Hip Hop Goes South
March 11th, 2010 | Published in Artist Spotlight, Arts & Culture, Culture and College, Featured Stories
By Chris Zebo
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It’s not often that you get to preside over your own funeral; but when Nas released Hip Hop is Dead four years ago, he wasn’t shoveling dirt into his own grave—he was just digging a big hole for others to fall into. The dirge went like this: “Everybody sounds the same / Commercialize the game / Reminiscin’ when it wasn’t all business / It forgot where it started / So we all gather here for the dearly departed.” Nas certainly wasn’t the first to march in the procession or the last. It was already known—especially underground—that hip hop had lost its way sometime between rap’s golden age and today’s age of the golden grill.
But what exactly happened? For years, the East Coast pointed its finger West and the West Coast pointed back. And it was a standoff until, eventually, all fingers began pointing South (finally, they agreed on something). Lil Jon and the crunky bunch bore the brunt of the blame. Yes, Atlanta was on fire again. And the fire had spread all the way to Houston. But as much as crunk and snap and Southern hardcore rap had lowered the denominator, it still didn’t explain how hip hop music—a sound that became a culture—was reduced to background music at frat party beer pong tournaments.
Today, hip hop is mired in an abysmal identity crisis, and there’s been a lot of soul searching (and searching for soul) as new and old artists sift through the ashes of a burned out music genre.
But one group in Texas has raked through the cinders and found something to hold onto. Dem Southernfolkz, a hip-hop trio out of Dallas, has both resurrected vestiges of the golden age and made some much-needed improvements to a jaded formula. Ironically, the trio—Kinfolk Jack, Big Ben, and Saturday Alridge—spent more time looking away from hip hop for inspiration than they did digging through the gold-plated rubble. “I don’t even really listen to hip hop,” says Alridge, “and if I do listen to hip hop, there’s no lyrics.”
Instead, the group returned to the music’s ancestral roots—old gospel, soul, funk and jazz—and infused some new and unlikely influences, like Irish folk singer Fionn Regan, Bob Dylan, Broken Social Scene, and the Microphones. “If you wanna move forward in your music and try to reach that point of innovation,” says Alridge, “you gotta put something else in. Otherwise, it’s incestuous to just put in hip hop and then try to crank out hip hop.” If you do recycle, he says, you “end up regurgitating whatever you put in.”
Dem Southernfolkz has self-released a full-length album, The Message, and a four-song EP, Something to Hold Onto, in the past year. The Message is what you’d expect from a first release; it’s like an adolescent coming of age. It’s got zits and growing pains. There are songs that deserve repeat and others you might skip. But all in all, it’s quite an impressive album, especially considering some of the music was written via email while Jack and Ben volleyed verses and beats back and forth while stationed in Iraq.
Something to Hold Onto, their most recent release, is the folkz all grown up. The group says the EP reflects where they are now and where they’re going. They’ve certainly turned over a new leaf. For three guys that have probably never shot a drop of heroin in their lives, they’ve somehow figured out how to synthesize it aurally. Listen—just once—to “Feels Like” and you’ll be a scratching addict. The song opens with a breakbeat and a looping vocal sample, and by the time the synth wafts ethereally through layers of compressed bass and delayed guitar, it’ll be too late to go back.
Lyrically, the group has strayed far, far away from the hip-hop morass. “When you cast off your morals and just [say] anything in the booth,” says Jack, “it’s a problem.” So the usual suspects are conspicuously missing. Absent are the token allusions to aggravated assault, jail time, thug love, bling and booty (although it was hard to say goodbye to booty). “In our music,” says Ben, “we talk about the stuff that you think about when you’re at home, at the end of the day, nobody else is around, you’re looking in the mirror and you’re thinking about all the messed up stuff you did or what you should of did.”
“All the real stuff,” Ben adds, “all the real-life stuff.” You remember that stuff,
right?—like forgiving and forgetting, trying to be morally responsible in an upside-down world, relinquishing the Hollywood fantasy and facing the real world, trying to pay your bills when you’re broke and living paycheck to paycheck. It’s affecting stuff, sincere and uplifting. “We might not have the best lyrics in the world, the best flow, might not have the best musicians,” says Ben, “but I guarantee you, it’s gonna touch somebody.”
Last week, Maroon Weekly sat down with Dem Southernfolkz for an exclusive interview a few days after their show at the Stafford. You can watch the interview on the Maroon Weekly website at maroonweekly.com. The group goes into more detail about the state of the music industry, why their time in Iraq isn’t exploited in their music, how the church has influenced their sound, and much, much more. You can also download a free MP3 (“Feels Like”) by Dem Southernfolkz at our website!
Dem Southernfolkz return to the Stafford on Thursday, April 8 at 9pm. You can download both The Message and Something to Hold Onto from their website at demsouthernfolkz.com.
