14 minute read
EarthGang and JID
EARTHGANG and JID aren’t your typical Atlanta rappers. But the southern US city that’s transformed hip hop over the past decade is itself changing, and they’re about to show the world it’s time to catch up No place
Code red: EarthGang (this page) and JID (opposite) are set to blow up
like home
Words MAURICE G GARLAND Photography CAM KIRK
JID
C
old air-conditioning is a welcome guest at Cam Kirk Studios when it’s hot-as-hell o’clock in the afternoon in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia. While this isn’t the busiest area downtown, it’s still easy to get caught up here, as you are literally at the intersection of arrival time, a good time and hard times.
The entrance to the brick building the studio calls home is steps away from a Greyhound station where nomads loitering outside will ask you for loose change, food, a phone charger or, depending on the time of day, all three. The tall windows of the studio offer a bird’s-eye view of the legendary Magic City strip club that has now added ‘Kitchen’ to its name after its food offerings gained popularity when hometown favourite and NBA basketball player Lou Williams risked it all, breaking COVID protocols in the 2020 ‘bubble’ to stop by the notorious breast-and-thigh showcase just to get a plate of wings. The backside of the building sits in the shadows of the Atlanta City Detention Center – or, as the locals call it, ‘the jail’ – which, in case you’re wondering, currently has a 2.4-star average on Google reviews, with the most recent comment saying: “Would not recommend”. Knowing that, this isn’t necessarily a corner you want to get lost at, literally or figuratively.
Once you’re inside the building, though, it’s not difficult to find the actual studio. You can either follow
the sound of music that spurts out every time the door opens, or you can secretly trail the first twentysomething you see wearing something designed by Kanye West, Virgil Abloh or Travis Scott onto the elevator to the fourth floor. The walls of the studio are decorated with crisp, high-contrast photos of the studio’s long list of clientele, consisting mostly of Atlanta rappers who have defined the sound of rap – and, by default, pop – music for at least the last seven years. Migos, Gucci Mane, Lil Baby, Young Thug, 2 Chainz and 21 Savage are among the many featured. However, today’s client, who has also achieved a good amount of notoriety, has noticed he’s nowhere to be found.
“When you gonna put me on one of these walls, bro?” asks JID, jokingly but equally puzzled, as he greets the studio’s owner and namesake.
“Soon. We’re going to change that today,” replies Cam Kirk, laughing at the entourage of weed aroma that has followed JID into the space.
The omission, as unintentional as it is, does speak to the Atlanta rap scene’s representation at large. Along with friends and Dreamville labelmates WowGr8 and Olu of EarthGang, JID is a founding member of the Spillage Village, an Atlanta-based musical collective also consisting of singer Mereba, rappers Jurdan Bryant and 6lack, and producers Hollywood JB and Benji. While these three Spillage Village members all have Grammy nominations and passport stamps congruent to most of the faces on the wall, they’re not always the first – nor the most – mentioned when it comes to the city’s current wave of rap artists. Each of them, at least, expect that to change when their new albums, EarthGang’s Ghetto Gods and JID’s The Forever Story, drop at different points this year.
“A lot of people, if they weren’t real fans of us like that, they wouldn’t even know we was from Atlanta,” says Olu, who, along with WowGr8, graduated from Atlanta’s storied Benjamin E Mays High School, which was also attended by all four members of legendary Southern hip- hop group Goodie Mob. “Because we may not look like the typical Atlanta artist that is portrayed in the media.”
In this case, ‘typical’ falls into a colourful grey area, since just about every Atlanta rapper – no matter whether they’re trap (the city’s own distinct genre of Southern hip hop, associated with artists such as TI and Ghetto Mafia) or not – shares similar accents, hairstyles, fashion tastes, or that lingering desire to prove “the South got something to say”. But much like how reality television producers bypass the city’s rich heritage of Black accomplishments in the fields of business, politics, real estate, higher education, medicine and technology in favour of drink-throwing drama, coverage of Atlanta’s music scene tends to obsess over trap, while almost completely ignoring anything outside of it. Which wasn’t always the case.
Before TI’s branding of it, ‘trap music’ or anything street pretty much lived up to its title and stayed confined
in a specific set of neighbourhood borders, while combinations of positive (Arrested Development), player (Outkast) and party (Ludacris) music made it onto the TV music show Rap City, and thus to other cities in the process. But with the age of the internet, which came about at a time when Atlanta was rapidly becoming number one in income inequality in the US, information and tools became more accessible, and all that was considered underground or lowly found a way in and eventually to the top of the charts. “I know n****s like them who are my friends,” says JID. “Their stories are real and representative of what I grew up seeing and admiring about my city. It’s real and authentic. Their stories will always be important and need to be told. I support that shit 100 per cent.” “I’m from Atlanta, and if n****s from there don’t listen, it matters to me,” says Olu. “If we’re making music that don’t someway connect with them, we’re not doing it right.” WowGR8 has a perspective that “You can’t tell me falls somewhere in the middle, with a hint of cynicism. “As much as I’m you like different styles of clothes a product of the city, I’m a product of the internet. You can’t tell me you like different styles of clothes but not different styles of music” but not different styles of music.” This is why, with Ghetto Gods, EarthGang are intentionally going in a different direction from their 2019 breakthrough album, Mirrorland. COVID is not being credited as an executive producer, but it did influence how the album was created. Between quarantine and live shows coming to a screeching halt, EarthGang couldn’t tour. This gave them a chance to lock in at home and reconnect with the energy that fuelled the early part of their career. “When you’re recording while travelling, you learn about the world but also a lot about yourself,” says Olu, admitting that the duo hadn’t recorded a project exclusively in Atlanta since signing to Dreamville – rapper and producer superstar J Cole’s label – in 2017. “It was like showing a reflection of everything you saw in the world and the cultures you experienced.” However, he also brings up a comparison that frequent collaborator and fellow Spillage Village producer Hollywood JB told him. “He said that with Ghetto Gods it feels like we understood the assignment and did what needed to be done, but with Mirrorland we were all over the place. It was so dense, but sometimes you need shit like that – something you can listen to for 10 years and still find something.” Most, if not all the guest features on Ghetto Gods are fellow Atlantan artists, ranging from Yung Baby Tate to CeeLo Green, while the record’s producers include platinum prodigies such as JetsonMade and Big Korey, son of legendary Atlanta music exec Big Oomp. This album is pretty much their version of clicking their heels and saying, “There’s no place like home.” “Mirrorland was like Atlanta: The Musical – a Broadway show,” says WowGr8. “Ghetto Gods is the movie, the reality show.”
“We just wanted this album to sound like Atlanta”
Changing goals: before going into music, JID (pictured here in his beloved Sly Stone T-shirt) had planned a career in American football, but this was cut short by injury
JID
Altered egos: Olu (left) and WowGr8 first met at high school. Back then, they were known as Johnny Venus and Doctur Dot
When WowGr8 and Olu arrived at Cam Kirk studios today, they were too tired to be concerned about the pictures on the wall or why they’re not in any of them. The question they have is simply, “What are we doing here today?” To be fair, the photoshoot for this cover story is sandwiched between performing at the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago the day before and the Gorillaz show they’re booked to appear at in London the day after this. So yeah, they are probably just looking at calendar invites at this point.
With suitcases in tow, there’s a good chance neither of them will get to spend any real time at home to enjoy simple tasks like cooking a meal, chilling with family and washing clothes. Which is why Olu is pondering just picking up some new clothes at Lenox Square mall on the way to the airport, and WowGr8 is negotiating a deal with the shoot’s stylist, D Mapp, to buy the leopard-print Saint Laurent shirt he’s having a hard time walking away from. The situation is a familiar one given that both EarthGang and JID have essentially lived on the road since going on their first tour in 2014, opening for Ab-Soul. From there, they would build reputations for being electric performers, featured on tours with Mac Miller, Bas and J Cole while also co-headlining their own Never Had Shit Tour.
“Ever since I’ve been on tour, I haven’t written a song without thinking about performing it,” says WowGr8, who also says he actually stopped writing altogether recently, citing that wordy lyricism should take a back seat to clarity that listeners can feel and understand. “Some people get so caught up in the sport of it, trying to show they can hit the most backflips. That’s cool, but to a crowd of people? No one is going to remember that.”
It’s worth noting that the one exception is actually in his crew. JID – known for his microphone acrobatics and at times pausing after performing songs to catch his own breath – once almost made a stage and ceiling cave in due
to synchronised stomping from the crowd during a show at Ithaca College in 2019. Surely someone remembered that.
“I have one last personal goal to achieve as an artist,” WowGr8 continues. “Arena tour. I don’t feel like I have to beat the sales game or streaming game, I have to beat the touring game. We just started headlining tours in 2019, so we should start doing amphitheatres next year and the arenas after that.” That goal doesn’t seem unobtainable considering that EarthGang have a strong enough reach to do shows at the bottom of the planet during the height of a global pandemic.
In December 2020, the duo damn near went viral when images of them performing to a mask-less crowd surfaced on Instagram. Some fans left comments asking if the pictures were a photo dump from past years, while others accused them of being reckless. What they were seeing was EarthGang performing for crowds of 7,000 to 15,000 people over the span of three days – outside – in New Zealand, which at the time was the safest country in the world, with zero positive COVID cases. The show was originally booked in 2019 for 2020, but we all know how that worked out.
“I’m playing Globally Monopoly, I keep trying to tell y’all,” their manager Barry ‘Hefner’ Johnson bragged in the caption of one of his posts showing the concert. “EarthGang is the only hip-hop act in America doing festival dates currently, I’m pretty sure!” At that time, this was very true. Especially considering the dates were between December 31 and January 5, meaning that EarthGang flew into New Zealand two weeks prior to quarantine before doing the shows, sacrificing holidays with family and, in WowGr8’s case, missing Christmas with his three-year-old son.
“Missing Christmas is a big deal,” admits WowGr8, who is pretty open about how he’s the primary caretaker of his child. “But coming back with a bunch of money is also a big deal.”
Abunch of money and how one spends it is now the topic of discussion in JID’s dressing room. The artist, who opted out of a shave from the shoot’s hired barber and brought some of his own clothes because “I stay camera-ready”, has pulled out a delicate, vintage Sly Stone T-shirt he packed into his Louis Vuitton duffel bag. He’s justifying spending $800 [£580] on it – the shirt, not the bag – because one, that’s his favourite artist; two, he’s never seen his face on a shirt before; and three, he “wears the hell out of it all the time”, including right now.
“Make sure you write that these pants are from the 1930s,” JID says, inferring that the patchwork trousers he’s rocking today also cost a pretty penny. But at the same time he’s trying to save a buck or two by asking the stylist, “Can I have these?” every time she pulls out a new pair of socks.
Bouncing around like this is all a part of JID’s jittery personality. He talks in damn near the same cadence as he raps, short bursts with more words than you thought he could fit in there. But today he doesn’t have many words to offer about his new album. “I can’t tell you” is one of his responses when asked about specifics, and “It’s my favourite that I made so far” is what he says when asked about it in general. “I’m just trying to grow it and keep it fresh and prove my fans right,” he says in one of the rare instances where he opens up about the new music on the album. “I want them to “If we’re making music that don’t be able to brag on me, like, ‘This is a great body of work.’ That’s always the intense part, making someway connect with Atlantans, we’re something that someone’s never heard before.” WowGr8 jokes that JID tends not doing it right” to over-rap with the “Eminem disease”, but that sickness has helped him build a healthy mixed bag of features on songs by artists including Doja Cat, Dua Lupa, Conway the Machine, Denzel Curry, Free Nationals, and even emerging Atlanta rappers Grip and Kenny Mason. While he’s tight-lipped on who will guest on The Forever Story, JID insists that it’s the product of an ensemble cast because that’s the way it should be told. “Music is communal; you can’t just work by yourself and expect people to feel it,” he says. “You need some outside feedback.” EarthGang share similar sentiments, revealing that a long list of people including Andre 3000 and David Banner stopped by during the recording of Ghetto Gods, although neither of the two is confirmed to actually appear on the album. “I know a lot of n****s say you save money recording at home, because you can wake up and create,” says Olu. “That’s a beautiful thing. But I love going to the studio. It’s like going to the gym to work out, or going to the court to play ball. You get a lot of that energy that you can’t get from being locked up at home in front of the computer. Even if you’re not making music, just being around the creative, that’s the real fun.” Fun is something that both parties seem to be having as they – and the rest of the world – look forward to moving freely around the planet again. But as EarthGang and JID start to return to their road lives, the hope is that they continue to take the city with them wherever they go, even if it doesn’t fit the rest of the world’s idea of what Atlanta is; the city as it is, changing by the minute. “Being here for the past last year helped me understand the world is coming here,” says Olu. “We gotta embrace that shit, but keep our essence, too. There’s a connection between the stories we tell and the shit people see. Buildings have an expiration date; it’s about the spirits.” “We just wanted [this album] to sound like Atlanta,” he adds. “Some stuff we do is so cerebral, which is cool and different. But n****s also need stuff they can’t stop looking at, too.” Picture that, frame and hang it. Instagram: @earthgang; @jidsv
