Let the World Listen Right: The Mississippi Delta Hip-Hop Story

Two: New Blues in the Mississippi Delta

46 C h a p t e r T w o New Blues in the Mississippi Delta You have Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and just a variety of music. Even back then, when the blues was real real popular here, every Saturday morning, you know, you would see people outside in the community, barbequin’, just drinkin’ beer, smokin’, and that’s how I feel like I got introduced to the blues. Music’s been around me all my life, so it’s a no-brainer to get in this. –TopNotch the Villain, Mississippi, 20051 I’m gonner make up the next song up all at once and see what I can do. Now it ain’t no song. I ain’t got no music or nothing to go with it. I’m gonner see what I can do from the root and branch. –Sonny Boy Watson, Mississippi, 19682 When I met twenty-six-year-old Jerome Williams at the threshold of the Love Zone that Sunday night, I was inspired to learn more about his work. At that time, he was spending four 12-hour days a week as a telemetry technician at Northwest Regional Medical Center, watching electronic blips on a medical computer screen. The hospital is situated on the periphery of the Brickyard, and it is a source of the few dependable jobs in town. TopNotch had been at it for two years, earning training certificates and new skills as he went. He was even photographed for the local newspaper for bravely putting out a fire on his floor when an oxygen tank exploded. On regular days he would hover in his white coat near the twenty-patient EKG monitor for up to twelve hours at a time, its tiny white dots bouncing in sync with the heartbeats of the secondfloor patients. It was his duty to check their rhythms, making sure that each beat fell right in its own time, strong and even. When he raps, Jerome goes by the name of TopNotch the Villain. He throws a black baseball cap atop his head and an oversized T-shirt over his bulky frame. He is a freestyle rapper, improvising and remixing verse on the fly, adapting his New Blues in the Mississippi Delta 47 rhythm and rhyme to his immediate environment. Each of his raps is substantially different from the next, composed expertly in the moment. He sets his beat, strong and even, by patting his chest and sputtering with his mouth, and then begins to spit: Local boy, Stayin’ poster boy All about the grain Never worried about some change Unless I’m a get some a change Made my chance Did my thing Like I did my homework But it wasn’t from the school But it was from Delta streets I worked Everything could end my life And disrespect be put in dirt Did my hand and shake my hand Shake my hand and give the Lord All the blessing all the praise But it was my hand they raise When they saw the title one Knowing that the title son Giving me the whole city Giving me the lock down Really just to shock you If you thought about it top down TopNotch Hold the bill Hold the grain Hold the steel Hold the mayo Hold your meal Hold the flow Hold your feels New Blues in the Mississippi Delta 48 This is back Through some years Through some time Measure points Making sure Everybody feelin’ they relate to joints Pulled the cross Did some thought Did some thinking Did some training Did forever Then came to bubble out you cranium Still you’re drainin’ ’em With some long type of loop Everything the Delta said They had to be fluid, but the Difference between smart and the Difference between stupid It’s a fine line and everybody had to go through it Believe this When the people come to the hood they receive this And make sure that nothin’ ends your life but what’s prestigious Achieving it Thinking that all the thing’s the same Make hood for the love but Love brings pain3 TopNotch’s rhythms follow his extended exhalations, long breaths that allow him to rapid-fire poetic verses and then punctuate them with shorter lyrical blasts. He keeps an even 4/4 meter throughout his composition even as he plays with myriad polyrhythms within a...