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

Four: True Blues Ain’t No New News

109 C h a p t e r F o u r True Blues Ain’t No New News Like I said, we call it the mergin’ of blues to rap. Like I said, we gonna transcend it and we gonna tell you what we’re talkin’ about, with rap emerging from the blues or what have you . . . –TopNotch the Villain About fifteen miles south of the Tennessee/Mississippi border, TV signals fade, most cell phones cease to work, and hopes of socioeconomic equality struggle as if trapped under the thick cotton curtain that lines its boundaries. In this part of the world the radio auto-tuner swings almost completely around the dial before finding a weak signal to pull from the air. More than likely, it will find community radio from the closest small town—tiny stations with tiny transmitters whose signals manage to roll over the flat Delta landscape for twenty miles in any direction. From this ether strong black voices emerge in the midnight—each singular, each exquisite. The first of these to register on the dial is that of West Helena, Arkansas’s KCLT 104.9: “This is DJ Pimp Min-is-ter here with your Friday night sookie, soookie, sooook-ayyy!1 “Hello, Helena. You’re listening to party blues and oldies for grown folks only. Be grown or be gone! “I’m givin’ a shout-out tonight to my partner, Leroy White. Let me hear you say, Leee-roy! Leee-Roy! Party down, party down!” Keep heading south and KAKJ fades out around the Lyon exit, with Clarksdale’s WROX phasing into the dial. DJ Lady Cherry is on the microphone , conducting the night with the coy but pointed demeanor of a master blues vocalist. “Hello, Clarksda-yullll. You’re listening to WROX, the Home of Southern Soul, and I am your host, Lady Cherr-ay. Cherishhhhhhhhhhh! Cherrycherrishhhhhh! Ain’t that somethin’? Ooo-wee!” True Blues Ain’t No New News 110 Lady Cherry spins a lover’s trifecta of songs, including Theodis Ealey’s raunchy “Stand Up in It,” Robert Johnson’s bittersweet “Come On in My Kitchen,” and, inevitably, Kool and the Gang’s “Cherish.” The next morning George Hines, a longtime regional deejay, takes over the WROX airwaves, busting through the morning air with the enthusiasm of daybreak: “This is Hines in the mornin’ times at WROX, X, X, the station that Early Wright built. George Hines, Hines, Hines on your radi-yi-yo. NO! There is nothing wrong with your radi-yi-yo. We are simply . . . jammin’. I’m like the deejays back in the day: systematic, cruisamatic, rip and read!” Madd and Marilyn in the Morning, the popular WROX morning radio show hosted by bluesman Bill “Howl-n-Madd” Perry and Marilyn Fontenot, a Cajun journalist and station manager, offers a forum for blues musicians to plug their work and discuss their art. For their seasonal blues summit, the morning crew asked TopNotch and DA F.A.M. to speak about the relationship of their work to the blues. The conversation comes full circle. Howl-n-Madd: Let me tell you the way I see it. You know, Hip-hop—you know, I mean, you can call it hip-hop if you want to . . . but see, listen to some of the lyrics, you see, and you’ll find out that what you’re callin’ hip-hop, some of those guys has got blues that’ll make you go, “Oh, wait a minute, now!” [laughing] Well, I mean, you know, you can ask, I mean, as . . . the bluesman said, “All music is blues.” That’s the way I see it. . . . See, my son, he’s also a hip-hop master. And he’s got a rap called “Top Notch!” Seriously, seriously. TopNotch, what’s up? TopNotch: Good morning to WROX 1450 AM radio. What’s goin’ on? Bringin’ Mississippi live this morning. George Hines showing an article about Early Wright at WROX studios, Clarksdale. Photograph by the author. True Blues Ain’t No New News 111 Yes, yes, it’s all about Mississippi artists and, uh, blues artists, musicians, I mean about, you know, Mississippi music. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, growing up in Mississippi. I heard [bluesman] Big Jack Johnson this morning on the phone, early this mornin’, talking about he’s from the cotton field. Well, um, I’m gonna tell you about...