11th Hour Online

11 Questions Fish Scales From Nappy Roots

by Chris Horne

In 2002, just after the Dirty South really exploded hip-hop, a sextet of really dirty, gritty Southerners from Kentucky started blowing up the party with an infectious hit song, “Awnaw”. Five years later, Nappy Roots is poised to jump back in the spotlight with their new release Innerstate Music, out in February, and The Humdinger, planned for that fall. And while there’s Kentucky mud on all their shoes, one member has Georgia red clay in his blood—Milledgeville-native Fish Scales. A baller in more than one sense, Scales took time to discuss life since leaving the M-I-L, letting us in on what’s coming up for him and for Nappy Roots, including a Thanksgiving turkey drive and a video shoot. Check him out at myspace.com/fishscales. – Chris Horne

Fish Scales, from “Roun’ the Globe”:
“First say a prayer for those in combat
Might could throw something on the grill when you come back
Might could take a trip to the ‘Ville and then back
We can all get loose on the porch, and of course
Hit Churchill Downs and thrown something on a horse
Or we can hit them Sinclair waters
You ain’t seen country till you been through Georgia”

1.) You been keeping pretty busy?

I had two shows this weekend—solo shows, Nappy Roots shows. And I’m involved in a movie. It’s called Unsigned Hype—go to DraeJacksonFilms.com—it’s the first motion picture that I’m acting in so I’m pretty excited about it. It’s an Atlanta-based rap movie so it involves a lot of different elements about coming up in the rap game, but it’s not a documentary—we stress that. It is definitely a motion picture.

Chris: Nappy Roots also did a lot of original songs for the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers.

Scales: That was a crazy opportunity, man. Basically, the Coen Brothers wanted a certain sound for the movie. If you’ve seen The Ladykillers, you know the sound they tried to capture—this Southern gospel-type deal. And they only wanted to use either Outkast or Nappy Roots. Well, Outkast was trying to complete their last project together so they weren’t able to do it. They flew us out to L.A., met up with the Coen Brothers and pretty much we worked on the score with (T-Bone Burnett).

2.) You represent for the M-I-L, the A-T-L, the Macktown—that’s my lame attempt to quote “Country Boyz”—but seriously, what exactly are your ties to the mid-state?

Born and raised in Milledgeville. My whole family is in Milledgeville. I moved when I was 19-years-old to play basketball in Kentucky so my roots really are in Milledgeville, Ga., and I come home as much as I can. The thing about Milledgeville is there ain’t a whole lot there. There’s a lot of history there, but I felt like for me to really achieve my dreams, I had to leave. I love Milledgeville, man. You can leave Milledgeville but you’ll always come back.

3.) How did you go from playing ball at Western Kentucky to joining the Nappy Roots?

I was always rapping when I was a kid. I had a rap group in Milledgeville—a couple of them. The first one was D.R.C.: Devastating Rap Creators—I never tell anybody about that one. The second group was called M.O.B.: Myriads of Brothers. We actually went into the studio and recorded. That was me, Short Dog, who I got featured on my single, and Dax Boster—people know him around town as Coco Capone. Then I started playing basketball for Baldwin and I kinda lost interest in rap because basketball was taking up all my time. I got a scholarship to go to Western Kentucky. That’s where I met Skinny DeVille. There was only two members in the Nappy Roots at the time—Ron Clutch and Skinny DeVille. We just put our dreams together.

4.) Did you ever have to come to a decision about whether you were going to pursue basketball or rap?

Yeah, that was probably one of the biggest decisions of my life. I was a senior and we’d just got a record deal. Coach Felton was my coach—he’s now coaching the Georgia Bulldogs—and he rode down with me when I was going down to sign the contract in Nashville. He was very helpful in that situation. The problem was I’d be at basketball practice thinking about writing a song in the studio, and I’d be in the studio thinking about how I was at basketball practice. I wasn’t giving 100% to either one. I felt like I should skip that last year of basketball and focus on music.

Chris: That’s a big leap of faith.

Scales: It was huge. I was a senior. I was one of the captains. I looked real bad for, like, three years. For three years—this is 1998—nobody heard nothing from Nappy Roots. People was like, “Man, why’d you quit? Y’all ain’t even doing anything.” It was a huge leap of faith to stick with it and have faith in Nappy Roots. But then, the rest is history.

5.) What happened in those three years?

We were on the shelf. We were a tax write-off for Atlantic Records. Back then, in the industry, they’d sign a lot of new artists. If they blew up then fine and if they didn’t, they’d just write it off. That’s what we were until we came up with the song “Awnaw”, and that’s when they were like “whoa, hold up.” They’d seen the potential the whole time but if we didn’t come up with a hit, they didn’t care.

6.) What makes your music different than the rest of the Dirty South music scene?

We rap about real things. When I say real, I ain’t talking about who’s the most gangster—I’m talking about the bottom line, what life is really about. Being broke, taking care of your kids, trying to go to college and get an education—these are real things that most people really go through. Everybody ain’t a gangster. Everybody don’t shoot at people all the time. Everybody don’t ride nice cars down the street with 28-inch rims—that’s cool and that does exist but that’s not everybody’s reality. It’s just not real to think people got thirty women around them all the time and they all look like models. We just relate to people.

7.) Y’all’s next record, The Humdinger, was supposed to come out like a year ago. What’s going on?

For the most part, we’ve just been looking for the right situation. Actually, a lot of labels made offers for The Humdinger but none of them really wanted to push it. We don’t want to put our record in the hands of someone who doesn’t take it as seriously as we do. That happened with us on Wooden Leather. So we’ve taking our time with it. And actually, Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz took four years to record. The Humdinger is taking about four years so everything’s right on time.

8.) Do you feel like, coming from a small town, you have to try harder to get heard?

It’s hard, but these days, all you really have to do is get in your car and drive to Atlanta. You don’t even have to move. Atlanta is the new New York as far as the music industry goes. If you in Macon, Milledgeville, Sandersville, Sparta, Hawkinsville, you should be in Atlanta every week. Almost every night, I go out to some kind of industry function. You can go to showcase your talent or just to let your face be seen. People don’t get turned off if you say you’re from Watkinsville or Irwinton.

9.) How long did it take you to figure out the business end?

It took a while. I got signed in ’98 and I didn’t really start to understand this business until 2004. That’s when I really started taking control of my own. I got burned a lot, man. Still getting burned. But I’ve learned so much. It’s not about trying to go out and get that big record deal. It’s about creating a career. Paying my bills. I feel like I can’t go get a job at McDonald’s now. It’d be humiliating. So it’s like, what am I going to do if I don’t have a major label deal? I can’t sit around and pout; I have to go out and make a career.

Chris: What taught you the biggest lesson?

Scales: It was when Atlantic gave us that—I don’t want to call it an ultimatum but I guess that’s what it was—and we didn’t go with it. A sense of urgency came over me. It was like, “Okay, we’ve been taken care of for the last four or five years by this label. Now what are we going to do?” So to me it was time to take all that experience, those contacts, the things we developed and putting them to use. I couldn’t sit around anymore and just be an artist. Got to be smarter than that.

10.) Your mixtape, Da Sticks, is out and you’ve got a solo album, The Balance, coming. How does the solo work compare to working in a group?

Man, it’s kind of bittersweet. When I’m in the studio all by myself, I don’t have nobody to feed off of. With Nappy Roots, when I hear Big V rapping, writing his verse, when they go into the booth to do they part, that makes me step my game up. When I’m recording by myself, I tend to have some people in the studio that say, “Yeah that’s hot,” though it’s probably not. But Nappy Roots’ll tell you like: “Naw, you need to spit that over.” We can tell each other, “Yo, you probably shouldn’t be on that song.” That’s the last resort but at least that’s in the back of your head.

Chris: How do you keep all the egos in check?

Scales: You don’t, man. It’s just you gotta respect each other, and that’s what we do. We know who does what in the group. We know who’s gonna trip if we go get Kentucky Fried Chicken instead of Popeye’s. Just kind of understood—it takes the chemistry to control the egos. It ain’t something we can’t get past, and that goes back to us being real people.

11.) With most everyone else being from Kentucky, do you feel like you’ve got to stand up for Georgia more?

I do it consciously, man. Nappy Roots is a Kentucky-based group, and I respect that and I love that. But it’s probably no more than just Georgia pride—that’s why I do it. I have a lot of pride in Georgia. We’re all in SEC country. They love the Wildcats and I love the Bulldogs so we’ve got that rivalry.

Chris: Are y’all gonna get together for that game, when Georgia faces Kentucky?

Scales: We’re trying to play that day with Greg Street and Akon at the Kentucky-Georgia game. That’s going to be a great day—we ranked #10, so I know we’re going to win.