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On the Grind: Macon’s Rap Scene 101
By Chris Horne
Bullshit there’s no music scene in Macon. There’s plenty—perhaps more than anyone could’ve expected. But while there’s no shortage of cover bands and half-assed kids kicking around in the proverbial garage, that does not a music scene make.
What does?
Making music is the easy answer, and good music is a better answer, but that’s not it either—not entirely. (And to be fair, in a city with this music history, the standard is unfairly high.) So let’s say: dedicated musicians making original music, preferably working together in some capacity or another. That’s pretty much a music scene, and in that case, Macon has one… or two… or three.
The one that’s most often ignored here is rap. If Atlanta is the buckle on the Dirty South belt then Macon is halfway down the zipper. Ignoring rap seems impossible, especially now and doubly so when one’s eyes are open to it, but that’s our sin—and by our, I mean myself and The 11th Hour… and probably you too to some degree.
And there’s only one way to fix that.
Myspace can be a musician’s best friend, and most of Macon’s music scene already knows that. Search for rappers in Macon and more than a thousand profiles come back. By comparison, only 370 bands came up under rock, a much older genre with as many as or more sub-categories as rap. In fact, combine rock, pop and country, and you’d still be about 500 bands short.
The proliferation of homemade MCs isn’t unlike the soul singers and rock acts that came out of the woodwork during the 50s and 60s in the aftermath of Little Richard, James Brown and Otis Redding. If there’s a difference, it’s that technology has turned rap into today’s folk music. After Young Jeezy followed the path that Sonny Spoons blazed out of Macon, everyone picked up a mic and a bootleg copy of Fruit Loops, making beats and rhymes at home.
 So how do you separate the players from the wannabes?
Step one: Look up.
Those billboards not only tell you who’s hottest around town, but who is most serious about being big everywhere. For months now, Dark House 415—area rappers Hardhead Jacob, ReUp, A.K. Dre, Shagg Collie and D-Boi—has put money from their shows and mixes back into marketing. About three months ago, they hired LJ Habersham to run their promotions and help get them network so they can make that next step. As a result, this weekend DHC 415 is performing for the BET Awards at Club Masquerade with Yung Joc and Keith Murray.
Soon after, Dark House is dropping a new mix with DJ Burn 1, best known for his work with Georgia-based rapper Bubba Sparxxx. They’ll also soon be appearing in The Source, hip-hop’s most venerable magazine, as one of the nation’s up-and-coming acts.
“When those record companies want to find out who’s hot, they call the Atlanta radio stations to look at their playlists. So, I’ve been focused on getting them outside of Macon,” Habersham says. “I’m building relationships with people in Atlanta, in St. Louis, Miami and New York as well as the whole Southeast.”
Step two: Ask somebody.
If you do, it won’t take long to find Macon’s Kadalack Boyz, one of the first two acts covered by ColliPark Music’s marketing agreement with Asylum, Warner’s incubator label. (ColliPark Music, based in Atlanta and founded by producer Mr. ColliPark, is the label responsible for Soulja Boy whose infectious “Crank That” is ruling the charts.)
Featuring rappers Tex James, Tok, Spidaman, Skinny and J Luk, the Kadalack Boyz have been tilling and sowing the Macon soil for a while. Now that they’re playing in the clubs and on the radio in Atlanta, so when they come back to Macon they get respect.
The problem is—according to rappers, producers, venues and other local players—that until you get out of the city and score somewhere else, Macon doesn’t give much respect. It’s a sentiment echoed by musicians across the board. The double-edged sword is that without that support from home, it’s hard to make it somewhere else.
DJ and 97.9 WIBB radio personality DatDamnDirty, sees the problem cutting both ways. “Macon’s going to have to support an artist, and the artist is going to have to go after the city. They’ve got to get the support so people do come out.”
Building that support is, more or less, what separates the contenders from the pretenders. And that means giving the public a competitive product—both in content and production—and combining it with good business sense. That’s something a few radio DJs cited as a reason Macon’s talent isn’t getting recognized.
“You can’t sound local. If I can’t play you right after Jay-Z, I can’t play you,” WIBB’s Mr. Fourth of July says.
Founder of Poetic Peace, Power 107’s Y.O. Latimore agrees. “A lot of them are in a dream world. They only think of being a superstar without knowing how to be one. They don’t look at a Dark House or Kadalack Boyz and see how they invested in themselves. The talent is here but the business end is missing.”
Thus the Mystery of the One-Thousand MCs is solved.
But there are more, plenty more who do know what they’re doing and are making the right steps—they validate the claim that there’s a load of talent here.
One of them is CMD Styles, formerly of Soulism with DJ Skillz, the man responsible for breaking Jody Breeze. By day, CMD is an airbrush artist whose work is all over Club Money’s, and by night, he’s an airbrush artist with an affinity for the mic. Lately, he’s been hustling himself as a music artist, promoting his newest mix, HisStoryInTheMacon 1.5: Paint or Die. During this “Week of Paint or Die” he brings along other locals he works with like Goodie Supreme, who is one-half of The S.E.T., and Young R, who is getting a lot of attention for his song “Dyme Pieces”.
 “Paint or Die is what it’s about. Like I say on the record, ‘I still got to feed my family’,” CMD says, referencing “Why I Do This”, a song about busting ass to make a living doing what he loves. He adds, “There’s a lot of people that stopped chasing they dreams, settled for less. I can’t do that.”
Working with Ghetto America Music Entertainment (G.A.M.Ent) in Macon, Young R shares that passion, and perhaps the discipline it takes to harness it. A student at Mercer in the engineering program, he gets done with class and moves to the stage, going to open mic nights and looking for ways to share his music. On the weekends, he’s out at Smiley’s selling his mixtapes. So far, he’s gone through about 3,500 copies.
And R’s spreading out, hitting up spots in Atlanta, Albany and all over Middle Georgia. Combined with his partnership with one of the area’s best producers, Hitman, he’s one artist on the threshold of doing something. One insider said, “He’s getting popular—really, really popular with the teenagers especially.”
The same is being said about guys like the Hillside Geez (who also have their own billboard), P.P.C. (the Pro Pimp Clique), TruBreed (just signed to Jeezy’s C.T.E. label), and Firestarter, who won the Hustle & Flow competition at Money’s in July. And yeah, you may have noticed something here: Every rapper mentioned so far is male. It’s like there are no women in the game.
But that’s not true. Ask Diamond. Like CMD, she approaches the business from a couple different angles. She’s a rapper but she also sings R&B. And she’s the publisher of a publication called Diamond Life, which she uses to highlight the local scene, like she did with the aforementioned Firestarter.
Diamond says, “They aren’t giving us any exposure. For example, a rapper might bring a female up to sing on a track but that’s usually it.” Women aren’t given the opportunity to perform as much. The other problem? “They perceive that women are too hard to work with. They think we have too many personal problems but I think those are just excuses.” Either way, Diamond—like another female rapper Jazzy T—says she’ll keep pushing.
The more mainstream rap often obscures another segment of the scene. Just as in the industry as a whole, there’s a fringe group of rap artists—like Hymajesty Ace and B.Ware—who take a different approach stylistically with the lyrical content and the sound. It isn’t as heavy on the legitimacy of “the streets”, assuming that they are legitimate enough and choosing to address more political concerns.
Hymajesty Ace’s CD, Expensive Pleasures, features eclectic beats and impromptu instrumentation assembled by jazz pianist/producer Stanyos Young of Soular.E Productions. But Ace branches out from his music too, working in tandem with the Poet Unknown on a project called Topiq Tuesdays, an open mic forum at the Jazzplex where the community assembles to discuss the issues of the day.
“Individuals like myself and others are blessed because we are of a chosen few selected to be the mouth piece of those without a voice,” B.Ware says of his path, which he sees including social activism and entrepreneurship intended to “move the culture”.
It’d be easy to try to define this style against that one, to say one gives back to the community more, or is more important. It’d be easy enough to try to categorize or pigeonhole, to take one side or another. But it’s all Macon music and so, to me anyway, it’s all good. And despite the fact that this isn’t an exhaustive listing of Macon’s rap scene, no one I spoke with is in this just for the money or the fame—they all love what they do, and every one of them wants to give back to the community in some way, even if it was just to “Put Macon on the map again.”
Crazier things have happened here.
(Stay tuned for Macon’s Rap Scene 102 coming in November.)
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