rap Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Hip-Hop Artists In Rural Virginia Help Each Other Make Music And Spread The Word About It

When he was starting college several years ago, Geonoah Davis was a poet. His cousins were rappers. Some of his cousins started making music together as Valley Boy Music Group. They knew he wrote poetry, so one day they asked him to write and record a verse on one of their songs.

“I felt like from the get-go, I’ve always had something to say,” Davis said. “So it was rewarding because I was like, ‘Wow, I want to keep doing this.’”

He raps under the name geonovah, and he writes a lot about his own life—heavy stuff like relationship struggles, depression, and racism he has experienced. He writes about joyful, playful stuff, too, like being in love and having a good time with friends. For geonovah, music is also a way to talk about the changes he wants to see in the world, like an end to mass incarceration and police brutality.

“I talk about a lot of the things going on in society, and being a Black person in society, in America, has never been easy,” geonovah said.

We’re Gonna Make It Work Somehow

In 2017, Valley Boy Music Group put on a field party in southwest Virginia. Picture a large tent in the middle of a dark field, surrounded by mountains. Hundreds of people are packed under, dancing and cheering. There’s neon lights, smoke machines, and glow paint flying all around. geonovah, was one of the performers at the field party that night.

“I don’t even know how we got there,” geonovah said. “And there was like 400 people. It was crazy.”

geonovah is 25 and grew up in Big Stone Gap, a town of around 5,000 in Wise County, Virginia.

geonovah has been rapping and recording music since 2016. He started rapping in college when his cousins asked him to join their hip-hop collective, Valley Boy Music Group.

“My family’s all from Big Stone,” geonovah said. “Actually, the house I live in was my great grandmother’s and her mom’s before that.”

The Wise County hip-hop tradition goes back farther than geonovah and the Valley Boyz. One of geonovah’s cousins and fellow Valley Boy is Raekwon Mitchell a.k.a. RKMITCH. His dad’s friends were big into freestyling. And when he was a budding rapper, RKMITCH remembers listening in as they improvised lyrics over beats.

“They were like, ‘Okay, let me see what you got,’” RKMITCH said. “So I went to pull out my little notepad. And they’re like, ‘No, no, no. I want to hear what you can just come off the top with.’ I just looked at them. I was like, ‘Oh, no, I can’t do that. I’m not a freestyler. I don’t do that, I write.’”

RKMITCH prefers to write out lyrics rather than freestyle. He never saw the older generation record anything—it was more about bragging rights among friends.

“With them it was always just the energy of it, the love of the music, and seeing their abilities to freestyle,” RKMITCH said.

Raekwon Mitchell a.k.a. RKMITCH recording a song in a dorm room in 2015. RKMITCH has been rapping since he was 13 when an older cousin encouraged him to put his poems to beats.

As RKMITCH remembers it, the older generation rappers were making music for each other. They were showing off how quickly and how persuasively they could articulate a point of view. And there was less of an emphasis on sharing it with a larger audience.

“I don’t think many of them actually performed, in this area especially,” RKMITCH said. “There’s not really a whole lot of places to perform.”

The Valley Boyz have created their own performance spaces, like those field parties. They’ve improvised studios, too, out of dorm rooms, hotel rooms, and bedrooms.

“We’ve been in situations where it’s like, ‘Wow, you’re really recording right here?’” RKMITCH said. “And it’s like, ‘Well, yeah, I mean, we’re gonna make it work somehow.’”

In Appalachian Virginia, a lot of institutional support for music is targeted towards old-time, country and bluegrass. So hip-hop communities have had to find ways to support themselves.

Jared Soares is a photographer who’s been documenting the hip-hop scene in another southwest Virginia town—Roanoke—since 2007. He says artists there had a similar way of making do, or making it up.

“It was very much a DIY culture, a Do-It-Yourself mentality,” Soares said. “‘If it doesn’t exist in Roanoke, we’re just gonna build it. And we’re gonna make do with what we have, and we’re gonna make it the best possible.’”

Community Care Is Part Of The Hip-Hop Tradition

geonovah sees his music as a way to bring more material support to other hip-hop artists.

“I’m doing it so I can get the resources I need for the people I care about and for the community that I care about in this area,” he said.

Last year, geonovah won a grant to help him produce new music. The organization that gave the grant often supports bluegrass and old-time musicians, but this was the first grant they’ve given to a local hip-hop artist. The first thing geonovah did when he got the funds was buy new equipment for several other hip-hop artists in the area. One of those was Kelly Thompson, a.k.a. Pookie.

“He’s helped others get microphones and interfaces and other gear that’s necessary for recording,” Pookie said.

A.D. Carson is a hip-hop artist and an assistant professor of hip-hop at the University of Virginia. He explains that helping out the folks back home isn’t just a subject of certain rappers’ music, but it’s also part of their practice. Part of the hip-hop tradition.

“Thinking about not just shouting out home…But also how do we bring the people from where we’re from into the space where they might also have access to those resources,” Dr. Carson said.

They Just Don’t Have The Resources To Produce Their Art

In Pookie’s third floor apartment in downtown Wise, Virginia, geonovah has helped Pookie turn his spare bedroom into a makeshift studio. A mattress is propped up against a wall to muffle the street sounds below. Pookie sits at a computer that geonovah bought with the grant money, and starts making a beat.

He and geonovah have been friends since middle school, and they’ve been making music together for a couple years now.

“Whenever he makes a beat, and if he’s had me in mind, he’ll put these little sounds here and there and I’m like, ‘Ooh, he put that in there just for me,’” geonovah said.

Pookie (left) and geonovah (right) work on a song together in Pookie’s bedroom studio. Pookie first got into making music in high school when his dad taught him to play piano. Pookie’s dad played piano in church, and this background influences Pookie’s beats.

Pookie was inspired to learn to make beats by watching geonovah and some local producers at work.

“I was just totally impressed,” Pookie said. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is how music is made?’”

Long-term, geonovah hopes to help establish cultural arts centers in the area to better support artists of all kinds.

“I feel like there’s way more artistic individuals in this area than we know, they just don’t have the resources to produce their art,” geonovah said.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

A Family Legacy Dedicated to Hip-Hop, Arts in Appalachia

This story is featured on an episode of Inside Appalachia, focused on hip-hop culture throughout the region. To listen to this episode and others, subscribe to the podcast.

West Virginia native Eric Jordan and his family has been one of the most powerful forces creating hip-hop in the state. Jordan has a special ability to mentor develop and produce Appalachian artists.

As a young child, Jordan always loved hip-hop culture and music. But he learned you could make music on the sidewalk if you wanted to see Purple Rain at the Warner theater in Morgantown.

“Me and my friends didn’t have any money to get in. We went and got a piece of cardboard. Man, we got like $50. It was enough to get everybody in. From then on, music and art became a business.” said Jordan.

Two Brothers, One Record Company

In 1999, Jordan and his brother Lionel, also known as 6’6 240, started an Indie hip-hop label called Soundvizion Records. They did most of the production work themselves. They found that they had a talent for developing artists. They started a project they called 304 Reconz, where they search all over West Virginia for talent to mentor.

“When we started SoundVision in 1999, the mission statement was, ‘let’s give these kids something to be proud of for themselves’. We all did it together,” said Jordan. “It ain’t no racial line here. I didn’t see black or white. I saw poor, and that’s where we attacked it with 304 Reconz. We representing the trailer parks, we’re representing poverty. That’s not a black thing, that’s a poor thing. That’s lack of having, that’s survivalist. And you know, that’s interracial.”

How Poetry Inspired a Hip-Hop Youth Camp

Eric and his family are no stranger to the arts. His father, the late Norman Jordan, is one of the most published Appalachian poets. He even won an award from the United Nations. Norman Jordan also started a youth art camp 30 years ago. It was known as the African American Arts and Heritage Academy.

“My father was a mentor to me. I’ve been a mentor to artists. Honestly we are in the talent development business. We have been in that business for a long time,” Jordan said about his father.

Eric Jordan (l) and his father Norman Jordan, who passed away last year.

The camp is for all children ages 13 to 18.

“We concentrate on African Arts to teach, but we want students of all races to be involved,” said Jordan.

The art camp is a week where kids can come to the camp, pick a discipline, theater, graphic arts, dance, or hip-hop, depending on which instructors are available.”

To honor his memory and legacy, the camp was renamed the Norman Jordan African American Arts and Heritage Academy. Kids pay an entry fee, but he tries to keep the fees low. Recently the camp has been struggling financially. So the hip-hop community from all over the state came together to host a fundraiser at a venue in Morgantown called 123 Pleasant Street.

To honor his memory and legacy, the camp was renamed the Norman Jordan African American Arts and Heritage Academy. Kids pay an entry fee, but he tries to keep the fees low. Recently the camp has been struggling financially. The hip-hop community from all over the state came together to host a fundraiser at a venue in Morgantown called 123 Pleasant Street.

Jordan says the academy is more than a camp. It’s an opportunity to mentor young people who might come from a rough background.

He’s toured all over the American hip-hop scene, learning lessons along the way He enjoys sharing what he’s learned in the studio, but especially in the camp. It’s a way to give back and invest in the future of his community.

“It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever been a part of. If you have any kind of success, you have to take on the accountability that comes with that success,” said Eric Jordan. “Some people say, ‘I don’t want to be a role model’. But that situation and what’s going on in our communities is bigger than any damn song. You know? It’s bigger than any radio play that you’re gonna get.”

“Kids that are coming out of these communities— they don’t have confidence. They don’t have experience. The arts does that. Especially if you’re dealing with hip-hop and production. Our message is always going to be about, ‘how as we as a community can be better.’”

K Flay – Mixing It Up

Channel surfing one night, I stumbled upon a video of a young woman performing on Carson Daley’s Last Call. She was rapping and singing what appeared to be original material. It was infectious.

Accompanied by a drummer and a man working computer keys and other electronic gizmos, I was fascinated by what appeared to be a hybrid rap-hip-hop-electronic music. Her stage presence had none of the street-wise bravado and neither was she pandering to the audience, nor putting her body on display. She seemed lost in her own world; pacing about the stage, engulfed by the music, earnestly gesturing while rapping and singing.

I had seen other artists perform in this style, but never with this kind of sound and stage presence. Whatever the big “it” is, meaning star quality, K Flay aka Kristine Flaherty, has it in spades.

Her songs sound fresh, her ideas original and free from self-consciousness and her voice will get under your skin. K Flay has big things coming her way. It’s just a matter of whether or not the music industry will recognize and embrace her originality.

We talked about her new album, Life As a Dog, and what it’s like to be in a male-dominated genre, stereotypes, getting faded and her ambitions.

A tiny disclaimer: K Flay has the occasional naughty word on her album. If you are offended by that, then don’t say I didn’t warn you.

"A Change of Tune" Interviews Run River North

"We play folk music, but not in the sense that we play banjos. We just like talking about people and their stories." -Alex Hwang

This week, “A Change of Tune” host Joni Deutsch interviews Alex Hwang (vocals, acoustic guitar) of indie folk group Run River North about the band’s self-titled debut. The discussion also veers into the Korean-American band’s connections to Honda, their definition of folk music, and how the group was influenced by, of all things, rap and hip-hop music. If you’re a fan of indie folk music with a twist, this interview is recommended for you.

Joni: Did you guys feel like you were getting punk’d by Honda when they put you on Kimmel’s talk show?

Alex: We really had no idea. We were hoping we would get a Honda van out of it, but obviously they had something else in mind. It basically was an episode of Punk’d. But luckily, the people who punk’d us are really good friends of ours, and we meet-up with them once every other month to have burgers and barbeques. There’s no hard feelings after that, even though it did feel kind of mean at the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4vKLKK0l8w

Joni: After that, did it feel like an obligation to keep using Honda vehicles? Is there a clause that says, “You must only use and talk about Honda vehicles?”

Alex: That’s the cool thing about the people that work at Honda. All of us drive Hondas naturally, and we did afterwards. If they ever need anything from us, we’ll try it out, but there’s no contractual thing. We’re not sponsored by them or anything. It’s like an organic relationship. I do like Honda, without them ever putting us on Kimmel. [Laughing] I think I got in trouble last time, though. There was this festival that Toyota was sponsoring, and I was just bragging about Honda and how they put us on Kimmel. Toyota was confused as to why we were on the bill and why we were talking about Honda.

J: Toyota was probably thinking, “You expect us to one-up Honda by putting the band on Conan?”

A: [Laughing] Yeah, that would be nice. We love Conan and watch him all the time.

J: Going into your new record, how’s the experience been releasing it?

A: We’re just excited to be able to go on tour and play the songs that are on the album. It’s just great to have an actual CD that’s pressed and not burn CD’s from Target that we have to put on the road. It’s good to have a product to sell that we’re really behind, and it just shows a great snapshot of what we were like last summer. The reactions have been great, people have been really liking our live show and buying our CD. For some people, it’s there first time coming out to a concert, so we’re really excited for people to experience live music in general and allowing our music to be their first to do that. Sometimes it’s the first CD they’ve bought in a while, too, so they’ll tell us, “I’ve only bought the Taylor Swift CD and yours!”

J: That’s really interesting. Do you think there’s a correlation between your music and Taylor Swift?

A: [Laughing] Ah, no. I think that was just that one fan. I just kind of remembered her making a big deal that I was in the same category as Taylor Swift. I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

J: Are you guys hearing a lot of comparisons to Fleet Foxes and other indie folk-rock bands?

A: Oh, totally! We did work with the producer who worked on a Fleet Foxes album. It’s a similarity that we don’t not like. I think it’s interesting that you have some acoustic guitars and everybody singing and a lot of similarities come up. But when you come to our live shows, there’s a lot happening. We’ve grown up a little bit more since the album was recorded, and it’s interesting to see people be surprised about what they read about, what they hear on the album, and then what they actually see live.

J: When you think of folk bands, like Mumford & Sons and Of Monsters and Men, you think of 30-year-old white men with beards, sometimes in flannel or with banjos and mandolins. But you describe your music as “gangster folk.”

A: [Laughing] For me, personally, I always wanted to be a rapper. It’s going to be a life-long dream that I might not ever fulfill, so I wanted to put it out there into the world. If somebody latched onto the genre of gangster folk, somebody should do it anyways. I like how our music and the songs that we write are about folks that we know and our own folks. In a quite literal sense, it’s “folk music.” As for the gangster part, I just like how everybody in the band can not only play their instruments really well, but they can hold a note, they can sing, and their voices are also a part of the whole make-up of the band. I think that’s really gangster for everybody to stand-up to the plate, not just hide behind their instruments, and be vulnerable enough to sing out loud. That’s the part that I really appreciate about gangster folk or the genre that I’m continually trying to press onto the world.

J: I can’t let that rap comment go. You’ll have to tell me a little more about that. Why did you want to be a rapper? Can you give us a verse or two?

A: [Laughing] No, I can’t give you a verse. But I can tell you we love listening to A Tribe Called Quest in the car on road trips. Kanye is a lot of fun to listen to. Personally, I just love free-style rap. There’s one that I was growing up with who’s still going around. He’s called Dumbfounded, but I think he goes by Parker now. He’s a Korean-American from Koreatown, and he’s kind of close to my age. Seeing him do his thing, speak his own opinion, and do what he wants to do in a genre that isn’t really dominated by any Asians, it was really inspiring to see that happening in that genre. I was really pulled to rap and hip-hop because of that. So having that background, I’m just inspired by people who can break stereotype and give their opinion on things and be heard. I think a lot of rappers have the potential of doing that well, if given the right platform. If you ever have a chance to check out Parker (Johnathan Park) and Awkwafina, they’re these Asian-American rappers who I personally find really interesting to listen to.

J: Besides the influence of parents and past generations, what else inspires your music?

A: You know, that’s interesting. Going on the road, people have been coming up to us telling us about their immigrant stories, their family lives, or what gets them through. It’s weird: when you’re an artist and, luckily for us get on TV, people then start gravitating to you and start sharing stories. I think the inspiration comes from fans and hearing these incredible stories that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. I think it’s continually finding stories out there already, reacting to that, and repurposing and packaging that to put out there. I really enjoy just writing songs about folks and that I know of or hear. We play folk music, but not in the sense that we play banjos. We just like talking about people and their stories.

J: I assume the audiences you’re seeing are a mix of all kinds of people. Do you think your music is helping improve or diversify the indie folk scene?

A: I hope so. I’m not trying to be crusader to be a diversity person for indie folk, but when you come to our shows, there’s not only ethnic diversity but a generation diversity. Parents are bringing their kids. Sometimes there’s an old couple, looking like they’re in the 70’s, listening in the back and politely telling us they heard us on NPR. It’s great to see so many walks of life coming through. I think that speaks to the fact that we try to write stories about people, so the more people we write about, the more different people will show up. It’s really interesting to see such diversity in the crowd. [Laughing] They’re always wondering why we’re all Korean. We’re trying not to be racist, it’s just the five people I first shared our songs with.

J: I noticed that the band covers quite a few songs on YouTube. Do you have any favorites?

A: Oh yeah! We haven’t done a video for it, but on our first head-lining tour, we did “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. It’s a totally different take on it. It came from the fact that I probably listened to the album a thousand times over and be [The Killers’ frontman] Brandon Flowers. We made it our own, and I think it’s a lot of fun. A lot of the covers actually come from one source. Our friend started a relationship and wanted us to play a song for a girl, and right now he’s married to that girl. At each step of their relationship, they’ve asked if we could cover a song. They’ve been the only ones that we’ve said yes to the request. Each one has been great, and it’s been an interesting way of covering songs. They’ve always picked good songs for us, actually, ones that we didn’t think were going to be great or we didn’t personally connect to, but we just wanted to help this couple out. So now, whenever they ask, we’ll say yes because they’ve been so good about picking songs.

J: That’s so cute! So you’re not doing the covers because you like doing covers, you’re doing them because you’ve been given a quirky relationship request.

A: It is! If you look at the video for the City and Colour song, every place we go to in that video is a spot that our friend Cory and Bev really like about L.A. So the whole video’s like a “Happy Valentine’s Day” gift to them that Cory wanted to give to her. That asked us to play a song for them for their wedding, but unfortunately we were on tour. It was one we wanted to cover to as well, so you’ll probably see another cover come out because Cory and Bev are in love. We’re excited to see where that keeps going.

J: Beyond the cover songs, I also saw your cutesy music videos on YouTube. Did you have a favorite?

A: They’re both so much fun. The first one, [“Fight to Keep”] with [Napoleon Dynamite’s] Diedrich Bader, he was such a great guy. We got to go to Big Bear and get murdered by him, and that’s something I’m never going to be able to do again. But the “Excuses” video was near and dear. The two guys who directed it are good friends of mine, and the guy who stars in it is also a friend. We had so much fun running around L.A. and shooting it in a day and a half. I think it was great because it didn’t require too much for the band. We could all just go to different places in L.A. and watch him make a freak of himself. When we do videos, we like to support people that are our lives, and everything in that video was made possible by friends. It’s always fun to incorporate friends in everything that we do and support small businesses in the art world.

J: And in “Fight to Keep,” I didn’t realize Bader played “Rex Kwon Do” in Napoleon Dynamite until I looked it up.

A: He doesn’t really do music videos, but he was fantastic, and the fact that we was willing to do that for us was mind-boggling. He was really down to earth, and not only does he have funny lines, but he’s a great guy. I think somebody from our label had worked with him on The Drew Carey Show, so she just reached out and he was super excited about it. He doesn’t really do music videos so, once again, it was a friend relationship that made this happen.

J: Do you have any dream collaborations with musicians?

A: I think working with some of the artists that Phil [Ek, Run River North music producer] has produced like Fleet Foxes would be good. But on a way more serious note, there’s a group on YouTube called Turquoise Jeep, and two of the members of that group are Yung Humma and Flynt Flossy. If we could collaborate with them, it would be a dream come true. They are our musical influences, and they make the band really happy when we drive for long, long hours into the night. Collaborating with them would be a dream come true. It’s rap, but you don’t know if they’re serious or not. It’s really good.

J: The band was originally called Monsters Calling Home. Now it’s Run River North. Is there a new name for the band on the horizon?

A: [Laughing] Hopefully not. I think the first step was because we didn’t want to hold onto anything too tightly, but I think it’s hard for fans to find us again and to change our Facebook and YouTube and all of these things. It’s really stressful, so we might just want to keep this name, but you never know. I love the way Arcade Fire have a different name for each album, and each album they personify that and think of themselves like, “This time we’re Neon Bible, that time we’re Reflektor.” They find different ways to get behind a name. I do love Run River North and how it exemplifies what our band is holistically. It’s all about our music being like a river and being bombastic but quiet at the same time, and there’s this fluidity to it that’s great to talk about. But who knows. We might meet Flynt Flossy in a year and he’ll come up with a better name for us.

Run River North will join fellow folk rockers Boy & Bear on their North American fall tour. You can follow Run River North on http://home.runrivernorth.com/. Listen to “Fight to Keep” on Joni Deutsch’s “A Change of Tune” this Saturday at 10 PM EST on West Virginia Public Radio.