Post by Adam B on Feb 16, 2007 8:58:15 GMT -5
Changing The Culture of Hip-Hop
By Charles Walsh
February 16th, 2007
Direct Link: www.connpost.com/ci_5237435?source=rss
If there is any truth in the title of the recent top-selling rap CD "Hip Hop is Dead," Uncut and Mongo Maddness are having no part of it. The two determined Bridgeport rap artists/producers operate Deviouz Dollarz, a recording label that "drops" ("produces" to non-hip-hoppers) rap CDs on a regular basis.
During a recent visit to The Deviouz Dollarz recording studio, it seemed that between them, Uncut (real name Eddy Chappell) and Mongo (John Shuler) have enough energy to keep the rap industry chugging ahead.
To underscore the point that hip-hop is alive and kicking, they whip out a stack of CDs they have produced since they took over the label a couple of years ago — including their freshly minted mix tape CDs, "Free Mongo II" and "My Time To Shine." The shiny little discs represent months of work.
A mix tape, or mix CD, is a compilation of raps by various artists that is put together by a producer — in this case Mongo, 36 — using "beats" taken from commercially released CDs and other sources.
Mix tapes are intended to promote the artist on the disc, so they are distributed free. For their mix tape CDs, Uncut and Mongo drew on the services of several local rappers, including their own children.
No sign of approaching hip-hop morbidity was apparent during that recent studio visit, as Uncut put the finishing touches on those latest mix tape CDs.
The studio, consisting of two-and-a-half carpeted rooms in a nondescript one-story building in a desolate industrial area on Bridgeport's East Side, is comfortable enough that Uncut often crashes there on a battered white leather couch when the recording sessions run late. The studio is just a couple of blocks from where a friend and fellow rap producer, Donnique Edwards, was found murdered last year in his combination hair salon/recording studio.
Uncut has learned to live with — or at least ignore — rap's violent side. He knows that be it in Los Angeles or Bridgeport, rivalries can be dangerous. A relatively minor affront can bring trouble.
"You can't worry about that," Uncut says. "I spent my whole life worrying about that kind of stuff. I decided a long time ago that I'm just going to do what I do and let the chips fall." On this afternoon, Mongo, a large man with a head of tightly woven cornrows, who recently completed a six-month sentence for marijuana possession (thus the "Free Mongo" CD title), leans against a table, listening. Uncut fidgets purposefully with an imposing array of electronic gadgetry, the most recognizable of which is a seriously black Dell computer. Another partner in the label, Grouch Sparkz, is traveling to promote the new CDs.
As Mongo, who has the demeanor and size of a Buddha, works, Uncut muses dreamily about his life as a rapper.
"I don't know how long I'll be doing this," he says, "but a while back I said, 'From now on I'm going to do what pleases me, and what pleases me is making rap CDs.' "
At 39, Uncut is fairly ancient for a rapper, but he has no desire to return to his previous career as an accountant.
"Knowing numbers helps me do the books for the studio, though," he says.
What was pleasing Uncut at that moment was polishing up the final tracks on a soon-to-be-released commercial CD, tentatively entitled "Dead Or In Jail." That title pretty much sums up his rather fatalistic view of what awaits inner-city kids who choose to "play the drugs and guns game."
"The lyrics are based on what I've seen and learned growing up in Bridgeport." he says.
And much of those lyrics are written in the hard, staccato language of the streets. No punches are pulled. No curses avoided. Deviouz Dollarz CDs are not for kids.
Uncut, in black jeans and a T-shirt with a large picture of a $100 bill on the front, wears a set of bulbous headphones that make talking to him hit or miss. When he wiggles the computer's mouse, red and green and yellow lines jump back and forth on the computer screen. Each wiggle causes a corresponding, digitized line of rap music to come from somewhere in the control room.
When a visitor inquires, Uncut pulls off the headphones to demonstrate how he creates a rap "beat" — that heavily syncopated rhythm throbbing under all rap. He fingers a drum machine, a flat pad hardly bigger than his hand.
Each tap yields a realistic drum sound. Different taps on different areas of the machine produce varying sounds from a gentle thump to a piercing whack, to something that sounds like a bomb going off.
Before long he has recorded the drum "kick," a short rhythm line that is repeated digitally to make a smooth, if not entirely real, beat. Once the drums are set, a backing clip of an existing song can be added.
"You ready?" Uncut says, in the microphone suspended from the computer screen.
"Yeah," comes a sweet female voice seemingly from nowhere. "Let's go."
The voice is Uncut's 12-year-old daughter — rap name: Ann C. Honey, real name Monique Chappell — who is one half of a rap duo called The Young & The Restless. Her dad is the other half. Ann C. Honey is really just a few feet away in the recording studio, standing before an imposing boom microphone. She's gotten out of her eighth-grade class early to record a few new verses with her dad for their upcoming CD. The as-yet-untitled disc deals in part with the loving, but sometimes strained relationship between a father and daughter.
Ann C. Honey is no rap neophyte. Uncut says she's been doing it since she was 3 years old.
Uncut makes her do the same phrase over and over, each time making subtle changes in the mix. To the untuned ear, they all sound alike.
Satisfied with the phrase at last, Uncut pulls off his headphones to talk about his early years as a rapper.
"I started rapping seriously when I was 9," Uncut says. "I started in my bedroom using a kid's record player. I wired in an old telephone for the microphone." He added a VCR to combine his voice with his homemade beat.
"Back then there was no one around to tell you how to do stuff. You had to figure it out for yourself."
These days, having been fired from a job with a health insurance company for distributing copies of a mix tape CD to his co-workers, when he is not on the road promoting his CDs, he's in the control room endlessly wiggling the mouse and fidgeting with the dials, merging his beats, sampled musical themes and the rap lyrics into a seamless flow. It's when the merging is going really well that he tumbles exhausted into that battered white couch.
When the 16 tracks of "Dead or in Jail" are finally released for sale, it will be the culmination of what Uncut says has been 19 years of MC-ing rap shows, and writing and recording rap music. While he says he can whip out a rap lyric in as little as half an hour, Uncut says the final product can take up to a year to finish.
Uncut is traveling through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida promoting the new mix tape CDs. Even though Deviouz Dollarz fiercely promotes to the Connecticut scene, Uncut knows that to make it really big he's got to get his rap head in New York City. That's where the major rap labels are, all within a six-block area around 51st street and 8th Avenue.
"If you are a rapper from Connecticut, you've got to break into the New York or Boston scene," says Adam Bernard, who hosts a weekly rap show on WVOF-FM at Fairfield University. "You want to rock some New York stages like The Knitting Factory or The Bowery Poetry Club in New York. But it's hard."
No one knows that better than Uncut and Mongo. While they constantly play club dates in Connecticut, Massachusetts and other states, cracking the New York rap scene has so far eluded them. They're not giving up, though. To maximize their power they have created a kind of rapper cooperative called "The Northern Alliance" that is intended to give greater exposure to non-New York rap groups.
"We're organizing the rappers in New England and even in Canada," Mongo says.
All of Deviouz Dollarz CDs are available on their Web site: www.deviouz-dollarz.com.
By Charles Walsh
February 16th, 2007
Direct Link: www.connpost.com/ci_5237435?source=rss
If there is any truth in the title of the recent top-selling rap CD "Hip Hop is Dead," Uncut and Mongo Maddness are having no part of it. The two determined Bridgeport rap artists/producers operate Deviouz Dollarz, a recording label that "drops" ("produces" to non-hip-hoppers) rap CDs on a regular basis.
During a recent visit to The Deviouz Dollarz recording studio, it seemed that between them, Uncut (real name Eddy Chappell) and Mongo (John Shuler) have enough energy to keep the rap industry chugging ahead.
To underscore the point that hip-hop is alive and kicking, they whip out a stack of CDs they have produced since they took over the label a couple of years ago — including their freshly minted mix tape CDs, "Free Mongo II" and "My Time To Shine." The shiny little discs represent months of work.
A mix tape, or mix CD, is a compilation of raps by various artists that is put together by a producer — in this case Mongo, 36 — using "beats" taken from commercially released CDs and other sources.
Mix tapes are intended to promote the artist on the disc, so they are distributed free. For their mix tape CDs, Uncut and Mongo drew on the services of several local rappers, including their own children.
No sign of approaching hip-hop morbidity was apparent during that recent studio visit, as Uncut put the finishing touches on those latest mix tape CDs.
The studio, consisting of two-and-a-half carpeted rooms in a nondescript one-story building in a desolate industrial area on Bridgeport's East Side, is comfortable enough that Uncut often crashes there on a battered white leather couch when the recording sessions run late. The studio is just a couple of blocks from where a friend and fellow rap producer, Donnique Edwards, was found murdered last year in his combination hair salon/recording studio.
Uncut has learned to live with — or at least ignore — rap's violent side. He knows that be it in Los Angeles or Bridgeport, rivalries can be dangerous. A relatively minor affront can bring trouble.
"You can't worry about that," Uncut says. "I spent my whole life worrying about that kind of stuff. I decided a long time ago that I'm just going to do what I do and let the chips fall." On this afternoon, Mongo, a large man with a head of tightly woven cornrows, who recently completed a six-month sentence for marijuana possession (thus the "Free Mongo" CD title), leans against a table, listening. Uncut fidgets purposefully with an imposing array of electronic gadgetry, the most recognizable of which is a seriously black Dell computer. Another partner in the label, Grouch Sparkz, is traveling to promote the new CDs.
As Mongo, who has the demeanor and size of a Buddha, works, Uncut muses dreamily about his life as a rapper.
"I don't know how long I'll be doing this," he says, "but a while back I said, 'From now on I'm going to do what pleases me, and what pleases me is making rap CDs.' "
At 39, Uncut is fairly ancient for a rapper, but he has no desire to return to his previous career as an accountant.
"Knowing numbers helps me do the books for the studio, though," he says.
What was pleasing Uncut at that moment was polishing up the final tracks on a soon-to-be-released commercial CD, tentatively entitled "Dead Or In Jail." That title pretty much sums up his rather fatalistic view of what awaits inner-city kids who choose to "play the drugs and guns game."
"The lyrics are based on what I've seen and learned growing up in Bridgeport." he says.
And much of those lyrics are written in the hard, staccato language of the streets. No punches are pulled. No curses avoided. Deviouz Dollarz CDs are not for kids.
Uncut, in black jeans and a T-shirt with a large picture of a $100 bill on the front, wears a set of bulbous headphones that make talking to him hit or miss. When he wiggles the computer's mouse, red and green and yellow lines jump back and forth on the computer screen. Each wiggle causes a corresponding, digitized line of rap music to come from somewhere in the control room.
When a visitor inquires, Uncut pulls off the headphones to demonstrate how he creates a rap "beat" — that heavily syncopated rhythm throbbing under all rap. He fingers a drum machine, a flat pad hardly bigger than his hand.
Each tap yields a realistic drum sound. Different taps on different areas of the machine produce varying sounds from a gentle thump to a piercing whack, to something that sounds like a bomb going off.
Before long he has recorded the drum "kick," a short rhythm line that is repeated digitally to make a smooth, if not entirely real, beat. Once the drums are set, a backing clip of an existing song can be added.
"You ready?" Uncut says, in the microphone suspended from the computer screen.
"Yeah," comes a sweet female voice seemingly from nowhere. "Let's go."
The voice is Uncut's 12-year-old daughter — rap name: Ann C. Honey, real name Monique Chappell — who is one half of a rap duo called The Young & The Restless. Her dad is the other half. Ann C. Honey is really just a few feet away in the recording studio, standing before an imposing boom microphone. She's gotten out of her eighth-grade class early to record a few new verses with her dad for their upcoming CD. The as-yet-untitled disc deals in part with the loving, but sometimes strained relationship between a father and daughter.
Ann C. Honey is no rap neophyte. Uncut says she's been doing it since she was 3 years old.
Uncut makes her do the same phrase over and over, each time making subtle changes in the mix. To the untuned ear, they all sound alike.
Satisfied with the phrase at last, Uncut pulls off his headphones to talk about his early years as a rapper.
"I started rapping seriously when I was 9," Uncut says. "I started in my bedroom using a kid's record player. I wired in an old telephone for the microphone." He added a VCR to combine his voice with his homemade beat.
"Back then there was no one around to tell you how to do stuff. You had to figure it out for yourself."
These days, having been fired from a job with a health insurance company for distributing copies of a mix tape CD to his co-workers, when he is not on the road promoting his CDs, he's in the control room endlessly wiggling the mouse and fidgeting with the dials, merging his beats, sampled musical themes and the rap lyrics into a seamless flow. It's when the merging is going really well that he tumbles exhausted into that battered white couch.
When the 16 tracks of "Dead or in Jail" are finally released for sale, it will be the culmination of what Uncut says has been 19 years of MC-ing rap shows, and writing and recording rap music. While he says he can whip out a rap lyric in as little as half an hour, Uncut says the final product can take up to a year to finish.
Uncut is traveling through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida promoting the new mix tape CDs. Even though Deviouz Dollarz fiercely promotes to the Connecticut scene, Uncut knows that to make it really big he's got to get his rap head in New York City. That's where the major rap labels are, all within a six-block area around 51st street and 8th Avenue.
"If you are a rapper from Connecticut, you've got to break into the New York or Boston scene," says Adam Bernard, who hosts a weekly rap show on WVOF-FM at Fairfield University. "You want to rock some New York stages like The Knitting Factory or The Bowery Poetry Club in New York. But it's hard."
No one knows that better than Uncut and Mongo. While they constantly play club dates in Connecticut, Massachusetts and other states, cracking the New York rap scene has so far eluded them. They're not giving up, though. To maximize their power they have created a kind of rapper cooperative called "The Northern Alliance" that is intended to give greater exposure to non-New York rap groups.
"We're organizing the rappers in New England and even in Canada," Mongo says.
All of Deviouz Dollarz CDs are available on their Web site: www.deviouz-dollarz.com.