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A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article over at Byron Crawford's site about a rapper from South Philly, Big City Philadelphia, that Asher Roth has apparently been biting from to promote his own career. It wasn't entirely shocking news - jacking from another artist is a time honored tradition in hip hop, and as for Roth, he's been getting exposed as a fraud on an almost a daily basis since Bol first posted that article. The real story, though, was Big City Phil himself, a man who's led a life that would seem to be straight out of an Al Pacino movie.
Originally discovered by Will Smith's label, BCP was arrested on an attempted murder charge before he could sign a deal. After beating the case, Phil went back home where he hooked up with Beanie Sigel. Once again Big City was on the verge of signing a record deal, this time with Beans' State Property, when he was arrested for bringing 2,000 pounds of Ketamine (aka Special K) across the border from Mexico. He jumped bail and went on the run for over year, until a month long binge on coke and ecstasy left him comatose in a hospital, where police eventually caught up to him. While he was back in prison, Phil ended up in Fairton Prison where he met up with Beanie Sigel, who was finishing up a bid of his own. Having served his time, Big City, now working with Fort Knox Records, is finally focusing on his music career.
Of course, no matter how interesting his backstory is, it wouldn't mean much if Big City Phil couldn't rap. As it turns out, he's one of the most impressive "street" rappers I've heard in a long time. He's lyrical, can drop a few punch lines, and he seems intent on defending hip hop from all of the frauds that have been messing up the game lately. I had a chance to talk to him about Beanie, Asher Roth, Will Smith and his disdain for hipster rap and, as you might expect, he had some interesting things to say. What impressed me the most, though, was how genuine his responses were. Here's what he had to say:
You got everyone's attention with "How to Rob an Industry Hipster," so let's start there. I realize the song wasn't entirely serious, but after reading that article in Philadelphia Weekly it's clear you're no fan of hipster rap. The article (here) attempted to define "hipster rap" -- in your own words, what do you define hipster rap as? What is it that you don't like about hipster rappers?
Truthfully, the song is serious in the sense that I take rap very seriously and sometimes you gotta rob or murder someone on wax. I'm keeping my nose clean, so I have no immediate plans to run up in Kid Cudi's crib. Then again, let's hope the economy doesn't get too much worse, cause dudes are starving out here. Seriously though, the song represents the type of animal I am compared to these hipster rappers. That's pretty much the story with that. I'm just trying to give the mainstream an idea of what real rap sounds like. If using those hipster kids is what it takes to get the mainstream to listen, I'm not ashamed of that, cause I'm delivering real hip hop to them. I wasn't pandering to nobody, I was eating dudes. And I didn't spare OG's like Common and Q-Tip either. Anyone slipping gets put under the scope, even if I listened to your records when I was a little kid.
To me, hipster rap is basically dudes perpetrating a hip hop fraud. Taking the name hip hop or rap, and attaching it to a silly mockery of my culture, so their big labels can make money off a whole new generation of consumers. What I don't like about the genre is pretty much the fact that they're not real. I don't mean "real" like dudes pretending to be real cause they went to jail, or cause they got shot, or shot somebody. I mean real like the music actually means something to them. That this rap shit is attached to their spirit, not just the latest trendy thing to do. By the way, I do like some hipster rap. And I respect some of the dudes I went at in the hipster track. For the record, a lot of them have talent, and I didn't put that record out to diminish their credit as musicians. But as "rappers" they can't put out those kinds of spaced out records and expect not to get name checked by a dude like me.
Your style as an emcee is a lot more in line with the kind of hip hop we heard in the 90's than the pop rap that seems to be popular these days. You focus more on the lyrics than on the hook, and the content is a lot more street - it's almost the direct opposite of the kind of rap that gets play on the radio these days. Do you think its possible for you to get love from the mainstream right now, given the type of music that is currently selling?
You pretty much explained it right there. There's no lyrical content anymore. They don't paint a picture, or walk you through any kind of story - nothing. The art is being destroyed and being lost. Rap was always an art where you paint a picture so vivid the people can feel it in their heart. Right now, what's hot is only hot temporarily. That means tomorrow it won't be hot anymore. It's like handbags for girls. They're building rap music out of straw now instead of brick. I don't think the mainstream is real or even has a heart to love anything. They just follow the latest trend. So I doubt I'll ever get mainstream love for just being who I am. I mean, that's the whole reluctance thing for an mcee like me these days, you know? You do what you know how to do, and you hope there will be enough of an audience that embraces it that you can make a living from it. But with the way the mainstream is right now, a dude like me can't quit his day job. At the same time, I think if you just persist and keep pumping out product that's guided by your spirit, you can inspire people. Once you have some strong fans, and enough people get to know you and your music, they all come to the table. We've seen it happen with a lot of underground artists who went against the grain over the last 30 years in hip hop.
You're now working with Fort Knox Records. Is this the same Fort Knox that Sam and (boxing analyst and former ESPN anchor) Max Kellerman used to run? How'd you hook up with them?
Yea, the Kellerman brothers all made music, but Fort Knox was mainly Sam and Jack. I met Jack back in 2000 through a mutual friend named Eddie who wanted us to work together cause Jack made beats and I rapped. But I was all over the place back then and we never got a chance to put that kind of work in. But through the years I kept doing basement mixtapes with my man Joey Baggs (shout to Joey Baggs). So I had songs, and somehow they got into Jack's hands. So in 2007 I get a call from Eddie saying Jack is making music videos now, and I should get with him finally and make something happen. So we shot some videos and pretty soon, we started fucking around in the studio. Fort Knox is grassroots but it's strong, cause it's basically 3 guys who can do everything. Jack's got the studio and does videos and beats, then he has this kid named St. Paul who also does beats, and Jon Moskowitz [one of the producers behind Bobb Deep] executive produces everything with Jack, and gives it that pro touch. It's really a strong team, and I feel good about it. We're just looking for that major label support.
I don't know if you saw it, but Byron Crawford wrote an article (here) about the fact that Asher Roth seems to be biting quite a bit of what you've done up to this point: the freestyle on the rooftop, the cosign from Beanie, the Slick Rick song [Gangster Story, above]. Every aspect of Roth's image seems to have been carefully developed by his management, namely Steve Rifkind, so it seems unlikely this would be a coincidence that he would do so many of the same things that you did. What's your reaction to that?
Haha yea I read that article. It's interesting. Truthfully, I don't really know what to think about it. Most people who hit me up about the article basically said three times isnt a coincidence. Twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. I think Asher's camp might have caught wind of me early and they went on the offensive. Look, the thing me and Asher have in common that's unchangeable is that we're both white and we're both trying to do something in the music business. So maybe they thought it might be a powerful way to market their whiteboy - borrow from my life. Clever marketing scheme it may be, that's really my life. But I can't say that for the next guy.
It annoyed me a little cause it's not just little ideas I come up with to market myself. Beans is my man, and when he vouches for me, it's not on some marketing shit. It's on some hip hop shit. We have a friendship based on the fact we're the same type of South Philly dude and we've been through a lot of the same shit (went through some of it together). When I pay homage to Slick Rick, it's not because I learned about who he is in some hip hop crash course. He was the first rapper I ever heard when I was a little kid. And then when I was with Overbrook Ent (Will Smith's company) they flew me to Cali for Jada Pinkett's birthday party, and I wound up onstage with Rick and Nas. I went from an anonymous dude in the street, to sharing a spotlight with two of my strongest influences in rap. So there's a personal history attached to those things. So I admit when I saw the article, I was a little put off, cause yea it looked like a gimmicky hipster rapper taking ideas from me, cause they weren't just ideas, they were part of my identity. Maybe it was just a coincidence though. I really can't call it cause you never know what's going on in someone else's head.
While we're on the subject of Asher Roth, it seems like in the history of hip hop there's only been room for one white emcee/group at a time to be in the spotlight at any given time. The Beastie Boys gave way to 3rd Bass to House of Pain to Eminem. Now Em's releasing his comeback album right on the heels of Roth's album. Even though your style is completely different from those two, the fans have a habit of lumping all white emcees into the same group. Given that, do you think there's enough room for you and Asher (and Em) to all have success? Or do you see it heading toward a situation like 50 and Ja, where you're going to have to end this kid's career in order to take your own career to the next level?
I mean, like you said, our styles are so different. I think it really depends on how Roth tries to play his angles from now on. His market is the college kids. He should stick to that I Love College shit. Shit, he can come sing "I Love College" on one of my hooks, and get me some college fans. But if he steps inside my ring on some real rap ability shit, he's gonna make himself look bad. That's basically what happened when he did all those things the article talked about. He created a comparison by playing me too close.
I don't want anyone to take me the wrong way on this - I don't hate Asher Roth. I name checked him in the hipster song because he came up in my radar. But his raps are good for a certain type of college audience who have only been exposed to mainstream hip hop. It's like user-friendly, beginner's hip hop. Nothing wrong with that. But when his album is being marketed as a top 5 of all time, I have no choice but to comment on that in my music. This is rap. This is what it's all about. And if he responds, there's really no way for him to win, because as the machine behind him gets more and more exposed, his case for being embraced as a real hip hop artist gets weaker and weaker. In that sense, it's sort of like a 50/Ja kind of situation, because as a rapper, I have to comment on this kind of thing, and he's put himself in my cross-hairs.
Two times in the past you were close to signing a record deal [first with Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment, then with Beanie Sigel and State Property], and both times the deal came apart after you got arrested. I'm sure a lot of people reading about your past would ask why you didn't get out of the drug game when you had the chance to go legit as a musician. It sounded like you were moving some serious weight at the time, so was it just the fact that you were making more money with drugs than you would have with music? Were these labels not giving you any advance money?
Basically, when all you know is running around making fast money in the street, that's your meal ticket. You can try to do other things, but it's all a fantasy cause at the end of the day, you know what you know, and you need to make money. So of course, when I'm talking to Charlie Mack about plans to drop a full length album with Overbrook - Will Smith's label - I'm thinking where do I sign? But then when I fly back to Philly, I got immediate bills to pay, mouths to feed, and basically responsibilities to people in the street. I couldn't just switch up my life that fast. Or maybe I thought I couldn't but I could have. I don't know, I was 19 or 20 at the time, and I guess I just didn't know how to get out of the life I was in. You see it in movies all the time like Carlito's Way. That's exactly what it feels like. You want out, but you can't see the door, and then by the time you do, it's already too late.
When you got into talks with the labels, did they have any idea of what you were doing outside of the music? Part of my curiosity here is your earlier connection with Will Smith and Overbrook - Smith seems like he's too squeaky clean to ever deal with someone running out in the streets. Was he expecting you to be commercial, to follow in the footsteps of his own career?
I think some of the motivation for Overbrook's interest in signing me was to give Will a way to respond to Eminem's attacks. Em was digging into Will for a minute, and Will couldn't really meet Em on the same playing field, because then he'd offend his own audience, cause they expect Will to be a nice guy. By the way, Will always had a reputation in the street for being a talented rapper - don't let anyone tell you different. But he also had a reputation for being clean cut. Not like a hostile, angry type of rapper. So I think Charlie Mack (Will's manager) saw me as a weapon to respond to Em, as well as an opportunity to build controversy between me and Em, cause we'd naturally be bid against each other in the media like we were saying before about white rappers. Shout out to Charlie Mack [who old school heads will remember from "Charlie Mack is the first out the limo!"] by the way.
In your bio, it says that while you were in prison you spent time working on your skills as an emcee, doing a lot of battle raps. I'll admit my only knowledge of prison comes from what I see from Hollywood, but it seems like you'd have to watch your back around any dude you beat in a battle in there. Was that ever the case, where you served someone up lyrically and it escalated after that? Or was it a situation where you got respect for your skills as an emcee?
I was transferred around to a lot of different prisons, cause I was arrested and convicted in different states. But the main place where I was battling a lot was Fairton. And my man Woodgie ran the joint. So when I first got to Fairton, I ran into Woodgie and he was like "yo Beans is in the hole, but he's getting out soon." So the day Beans was released back into general population, Woodgie shut down the yard and made everyone sit on the bleachers so me and Beans could walk the track and talk. He had me spit a bunch of different raps for him, and by the time we got back to the bleachers, he was just like "it's official. Big City's official." So there was a lot of beef happening like in any prison, but not related to any rap battles. It was a situation where I got respect. Real talk, if you're a whiteboy in prison and you can hold onto your sneakers (let alone hold your own), you get respect. So when I battled, and served someone, everyone watching, including the dude I just destroyed - they all loved it. And they respected it, it never turned into anything negative.
You're Italian and, from what I've read, your family has had ties to the mob. I don't know if things are different in Philly, but where I'm from the Italian community (particularly the old school types who are connected to the mafia) has never really embraced black culture. What's your family's reaction been to your involvement in hip hop?
A lot of my family is gone now. So we never got around to that discussion. Look, it's a new world we live in now. Even the Italians in the street listen to rap. So when they see me doing it, they definitely support it cause they're fans of the music in the first place.
Finally, is there anybody you want to shout out?
Yea, shout to James Lark, Joey Baggs, Woodgie, Johnny Green, Eddie Ess, and Richie Kep. And shout to D. Fresh and 33jones.com, The interview was my pleasure.
Shout out to Big City Phil for taking the time out to do the interview. I don't know what the future holds for him - if this were the late 90's, when the music industry was strong and people were checking for actual lyricism, I have no doubt this dude would blow up - but I wish him the best. If nothing else, he's managed to put out a dope mixtape and restore some of my faith in street rap. Here's hoping a few more take notice and give him a chance.
Here are a couple of joints from the tape:
Big City Phil - Gangster Story
Big City Phil - Appetite for Philly
Further Listening:
Big City Philadelphia on MySpace
Big City - The One (video)
Big City's online EPK
And be sure to cop Big City Philadelphia's debut mixtape. It's dope, it's free, go get it!
05/12/2009 08:30:01 PM posted by Fresh