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10 minute read
Rap in CR
If You Build It …?
Cedar Rapids’ rap OGs take a look at how the scene is faring.
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BY GeneVIeVe TRAInOR
If you start asking around about the hip- “but I don’t see what I saw 10 years ago, 20 years coming through town to perform. I think the bighop scene in Cedar Rapids, you’ll hear ago. … I could be far removed from the scene. gest show they had here—I was in high school I the same answer repeatedly: “What But there aren’t many places in Cedar Rapids to believe—was Hammer. We wasn’t going to see scene?” perform. … You’ve had these good pushes, but all the nitty gritty acts from back then.”
Of course, there hasn’t been much of anything not enough momentum for it to really blossom.” After high school, he went to the University happening the past year-plus, due to the pandem- Rahlan Kay has been on the hip-hop scene in of Iowa, where he got a taste of (and heavily ic. But although everyone can manage to drop Cedar Rapids for 30 years. He was the first hip- influenced) the Iowa City scene, performing as a name or two, the general consensus seems to hop act to play the McGrath Amphitheater, for Genuyne until he got the tip that someone else be that whatever scene there once was has fad- Uptown Friday Nights, and he managed the hip- had a slightly stronger claim to a slightly differed. The further you dig, the less you find. Only hop stage for 319 Fest. He was first inspired to ent spelling. In Iowa City, he had access to occaa handful of names show up on a Bandcamp perform by a local group he saw take the stage at sional BET and a hip-hop show on campus radio, search. Facebook pages like Hip Hop Roots and the clubs were welcoming—but the talent Cedar Rapids, Iowa haven’t seen activity since was transitory. 2014. It’s something of a ghost town. “[There was a] real strong push, but we
Now, I don’t claim to be omniscient. I hope weren’t able to sustain it,” Rahlan Kay said. “I like hell that I get a slew of emails schooling me on all I missed. Y’all would tell me when I fuck up, right? Yeah. I trust you. So I hope you trust me: CR is a city that’s just waiting to break. Years ago, I saw Schäffer the Darklord at the Sofia DeMartino would say because of three things: not really being supported, Cedar Rapids not choosing to support; Iowa City, moving; not having a real bona fide radio station that catered specifically to hip hop. … It’s hard to build and maintain a scene Blue Collar Lounge—a tiny bar where 1st St SW without having some of those channels.” meets C St SW (a diner called Lucita’s is there LISTEn: Rahlan Kay LISTEn: imperfekt now). It was by a large margin the most packed I have ever seen a show in Cedar Rapids at a legitimate establishment. The fans are there, so why “Here we never really had a place where you can isn’t the music? just show up with a CD and put it in a CD player
When you start asking around about hip hop and rap into a microphone, it just never was a in the city, two names will come up again and thing,” imperfekt said. “So we would always just again: Rahlan Kay, a.k.a. Rowland Gibson, have to figure out a little dive bar we could go and imperfekt, a.k.a. Rick into.” Noggle. They’ve been playing out in the city for de“THE LEGAL CAPACITY OF THE BLUE COLLAR LOUnGE From 2006-2012, imperfekt ran the monthly Super cades, often driving engage- WAS 49 PEOPLE. … WE WOULD HAVE nIGHTS WHERE Fresh Saturdays at a series ment and creating practically 100 PEOPLE WOULD PAY FIVE BUCKS AT THE DOOR.” of venues in Cedar Rapids. It from scratch. These are both started when his mother, who hometown boys, born and worked at the Blue Collar raised in the 319, with deep ties to the commu- McKinley when he was a student, Magic Motion. Lounge, encouraged him to hold a show there. nity, both professionally (Noggle owns a hip “I’ve always been musical, playing instru- It exploded fast, with acts from as far away as hop inspired vintage clothing store downtown, ments or being in band, being in orchestra,” he New York City looking to book with him, and 20 Years Awesome; Gibson works with youth at said. He’s played upright bass, saxophone; he’s eventually grew into Super Fresh Culture Fest, Foundation 2) and in their music. sung in choir, done theater. But when he and his a festival that ran three years in Cedar Rapids,
The video for Rahlan Kay’s latest single, friends saw Magic Motion, they thought, “Oh, from 2012-2014. “Music Is Like Breathin’” (produced by his we could do this too.” “The legal capacity of the Blue Collar Lounge brother, EJ Swavv, who he also performs with They called themselves EM3: Educated was 49 people. … We would have nights where in the group Sons of Mack) is a love letter to Music to the Third Power. In addition to Magic 100 people would pay five bucks at the door,” the city, showcasing the crucial spots of his Motion, he named Cedar Rapids influences he said. youth, including McKinley Middle School and Soldiers in Command, Sonny Butler, Maybelle, Once the showcases outgrew that spot, they Washington High School, and shouting out influ- DJ Commando (who’s still active)—and he re- ran for a while at the Coopacabana, until the ences and peers in the text across the bottom of members rushing home from McKinley in the flood of 2008. It took several meetings with the the screen. afternoons to see Yo, MTV Raps. owner over two to three months before he agreed
“I think there are individuals who have an “That was the only visual that we would see to let them do a show there, but eventually, they interest,” he says of up-and-coming performers, of hip hop, because it wasn’t like anybody was were staples in the space, and even the regulars
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Inside noggle’s throwback shop, 20 Years Awesome. Sofia DeMartino / Little Village
in what imperfekt referred to as an “old people bar” were hanging out enjoying the gigs. The venue was one of the few they had access to with both ample space and a stage.
“These places never had stages,” imperfekt said of the dive bars they typically booked, “so we were performing on the same level as the people that were watching us perform. … We just never had that real stage, go there, have a big booming sound system—we’d have to bring our own speakers and everything. We were like the entire embodiment of the show: sound, DJ, booking it, making the flyers—we did all the work. Whereas if we lived in Iowa City and we booked a show at Gabe’s Oasis, all we’d have to do was secure the date.”
Although imperfekt has in the past toured all over, including Austin, Texas and the East Coast, and his crew, the Mic Hand Crew, is made up of rappers from around the region, “Cedar Rapids has always been my heart,” he said. “I’ve always been trying to put on for this city.”
“There’s lots of talent here, and I talk about it quite a bit with some of my other cohorts, how I feel bad for the up-and-comers.” The lack of regular shows and scene support in the city “makes me feel sad for the … young versions of me that are supposed to be coming up and taking my place,” he said.
“Once again it comes down to the fact that there’s not a place that you can go to and just plug a microphone in and rap. If you want to book a show you have to have a full sound system.” hustle. They have had conversations with the bar owners, fought for the scene in their hometown. And they both still perform on a semi-regular basis, or did before COVID-19, and hope to again. But they both expressed that there is a lack of cohesion and a lack of institutional support that prevent what could be considered a “scene” from actually taking hold.
“There’s just not a lot of venues,” Rahlan Kay said. He shouts out the Olympic South Side Theater, Cocktails, and Tailgators, but, “There’s very few and far between, specifically in Cedar Rapids. And I don’t think the community of Cedar Rapids, the business community per se, was really too keen on having people perform live hip hop.”
“There were other spots in town that we always wanted to get into and do stuff, but they wouldn’t let us,” imperfekt concurred. “There’s such a stigma against rap and hip hop being a negative thing.”
Part of that stigma may have to do with the somewhat unique relationship between Eastern Iowa and Chicago. One of the first things you learn on moving to this region is that “people from Chicago” is Iowan for “troublemakers,” and almost exclusively refers to black people.
“I know that there’s a certain bit of privilege that I’ve had,” imperfekt said. Although he noted that things seem different now, he acknowledged, “I know that being that most of the business owners here were white, and I was a white person trying to come and book a hip-hop show, that it was easier for me than some of the black guys around town.”
So like a bad real estate joke, it all keeps coming back to finding the right location, location, location.
IOWA CITY NORTHSIDE MARKETPLACE
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“Realistically it comes down to a centralized location where people go,” imperfekt said. “That’s where the OGs go and the newcomers go, and the up-and-comers get to come and cut their teeth.”
When he was a teen, he and his friends traveled down to Gabe’s in Iowa City for that opportunity.
“I would go to a show two hours early and stay two hours late, with the hopes that a freestyle session would happen, or with the hopes that we would break dance and battle rap people. … For there not to be anywhere for anybody to go that’s been consistent, it leaves everybody in their own studio at their own house making their own music by themselves.”
Rahlan Kay sees that isolation as well. And although he notes that other regional hubs, like the Atlanta area or New York, seem to have a more supportive atmosphere than anywhere in the Midwest, he also thinks that it may be a shift in the genre.
“Now in 2021, there’s not that push for having a group, like a Wu-Tang. I think it’s more individualized. And I might credit that to social media. Anybody can be a star,” he said of the new talent making names for themselves online.
There’s a Midwestern lope to the styles of both artists, though, that despite their dissimilarities makes a listener think that a Cedar Rapids “sound” is a thing, even if the “scene” isn’t. Rahlan Kay focuses on message, and imperfekt has a distinct lyrical agility that he centers in his work, but there’s something that’s both focused and casual about their tunes, like an Iowan sitting on the porch watching a tornado roll in: unworried, unhurried, yet also somehow defiant.
It’s enough to allow hope to sneak in that there may be a future for this scattered effort yet. And support is building: Both Rahlan Kay and imperfekt mentioned the Sound Box studio in Cedar Rapids, which also nabbed runner up in Little Village’s Best of the CRANDIC awards last year. And coming up on July 10, the Iowa Summer Jam is returning, this time to the Olympic South Side Theater. It’s billed as a festival for all genres, but CR rapper Tone Da Boss is producing, through his T1 Entertainment management and marketing group, another key player pushing forward in the city.
“That might be a good indicator of where we are,” Rahlan Kay said of the Summer Jam.
I for one can’t wait to find out.
Genevieve Trainor would just like to say that anyone who didn’t vote for Kendrick in this month’s poll was wrong.