Where Are All The Other White Rappers?
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1456891/20020806/story.jhtml?headlines=true
"Hey, there's a concept that works/ 20 million other white rappers emerge"
Eminem, "Without Me"
It's true. Hollywood loves an idea that works: whether it's boy bands, volcano flicks, "Friends" rip-offs, reality shows or this year's model girl surfing movies.
And while Eminem's got a good point, where, exactly, are those other 19,999,999 white rappers?
It's not enough to keep blaming Vanilla Ice. Yeah, he and Marky Mark ruined things for a while. But Em's success, along with Kid Rock, Bubba Sparxxx, the rock-rap crossover of Linkin Park and such underground sensations as El-P, Necro and Non-Phixion, have renewed and mainstreamed the credibility of a new generation of white MCs.
While it's hard to pin down why the bottle hasn't yet been uncorked on a raft of Eminem wannabes, a number of promising white rappers are bubbling under, hoping to finally blur the racial lines in hip-hop and, once and for all, well, avoid the need for articles like this one.
"Hip-hop is about the unknown grabbing the mic and setting the world on fire," said Gary Harris, executive vice president of urban A&R for ArtistDirect Records, which will release the debut from Portland, Maine, rapper Poverty in January.
"What prepared me to hear Poverty is that I'm a child of the '60s and the civil rights movement, where the important lesson that black and white Americans hopefully learned was that color doesn't matter. Like Martin Luther King said, we should all be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin."
Harris, who was the head of promotion at Def Jam when the Beastie Boys were signed, said they taught him that it doesn't matter where you come from as long as you're dope. "And Poverty is dope," he said of the MC, whose grimy rhymes deal with his destitute upbringing by a drug-addicted mother and his struggle to beat the street.
The other rappers you can expect to hear from in the near future range from New York slick to Southern grit and underground gonzo.
On the flashier end of the spectrum is Kain, who appears on P. Diddy's The Saga Continues (2001). While the MC was given plenty of shine in Diddy's videos, a Bad Boy spokesperson said there is no information on when Kain's debut album might drop.
The Wu-Tang Clan invited Remedy (a.k.a. Ross Filler, a.k.a. Reuven Ben Menachem) into their extended Killa Beez family by giving him a track on their 1998 Wu-affiliated release The Swarm. Last year Remedy like the Wu, a Staten Island native released a self-produced debut, The Genuine Article, mixed by RZA. He is slated to release his latest independent album, Code Red, on August 20.
Big Apple Italian-American Jojo Pellegrino has been rhyming for years, most recently as part of the Violator crew. A veteran of New York mixtapes with a number of white label singles under his belt, "The Rap Tony Soprano" was slated to have his full-length debut, Pellegrino Story featuring Busta Rhymes, Method Man and Kurupt released last year. Since recently splitting with Violator/Loud Records, a spokesperson said the goodfella rapper has been shopping for a new deal and is hoping to release his debut soon.
One rapper you can hear now is 6'4", 320-pound Nashville native Haystak, who shares a hick-hop vibe with new pal Bubba Sparxxx. Whereas things were lovely for Sparxxx, veteran rapper 'Stak has a dimmer, more introspective outlook on life than the pigsty-loving Timbaland protιgι. Haystak's third album, The Natural, is full of tales of poverty, struggle and strife delivered in a raw but catchy style that wouldn't be out of place on a DMX record.
While many white MCs try to deflate the race question by ignoring it, gravely voiced Haystak tackles it head-on in the lead track from the album, "White Boy," a litany of derogatory names for white people. The 27-year-old rapper said he purposely front-loaded the album with the song as a means of deflating his media detractors.
"I get hit with that so often that I figured, 'Let's get this white boy sh-- out of the way, because I'm one of the coldest rappers out there today, period,' " said 'Stack, who duets with honorary Crazy White Boys member Sparxxx on the track "Oh My God."
Haystak knows acceptance isn't always easy, but even he's at a loss to explain why more white rappers haven't broken through. He copped to the fact that being white has definitely made it much harder for him to gain acceptance from his peers, which has always been his #1 goal. "It's like a blind man being a professional bowler," he said of being a white MC. "He has to practice so hard and try much harder for people to think he can do it."
So, why does it matter that these rappers are white? Frankly, it doesn't. They're all talented MCs with original flows, regardless of race. All that matters, as Harris said, is that they bring the goods. But, like watching Tiger Woods on the golf links, NHL forward Anson Carter on the ice or Sevendust singer Lajon Witherspoon on the stage, the issue is there because, for now, in the rap game they are still a visible minority.
One explanation for the dearth of white MCs, according to Harris, could be the way the contemporary hip-hop business works. "Artists are normally not introduced to a label by a manager or lawyer, but by another artist," he said. "The latest kid in a neighborhood to get a deal brings on his crew. But I just don't know that white folks, to this point, are plugged into that network."
An example of an artist who has gained that juice and already used it to his advantage is Kid Rock. His DJ, Uncle Kracker, is about to release his second solo album, which would not likely have seen the light of day if not for the breakthrough success and sponsorship of his boss.
If nothing else, the slow rise of this new generation of white rappers reflects the pervasiveness of hip-hop in our culture over the past 20 years. The same dirty white boys who used to bang around on guitars in their rec rooms trying to be Kurt Cobain are just as likely to be sampling beats and writing rhymes, hoping to be the next Ja Rule or Tupac. Some of them, such as the members of Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit and the like, have gone platinum many times over combining the best of both worlds.
But, as controversial as Eminem is and as proud of being a redneck as Bubba and Kid Rock are, there remains a line that white rappers seem reluctant to cross: the use of the N-word.
Almost everyone, that is, except Long Island's RA the Rugged Man. The X-rated MC, a 28-year-old whose been rapping on street corners since well before he could drive, dropped the by-now-obligatory hip-hop epithet in his raw 2001 single "What the F---?," though he doesn't remember doing it.
"I say what I want to say, and other people play politics," said RA, who swore he wasn't trying to be controversial when he let slip. "I honestly don't remember saying that, but I don't even listen to my records. The fact is, all this foul sh-- people are saying now killing their girlfriends and whatnot I was doing 10 years ago."
Known for his wild stage show and dirty mind, like Jojo, RA is in limbo as he waits to get out of his contract with the defunct Priority Records and release an album later this year.
Though he too was mystified as to why there isn't a sea of white mic controllers out there yet, RA who recently completed vocals for an album he's recording with legendary hardcore punk outfit Bad Brains under the name White Mandingo said it's only a matter of time before hip-hop is as black and white as a zebra.
"There may not be [a lot of white rappers] now, but there will be," RA said wearily. "Back in the day, if you was a dope-ass rapper, black people gave you respect faster than white people, who didn't think white boys should be rhyming. But hip-hop is being drained by white people. It's becoming a white culture, and eventually black people will move on to some other sh--."
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