Soul in the City:
Ear Candy Interview with Ab Rock

Written by: Slangston Hughes
Photography by: Edith Williams of Diamond Digital Portraits

 

Slangston: Okay. Slangston Hughes here with Mr. “A. b. r. o. c. k. Battle anybody. I don’t care if you rock DKNY” and that line takes me back a ways. A long way back. I think probably to the first time I heard you rhyme. I remember I was walking in between Gallery 409—which is no longer Gallery 409—and the old 5 Seasons—which is on longer the 5 Seasons anymore—which just shows how long you’ve been doing this. So, I walk up and there’s a cipher going on in front of the spot and you’re in the middle just like demolishing it. And I remember one line that you said: “Authentic b-boy not an artificial d-coy” and that takes me to a quote that a friend of mine once said, which is: “Can a b-boy become a b-man?” And, I think, when you look at the way your music has evolved over time from early ‘01 to now, you can really see the perfect eXample of the maturation. So, the question is, how have you been able to make that transition and what has been the biggest challenge in going from the backpacking b-boy to the grown man showing the full palette of, not just music, but life as well?

Ab Rock: Wow, that’s a big question! I really say the biggest thing that aided in the transition is just being honest with yourself. You know, sometimes it’s important that you’re doing music that speaks to where you are. You know, not really something that’s showing only a persona. 2000-2001, I was really heavy into the battle scene, Baltimore ciphers, and showcases skills. You know, that’s the scene I grew up in. The Black Thought-Common Sense school of emceeing, but, always, there was a range to what I did and Hip-Hop music is just one of the things that really kind of gives you a voice. And I remember, maybe around 2004 after I dropped the first album Declaration of Independence, I was like, “I could do another battle-type joint,” but the music I was making just wasn’t speaking to who I was at the time. You know, I was post-college, I had a fam, my career, and there was all these issues you run into and you hit the wall. You might be writing a song about how you battled this dude and it might show how nice you are, but it’s not really speaking to what you deal with on a daily basis. So, initially, for me there was a period of a lot of trepidation like, “Can I start writing about how I’m feeling? When its not the cool, confident me?” But, I remember, really one of the big pivotal moments for me was listening to the Little Brother song “Speak” and just being like, “Wow.” You know, that song really hit me in the heart. At that time, I was working like 80 hours a week it seemed and just really going through the motions. And it just made me realize that there was a market out there for being honest and, from there, I started recording The Mid-Midlife Crisis and writing songs about where I was in life. And it took so long for the album to come out because I wasn’t just writing songs; I had to live them. So, while I was going through stuff, going through my grandmother dying, going through transitioning, like you said, “from b-boy to b-man”, dealing with fam and job issues and letting go of old stuff while dealing with new stuff, all that was coming out in the album.

 

“As artists, we have a lot of different masks that we wear and the combination of everything is what leads to
that end result. So, when we hit the stage, we’re giving you a combination of that whole day. It’s not all
glamorous, but it’s real!”

 

Slangston: What is the final statement you feel like you really wanted to make with that album and do you feel like you’ve had the chance to make that statement?

Ab Rock: One thing I love is, when hearing feedback from people about the album, they don’t really say it’s one song here or a song there that they like, but that they can just put it in and let the whole thing ride through because there’s such a range of emotions in there. My thing was that, even if I didn’t sell 2 or 3 copies of that album, I needed to write that album. It was like cathartic for me—not Ab Rock the emcee, but Abdul the person—so, for me, having that album out, finishing it, and even after it was finished it took a while before I could put it out because I had to distance myself from it first ‘cause it was so raw. There was a lot of things I touched on in there. You know, your fears and insecurities and everything just put out there, and the statement that I wanted to make was that that’s okay. To be honest in who you are as an artist and a person alike is okay because people change. Not particularly for bad or worse, but they change. Going from b-boy to b-man… it’s just change.

 

Slangston: As an artist here over the years, what are major changes that you’ve seen with the Baltimore scene overall across the board from Hip-Hop, live music, and just the entire artistic scene itself overall?

Ab Rock: Well, one thing that I can say is a lot of us have maturated on the scene overall and started to incorporate live music in our sets. And you see a lot of the scene blending, as well. Like, a lot of Hip-Hop artists collaborating with Neo-Soul artists or Hip-Hop artists working with like musicians. And, as we’ve grown, we’ve started to eXpand the range of what we can do and step outside the box of who we are as artists. And the scene has grown and I like the fact that it’s very diverse and it’s strong enough in its own right to where, now it’s grown to where we have a strong music scene, a strong poetry scene, a strong theatre scene, and Hip-Hop scene and the whole scene has individually strong in its own right.

 

Slangston: Tying directly into that, you’ve recently started a monthly showcase at Club Reality called “Un{framed}” that really truly ties together so many of these different artistic scenes in Baltimore, and the tagline that you use, which I think is very profound, is: “It’s not a show, it’s an eXperience.” What is the main reason why you felt it necessary to start the “Un{framed}” series and what was the main goal you had in mind with bringing together all of these different aspects (the live music, visual art, Hip-Hop, poetry, R&B, etc… but all of these different components of the Baltimore entertainment and arts scene)? What was the overall vision for this endeavor in itself?

Ab Rock: The idea was really a give back, because you want to showcase the diversity of the scene. I kind of wanted to give everyone else the feeling of my eXperience in Baltimore because I go to live shows, I go to art shows, Hip-Hop shows… the whole nine and I party. So, it’s like a way to combine all of my eXperiences on the scene into one event. I wanted to create an event with my partners Femi The Dri Fish from 5thL and Tony Jones that was similar to a night out for me. And it’s not a show. Anybody can throw a show. We’re creating an environment for you to have an eXperience and create memories and truly have a one-of-a-kind eXperience. And that’s why we really take time to showcase the diversity of the scene, and people come there and network and they have a good time, and it’s almost like a social eXperiment.

 

Slangston: In your video for the song “Who Do You Think You Are” where you show like a full work day starting with artists working on the work-site of a day job and then ending with the performance scene where you see them as artists performing at the venue at night, what was the whole concept and vision behind that idea?

Ab Rock: First of all, I want to send a shout-out to Hilton Carter for shooting a great video and Undersound Music, too, for helping me to wrap it up in just a couple of days. We shot it at Club Reality. Basically, the idea of the video treatment was a concept I was working on where I wanted to showcase the minutes in a day of an artist’s life. Usually, you just see the end result. You don’t see everything else that comes along with it. You don’t see the waking up in the morning and the whole entire daily grind. And the song is called “Who Do You Think You Are”, so the idea is, as artists, we have a lot of different masks that we wear and the combination of everything is what leads to that end result. So, when we hit the stage, we’re giving you a combination of that whole day. It’s not all glamorous, but it’s real!

 

“My thing was that, even if I didn’t sell 2 or 3 copies of that album, I needed to write that album. It was like
cathartic for me—not Ab Rock the emcee, but Abdul the person…”

 

Slangston: The single that’s out now, “Fly” featuring J Soul, which isn’t on the album, seems to be a bridge between one project and the next. So, what is the next project?

Ab Rock: The next project is going to be a mixtape with PEDEX clothing and also a re-release of The Mid-Life Crisis to give it a larger release to an even bigger audience, ‘cause it had a DMV release, but we want to get it out there even more. So, we’re doing some remixes of a few songs with a couple of different producers to give it a fresh feel. And, also the next big thing in the new year I’m working on is putting together a live band of my own and looking to do even more performances in the live music arena of things.

 

Slangston: Okay. Well that’s a perfect segway into the last question. What are the main differences that an audience can eXpect when they see Ab Rock with a live DJ in comparison to when they see him with a live band?

Ab Rock: Well, one thing, rocking with a DJ you have your tracks and adlibs are all already in place, so it gives you more time to focus more on lyrics and focus on being very witty. Where, with live instrumentation, it kind of frees you up and there’s more emotion and energy and, for me, the more energized I am, the more it makes for an even better show. So, one format is cool, but sometimes it can have me boxed in, and, too, it depends on the audience I’m performing for, but I definitely love performing with a live band.

 

 

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