Post by J$crILLa on Mar 27, 2006 1:35:33 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/ar...cara.html?_r=1
The First Family of Hyphy Pops a Collar (What'd They Say?)
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By JON CARAMANICA
Published: March 26, 2006
WHEN he was in high school in Vallejo, Calif., in the mid-1980's, Earl Stevens would sit down with a dictionary, the big one, and pick out words to play with. He was the class clown, a drummer in the school marching band and a burgeoning rapper who, in between talent shows, would hone his verses while his brothers banged out beats on the walls.
Skip to next paragraph
Ethan Kaplan for The New York Times
The quick-tongued rapper E-40 and his son, Droop-E, a fast-rising producer, both exponents of the Bay Area style hyphy.
Audio Clips from "My Ghetto Report Card": "White Gurl" (Featuring Bun B, Pimp C of UGK & Juelz Santana) | "Muscle Cars" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak & Turf Talk) | "Tell Me When to Go" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak)
Forum: Popular Music
Eventually Mr. Stevens, who raps as E-40, became renowned for a vocal style that takes bits and pieces from each of his identities, a spirited, intricate gobbledygook of carefully tweaked lingo that reveals itself fully only on repeated listens. The same could be said of regular conversation with him, which is punctuated with phrases — "I'm from the land of the slick talkers and collar poppers," "When I was a young mustache," "I hung in there like a hubcap in the fast lane" — that demand careful attention, and maybe a little context (in order: boastful, wistful, defiant).
"It was a liability being so different," E-40, who is 38, said one recent afternoon, taking sips of Carlo Rossi Burgundy from a Gatorade bottle in the lobby of his Midtown Manhattan hotel. "But I like to do what they don't, and that's what makes an innovator."
On his 10th album, "My Ghetto Report Card" (Reprise/BME), E-40 finally has a sound to match his style: the uptempo, dense and chaotic subset of hip-hop known as hyphy (pronounced HY-fee), which has emerged from the Bay Area in the last few years. The album, which was released earlier this month and sold about 90,000 copies in its first week, placing it at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart, is E-40's highest debut to date, thanks in no small part to the rise of hyphy, the latest in a series of regional rap scenes drawing national attention.
At the same time, E-40's son, also named Earl, and who records as Droop-E, has emerged as one of hyphy's most innovative and promising producers. Early next month, Droop-E, 18, will release his first proper album, "The Fedi Fetcher and the Money Stretcher" (Sick Wid It), a collaboration with the rapper B-Slimm. Until then, his beats can be heard on albums by almost every rapper in the Bay Area, including Messy Marv and Mistah F.A.B.
There have been numerous instances of father-son success in the music business — take the Hank Williams line (Sr., Jr. and III), for instance, or Loudon Wainwright III and his son, Rufus. But rarely if ever has a father-son pair so thoroughly defined and dominated a particular genre at the same time.
Few families have been as well equipped for the challenge. E-40 got his start as a member of the Click, which also included his sister, Suga T, his brother D-Shot and his cousin B-Legit. In the 1960's, his father and uncle were in a local soul band, the Inspirations, and that uncle, St. Charles Thurman, went go on to be the chief executive of Solar Music Group , which gave many Bay Area rappers their start. (Mr. Thurman's lone seven-inch single as a solo artist is highly prized by collectors: fewer than five copies are known to exist.)
Mr. Thurman virtually ran the entire back-end operation for the Click's early releases, getting the group's records placed "in liquor stores, grocery stores, clothing stores — anywhere I could," he said. In 1989, he also helped the members start their own label, Sick Wid It, which was distributed for a decade by Jive Records and is now run by Mugzi, E-40's youngest brother. (It remains a home for family business, releasing records by Turf Talk, who is E-40's cousin and one of the Bay Area's hottest rappers.)
Initial response to E-40 was lukewarm. "He had this high-pitched voice, and he was rapping too fast," Mr. Thurman said. "But speed rapping hadn't come out yet. He wanted to change his style, and I said: 'No, you've got to keep that style going. Otherwise it wouldn't be you.' "
Eventually, E-40 found an audience, becoming, along with Too Short, one of the region's most popular rappers. Two of his albums — "Tha Hall of Game" (1996) and "The Element of Surprise" (1998) — have gone gold, and "In a Major Way," from 1995, has gone platinum. "People who keep a consistent flow, they probably sell the most records," he said. "But me playing the snare drum in the band, I learned the capability to get off beat and get back on real quick, which I bring to my raps."
But E-40's influence is felt most in hip-hop's slang trail, which leads back to him as often as not. Though he didn't coin the word hyphy — "That's very rare," he joked — he has helped concoct scads of other expressions: popping collars, you smell me? and the infamous izzle sound briefly popularized by Snoop Dogg. (His long-delayed dictionary of slang will be published later this year by Warner Books.)
Skip to next paragraph
Audio Clips from "My Ghetto Report Card": "White Gurl" (Featuring Bun B, Pimp C of UGK & Juelz Santana) | "Muscle Cars" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak & Turf Talk) | "Tell Me When to Go" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak)
Forum: Popular Music
Most important, though, he has been a beacon of hope for a younger generation of Bay Area rappers often overlooked by the hip-hop industry, which has gravitated toward acts from New York, Los Angeles and, lately, the South. "40's been keeping us in the game," Turf Talk said. "It's just right for him to be at the forefront now."
E-40 has appeared on several of the hyphy scene's defining songs, his ornate flow a perfect match for their frenetic sonics. "I helped birth it without even trying," he said. "I always know how to readjust myself and keep up with the times. I was never stubborn."
In a sense, E-40 was hyphy before hyphy existed. (The word refers both to the music and its attendant culture, which includes, among other things, unusually loose-limbed dancing and ghostriding, an unusually risky form of stunt driving.) "On the old Sick Wid It records, he would get on one of those slow bass lines and he would quick rap over it," Mugzi said. "Now, the music is catching up to him."
In late 2002, E-40 asked a friend, the producer Bosko, to fashion a studio for his son at their home near Vallejo, which he shares with his wife of 15 years and their two sons. By Christmas, it was ready, even if Earl Jr. wasn't quite. "I really didn't know how to work the equipment," he said. "I wasn't computer-wise at that time."
Within months, though, he got the hang of it, thanks in part to mentoring from the highly regarded producer Rick Rock, responsible for hits by artists including 2Pac and Jay-Z and widely considered to be the architect of the new Bay Area hyphy sound. "Before, I would just be wild with it," Droop-E said. "But when Rick would come over to the house, I would watch his techniques."
His perseverance has paid off. "He's in the cocoon right now, building a lot of ideas," Rick Rock said. "His music has escalated nicely."
It's also beginning to attract notice outside the Bay Area. Earlier this month, Droop-E got on a plane on a Friday afternoon — he's still a senior in high school — and headed to Atlanta, where he spent the weekend in the studio with the St. Louis rapper J-Kwon, who was recording his new album there, and flew back in time for Monday morning classes. "After talking with him for five minutes, I totally forget he's so young," said the electronic music pioneer DJ Shadow, who recently collaborated with Droop-E on the song "4 Freaks." "He's extremely bright and soaks things up very quickly."
But while Droop-E might be a quick study, his father wasn't above applying a little paternal pressure when it came to "My Ghetto Report Card." As the album was nearing completion, E-40 realized he was missing a contribution from his son, who had been hard at work on his album with B-Slimm and on the newly released "Bay Bridges Compilation Vol. 1" (Sick Wid It), for which he created all the beats. "My dad was, like, if you don't make the album, it's on you," he said. So Droop-E set to work, fashioning a richly textured and forebodingly dark beat. For good measure, his cousin Turf Talk delivers the hook.
"It's a slap," E-40 assured. In other words, he was beaming with paternal pride.
The First Family of Hyphy Pops a Collar (What'd They Say?)
E-Mail This
Printer-Friendly
Single-Page
Reprints
Save Article
By JON CARAMANICA
Published: March 26, 2006
WHEN he was in high school in Vallejo, Calif., in the mid-1980's, Earl Stevens would sit down with a dictionary, the big one, and pick out words to play with. He was the class clown, a drummer in the school marching band and a burgeoning rapper who, in between talent shows, would hone his verses while his brothers banged out beats on the walls.
Skip to next paragraph
Ethan Kaplan for The New York Times
The quick-tongued rapper E-40 and his son, Droop-E, a fast-rising producer, both exponents of the Bay Area style hyphy.
Audio Clips from "My Ghetto Report Card": "White Gurl" (Featuring Bun B, Pimp C of UGK & Juelz Santana) | "Muscle Cars" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak & Turf Talk) | "Tell Me When to Go" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak)
Forum: Popular Music
Eventually Mr. Stevens, who raps as E-40, became renowned for a vocal style that takes bits and pieces from each of his identities, a spirited, intricate gobbledygook of carefully tweaked lingo that reveals itself fully only on repeated listens. The same could be said of regular conversation with him, which is punctuated with phrases — "I'm from the land of the slick talkers and collar poppers," "When I was a young mustache," "I hung in there like a hubcap in the fast lane" — that demand careful attention, and maybe a little context (in order: boastful, wistful, defiant).
"It was a liability being so different," E-40, who is 38, said one recent afternoon, taking sips of Carlo Rossi Burgundy from a Gatorade bottle in the lobby of his Midtown Manhattan hotel. "But I like to do what they don't, and that's what makes an innovator."
On his 10th album, "My Ghetto Report Card" (Reprise/BME), E-40 finally has a sound to match his style: the uptempo, dense and chaotic subset of hip-hop known as hyphy (pronounced HY-fee), which has emerged from the Bay Area in the last few years. The album, which was released earlier this month and sold about 90,000 copies in its first week, placing it at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart, is E-40's highest debut to date, thanks in no small part to the rise of hyphy, the latest in a series of regional rap scenes drawing national attention.
At the same time, E-40's son, also named Earl, and who records as Droop-E, has emerged as one of hyphy's most innovative and promising producers. Early next month, Droop-E, 18, will release his first proper album, "The Fedi Fetcher and the Money Stretcher" (Sick Wid It), a collaboration with the rapper B-Slimm. Until then, his beats can be heard on albums by almost every rapper in the Bay Area, including Messy Marv and Mistah F.A.B.
There have been numerous instances of father-son success in the music business — take the Hank Williams line (Sr., Jr. and III), for instance, or Loudon Wainwright III and his son, Rufus. But rarely if ever has a father-son pair so thoroughly defined and dominated a particular genre at the same time.
Few families have been as well equipped for the challenge. E-40 got his start as a member of the Click, which also included his sister, Suga T, his brother D-Shot and his cousin B-Legit. In the 1960's, his father and uncle were in a local soul band, the Inspirations, and that uncle, St. Charles Thurman, went go on to be the chief executive of Solar Music Group , which gave many Bay Area rappers their start. (Mr. Thurman's lone seven-inch single as a solo artist is highly prized by collectors: fewer than five copies are known to exist.)
Mr. Thurman virtually ran the entire back-end operation for the Click's early releases, getting the group's records placed "in liquor stores, grocery stores, clothing stores — anywhere I could," he said. In 1989, he also helped the members start their own label, Sick Wid It, which was distributed for a decade by Jive Records and is now run by Mugzi, E-40's youngest brother. (It remains a home for family business, releasing records by Turf Talk, who is E-40's cousin and one of the Bay Area's hottest rappers.)
Initial response to E-40 was lukewarm. "He had this high-pitched voice, and he was rapping too fast," Mr. Thurman said. "But speed rapping hadn't come out yet. He wanted to change his style, and I said: 'No, you've got to keep that style going. Otherwise it wouldn't be you.' "
Eventually, E-40 found an audience, becoming, along with Too Short, one of the region's most popular rappers. Two of his albums — "Tha Hall of Game" (1996) and "The Element of Surprise" (1998) — have gone gold, and "In a Major Way," from 1995, has gone platinum. "People who keep a consistent flow, they probably sell the most records," he said. "But me playing the snare drum in the band, I learned the capability to get off beat and get back on real quick, which I bring to my raps."
But E-40's influence is felt most in hip-hop's slang trail, which leads back to him as often as not. Though he didn't coin the word hyphy — "That's very rare," he joked — he has helped concoct scads of other expressions: popping collars, you smell me? and the infamous izzle sound briefly popularized by Snoop Dogg. (His long-delayed dictionary of slang will be published later this year by Warner Books.)
Skip to next paragraph
Audio Clips from "My Ghetto Report Card": "White Gurl" (Featuring Bun B, Pimp C of UGK & Juelz Santana) | "Muscle Cars" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak & Turf Talk) | "Tell Me When to Go" (Featuring Keak Da Sneak)
Forum: Popular Music
Most important, though, he has been a beacon of hope for a younger generation of Bay Area rappers often overlooked by the hip-hop industry, which has gravitated toward acts from New York, Los Angeles and, lately, the South. "40's been keeping us in the game," Turf Talk said. "It's just right for him to be at the forefront now."
E-40 has appeared on several of the hyphy scene's defining songs, his ornate flow a perfect match for their frenetic sonics. "I helped birth it without even trying," he said. "I always know how to readjust myself and keep up with the times. I was never stubborn."
In a sense, E-40 was hyphy before hyphy existed. (The word refers both to the music and its attendant culture, which includes, among other things, unusually loose-limbed dancing and ghostriding, an unusually risky form of stunt driving.) "On the old Sick Wid It records, he would get on one of those slow bass lines and he would quick rap over it," Mugzi said. "Now, the music is catching up to him."
In late 2002, E-40 asked a friend, the producer Bosko, to fashion a studio for his son at their home near Vallejo, which he shares with his wife of 15 years and their two sons. By Christmas, it was ready, even if Earl Jr. wasn't quite. "I really didn't know how to work the equipment," he said. "I wasn't computer-wise at that time."
Within months, though, he got the hang of it, thanks in part to mentoring from the highly regarded producer Rick Rock, responsible for hits by artists including 2Pac and Jay-Z and widely considered to be the architect of the new Bay Area hyphy sound. "Before, I would just be wild with it," Droop-E said. "But when Rick would come over to the house, I would watch his techniques."
His perseverance has paid off. "He's in the cocoon right now, building a lot of ideas," Rick Rock said. "His music has escalated nicely."
It's also beginning to attract notice outside the Bay Area. Earlier this month, Droop-E got on a plane on a Friday afternoon — he's still a senior in high school — and headed to Atlanta, where he spent the weekend in the studio with the St. Louis rapper J-Kwon, who was recording his new album there, and flew back in time for Monday morning classes. "After talking with him for five minutes, I totally forget he's so young," said the electronic music pioneer DJ Shadow, who recently collaborated with Droop-E on the song "4 Freaks." "He's extremely bright and soaks things up very quickly."
But while Droop-E might be a quick study, his father wasn't above applying a little paternal pressure when it came to "My Ghetto Report Card." As the album was nearing completion, E-40 realized he was missing a contribution from his son, who had been hard at work on his album with B-Slimm and on the newly released "Bay Bridges Compilation Vol. 1" (Sick Wid It), for which he created all the beats. "My dad was, like, if you don't make the album, it's on you," he said. So Droop-E set to work, fashioning a richly textured and forebodingly dark beat. For good measure, his cousin Turf Talk delivers the hook.
"It's a slap," E-40 assured. In other words, he was beaming with paternal pride.
