Nov 23, 04 08:28 AM
These Roads Have Me Vexed.
I'm remembering this rapper I saw in Asheville, North Carolina.
A couple Summers ago, I was skint and didn't take my annual trip to an exotic location: instead, I rented a bitchin' Mustang, and I drove to my friend Kelly Sue's in Kansas City. Then I drove south, to Branson, to Oxford and Clarksdale, Mississippi, Memphis, and then I headed to Asheville with the intention of driving up the Blue Ridge Parkway and then back home.
It was the day of the New York black out, which, after an initial panic (I asked a waitress at a Tennessee Cracker Barrel if she knew what was going on, and she replied, in her charming Southern drawl, "You mean here in Cooksville?"), I was melancholy to be absent for.
It was raining torrentially. I drove into Asheville, checked into a hotel, and headed to the Mellow Mushroom, which you may mock but is in fact a ridiculously tasty slice of pizza.
There was a DJ spinning instrumental hip hop tracks, and local hippie kids were getting up on the mic and rapping. It was fascinating: I mean, these were hippie kids, dreadlocked, poncho-wearing hippie kids. A procession of them got on the mic and rocked it to varying degrees of proficiency, each with, hilariously, a take on a current rapper's style: a hippie kid Snoop, a hippie kid Del, a dreadlocked Nelly manqué.
There was a dishwasher in the kitchen that I could see from my table. He was nodding his head to the track, clearly working out a strategy for freestyle, getting into the sound of the track. And then, when he was ready, he would put the dishes down and head over to the mic, wiping his hands on an apron. He was psyched, the words right there at his command, ready to rock it.
And then the moment he got on the mic, the DJ, who'd been spinning the same instrumental for a while, switched up the track. Faced with this new track, the hippie dishwasher's momentum collapsed, he halfheartedly tried to apply his meticulous plan to the new track, but always faltered, and would end unsatisfyingly and walk dejectedly back to the dishes, only to repeat the same pattern twenty minutes later, then again, then again.
I almost got up and had a word with the DJ, who was oblivious to the tragedy: Don't change the beat yet! Let the dishwasher have his moment. Please!
There was one rapper who was absolutely fantastic. He was actually dressed somewhat like a rapper, with only a modicum of hippie accoutrements. He brought a girlfriend with a taut belly and a giant buckle, and a notebook. He would get on the mic and the whole pizza parlour would elevate--all eight of us sitting at the tables in the Mellow Mushroom, munching, captivated. The amazing rain banging on the roof made us feel closed in, intimate, focussed. It was an extraordinary, urgent performance.
I really wanted to talk to him. I thought--Asheville rapper kid, why are you trying to sound like you're black? You're so talented. Go this route and you'll be good; find your unique and honest self, and you'll be great.
He had a line I remember: "These streets have got me vexed." These streets? The streets of North Carolina? Try these roads have me vexed. Wow, wouldn't it be awesome for a white hippie kid rapper to emerge from the Blue Ridge Mountains, not aping the rappers in vogue, but with his own bracingly honest style?
Posted by Mike at November 23, 2004 8:28 AM
