Remember the wild, wooly ’90s in Memphis? The city felt like the nation’s forgotten stepchild, but creativity was bursting from every corner. This was especially true in the world of rap. Mixtapes — actual cassettes — were being cranked out at an astounding rate. Around 1993, a friend who counseled “underprivileged youth” at the time wowed us all by pulling one such cassette from her purse, given to her by a client whose name has been lost to time. The sound was murky, bleak, reverberating with pounding beats, and unlike anything we had heard before. Everywhere you turned, it seemed, someone was handing you a mixtape loaded with inventive sounds. At the time, we thought, “Of course it’s original. That’s what Memphians do.”
The sense that you’re living in a cultural backwater can be liberating. No one is watching or documenting your efforts, so you can let your creativity run wild. This was the Bluff City’s milieu then. Even as city planners touted the importance of attracting “creatives” to the city, few of them guessed the local hip-hop world was already flush with them, fired with DGAF, anything-goes energy and laying the groundwork for the trap music of the 21st century. Now, as Al Kapone observes, “a lot of young artists today are using the sound that was created back then.”
(left to right) Tom Skeemask, Frayser Boy, Al Kapone, DJ Zirk, Gangsta Blac, Kia Shine (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
Elder Statesmen
With one quarter of the century behind us, it’s easier to see how prescient those mixtapes of the ’90s were, as the Memphis bounce has come to rule the airwaves (sometimes with Atlanta taking the credit). Locally, that’s finally being acknowledged thanks to a tradition that began with last year’s RiverBeat Music Festival, when the spotlight was thrown on a loose assemblage of hip-hop artists — La Chat, Crunchy Black, Al Kapone, Skinny Pimp, DJ Zirk, Gangsta Pat, and DJ Spanish Fly — known collectively as the Memphis Rap OGz.
This year, that concept lives again. Hosted by Kapone & DJ Zirk, hip-hop pioneers Tela, Gangsta Blac, Frayser Boy, Kia Shine, and Tom Skeemask will take to the Orion Financial Stage on Saturday, May 2nd, at 5:45 p.m. to once again affirm Memphis’ place at the cutting edge of rap — then and now. Setting up the beats for them will be DJ Bizzle Bluebland, aka Jared “Jay B” Boyd, a mainstay of the local DJ scene and program manager at WYXR, and DJ Superman, aka Chris McNeil, the longtime radio jock at KXHT Hot 107.1 FM who’s been pivotal to the local hip-hop scene practically this whole time.
Al Kapone, who, with logistical assistance from Bram Bors-Koefoed, has been instrumental in bringing these artists together, says they’re all eager to drop their rhymes at RiverBeat. “A lot of these artists don’t get the recognition that they should on a big platform like this, so reaching out to them is not hard at all. They want to be a part of it. I guess the only hard part is making sure the other ones who didn’t get a chance to be on this particular show understand that their time is coming.”
Boyd, whose 2023 Flyer story, “Gettin’ Real Buck,” offered a thorough history of early Memphis rap, is delighted to see so many voices from the past brought together, especially one who was a bit different from the others. “Tela is the artist that I’m most excited about,” he says of the solitary artist who could not make the cover photo shoot. “His pen game is crazy, and he’s got so many songs from when he was rapping a lot, like with Scarface, where he and Scarface are going back and forth. He’s got this wise kind of attitude, like an elder statesman.”
That holds true for all the performers, and Kapone, for his part, is enthusiastic about getting all these elder statesmen onstage. While he has often invited his rap peers to join him when appearing at Memphis in May festivals since the early 2000s, he was inspired to take it to another level by a 2018 Legends of Memphis Rap show he participated in. “Peppa Williams was able to bring out so many of the OGs for that,” says Kapone. “I think it was the first time that was done, and I saw how he was able to make that happen on a bigger scale. Because it was, I don’t know, maybe 10 to 12 different artists from then, all coming together.”
Frayser Boy with Gangsta Blac (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
Reelin’ in the Years
As Kapone emphasizes, it may be easier to get so many rappers together now than it was in the early days, when egos and beefs were more hot-headed. “In those younger days,” he says, “they were being true to the art. Whereas now, when you become older, you get to show that you’ve grown. Now you can just express the artistic part of it and not get too caught up in the lifestyle.”
That sentiment is seconded by Frayser Boy, who, sharing an Oscar with Three 6 Mafia for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from Hustle & Flow, may be the most celebrated of the OGs. He feels change is inevitable. As we all sit in the group photo shoot, he explains further: “I’m not doing the same things. So of course I talk about my kids more. I talk about God more. I just talk about better things. And, you know, there’s more substance in my work. Like when Gone on that Bay came out in 2003, it was straight robbing, stealing, killing, mobbing. I ain’t doing that no more.”
To this, Gangsta Blac offers a quick rejoinder: “Well, I’m still a gang banger. I can’t change.”
“You’ve changed. You just don’t know you changed,” Frayser Boy replies, inspiring Gangsta Blac to declare, “I ain’t never promoted no killin’ and robbin’!” This in turn causes all the OGs to collapse in uproarious laughter.
Regarding life changes over the years, Kia Shine, who’s worked in films, as a voice artist for video games, and as a host for BET’s Rap City, appreciates the chance to rap precisely because he’s done so much other work outside of the genre. “It’s great that we have opportunities like this, to bring back nostalgic moments with these artists. But at the same time, it’s like, as a creative, sometimes you don’t want to get stuck in that same thing all the time. You want to take on other things, to be able to do other stuff, just to keep yourself sharp. So then when you come back to rap, you still keep that same zeal and zest that you had about it. When I do other stuff, it makes me appreciate rap. But you have to keep your knives sharp, doing creative things, and that’s not just limited to using your voice. When you’re creative, it doesn’t always have to just be rap, you know?”
Rebels Without a Pause
Shine should know. Yet at the same time, these artists know the power of what they created 20 to 30 years ago, and they’re ready for their city to recognize it. Tom Skeemask, in particular, is primed for the spotlight. “2 Wild for the World is about to turn 28 years old now,” he notes, then turns to the others and adds, “It’s a blessing to be around all of y’all, because I get an opportunity to do exactly what you all did. I’m probably the only person in this room that ain’t never been on the radio station, though. They might play some of my new songs, but my older music has never been in rotation. I’m dead serious. But I’ve been honored to stay underground.”
This in turn prompts a conversation about radio play in Memphis, as many sing the praises of DJ Superman, who has been focusing on local rap since at least 2001, when he started with Hot 107.1. “The beauty of having DJ Superman there,” says Kapone, “is he was there in the early days as well, as a club and on-air personality, and he’s been singlehandedly keeping it up through the years, from the ’90s till now, where he does a special mix on 107.1 every Friday at noon, dedicated to OG Memphis rap. So just having him being one of our DJs is only fitting.”
Yet savvy DJs alone aren’t enough, according to longtime Atlanta resident Kia Shine. “It has to happen from a programming level, not on a DJ level. Atlanta radio is pro-Atlanta right now, so they don’t let the older music not be in rotation, right? If you listen to a mix, you’re gonna hear it go from new Atlanta all the way back to the older shit.” This was taken as proof positive that Atlanta has been better able to promote itself as a hip-hop originator than Memphis, despite our city’s key role in pioneering crunk, trap, and other styles.
In any case, when these mavericks were getting started, they were intentionally rebelling against the status quo, and a slick radio-friendly presentation was not their goal. As DJ Zirk told the Flyer’s Andria Lisle in 2018, the ’90s were “an era of just trying: What can we invent that’s different from what’s happening up north and out west? We were working on limited equipment, doing what we had to do, because we didn’t have the technology. With songs like ‘Lock’m N Da Trunk’ and Skinny’s ‘Lookin’ For Da Chewin,’ we were trying to see which one of us could be the wildest and have the most aggressive beats.”
What’s more, these artists were determined to build something that would last, despite locals’ relative ignorance of what they were doing. “It was looked at as a fad,” Kapone says, noting that he himself didn’t think he’d rap for more than four years. “It’s not gonna last long, was what people thought. But now, the fact that it has grown to the level it’s grown to is because hip-hop was able to embrace other genres. That’s why you had like the rap-rock fusion, and you had like country-rap fusion. Rap, soul, blues — every genre of music, hip-hop was able to incorporate those sounds and styles into itself, which gave it, I think, a longer lifespan.”
And for Kapone, hip-hop’s staying power is one of the messages of any performance by the Memphis Rap OGz. “Hopefully, this shows the younger artists that there is longevity in the business, especially as an independent artist. The goal is to move the right way to be able to survive and have the longevity to prove it.”
Underscoring that point, Boyd points to the interest all of these artists show in younger performers. Whenever he sees Skeemask, Boyd says, “he’s always helping out a younger musician. He’s always got one or two guys with him. He looks out for all the people around him, and he cares a lot about bringing other people along. He doesn’t do anything by himself. DJ Squeeky [who has his own RiverBeat set just before the OGz this year] has got The Family, and helped to discover Young Dolph and elevate him. Zirk’s the same way.”
All of that, from the timelessness of their raw beats to their support of younger talent, adds up to one thing: Staying power. That’s what Kapone most wants to convey to the artists of today. “When we were younger in the rap game, we didn’t have anyone who could say, ‘You know what, there’s guys who have been able to do this and do that in the music industry for 20 to 30 years.’ But that’s who we are. It’s possible.”