 1: or you know, smoking weed, which if you've walked down
Speaker 1: the street in New York City or where you are
Speaker 1: in l A, you know everyone's smoking weed. Uh. And
Speaker 1: yet you know this is often often the pretense to
Speaker 1: to to lock people up. Um. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you know, the the the weight of American oppression and
Speaker 1: in all in all senses um sort of bears down
Speaker 1: on these guys. And and that's why they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're resilient. Uh. And I think that's why the
Speaker 1: art is often so so vibrant and so visceral and
Speaker 1: people can't get enough of it, right, Like that's that's
Speaker 1: the other thing. Like I was talking before about peace,
Speaker 1: saying people want to listen to this music because it
Speaker 1: reflects their reality. But it's not only them, right, Like,
Speaker 1: rich white kids in college also want to listen to
Speaker 1: this music because it's cool, because it's dangerous, because sexy. Right.
Speaker 1: The same thing that that uh, you know, popular music,
Speaker 1: and especially black popular music has always been um and
Speaker 1: so so there's the voyeuristic component of it just as
Speaker 1: much as uh, there's the sort of autobiographical uh you
Speaker 1: know component of people seeing themselves in the music. There's
Speaker 1: there's people who just want a glimpse, right, people who
Speaker 1: want to try on blackness or or or get a
Speaker 1: taste of it or what they assume to be, you know,
Speaker 1: a certain certain type of blackness. Um. So you know
Speaker 1: that that cross generational, transracial, you know appeal the hip
Speaker 1: hop has has been shown to have over the last
Speaker 1: almost fifty years now is like it's it's fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: and there should be countless books about about this. It's
Speaker 1: not only it's not only Atlanta, it's not only trapped music, um.
Speaker 1: But but this is you know, this is the story
Speaker 1: of popular music going back to you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw the Basil Erman's Elvis movie, Um,
Speaker 1: but but it's it's it's the same thing I see
Speaker 1: shaking your head, you know, which this is off point,
Speaker 1: But Basil Rman Elvis movie, like his other movies, figure
Speaker 1: has got to be more Basi Lerman than I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm mostly joking. But but you know what I mean, right,
Speaker 1: But um, the other thing that is fascinating in the book,
Speaker 1: you know, people know a lot about the inner workings
Speaker 1: of the music world at this point in time, and
Speaker 1: you hear these people at age five, they start making music,
Speaker 1: their parents are spreading the demos. In this particular case,
Speaker 1: you have a couple of examples where from reading the
Speaker 1: book it sounds like they were drug dealers, and quality
Speaker 1: Control seems to say, well, you have such experiences, you'd
Speaker 1: make a good rapper. Is that how it went down?
Speaker 1: That's the story of a couple of these guys. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think back to to to young Jeezy,
Speaker 1: who you know in early discovery of of Coach K,
Speaker 1: he was a hustler, as as he described it, and
Speaker 1: he was trying to fund other rappers and Coach met
Speaker 1: him in a recording studio and said, no, no, you're
Speaker 1: the rapper Like you have the star power, you have
Speaker 1: the voice, you have the clothes, you have the cars,
Speaker 1: like you're you're the guy. Uh. And then he recreated
Speaker 1: that right with little Baby. Little Baby was known as
Speaker 1: a gambler. Right, Little Baby was selling weed and gambling.
Speaker 1: He would come by the studio, hang out with me,
Speaker 1: goes take their money after they came back from from touring,
Speaker 1: right with a little bit of cash in their pocket.
Speaker 1: And and he he would shoot dice with them, right
Speaker 1: and and he had such star power right like this
Speaker 1: is this is a timeless story, right to go back
Speaker 1: to to to Elvis or one one story I tell
Speaker 1: in the book, Uh was Jermaine Duprie discovering Criss Cross.
Speaker 1: These were not drug dealers, these were kids in the mall.
Speaker 1: And Jermaine dupre said, they have it right, star power
Speaker 1: like whatever. That ineffable quality is star power, And in
Speaker 1: raps specifically, it often comes with authenticity or the appearance
Speaker 1: of authenticity. Right. So when Coach k would see someone
Speaker 1: like little Baby, he would say, you know, other people
Speaker 1: are out here wrapping your story. You should do it right.
Speaker 1: You have a look, you have some money in your pocket,
Speaker 1: you have you know, the carriage like the swag for
Speaker 1: lack of a better term, like you know, just just
Speaker 1: give it a shot, right, and Baby would say no,
Speaker 1: like that's not for me, that's not for me. Baby.
Speaker 1: You know, he told me straight up, and his friends
Speaker 1: told me to Like we didn't we didn't look up
Speaker 1: to rappers. We thought they were corny and we thought
Speaker 1: they were faking. You know, we didn't know. We didn't
Speaker 1: know rappers like we knew whatever other hustlers were on
Speaker 1: our block. Uh, people were more immediate to us. Um
Speaker 1: and and for Baby, you know, it took it took
Speaker 1: going to prison for for him to say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try this, Like there
Speaker 1: there's a safer way, there's a there's a better way.
Speaker 1: Um and ah do people try it and they're not
Speaker 1: only good at it, right, But this is someone like
Speaker 1: him put in the work, had enough of the sort
Speaker 1: of natural skill, the natural charisma, stories to tell, and
Speaker 1: then put in the work to get good enough that
Speaker 1: people wanted to hear his music. Uh. And you know
Speaker 1: this is again this is like a fraction of a
Speaker 1: percentage of people who can pull this off. But it's
Speaker 1: not no one and and every day, the barrier false right,
Speaker 1: like the bar of of what it takes to be
Speaker 1: able to put out music. Right. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll get to this. But the distribution channels that
Speaker 1: it used to It used to be expensive to record, right,
Speaker 1: It used to be expensive to print a c d
Speaker 1: uh and have it put in best buys around the country.
Speaker 1: Right now, record on your laptop, put it on YouTube
Speaker 1: for free, and all of a sudden you have a
Speaker 1: million dollar deal. You know, we see the story over
Speaker 1: and over again in rap and and outside of wrap. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think as these technological hurdles have fallen, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's more and more or opportunity for
Speaker 1: somebody with a you know, a local following, a story
Speaker 1: to tell and and a little bit of drive and
Speaker 1: star power to be able to make it. There are
Speaker 1: frequently depictions in the book of large amounts of cash.
Speaker 1: One person, I think it's a little baby, it's gonna
Speaker 1: shoot his first video in the studio shows up with
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars cash, so I think it might have
Speaker 1: even been three hundred. Whatever it was, it was a
Speaker 1: staggering stump thing. Then also there's another one where the
Speaker 1: money goes out the window, never recovered. How much is that?
Speaker 1: I think that was? That was sorry. Someone told me
Speaker 1: about Shardie Low who rest in piece of Shardi Low.
Speaker 1: He was He was a rapper from the mid two
Speaker 1: thousands again you know, big reputation as as a drug
Speaker 1: dealer and a hustler. And one of his one of
Speaker 1: his right hand men, told me a story, yeah about
Speaker 1: being on a car, you know, being in a police
Speaker 1: chase and CHARTI love throwing you know, fifty grand out
Speaker 1: of the window to just not be caught with the
Speaker 1: proceeds from whatever it is they were doing. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: first and foremost, to shoot a video in the studio,
Speaker 1: it's almost hard to spend three hundred thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: so I should I should cut in here and say
Speaker 1: this was not a music video. This was just a
Speaker 1: video for Instagram of showing people that he was rapping,
Speaker 1: right saying, this guy who you might follow or no,
Speaker 1: from the neighborhood, like we're going to start rapping. It's
Speaker 1: just an in studio video. It wasn't. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: music video. It was just you know, here I am
Speaker 1: pressing pressing record on my phone to show you what
Speaker 1: my friend is up to. Okay, then what's the three
Speaker 1: hundred k about? He just had that in his pocket? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too it's to show off with. It's a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a trophy. You're saying he just wanted to show it.
Speaker 1: Did he show the three hundred k on screen? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yes, But did he really have the three k?
Speaker 1: And you know, etcetera. Look who who this cash belongs
Speaker 1: to at any given moment? Uh, it's impossible to say. Um,
Speaker 1: I think you know, part of this fast money lifestyle
Speaker 1: that that's depicted in the book, and that these guys
Speaker 1: you know, live and rap about. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: quote in the book, you know that's how Atlanta goes.
Speaker 1: You're up, you're down, you're up, you're down, you're up,
Speaker 1: you're down. Uh. And and that's a you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's an endemic I think to to being in the
Speaker 1: street in this way. Um. And look it's a problem, right,
Speaker 1: it's a problem. It's the same as a car, a necklace. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an Instagram trend these days of rappers, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing trying to bring a million dollars to
Speaker 1: the hood, right, to bring a million dollars to where
Speaker 1: they grew up with as a way to say, you know,
Speaker 1: this world told me I wasn't never going to be anything.
Speaker 1: And and look at me now, And not only look
Speaker 1: at me now in Beverly Hills or you know, in
Speaker 1: a midtown skyscraper, but look at me now where I
Speaker 1: came from, right where where the police were throwing me
Speaker 1: against the wall, and you know, telling me I'd never
Speaker 1: be anything. And my teachers, you know, didn't care about me,
Speaker 1: and you know, told me I'd grew up to be
Speaker 1: in jail. And and and it's a you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a it's a talisman, it's a trophy,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a statement to say, you know, look
Speaker 1: what I became. Okay, stories are legion of all musicians
Speaker 1: people the music world being ripped off. It's even worse
Speaker 1: for black people. You depict the successful people having a
Speaker 1: great amount of money, Is it more transparent, more equal
Speaker 1: in it land in the world that you investigated, or
Speaker 1: in reality a lot of money as much money as
Speaker 1: they have, a lot of it's going somewhere else. Look,
Speaker 1: what is a record label if not somebody reaching into
Speaker 1: your pocket to have a piece of of what you're
Speaker 1: what your talent rot you know, I think the music
Speaker 1: business is unfair, right, like these contracts. Look, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not unfair. Maybe the labels put in the research and development,
Speaker 1: maybe they do the marketing and they take on all
Speaker 1: the risk, like, uh, whatever it is. But traditionally we
Speaker 1: have seen, you know, the people who have been brave
Speaker 1: enough to talk about what their contracts are, like, what
Speaker 1: their royalty rates are, what their advances. You know, I
Speaker 1: talk about for people who don't know. I think anybody
Speaker 1: listening to your podcast knows this. But but advances are
Speaker 1: are not free money, right, They're they're they're recupable, right.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't see another dollar until you earn
Speaker 1: back that money that they advanced to you. It's credit. Um.
Speaker 1: So look, I think that that's happening in this world
Speaker 1: as much, if not more than it's happening everywhere else.
Speaker 1: These not only not only are these artists young, but
Speaker 1: they're really you know, these are they're rappers being signed
Speaker 1: for millions of dollars that are fifteen years old. You know.
Speaker 1: There's a chapter about about A and R people in
Speaker 1: Atlanta in the book where you know, uh Ray Daniels.
Speaker 1: This this This executive in Atlanta says, I just got
Speaker 1: back from you know, giving giving a fifteen year old
Speaker 1: a million dollars Like that's and he's like, that's crazy, right,
Speaker 1: like on its face, like that's a it's a crazy proposition. Um.
Speaker 1: But but that artists are earned back that money, right,
Speaker 1: And there's managers to pay, there's lawyers to pay, there's
Speaker 1: early investors, right. I talk about the sort of the
Speaker 1: culture of you know, uh, street guys putting money behind
Speaker 1: an emerging artist, whether it's to record a video or
Speaker 1: get the money or excuse me, to get the song
Speaker 1: played at the strip club or whatever it is. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody wants their piece. Um. And and that's the same
Speaker 1: I think across genres. Um. This just happens to be
Speaker 1: the most lucrative and the most popular genre right now,
Speaker 1: so the amounts are higher. Um. You know, we saw
Speaker 1: this sort of gold rush of of deals around the
Speaker 1: streaming era as the record companies you know, rebounded after
Speaker 1: the dark times of of the post napster years. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is not primarily a book about
Speaker 1: recording contracts, So I didn't get two into the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty there um, and I think a lot of these
Speaker 1: guys are doing well, but just as many of them are,
Speaker 1: you know, signing bad deal, signing horrible deals. Have have
Speaker 1: have no experience, no guidance. Uh. And and when a
Speaker 1: label comes to you and says, you know, here's grand
Speaker 1: for the rights to your smash viral single on TikTok,
Speaker 1: and you know your mom needs to pay the rent
Speaker 1: and you know you have no career prospects at the moment,
Speaker 1: like if you're going to sign you know, so that
Speaker 1: that's where the that's where the uh, the exploitation, I
Speaker 1: think really comes in here. Now they talk about income.
Speaker 1: We talked about little Yahdi, but he had his own
Speaker 1: look using my air Quotes brand. But in the traditional
Speaker 1: mainstream music business, which is now becoming you know, this
Speaker 1: is the mainstream business. What I'm trying to say is
Speaker 1: you have the record contract, if you have an endorsement deal,
Speaker 1: it's publicized sponsorship product. Your grosses are in poll star.
Speaker 1: You talk about these guys going on the road, maybe
Speaker 1: dropping in multiple gigs a night, just making a two
Speaker 1: track appearance, like it's a whole another subculture that's not reported.
Speaker 1: So what can you tell us about that? Look, I
Speaker 1: can't speak to how this stuff is reported on taxes, right,
Speaker 1: and how this income is is logged. Um. Again, that's
Speaker 1: beyond my pay grade. I'm not an accountant. Um. But
Speaker 1: but look, yeah, this is there's a cash business here, right,
Speaker 1: whether it's like you said features right, a rapper pay
Speaker 1: is another rapper ten grand, twenty grand, fifty grand, a
Speaker 1: hundred grand to to get on the track with them
Speaker 1: for extra attention. You know, you make a club appearance.
Speaker 1: You know you you hear a lot of rappers these days. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, getting getting a little wonky with economics talking
Speaker 1: about the back end, right, So you get a get
Speaker 1: a certain a certain amount of the of the payment
Speaker 1: to show up and wrap two songs at a club
Speaker 1: in the V I P. Section. Uh, you know up
Speaker 1: front when you sign and then you go, and then
Speaker 1: as you're walking out they hand you the rest in
Speaker 1: cash and that's the back end, right. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think just like this culture comes from mix tapes, right,
Speaker 1: this this this world this is and I think this
Speaker 1: is why. One of the reasons why rap music was
Speaker 1: so quick to adapt to streaming, right is it was
Speaker 1: you too moving quickly. It was used to being a
Speaker 1: volume business. It was used to being about market share, right,
Speaker 1: And these were homemade recordings, tapes, c d s uh
Speaker 1: sold out of the trunks of cars, so that flea markets,
Speaker 1: at barber shops, you know, covers printed on a ink jet.
Speaker 1: You know, beats taken from online and not cleared, um
Speaker 1: cash changing hands like this is ah, these these are
Speaker 1: these are underground economists uh and and there's a ton
Speaker 1: of them that overlap I think uh in in in
Speaker 1: wraps specifically. So yeah, you know, whole star is one thing,
Speaker 1: but you know, good luck to good luck to them
Speaker 1: and and the Forbes list to really get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of how a Southern rapper makes money on the
Speaker 1: club circuit. Okay, another thing you talk about is how
Speaker 1: really it's not gag oriented. And then a game comes,
Speaker 1: I believe from Detroit and really permeates Atlanta and Florida
Speaker 1: until it's ultimately busted. And you're talking about today the
Speaker 1: flourishing of strip clubs. To what degree is at a
Speaker 1: side show? To what degree does that have an effect
Speaker 1: on the flourishing of rap in Atlanta? So you're you're
Speaker 1: referring to be a meth black mafia family. This is
Speaker 1: you know, this is a a well known story. At
Speaker 1: this point, I don't I don't spend too much time
Speaker 1: on it. Um. You know, there's a there's a great
Speaker 1: book about BMF, there's television series about BMF. Countless documentary
Speaker 1: is Amelian YouTube videos. Um, but this is yeah, this
Speaker 1: is street lore right of a big meache coming down
Speaker 1: to Atlanta after building his his cocaine syndicate uh out
Speaker 1: of Detroit with his brother. The two brothers run run
Speaker 1: the business together. One of them moves to Atlanta and
Speaker 1: he decides he wants to get into wrap right. And
Speaker 1: they they have an artist Blue Da Vinci, who never
Speaker 1: comes in anything. But they also have a sort of
Speaker 1: off paper alliance with young Jeezy who really really makes
Speaker 1: the most out of out of this association, um and
Speaker 1: becomes a big star even though he wasn't technically signed
Speaker 1: to their label. But you know, they have a they
Speaker 1: have a magazine. As you said, like you know, according
Speaker 1: to everybody, the clubs were flushed with money. The nightlife
Speaker 1: was crazy. Uh you know this this was It's the
Speaker 1: same thing you saw in Miami, right, cocaine cowboys. You
Speaker 1: know you even going back to prohibition, right, this is
Speaker 1: what Boardock Empire is about, which is you know, money
Speaker 1: trickles down right from from illegal enterprise when it hits
Speaker 1: a certain level and and everybody wins, right the restaurants,
Speaker 1: the clubs, the recording studios, the you know, uh, the
Speaker 1: luxury stores at the mall. Um. So yeah, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about what you're talking about Atlanta. You know, the
Speaker 1: the first wave that I that I talked about in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the book. You know, that's that's Jermaine
Speaker 1: dupri that's Outcasts, that's the Face Records ELI read baby Face,
Speaker 1: you know TLC not really not really street wrap uh
Speaker 1: as as as we know it now. Um. But but
Speaker 1: when when trap takes over right in the in the
Speaker 1: late nineties, early two thousand's, a lot of that comes
Speaker 1: from B m F and the lifestyle that they were,
Speaker 1: you know, propagating around the clubs, around the venues um
Speaker 1: and people were either affiliated, uh you know, tangential. They
Speaker 1: wanted to keep up, they wanted to be in the mix.
Speaker 1: You know. I think so that that I think is
Speaker 1: is extremely influential, um, both economically, but also culturally and
Speaker 1: and stylistically. This idea of of you know, glits and
Speaker 1: flash and Glamour. Um. You know people wrap about it
Speaker 1: to this day, right, Big meatch having tigers at his
Speaker 1: birthday party. Um. And I spoke for the book to
Speaker 1: to this party planner, Hannah Kang, who's still the biggest
Speaker 1: best you know, black celebrity party planner. And she she's
Speaker 1: she's a Korean woman. But but she she says in
Speaker 1: the book, you know, I've never worked for a white
Speaker 1: person in my whole career in Atlanta, which I which
Speaker 1: I just which I loved, and I think really gives you,
Speaker 1: you know, a portrait of this place as as Black Mecca,
Speaker 1: black Hollywood, whatever you want to call it. Um. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, you know, the BMF legend just sort of
Speaker 1: looms really large to this day. You know everybody I
Speaker 1: talked to her like, oh, it'll never it'll never be
Speaker 1: like that again. Um. And and you know, whether that's
Speaker 1: whether whether that's completely accurate or not, Like, that's that's
Speaker 1: how that's that's how myths build and and and carry on. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: you depict the strip clubs, you say, when the the
Speaker 1: the Mafia family ultimately gets taken down, strip clubs get
Speaker 1: taken down, but still you know they're cutting track they'll
Speaker 1: go to the strip club to demo it. Then you
Speaker 1: have another guy at the strip club talking about the
Speaker 1: right way to make it rain to this day, what
Speaker 1: is the status of strip clubs and how much influence
Speaker 1: do they have visa VI the music and the culture.
Speaker 1: So this is again something that that's been written about
Speaker 1: many times over the years. I didn't want to linger
Speaker 1: on it too much in the book because I felt
Speaker 1: like it's pretty well established. My my close friend and
Speaker 1: colleague John Carmonica did a great story about Atlantic strip
Speaker 1: clubs as a as a proving gun for records. Another
Speaker 1: one of my colleagues, Richard Fossett, did one uh when
Speaker 1: when when he was at the l A times I believe, Um,
Speaker 1: but but this has happened for decades at this point,
Speaker 1: which is uh, you know, this is like I said,
Speaker 1: this is a proving ground, right, This is this is
Speaker 1: party music often right, This is music for dancing to.
Speaker 1: This is music for that you know, makes people want
Speaker 1: to spend money. Um, and it's its own economy, Like
Speaker 1: we were talking about the illicit economies. You know. You
Speaker 1: you go, you slip the DJ a little money, he
Speaker 1: plays your track. If the dancers like it, they dance
Speaker 1: better to the track. That then makes customers spend more
Speaker 1: money on them. Right, and then they want to hear
Speaker 1: your song again, so they requested again. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: you know it's it's this whole it's a whole economy.
Speaker 1: I I spent a night um at a club called Follies,
Speaker 1: which no longer exists, uh, with with this guy DJ John. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this didn't make the book. This could be its
Speaker 1: own book. Honestly. DJ John Uh, amazing guy, big white guy,
Speaker 1: started djaying and strip clubs. You know when they were
Speaker 1: not allowed to play rap music, right, he said. When
Speaker 1: he started at Folly's, it was it was a rock bar. Right,
Speaker 1: it was like a bon Jovi motley crew, you know,
Speaker 1: the you know, airport workers would go there and and
Speaker 1: rap was banned. Right. DJ John worked in Follies every
Speaker 1: week for more than twenty years. Right. I wanted to
Speaker 1: call him the cal Ripken Jr. Of Atlanta strip clubs
Speaker 1: because and and he guts to see the whole thing change. Right.
Speaker 1: By the time I spent a night with him at Folly's,
Speaker 1: he was managing a rapper himself. He had no interest
Speaker 1: in in rap music when he started there, but he
Speaker 1: would he would take money to play whatever songs people
Speaker 1: wanted to hear. Usually that means their own song, but
Speaker 1: it could just be a request, right if if Bob,
Speaker 1: if you rolled in and and you wanted to hear
Speaker 1: uh you know, uh shake your tail feather by Nelly,
Speaker 1: you could you could send John uh money on PayPal
Speaker 1: and he'll play it right then and there. Um. So
Speaker 1: people do it as a as a promotional tactic because
Speaker 1: I think you know, one of the things that makes
Speaker 1: Atlanta so special, uh is that there really is a
Speaker 1: local scene and things break on the ground before they
Speaker 1: break nationally. Right. And that's something that's like an age
Speaker 1: old tale in the music industry, but has has been upended.
Speaker 1: Right now. You can be from Singapore and you can
Speaker 1: drop a song it sounds like Atlanta rap on YouTube
Speaker 1: and maybe you get big before anybody even knows who
Speaker 1: you are, right, your song goes viral on TikTok or
Speaker 1: whatever you know. Uh. And yet these artists and these
Speaker 1: labels in Atlanta, like they still see the value in
Speaker 1: building an audience, right, building a groundswell of people, because
Speaker 1: because that's how you build careers, right instead of one
Speaker 1: off hits, uh, you you you you get a loyal
Speaker 1: fan base. And and this happens in nightlife, right and
Speaker 1: so whether it's whether it's a strip club or a
Speaker 1: club club or somewhere in between. You know, they want
Speaker 1: their music to work there first because they feel like
Speaker 1: once they have the neighborhood behind them and then they
Speaker 1: have the city behind them, that that's going to serve
Speaker 1: them well when they break nationally. Okay, on the other
Speaker 1: side of the fens from the artists, you talk about
Speaker 1: quality control, talk about Coach K and you talk about
Speaker 1: p and you talk about where they came from. What
Speaker 1: is so special about them that they can engender success.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they're really really, really really bright
Speaker 1: business minds right first and foremost, I think they also
Speaker 1: make a great pair, a really complementary pair, right Um.
Speaker 1: Coach you know, Coach grew up in in Indianapolis. Uh.
Speaker 1: He he came to Atlanta, you know, as a young man,
Speaker 1: drawn in by Freaknik, which is the sort of big
Speaker 1: black college spring break thing that really you know, put
Speaker 1: put put Atlanta nightlife on the map. Uh in the
Speaker 1: early nineties. Uh. And he spent a lot of time,
Speaker 1: as I've mentioned, sort of you know, working artists after
Speaker 1: artists after artist as a manager, building these relationships with radio,
Speaker 1: with their labels, with other artists, with producers, you know,
Speaker 1: just years, decades right of groundwork, and you know, grew
Speaker 1: into a godfather of of the scene. Right. Everybody knows him.
Speaker 1: Everybody respects him, They respects a year, they respect the
Speaker 1: way he does business. Um, and and piece of pieas different. Right,
Speaker 1: he didn't start as a musician. He started in the
Speaker 1: streets like he'll he'll, he'll tell you that, you know.
Speaker 1: And and he's one of these guys who saw music
Speaker 1: as a way out right. He wanted to invest the
Speaker 1: money he'd made. He had some real estate, he bought
Speaker 1: a studio. He tried to make it work. He wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what to do. I wasn't finding success. Realized you
Speaker 1: know that as as much money as you can make
Speaker 1: in music and rap music, you can lose it just
Speaker 1: as quickly. Right, total gamble um. But when he partnered
Speaker 1: with Coach and they discovered megas, they just both bring
Speaker 1: something different at the table, right. Coach coaches plugged, coaches
Speaker 1: plugged in in the boardrooms and the radio stations. And
Speaker 1: and he's a talent scout, right, He knows. He knows
Speaker 1: what's going on in in these neighborhoods. He he he
Speaker 1: meets young kids, artists, people who you know, show him
Speaker 1: what's happening. And he's a motivator. Right. I saw him
Speaker 1: do it over and over again. I saw him do
Speaker 1: it with a little baby firsthand. I saw him do
Speaker 1: it with Marlowe firsthand. He's the one who can say
Speaker 1: I've been where you've been, right, I've seen what you've seen.
Speaker 1: I've gone through these things, and I promise you you
Speaker 1: listen to me and you follow what I tell you.
Speaker 1: Not only are we going to make a lot of money,
Speaker 1: not only are you going to be able to help
Speaker 1: your family, but you're going to be safer. Right. And
Speaker 1: he's he's really taking it upon himself, I think too.
Speaker 1: You know uh mentor these artists right, and what they
Speaker 1: talk about is is artist development, Right, This is something
Speaker 1: that is nearly extinct in the record business. And why
Speaker 1: we see you know, one hit wonder uh every day
Speaker 1: right on TikTok or you know a half a hit wonder,
Speaker 1: like sometimes they're not even making the billboard chart. Um.
Speaker 1: And and one funny story, I think it didn't didn't
Speaker 1: make the book might be in a Times article. Um,
Speaker 1: but they had to they have to stop themselves right
Speaker 1: from going after some of these viral things. There was
Speaker 1: a moment when I first started reporting on these guys
Speaker 1: when I think he said, you know, uh, there was
Speaker 1: the girl known as the catch me outside girl, right,
Speaker 1: she became she became bad baby. She went viral on
Speaker 1: a Dr Phil clip, and they were like, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: she started rapping, because you know, what do you what
Speaker 1: do you what do you do after you have a
Speaker 1: viral moment, Maybe maybe you start you start rapping. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think it was p one
Speaker 1: of them was like, maybe we should go after her,
Speaker 1: like maybe we should do this and and and coach
Speaker 1: said like no, like that's not what we do. Like,
Speaker 1: let's keep our eye on the ball, right. What we
Speaker 1: do is we build artists, we build careers, we build brands. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they're with these guys. They're with these guys
Speaker 1: every day right there, constantly sending new music back and forth,
Speaker 1: constantly pushing them do more shows, record more, another mixtape,
Speaker 1: another video. And yeah, it's just a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a unit a yang duo um that you know everybody
Speaker 1: on the label responds to either. You know, they may
Speaker 1: be closer with one, they may be closer with the other,
Speaker 1: but they respect both of them. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: at this point, they've turned out so many artists who
Speaker 1: again don't have a hit song, but have real careers. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I put them up there with you know,
Speaker 1: uh no limit or cash money or a G unit whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever. These rap crews and labels over the
Speaker 1: last twenty years who have been able to make more
Speaker 1: than one star, like to do it once as a miracle,
Speaker 1: right to do it five times. It's like it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a system. Now. Another thing you depict
Speaker 1: in the book that is different from traditional conception of
Speaker 1: the music business is the recording. Now, traditional music business,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you'll have pre production to work on
Speaker 1: the song, and I said, well, we have ten songs
Speaker 1: when we record them, you know. But here people are
Speaker 1: running around with hard drives and you know, depict one thing,
Speaker 1: Oh there's a famous studio in New York. Well let's
Speaker 1: you know, we got an hour free, let's go record.
Speaker 1: So you know, they're constantly recording, and a great percentage
Speaker 1: of the stuff never even comes out right so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's how much do these people alter. Let's say you're wanting,
Speaker 1: you know, one of these guys in quality control, how
Speaker 1: much will you record before they release something? Dozens, hundreds,
Speaker 1: thousands of songs, probably on hard drives. Right, This is
Speaker 1: it's a it's a volume business. It's you know, they're
Speaker 1: putting out a ton of music. Right if you look
Speaker 1: at look at Little Babies discography, the first whatever, it's
Speaker 1: been five years of his career, right, stack that up
Speaker 1: against you know, of course they're there are rock bands
Speaker 1: that that put out a ton of music whatever I
Speaker 1: guided by voices or you know, some something like that. Sure,
Speaker 1: but traditionally a major label chart topping artists, right, what
Speaker 1: they're going to put out twelve to fifteen songs every
Speaker 1: eighteen months? Will Baby put out five mixtapes in ten months? Right,
Speaker 1: each of them probably between fifteen and twenty tracks. Um,
Speaker 1: this is what the audience wants, right, they're responding to
Speaker 1: they're responding to the audience. They're there, they're churning at
Speaker 1: this rate. And and it's an artistic choice as well, right,
Speaker 1: Like the guys that they are emulating, the guys who
Speaker 1: who started this, uh, this practice of recording in this
Speaker 1: way improvisationally, uh, putting a ton of music out. This
Speaker 1: is this Gucci Man, this is Little Wayne, Uh, this
Speaker 1: is young Thug. These guys are all We're putting out many,
Speaker 1: many mixtapes a year. Guci Man was putting out three
Speaker 1: mix tapes on the same day at one point, at
Speaker 1: the peak of his career. Um. And there's just there's
Speaker 1: a lack of preciousness um about the art. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think the important thing to realize is, like that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily make it worse, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: I think the the the the audience, like the it
Speaker 1: showed like people people care about this music as much
Speaker 1: as you might care about a Beatles song, right that
Speaker 1: they spent six months working on, Right, we see it
Speaker 1: and like they get back music video. But but that
Speaker 1: doesn't that's not like a one isn't necessarily better than
Speaker 1: the other, right, And I think that that's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's this idea that it's that it's disposable, um.
Speaker 1: But it's only as disposable as as as the audience
Speaker 1: wants it to be. Right, Like I I think I
Speaker 1: think we'll be playing bad em bougie at weddings in
Speaker 1: in fifty years, right, Um, and maybe you know it
Speaker 1: was made in one take in offset spacemen, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's it's incredible to watch also,
Speaker 1: just the the way they sort of start and stop
Speaker 1: without writing anything down, uh, and sort of creating these
Speaker 1: these melodies, these flows, these rhymes, uh, these jokes, these
Speaker 1: stories in real time. So I feel truly, truly blessed
Speaker 1: to have been able to to to see it in
Speaker 1: person as much as I have. Okay, so you have
Speaker 1: all these rappers, where's all the where all the beats
Speaker 1: or of the music coming from? You know, That's something
Speaker 1: I wish I got into more in the book. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a whole other book to be written about Atlanta producers. Um.
Speaker 1: But they're working at a similar pace, right. You have
Speaker 1: you know, guys like Metro booming, Um, guys like Murder Beats,
Speaker 1: Guys like Zethoven. You know, a classically trained pianists who
Speaker 1: who played in church with his parents. He's you know,
Speaker 1: instrumental to the careers of future Gucci Man, Negosh and
Speaker 1: and and they're working similarly, right, They're making hundreds and
Speaker 1: hundreds of beats, dozens of beats maybe you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of beats over the course of their career, and and
Speaker 1: they're spreading them around their network right there. File sharing
Speaker 1: so easy, drop box, you know. I remember being in
Speaker 1: the studio with Marlowe who's trying to find something that
Speaker 1: inspired him. He just pulled up a Gmail, right. I
Speaker 1: guess you know you post looking for beats posted Gmail
Speaker 1: address on your Instagram story. Dozens of kids will hit
Speaker 1: you, you you know, with with a beat within five ten minutes,
Speaker 1: just clicking around attachments, trying to find something that inspires him,
Speaker 1: trying to find something that that catches the year. Um.
Speaker 1: There are guys who make very bespoke versions of this right, Um,
Speaker 1: people who will work months on the same beat, you know,
Speaker 1: get getting the high hat just right, getting the base
Speaker 1: just right. And then there are people who will just
Speaker 1: you know, make three beats in an hour. Uh, and
Speaker 1: there's no telling which one is gonna become the basis
Speaker 1: for a hit song. Right, So it's like it's a
Speaker 1: grab bag. Yeah. Like I said, you know, the producers
Speaker 1: were not as big of a role in this book.
Speaker 1: I spoke, I spoke to a lot of them, and
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of them work. Um, but they
Speaker 1: just didn't fit as much with the narrative. But you know,
Speaker 1: i'd gladly, gladly read that book to you know, I
Speaker 1: I get into some of this um in the video
Speaker 1: series I do for The Times Diary of Song, which
Speaker 1: is about about the making of tracks, and you know
Speaker 1: how how stuff is created and then it's made marketed
Speaker 1: and it goes viral sort of uh in this era. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know you think of something like Old Town Road,
Speaker 1: which funnily enough was know was recorded in an Atlanta
Speaker 1: studio um by Little nos X, but the beat came
Speaker 1: from a Dutch teenager who he never met before, who
Speaker 1: sampled the nine Inch Nails song that he'd never heard
Speaker 1: before that he pulled off YouTube you know, um so
Speaker 1: and and then sold or least even for what like
Speaker 1: fifty seventy five bucks. Um. You know, they are endless
Speaker 1: sites for free beats, for cheap beats, for you know,
Speaker 1: beats you can lease for a month, see if it
Speaker 1: takes off six months. Um. And you know, the business
Speaker 1: of the stuff gets gets super naughty when it comes
Speaker 1: to to clearing and samples and rights holders and publishing
Speaker 1: and all of that. Like I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't envy the people behind the scenes who have
Speaker 1: to clear all this music. Um, but it's a it's
Speaker 1: an extremely fascinating and fast paced way to to create. Now,
Speaker 1: you make the point you referenced earlier that these guys
Speaker 1: in Atlanta a great degree are recording differently from people
Speaker 1: previous in rap in that they're literally doing it. Not
Speaker 1: sometimes we're by we're but usually phrase by phrase. They're
Speaker 1: not starting up with a whole thing. Can you amplify
Speaker 1: that a little bit? Yeah? Correct? So so, I mean
Speaker 1: jay Z famously, you know, says he never writes his
Speaker 1: lyrics down, right. But but the amazing thing about jay Z,
Speaker 1: according to you know, people have seen it. I've never
Speaker 1: I've never watched jay Z record other than in you know,
Speaker 1: The Fades of Black documentary and in various YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: But he's wrapping whole verses at a time, right, things
Speaker 1: that he comes up with in his head and remembers.
Speaker 1: Um And and I think little Wayne uh Is is
Speaker 1: the same way. Um. He another one I think, having
Speaker 1: learned from jay Z, you know, it's a point of pride,
Speaker 1: right that he never wrote down his lyrics. But you
Speaker 1: think of you know, some people might think of rap
Speaker 1: as you know, a guy with a with a black
Speaker 1: and white journal pad right scribbling down stands as like
Speaker 1: they're a poem, and then wrapping them into a microphone.
Speaker 1: But the Atlanta style, especially over the last ten years,
Speaker 1: um following the footsteps of those guys that I named,
Speaker 1: is extremely improvisational, and it happens directly into the microphone, right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you know, some little baby said. You know, every
Speaker 1: now and then I'll get hired to do a feature
Speaker 1: for a song or whatever. I'll have an idea, I'll
Speaker 1: write something down, but almost always they're just playing the
Speaker 1: beat on loop and wrapping their ideas directly into the mic, right.
Speaker 1: So they'll they'll often start with like a gibberish sort
Speaker 1: of thing, which I've seen pop top liners do as well, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of syllabic melodic uh, you know, get a rhythm
Speaker 1: down with just a just a nonsense phrase, and then
Speaker 1: they start to fill in words, and then they start
Speaker 1: to fill in phrases, and they start to fill in lines,
Speaker 1: and they'll just go sort of like you know, piece
Speaker 1: by piece by piece, um. And you know I described
Speaker 1: I described me goes doing this in the book and
Speaker 1: their their relationship with their engineer, right, has to be
Speaker 1: like basically basically telepathic. Right, the engineer knows when they
Speaker 1: want to go back, uh and do something, over keep something,
Speaker 1: you know, move on to the next thing, um and it.
Speaker 1: And it's the sort of this lego block process, whether
Speaker 1: they're just building and building and building um and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have sixteen bars and and
Speaker 1: and you move on to the next one. Now, historically
Speaker 1: popular music has not been about the lyrics. The lyrics
Speaker 1: are secondary and the success of these songs, how much
Speaker 1: of it is the beat? How much of it is
Speaker 1: the lyrics in terms of the appeal? I think it
Speaker 1: really depends. I think you know, Southern rap gets a
Speaker 1: reputation for being non lyrical. You know, there's the term
Speaker 1: mumble rap that was in vogue a few years ago,
Speaker 1: talking about people like Yaddi and future um and me
Speaker 1: goes um. You know, I think that's sort of in
Speaker 1: line with biases against Southern people, and especially southern black
Speaker 1: people throughout history, right, this idea that you know, they
Speaker 1: have a country accent, therefore they're not as bright as
Speaker 1: you know, someone like Naz or whatever, who's a you know,
Speaker 1: northern storyteller. Um. But I mean to me, like, most
Speaker 1: of these guys are lyrical geniuses, right, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: from Gucci Man Too Young Thug to two Little Baby.
Speaker 1: Like I think if you you see the way they
Speaker 1: play with language, you see the way they they they
Speaker 1: describe an image, right, there's often economy in the writing. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the way they're putting phrases together, the way
Speaker 1: they're birthing new slang. You know, someone like Future I
Speaker 1: think is like completely unparalleled when it comes to like
Speaker 1: lingo and just the way he's inserting new idioms into
Speaker 1: popular culture, right, Like this is a skill. This is
Speaker 1: not like, this is not anything to be sneered at. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, people get turned off by
Speaker 1: the auto tune, but if you listen to even someone
Speaker 1: like Little Baby, I think it's just a really sneakily lyrical,
Speaker 1: intricate rapper. Um. You know, his his his phrasing, his timing.
Speaker 1: He's so wordy. You know, you go see him in
Speaker 1: concert and in the and the breath control is amazing.
Speaker 1: He's just you know, these these sort of run on versus.
Speaker 1: Even even the choruses are often extremely wordy. Um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just there's so many different flavors of this um,
Speaker 1: even within Atlanta, even within guys who might sound the
Speaker 1: same uh at at first at first glance. But you know,
Speaker 1: of course the beat is important, right, This is a
Speaker 1: this is like a music that is made to be
Speaker 1: felt often. You know, you you feel that you feel
Speaker 1: the baseline, you know, the melody, the high hats, um,
Speaker 1: the cadences, the patterns. Like you know, I think it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as popular internationally uh as it is without
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff. Um. You know they people
Speaker 1: in other markets might not even be following the slang
Speaker 1: in the lyrics. UM. But I think you you get
Speaker 1: out of it what you put into it. Like I
Speaker 1: think if you invest in these guys, you see sort
Speaker 1: of how they're how they're building uh stories, characters, narratives,
Speaker 1: not only within a song, but sort of over time
Speaker 1: on mix tapes, uh, you know, on albums, on guest
Speaker 1: versus you piecing together um, a story, a mythology and
Speaker 1: narrative sort of you know, internal um world right there.
Speaker 1: You know characters that recur um. You know, street names, geography,
Speaker 1: it's a you know, it's it's like a it's a
Speaker 1: folk tradition. Um. I think in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Now you recite essentially thirty years worth of history in
Speaker 1: the book, and from those who are not deep in
Speaker 1: the scene, it appears that a lot of these acts
Speaker 1: had a commercial and social peak and then it's past.
Speaker 1: Now the music business, to a great degree, that's the
Speaker 1: way it's run, but since to a degree it's an
Speaker 1: underground economy, some of it's not monetized. Are these people
Speaker 1: peak peeking and disappearing or are they being kept alive
Speaker 1: in this subculture and able to continue to monetize their
Speaker 1: quote again, Brands, I think you're seeing a lot more
Speaker 1: longevity these days, right, I think music industry in general,
Speaker 1: um but in in raps specifically, there wasn't often the
Speaker 1: super long tale for these things, right you think of
Speaker 1: you think of the the the early New York rappers, Right,
Speaker 1: they didn't rap into their forties or even into their thirdies.
Speaker 1: You know, they were not celebrities in the same way
Speaker 1: that that you see Now you have guys who you know,
Speaker 1: put out their their best album twenty years ago who
Speaker 1: are still on the blogs and in the clubs and
Speaker 1: on TV every day. Um So, I think there is
Speaker 1: a there's a longer shelf life for these people, for
Speaker 1: these artists, especially as celebrities. UM. But I think rap
Speaker 1: music is still very much a young man's game, right.
Speaker 1: There's always somebody fresher, There's always somebody doing something slightly different,
Speaker 1: something new. There's always somebody you know, SEXI or more dangerous,
Speaker 1: more experimental. Um and and these cycles go really quickly, right,
Speaker 1: I think even you know, you look at quality controls
Speaker 1: existed since uh you know when when when Mega started
Speaker 1: to blow up, and and and then you look at
Speaker 1: someone like Little Baby who's now in the A list himself,
Speaker 1: and they have many many rappers that have come after
Speaker 1: that that are you know, on their way up, like
Speaker 1: the churn, even within one label, uh, and you can
Speaker 1: see sort of you know who who's peaking at any
Speaker 1: given moment or or or who's coming from behind. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I think the audiences are always in search
Speaker 1: of the next thing. Um But I think the idea,
Speaker 1: right is that at a at a label like this,
Speaker 1: and if if if you put out enough good work,
Speaker 1: even if it's in a quick period of time, and
Speaker 1: you sort of build your quote unquote brand, and you
Speaker 1: establish your relationships and your fan base, you can continue
Speaker 1: to tour. You can continue to get endorsements, you can
Speaker 1: continue to you know, be on television and show up
Speaker 1: at a word shows. You know. Luckily, I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of these rappers, the sort of mainstream mono
Speaker 1: culture uh in American popular culture is still pretty slow. Right,
Speaker 1: So even if you're considered a little bit uh passe
Speaker 1: a or you know, no longer the hot new thing
Speaker 1: and wrap, you're still going to be on network television. Okay,
Speaker 1: So music in general in this sort of grows out
Speaker 1: of what you're saying is overwhelming. You know, the hits
Speaker 1: and the Spotify top fifty never meant less used to
Speaker 1: have a hit in the old days, everybody knew it
Speaker 1: something you mean number one people haven't even heard of
Speaker 1: the act. So if one has not been following this
Speaker 1: music and an uneducated it just looks overwhelming. First their SoundCloud.
Speaker 1: There are mixed tapes continuing to come out, never mind
Speaker 1: the history. There's a lot of people in the game.
Speaker 1: Does one follow it without making it a full time job?
Speaker 1: I think this goes for any culture, right that you can.
Speaker 1: You can say the same thing about TV. Right, I
Speaker 1: might be watching a show that I think is is
Speaker 1: the best thing in the world on one streaming service
Speaker 1: and you don't even have a log in for that one, right,
Speaker 1: and you have no idea what I'm talking about. We
Speaker 1: think of, you know, I think you've written about this
Speaker 1: in the newsletter. You think of something like the bear, right,
Speaker 1: The bear in my world was a huge hit right
Speaker 1: among people in the media in you know, relatively young
Speaker 1: something like industry or the bear is like, that's what
Speaker 1: people are watching, that's what people are talking about. If
Speaker 1: I go home and see my parents, they don't know
Speaker 1: what the bear is, you know, or or maybe they
Speaker 1: clicked on it on Hulu and they accidentally found it.
Speaker 1: They didn't know it was trendy. Right, Um, Look, I
Speaker 1: think the monoculture that I just referenced, like it barely
Speaker 1: exists anymore. Right with you? On that, I would say
Speaker 1: it doesn't exist at all. But okay, Yeah, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're a handful of things that breakthrough, right, Rihanna is
Speaker 1: going to play the super Bowl, Like that's a monoculture event,
Speaker 1: right Arguably, you know, maybe the Beatles documentary that Peter
Speaker 1: Jackson Beatles tument. I feel like that that broke through
Speaker 1: as much as I'd seen anything breakthrough in years right. Um,
Speaker 1: going back to two me goes, I think that Embouge
Speaker 1: was a number one song in the world. Did my
Speaker 1: grandparents know it? Probably not. I think it had a
Speaker 1: huge amount of permeation into into the mainstream. Um. And yet,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, and was that was five years ago,
Speaker 1: it's only gotten worse. Um. I think people choose their spots, right,
Speaker 1: they know what they're interested in, they know what Spotify
Speaker 1: serves them. They either listen to the radio or they don't.
Speaker 1: You know. I think look radio, like some of this
Speaker 1: music trickles up onto the radio usually after finding success
Speaker 1: on streaming. UM, sticks around for a long time, right.
Speaker 1: We see like the charts are pretty stagnant, especially the
Speaker 1: airplay charts. UM. But someone like Little Baby, He's found
Speaker 1: a ton of success on you know, what's referred to
Speaker 1: as urban radio, like many, many, many number one songs there,
Speaker 1: which means, you know, people driving home from work, they
Speaker 1: know the sound of his voice, even if they don't
Speaker 1: know his biography. UM. But I think that there remains
Speaker 1: this question of like superstars, right, is there a next
Speaker 1: generation of superstar? Who is who is the next superstar?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm looking at a little Baby's career.
Speaker 1: Now he has an album coming out right ahead of
Speaker 1: this book, and in mid October, he's you know, he's
Speaker 1: the he's in the theme song for the World Cup.
Speaker 1: Is he's he has a Budweiser sponsorship, right, It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't get much bigger than that. And yet if
Speaker 1: you ask you the average person on the street, depending
Speaker 1: on their age and where they're from in Times Square,
Speaker 1: I still don't know if they if if they know
Speaker 1: who he is? Right Like, it's a it's a dice
Speaker 1: roll um. But I think, you know, if you want
Speaker 1: to pay attention, you can just pick a city, pick
Speaker 1: a YouTube account, pick a pick one artist, listen to
Speaker 1: the artist featured on their song. You know, I think
Speaker 1: there's there's a million different paths to follow, um, and
Speaker 1: you can get a decent picture of of where hip
Speaker 1: hop is at, where regional rap is at. But I
Speaker 1: agree in terms of you know, the what what what we?
Speaker 1: What I grew up on and certainly what you grew
Speaker 1: up on. That idea of like a discreete a list
Speaker 1: of artists, Uh, that doesn't exist anymore. You know, I've
Speaker 1: I've I've written about someone like NBA Young Boy who
Speaker 1: one of the biggest trappers in the world. You know,
Speaker 1: more YouTube streams than Taylor Swift, you know, and yet
Speaker 1: no radio play, zero television appearances. Nobody under the age
Speaker 1: of thirty knows who he is, and certainly not white people.
Speaker 1: Um So, you know, I think, I think it's a
Speaker 1: different world, but I think that applies across all media. Okay,
Speaker 1: but let's go back to your TV analogy. You're talking
Speaker 1: about hipster's media people knowing the bear. I hear from
Speaker 1: a lot of people regularly, and there are not many
Speaker 1: students of the game of streaming television. So they'll have
Speaker 1: watched the same shows even though got horrific reviews. They'll
Speaker 1: watched the offer, They'll watched ted Lasso, etcetera. You start
Speaker 1: talking about Borgan, even one of the legendary and foreign shows,
Speaker 1: they have no idea what you're talking about. Sororitive organ obsessive. Right,
Speaker 1: that's another that's another podcast. But staying with the concept
Speaker 1: of music, theoretically you could pay attention to the Spotify
Speaker 1: top fifty. That could be your thing. And even narrower
Speaker 1: than that is terrestrial radio. At the other end of it.
Speaker 1: In the book, there's multiple people creating a plethora of
Speaker 1: product outside it looks like a lot of people are
Speaker 1: in that deep is the truth that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people and this is just their passion or
Speaker 1: really there's a limited number of people who are very
Speaker 1: passionate about it. That's a great question, you know, I
Speaker 1: think because this is a local scene, right that that
Speaker 1: I'm writing about, Like there's a way to be famous
Speaker 1: in Atlanta specifically, where you're only famous in your city,
Speaker 1: right I can. And there are there a handful of
Speaker 1: artists at any given moment who if you went to
Speaker 1: the mall there down on the West End, like that's
Speaker 1: a celebrity, you know what I mean, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a that's a hero that's getting played out of cars
Speaker 1: in the parking lot. And yet there's no even in
Speaker 1: the Spotify era, even in the YouTube ere, there's no
Speaker 1: sort of permeation outward. Uh. And I think I think
Speaker 1: that exists in in most American cities. I think like
Speaker 1: there are still subcultures there, especially in music. There are
Speaker 1: still local scenes. There are you know, hometown heroes. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that draws me so
Speaker 1: much to to wrap. I don't know, you know, if
Speaker 1: the same thing happens in rock, right, I don't know
Speaker 1: really definitely there. I I agree with you. I think
Speaker 1: you know, as much as we used to say, like
Speaker 1: you could find a punk scene, you know, in any
Speaker 1: any metropolitan area or even a small town. I think
Speaker 1: they're fewer and further between now. But I think rap
Speaker 1: works in that local and I think you do a
Speaker 1: very good job of depicting that. Let's talk about you specifically.
Speaker 1: This year you were beat. You wrote a book about Atlanta.
Speaker 1: But Atlanta is not the only epicenter of hip hop,
Speaker 1: if it might be the most prominent at this point,
Speaker 1: To what degree do you listen to the mix tapes
Speaker 1: of hip hop artists in New York l A never mind? Before?
Speaker 1: Do you keep up on all these people or go on?
Speaker 1: I keep up less than I used to write. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm getting I'm getting old, right, this was I'm I
Speaker 1: grew up file sharing, right. I grew up on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I was downloading music on Napster when I was you know,
Speaker 1: ten eleven years old. I'm the problem, you know. But
Speaker 1: I also was an obsessive fan. I was discovering music
Speaker 1: on message boards. I was, you know, on every social
Speaker 1: network that that that that was growing. Um And and
Speaker 1: I prided myself on keeping up right on knowing what
Speaker 1: was hot, on knowing what was going to be big
Speaker 1: before it was big. And that's you know, part of
Speaker 1: the reason I end up getting the job that I
Speaker 1: did is because I was honing those skills as a
Speaker 1: as a fan first, um and then you know, you
Speaker 1: learned about the industry, you read, you you develop an
Speaker 1: ear um and that's really helped me on my beat.
Speaker 1: But look, I mean I had a book to write,
Speaker 1: you know, I I have I have a dog, I
Speaker 1: have a life like I'm not spending as much time
Speaker 1: sort of um trawling the internet for obscure regional artists
Speaker 1: as I used to. But I think I keep up
Speaker 1: more than people. Okay, let me ask the question a
Speaker 1: different way. Prior to the Internet, anybody in the music
Speaker 1: business knew every record on the chart. We may not
Speaker 1: have literally heard it, but they know about it. Whatever
Speaker 1: anybody today says, they especially the album start. Anybody who
Speaker 1: says they know every album, they're just lying. Nobody does.
Speaker 1: There's always stuff there you don't know. John Parrellis knows. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll leave it to that, but not only don't debate
Speaker 1: this issue right now, I continue. So when I look
Speaker 1: at hip hop, is it the same thing that really
Speaker 1: they're different people in different things. Or is there a cadre,
Speaker 1: whether small or large, who literally have their finger on
Speaker 1: the pulse in the nation about hip hop? Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I listen to all the mixtapes. Does that even exist? Look?
Speaker 1: There are a few people you know that I could
Speaker 1: point to online who are younger and better than me,
Speaker 1: who I read, who I feel like, you know, they
Speaker 1: they really really really, you know, have their eye on things. Um.
Speaker 1: You know Alphonse, that Pitchfork you know, writes a weekly
Speaker 1: rap column. I'm continually continually blown away by his ability
Speaker 1: to keep up right, his ability to to find these
Speaker 1: these scenes, whether it's you know, Jersey Club or you
Speaker 1: know these Flint guys or you know San Jose and
Speaker 1: go down that rabbit hole. You know, there's wrap websites,
Speaker 1: you know, something like Passion of the Weiss where you
Speaker 1: know there's a new young, first time freelancer every week
Speaker 1: who's uncovering, Uh, you know a scene I've never heard of. Um,
Speaker 1: But I think even those people have to pick their
Speaker 1: spots right. You know what you like? You follow, you
Speaker 1: follow a rabbit hole, uh in in a direction it
Speaker 1: leads you, you know to maybe various scenes that are
Speaker 1: in dialogue with with the one you're into. Um. But
Speaker 1: I don't think there are completest. I think there's just
Speaker 1: too much music, right. And there's the thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: about rap is that in some of these these streaming sites,
Speaker 1: some like SoundCloud, like it's affecting the aesthetic right there
Speaker 1: there artists that flocked to specific places that have a
Speaker 1: specific sound, right, and that sound is only growing in
Speaker 1: this one ecosystem. Um. And and you know that's that's
Speaker 1: now regenerated. A couple of times we had what was
Speaker 1: referred to as SoundCloud rap in is not the same
Speaker 1: thing we we we talk about now when when you
Speaker 1: say SoundCloud rap um. But but you know, the idea
Speaker 1: of a completest, it's it's it's just not I just
Speaker 1: it's just not possible right with the with the amount
Speaker 1: of stuff coming out, Okay for the uninitiated to find
Speaker 1: the difference in status between Atlanta and New York and
Speaker 1: l a rap or any other scene that I might
Speaker 1: have overlooked. So New York right has come back around.
Speaker 1: Actually New York is the birthplace of hip hop, you
Speaker 1: know very much the initial arbiter of you know, authenticity,
Speaker 1: of lyricism, of of beat making. Uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: the legacy is here. Um and and then for the past,
Speaker 1: you know, two and a half three decades, it's been
Speaker 1: what happened to New York rap? Who's the next savior
Speaker 1: of New York rap? Right? You you had a moment,
Speaker 1: you know you you you had a moment with pop
Speaker 1: smoke um and the and the Brooklyn drill stuff. And actually,
Speaker 1: you know, the drill rap coming out of New York
Speaker 1: now is very much at the center of things. Right,
Speaker 1: Even even kids in the deepest undergrounds in Atlanta are
Speaker 1: now making songs that sound like New York drill. But
Speaker 1: of course New York drill comes from Chicago, comes from London. Right,
Speaker 1: This is a sound that traveled all around the world
Speaker 1: before New York sort of took it back and put
Speaker 1: their own spin on it. Um l A obviously vibrant
Speaker 1: through all time, h through through the history of hip
Speaker 1: hop New York versus l A. The sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the traditional rivalry of of nineties rap, you know, or
Speaker 1: you do you like Biggie, do like tupac Um you know,
Speaker 1: a huge renaissance UM in in recent years. You think
Speaker 1: of someone like Kendrick Lamar, one of you know, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest stars of our era, UM and and
Speaker 1: a ton of people under him. You know, someone someone
Speaker 1: like Draco the Ruler really was putting l A on
Speaker 1: the map again before before he was killed a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. UM. The thing that's amazing now is
Speaker 1: that it's not just Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Detroit, the
Speaker 1: Bay Area, right, Memphis, the sort of traditional hip hop
Speaker 1: strongholds like you have scenes in tiny towns in Florida.
Speaker 1: You have you know, scenes in North Carolina place it
Speaker 1: was notoriously uh barren with of of stars. Um. You know, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: you can find a hip hop see like the proliferation
Speaker 1: of regional hip hop right now and places doing original, amazing,
Speaker 1: extremely distinct things. Milwaukee, you know, places that have never
Speaker 1: traditionally been in the conversation are now as vibrant as
Speaker 1: anywhere else. I think the reason you continue to hear
Speaker 1: about New York, l A, Atlanta, to a lesser extent, Chicago,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, New Orleans, Memphis is that there's an
Speaker 1: infrastructure there, right, and that's that's The other thing that
Speaker 1: you know, the book really tries to. The argument I
Speaker 1: tried to make in the book is that the explosion
Speaker 1: of Atlanta and the streaming era was really prepared for
Speaker 1: in the nineties, right when places when labels like l
Speaker 1: A La Face Ela reads l face maybe face so
Speaker 1: so Deaf Germaine dupre outcasts and the Dungeon family, you know,
Speaker 1: when they were opening studios, they were bringing the record
Speaker 1: business to them, and that lays the groundwork right for
Speaker 1: for there to be places for these kids to go
Speaker 1: to to record music and and make videos and meet executives.
Speaker 1: And it's still not in New York or l A,
Speaker 1: where the where the majors are based. But compared to
Speaker 1: a lot of these smaller regional scenes which you know
Speaker 1: don't end up breaking through on a national level unless
Speaker 1: you're really paying attention. A lot of that is because
Speaker 1: because of the physical infrastructure, right, whether it's venues, studios, clubs,
Speaker 1: strip clubs. As we discussed. Um, So I think there's
Speaker 1: music coming out of all out of all of these
Speaker 1: all of these towns, all these these little crevices, um,
Speaker 1: but not all of it is reaching the radio. Okay,
Speaker 1: used to Peo, we have a new scene prior to
Speaker 1: the Internet every three to five years. So have we
Speaker 1: run even though everyone's making music. Ah, we're running out
Speaker 1: of the highway on hip hop and something else will
Speaker 1: come in? Or is there really so much innovation there's
Speaker 1: mills to go. I think people have been you know,
Speaker 1: uh predicting the end of hip hop's reign for twenty
Speaker 1: five years now, right, but it's always almost about to end. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think we've seen the slow, sad
Speaker 1: death of rock, right, Like I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but like it's just so hard for me
Speaker 1: to imagine us like guys capturing chart topping rock band
Speaker 1: that's for white guys playing analog instruments. Uh, you know.
Speaker 1: So look, it had a good run. I think I
Speaker 1: bop has proven to be more adaptable, um, at least
Speaker 1: in recent years. Uh. You know. I think when you
Speaker 1: think of people who are succeeding in pop or or
Speaker 1: rock or whatever, they're often drawing from a rap tool
Speaker 1: kit right there. They're borrowing, whether it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: trap high hats and drums or the release schedule. Right,
Speaker 1: the sort of more is more than Morgan Wallans of
Speaker 1: the World putting out thirty track deluxe albums that that
Speaker 1: comes from rap music, you know what I mean? Uh,
Speaker 1: not to mention his his his sound in places, um So,
Speaker 1: I think you know it's been it's been picked over
Speaker 1: for parts. Um. But it's extremely, extremely resilient. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of that is is about where
Speaker 1: it comes from, right, Like it comes from people who
Speaker 1: are struggling. Right. The basis of hip hop is is
Speaker 1: in economic despair, right Uh. And and it comes from
Speaker 1: necessity and in a lot of places and and in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases. Um So I think like you
Speaker 1: can never you can never count it out because it's
Speaker 1: always it's always regenerating because people need it. So how
Speaker 1: did you get your job at the New York Times?
Speaker 1: You know, I started out writing about music when I
Speaker 1: was a teenager because it was the thing I knew about, right. So,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people default to music writing
Speaker 1: when they when they first start because it's the thing
Speaker 1: that they're into the most. Um. You feel like you
Speaker 1: have some ownership and expertise um over it. But I
Speaker 1: very quickly realized I didn't want to be a critic
Speaker 1: um and that you know, I grew up in the
Speaker 1: sort of blog Era and P three blogs, Pitchfork, you know,
Speaker 1: the proliferation of music criticism online. And I was like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: Like this seems unforgiving, right, Like all these people are
Speaker 1: writing so many words all the time with you know,
Speaker 1: very little return. Um. All the magazines that I grew
Speaker 1: up with were dying um as as they still are UM.
Speaker 1: And I very quickly decided, you know, I should learn
Speaker 1: if I'm going to write, I should learn how to
Speaker 1: report um. I should learn a practical skill within this.
Speaker 1: I'm not a critic um, even though I have a
Speaker 1: lot of a opinions. Uh So I stopped writing about music.
Speaker 1: Basically I learned how to report um. I was a blogger.
Speaker 1: I was a news blogger for many years. I worked
Speaker 1: at the Village Voice. I worked in York. It was
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. You left Florida, you went to
Speaker 1: college where sure, I moved to New York. I went
Speaker 1: to n Y U to what to greeted in while you,
Speaker 1: uh push you forward in your career, it was four
Speaker 1: years you would just go to college? Oh no, I
Speaker 1: mean I always tell people like I would not have
Speaker 1: the job that I have, especially when I got it.
Speaker 1: You know, was still in my twenties. I would not
Speaker 1: have that opportunity without having got the head start of
Speaker 1: living in New York beginning when I was eighteen. You know,
Speaker 1: I A lot of people moved to New York to
Speaker 1: try to make it in whatever field after college, and
Speaker 1: I was here first. So for me, n y U
Speaker 1: was a very very very expensive path to living in
Speaker 1: the city and having internships. And you know, I took
Speaker 1: on a lot of student loans and you know, fortunate
Speaker 1: enough that my my parents could help me out. UM.
Speaker 1: But I was. I was working from right when I
Speaker 1: got here, right, I was writing for free magazines around
Speaker 1: the city, UM, websites earlier. Some of the earliest music
Speaker 1: reporting I did was for an Australian website that doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore. UM or for tiny mixtapes for free. You know,
Speaker 1: I was. I had a blog spot, UM, I had
Speaker 1: a tumbler. I was just trying to practice basically, UM.
Speaker 1: And and as I was finishing school is when I decided,
Speaker 1: you know, music writing seems like a very very very
Speaker 1: unforgiving space. And that's when I branched out. Did you
Speaker 1: study journalism at n y U? I did. I studied
Speaker 1: journalism undergrad although I did like a media criticism track.
Speaker 1: So I was more reading a door now than I
Speaker 1: was out on the street like beat reporting. Okay, and
Speaker 1: it was at the end of your education or did
Speaker 1: you get a master's or anything. No, that was the
Speaker 1: end of my education. I was, you know, as I said,
Speaker 1: I was working throughout all of undergrad as much as
Speaker 1: I could. I was starting to get paid here and
Speaker 1: there for freelancing online mostly um. And you know, if
Speaker 1: I've figured I would learn more and not rack up
Speaker 1: any more student debt just doing it as opposed to
Speaker 1: go into grad school. So you graduate from n hyle
Speaker 1: U in the next step is graduated into her session. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, was not a great time to to try
Speaker 1: to be in journalism. Uh. You know, this was this
Speaker 1: was the dark days, especially for for print media US.
Speaker 1: The Internet was taking over and they hadn't really figured
Speaker 1: out what to do yet. But I was really good
Speaker 1: at being online. I could, you know, write fast, I
Speaker 1: could spot trends. I knew what was you know, going
Speaker 1: to go whatever proto viral um I And I really
Speaker 1: marketed myself as a sort of ex generation uh internet journalists.
Speaker 1: You know, I could get on Facebook and find somebody
Speaker 1: you know, both quicker than you know a reporter who
Speaker 1: was not native to those spaces. Um and so you
Speaker 1: I tried to really use that right. And it was
Speaker 1: also a real time of like democratization among writers, right
Speaker 1: like Twitter was starting. I was on Twitter very early,
Speaker 1: um tumbler, like I said, blog spot, this is a
Speaker 1: way for me to like interface with writers who I admired,
Speaker 1: uh in a in a pretty direct way, right Like
Speaker 1: you could reblog them, you could retweet them, you could
Speaker 1: add commentary, you could chime in, you know. So I
Speaker 1: was I was annoying. I was like I was in
Speaker 1: the face of people who I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: looked up to or whose careers I wanted um and
Speaker 1: and yeah it was it was. It was like a
Speaker 1: much more innocent time I think online Um, the pool
Speaker 1: felt smaller. UM. So I made some headway that way. UM.
Speaker 1: And then, like I said, I became a blogger. Right
Speaker 1: people needed content for their websites. So I was writing
Speaker 1: eight ten posts a day um for the Village Voice,
Speaker 1: first on the weekends while I had a day job. UM.
Speaker 1: Then then as a full time news blogger, um, you know,
Speaker 1: offering metro stories. What was your day job. I worked
Speaker 1: at Life dot com. So Life dot Com was a
Speaker 1: partnership with Getty Images. It was what remained of Life magazine.
Speaker 1: And I ran the homepage photo carousel. So I would,
Speaker 1: you know, with the help of an editor, pick seven
Speaker 1: to ten photos that represented the news of the day,
Speaker 1: something from the archives for an anniversary, something from a war,
Speaker 1: tragedy abroad, something more lighthearted, and then I would write
Speaker 1: a you know, two word caption for it. Um. So
Speaker 1: I was running the homepage of Life dot com, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody an I don't know if
Speaker 1: anybody was visiting Life dot com. But we were updating
Speaker 1: the homepage every day, um and then and then on
Speaker 1: the weekends, I was Saturday and Sunday. I had control
Speaker 1: of the Village Voice website for whatever reason, because they
Speaker 1: needed content, you know, they needed traffic. So um, that's
Speaker 1: when I started. You know, I wrote a little bit
Speaker 1: about media. I wrote about politics, I wrote about crime,
Speaker 1: metro stories, um, pop culture. Sometimes they would give me
Speaker 1: the keys to the music blog as well. UM, so
Speaker 1: I would keep up with that a little bit. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah, I was just writing a lot. I was
Speaker 1: learning how to how to write quickly, how to write cleanly,
Speaker 1: how to pick up the phone sometimes, how to make
Speaker 1: a little joke, you know. You know, uh, aggregation was
Speaker 1: less dry back then. It was about sort of like
Speaker 1: adding voice. Um. So I was trying to develop developed
Speaker 1: that way. Um and I just got a lot of
Speaker 1: reps in. You know. I was just I was meeting people,
Speaker 1: I was making waves when I could. I was making
Speaker 1: fun of the New York Times for not printing curse
Speaker 1: words from the Village Voice website. You know, just just
Speaker 1: just being pesky, um and working my way up from there. Um.
Speaker 1: So after the Voice, I did this a similar thing
Speaker 1: in New York Magazine. I worked for their Daily Intelligence
Speaker 1: or blog, uh as a news blogger. You know, school shootings, terrorists, attacks,
Speaker 1: covered Benghazi, you know, covered media, covered the New York Times,
Speaker 1: covered Conde nas covered internet culture, just a real grab
Speaker 1: bag of stuff. And I wasn't doing a ton of
Speaker 1: culture reporting. But I always had my eye on that.
Speaker 1: And when I first started contributing here and there for
Speaker 1: the magazine, Um, I would you know, I did a
Speaker 1: piece about Angie Martinez, a New York radio figure. You know,
Speaker 1: I had I still had sort of one eye on
Speaker 1: music and culture because I knew that was my main interest,
Speaker 1: even though I was on the news side of things. UM.
Speaker 1: But I think that ultimately being functional in both worlds
Speaker 1: is what allowed me to get my job at the Times. Right,
Speaker 1: because when when The Times is looking for a music reporter,
Speaker 1: they're looking for a reporter first and foremost. Right. Anybody
Speaker 1: has can have an opinion about music. Um. We have
Speaker 1: no shortage of music critics online, amateur and professional. UM.
Speaker 1: But I think the fact that I knew how to
Speaker 1: do a public record search. I knew how to pick
Speaker 1: up the phone. I knew how to like get on
Speaker 1: the street and and and interview someone, how to track
Speaker 1: someone down, um, how to how to cover breaking news.
Speaker 1: All of that really came into play. So a lot
Speaker 1: of your working career was not actually music focused. You've
Speaker 1: done this, You've written this book. There are people like
Speaker 1: John Perellis who've continue to do with their whole lives
Speaker 1: and at the Times, what do you see going forward
Speaker 1: and what would you dream would go forward. I've gone
Speaker 1: back on fourth on this a lot because I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, December will be eight years for me on
Speaker 1: the music beat at the Times. On one hand, I
Speaker 1: saw the book as potentially like a capstone to my
Speaker 1: time on the beat. You know, I think I could
Speaker 1: cover other things. I could write about other other stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many more Grammy Awards I have
Speaker 1: in me. I don't know how many more rock star
Speaker 1: obituaries or Beyonce album cycles. You know, there's something about
Speaker 1: the music world that you know, as you well know,
Speaker 1: it's very cyclical, uh, covering the same thing every every
Speaker 1: every year, every few years. Um So part of me
Speaker 1: saw the book as like a capstone project um to
Speaker 1: my time on the beat, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: like I feel like I'm I know the music world
Speaker 1: better than I have. You know, the thing about about
Speaker 1: being a beat reporter is you you accrue knowledge. You
Speaker 1: you gain sources, You get how things work, you can
Speaker 1: see things before they happen, you know the patterns. Um. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's all up in the air. Um.
Speaker 1: I love the team that I work with, U Karen
Speaker 1: Gans the music editor John Perellis who we've mentioned chief
Speaker 1: pop critic John Karamonica, you know, uh, the other pop
Speaker 1: critic has been a huge mentor friends, champion of me
Speaker 1: since I was very young, helped to bring me in
Speaker 1: here at the Times Ben's serio covers the music business
Speaker 1: for us came it came over from the business section
Speaker 1: works with us in arts. Now. UM, we have a
Speaker 1: very very very tight and I think, you know, pretty
Speaker 1: thorough team for for how few of us there are. UM.
Speaker 1: And I love working with them on a day to
Speaker 1: day basis. UM. But the short answer is, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think you know. Times likes for
Speaker 1: their reporters to move around, but they also like for
Speaker 1: you to have expertise. So I've I've gained some expertise
Speaker 1: on this beat. Uh. And I don't know how much
Speaker 1: longer I'm going to use it, but hopefully hopefully a
Speaker 1: little while longer at least. Okay, the New York Times itself, Hey,
Speaker 1: you have the vilification denigration from the right of the
Speaker 1: New York Times become a pejorative. Ironically, they use the
Speaker 1: New York Times for all their factual news. Okay. You know,
Speaker 1: if you can tune in, Fox are always saying getting
Speaker 1: all the new they don't do any reporting. They get
Speaker 1: it from the New York Times. So at one level,
Speaker 1: the New York Times it's fact. You know, New York
Speaker 1: Times sets the agenda for America. Brings up the issues.
Speaker 1: But there's the issue of the right wing backlash, and
Speaker 1: there's also concommitantly a smaller footprint. Used to be if
Speaker 1: The New York Times weighed in on something like hip
Speaker 1: hop music, everybody interested in that would read that article.
Speaker 1: And it's not only the New York Times. You know,
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles it's even worse. It was in the
Speaker 1: l A Times everybody. So now people in l A.
Speaker 1: Most people don't see it. So what is your experience
Speaker 1: working for The New York Times said it opens doors
Speaker 1: in Atlanta is generally a good thing or a bad thing.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel writing articles in terms of
Speaker 1: their impact? You feel like you have a big footprint.
Speaker 1: You wish you had a larger footprint. What's going on
Speaker 1: all there? I still think the platform is unparalleled, right,
Speaker 1: it's still the New York Times. Even people who don't
Speaker 1: read The New York Times know what the New York
Speaker 1: Times is. They respect it. You know, there are people
Speaker 1: in Atlanta who only know me as the New York Times.
Speaker 1: You know it's New York Times this year, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think as far as a brand name, like it's
Speaker 1: just in the news business, like it doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's a few other places at this level. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, do I wish more people saw some of
Speaker 1: my stories, especially my more obscure culture stories, my non
Speaker 1: Beyonce Taylor Swift coverage. Sure, but I think we can
Speaker 1: still move the needle. And I think, you know, one
Speaker 1: thing I really love about our team is that we
Speaker 1: don't just cover the big stuff. Really do follow stories, news, passions, subculture.
Speaker 1: We break artists. We often do first interviews that people
Speaker 1: have ever done. You know. Uh, I wrote a big
Speaker 1: feature about a you know, a young woman named Ethel Caine.
Speaker 1: Recently she you know, was living in small town Alabama
Speaker 1: putting out her first album. You know, people came up
Speaker 1: to me at the show and said, I learned about
Speaker 1: this from the New York Times. You know. Like that,
Speaker 1: I think I think we can still have that impact.
Speaker 1: We just have to pick our spots because we have
Speaker 1: such a small staff. Um, you know, especially in music,
Speaker 1: there's so much happening at all times. We can't cover everything.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, and and this goes for the
Speaker 1: paper in general. But I think like we often make
Speaker 1: as much of a point in what we don't cover
Speaker 1: as as in what we do. Um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's an expert driven section, you know, very critic heavy,
Speaker 1: the art section, movie critics, art critics, classical critics, pop
Speaker 1: critics like I think, you know, we're still hopefully top
Speaker 1: of the heap, uh in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 1: and can set the agenda. You know, you think of
Speaker 1: something like Broadway. Obviously not not a lot of people
Speaker 1: setting that agenda more than the Times. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I think our our our culture covers coverage
Speaker 1: is strong across the board. Um. But look, of course,
Speaker 1: like the fragmentation of of media has has affected us all.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you you put into Google any
Speaker 1: topic of the day that you're going to find dozens
Speaker 1: and dozens and dozens of seo garbage. UM, but I
Speaker 1: think you'll probably still most of the time find the
Speaker 1: best or the definitive or even the first story uh
Speaker 1: from us. Okay, we've been talking to where I've been
Speaker 1: talking to Joe Coscarelli has a new book, Rap Capital
Speaker 1: and at Lanta story. Even if you think you're not
Speaker 1: interested in hip hop or don't know anything, it is
Speaker 1: very insightful in terms of what is the genesis of
Speaker 1: this music? The people were making it, the people who
Speaker 1: are marketing it. So thanks for taking the time to
Speaker 1: talk to me in my audience here, Joe. It's been great.
Speaker 1: I really really really appreciate it. Uh. You know, you
Speaker 1: gave the book such a close read and and in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, you're my ideal reader. I didn't
Speaker 1: want this to be a book for rapp aficionados, for
Speaker 1: super fans, you know. I wanted I wanted to explain
Speaker 1: this culture in a human way, uh in in a
Speaker 1: way that sort of transcended people who would think they
Speaker 1: would read a book about rapping. Six So, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for for your time. Well you certainly succeeded.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Sex